Shoesday- Saintly Soles

Shoe dedicates far and wide, did you know that there are saints for the masters’ of the shoe craft?

Crispin and Crispinian were once the Catholic patron saints of cobblers. Born to a noble Roman family in the 3rd Century AD, Saints Crispin and Crispinian, twin brothers, fled persecution for their faith, winding up in Soissons, where they preached Christianity to the Gauls and made shoes by night. Their success attracted the ire of Rictus Varus, the governor of Belgic Gaul, who had them tortured and beheaded c. 286. In the 6th Century, a church was built in their honor at Soissons.

These saints were removed from the liturgical calendar (but not declared to no longer be saints) during the Catholic Church's Vatican II reforms on the basis that there was insufficient evidence that Saints Crispin and Crispinian actually existed. Their role as shoemakers, their relationship as twins, and the timing of their holiday are suggestive of the possibility that they could have represented a local Celtic deity which had been made into a saint during a syncretist conversion.

The feast day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian is October 25. Hmm. That is suspiciously close to Gretta's birthday!