What can I say, Constantine is a favorite of mine. There are so many wonderful quirky things about him & then he is a saint & then he is an emperor. Really, what's not to love? You can look up all the garden variety stuff in any world history, so let me go straight to the good bits:
Constantine had several children & named most of them for himself (except one daughter he named Helena, for his mother & another son called Crispus). Three of his sons were called Constatine, Constantius & Constans. He even named a daughter Constantina. For a man named Caesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus, son of Constantius Chlorus this shows a shocking lack of imagination. Or incredible self promotion. Ever since I learned this, I picture Constantine looking a lot like George Foreman. In a toga.
"Scholars debate" when he actually converted to christianity. His mother had converted many years before her death, but he held on to (& took advantage of) his pagan title until the day he died. I actually think you can make an solid argument for his being an atheist or at a minimum a major hedger of bets. While they debate, scholars like to point to the many protections he gave chirtians, certainly not the norm. Except his mother was a christian & even an emperor can have a soft spot for his mother. Finally, there is no disputing that the christians were not singled out for special treatment. He had a remarkably even hand when it came to religious tolerance. The better to tax you with, my dears.
& that was Constantine's real claim to fame. Put everyone in touch with everyone else, let them barter, let them trade & take your percentage off the top. He is looking more & more like George Foreman to you, too now, right.
Anyhow today is Constantine's feast day. The one I mean anyhow. Not the Constantines that came before & after. Not to be confused with the saints Constantius (yep more than one). There are scores of better looks at his life than this one. My brother recommends John Julius Norwich's Byzantium in three easy volumes. Our boy appears mostly in the first--but he is felt all the way through. I instead give you this.
Showing posts with label saint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label saint. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
A saint for Monty Python fans
Yes, yes I know what day it is, I know tis the season of green beer & drunken debauchery in the name of an Italian driving the snakes out of Ireland. Not that he was definitely Italian. Because that is the important point. But here at Useless Ranch we like to offer alternatives. Preferably alternatives with something quirky going for them.
& so I offer you Joseph of Arimathea. First of all, you're welcome.
Secondly, no really, it was no trouble at all.
Thirdly, yes, I guess everything & everywhere & everyone has some quirk if you look hard enough. Considering how wildly popular Monty Python remain, I guess you could argue that being named in a Monty Python movie barely rises to the level. But Joseph of Arimethea is all I've got right now.
Let's get to the man. He is the one who asked Pilate if they could take Jesus's body away (Pilate said go for it, just so you know). It seems like a big middle management step for a guy who was a secret disciple of Jesus (apparently he kept a low profile because he was afraid of Jews...? Maybe I read that wrong, but that's what the saint-blurb seems to say). I like to imagine how mundane task are done (this is not a joke actually) so last night, after I found this guy, I imagined his pitches. Did he offer to take away ALL the crucified as maybe a beautification program? Or just the jewish ones because they might lower property values? Or just that one there because no one wants his followers hanging around under his cross? Let me assure you, these were the least offensive persuasions I thought of.
So Joseph of Arimathea takes the body & puts it in his own already prepared tomb. He also bought the linen etc. & generally did all that funeral grunt work & picked up the tab, which is not nothing. If you were already looking for him, you could say he fulfilled part of Isaiah's prophecy in the Songs of the Suffering Servant, specifically & literally about the servant lying in the tomb of a rich man (& people do say that). What happens next is better covered elsewhere, so lets stick with Joseph.
After the main event, Joseph went walkabout, bringing the word as far away as the British Isles. & apparently brought a famous cup with him which brings us to Monty Python. Because that cup was (or was not) the Holy Grail. Once he had done that, he was apparently finished.
Lastly, Old Joe here is the patron saint of funeral directors & what's not fun about that? So drink your green beer & toast the man: Joseph of Arimathea. & you can toast him again later this year because he was actually moved off of March 17th & on to several different days, depending on which calendar you went with way back when.
& so I offer you Joseph of Arimathea. First of all, you're welcome.
Secondly, no really, it was no trouble at all.
Thirdly, yes, I guess everything & everywhere & everyone has some quirk if you look hard enough. Considering how wildly popular Monty Python remain, I guess you could argue that being named in a Monty Python movie barely rises to the level. But Joseph of Arimethea is all I've got right now.
Let's get to the man. He is the one who asked Pilate if they could take Jesus's body away (Pilate said go for it, just so you know). It seems like a big middle management step for a guy who was a secret disciple of Jesus (apparently he kept a low profile because he was afraid of Jews...? Maybe I read that wrong, but that's what the saint-blurb seems to say). I like to imagine how mundane task are done (this is not a joke actually) so last night, after I found this guy, I imagined his pitches. Did he offer to take away ALL the crucified as maybe a beautification program? Or just the jewish ones because they might lower property values? Or just that one there because no one wants his followers hanging around under his cross? Let me assure you, these were the least offensive persuasions I thought of.
So Joseph of Arimathea takes the body & puts it in his own already prepared tomb. He also bought the linen etc. & generally did all that funeral grunt work & picked up the tab, which is not nothing. If you were already looking for him, you could say he fulfilled part of Isaiah's prophecy in the Songs of the Suffering Servant, specifically & literally about the servant lying in the tomb of a rich man (& people do say that). What happens next is better covered elsewhere, so lets stick with Joseph.
After the main event, Joseph went walkabout, bringing the word as far away as the British Isles. & apparently brought a famous cup with him which brings us to Monty Python. Because that cup was (or was not) the Holy Grail. Once he had done that, he was apparently finished.
Lastly, Old Joe here is the patron saint of funeral directors & what's not fun about that? So drink your green beer & toast the man: Joseph of Arimathea. & you can toast him again later this year because he was actually moved off of March 17th & on to several different days, depending on which calendar you went with way back when.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Colette v Colette
I remember the first time I saw the movie Gigi, it was at the Prosser Public Library where they used to have a regular Friday night movie (also the first place I saw The Graduate- you just know they don't do this anymore). I was primed to love this movie for all the usual reasons but also because me & my brothers were quite sure the lyrics to the most famous song began with "Thank Kevin for little girls" & one of use was Kevin! So thrilling.
For those of you wondering why I am talking about this is, Gigi (& several other novellas & short stories- run, run to your public library) was written by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette & her connection to today is....extremely tenuous. Back to Gigi for just a moment: it is a fairy tale: young girl in poverty etc. etc. marries the prince & lives happily ever after (I refuse to apologize for the spoiler, if you don't know how Gigi ends, you really need to get out more).
But today's Colette is an entirely different person...& personage. Saint Colette was born in 1381, in Corbin, France (a place that is not Googleable or Bingable so either it was spelled wrong, renamed or has Brigadoon-type qualities, guess which story I prefer). After a while she joined the Poor Claires & began reforming, but before that she was an anchoress. When I first learned about these women, I was fascinated & I still pretty much stop every time I hear about one.
An anchoress would wall herself into a room with no egress (if ever there was a time for the word "egress" I believe this is it)....with no egress except a window looking into a church.
I have been told I have the soul of an accountant. I don't think it was meant to be a compliment & my response at the time was I don't have the soul of anything, there is no such thing as a soul which I am sure the other guy thought pretty much proved his point. But I knew what he meant. While I like a good yarn as much as anyone, it takes me mere moments to get bogged down in the day-to-dayness of just about anything. Upon hearing of an anchoress, my first thought was how did she go to the bathroom, but our saint lived in a day of chamber pots so that was a no brainer. More problematic was how she managed to produce anything to fill a chamber pot. I picture the priest holding mass while altar boys chuck loaves of bread through the window behind him. Then there is the whole how did she get in there? How did she get out (she left the room after four years)? I cannot be alone in starting to wonder if this is how the whole Rapunzel thing got started.
Now for the Rapunzel detour: the Rapunzel story we know is almost certainly a German rip-off of a French story written by an actual known person, a woman as it happens: Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force. Mademoiselle de la Force lived...quite the life & was well known in her day. More than a hundred years later, her stories were still being published in France under her name & then the Grimm Brothers sanitized it & it caught on everywhere else. Yes, yes de la Force ripped the story off from the legend of Saint Barbara (patroness of among other things firefighters & people who will die a sudden death--what?!?!?!), but she spiced it up plenty.
So here we are at the other Colette. She wrote, famously or infamously, under what I was taught was a pseudonym but turned out to be her last name, one of them anyhow. In fairness, the first stories WERE published under her husband-at-the-time's pen name but no one seems to have ever been confused about who really wrote them. It seems he often published other writers' works as his own. This doesn't make it not-plagiarism but does make it maybe a norm for the time.
Colette was described as a victim of her machinating husband/publisher who took all the credit & kept all the money. This story also had a Rapunzel ring to it, but it turns out she had a pretty good time herself. She died in 1954 & it is clear everyone knew who she was. She had a state funeral after all, having been much lauded while alive for all kinds of artsy & patriotic stuff. The French people adored her, the catholic church not so much; they refused rites because of her divorces. Apparently you can hide Jews from Nazis, etc but get two or three little divorces...
To recap: one Colette lived in a room with a window into a church & the other Colette lived large. One went on to a life of deprivation & the other did NOT. That's all I've got. Except today's word: machination. & Saint Colette's patronages: women who are trying to get pregnant, expectant mothers & sick children. The other Colette was by all accounts, including her own, a disinterested mother.
For those of you wondering why I am talking about this is, Gigi (& several other novellas & short stories- run, run to your public library) was written by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette & her connection to today is....extremely tenuous. Back to Gigi for just a moment: it is a fairy tale: young girl in poverty etc. etc. marries the prince & lives happily ever after (I refuse to apologize for the spoiler, if you don't know how Gigi ends, you really need to get out more).
But today's Colette is an entirely different person...& personage. Saint Colette was born in 1381, in Corbin, France (a place that is not Googleable or Bingable so either it was spelled wrong, renamed or has Brigadoon-type qualities, guess which story I prefer). After a while she joined the Poor Claires & began reforming, but before that she was an anchoress. When I first learned about these women, I was fascinated & I still pretty much stop every time I hear about one.
An anchoress would wall herself into a room with no egress (if ever there was a time for the word "egress" I believe this is it)....with no egress except a window looking into a church.
