Saints Go Hard: The Story

An archangel, a teenage soldier, a martyred knight and a monk. None of them played soft.

Somewhere along the way, holiness got repackaged as soft. Quiet, polite, a little pale, never in the way. The saints would not recognize that version. The four on this design picked fights with the devil, with armies, with emperors and with their own flesh, and they won. Here is who they are.

St. Michael the Archangel

Far left, wings out, sword up. Michael is not a man who became a saint. He is an archangel, and Scripture shows him in combat: in Revelation 12 he leads the armies of heaven and throws the dragon down. His name is a question, Mi-ka-El, "Who is like God?", and the answer is the whole point. Nobody. In 1886 Pope Leo XIII wrote the St. Michael Prayer, and Catholics have been asking him to defend us in battle ever since.

St. Joan of Arc

Second in line, in armor, banner flying. Joan was a farm girl from Domrémy who started hearing the voices of St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret at thirteen. At seventeen she rode at the head of the French army and broke the siege of Orléans. She carried her banner into battle instead of swinging a sword, because she said she never wanted to kill anyone. At nineteen she was burned at the stake in Rouen after a rigged trial. The Church later overturned the verdict, and in 1920 she was canonized.

St. George

Third, lance driven into the dragon. George was a soldier in the Roman army who refused to sacrifice to the emperor's gods during the persecution of Diocletian. He was tortured and martyred around the year 303. The dragon came later, in the legends of the Middle Ages, but the image is true to the man: a soldier who would not bow, standing over the enemy. He became the patron of soldiers and knights all over the Christian world.

St. Benedict

Far right, hooded, cross out like a weapon. Benedict wrote the Rule that built Western monasticism and gave the world the motto ora et labora, pray and work. His enemies were quieter but no less real. When monks who resented his discipline tried to poison him, he blessed the cup and it shattered. The St. Benedict medal carries the old Latin exorcism that came out of that story: Vade retro Satana. Get behind me, Satan. If that line sounds familiar, it is the whole idea behind our Vade Retro Satana pieces.

The design

Four saints in a battle line under a storm, halos burning, lightning splitting the mountains, with SAINTS GO HARD in gold blackletter across the top. Drawn like an old bootleg tour tee, because the saints deserve merch. It comes on an oversized organic tee ($60), a heavyweight long sleeve ($60), a hoodie ($80), an extra baggy pump cover ($68) and an embroidered dad hat ($44).

“Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”Ephesians 6:11

The saints never played soft. Neither should we.