A blessed day, word whisperers, and welcome to another installment of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Today, praise be, we look at a word that you might say is ‘holier than thou’, for today’s word is: hagiomania.

Hagiomania is the obsession with saints and sainthood. ‘Hagio’ means ‘saint’, from the Ancient Greek ‘hágios’ meaning ‘holy or saintly’, paired of course with the familiar ‘mania’ meaning ‘compulsion or obsession’. The word ‘saint’ itself means ‘a person whom a church or another religious group has officially recognised as especially holy or godly; one eminent for piety and virtue’, or can simply mean ‘one of the blessed in heaven’. Some famous saints you might recognise (or obsess over, you hagiomaniac) include Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland whom many celebrate on March 17; Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order, known for his love of animals; Saint Nicholas, patron of the Russian Orthodox Church, known widely in secular terms as Santa Claus; and, of course, Mary, the Blessed Virgin, considered the greatest saint as the mother of Jesus.

According to ‘The Athenaeum: A Magazine of Literary and Miscellaneous Information’ of 1807, ’One regular symptom of hagiomania (if the word may be allowed) is the desire of martyrdom. Luisa began to experience it about the age of seventeen. Frequent meditations upon the sufferings of Christ led to this; her favourite day-dream was to imagine that she was enduring torments for the sake of the Catholic faith…’ Sooooo...hopefully that clears that up for you.

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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