I have been told I have the soul of an accountant. I don't think it was meant to be a compliment & my response at the time was I don't have the soul of anything, there is no such thing as a soul which I am sure the other guy thought pretty much proved his point. But I knew what he meant. While I like a good yarn as much as anyone, it takes me mere moments to get bogged down in the day-to-dayness of just about anything. Upon hearing of an anchoress, my first thought was how did she go to the bathroom, but our saint lived in a day of chamber pots so that was a no brainer. More problematic was how she managed to produce anything to fill a chamber pot. I picture the priest holding mass while altar boys chuck loaves of bread through the window behind him. Then there is the whole how did she get in there? How did she get out (she left the room after four years)? I cannot be alone in starting to wonder if this is how the whole Rapunzel thing got started.
Now for the Rapunzel detour: the Rapunzel story we know is almost certainly a German rip-off of a French story written by an actual known person, a woman as it happens: Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force. Mademoiselle de la Force lived...quite the life & was well known in her day. More than a hundred years later, her stories were still being published in France under her name & then the Grimm Brothers sanitized it & it caught on everywhere else. Yes, yes de la Force ripped the story off from the legend of Saint Barbara (patroness of among other things firefighters & people who will die a sudden death--what?!?!?!), but she spiced it up plenty.
So here we are at the other Colette. She wrote, famously or infamously, under what I was taught was a pseudonym but turned out to be her last name, one of them anyhow. In fairness, the first stories WERE published under her husband-at-the-time's pen name but no one seems to have ever been confused about who really wrote them. It seems he often published other writers' works as his own. This doesn't make it not-plagiarism but does make it maybe a norm for the time.
Colette was described as a victim of her machinating husband/publisher who took all the credit & kept all the money. This story also had a Rapunzel ring to it, but it turns out she had a pretty good time herself. She died in 1954 & it is clear everyone knew who she was. She had a state funeral after all, having been much lauded while alive for all kinds of artsy & patriotic stuff. The French people adored her, the catholic church not so much; they refused rites because of her divorces. Apparently you can hide Jews from Nazis, etc but get two or three little divorces...
To recap: one Colette lived in a room with a window into a church & the other Colette lived large. One went on to a life of deprivation & the other did NOT. That's all I've got. Except today's word: machination. & Saint Colette's patronages: women who are trying to get pregnant, expectant mothers & sick children. The other Colette was by all accounts, including her own, a disinterested mother.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Sameness circa Geoffrey Chaucer, 14th century give or take
It has been a while, but I am back on the Chaucer bus. I am supposed to have the Knights Tale re-re-read by New Year's eve, but it is not looking promising. Sorry A*****, this business of colicing horse on Christmas Eve is still eating into my time. Then there is all the usual year-end craziness, even though we barely celebrate Christmas (but I did get my mah jong set woo-hoo) craziness, personal year end stuff, also the students wrapping up & trying to get out of town & some of them graduating & not coming back so they can be little bit wired. Lastly, there are actual students coming back after getting advanced degrees elsewhere (we have been here a long time) & one HILARIOUS story about two former students meeting in Prof. R******'s lab & now they are married with kids. The time really does fly.
So, the Knight's Tale. I am remembering...via my notes how hilarious I found this the last time I read it. Yes, it was a while ago, but wholly unrelated to deciding to sit down & do this again, but all the way to the end this time, I have been thinking on certain elements of the Knight's Tale lately. Specifically, the way the knight had to make the fair maiden, well, fair, despite all evidence to the contrary what with her being the sister of the Queen of the Amazons. Yes, yes I know Wonder Woman was an Amazonian princess as well, but as far as mythical figures taking on the audiences characteristics go, Wonder woman just keeps proving my point.
That was a lot of commas! Let me see if I can think it out in smaller pieces. The knight is describing a desirable woman. He describes her as looking an awful lot like...the mother of his fair haired son probably looked. The knight does this even though he is telling a story about a warring Athenian prince & some other prince from Thebes. I guess this is BECAUSE if they don't look like him, he just cannot relate, although there is plenty of evidence he doesn't look anything like I would imagine an ancient Greek might look. What news story could possibly have triggered this thinking in me? Hmmmm.
Just to be clear, I don't care what anyone who might have existed might have looked like, but I do find this business of insisting they must have looked a certain way intriguing. & there is always what they zero in on. No one is going to the wall insisting a particular figure was probably quite short, except for Napoleon, which turns out is very likely a myth anyhow.
But whatever, that is not really what I wanted to talk about today, exactly. Today is the martyr day of Thomas à Becket. You can get all the info you want on himself elsewhere, I will just give you the highlights: he was made Archbishop of Canterbury by a king who thought he would be the king's man in Canterbury. Turns out Thomas à Becket was his own man & started telling the king what he could do with his influence. This is not the first time a political appointee went his own way (US History buffs can start extolling on Chester Arthur or Warren Burger anytime now), but it was plenty big because best case scenario, the king accidentally had him killed. I know, right? Which is why we have the pilgrimage to Canterbury & the Canterbury Tales.
I guess I am done, except did anyone else see that bit on Bill O'Reilly basting the pope? Because the pope is not God's man on earth if he disagrees with you, then he's just a crackpot. I like how O'Reilly had mixed feelings on the former Nazi, but is completely certain the new guy is just wrong. & I really like how he is pretty sure Jesus would not endorse a system that helped the poor at the expense of the rich. Because it just might be human nature the think our heroes look just like us.
So, the Knight's Tale. I am remembering...via my notes how hilarious I found this the last time I read it. Yes, it was a while ago, but wholly unrelated to deciding to sit down & do this again, but all the way to the end this time, I have been thinking on certain elements of the Knight's Tale lately. Specifically, the way the knight had to make the fair maiden, well, fair, despite all evidence to the contrary what with her being the sister of the Queen of the Amazons. Yes, yes I know Wonder Woman was an Amazonian princess as well, but as far as mythical figures taking on the audiences characteristics go, Wonder woman just keeps proving my point.
That was a lot of commas! Let me see if I can think it out in smaller pieces. The knight is describing a desirable woman. He describes her as looking an awful lot like...the mother of his fair haired son probably looked. The knight does this even though he is telling a story about a warring Athenian prince & some other prince from Thebes. I guess this is BECAUSE if they don't look like him, he just cannot relate, although there is plenty of evidence he doesn't look anything like I would imagine an ancient Greek might look. What news story could possibly have triggered this thinking in me? Hmmmm.
Just to be clear, I don't care what anyone who might have existed might have looked like, but I do find this business of insisting they must have looked a certain way intriguing. & there is always what they zero in on. No one is going to the wall insisting a particular figure was probably quite short, except for Napoleon, which turns out is very likely a myth anyhow.
But whatever, that is not really what I wanted to talk about today, exactly. Today is the martyr day of Thomas à Becket. You can get all the info you want on himself elsewhere, I will just give you the highlights: he was made Archbishop of Canterbury by a king who thought he would be the king's man in Canterbury. Turns out Thomas à Becket was his own man & started telling the king what he could do with his influence. This is not the first time a political appointee went his own way (US History buffs can start extolling on Chester Arthur or Warren Burger anytime now), but it was plenty big because best case scenario, the king accidentally had him killed. I know, right? Which is why we have the pilgrimage to Canterbury & the Canterbury Tales.
I guess I am done, except did anyone else see that bit on Bill O'Reilly basting the pope? Because the pope is not God's man on earth if he disagrees with you, then he's just a crackpot. I like how O'Reilly had mixed feelings on the former Nazi, but is completely certain the new guy is just wrong. & I really like how he is pretty sure Jesus would not endorse a system that helped the poor at the expense of the rich. Because it just might be human nature the think our heroes look just like us.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
The repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables
When it comes to saints, patronages run the gamut: places, professions, illness (usually against, unlike professions & places), but today's man has a new one on me: alliteration.
Benno famously played both sides against the middle in a pre-Martin Luther era church reformation (Martin Luther reviled him. Specifically. By name). The only thing Benno seems to have not flip-flopped on was simony. Don't feel bad, I had to look it up too: the sacrilegious vice of purchasing ecclesiastical offices and benefices to which spiritual jurisdiction is attached. What it isn't is the selling of those offices, for which I could not find a word-no emigration/immigration symmetry here.
Benno took vows & broke them, pledged to support a pope, then the anti-pope & then back to another not-anti-pope. This guy was first & foremost a politician & probably lucky not to be living in an age where your old speeches have been recorded & can be played back against you.
Benno pretty much only comes up when someone is in a reform the reformers kind of mood (which is more often tan you might think OR less often than it should be, depending a upon
your perspective. That's the thing about reform: there is never enough until there is too much.
But who cares about reform, I want to know about the whole alliteration thing! He must have been quite the public speaker, maybe his speeches were full of catchy phrases & jingles, you know (or maybe you don't), politicians' stump speeches aren't want they used to be). It seems to me thought that is ought to be fairly easy (& harmless) to pay homage to Benno on today his day: just stare into the mirror & go at it. May I suggest "she sells seashells by the seashore".
For everyone who went "wait, what?", let me clarify: Benno, an eleventh century politically savvy bishop...or canon, there is some confusion, is patron saint of
- anglers (there is a whole story about locking up his church & throwing away the key & then the key being recovered from a fish & if that all sounds like something we have covered before that is because we HAVE, but that was a different guy),
- weavers (he was big in Meissen & once upon a time weaving was big in Meissen -it was big everywhere- & I am guessing that is the connection although I accept there may not be one, especially since Meissen was really famous for porcelain & Benno is not the patron of porcelain workers who don't seem to have one, although patrons of potters abound),
- & alliteration.
Benno famously played both sides against the middle in a pre-Martin Luther era church reformation (Martin Luther reviled him. Specifically. By name). The only thing Benno seems to have not flip-flopped on was simony. Don't feel bad, I had to look it up too: the sacrilegious vice of purchasing ecclesiastical offices and benefices to which spiritual jurisdiction is attached. What it isn't is the selling of those offices, for which I could not find a word-no emigration/immigration symmetry here.
Benno took vows & broke them, pledged to support a pope, then the anti-pope & then back to another not-anti-pope. This guy was first & foremost a politician & probably lucky not to be living in an age where your old speeches have been recorded & can be played back against you.
