Happy St. Francis Xavier’s Day!

Yay for one of the first Jesuits and a guy who brought the Gospel to large chunks of Asia, after being the guy who only went on retreat for the Spiritual Exercises because St. Ignatius Loyola was a pool shark!

There’s a great religious sitcom going begging, in the true prehistory of the Jesuits. Fr. Pacwa’s homily this morning played this for its full value. Inigo Loyola, an ex-soldier turned into half a monk, a Spanish Basque older than everybody else, supporting himself by begging, and not even knowing Latin — getting stuck in the same room at college as Francis Xavier, young and elegant and learned and rich and athletic, a French Basque whose family had been on the losing side of the same war Inigo had been on the winning side of, with more knowledge than he knew what to do with and a great desire to get more. Inigo really, really wanted to recruit him. Francis really, really didn’t want to be recruited. It was like the odd couple, except that Pierre Fabre (aka Faber or Smith) was stuck in there with them, and probably right in the middle.

But Pacwa was also a tad unfair this morning. Xavier wasn’t worldly; he loved God and he meant to serve Him in the Church. He didn’t live riotously; he was probably the best student in Paris. What he wanted to do with his life was perfectly good.

What God wanted him to do was join his crazy roommate in some crazy new order and die out in Asia where nobody in his right mind would be. OTOH, the funny thing was that he did become a great churchman in charge of many souls, a papal nuncio at the age of 35; and he did have the chance to go on learning — learning languages and going places few Europeans had had a chance to, in more than a thousand years.

God has a heck of a sense of humor.

UPDATE: St. Francis Xavier is also responsible, in a classic Unintended Consequence, for the introduction of Japan to Western playing cards and card games.

Ohrid: Homebase of Slavic Evangelization

I’d never heard of this place Ohrid in Macedonia until about five minutes ago, but apparently it was where the disciples of St. Cyril and St. Methodius started the first school for Slavic churchmen. Nice pictures, too. Take a look.

“The Life of St. Eligius” by St. Dado

I read this saint’s life the other day, because his feast day was December 1. “The Life of St. Eligius” (or Eloi) is a real corker.

First off, it’s a contemporary life, written by not just somebody who knew the guy, but by his roommate and best friend at the palace, from back when they were both young officials. So it’s also an insider’s look at life in Merovingen France. Dado also has the odd moment of writerly genius, like when he describes a sophistical baddie as an “oily snake”.

Second, if you love those old Frankish names, you’re in luck. Everybody’s named stuff like Dado, Bobo, Abbo, etc.

Third, St. Eligius was a goldsmith before and during the time he did all the other stuff, like being the Merovingen Secretary of State, and becoming a bishop. You don’t get too much about medieval craftspeople that’s not written as a side-passage in something about lords and ladies. So this is a breath of fresh air.

Fourth, so much stuff blows up miraculously to free slaves or prisoners that you start about whether St. E had gunpowder or a time-travelling demolitions expert around. But then people’s handcuffs blow off too, and that’s… um… hard to manage without blowing off people’s hands. (Unless maybe there was acid on the handcuffs, and the gunpowder was just a distraction….) Still, the man was in touch with Byzantium and with all sorts of traders and technical people, and he was a genius technical guy himself. If anybody could have had gunpowder in early medieval Europe, even before the Chinese did, he’d be the one.

Unfortunately, that theory doesn’t really fit the character of the man as painted by his friend — he was the opposite of sneaky, and did stuff like begging forgiveness for getting his measurements of a chunk of land wrong by a foot. OTOH, a lot of pious people have been known to anoint things on the sly with blessed oils, hide holy medals in their kids’ beds, etc. So if St. E thought he just had been granted the knowledge of how to make a special holy powder, as opposed to thinking it was a sneaky demolitions trick, he might possibly have set stuff up without telling even his best friend and not felt bad about it. Hmmmmmm.

But I’m not exaggerating about the number of explosions. BOOM! If you want to insert sf into medieval history, St. E’s life is the place to go.

Fifth, he’s the patron saint not just of goldsmiths and metal workers and shoeing horses, but of mechanical and electrical engineers. Probably electronic engineers too. And he makes things blow up real good, so the engineers are probably happy with that.

Belatedly, have a happy St. Eligius’ Day! Daniel Mitsui has his signature, and a nice icon of him shoeing his horse. Here he is in the Catholic Encyclopedia and Wikipedia.

UPDATE: I did find the perfect activity for the saint’s day.
Also, the UK army REME engineers, under the protection of the good saint, have a little army humor piece called “The Gospel according to St. Eligius” which you might enjoy. But St. Barbara is the usual patron saint of firearms and St. Elmo (St. Erasmus of Formiae) of explosives, both because of their connection with lightning. I guess St. Eloi was busy enough.

