Mary among the Pagan Poets

It’s not an exact quote, but the Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos alludes to Polyxena in Euripides’ Hecuba. Both Polyxena and Hecuba describe Polyxena as a “bride unwedded” and as an “un-bride unwedded,” as part of their laments over the unfairness of the situation. (Because Achilles while alive had attempted to marry Polyxena, in this version of the story, and that’s why his vengeful ghost demanded her human sacrifice by the Greeks.)

But the Akathist Hymn turns this around, saying to Mary, “Rejoice, O bride unwedded!”

Ovid also talks about Polyxena in the Metamorphoses, Book 13, closely referencing/translating Euripides’ lines about her determination to preserve her modesty in death. Ovid was at least partially making a joke about the futility of this, because the Metamorphoses jokes about everything, apparently. (If you’re a classics person who has read everything that’s part of the jokes.) But he also described Polyxena as “fortis et infelix, et plus quam femina, virgo.” (“A virgin both more valiant and unlucky/unblessed than a woman/wife.”)

Dude. “Virgo fortis” is one of the titles of the Virgin Mary. I thought it was just riffing on the Valiant (or enterprising) Woman of Proverbs, who was “mulier fortis.” But no! It is riffing on Proverbs 31 and Ovid, too!

One of the medieval hymns for St. Euphemia also started, “Virgo fortis agonista, o felix”. A fair number of other virgin martyrs are also described in hymns as “virgo fortis,” as well as St. Catherine of Siena who died a natural death.

And Ovid was one of the standard schoolboy texts for monks and future clergy, so they were quoting Ovid on purpose.

To be fair, it turns out that Pliny the Younger said that the Vestal Virgin Cornelia, who was executed for inchastity against her vowed term of service, but whom he believed innocent, also emulated Polyxena in the play, by walking freely to execution and refusing to be touched by the execution squad even for help down the stairs, and when her robe caught and she tripped, by arranging how she would fall to preserve her modesty.

(Since Pliny was an eyewitness, this demolishes the claim that emulating Polyxena’s care for modesty was impossible in real life for martyred Christian girls like Agnes and Perpetua. Granted this was easier if you were being buried alive, like Cornelia was, rather than all the ingenious means of arena-death devised for the martyrs. And honestly, it might have been reflex and deportment training, just as girls used to be taught to catch items in their skirts instead of bending over to catch them.)

This info is partly taken from an academic article available in PDF form, but it’s also on this website. So I will give them the traffic. https://brewminate.com/dying-like-a-woman-euripides-polyxena-as-exemplum-between-philo-and-clement-of-alexandria/

(Vestal Virgins were considered too sacred to have their blood shed, so technically bad Vestals were just imprisoned for life in an underground cell, with a bed, bread, oil, milk, and water, and even a lit oil lamp. So they suffocated after the cell was completely covered with dirt. Ugh.)

(Cornelia, the Virgo Maxima or head virgin, was executed by Emperor Domitian, who was also no friend of Christians. Pliny the Younger says that she was convicted at a trial to which she was not invited, of having committed incest with a relative called Celer, who also insisted on his and her innocence while being killed. Pliny says that Domitian was known to have raped his brother’s widow, and that he probably killed Cornelia and three other Vestals to cover up his own evil.)

(And of course Jesus quoted Euripides’ Bacchae to St. Paul, when he told him it was stupid to kick against the goads! Man, that Euripides must have been one startled poet when Jesus harrowed hell.)

(Another article by the same guy, Friesen, about the Bacchae‘s reinterpretation by Jews and Christians.)

Ven. Pierre Toussaint

Ven. Pierre Toussaint is mentioned reasonably often in the Catholic press. But it’s been somewhat difficult for me to “get” him, other than that he was a free black hairdresser, very good and generous, and bore no grudges toward his masters from when he was a slave.

But there’s a near-contemporary account, by New Yorkers who weren’t even Catholic, from before the Civil War. It’s called Memoir of Pierre Toussaint, Born a Slave in St. Domingo (1853), and it’s online. The author withheld her name from the original printings (because she was a lady, and it wasn’t done!); but it is known to have been written by Hannah F. Lee, also the author of various historical works.

