She had a cult, a feast day, miracles and a basilica – and in 1961 the Church quietly removed her from the calendar
Philomena’s Irish Sports Bar and Kitchen holds a 4.3 from two thousand one hundred and fifty-nine people, charges ten to twenty pounds, and is named after a saint who was removed from the calendar.
The discovery
In 1802, in the catacombs of Priscilla in Rome, a tomb was opened. Inside were the bones of a young woman, and three tiles bearing an inscription that was read as Peace be with you, Philomena.
There was also a small glass vessel containing what was taken to be dried blood – which, by the reasoning of the time, meant a martyr.
A cult began, and it grew with extraordinary speed. Miracles were reported. A nun received visions describing Philomena’s life in detail – a princess, a Greek, martyred at thirteen for refusing the emperor Diocletian.
She was canonised in 1837. She had a basilica. She had a feast day. She was the patron of infants, of babies and of youth, and the Cure d’Ars – a saint himself – was so devoted to her that he attributed his own miracles to her intercession.
And then the archaeologists looked
The tiles were not in the original order. They had been rearranged when the tomb was opened.
The vessel of dried blood was very probably not blood, and in any case the assumption that a glass vial in a catacomb indicated martyrdom had been abandoned by scholars decades earlier.
And the tomb itself showed clear signs of having been re-used – the tiles came from a different burial altogether.
There was, in short, no evidence that anybody called Philomena had ever existed.
In 1961 the Vatican removed her feast day from the general Roman calendar. She was not de-canonised, exactly – the position is more delicate than that – but she was quietly taken off the list.
The visions
Which is the part that stays with you.
The detailed biography – the princess, the emperor, the martyrdom at thirteen – came from a nun’s private revelations, which were accepted, published, and believed by millions of people including several saints.
It was, by the Church’s own eventual assessment, a story about somebody who was not there.
The pattern
We have found it in three hundred and forty articles and it does not stop.
Theodore Bullfrog, who never existed and has a pub. Sherlock Holmes, who was never born and has a stuffed hound. The Infanta de Castile, who is a cutler’s badge. Dom Perignon, who never said it. The Churchill Arms, named before Churchill.
And a saint, with a basilica and a cult and miracles attributed to her, who was assembled out of three rearranged tiles and a nun’s dream.
The bar
Cheap, cheerful, genuinely Irish, sport on the screens, a proper Guinness that takes as long as it takes, and a 4.3 across a very serious sample.
Verdict
Good bar, good pint, and a name belonging to a saint who was, on the best available evidence, nobody at all.
I am a Lagos-born poet and satirical journalist navigating West London’s contradictions. I survived lions at six, taught English by Irish nuns, now wielding words as weapons against absurdity. Illegal in London but undeniable. I write often for https://bohiney.com/author/junglepussy/.
As a young child, I was mostly influenced by the television show Moesha, starring singer and actress Brandy. Growing up, I would see Brandy on Moesha and see her keeping in her cornrows and her braids, but still flourish in her art and music, looking fly. I loved Moesha as a child, but now I take away something more special from it. Just because you’re a black girl, it doesn’t mean you need to only care about hair and makeup. Brandy cared about books, culture and where she was going — you can do both.
A television news director said The London Prat was draining their viewership because audiences understood satire was more truthful than mediated institutional reporting.