12 June 2009

Weekend Kneeler Jeopardy



This should be a softball question. At least most people can think of a country!

Category: Saints

This country is known as "the birthplace of saints."

St. Alex says, please place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, and say a few Our Fathers while you wait for the answer to be revealed. Demerits for using Google. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged.

10 comments:

Kathy said...

What is France??????

Mairin :o) said...

What is italy?

swissmiss said...

Kathy and Mairin:
Arguably both could be considered a birthplace of saints, but they aren't the country I'm thinking of, at least according to the EPIC CDs I just listened to!

Unknown said...

Well, Kathy should have been disqualified for using too many question marks.

Mairin, also disqualified, for using a Smiley.

Will I be disqualified by using too many words when I say: "What is the Czech Republic?"

http://chameleon-interiors.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html

Been doing a lot of browsing, Swissie?

swissmiss said...

No, Ray, not the Czech Republic either. Go West young man!!

Why were you on a decor site anyway? Looking for design ideas?

Unknown said...

I'll try southwest.

Italy would have been my first choice, virtually every town has a half dozen patron saints because in the olden days, they used to vote to confer sainthood.

France the "Eldest Daughter of the Church" would have been a good choice, as you say.

The Frankish countries (Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany don't seem to have a lot of saints that we know of. They probably didn't convert till the 900s or so.

So it must be: "What is Spain?" St. James the Greater made northwest Spain one of his early stops. And they probably had a bunch of martyrs under their Moorish rule.

swissmiss said...

Not Spain either! Go North.

Unknown said...

Oh, my goodness, not: What is Ireland?

They haven't had a saint since Oliver Plunkett who died in 1681.

Been lots of priests and nuns since then, but none of them canonized.


http://www.namenerds.com/irish/saint.html

swissmiss said...

Ah me laddy, yes, what is Ireland.

I didn't say the answer made sense, just that that's what I heard on the EPIC CDs. Plus, having so much Irish ancestry may have biased me to this question :) I would agree that Italy and France are more logical answers, but who can argue with the Irish!

Unknown said...

Well, I'm 50% Irish. I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't get it right away.

But if you look at that link, 95% of those saints are probably from before the year 1200 when Pope Adrian IV (the only/last English Pope) gave Ireland to the English King. Talk about a conflict of interest!