Seriously, this is great stuff. Not only does it explain a lot about his life and times, but it contains a lot of oral history in the form of personal stories and quotes, from people who couldn’t forget this man and wanted everyone to know about him. He was both a saint and a character.

The unfortunate thing is that, other than from Toussaint’s wife, the author Mrs. Lee does not seem to have collected any oral history from anyone African-American. (She admits that she just didn’t know any other black New Yorkers. Still, that’s not very enterprising, even in a world where ladies had to be introduced to strangers by acquaintances.) She does present letters from black people, so maybe it really was a logistics problem.

We do have Pierre Toussaint’s photograph, as an old man looking like a patriarch. There is also a portrait (a miniature) of him as a young man, looking like a very elegant but very tough guy. Check out the miniatures in color! (You have to hit the arrow button to see Euphemia.)

The improbable fact is that, after his owners (the Berard family) lost their fortune in a financial crash, and after his master died, he looked after his master’s wife (who owned him) as if she were his own mother or sister, and paid the bills for her, including the rent, from his hairdressing business, as well as helping her second husband financially. He also freed his sister Rosalie and his fiancee Juliette Noel with his own money, sent money to his impoverished white godmother (Aurora Berard, another member of his owners’ family) in France and her family, and looked after everybody he could find who had been a slave on his master’s plantation.

He ended up owning his old master’s house in New York, and lived in it, and even helped found a school in it for his niece. (By renting part of the house out, as an apartment, to a white schoolteacher.)

Without being openly pushy or impolite, and without being offensive to anyone, Toussaint doesn’t really seem to have felt inferior to anyone, or even have felt hobbled by his enslavement. When he was freed by his mistress on her deathbed, in 1807, he took it with equanimity — even though he had made such a point of saving his own money to free his sister and his fiancee. Other people deserved help; he just did what was needed, whether he was playing on hard mode or not.

It’s a very male attitude, I think!

After Toussaint married and freed Juliette, she was his partner in charity and in religious devotion. She apparently delighted in picking out fashionable Madras handkerchiefs and crape dresses to send to Toussaint’s godmother. She also had various businesses, including showing ladies how to tie up their hair stylishly in those Madras handkerchiefs. (As seen in her minature.) When his sister Rosalie died, and her husband turned out not to be a great father, Pierre and Juliette took their niece Euphemia home (she was only six months old), and worked to keep her alive despite her illnesses. But they were always looking for ways to help others.

One of their funnier charities was done for a Frenchman who had lost his money. They worried that he wasn’t eating well, so they anonymously sent him nice dinners with gourmet food. They were afraid that he would be too proud to accept if he knew it was from tradespeople, even the Toussaints. He assumed that his rich friends were doing this and was proud to accept such gifts of their esteem, which he told Toussaint about; and apparently Juliette found it funny enough to remember it years after.

(Of course, he might have figured it out, and that’s why he was telling Toussaint… these things are tricky.)

Toussaint was famous enough as a hairdresser in New York that he appeared as a minor character in an anonymously written novel, Echoes of a Belle (also 1853). Toussaint was described as having a “good tempered face,” wearing a “snowy apron” when doing hair, and also “small earrings.” From his portrait, he seems to have worn a black suit with a white shirt, very much like Beau Brummel.

At this time, hairdressers made house calls, and some ladies hired him to drop by almost daily. His cheerfulness and skill, as well as his good sense and discretion, made him regarded as a friend by these ladies. He followed them through all the fashions, from tall updos, to shaven heads under wigs, to crops, to Grecian curls. He was also very good with giving kids haircuts, or special hairstyles for big occasions, with “his kindly hands.”

But he also had friends among every kind of New Yorker, rich and poor, slave and free, because he truly loved all sorts of people. His English seems to have been strongly accented, but his French very high class. So you get a real mix of quotes in this book.

