SAINTS + MARTYRS + CRISPIN + CRISPINIAN

Dear Crispin and Crispinian,

Brave brothers of Christian lore who lived and worked and died together, please
hear my prayer, and intercede with God
for me. You worked with leather, making sandals and shoes, and perhaps satchels
and blacksmith's aprons. Your handiwork
aided others and protected them from harm.



You, however suffered great harm and torture,
and were eventually killed for your faith
and your love of the Crucified Christ.

Safe now, your labors over, you wear
the golden crowns of martyrs, and dwell forever in the Ivory cloud halls
of the Kingdom of Heaven

Protect me now, I pray you, good saints,
with your prayers before the throne
of our Creator, Merciful Lord
and Eternal King.

Amen

NOTE - Saints Crispin and Crispinian, twin brothers, are the French Christian patron saints of cobblers, tanners, and leather workers. Legend has it that they were born
to a noble Roman family in the 3rd century AD, fled persecution for their faith, ending 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 thrown into the river with millstones around their necks. They survived, but were beheaded by the emperor c. 286.

An alternative account describes them as sons
of a noble Romano-Briton family whose father had been killed, having incurred
the displeasure of the Roman emperor living at Canterbury. As they were approaching maturity their mother sent them to London
to seek apprenticeship and to avoid coming
to the attention of their father's killer. Traveling there, the brothers came across
a shoe-maker's workshop in Faversham
and decided to travel no further. A plaque
in Faversham commemorates their association with the town. A flaw in this account is
its failure to explain how the brothers came to be martyred. Crispin is associated
with the Battle of Agincourt as the encounter was fought on October 25, Saint Crispin's feast day, as Shakespeare mentions
in his history play, Henry V.