St. Crispin and St. Crispinian

Who was St. Crispin?

St. Crispin is almost never alone. He and St. Crispinian were Christian martyrs of Soissons, a city in northern Gaul about sixty miles northeast of Paris, and the Church has always honored them together on October 25. Tradition calls them brothers, sometimes twins. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1908) notes that this "has not been positively proved."

What is certain is that Christians venerated them at Soissons very early. By the 6th century a large basilica stood over their graves there, and the goldsmith-bishop St. Eligius later made a costly shrine for St. Crispinian's head. Everything else comes from their Passio, the story of their martyrdom, written long after the events.

The legend of Crispin and Crispinian

The Passio tells the story this way. Crispin and Crispinian were Romans of good family who went to Gaul as missionaries and chose Soissons as their field. Following St. Paul, who made tents so as not to burden anyone, they worked with their hands, making shoes, and earned enough to keep themselves and to help the poor. Later retellings add that they preached by day and worked at their bench by night, and that many people were won over by their kindness.

During the persecution under the emperor Diocletian, they were brought before his co-emperor Maximian, who tried promises and threats in turn. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives their answer from the legend:

Thy threats do not terrify us, for Christ is our life, and death is our gain.

Maximian handed them to the governor Rictiovarus, whom the legend calls "a most cruel persecutor of the Christians." The Passio says the brothers were tortured, then thrown into the river Aisne with millstones tied around their necks, yet swam to the other bank. They also came through a great fire unharmed. In the end Maximian had them beheaded, on October 25 in 285 or 286.

History and legend

The Catholic Encyclopedia is frank about the Passio. Because it mentions a large church already built over the saints' graves, it can't have been written soon after their deaths. It "contains, moreover, many details that have little probability or historical worth and seems to have been compiled from various fabulous sources." The Bollandists, the Jesuit scholars who edit the lives of the saints, printed it in their great collection all the same, and it was read in many breviaries.

So the honest summary is this: two martyrs named Crispin and Crispinian were venerated at Soissons from an early date, and their deaths in the Roman persecutions are likely. The shoemaking, the missionary journey from Rome and the miracles at the river belong to legend.

The miracles of St. Crispin

• Surviving the river Aisne with millstones around their necks: traditional.
• Coming through the fire unharmed: traditional.
• Favors asked at their shrine and altars: reported in the long devotion of the shoemakers' trades, but never formally investigated, since their cult began centuries before the modern process.

Why St. Crispin is the patron saint of shoemakers

Because of their trade in the legend, Crispin and Crispinian became the patrons of shoemakers and cobblers all over Europe, and of the neighboring leather trades: the Catholic Encyclopedia names saddlers and tanners too. Shoemakers' guilds put the brothers on their banners, prints and altars; an 18th-century print from Bassano, Italy, calls them protectors of the shoemakers' guild. Even shop signs called on them, like the carved sign of a Paris bootmaker's shop made in 1593. See more patrons of trades on our patron saints page.

Symbols of St. Crispin in art

Look for two young men, often dressed alike, together:

• Shoemaker's tools: an awl, a curved leather knife, a last (the wooden foot form), or a hammer. These identify them at once.
• A shoe or boot: held up in one hand, or hanging in the workshop.
• A workshop scene: late medieval painters loved showing them at the bench, as in the paintings on this page.
• The palm of martyrdom: both often carry one.
• A millstone: less common, from the river legend.

The panels from Messkirch show the usual pairing: each brother stands alone on his own gold-ground wing with a palm and a knife. Italian guild prints, like the one from the Remondini press in Bassano, show them working among ordinary cobblers. Painters also showed their martyrdom, sometimes in graphic detail.

St. Crispin's Day and Agincourt

On October 25, 1415, St. Crispin's Day, Henry V of England defeated a much larger French army at Agincourt in northern France. Shakespeare made the date immortal in Henry V (Act 4, Scene 3), where the king answers a wish for more soldiers:

This day is called the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

A few lines later come the words most people know:

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember'd;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

"Crispian" here is Crispinian, and "Crispin Crispian" is Shakespeare's way of naming both brothers at once. His audience knew the feast well: St. Crispin's Day was kept in medieval and Tudor England.

Feast day, calendar and relics

The feast of Crispin and Crispinian is October 25. The Roman calendar printed after the Council of Trent gave that day to Sts. Chrysanthus and Daria, so the two shoemakers lived on in local calendars rather than the universal one. When the General Roman Calendar was revised in 1969, they were again not included. They remain in the Roman Martyrology on October 25, and the Church of England keeps a commemoration that day. Our feast days page lists other saints of late October.

Their old basilica at Soissons is gone. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, some of their relics were taken to Rome and placed in the church of San Lorenzo in Panisperna, and Charlemagne gave others to the cathedral he founded at Osnabrück, in Germany.

Prayer to St. Crispin

No traditional prayer to St. Crispin is known from the standard Catholic prayer books. Shoemakers, cobblers and leatherworkers ask the two brothers, in their own words, to pray for them and for their work. On October 25 the Roman Martyrology names them among the martyrs of the day, and the Church of England's calendar lists "Crispin and Crispinian, Martyrs" on the same date.