FOURTEEN HELPERS IN NEED
On the second Sunday in
May thousands of pilgrims
will be aiming for the Basilica
of the ‘Fourteen Saints’ at
Bad Staffelstein in a rural
part of Southern Germany.
They are there to honour and
remember the ‘Fourteen
Helpers in Need’, whose
feast day is that day. These
are saints who during the
Middle Ages have been
called upon for help in all
sorts of dangers, and still
surprisingly are done so now,
even by Protestants.
During the Middle Ages
people especially feared pestilence, fire, storms, sickness of their animals
and bad harvests. For that reason, these saints, usually martyred by
dreadful means, have been attributed with certain patronages. The persons
of the saints and their tasks varied regionally and in time, but during the
fourteenth century the number and patronages became fixed by the
‘Regensburg Group’, so named after the cathedral city of Regensburg in
Bavaria, where this group of saints was fixed in number. It was a group
which was considered sufficiently balanced: three saintly bishops, three
knights, three virgin women saints, a doctor, a monk, a boy, a deacon and –
the best known of them all – a giant with the name of Christopher. The
number fourteen points to Jesus’ family tree, which, according to Matthew,
was divided into three groups of 14 generations.
Since the functions of these saints were redefined again and again, they
remained important over the centuries. St Ch