Benno pretty much only comes up when someone is in a reform the reformers kind of mood (which is more often tan you might think OR less often than it should be, depending a upon
your perspective. That's the thing about reform: there is never enough until there is too much.
But who cares about reform, I want to know about the whole alliteration thing! He must have been quite the public speaker, maybe his speeches were full of catchy phrases & jingles, you know (or maybe you don't), politicians' stump speeches aren't want they used to be). It seems to me thought that is ought to be fairly easy (& harmless) to pay homage to Benno on today his day: just stare into the mirror & go at it. May I suggest "she sells seashells by the seashore".
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Joseph de Veuster
Technically, yesterday was the feast day of Joseph de Veuster AKA Saint Damien Joseph de Veuster of Moloka'i, but I was busy & then I posted something else & then I got sidetracked....sue me.
Our boy here is one of the Hawai'ian leper colony saints, yes there is more than one. OKay I thought there was more than one but all I can find is his guy. A LOT of this guy. In my defense he has several names, the most common being Father Damien which is NOT what the register of saints people called him. But there just could not be two guys hanging in Moloka'i at about the same time being defended by...
You know what, I am starting again. Again again since I meant to post this yesterday. Here we go:
Joseph de Veuster was studying to be a priest & his brother (Pamphile-what a great name!) was a priest & this brother was supposed to go minister to the people of Moloka'i but he got sick sooooooo....Joseph took his place & was ordained in Hawai'i & worked (famously) in the leper colony. & that was his life. Not an easy life, kind of a short one (he died before his 50th birthday). It will come as no surprise that Father Damian contracted leprosy himself, but he more or less knew that would happen going in.
There a lot of famous stories about Father Damien, his piety (meh), his devotion to his parishioners (more impressive). But the stories I like best about Father Damian have to do with what the outside world thought of him. Keep in mind, this is a man living in a leper colony in 19th century Hawai'i. This is not one of those high profile leadership roles. But he swung it. Swinged it? Swang it?
First the small story, which is really more of a factoid. When Hawai'i was made a state & got to add two images to the United States Capitol Building, his statue was one of the two. I want you to stop now & think about this. A cluster of Pacific island's with a vibrant (gory & beautiful) history, so different from every other state in the union & proud of it. they can choose two iconic figures to say to the country tis is who we are & they choose a leper. Double dog strange when you consider most of the white men making tis decision were descended from a very specific sect of New England Puritan. I know right? I had to know what the other image was: Kamehameha, which was my first guess.
The big story, & one of my favorites among all saints stories ever, truly.
After Father Damien's death, a certain Reverend Mister Hyde referred to him as a dirty person who contracted leprosy through his own lack of hygiene, etc. & was in general undeserving of the accolades that were trickling in. There were probably many motives for this prejudice, not the least of which Hyde was a Presbyterian & in addition to not always being super nice to the locals which father Damien was getting credit for being Presbyterians are not always super nice to Catholics. It's kind of a thing. What really kicked it into over drive was the DELUGE of rebuttal his letter received. The most famous was from Robert Luis Stevenson (himself a Presbyterian) who traveled he Pacific with his family & was in Hawai'i for a significant period. Among other things Stevenson chewed on Hyde for being such a nitpicking asshole, indicated the motive was probably jealousy & suggested that Father Damian would likely be made a saint, Reverend Mr. Hyde could be sure his own jerky behavior would be a big part of it. You can read the letter in its entirety here. Stevenson sent the letter in 1890, Father Damien died in 1889, & Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde was published in 1886. Still, its a lovely little coincidence.
Oh oh, Father Damien was Flemish. Another one! & of course he is the patron of people suffering from leprosy as well as people who work to treat &/or cure it. I am guessing he is also the patron saint of Honolulu at least & very likely all of Hawai'i, but I could not find it confirmed anywhere.
Our boy here is one of the Hawai'ian leper colony saints, yes there is more than one. OKay I thought there was more than one but all I can find is his guy. A LOT of this guy. In my defense he has several names, the most common being Father Damien which is NOT what the register of saints people called him. But there just could not be two guys hanging in Moloka'i at about the same time being defended by...
You know what, I am starting again. Again again since I meant to post this yesterday. Here we go:
Joseph de Veuster was studying to be a priest & his brother (Pamphile-what a great name!) was a priest & this brother was supposed to go minister to the people of Moloka'i but he got sick sooooooo....Joseph took his place & was ordained in Hawai'i & worked (famously) in the leper colony. & that was his life. Not an easy life, kind of a short one (he died before his 50th birthday). It will come as no surprise that Father Damian contracted leprosy himself, but he more or less knew that would happen going in.
There a lot of famous stories about Father Damien, his piety (meh), his devotion to his parishioners (more impressive). But the stories I like best about Father Damian have to do with what the outside world thought of him. Keep in mind, this is a man living in a leper colony in 19th century Hawai'i. This is not one of those high profile leadership roles. But he swung it. Swinged it? Swang it?
First the small story, which is really more of a factoid. When Hawai'i was made a state & got to add two images to the United States Capitol Building, his statue was one of the two. I want you to stop now & think about this. A cluster of Pacific island's with a vibrant (gory & beautiful) history, so different from every other state in the union & proud of it. they can choose two iconic figures to say to the country tis is who we are & they choose a leper. Double dog strange when you consider most of the white men making tis decision were descended from a very specific sect of New England Puritan. I know right? I had to know what the other image was: Kamehameha, which was my first guess.
The big story, & one of my favorites among all saints stories ever, truly.
After Father Damien's death, a certain Reverend Mister Hyde referred to him as a dirty person who contracted leprosy through his own lack of hygiene, etc. & was in general undeserving of the accolades that were trickling in. There were probably many motives for this prejudice, not the least of which Hyde was a Presbyterian & in addition to not always being super nice to the locals which father Damien was getting credit for being Presbyterians are not always super nice to Catholics. It's kind of a thing. What really kicked it into over drive was the DELUGE of rebuttal his letter received. The most famous was from Robert Luis Stevenson (himself a Presbyterian) who traveled he Pacific with his family & was in Hawai'i for a significant period. Among other things Stevenson chewed on Hyde for being such a nitpicking asshole, indicated the motive was probably jealousy & suggested that Father Damian would likely be made a saint, Reverend Mr. Hyde could be sure his own jerky behavior would be a big part of it. You can read the letter in its entirety here. Stevenson sent the letter in 1890, Father Damien died in 1889, & Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde was published in 1886. Still, its a lovely little coincidence.
Oh oh, Father Damien was Flemish. Another one! & of course he is the patron of people suffering from leprosy as well as people who work to treat &/or cure it. I am guessing he is also the patron saint of Honolulu at least & very likely all of Hawai'i, but I could not find it confirmed anywhere.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Prayer in school
I occasionally see the bumper sticker: as long as there are tests, there will be prayer in school. I always want to ask the driver if they really meant to link up prayer with cheating because most teachers with tell you that so long as there are tests, there will be cheating in school. I realize it was almost certainly not what they meant, but maybe it was, what do I know about the kind of person who wants that to be the message to all the random other people who share the road.
I wish I could find the article, but it was ages ago (before the interwebs, girls & boys) about a teacher, a devout Christian or so she described herself, who was so bothered by the mandatory prayer thing that she began having the students read prayers from other religions during this allocated time. The upshot was her school district had a hard time explaining that when they said "prayer" they meant only their prayer, the prayers of the majority of attendees who wanted to pray (which was not incidentally a majority of attendees). The teacher, who was born again - I remember because this is the moment when I learned a born again person's definition of "born again" - felt that jamming prayer down everyone's throat, even if it was good for them, was not the way to become born again. Apparently there is something voluntary there, like needing to ask forgiveness before being forgiven.
It has been years (over a decade) since I read the little human interest thing about this teacher. Alas, I have NO IDEA what part of the country she was even in as in those days I did a lot of traveling for work & newspapers are often complimentary....
Ah well, wherever she is or was, here it is the countdown to the final. I have bitched before about people who use their religion as a get-out-of-exam free card, but that is actually less common at the student level than the administration level. Among the students it is dead grandmothers & cheating. All of this kind of brings us to the saint of the day (it has been a long time, hasn't it? Or is that just me?): Wolbodo of Liege. How can you not love that name: Wolbodo.
He was born in to a wealthy Flemish family, which I also love. It is so hard to find someone who calls themselves Flemish. & he died of natural causes, which always peak's my interest. In between he was the Bishop of Liege. Wolbodo was big in caring for the poor, not so much in regional politics, thought there should be more emphasis on the saints (I presume he didn't know he would be joining them) & is one of legion Patron Saints of Students. What really caught my eye was that his name has been taken by the Menschen Vereeniging Wolbodo, a group founded by catholic students who for whatever reason did not want to join the other catholic students in their official catholic students group. This group effectively left the church less than ten years after they formed & went in, well, a different direction. No, not satanists. More humanists. Or contemporarists. They have been strongly identified with hippies, but that was when most hippies were still students. Wolbodians are more about the present than anything & don't worry too much about what you are either. Funnily enough, their patron had that same reputation.
So if you are going to pray to someone during finals, why not Wolbodo? At least his followers look interesting.
I wish I could find the article, but it was ages ago (before the interwebs, girls & boys) about a teacher, a devout Christian or so she described herself, who was so bothered by the mandatory prayer thing that she began having the students read prayers from other religions during this allocated time. The upshot was her school district had a hard time explaining that when they said "prayer" they meant only their prayer, the prayers of the majority of attendees who wanted to pray (which was not incidentally a majority of attendees). The teacher, who was born again - I remember because this is the moment when I learned a born again person's definition of "born again" - felt that jamming prayer down everyone's throat, even if it was good for them, was not the way to become born again. Apparently there is something voluntary there, like needing to ask forgiveness before being forgiven.
It has been years (over a decade) since I read the little human interest thing about this teacher. Alas, I have NO IDEA what part of the country she was even in as in those days I did a lot of traveling for work & newspapers are often complimentary....
Ah well, wherever she is or was, here it is the countdown to the final. I have bitched before about people who use their religion as a get-out-of-exam free card, but that is actually less common at the student level than the administration level. Among the students it is dead grandmothers & cheating. All of this kind of brings us to the saint of the day (it has been a long time, hasn't it? Or is that just me?): Wolbodo of Liege. How can you not love that name: Wolbodo.
