6

Ignatius of Loyola was Cannon-Proof

Living in the early 1500s, Ignatius spent a good chunk of his life as a military man. A gambling, barroom brawlings military man. Oh, did we mention the whoring? Or as he put it in his autobiography "wenching."

During a huge battle with the French, his own men knew they were doomed and proposed a surrender. Ignatius would have none of that shit. He fought on and, shortly thereafter, he was shot with a friggin' cannon.

And lived.

The ball passed right between his legs, tearing one open and smashing the shin in his other leg. When he was carried to town to be treated, his broken leg had to be set, rebroken then set again. A chunk of bone sticking out had to be sawed off. When it was discovered that whoever set his leg had fucked it up so bad it was now shorter than the other one, they used weights to try to unsuccessfully stretch it out.

"Boy, we are just not good doctors."

When you consider this was around 1520 and they didn't have frivolous luxuries like sterilization and anesthesia, you realize the guy was more hard-core than entire countries' worth of today's pansies.

5

Vladimir of Kiev: Saint with 800 Wives and a Viking Army

Yeah, this guy had his own army of Vikings. We could probably stop right there.

Before becoming a saint, Vladimir Svyatoslavich enjoyed a career as a marauding pagan. One day he decided he wanted to be the Grand Prince of Kiev, so he amassed the aforementioned army of Vikings to go storm the city and depose the asshole who currently held the title (his brother).

Along the way he decided getting married might be fun and he sent some people to ask for the daughter of a nearby royal. After all, isn't that the time when men first start to think about settling down? When storming across Europe with hordes of Vikings to kill their own brother?

"Anyone else have a craving for wedding cake? I have a craving for wedding cake."

Sadly, the would-be bride declined the offer so he took a detour, killed her father and married her by force. Presumably there was a break for a nice dinner and some dancing before he got back to the task at hand and killed his brother, becoming ruler of Kiev.

Over the years he expanded his territory and his inventory of boobies, reportedly taking somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 concubines and several more wives.

4

Symeon the Stylite was What David Blaine Only Pretends to Be

Unlike those first guys up there who kind of stumbled into sainthood and badassery due to extreme circumstances, Symeon chose both willingly. </>

The man had a real hate-on for the pussified way all the rest of us live and decided he couldn't take it any more. At first he tried to shun the luxuries of mid 5th century life by shutting himself in a little ramshackle Unabomber-style hut for three years, where he figured not eating or drinking anything at all for the entire period of Lent would be a good idea.

After the hut proved too expansive and extravagant for him, Symeon packed up his loincloth and moved to a crevice in a rock in the desert. In a space about 20 yards in diameter, he set up shop but soon learned that when you decide to live your life as a religious sideshow, you're going to attract attention. Soon pilgrims arrived to watch him presumably just sitting on his rock. They asked him for advice and prayers and probably threw peanuts and tried to get him to do tricks.

3

St. Louis Crusades His Way to Sainthood

Louis managed to get a lot of shit done with his life, and afterlife, from being the King of France for nearly 25 years to somehow getting a city in Missouri named after him. And he also managed to go on multiple Crusades, which is kind of impressive considering that just surviving one of those would make people think you were a Highlander.

Louis' first Crusades went kind of poorly for him, which is to say during his first attempt he and a couple thousand of his men were captured by the Egyptian army and more than the entire yearly revenue for all of France had to be paid for his ransom. So that was probably mildly embarrassing.

Being that Crusades don't fund themselves, nor do massive ransoms for Kings who fuck up their Crusades, Louis kicked out all the Jews who were charging interest on loans in his country. So he did it because he wanted to help all of the poor and indebted peoples of his land, right? Oh, no, the loans that were owed to them still had to be repaid, just to Louis now.

2

Alfred the Great Invents the Navy

Alfred was the son of an English king named Ethelwulf back in the late 800's when the world was mostly rife with roving barbarians, plagues and triceratops [citation needed]. The youngest of Ethelwulf's four sons, Alfred was probably never expected to be king with three older brothers in line first. But sometimes being a badass can overcome such technicalities.

During a battle with the Danes when Alfred's brother Ethelred was busy praying in his tent for some manner of guidance or victory or a comely wench, Alfred got sick of waiting and hijacked the army, then led them to victory.

When Ethelred died, Alfred took over as king and immediately set himself up as an awesome military strategist by deciding not to fight the Vikings, opting to pay them off instead. Sadly, this lasted until the Vikings realized they were burly, horn-hatted men who raped and pillaged and that no payment would be enough to deprive them of their true passion in life.

1

Saint Olaf: a Viking

Remember how impressed we were with Valdimir up there and his personal Viking army? Well, Saint Olaf was a Viking. Barring new information on the existence of some ninjas who became saints, or some astronauts, it's not likely many other saints are going to have as much of an awesome history as Olaf and likely few of them ate as much meat or killed as many cave trolls.

Known in life as Olaf the Thick, because Vikings were all about cool and slightly unsettling nicknames, he was the king of Norway for about thirteen years starting in 1015. Back then, as near as we can tell, the average Viking day consisted of getting drunk and setting fire to anything that belonged to someone they didn't like.