Why Candles?

This week, somebody was asking about why Catholics light candles, and I looked into it.

See, the interesting thing is that wax candles are a Western, Northern thing. The usual Biblical Old Testament lighting was oil lamps, and the Temple had the almond-tree-shaped lampstands that also used burning olive oil.

Most of the world has used plant oils, butter, or animal grease/oil lamps, as well as sometimes figuring out how to use petrochemicals. But in the West, there were beeswax candles developed. Well, the Romans also used taper candles, and wax torches. Officials were given the honor of having people carry tapers before them or after them.

When Christianity came along, and possibly within the first century or so, the church in Rome quickly started giving God honor with candles and tapers, as opposed to just using oil lamps. And from there, candles spread to the Eastern church as well. Emperor Constantine gave giant candles, “pillars of wax,” to the church he attended in Constantinople.

Not everybody liked candles. St. Jerome is annoyed by the heretic Vigilantius on a lot of topics. (And no wonder, because he worked for St. Septimius Severus, and then got to go on pilgrimage to Bethlehem where he was Jerome’s houseguest! But then he left suddenly without explanation, went home, and started doing all this heresy stuff, ignoring all his orthodox theological mentors.)

But he particularly disdains Vigilantius’ attack on popular piety and the use of candles during prayer vigils, or liturgically to give honor to the reading of the Gospel in churches. (Jerome calls candles “cereus,” wax, and “luminaria.”.) Jerome associates candles with joy as well as with honor and lighting the night. He also brings up several Bible verses, and asks that if people light candles to honor martyrs, “What do you lose by it?” [“Quid inde perdis?”]

So basically, all the Bible verses from the OT that talk about lamps and fire, tend to be transferred to candles in popular devotion in the West, and sometimes in the East. Lamps symbolize guidance from God. They are also used as an analogy for human reason and human life, from Job on. Since a candle’s wax visibly burns down, further and further, the association with human life is very natural.

Also, since ordinary laypeople were not able to use incense, candles seem to have taken on the Biblical significance of burning incense, being a symbol of prayers going up to God.

There’s probably a lot more to be said about candles.

Hay-on-Wye

The two redoubtable members of the Cummings Your Way channel take a trip to the UK’s Book Town, Hay-on-Wye.

Their first stop is at a nearby estate that allegedly inspired Baskerville Hall, so that’s definitely worth seeing.

If you’ve never seen anything by Cummings Your Way, they’re allegedly a travel channel, or a channel about exploring bits of England that are under-appreciated and local to the two guys running the channel.

However, it’s also an excuse to explore all sorts of different video styles, normally focusing on the Seventies and Eighties. They also compose and perform their own musical score.

It’s a very odd but likeable YT channel, especially if you have any kind of Anglophile tendencies.

I also think that they should be given control of Doctor Who. Budgets would go way down, quality would go way up, and they couldn’t possibly do worse than RTD does now.

Outside the Protection of Law

The word “outlaw” originally meant someone living outside the protection of law, because that person had committed such heinous crimes that no decent person would even help them stay alive. (Usually this meant treason, regicide, and so on.)

Their lands were seized by the government. Their goods were also seized, if the government could get them.

It was forbidden to give such people food, water, fire, or shelter except under duress. Killing such a person was not murder, and might even provide one with a reward, as if the person were a dangerous animal.

Those who aided such a person were committing a crime.

In medieval England, nobody under the age of 14 could be outlawed, and the courts generally shied away from outlawing women.

(The situation got a lot less clearcut when medieval England came up with the concept of civil outlawry, as opposed to criminal outlawry. It also wasn’t terribly effective, as civil outlawry could only be deployed against people who defaulted on tons of debts and didn’t have lands or seizable goods, and who just refused to show up for court or possibly no longer lived anywhere in a county.)

In Saxon times, an outlaw was also called a “wearg,” a wolf. Very often, his crimes were such that he was also excommunicated, and hence had no protection from either the civil authorities or the Church’s laws. OTOH, a repentant outlaw might find a home in a monastery or as a penitent hermit.

St. Guthlac is a good example of this, both in life and in Old English literature.

(There’s a surviving Old English poem about his life which is just awesome, btw. Here’s a translation.)

The laws of war operate on a similar basis to the laws of criminal outlawry.

People who don’t identify their side, don’t wear uniforms, and don’t operate under the laws of war, but who do commit acts of war, do not receive the protection of law given either a soldier or a civilian. They commit war crimes. They may count as terrorists, depending on the war crime.

Such a person can be shot as a spy, if not wearing a uniform while committing such acts. A uniform can be as simple as an armband, but there has to be one.

