25
October. Day of
Remembrance: 1662 Book of Common Prayer: Crispin the Martyr, 288 A.D.
Saints Crispin and Crispinian are the French Christian patron saints of cobblers, tanners, and leather workers. Born to a noble Roman family in the 3rd century CE, Saints Crispin and Crispinian, twin brothers, 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. Though they survived, they were beheaded by the emperor c. 286.
An alternative account gives 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. Travelling there, the brothers came across a shoe-maker's workshop in Faversham and decided to travel no further but to remain in Faversham where there is a plaque commemorating their association with the town. They are also commemorated in the name of the ancient pub "Crispin and Crispianus" in Strood. This account fails to explain how the brothers came to be martyred.
The feast day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian is 25 October. Although this feast was removed from the Roman Catholic Church's universal liturgical calendar following the Second Vatican Council, the two saints are still commemorated on that day in the most recent edition of the Roman Martyrology.
Saint Crispin is often associated with the Battle of Agincourt as the battle was fought on Saint Crispin's Day, and especially because of Shakespere's St. Crispin's Day Speech from his play Henry V.
See also
- St Crispin Street Fair
- St. Crispin's Day Speech
- Daughters of St. Crispin
- Order of the Knights of St. Crispin
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