He was born in to a wealthy Flemish family, which I also love. It is so hard to find someone who calls themselves Flemish. & he died of natural causes, which always peak's my interest. In between he was the Bishop of Liege. Wolbodo was big in caring for the poor, not so much in regional politics, thought there should be more emphasis on the saints (I presume he didn't know he would be joining them) & is one of legion Patron Saints of Students. What really caught my eye was that his name has been taken by the Menschen Vereeniging Wolbodo, a group founded by catholic students who for whatever reason did not want to join the other catholic students in their official catholic students group. This group effectively left the church less than ten years after they formed & went in, well, a different direction. No, not satanists. More humanists. Or contemporarists. They have been strongly identified with hippies, but that was when most hippies were still students. Wolbodians are more about the present than anything & don't worry too much about what you are either. Funnily enough, their patron had that same reputation.
So if you are going to pray to someone during finals, why not Wolbodo? At least his followers look interesting.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Saint Urho
Once upon a time (1956), in a land very far away (Minnesota) there was not much to tell really. The true story, if there was a true story, began in Finland or maybe the story began "The true story began in Finland". It's a toss-up.
Once upon a time in Finland, the grape vines were under attack by locusts (grapes? locusts? Finland?). Enter Urho. He waved a...stick & chanted "get out grasshoppers" or some such & a legend was born: the legend of Saint Urho who drove the locusts from Finland. If this sounds a little bit like a second string holidays version of Mad Libs, I'm with you. & so were the irish-americans of Virginia, Minnesota (no, really). They called it a made up holiday (!) meant to steal the thunder of Saint Patrick's Day (which I guess is not made up....?).
Whatever the inspiration, you can celebrate Saint Urho's Day drinking purple beer. Does beer seem like a funny choice to honor the rescuer of a vineyard to anyone else? Anyway, you can also join in wearing purple, to represent the grapes & green to represent the....grasshoppers? There is also a cultural dish made with potatoes. Alright, I am not one for my holiday is more authentic than your holiday but this is getting a little bit same-y. But wait, Saint Urho has a charming little ?song?chant? Whatever it is, you can find it here. & they dance slow polkas (what?) called a schottisches.
What the hell, I'm in. Bring on the grape juice. Let's honor this patron of Finland that Finland does not actually acknowledge.
Once upon a time in Finland, the grape vines were under attack by locusts (grapes? locusts? Finland?). Enter Urho. He waved a...stick & chanted "get out grasshoppers" or some such & a legend was born: the legend of Saint Urho who drove the locusts from Finland. If this sounds a little bit like a second string holidays version of Mad Libs, I'm with you. & so were the irish-americans of Virginia, Minnesota (no, really). They called it a made up holiday (!) meant to steal the thunder of Saint Patrick's Day (which I guess is not made up....?).
Whatever the inspiration, you can celebrate Saint Urho's Day drinking purple beer. Does beer seem like a funny choice to honor the rescuer of a vineyard to anyone else? Anyway, you can also join in wearing purple, to represent the grapes & green to represent the....grasshoppers? There is also a cultural dish made with potatoes. Alright, I am not one for my holiday is more authentic than your holiday but this is getting a little bit same-y. But wait, Saint Urho has a charming little ?song?chant? Whatever it is, you can find it here. & they dance slow polkas (what?) called a schottisches.
What the hell, I'm in. Bring on the grape juice. Let's honor this patron of Finland that Finland does not actually acknowledge.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
A day for dentists
One of the first things I loved about Saint Apollonia was her name. I cannot help it, I am delighted when saints have completely not christian names. I know, I know your name is one thing over which you have almost no control, what with your parent generally choosing it, often before you hit the ground. Unsurprising, the parents who choose a feminization of the greek god of the sun (& healing & prophecy & poerty & so on) to name their daughter were themselves not christian.
So, Apollonia. Martyred because she refused to renounce her (new) religion, which is a popular one among the saints; a sizeable sub-group are the volunteers. Generally they are women who, when faced with that fate-worse-than-death option opt for death. In Apollonia's case, it came after what had to be a pretty rough time. Among other things, her persecutors removed all her teeth, a method of torture that has given me the creeps since Marathon Man. Finally, when told she was about to be burned to death, she jumped into the flames. Bringing us to a very large set of saints martyred by fire.
& given that, it should be completely unsurprising that fire is not one of her symbols. She is not shown in front of a wall of fire or with flames curling around her feet or any other fire themed pose (OKay, OKay she is sometimes standing with a burning pyre off in the background, but I am really talking about what is in the clos-up). Instead, she is often portrayed holding a tooth in dental pliers. In an unusual twist, her relics often are teeth which I find, well, odd.
For those who don't know, saintly relics are what was left of the body (the one that had to remain inviolate for a long long long time after death for you to start down that road to sainthood). These relics are kept in reliquaries (def: a container for relics). Usually they are bones, sometimes some hair, sometimes some cloth but Apollonia's are often teeth. Which would mean that after her teeth were removed someone collected & saved them expecting them to be valuable. Which I find odd. Even if you were going to save them à la the opening of Cloud Atlas, how would you know which ones were hers?
Whatever. If you start getting curious along those lines, the whole business just falls apart. Back to the woman herself. Kinda. Apollonia is the patroness of lots of places. Towns, churches, & at least one train station. & of course dentists.
So, Apollonia. Martyred because she refused to renounce her (new) religion, which is a popular one among the saints; a sizeable sub-group are the volunteers. Generally they are women who, when faced with that fate-worse-than-death option opt for death. In Apollonia's case, it came after what had to be a pretty rough time. Among other things, her persecutors removed all her teeth, a method of torture that has given me the creeps since Marathon Man. Finally, when told she was about to be burned to death, she jumped into the flames. Bringing us to a very large set of saints martyred by fire.
& given that, it should be completely unsurprising that fire is not one of her symbols. She is not shown in front of a wall of fire or with flames curling around her feet or any other fire themed pose (OKay, OKay she is sometimes standing with a burning pyre off in the background, but I am really talking about what is in the clos-up). Instead, she is often portrayed holding a tooth in dental pliers. In an unusual twist, her relics often are teeth which I find, well, odd.
For those who don't know, saintly relics are what was left of the body (the one that had to remain inviolate for a long long long time after death for you to start down that road to sainthood). These relics are kept in reliquaries (def: a container for relics). Usually they are bones, sometimes some hair, sometimes some cloth but Apollonia's are often teeth. Which would mean that after her teeth were removed someone collected & saved them expecting them to be valuable. Which I find odd. Even if you were going to save them à la the opening of Cloud Atlas, how would you know which ones were hers?
Whatever. If you start getting curious along those lines, the whole business just falls apart. Back to the woman herself. Kinda. Apollonia is the patroness of lots of places. Towns, churches, & at least one train station. & of course dentists.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Procrastinators don't have a patron saint...yet
A long time ago, when I had friends who were alternative radio DJs (they are now housewives & investment bankers - go figure), I got this song stuck in my head.
I should say first that I am not one to be plagued by things like this. I did once follow James Thurber's direction to say Perth Amboy over & over again until it became meaningless, but this did not take much time as I had to look up Perth Amboy to give it any meaning before I began. So I said Perth Amboy Perth Amboy Perth Amboy & then I was done. When Perth Amboy comes up in conversation (which is not often), I giggle for no apparent reason but I'm OKay. I don't get lost in a vortex of meaningless syllables. Mostly I automatically resist these kind of brain glitches in general; if you tell me NOT to think of a purple elephant I can say "fine" & then not think of one. Not even for a moment.
But this song got stuck in my head. Maybe I should back up. I had this other friend - I don't think this one ever met the others, but I swear none of them are imaginary - & she played STUDIO Dead. Not the meandering live stuff that puts me to sleep but what Garcia et al laid down in the studio that may or may not have served as a jumping off point for whatever it was they played when they were on the road. She listened to actual Grateful Dead albums; no joke until I met her I had no idea there were albums. & because she played the albums, because the songs were performed exactly the same over & over (because we were listening to a clean, clear studio performance over & over), I got to know the words. I would be exaggerating if I said I didn't know there were words, but anyone who has ever been trapped in a room with people listening to Grateful Dead bootlegs would agree it was possible to think the words had no real meaning. I never thought about it until this moment but I but they could be saying Perth Amboy over & over again & it would all sound pretty much the same.
Among the many Grateful Dead songs I learned the words to was Truckin'. This is a funny song. It has one of my favorite lyrics of any song: I'd like to get some sleep before I travel, but if you've got a warrant, I guess you're gonna come in. I really didn't mind learning the words. I enjoy the iambic pentameter at the top of the line & the breakdown that followed. I could sing them in the shower. Or not. As I liked.
Then along came the Pop-o-pies. What I am trying to say is the Pop-o-pies are like musical herpes, they wrap around your brain stem & well, they corrupt what you used to enjoy. Unfortunately, I had more than one friend who thought they were brilliant (on the other hand, I just learned the LATimes said they were the worst band in California, so who you gonna believe the LATimes & all their baggage or a former alternative music DJ who married an american auto company engineer & began having babies, no judgement). I included the link to their cover of Truckin' above (use at your own risk) but cannot find the song that drieves me out of my mind: The Pop O Rap. Search at your own risk.
Well, I guess I have stalled long enough. Today's saint is Poppo. He looks mostly ordinary, except he died of natural causes. The defining characteristic that caught my eye? Apparently he was quite disorganized. Also his name makes my skin crawl for reasons I think I have made more than clear.
I should say first that I am not one to be plagued by things like this. I did once follow James Thurber's direction to say Perth Amboy over & over again until it became meaningless, but this did not take much time as I had to look up Perth Amboy to give it any meaning before I began. So I said Perth Amboy Perth Amboy Perth Amboy & then I was done. When Perth Amboy comes up in conversation (which is not often), I giggle for no apparent reason but I'm OKay. I don't get lost in a vortex of meaningless syllables. Mostly I automatically resist these kind of brain glitches in general; if you tell me NOT to think of a purple elephant I can say "fine" & then not think of one. Not even for a moment.