His wife was twenty years younger, and strongwilled. But later in life, she said that she always did whatever Toussaint suggested, because “she was not obliged to do it.” And the memoir gives an example of Juliette consulting Pierre about a small purchase, and him agreeing with whatever she said. They seem to have had a marriage of consensus. When she went to Baltimore to visit friends, he told her in a letter to stay longer if she liked, or whatever she decided, because “I love my wife for herself, not for myself.”

Pierre and Juliette’s great grief was the loss of Euphemia to a wasting disease, as a teenager, in 1829. He found purpose in organizing various charities for others, and finding needy people jobs, as well as making business plans that allowed other people to support themselves. For example, he got a French lady to start a business as a conversation partner for girls learning to speak French.

He was also known for visiting other people who were grieving, and bringing them comfort and hope. His consolation calls sometimes were totally silent; he would hold someone’s hand, and perhaps even cry with them.

He also visited the sick, including total strangers with yellow fever, even nursing them through it.

After Euphemia died, he and Juliette adopted or fostered various boys who had no parents, sending them to school and setting them up in trade, as if they were their own sons.

He seems to have talked about all sorts of things, and one of them was his faults. He said that he was born with a quick temper, and was obliged to carry it around with him.

But one of his best friends said that he never heard Toussaint speak ill of anyone. If he could not say anything good, he was silent. “It seemed to be his object to forget all injuries.”

He was good at imitations when young, but gave it up when older. He also was good at playing violin for dances, and taught violin to a few boys.

He owned some apartment houses, and one of his old tenants described him as the “perfect gentleman,” to the point that his good points were almost hard to explain. His politeness was “the natural overflow… of his heart, and you no more thought of distrusting it than of failing to reciprocate it….”

One of his investments was in insurance companies, and therefore he lost a lot of money from New York’s 1835 fire. But it was remembered that when one friend’s house burned, he was the first one there to express sympathy, without a word of his own problems.

Toussaint was reluctant to speak of his political views on slavery or abolition. It’s scary to read his one comment on abolition, in a book published in 1853 — “[Abolitionists] have never seen blood flow as I have. They don’t know what they are doing.”

He did keep in touch with what was going on with Haiti, through letters from friends. He also got letters from all over America and Europe, including one from a Protestant woman saying that, whenever she visited a Catholic church for sightseeing, she would kneel and pray and remember “my own St. Pierre” back in New York.

His wife ended up dying before him, and it was a blow. Suddenly his friends saw him as old and feeble. But he kept up his charities as long as he could, walked to Mass (6 AM daily Mass) as long as he could, and died a happy death. One of his last comments was, “God is with me.”

His funeral was the funeral of a saint, with a High Mass and a full house, and his friends commented that they learned more about his charity work at his funeral than they had ever known about before. He got obituaries which were full of loving tributes to his greatness. It was a remarkably counterculture moment for the time.

This is a heck of a book, written with love, about a good man doing God’s work in a harsh world.

Transfiguration Bible Fun!!

Greek is just such a fun language. I’m really sad that I didn’t get into it when I was younger.

Okay, so let’s look at today’s Gospel reading! Matthew 17: 1-9, we all know the gist of it.

Well, sorta. First off, the Gospel itself (as opposed to the version of the lectionary) starts by telling you that Jesus took the three guys up the mountain “after six days.”

Six days after when?

Six days after Jesus told Peter that he was now Rock… six days after Jesus started teaching the apostles about his own death… and six days after Jesus told Peter to get behind him, Satan, and that everybody following Him, Jesus, would have to take up their cross too… and that “the Son of Man is going to come in His Father’s glory” — and that “some of those standing here” would “see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom.” (Without having to taste death first.)

So six days later, Peter and James and John go up on Mount Tabor, and see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom, in His reigning, in His Father’s glory. Simple as that.

So the next funky thing about the reading is “transfigured.” In Greek, it’s “metamorphothe.”

“….And His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.”

“Shone” is “elampsen.” And if that reminds you of “lamp,” that’s exactly where the English word comes from — the Greek verb “lampo,” to shine.

And “like the sun” is “hos ho helios,” and “like the light” is “hos to phos.”

