I can imagine the saint's day feast: luke-warm black coffee and cigarettes.

Thanks for the reading material! "Dark Night of the Soul" is one of my favorite poems, but I knew very little about its author.

The McKennitt song is beautiful. I have to confess, the sheer weight of explanation behind the poem discouraged me from trying to follow it deeper, but even on the surface level it's a wonderful love poem.

So, question then: can anyone recommend a similarly delightful book about Saints? Not so much a collection of all of their vitae (as entertaining as those often are), nor an internet site, but a book with a few paragraphs about each one and their associations and notes for where their vitae might appear?

If so, that would be something I'd love to own.

Also, on a Saint-related note, are folks around here aware of the campaign to establish a Patron Saint of Handgunners? I stumbled across it the other day while researching something else.

I was in a role-playing campaign where there were Potions of Holy Water of St. Barbara floating around. Heh. "Begone, foul undead beast!" *BOOM*

Claude, thanks for the link. My copy of Fr. Kavanaugh's complete translation is getting awful beat up too.

The Genesian Theatre Company was formed in 1944 ... The building which houses the Company dates from 1868. It served as both a church and a poor school until 1932 when it became the Kursaal Theatre, housing the Sydney Repertory Company. In 1938 it became the first Matthew Talbot Hostel [for homeless men]. Since 1954 it has been the home of the Genesian Theatre Company.
The Company took its name from Saint Genesius, the patron saint of actors.

Also, San Juan de la Cruz is not to be confused with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a nun, who was also an excellent poet.

Have I mentioned how saints sometimes remind me of Borges's Chinese taxonomy?

If that does not fit, there are whole lists of patrons against the plague or epidemics.

John J. Delaney's _Dictionary of Saints_ (Doubleday, 1980) is most a collection of vitae, but has lists in the back for "The Saints as Patrons and Intercessors", "Saints of Places and Countries", symbols in art, and some nice timelines and calendars in the back. I didn't find it as fun a read as the Angels book you cite, but it's the best hardcopy resource that I know of that fits what I think you're asking for.

J.N.D. Kelly's _Oxford Dictionary of Popes_ is relevant on a similar topic, at least up through 1986-8 when my copy was published.

Hope this helps.

As a freshman in college, with limited Spanish and boundless naivete, I enjoyed the Cantico Espiritual (Spiritual Canticle). In grad school, with much more Spanish and much less naivete, I found it embarrassingly homoerotic. St. John later wrote commentaries explaining how all the images were spiritual, but to me that is (conscious or unconscious) spin. The last two lines are "and the cavalry, at the sight of the waters, descended."

Calling Dr. Freud.

I'm fond of the story of the Frenchman who, on first seeing Bernini's famous statue of St. Teresa, said "If that is divine love, I have experienced it often."