Saint Trivia
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128 free Saint trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
71 free Saint trivia questions with answers. Saints turn up everywhere: on calendars, in city names, on medals in glove compartments and in the reasons we give chocolates in February. This quiz covers the famous ones (Patrick, Nicholas, Valentine, Francis, Joan of Arc, George, Peter and Andrew), the patrons of lost things, throats, firefighters, musicians, the internet and lost causes, and the modern saints from Mother Teresa and Padre Pio to the first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis. It also covers how canonisation actually works and which pope made more saints than the previous five centuries put together. The easy questions ask which country St Patrick is patron of and which saint's gift-giving legend became Santa Claus. The hard ones want St Anthony's birthplace, the river where St Florian was drowned, the age at which Thérèse of Lisieux died and the first person born in what became the United States to be canonised. Good for church quiz nights, Catholic school classrooms and pub quizzes with a religion round. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the saints and their feasts, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 128 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country is Saint Patrick the primary patron saint of?
Ireland
Ireland credits Patrick, a fifth-century missionary bishop, with its conversion; the legend that he drove out its snakes is a tall tale, as there is no evidence the island ever had any.
Q 02By his own account, how did the teenage Saint Patrick first leave his homeland?
As a slave taken by pirates
'As a slave taken by pirates' is his own account: raiders seized him at about sixteen, and he spent six years herding animals before escaping and later returning as a bishop.
Q 03Legend says Patrick used which plant to explain the Trinity?
The shamrock
The shamrock, three leaflets on one stem, is the plant legend says Patrick held up to illustrate the Trinity; the story is not recorded in writing until the 18th century.
Q 04Saint Nicholas, whose gift-giving legend became Santa Claus, was bishop of which city?
Myra
Myra, in Lycia on the coast of modern Turkey, was Nicholas's see; in 1087 Italian sailors carried his relics off to Bari, where they remain in a basilica.
Q 05What did Saint Nicholas famously drop through a poor man's window on three nights?
Sacks of gold coins
Sacks of gold coins, one on each of three nights, paid the dowries so the impoverished man's three daughters would not be forced into prostitution.
Q 06Which medieval poet is credited with first linking Saint Valentine's Day to romantic love?
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer's poem The Parliament of Fowls has the birds gather to choose their mates on 'Seynt Valentynes day', probably the earliest link between the saint's feast and courtship.
Q 07Besides lovers, Saint Valentine is patron of epilepsy sufferers and which trade?
Beekeepers
Beekeepers count Valentine among their patrons, alongside epileptics and plague sufferers; a flower-crowned skull said to be his is displayed in Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome.
Q 08On Mount La Verna in 1224, Francis of Assisi reported receiving what?
The stigmata
The stigmata, wounds matching those of the crucified Christ, appeared on Francis after he saw a six-winged seraph during a forty-day fast on La Verna; he died two years later.
Q 09Francis of Assisi is credited with staging the first what, in 1223?
Live nativity scene
Live nativity scene: at Greccio in 1223 Francis set up a manger with a real ox and ass so villagers could picture Bethlehem, the origin of the Christmas crib tradition.
Q 10Francis of Assisi's feast day, 4 October, is also observed as what?
World Animal Day
World Animal Day falls on 4 October precisely because it is the feast of Francis, patron of animals; many churches hold pet blessings that day.
Q 11Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431 at roughly what age?
Nineteen
Nineteen: born around 1412 at Domrémy, she was burned in Rouen on 30 May 1431 after a trial whose charges included heresy and wearing men's clothes.
Q 12Which pope, elected a month into the First World War, canonised Joan of Arc in 1920?
Benedict XV
Benedict XV canonised Joan of Arc on 16 May 1920, nearly five centuries after a church court had her burned as a heretic; a retrial had already overturned that verdict in 1456.
Q 13Saint George is said to have been a soldier in which emperor's guard?
Diocletian's
Diocletian's: tradition makes George an officer in that emperor's guard, beheaded for refusing to renounce his faith during the great persecution; the dragon story was added centuries later.
