Born Jewish, he became an adult convert to Christianity. Hegesippus lived twenty years in Rome, Italy where he researched the early Church, but in later years he retired to Jerusalem. He was the first to trace and record the succession of the bishops of Rome from Saint Peter to his own day, and is considered the father of ecclesiastical history. Little of his writings survive, but he was...

Eutychius was the son of Alexander, a general in the imperial Byzantine army of Belisarius and a monk at Amasea in Pontus (in modern Turkey) at age 30. He was named the archimandrite of a monastery in Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey). Justinian the Great named him Patriarch of Constantinople from 552, and was confirmed in this position by Pope Vigilius. With Apollinarius of Alexandria...

Crescentia was born in 1682, the daughter of a poor weaver, in a little town near Augsburg. She spent play time praying in the parish church, assisted those even poorer than herself and had so mastered the truths of her religion that she was permitted to make her first Holy Communion at the then unusually early age of 7. In the town she was called “the little angel.” As she grew...

St. Benedict is sometimes known as St. Benedict the Moor as he was a black slave who is patron of African-Americans. The name Moor is from the Italian word for “black.” Benedict was born a slave near Messina, Italy. Freed, he became a hermit at Montepellegrino, eventually becoming superior of a large group of recluses.  When these hermits were disbanded by Pope Pius VI,...

Saint Joseph the Hymnographer was a Greek monk of the ninth century. He is one of the greatest liturgical poets and hymnographers of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but as a poet he is often confused with Joseph, the Archbishop of Thessalonica and brother of Theodore the Studite, who were one generation older than he was. He is also known for his confession of the Orthodox Faith in opposition to...