and no less than eight patron saints of tertiaries

I have no idea what was meant here, I just loved the notion of eight saints for something I'd never heard of as a noun (in regards to water, tertiary treatment is a term used for wastewater treatment - it's the highest standard of treatment, and follows primary and secondary). I'll leave it up to TEd to come up with a pun related to 3/8 of a saint, or some such.

Also, I'd like to proffer an apology - I wrote "less" here, when I am definitely in the "fewer" camp on this particular usage question - my bad.