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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Tuesday, June 23, 2015

entry arrow12:47 PM | Santa Catalina of our Fictions



This is St. Catherine of Alexandria, patron saint of Carcar. And Dumaguete. I like the idea that two cities known for writers would have as a patron saint someone who is entirely fictional. She doesn't exist except in the ecstasy of our mugna, literary and otherwise.

A street in Dumagete is named after her. In her essay "The Streets of Dumaguete," the sociologist Lorna Makil writes: "Calle Santa Catalina was named after Dumaguete’s patron saint, St. Catherine of Alexandria, known as the 'Warrior Saint.' We read that she was chosen to be the town’s patron saint due to the great need for protection against the southern slave raiders. Legends about her courage and physical prowess were narrated by the townsfolk who had observed that her image on certain mornings would carry amor seco (a grass weed) clinging to the hem of her dress, and making them believe that the saint had gone out at night to drive away the pirates."

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