Ice Saints are Hilarius

Ice Saints are actually a thing. The Ice Saints are Mamertus, Pancras of Rome, Servatius of Tongeren and Bonifcas of Tarsus, and having now looked them up I need to share this particular rabbit hole.

I went to wikipedia. First for the Ice Saints, they are the saint days that fall in mid May and are supposed to mark when the ground will no longer freeze and it’s okay to plant crops. This is historical (folks believed this) and mythical (sometimes it just gets cold; these dates have nothing to do with it). We’re having a cold snap at the moment. I pulled out the thickest socks and layered up, looking like Kenny in South Park, and was still freezing because part of me just didn’t want to put on the winter boots and the winter coat.

Next I wanted to look up who these saints were. Mamertus has his saint day on May 11th, and was apparently known for having a dispute with Pope Hilarius. I mean, was he? Hilarius apparently was all about consolidating the Roman church into the unified block that it became until Luther nailed up his 95 thesis in 1517. But seriously, Pope Hilarius? No wonder we have fourteen Leos. Hilarius 2 sounds like a film franchise with Jim Carey.

The other interesting person on the list of Ice Saints is St. Boniface of Tarsus, who’s been demoted a few times over the years and is no longer recognized, other than being an Ice Saint. This might have been because he was supposedly sleeping with his boss, a rich Roman woman named Aglaϊa. He converted to Christianity but it was apparently only a short time between his conversion and having his head lopped off. This has been commemorated on a site called, I kid you not, saintforaminute.com

A little curiosity will take you far away and back in time. All these Ice Saints were early Christian, 300 to 400AD or so. It’s not that I’m so much into Christian history but they kept records, and there’s evidence that the stories were maybe based on something, as opposed to digging up the remains of a village and trying to figure out who was who and what sort of things they cooked for dinner.

Although many of these things have been mis-read or badly interpreted. Like this bench, which I would like to think says….

…but apparently says no such thing. That dog looks like it knows the answer.