But this song got stuck in my head. Maybe I should back up. I had this other friend - I don't think this one ever met the others, but I swear none of them are imaginary - & she played STUDIO Dead. Not the meandering live stuff that puts me to sleep but what Garcia et al laid down in the studio that may or may not have served as a jumping off point for whatever it was they played when they were on the road. She listened to actual Grateful Dead albums; no joke until I met her I had no idea there were albums. & because she played the albums, because the songs were performed exactly the same over & over (because we were listening to a clean, clear studio performance over & over), I got to know the words. I would be exaggerating if I said I didn't know there were words, but anyone who has ever been trapped in a room with people listening to Grateful Dead bootlegs would agree it was possible to think the words had no real meaning. I never thought about it until this moment but I but they could be saying Perth Amboy over & over again & it would all sound pretty much the same.
Among the many Grateful Dead songs I learned the words to was Truckin'. This is a funny song. It has one of my favorite lyrics of any song: I'd like to get some sleep before I travel, but if you've got a warrant, I guess you're gonna come in. I really didn't mind learning the words. I enjoy the iambic pentameter at the top of the line & the breakdown that followed. I could sing them in the shower. Or not. As I liked.
Then along came the Pop-o-pies. What I am trying to say is the Pop-o-pies are like musical herpes, they wrap around your brain stem & well, they corrupt what you used to enjoy. Unfortunately, I had more than one friend who thought they were brilliant (on the other hand, I just learned the LATimes said they were the worst band in California, so who you gonna believe the LATimes & all their baggage or a former alternative music DJ who married an american auto company engineer & began having babies, no judgement). I included the link to their cover of Truckin' above (use at your own risk) but cannot find the song that drieves me out of my mind: The Pop O Rap. Search at your own risk.
Well, I guess I have stalled long enough. Today's saint is Poppo. He looks mostly ordinary, except he died of natural causes. The defining characteristic that caught my eye? Apparently he was quite disorganized. Also his name makes my skin crawl for reasons I think I have made more than clear.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Crispin not Crispian or even Crispinian
I once said (or I vaguely remember typing) some crap about the Patron Saint of Shoes. Well, I have finally found him. Kinda. I found a slew of saints (a slew of saints, like a murder of crows, I like it!) who oversee cobblers. Also I like thinking of chichi shoemakers like Manolo Blahnik as "cobblers". Feel free to delve the list yourself, but I am settling for Crispin not to be confused with Crispian, also a patron of shoemakers & his twin brother.
Sooooo, let's dig in:
Crispin (not Crispian AKA Crispinian, not that we care overmuch) or Crispinus but not Crispianus (because those spellings have fallen out of favor) was born to a noble Roman family sometime in the 3rd century. Just to give you some perspective, Hadrian's Wall would have been well underway (as in a century & a half underway) by the time this kid (these kids) was (were) born. That doesn't help? Let's just say the world was Roman as far as the eye could see & depending on which direction you were facing, probably much much farther. In short, it was not the best time to start walking around talking about the one son of the one god. There was many many words for that & one of them was treason.
Anyhow. Our saint (& his brother) went out into Gaul & started preaching this heresy & eventually lost their lives over it (details to follow). But that is not where the shoes come in. Apparently, for his (their) pay-the-bills job, not to be confused with their vocation, he (they) made & repaired shoes. He (they) got into trouble with the local constabulary over their contempt for all things material & were martyred in a variety of ways. No really, a variety: the rack, a few other tortures to get them to recant, thrown in a river with a millstone secured at the neck, & then burned. All of this had no sway & the torturer was reputed to seek refuge in the flames himself. I don't know about you, but I have had jobs like that; I kinda feel for this guy.
Anyhow, after the torturer left the building, the emperor's man, the one who had assigned the torturer, took over the job & made short work of it: beheadings all around. & let me say I have had jobs where I wished my boss would step in & kill people so I would be able to stop trying to punish them into seeing the error of their ways.
So that's the story of our saint. & his twin brother, the other guy. Also a saint. Now for the shoes.
Shoes get A LOT of press. They used to be just one of many fashion accessories, but now that no one wears hats or gloves & I cannot remember the last time I saw an evening bag on the red carpet, accessories more or less boil down to shoes. That they might be the day job of a guy going on about the evils of excess & & his twin brother, that's just funny to me. In fact, it seems appropriate that the Patron Saint of Shoes be one of a matched pair.
So how to celebrate the Patron saints of shoes. Well, may I suggest cocktails at the Designer Shoe Warehouse (they really should apply for a liquor license, don't you think?), where we could maybe listen to the late & truly lamented Kirsty MacColl. Then we could all settle down to watch one of my very favorite movies based ever so loosely on a true story (almost certainly more than you can say about the life of our saint. & his brother.) of a struggling family business in a world of changing values: Kinky Boots.
Sooooo, let's dig in:
Crispin (not Crispian AKA Crispinian, not that we care overmuch) or Crispinus but not Crispianus (because those spellings have fallen out of favor) was born to a noble Roman family sometime in the 3rd century. Just to give you some perspective, Hadrian's Wall would have been well underway (as in a century & a half underway) by the time this kid (these kids) was (were) born. That doesn't help? Let's just say the world was Roman as far as the eye could see & depending on which direction you were facing, probably much much farther. In short, it was not the best time to start walking around talking about the one son of the one god. There was many many words for that & one of them was treason.
Anyhow. Our saint (& his brother) went out into Gaul & started preaching this heresy & eventually lost their lives over it (details to follow). But that is not where the shoes come in. Apparently, for his (their) pay-the-bills job, not to be confused with their vocation, he (they) made & repaired shoes. He (they) got into trouble with the local constabulary over their contempt for all things material & were martyred in a variety of ways. No really, a variety: the rack, a few other tortures to get them to recant, thrown in a river with a millstone secured at the neck, & then burned. All of this had no sway & the torturer was reputed to seek refuge in the flames himself. I don't know about you, but I have had jobs like that; I kinda feel for this guy.
Anyhow, after the torturer left the building, the emperor's man, the one who had assigned the torturer, took over the job & made short work of it: beheadings all around. & let me say I have had jobs where I wished my boss would step in & kill people so I would be able to stop trying to punish them into seeing the error of their ways.
So that's the story of our saint. & his twin brother, the other guy. Also a saint. Now for the shoes.
Shoes get A LOT of press. They used to be just one of many fashion accessories, but now that no one wears hats or gloves & I cannot remember the last time I saw an evening bag on the red carpet, accessories more or less boil down to shoes. That they might be the day job of a guy going on about the evils of excess & & his twin brother, that's just funny to me. In fact, it seems appropriate that the Patron Saint of Shoes be one of a matched pair.
So how to celebrate the Patron saints of shoes. Well, may I suggest cocktails at the Designer Shoe Warehouse (they really should apply for a liquor license, don't you think?), where we could maybe listen to the late & truly lamented Kirsty MacColl. Then we could all settle down to watch one of my very favorite movies based ever so loosely on a true story (almost certainly more than you can say about the life of our saint. & his brother.) of a struggling family business in a world of changing values: Kinky Boots.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Move over Pocahontas
Generally I try to avoid two saints in one month (& there is already a saint queued up in less than a week) but Lily of the Mohawks is brand new saint this week & it seemed petty not to cover her. Anyone who has ever traveled anywhere in the americas (north, south, central, wherever) would have to take quite the circuitous route not to trip over a story of an indian princess. Even then, I am 99.9% sure you would wind up smack in the middle of an indian princess story not-on-purpose. Indian princesses jump off cliffs, marry the wrong man, betray their people, save their people, sometimes they just abandon their people. In short they are very busy people themselves.
& up until last week I would have said Pocahontas was the most famous in the world. If you have never seen the Disney movie (& I haven't), you would still have to be living under a rock not to know who Pocahontas was. Or rather, who history says she was. Or might have been. Whatever, it doesn't matter. This is not a post about Pocahontas. That being said, let us all take a moment to listen the Peggy Lee's Fever, which mentions Pocahontas.
Back to our saint: Tekakwitha was born to a family of mixed heritage (one parent was a Mohawk, who are part of the Iroquios language group, the other was an Algonquin, who have their own language, Algonquin; I might be misremembering, but I don't think these two groups always got along that well), but was orphaned at a very young age. Much of her family died of the same thing that wiped out so many people in the 17th century New World: smallpox. It really is the gift that keeps on giving.
Anyway, she was left dependent on an uncle who had a great distrust of christians in general & priests in specific. First, let me speculate this might be why said uncle was around to care for the much afflicted (scarred & partial blinded by small pox scars) little girl. Second, guess what kind of indian princess listed above, not that Tekakwitha was a princess-princess, but guess what kind of princess she was. If you guessed the kind that left her people you would be right. As a young woman, she ran away to be baptized, then ran away again (I don't entirely follow that one myself) to become a nun. Then she died of tuberculosis, another disease I am guessing her unreasonable uncle did not catch.
So, that sums that up. Except that on her deathbed, witnesses say her scars disappeared & she became beautiful (they don't say anything about her putting a on a little weight, so she must have been beautiful à la heroin chic). & of course later she started performing miracles, pretty much isolated to those who prayed to her so that probably helped determine who got the credit. Anyway. Tekakwitha is a saint now, better known as Lily of the Mohawks.
Which brings me back to Disney. It is a very familiar story; see Therese the little flower for the sickness in childhood, the tuberculosis in adulthood & so-forth, or countless others for the whole running away thing, or, or, or. Seriously, it is a familiar story, but now we have a native american heroine. Sigh.
& up until last week I would have said Pocahontas was the most famous in the world. If you have never seen the Disney movie (& I haven't), you would still have to be living under a rock not to know who Pocahontas was. Or rather, who history says she was. Or might have been. Whatever, it doesn't matter. This is not a post about Pocahontas. That being said, let us all take a moment to listen the Peggy Lee's Fever, which mentions Pocahontas.
Back to our saint: Tekakwitha was born to a family of mixed heritage (one parent was a Mohawk, who are part of the Iroquios language group, the other was an Algonquin, who have their own language, Algonquin; I might be misremembering, but I don't think these two groups always got along that well), but was orphaned at a very young age. Much of her family died of the same thing that wiped out so many people in the 17th century New World: smallpox. It really is the gift that keeps on giving.