Bishop Baraga, the “Snowshoe Priest”

Yet another saintly and historically significant member of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati whom we never hear about in church. Or in parochial school. Or anywhere.

(Yes, I’m going to continue harping on this. I heard more about Leif “the Lucky” Erikson in my parochial school than this guy. And I’m also bitter about not finding out Leif was a missionary, but I digress.)

Anyway, Bishop Baraga was very cool and adventuresome, and also a pioneering linguist. So click and learn.

Botticelli as Veil Stylist

Botticelli gives his version of “The Madonna of the Magnificat” a very interesting hairstyle. The woman in the picture is wearing a gauzy layered hair covering, and then she also has a warmer-looking scarf twisted around her head. (She seems to be using it more as a neck covering than anything else.) Possibly she was using it later as some sort of expedient to keep from catching a chill while breastfeeding.

Focus on the hairstyle at Holy Whapping. (Okay, you can read the post, too. But it’s a proper Advent meditation post, not a shallow post about historical fashion like this one.)

Info on the painting, which is called Info on the painting. It doubles as a family portrait of the Medici, which is… um… simultaneously sweet and religious, and weird. I mean, imagine if your dad had your family’s picture on the wall like this.

Lorenzo de’ Medici, the future Lorenzo the Magnificent, is holding the inkpot. I guess he was also a tad intense as a kid.

Here’s a much earlier Botticelli, in which the Madonna wears a very cute bun cover. Baby Jesus is apparently of opinion that it’s time to eat. Here’s part of an “Adoration of the Magi” with another cute bun cover for Mary.

In the “Cestello Annunciation”, I’m not sure exactly what’s going on with Mary’s hair, but it looks good. Apparently she’s got it pulled back in some kind of ponytail or braid, with a cloth partly wrapped around it.

“A Young Man Being Introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts” has a different hairstyle/veil style on every single one of the personified arts.

But Botticelli was apparently interested in drawing this kind of detail on men, too. He did a ton of different versions of the Adoration of the Magi, and all of them are full of men of every size, shape, and economic level, all depicted as individuals in their dress.

But as we know, Botticelli liked women (especially one certain blonde woman), so there’s a lot of women’s heads shown in his body of work!

Kerfuffle

Right now, there’s a minor flamewar going on in the comboxes of certain posts by Arturo Vasquez, Mark Shea, and the various blogs adding their punditry to the mix. It’s having more impact than its size indicates, because it hits a lot of hotbuttons along the way.

I sympathize with everybody. Yes, we all long for more mystery, and more clarity. Yes, we all long for a distinct Catholic identity, and for better Catholic catechism and evangelism. Yes, we love our teachers and our friends, and yes, nobody is worth getting that excited about some guy you only know through his work. Yes, it’s really awesome that the Church includes people who sweat their butts through grueling processions, and you can even see the point of people who do crazy stuff. And yes, the people who do crazy stuff and claim crazy visions both drive newbies away and draw them in.

Yes, yes, yes, it’s all true. Everybody’s right about something, at the top of their lungs.

But no, no, no, you’re all wrong. About something. About not looking at this the right way, the way it’s intended. About not being able to stand outside your own preferences when it comes to matters of prudence or freedom of devotion. Can you be absolutely sure you’re right about this particular thing, and is there any particular reason you should care?

I of course am the only wise one. What’s wrong with the rest of you?

I think what we all want is not to have to worry about this stuff so much. Why do we have to waste all this time justifying our identity, when we could be working on holiness and serving the Lord? Just being and doing what we’re born for?

But I don’t think anybody’s been spared that conflict. How we live and why we live has always been important; nobody lives a totally unexamined life except children and people sleeping. Darn it. But we do teach each other how to be Catholic, and how to serve the Lord, and many of the whys and wherefores. We really do need each other, and this isn’t a kerfuffle between strangers. It’s a family fight.

So now, as is the middle child’s prerogative, I will withdraw and let you go at it, occasionally looking up from my book to see if you are all done yet.

Top Ten Crushing Cradle Catholic Lines

Sometimes converts to Catholicism claim that “cradle Catholics” intimidate them a little or make them feel that they don’t belong. But us “cradle Catholics” don’t usually have any idea how this works. So for fun and profit, from our home office at the unapproved apparition site of Holier-Than-Thou-and-Thou-and-Thou, it’s:

The Top Ten Crushing Cradle Catholic Lines!

10. “I’ve lost rosaries older than you.”

9. “My great-uncle always said he’d have gone to Hell if it weren’t for the nuns and their rulers. Except on him, they used a yardstick. But pretty soon, there he was, attending the minor seminary at the age of twelve….”

8. “Oh, crap, it’s Ash Wednesday!” (Spits out first bite of burger) “If I’m gonna make it to Mass, I gotta get my ash in gear!”

7. “What brought me back to the Church? Oh, I really needed my throat blessed.”

