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:
“I have been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man’s having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“For them it’s out-of-date and outmoded to perform miracles; teaching the people is too like hard work, interpreting the holy scriptures is for schoolmen and praying is a waste of time; to shed tears is weak and womanish, to be needy is degrading; to suffer defeat is a disgrace and hardly fitting for one who scarcely permits the greatest of kings to kiss the toes of his sacred feet; and finally, death is an unattractive prospect, and dying on a cross would be an ignominious end.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“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)