Our story starts in the 13th century, with a man named Simon Stock. He will eventually become a saint (though he may never have existed, which is a trick some saints do; and then again, he may have absolutely existed, since parts of him are scattered throughout Europe, with some bones in Bordeaux, a tibia in Kensington, and part of his skull that he no longer needed, resting in Aylesford), but he isn’t when we meet him, on 16 July 1251, experiencing a vision of the Holy Mother, a brown scapular in her hand, and a promise that anyone wearing it would be delivered from Purgatory (if to Purgatory they were sent) on the immediately subsequent Saturday, which was the Holy Mother’s day to run errands, selecting the not-yet-holy who sported the divine object.