Crispin and Crispinian

According to Mark our Lord's first four disciples were Galilean fishermen who were two pair of brothers - Peter and Andrew, James and John.

Today and tomorrow we have two further pair of brothers who have contributed greatly to the catholic and local life of the church - Crispin and Crispinian, Cedd and Chad.

St. Crispin and his brother Crispinian were natives of Rome, and having become converts to Christianity, travelled northwards into France, to propagate the faith. They fixed their residence at Soissons, where they preached to the people during the day, and at night earned their subsistence by the making of shoes. In this they followed the example of the apostle Paul, who worked at his craft of tent making, and suffered himself to be a burden to no man. They furnished the poor with shoes, it is said, at a very low price, and the legend adds that an angel supplied them with leather. In the persecution under the Emperor Maximian, they suffered martyrdom, and according to a Kentish tradition, their relics, after being cast into the sea, were washed ashore at Romney Marsh. In medieval art, the two brothers are represented as two men at work in a shoemaker's shop, and the emblem for their day in the Clog Almanacs is a pair of shoes.

From time immemorial, Crispin and Crispinian have been regarded as the patron saints of shoe makers, who used to observe, and still in many places celebrate, their day with great festivity and rejoicings. One special ceremony was a grand procession of the brethren of the craft with banners and music, whilst various characters representing King Crispin and his court were sustained by different members.

At Tenby, it was customary, on the eve of St. Crispin's Day, to make an effigy of the saint, and suspend it from the steeple or some other elevated place. In the morning it was formally cut down, and carried in procession throughout the town. In front of the doors of each member of the craft the procession halted, when a document, purporting to be the last will and testament of the saint, was read, and in pursuance thereof some article of dress was left as a memento of the noisy visit. At length, when nothing remained to be distributed, the padding which formed the body of the effigy was made into a football, and kicked about by the crowd till they were tired. As a sort of revenge for the treatment of St. Crispin, his followers hung up on St. Clement's Day the effigy of a carpenter, which was treated in a similar way.

From the example of the saints it appears how foolish the pretenses of many Christians are, who imagine the care of a family, the business of a farm or a shop, the attention which they are obliged to give to their worldly profession, are impediments which excuse them from aiming at perfection. Such, indeed, they make them; but this is altogether owing to their own sloth and malice. How many saints have made these very employments the means of their perfection! Saint Paul made tents; Saints Crispin and Crispinian were shoemakers; the Blessed Virgin was taken up in the care of her poor cottage; Christ himself worked with his reputed father, and those saints who renounced all commerce with the world to devote themselves totally to the contemplation of heavenly things, made mats, tilled the earth, or copied and bound good books. The secret of the art of their sanctification was, that fulfilling the maxims of Christ, they studied to subdue their passions and die to themselves; they, with much earnestness and application, obtained of God, and improved daily in their souls, a spirit of devotion and prayer; their temporal business they regarded as a duty which they owed to God, and sanctified it by a pure and perfect intention, as Christ on earth directed every thing he did to the glory of his Father. In these very employments, they were careful to improve themselves in humility, meekness, resignation, divine charity, and all other virtues, by the occasion which call them forth at every moment, and in every action. Opportunities of every virtue, and every kind of good work never fail in all circumstances; and the chief means of our sanctification may be practiced in every state of life, which are self-denial and assiduous prayer, frequent aspirations, and pious meditation or reflections on spiritual truths, which disengage the affections from earthly things, and deeply imprint in the heart those of piety and religion. - by Father Alban Butler