Q 21What was Mother Teresa's job before she moved into Calcutta's slums?
Teacher
Teacher at a Calcutta convent school for nearly twenty years, she left after hearing, on a train to Darjeeling in 1946, what she took as a call to live among the destitute.
Q 22Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170 in which building?
Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral was his own church as archbishop: four knights who took an angry outburst by Henry II as an order cut him down there on 29 December 1170.
Q 23Saint Lucy, whose feast falls on 13 December, is patron of people with what?
Eye problems
Eye problems: Lucy is invoked against them because her name echoes the Latin for light, and later legends say she lost her eyes before her execution at Syracuse; art shows her holding them on a dish.
Q 14Saint George's red cross on a white field is the national flag of which country?
England
England's Edward III made George patron of his new Order of the Garter in the 1340s, and the saint's red cross, worn by English soldiers in that century, grew into the national flag.
Q 15Saint Christopher, patron of travellers, legendarily carried whom across a river?
The child Jesus
The child Jesus is the boy Christopher carries across a river in the legend; the child grows impossibly heavy because, as he then reveals, the saint is carrying the one who made the world.
Q 16Anthony of Padua, invoked for lost objects, was born in which city?
Lisbon
Lisbon, where he was born Fernando Martins in 1195, is his birthplace; his fame for recovering lost things stems from a stolen psalter returned to him by a runaway novice.
Q 17What was Saint Peter's original name?
Simon
Simon was his given name; Jesus renamed him Cephas, Aramaic for rock, rendered in Greek as Petros, which became Peter.
Q 18According to tradition, under which emperor was Saint Peter crucified in Rome?
Nero
Nero: tradition holds Peter was crucified head-down during that emperor's persecution of Christians and buried on Vatican Hill, where the basilica bearing his name later rose.
Q 19Mother Teresa founded which religious congregation in 1950?
The Missionaries of Charity
The Missionaries of Charity, founded in Calcutta in 1950, began with a handful of sisters serving the poorest of the poor and grew into hundreds of houses worldwide.
Q 20Where was Mother Teresa born?
Skopje
Skopje, then Ottoman and now the capital of North Macedonia, was the birthplace of this ethnic Albanian; at eighteen she left home to become a nun and never saw her mother again.
Q 24Saint Andrew is traditionally shown on what shape of cross?
X-shaped
X-shaped: the crux decussata, on which tradition says Andrew was bound rather than nailed, became the saltire, the white diagonal cross on blue that is Scotland's flag.
Q 25Saint David is the patron saint of which country?
Wales
Wales has the sixth-century bishop David as its patron, with 1 March as his day; his best-known miracle raised the ground beneath him at Llanddewi Brefi so a crowd could hear him preach.
Q 26Catherine of Siena urged Pope Gregory XI to bring the papacy back to Rome from which French city?
Avignon
Avignon had housed the popes for almost seventy years when Catherine arrived in 1376 and pressed Gregory XI in person to leave; he entered Rome the following January.
Q 27Thomas Aquinas's best-known work, left unfinished at his death in 1274, is called what?
Summa Theologica
Summa Theologica, his systematic reconciliation of Aristotle with Christian teaching, was left unfinished when the Dominican friar stopped writing in December 1273 and died the next March.
Q 28Augustine of Hippo was baptised in Milan in 387 by which saint?
Ambrose
Ambrose, bishop of Milan, baptised Augustine at Easter 387; Augustine had come to the city as its professor of rhetoric and at first went to hear Ambrose only to judge how well he spoke.
Q 29Saint Jude is the Catholic patron of what?
Lost causes
Lost causes and desperate situations are Jude's patronage; his name is really Judas, thought to have been shortened in translation to keep him apart from Judas Iscariot.
Q 30Saint Cecilia, whose feast is 22 November, is the patron of whom?
Musicians
Musicians have Cecilia as patron because her legend says that as instruments played at her wedding she sang in her heart to God alone; her feast is 22 November.