So then Moses and Elijah show up, “conversing.” The word is “syllalousen,” which is very fun to say.

And then a lot of English translations stop being exact, because there’s a weird word that’s hard to translate.

Peter doesn’t just say his piece. No, the verse starts, “Apokritheis de”. “De” is basically “Then.” But “apokritheis” usually means “answered, replied.” Usually. But sometimes it means, “spoke about what had just happened” or “spoke in a way that fit the occasion.”

It has this meaning in the Bible fairly often, because the Greek word is being used in place of Hebrew “anah” (and probably some Aramaic expression too). “Anah” literally meant “to dwell” at one point, but it came to mean “replied” or “sang” or “spoke about what had just happened, testified, defended oneself or another person”, or even “spoke in a way that fits the occasion.”

The funny bit is that Peter is “dwelling,” and then talking about building Jesus and Moses and Elijah temporary dwellings, as per Sukkoth. (OK, I am easily amused.)

Anyway, what Peter says is, “Kyrie, kalon estin hemas hode einai.” “Lord, it is good/beautiful for us to be in this place.”

What he wants to make (“poieso”) is “treis skenas,” three tents, “ei theleis,” if You will/want. I don’t think we pay enough attention to Peter’s “ei theleis,” which is an important part of his spiel. He didn’t just plunge ahead; he did ask “if You will it.” I think that’s why Peter didn’t get into trouble at that time.

Jesus uses “ei theleis” also. (Mt. 19:17 – “If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” Mt. 19:21 – “If you want to be perfect, sell your possessions and give to the poor.”)

Another thing we don’t notice is that THE FATHER INTERRUPTED PETER, “epi autou lalountos”, while he was speaking. I find this hilarious! In a way, it’s almost a commendation of Peter, because the Father basically perfects his intention to celebrate the occasion! Instead of a skene to cover their heads, the Father shows up with a “photeine nephele,” a bright cloud to “episkiasen”, overshadow them.

(And you’ll remember that Mary was also “overshadowed,” just as the Temple was overshadowed by the Shekinah glory cloud. This is the Shekinah glory cloud also.)

And it’s the second “Behold!” in the reading — first we “behold!” Moses and Elijah, and now we “behold!” the bright cloud. Finally, we “behold!” a voice speaking out of the cloud (“phone ek tes nepheles”).

Here’s what the Father says:

“Houtos estin ho huios mou, ho agapetos, en ho eudokesa; akouete autou.”

This is My Son, My beloved one, in Whom I myself am well-pleased; listen to Him.”

Of course, this is the same thing the Father said earlier at Jesus’ Baptism, in Mt. 3:17, when it was “a voice out of the sky” (“phone ek ton ouranon”). That was another “Behold!” moment. But that time, He just said that He was well-pleased; He didn’t say “listen to Him.”

So okay, maybe that part was kinda rebuke-ish. Maybe we need to listen to Jesus more than we talk.

Mt. 12:18 relates this phrase explicitly to Isaiah 42:1 — “Here is My servant whom I uphold, my Chosen One in whom My soul delights; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations….” Matthew quotes it as “in whom I am well-pleased.”

So the three apostles freak out, until Jesus tells them to get up. (Very much like in Revelation, and in various angelic and divine visits back in the OT.) And then they see “only Jesus” or “Jesus alone” (“Iesoun monon”). Pretty amazing ending.

But there’s more, because the second reading was from 2nd Peter, right after Peter talks about how he will soon be leaving his own “skenomati,” his tent/body.

Peter reminds us that he was there at the Transfiguration, an eyewitness, and that he heard “the voice” (“phonen… ek ouranou”) calling Him: “ho huios mou, ho agapetos mou, houtos estin; eis hon ego eudokesa.”

(The wording in Greek not being exactly the same suggests that God spoke in Aramaic or Hebrew, or that Peter was recalling the words freely instead of exactly.)

And of course the first reading from Daniel, and the responsorial psalm, both talk about the same thing too.

There’s a lot more to say about this, but I have to eat lunch now! Hope you enjoyed it!