Anyway, she was left dependent on an uncle who had a great distrust of christians in general & priests in specific. First, let me speculate this might be why said uncle was around to care for the much afflicted (scarred & partial blinded by small pox scars) little girl. Second, guess what kind of indian princess listed above, not that Tekakwitha was a princess-princess, but guess what kind of princess she was. If you guessed the kind that left her people you would be right. As a young woman, she ran away to be baptized, then ran away again (I don't entirely follow that one myself) to become a nun. Then she died of tuberculosis, another disease I am guessing her unreasonable uncle did not catch.
So, that sums that up. Except that on her deathbed, witnesses say her scars disappeared & she became beautiful (they don't say anything about her putting a on a little weight, so she must have been beautiful à la heroin chic). & of course later she started performing miracles, pretty much isolated to those who prayed to her so that probably helped determine who got the credit. Anyway. Tekakwitha is a saint now, better known as Lily of the Mohawks.
Which brings me back to Disney. It is a very familiar story; see Therese the little flower for the sickness in childhood, the tuberculosis in adulthood & so-forth, or countless others for the whole running away thing, or, or, or. Seriously, it is a familiar story, but now we have a native american heroine. Sigh.
Friday, July 27, 2012
You know, you need your rest
Today is one of those days. There are...let's call them celebrations, all loosely around a general idea, but don't seem to have all that much to do with each other. It is kind of like finding the handle of an old jug in one old field & the spout of the same jug in another one, miles away (does this ever happen? who would know?).
I will begin with the oldest I could find: today is the day of the seven sleepers. In early christian times, seven young men were persecuted into leaving their city lives behind because they would not give up christianity & went to live in a cave. After what I am guessing really would have been an exhausting few days, they all fell asleep (on the other hand I am personally acquainted with five 3 month old kittens that have more sense than this; one of them is always awake to alert the others). The pagan ruler saw his opportunity & sealed them in. They slept & slept & slept until 100, 200, 300 years later when the cave was opened by a farmer who knew nothing of the sleepers inside (& yet knew there was a cave-he had plans to use it for livestock). The farmer found the seven men, still young, still in their own native dress years out of date just waking up. There is a more official church version of this story in which the boys are indeed killed, tossed into the cave & do not rise from the dead (it would be confusing). The boys in this version are martyrs: Maximian, Malchus, Martinian, Dionysius, John, Serapion, and Constantine. If you are of a mind, you can travel to the site & hear the story from the locals. People seem to like stories about long term sleepers. Rip van Winkle comes to mind. So does King Arthur. I can think of another legendary person who has been asleep for 2012 years, give or take 32, but is expected by many to rise again.
So that's one sleeping story for today, but there is another. In Finland it is National Sleepy Head Day. Apparently, the last person still abed when the rest of the house is awake gets tossed into a body of water or at the least has water poured over them. The medieval town of Naantili chooses a local celebrity to publicly dunk. Every mayor has been tossed into water, as well as 100s of others. & the practice has spread to the US, the way these things do, at least as far as Denver.
So. Oversleeping would be the overall theme for today. I myself plan to celebrate with what I am guessing is probably traditional nap. & then maybe going to bed early tonight.
I will begin with the oldest I could find: today is the day of the seven sleepers. In early christian times, seven young men were persecuted into leaving their city lives behind because they would not give up christianity & went to live in a cave. After what I am guessing really would have been an exhausting few days, they all fell asleep (on the other hand I am personally acquainted with five 3 month old kittens that have more sense than this; one of them is always awake to alert the others). The pagan ruler saw his opportunity & sealed them in. They slept & slept & slept until 100, 200, 300 years later when the cave was opened by a farmer who knew nothing of the sleepers inside (& yet knew there was a cave-he had plans to use it for livestock). The farmer found the seven men, still young, still in their own native dress years out of date just waking up. There is a more official church version of this story in which the boys are indeed killed, tossed into the cave & do not rise from the dead (it would be confusing). The boys in this version are martyrs: Maximian, Malchus, Martinian, Dionysius, John, Serapion, and Constantine. If you are of a mind, you can travel to the site & hear the story from the locals. People seem to like stories about long term sleepers. Rip van Winkle comes to mind. So does King Arthur. I can think of another legendary person who has been asleep for 2012 years, give or take 32, but is expected by many to rise again.
So that's one sleeping story for today, but there is another. In Finland it is National Sleepy Head Day. Apparently, the last person still abed when the rest of the house is awake gets tossed into a body of water or at the least has water poured over them. The medieval town of Naantili chooses a local celebrity to publicly dunk. Every mayor has been tossed into water, as well as 100s of others. & the practice has spread to the US, the way these things do, at least as far as Denver.
So. Oversleeping would be the overall theme for today. I myself plan to celebrate with what I am guessing is probably traditional nap. & then maybe going to bed early tonight.
Monday, May 7, 2012
That Irish saint who was in the news mid-March
That's right, it's March & lately there's been a saint in the news. An Irish saint. & I am delighted to tell you it is Lorcán Ua Tuathail. That's the Irish name of the Patron Saint of Dublin: Laurence O'Toole. & the reason he is in the news? Someone stole his heart.
& that is as far as I got when my life got busy & I could either live it or blog about. So here is our March saint in early May:
Before he was Lorcan, doesn't that sound like a name right out of a Harlequin Presents? Let me start again: before he was Lorcan, Archbishop of Dublin, he was Lorcan one of four sons born to one of innumerable Irish princesses & a king's man to one of the multiple kings of Leinster. Unsurprisingly, Lorcan spent a chunk of his youth as a hostage (it meant something slightly other then) to his father's good behavior in the house of said king.
It was also typical that one son at least go into the church & legend has it his father tossed a coin or drew straws or something to decide which boy it would be. This made me laugh actually, because I know a catechism class who was having trouble remembering the Apostles Creed for their confirmation & took to betting the recitations. When they were found out there was hell to pay & now it turns out gambling is not quite so frowned upon as they had been lead to believe.
So Lorcan was chosen for the church, did well, & eventually became Archbishop of Dublin which I am sure made his parents very proud. He spent a bit of time mediating between warring factions in Leinster; it probably helped that he was related to more than a few of them. A Norman invasion & a few sieges later, Lorcan is still top church man for miles around. Then, while giving mass he was attacked, much like Thomas a Becket, but he got up again & being tired of mucking around went to Rome for official papers & received a papal bull naming him big church cheese of Dublin. When he got back, he cleaned house, sending a number of other appointments back to Rome under charges of corruption etc. Today's church could take a page, frankly.
All fairly normal. He left Ireland again (taking hostages naturally) & died before he could return. When urged to make a will, he replied he had nothing to leave. He had lived a life of as-close-to-poverty as the son of nobles, moving among nobles, commanding the respect of nobles could be expected to do. At feasts, he was said to drink water colored to look like wine so as not to make those who indulged self conscious but not violate his own vows. I'm not sure if this makes me like him more or less.
He is patron of Dublin, his feast day is November 14 & that was about it until last March. Oh he was revered & they had parades & the locals seem quite fond of him even 800 years since he died, but lets jump up to March 2012. But first lets jump back again. Remember I said he died on the road? Well he did. When this happened, it wasn't super unusual for the body to be made into parts, each part going or staying. His skull went to England centuries after his death & then went missing. But his heart went back to his own parish church. & there it....resided, I guess in a wooden heart shaped box, surrounded by an iron cage & locked with a great big medieval looking lock.
& then in March someone took it. They walked past golden chalices that could have been melted down, even if you couldn't find a black market buyer, past beyond antique candlesticks, cut the iron cage & left with the heart-shaped box (I'm sorry, it was just irresistible).
Is it me or this beginning to sound like a Dan Brown novel? It gets even more so: one of the advantages of falling behind is a little time gives a little perspective. The primary suspects are, wait for it, Travelers. Apparently, they are big in rhino horn trade (a market I had no idea had any connection with the Irish Republic, but there you are). If Dan Brown wrote this, I think he would be accused of going just too absurd.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Saint in cake
I had no idea there even was a Saint David until I saw him being not-so-much lauded on CakeWrecks. It is not that I thought there wasn't a Saint David, why wouldn't there be? There are two Saint Pelagias from Antioch for crissakes. But aside from Valentine through Patrick to Nicholas, you just don't see many saint cakes & I kind of got to wondering. So, after seeing his cake wrecked, I went cruising for David. It did not take long to find an interesting angle.
It seems in addition to being the patron of Wales (not whales, no matter what other sites might say, altho' in another 25 years he WILL be patron saint of whales because that does seem to be how many of the patronages happen), David is also the patron saint of: Pembrokeshire, a specific bit of Wales-kind of like across the pond, anyone from the US is a yankee, but in the south only someone from north of the Mason Dixon is a yankee, & then in the north, only if you are from the northeast are you a yankee, get to the northeast & yankees are people from New England, then if you actually go to New England they will tell you yankees are people from New York, NOT part of New England, because New York was originally (& I use that term loosely), New Amsterdam. Finally, it turns out Jans & Kees are kind of a dutch version of Smith & Jones.
Where was I? Oh, right, Pembrokeshire, a specific county in Wales. So David is the patron saint of Wales & then in Wales, he is the patron saint of Pembrokeshire. He is also patron saint of poets, which kind of interested me because there are surprisingly few patron saints of poets. Well, I was surprised anyhow. I kind of think of the whole saintly gig with traveling balladeers & troubadours & such. This poet patronage thing is almost certainly a collision with another saint, specifically King David, who wrote the Psalms & was canonized way-later (& I am sure would be appalled if he knew) is probably who was meant to be David, patron of poets but it all got scrambled & now they both are.
Our David is also listed as patron saint of doves. Which made me hope against hope that there is somewhere a patron saint of flamingos. I will keep my eyes peeled.
Finally David is the patron saint of vegetarians. In fact, he is not alone. There is even another patron saint of vegetarianism who apparently did not like the smell of roasting meat, but back to David. I cannot find the reference to how or why he got hooked up with vegetarianism (how hard did I look? not very), but I did discover that his birth was almost certainly the result of a rape.
I have no idea what kind of cake you should have for Saint David's Day. The BBC website has a lot of recipes for roasted lamb & chicken (odd that), but the only cake was Welsh cake which seems kind of lame, like serving green beer just because it's Saint Patrick's Day.
