Saint Anthony of Padua

A Portuguese Franciscan of the thirteenth century, canonised within a year of his death, and one of the most popular saints in the Catholic world. The 'finder of lost things' devotion is a folk extension of his reputation as a preacher and miracle-worker.

The most common folk practice is the brief prayer for a lost object, sometimes with a promise of bread to the poor. The corpus records the practice without turning the saint into a vending machine.