6. “This reminds me of the time the sisters made me scrub the stairs, backward and upside down, all the way from the bottom to the third floor.”

5. “Yeah, the Blessed Virgin stopped me from murdering that cheating bastard like he deserved. Darn it.”

4. “I’ve just got to run into church and drop off a hundred copies of the St. Jude novena in back.”

3. “Sure, you can use that holy water bottle. But I think that water is about fifty years old.”

2. “I’m worried about Father. He doesn’t look too good, and Mr. A and Mrs. B just died last week, and you know these things come in threes….”

And the number one inadvertently crushing cradle Catholic line is:

1. “What, this old thing? It’s a first class relic of my cousin the saint. Here, I’ll open it up so you can touch it.”

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Disclaimer:

1. No, of course I’m not serious!

2. WHICH lines are based on me and my family? WHICH lines are fiction? Guess right, and you win adulation and fame! But no money!

Advantage: Stonyhurst

Hogwarts: fictional UK boarding school.
Stonyhurst: real UK boarding school.

Hogwarts: imaginary Scottish castle.
Stonyhurst: real Lancashire recusant manor.

Hogwarts: fictional Forbidden Forest.
Stonyhurst: real Forest and Liberty of Bowland.

Hogwarts: fictional wizards attended.
Stonyhurst: real saints attended.

Hogwarts: fictional ghostly friar.
Stonyhurst: real Jesuits, and not the creepy ones either.

Hogwarts: Rowling has never been there.
Stonyhurst: Tolkien did spend time there.

Hogwarts: fictional secret passages and hidden rooms.
Stonyhurst: real secret passages and hidden rooms, some of which were rediscovered by students.

If you’re wondering what brings this on, EWTN had Stonyhurst’s “Celebration of St. Edmund Campion” on this morning. I just happened to catch the end, and was sad I hadn’t been able to see it all.

Scotland Yard Doesn’t Need No Stinkin’ Badgers!

Or maybe it does.

Apparently, Dark Horse has put out a graphic novel named Grandville, set in the Belle Epoque France of a parallel world inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. A horrible crime has taken place — so horrid that the Surete has asked for assistance from Scotland Yard. They send over their best badger — the relentless Inspector LeBrock!

Yes, I believe I am their target audience. Maybe I should get to a comics store.

Rosary Term from the Andes

Apparently, the word in Spanish for rosary beads (at least in the New World) is “cuentas” (counters). Usually the word for a decade of the Rosary is something obvious like “decenario” or “decena”; but in Ecuador back then, it was a “casa” (house). I really like that.

I read this in a book called New Granada: Twenty Years in the Andes by one Isaac Farwell Holton, which I found by poking around in Google Books. He’s awfully nasty about Catholicism and the Rosary, and yet he goes into these matters in detail. Heh.

How Not to Improvise a Shark Hunt

A true story from Uncle Jimbo’s Story Time.

He also tells us that Mr. Habu the Pit Viper is not your friend.

(These stories are also a good index for your military characters. Can you picture the main characters of Stargate: SG1 telling this story about Habu? Yes. Gibbs on NCIS? Yes. Even the guys on MASH? Yes. But the guys on Stargate Universe, or any of the stupid movies out lately? Not that I’ve ever noticed. And yet, the military seems to RUN on telling stories, probably more than any other profession today!)

The Social Secretary Was Too Busy Socializing.

Which is fine, as long as you hire somebody reliable to do the actual work behind your social secretary job. But apparently, Mrs. Desiree Rogers didn’t believe in having anyone get the job done.

I’m really surprised that this policy didn’t come back on them before. I mean, there are literally hundreds of things that can go wrong at a party, and they are not usually something that the head honchos of an organization can ignore. A moment’s annoyance usually means plenty of flak. So the White House kitchen and house workers must be covering up for the incompetence and apathy of this administration’s staffers. (Either that, or they just fired the one faceless but competent underling who was keeping things running.)

I guess we’ll find out whether the First Lady cares more about her idle rich friend, or her defenseless children sleeping upstairs.

Veils in Court: An Anecdote

From Curiosities of Law and Lawyers, by Croake James, 1899:

A Witness Told to Look a Judge in the Face

On the trial of Glengarry, in Scotland, for murder in a duel, a lady of great beauty was called as a witness. She came into court veiled. But before administering the oath, Lord Eskgrove, the Scotch judge (to whom administering the oath belongs in Scotland), gave her this exposition of her duty. “Young woman, you will now consider yourself as in the presence of Almighty God, and of this High Court. Lift up your veil, throw off all your modesty, and look me in the face.”

– Cockburn’s Memoranda, 122.

Curiosities of Law and Lawyers by Croake James

This is a very funny book of historical anecdotes and unhistorical jokes about lawyers, published back in 1899. The very first story is a joke about how a lawyer managed to get into Heaven.