It seems in addition to being the patron of Wales (not whales, no matter what other sites might say, altho' in another 25 years he WILL be patron saint of whales because that does seem to be how many of the patronages happen), David is also the patron saint of: Pembrokeshire, a specific bit of Wales-kind of like across the pond, anyone from the US is a yankee, but in the south only someone from north of the Mason Dixon is a yankee, & then in the north, only if you are from the northeast are you a yankee, get to the northeast & yankees are people from New England, then if you actually go to New England they will tell you yankees are people from New York, NOT part of New England, because New York was originally (& I use that term loosely), New Amsterdam. Finally, it turns out Jans & Kees are kind of a dutch version of Smith & Jones.
Where was I? Oh, right, Pembrokeshire, a specific county in Wales. So David is the patron saint of Wales & then in Wales, he is the patron saint of Pembrokeshire. He is also patron saint of poets, which kind of interested me because there are surprisingly few patron saints of poets. Well, I was surprised anyhow. I kind of think of the whole saintly gig with traveling balladeers & troubadours & such. This poet patronage thing is almost certainly a collision with another saint, specifically King David, who wrote the Psalms & was canonized way-later (& I am sure would be appalled if he knew) is probably who was meant to be David, patron of poets but it all got scrambled & now they both are.
Our David is also listed as patron saint of doves. Which made me hope against hope that there is somewhere a patron saint of flamingos. I will keep my eyes peeled.
Finally David is the patron saint of vegetarians. In fact, he is not alone. There is even another patron saint of vegetarianism who apparently did not like the smell of roasting meat, but back to David. I cannot find the reference to how or why he got hooked up with vegetarianism (how hard did I look? not very), but I did discover that his birth was almost certainly the result of a rape.
I have no idea what kind of cake you should have for Saint David's Day. The BBC website has a lot of recipes for roasted lamb & chicken (odd that), but the only cake was Welsh cake which seems kind of lame, like serving green beer just because it's Saint Patrick's Day.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Polycarp
So when it seems like winter just might never end (not this winter, but others, maybe or winter someplace else), runny nose & hat-head & earaches it is time for the patron saint of....well, earaches. I am not sure there is a patron of runny noses actually, & I am quite sure there is no one in the pantheon ministering specifically to sufferers of hat-head*.
I am speaking of course of Polycarp. Polycarp of Smyrna, not to be confused with Polycarp of Antioch. Don't you just love that there is more than one Polycarp? It gets better actually, there is also more than one Smyrna. For our Polycarp, though we are not all that interested in Smyrna, Georgia ; it is kind of strange that he is not patron saint of any Smyrna, though isn't it? Not Georgia, not Tennessee, not Delaware....& not the Smyrna he actually died in.
Polycarp wrote a lot about what he was doing while traveling...did I mention he traveled? Well he did. Thither & yon. At least one letter he wrote has survived (there seems to be some confusion, at least I was confused. There might be more than one letter, but maybe that was the other Polycarp), but letters about him can also be found. In his travels he observed that the church was interpreted in different ways in different parts of the world. It is Polycarp who said yes those eastern-types DO celebrate Easter on a different day & I think we can all live with that or something close enough that everyone DID live with it for quite some time.
He had lots of celebrity friends, John the Apostle among them. Oh, & Pope Anicetus of course. Pope Anicetus was the one who made the priests cut their hair, which is frankly the only reason I have ever heard of him. I am OBSESSED with the historical politics of hair, Cromwell & Samson & all that. Whenever I can work Leviticus 19:27 into conversation, I do it.
Where was I,? Oh right, Polycarp of Smyrna. In the end, he refused to burn incense or make an offering of any kind for the emperor (that whole Thou Shalt Have No G*d Before me thing) & so they burned him. But he would not burn. So they stabbed him to death & then burned the body. Where earaches (or dysentery, the only other patronage under his jurisdiction) come into this, I cannot quite figure.
//* in keeping with my usual attention to detail, I have since learned there kind of IS a patroness of hat-head: Catherine of Alexandria is in charge of milliners. Yes, I made a note & will get to her some year on her day, November 25th.
I am speaking of course of Polycarp. Polycarp of Smyrna, not to be confused with Polycarp of Antioch. Don't you just love that there is more than one Polycarp? It gets better actually, there is also more than one Smyrna. For our Polycarp, though we are not all that interested in Smyrna, Georgia ; it is kind of strange that he is not patron saint of any Smyrna, though isn't it? Not Georgia, not Tennessee, not Delaware....& not the Smyrna he actually died in.
Polycarp wrote a lot about what he was doing while traveling...did I mention he traveled? Well he did. Thither & yon. At least one letter he wrote has survived (there seems to be some confusion, at least I was confused. There might be more than one letter, but maybe that was the other Polycarp), but letters about him can also be found. In his travels he observed that the church was interpreted in different ways in different parts of the world. It is Polycarp who said yes those eastern-types DO celebrate Easter on a different day & I think we can all live with that or something close enough that everyone DID live with it for quite some time.
He had lots of celebrity friends, John the Apostle among them. Oh, & Pope Anicetus of course. Pope Anicetus was the one who made the priests cut their hair, which is frankly the only reason I have ever heard of him. I am OBSESSED with the historical politics of hair, Cromwell & Samson & all that. Whenever I can work Leviticus 19:27 into conversation, I do it.
Where was I,? Oh right, Polycarp of Smyrna. In the end, he refused to burn incense or make an offering of any kind for the emperor (that whole Thou Shalt Have No G*d Before me thing) & so they burned him. But he would not burn. So they stabbed him to death & then burned the body. Where earaches (or dysentery, the only other patronage under his jurisdiction) come into this, I cannot quite figure.
//* in keeping with my usual attention to detail, I have since learned there kind of IS a patroness of hat-head: Catherine of Alexandria is in charge of milliners. Yes, I made a note & will get to her some year on her day, November 25th.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
FKA Santa Maura
Lots & lots of saints today, including Saint Andrew (not the patron saint of golf) & Saint Trojan (not the patron saint of condoms). But enough about them & what they are not. This afternoon, lets get to know Saint Maura. Don't worry, there isn't much to know.
First let me say that a friend of mine wanted to choose Maura as her confirmation name but the priest would not let her becasue there was no saint named Maura & she chose Margaret instead. There are slews of Margarets. As it happens in this post-google era we can all know there is indeed a Saint Maura. She was a virgin (so much more appropriate than a few of the Margaret-ilk I would think but there you go). She was martyred. End of story. Well not quite.
Apparently a kinda-sorta cult sprang up around Maura & for a while there she was very big in the east. We don't know why exactly because one of Emperor Constantine's brothers (1/2 brothers? I get confused) divided his time between being emperor & putting down christians generally, & when he had a little extra time on his hands he would go round repressing devotions to Saint Maura specifically. & that was more or less all I could find about Maura until....
It turns out there is an island named after her. Originally I couldn't find the island, even with google but eventually I learned it was renamed Lefkas (in English). I'm sure they had their reasons.
Naturally I got curious what those reasons might be. While trying to find out (I never did but I did not look that hard) I learned it was the birth place of that well-known Greco-Irish writer Patrick Lafcadio Hearn. Don't worry if you have never heard of him, apparently he was mostly big in Japan.
So there was a Saint Maura, not too much remains known except they named an island for her & then they renamed it & then a guy who was named for the island went on to change his name. Which brings us to the end of this story & the end of November.
First let me say that a friend of mine wanted to choose Maura as her confirmation name but the priest would not let her becasue there was no saint named Maura & she chose Margaret instead. There are slews of Margarets. As it happens in this post-google era we can all know there is indeed a Saint Maura. She was a virgin (so much more appropriate than a few of the Margaret-ilk I would think but there you go). She was martyred. End of story. Well not quite.
Apparently a kinda-sorta cult sprang up around Maura & for a while there she was very big in the east. We don't know why exactly because one of Emperor Constantine's brothers (1/2 brothers? I get confused) divided his time between being emperor & putting down christians generally, & when he had a little extra time on his hands he would go round repressing devotions to Saint Maura specifically. & that was more or less all I could find about Maura until....
It turns out there is an island named after her. Originally I couldn't find the island, even with google but eventually I learned it was renamed Lefkas (in English). I'm sure they had their reasons.
Naturally I got curious what those reasons might be. While trying to find out (I never did but I did not look that hard) I learned it was the birth place of that well-known Greco-Irish writer Patrick Lafcadio Hearn. Don't worry if you have never heard of him, apparently he was mostly big in Japan.
So there was a Saint Maura, not too much remains known except they named an island for her & then they renamed it & then a guy who was named for the island went on to change his name. Which brings us to the end of this story & the end of November.
Monday, October 31, 2011
In which the devil builds a church...or not
You might have noticed there were more saints than usual this month. That was, in part because I can write the saint posts when I have time & then queue them up. It was also because October, being that month of spooky-ookiness just lends itself to saints. I don't care who you are, most of those people are downright not-quite-right in the head. I mean no disrespect, crazy people are pretty much the only people who get big things done (big goods things & big bad things).
For Hallowe'en, it seemed only right to end the month with a guy I had never heard of (although his miracle runs on a very popular theme), Wolfgang of Regensburg. C'mon, how can you resist a Hallowe'en saint named Wolfgang? The only thing that could be better would be Saint Vlad.
Wolfgang was a person, a child & then a man in the usual way. He was a scholar, an educator & the ultimately a bishop in his own part of the world (my guess would be greater Regensburg). Eventually he retired from his bishophood & went to live as a hermit (shocker!) & so on in so forth in that bishop to hermit to canonical candidate way. Despite being a hermit (seriously, I am beginning to think that word does not mean what I think it means), he had an active political life, did a bit of traveling & some light construction work (he built his solitary cell where G*d directed his axe to fall; seems an impractical method to me, but the axe remains a relic in the town of Ste. Wolfgang). He was known locally as a man of great goodness & after his death many churches adopted his name. All very standard stuff. But you know there had to be something to catch my eye (or more accurately my typing fingers) & that was the story of how Wolfgang of Regensburg beat the devil.
I think we are all fond of stories of beating the devil, even if you don't believe in the devil, even if you believe the devil is in all of us. We all like to beat him, in Moscow or even Georgia. When I was in school I remember loving the Stephen Vincent Benet story "The Devil & Daniel Webster", maybe in part because I spent a lot of my youth up in Daniel Webster country & have visited his birthplace on more than one occasion. I have just learned there is a movie that I somehow missed completely, but scenes still look familiar. I cannot tell if I saw it once & forgot or of all movies from that period look a little bit alike.
