Sir, – In addition to his duties as patron saint of Austria, the martyred Irishman, St Coloman is patron of hanged men, horned cattle and horses – leaving little time to deputise for St Valentine (Martin Murphy, February 12th).
A stone in St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna is inscribed: Hic est lapis, super quem effusus est sanguis ex serratione tibiarum S. Colomanni Martyris (This is the stone on which the blood from the sawing of the bones of the martyr, St Coloman, was poured).
The stone is smoothed and burnished by a millennium’s worth of veneration, attesting to the persistence, if not the efficacy, of requests for his intercession.– Yours, etc,
Dr JOHN DOHERTY,
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Operngasse,
Vienna,
Austria.