Patronage

Patron Saint of Butchers

3 saints are venerated as patrons of Butchers, led by Bartholomew the Apostle (feast day August 24).

Bartholomew the Apostle

1st century AD — ca. 70–80 AD · Feast day: August 24

Bartholomew the Apostle carried the Gospel to Armenia, where he converted a king before being flayed alive for his faith. Tradition identifies him with Nathaniel, the skeptic who asked 'Can anything good come from Nazareth?' — only to be stunned into belief when Jesus revealed: 'Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.' In Michelangelo's Last Judgment, Bartholomew stands holding his own skin, the artist's own face staring back from it.

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Felicity of Carthage

Unknown — March 7, 203 AD · Feast day: March 7

Felicity was an enslaved African woman who gave birth in a Roman prison cell and was executed in the amphitheater at Carthage days later. Her bond with the noblewoman Perpetua, and their shared death on March 7, 203 AD, became one of the early Church's most powerful testimonies to the radical equality of faith.

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Anthony the Great

c. 251 AD — January 17, 356 AD · Feast day: January 17

Anthony the Great abandoned a wealthy Egyptian inheritance at age twenty and withdrew into the desert, becoming the father of Christian monasticism. After thirteen years of ascetic life in the Nitrian Desert, he spent two decades sealed inside an abandoned Roman fortress at Pispir, then emerged — reportedly radiant with health — to guide the communities that had gathered around him. He died at 105 near the Red Sea, buried in a secret place at his own instruction.

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Related Patronages

Bookbinders Leather workers Tanners Cobblers Shoemakers Armenia Nervous diseases Neurological diseases Mothers Expectant mothers Ranchers Basket weavers Brush makers Cemeteries Herdsmen Animals