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| From BLOG PHOTOS |
Wolfgang's feast day, and I promise I'm not making this up, is October 31.
He's often (or so it's rumored; I haven't been able to find such an image) portrayed with St. Ulrich, the first saint to be formally canonized by the Pope--on July 4, 993, that's today-- and his contemporary. Where St. Ulrich helped to fight off the much more powerful Magyars with the use of a sword brought to him by angels, St. Wolfgang was the one Ulrich sent to actually convert those Magyars.
St. Ulrich is fascinating to me as a magician, because he had a special sense of humor, as you'll see in the following two stories.
After he died, miracles almost immediately started to occur at his tomb. For example, those ill with malignant fever began leaving Birch rods (apparently symbolic of the fever?) at his tomb, which act then cured them of their fever--the flip side was, if you picked up one of those rods and tried to use it (for example as a walking stick), you came down with the fever yourself. After a while, no one would touch the rods, and they piled up until they were "a nuisance." I'm not sure how the situation was eventually managed.
Also, in a book called "The Open Court," I found this little tale: "In the life of St. Ulrich, we are told of one who declared that the saint had no more power than a dog to work miracles, wherefore, losing forthwith his human speech, he began to growl and bark like a dog, and soon perished miserably."
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