Fourteen Holy Helpers

The Fourteen Holy Helpers are a group of saints venerated together in Roman Catholicism because their intercession is believed to be particularly effective, especially against various diseases. This group of Nothelfer ("helpers in need") originated in the 14th century at first in the Rhineland, largely as a result of the epidemic (probably of bubonic plague) that became known as the Black Death.

Read more about Fourteen Holy Helpers:  History of Veneration, The Auxiliary Saints, The Basilica of The Vierzehnheiligen, Depiction in Culture, Gallery

Famous quotes containing the words fourteen, holy and/or helpers:

    What do you take me for? A fourteen karat sucker?
    Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)

    When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religio of amulets and holy places and priestcraft. Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes. Catholicism is accused of being too much like all the other religions; Protestantism of being insufficiently like a religion at all. Hence Plato, with his transcendent Forms, is the doctor of Protestants; Aristotle, with his immanent Forms, the doctor of Catholics.
    —C.S. (Clive Staples)

    When other helpers fail and comforts flee, when the senses decay and the mind moves in a narrower and narrower circle, when the grasshopper is a burden and the postman brings no letters, and even the Royal Family is no longer quite what it was, an obituary column stands fast.
    Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893–1978)