Either way, there is no movie about Wolfgang of Regensburg beating the devil (actually there probably is...in the tourist kiosk of the Town of Ste. Wolfgang, but whatever) which is a damn shame because Wolfgang beat the devil & got him (the devil) to build a church. The story itself, without further ado:
I could not find it. I looked & looked & looked & all I found was this painting which some sources say is actually Ste. Augustine being presented with a book of vices (how handy!). How Wolfgang came to meet the devil, no idea. What the devil offered him, not a clue. How Wolfgang roped the devil into doing good works, great big mystery.
& so I leave you with this, a man who pulled a Tom Sawyer on Satan himself. Then somehow got assigned October 31st as his feast day.
For Hallowe'en, it seemed only right to end the month with a guy I had never heard of (although his miracle runs on a very popular theme), Wolfgang of Regensburg. C'mon, how can you resist a Hallowe'en saint named Wolfgang? The only thing that could be better would be Saint Vlad.
Wolfgang was a person, a child & then a man in the usual way. He was a scholar, an educator & the ultimately a bishop in his own part of the world (my guess would be greater Regensburg). Eventually he retired from his bishophood & went to live as a hermit (shocker!) & so on in so forth in that bishop to hermit to canonical candidate way. Despite being a hermit (seriously, I am beginning to think that word does not mean what I think it means), he had an active political life, did a bit of traveling & some light construction work (he built his solitary cell where G*d directed his axe to fall; seems an impractical method to me, but the axe remains a relic in the town of Ste. Wolfgang). He was known locally as a man of great goodness & after his death many churches adopted his name. All very standard stuff. But you know there had to be something to catch my eye (or more accurately my typing fingers) & that was the story of how Wolfgang of Regensburg beat the devil.
I think we are all fond of stories of beating the devil, even if you don't believe in the devil, even if you believe the devil is in all of us. We all like to beat him, in Moscow or even Georgia. When I was in school I remember loving the Stephen Vincent Benet story "The Devil & Daniel Webster", maybe in part because I spent a lot of my youth up in Daniel Webster country & have visited his birthplace on more than one occasion. I have just learned there is a movie that I somehow missed completely, but scenes still look familiar. I cannot tell if I saw it once & forgot or of all movies from that period look a little bit alike.
Either way, there is no movie about Wolfgang of Regensburg beating the devil (actually there probably is...in the tourist kiosk of the Town of Ste. Wolfgang, but whatever) which is a damn shame because Wolfgang beat the devil & got him (the devil) to build a church. The story itself, without further ado:
& so I leave you with this, a man who pulled a Tom Sawyer on Satan himself. Then somehow got assigned October 31st as his feast day.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Today, a dwarf
I freely & unequivocally admit I choose today's saint because of his name. No, not the Juan part, the other part: Juan the Dwarf. I know if you follow the link you will find JOHN the dwarf, but you will also find painting after painting of white Jesus & you all just need to get over that.
Okay, is everyone forming a picture of a Latin Lord of the Rings thing? Yes? Good.
Juan was born to a poor family (surprise, surprise) in Egypt (Juan?). He had a famously short fuse (waka waka) & while his temper never really went away, with spirituality came humility (so not 21st century, right?) & he stopped getting quite so worked up about offenses, imagined & otherwise.
So we have a dwarf, who has left his parents hovel to live in an underground cave he dug himself. It just gets better & better doesn't it? Lived for a while as a hermit, offering himself as a disciple. For reasons known only to ancient villagers with ancient pitchforks (in this instance Berbers with swords), he was driven away, wandered a bit & then settled on Mount Qolzum, over in Anthony's neighborhood, to hang with the other hermits.
In the end, the most interesting story about Juan, in my view, is he was directed (by Saint Pambo, a most excellent name) to plant a piece of dry wood & then traveled uphill in both directions twice a day to water it for thirteen years until it sprouted. The reason I like this is that one of my favorite movies: Enchanted April. It has nothing to do with dwarves or saints or mountains or anything really, but a dead bit of wood that sprouts does come into it. & I guess there are some sort-of hermits living together.
Back to our man of the day; he is the patron of nothing, nada, zip. Not even dwarves.
Okay, is everyone forming a picture of a Latin Lord of the Rings thing? Yes? Good.
Juan was born to a poor family (surprise, surprise) in Egypt (Juan?). He had a famously short fuse (waka waka) & while his temper never really went away, with spirituality came humility (so not 21st century, right?) & he stopped getting quite so worked up about offenses, imagined & otherwise.
So we have a dwarf, who has left his parents hovel to live in an underground cave he dug himself. It just gets better & better doesn't it? Lived for a while as a hermit, offering himself as a disciple. For reasons known only to ancient villagers with ancient pitchforks (in this instance Berbers with swords), he was driven away, wandered a bit & then settled on Mount Qolzum, over in Anthony's neighborhood, to hang with the other hermits.
In the end, the most interesting story about Juan, in my view, is he was directed (by Saint Pambo, a most excellent name) to plant a piece of dry wood & then traveled uphill in both directions twice a day to water it for thirteen years until it sprouted. The reason I like this is that one of my favorite movies: Enchanted April. It has nothing to do with dwarves or saints or mountains or anything really, but a dead bit of wood that sprouts does come into it. & I guess there are some sort-of hermits living together.
Back to our man of the day; he is the patron of nothing, nada, zip. Not even dwarves.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Pelagia AKA Margarito
I backed into Saint Pelagia, not in a parking lot or anything but through the Boris Akunin series about Sister Pelagia (which I backed into because of my deep & abiding love for all things Erast Fandorin, also a Boris Akunin character).
There are a few different Saint Pelagias, conveniently celebrated on the same days (today or later this month, depending on which calendar you go with, but all together on whichever day): a virgin who jumped from the roof of her house rather than be raped by soldiers, another who drove one man to suicide & his father to burn her alive for refusing to marry either of them, & a nun who saw a vision of Mary that told her where to find buried treasure, but today we are taking a look at Pelagia also known as Margarito the Courtesan.
Our Pelagia lived in Antioch (as did the roof-jumper, who is known as Pelagia of Antioch) & had quite a following as a dancer & professional mistress. She was known for her outrageous costumes & public spectacles (think Lady Gaga) & was out one day with her entourage when she happened to hear Saint Nonnus preaching in the street. In an unusual twist, as far as I can tell part of what got Nonnus the saint gig was baptising Pelagia & then getting her to renouncing her sinful ways. Pelagia was a very big fish (imagine Lady Gaga; now imagine her joining Westboro Baptist Church). She had a very public, very well compensated life of sin. She was a walking-talking repudiation of be good & good things will happen to you, be bad & you get my point. This was most excellent PR for the christians.
But Pelagia does not stop being interesting. She was casting off her worldy goods & worldly life & really wanted to get to Jerusalem & live as penitent without attracting undo attention. So she went disguised. As a man. No where else have I come across a saint who went cross-dressing to redemption. I am just going to beat this Lady Gaga thing like a rented mule.
Pelagia spent three years disguised as a man, shut away in a monk's cell. When she was found dead, she was buried without above ordinary ceremony. I wonder what they thought of the babe in monk's clothing but maybe everyone secretly knew. Also things were hopping in the Holy Land right about then. In more scandalous death-news, the wife of the emperor also died- yes they die all the time but this particular wife had been banished to Jerusalem because of her adultery. There were also a lot of religious schisms, the results of which are still seen today, hence Pelagia being a widely recognized saint in some churches & not so much in others.
That's it for our Pelagia really. The second go-round of the hooker with a heart of gold story. For another story about another Pelagia (no more holy than our saint & no less interesting, frankly) let me recommend Sister Pelagia & the White Bulldog. It has everything: religious schisms, sexual intrigues & behind the scenes look at champion dog breeding in Tsarist Russia. Also, the sister wields a deadly knitting needle, what's not to love?
There are a few different Saint Pelagias, conveniently celebrated on the same days (today or later this month, depending on which calendar you go with, but all together on whichever day): a virgin who jumped from the roof of her house rather than be raped by soldiers, another who drove one man to suicide & his father to burn her alive for refusing to marry either of them, & a nun who saw a vision of Mary that told her where to find buried treasure, but today we are taking a look at Pelagia also known as Margarito the Courtesan.
Our Pelagia lived in Antioch (as did the roof-jumper, who is known as Pelagia of Antioch) & had quite a following as a dancer & professional mistress. She was known for her outrageous costumes & public spectacles (think Lady Gaga) & was out one day with her entourage when she happened to hear Saint Nonnus preaching in the street. In an unusual twist, as far as I can tell part of what got Nonnus the saint gig was baptising Pelagia & then getting her to renouncing her sinful ways. Pelagia was a very big fish (imagine Lady Gaga; now imagine her joining Westboro Baptist Church). She had a very public, very well compensated life of sin. She was a walking-talking repudiation of be good & good things will happen to you, be bad & you get my point. This was most excellent PR for the christians.
But Pelagia does not stop being interesting. She was casting off her worldy goods & worldly life & really wanted to get to Jerusalem & live as penitent without attracting undo attention. So she went disguised. As a man. No where else have I come across a saint who went cross-dressing to redemption. I am just going to beat this Lady Gaga thing like a rented mule.
Pelagia spent three years disguised as a man, shut away in a monk's cell. When she was found dead, she was buried without above ordinary ceremony. I wonder what they thought of the babe in monk's clothing but maybe everyone secretly knew. Also things were hopping in the Holy Land right about then. In more scandalous death-news, the wife of the emperor also died- yes they die all the time but this particular wife had been banished to Jerusalem because of her adultery. There were also a lot of religious schisms, the results of which are still seen today, hence Pelagia being a widely recognized saint in some churches & not so much in others.
That's it for our Pelagia really. The second go-round of the hooker with a heart of gold story. For another story about another Pelagia (no more holy than our saint & no less interesting, frankly) let me recommend Sister Pelagia & the White Bulldog. It has everything: religious schisms, sexual intrigues & behind the scenes look at champion dog breeding in Tsarist Russia. Also, the sister wields a deadly knitting needle, what's not to love?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)