If guerrilla warfare leads people to abandon uniforms, they are taking their chances.

And somebody who helps other people commit war crimes, or crimes against humanity in general, is also considered a war criminal, in most cases. There are exceptions for aid workers… but often the aid workers get compromised, and end up actually working for the war criminals.

So basically, Gaza, Rafah and other Hamas territories are full of war criminals.

You’ve got terrorists collecting a salary from the UN, while actively running around committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. You’ve got terrorists setting up military bases, illegal prisons, torture sites, rape sites, etc., in places like hospitals and schools, as well as in civilian housing and in refugee camps.

And you have people using children, who would normally be exempt from war, as soldiers without uniforms, as bait, as propaganda actors, and any other illegal and immoral thing they can think of. (Sometimes these kids are also being abused physically and sexually, so it’s a very muddy situation.)

But the situation was created not by Israel, but by Hamas.

Israel didn’t attack first. Israel didn’t drag off “hostages” as sex slaves, or sit around raping dead bodies of suburban civilian housewives. All that was Hamas.

And Hamas actively set up a situation where any ordinary civilian who isn’t helping them, is still liable to get “martyred” by the Israelis who are fighting Hamas.

Hamas is the entity that is able to save civilians and end war crimes, by surrendering and laying down their arms. Hamas is the one that could be wearing uniforms, and staying away from civilian areas.

Anything bad that happens is all on Hamas. And they are happy to admit this in Arabic-language statements.

Escape from Slavery

2 Maccabees 1:7 -8 —

“…We Jews wrote to you of the trouble and violence that came upon us…They burnt the gate, and shed innocent blood…”

2 Maccabees 1:24-25, 27 —

“And the prayer of Nehemiah was after this manner:

“O Lord God, Creator of all things, dreadful and strong, just and merciful… Who delivers Israel from all evil…

“Gather together our scattered people, deliver those that are slaves to the pagan nations… that they may know that You are our God.”

The rescue of four Israeli civilian “hostages”, from their evil terrorist Hamas captors, is good news.

The only bad news is that other hostages are still in bondage.

The Actual, Physical Chair of St. Peter

There’s a black and white picture of the Chair in this article. It’s a sedan chair, a “sella gestatoria,” from the first century, made of oak. It includes two sets of ivory decorative plaques which were added at different times centuries apart, and it also includes repairs/restorations of parts of the oak that were replaced with acacia wood. It also includes four built-in metal rings for carry poles, which are still in pretty good shape.

The Chair has a big reliquary (also shaped like a chair) which is kept high up in St. Peter’s, right under the stained glass window of the Holy Spirit as a dove. There’s no color picture, because the popes haven’t ordered the reliquary open for so long.

There actually used to be two Chairs, one of which dated from St. Peter’s first time visiting Rome, and one which is supposed to have been his Chair for his time in residence as Rome’s bishop. The first Chair was around up until a few centuries ago, but now has disappeared. It was kept at a place called the Ostrianum, which was associated with Roman baptisms, before the baptistry near Nero’s racetrack, in the old cemetery under St. Peter’s, was established.

One old story about the second Chair is that it belonged to St. Pudens, who was a Senator, and thus had this sedan chair around the house for his own use. (Sedan chairs for prominent male Romans got popular during the reign of Emperor Claudius, before the reign of Nero when Peter and Paul got martyred.) He gave it to St. Peter as a fitting chair and way to get around, and it’s been in Peter’s body’s vicinity ever since.

After Peter’s martyrdom and the legalization of Christianity, the Chair originally was kept in the baptistry of Old St. Peter’s, and the popes would sit in it during baptismal ceremonies. Early on, they would be carried around in the sedan chair, until it got too old and precious to be used that way; and even then, popes would be carried in the Chair on February 22, the Feast of St. Peter’s Chair.

So yes, the reason popes had a “sedia gestatoria” was not earthly glory, but as an imitation of the actual practice of the first Pope. It’s the Popemobile of the day.

Also, February 22 is supposedly the actual date when Jesus told St. Peter that “You are Rock.” Apparently this date was handed down as the date when Peter got the Keys and became a bishop (as well as head bishop/prime minister), and was thus considered a good date to celebrate the Chair relic too.

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• Incidentally, it has been pointed out that the place where St. Peter supposedly stayed on his first visit to Rome was on a street where the Cornelii family lived — and that St. Peter knew a centurion named Cornelius, so he probably was invited to stay there by the family! St. Pudens was supposedly a relative of the Cornelii, which would make sense. St. Pudentiana and St. Praxedes were daughters of St. Pudens, and their brothers were St. Novatus and St. Timotheus. Pudens’ dad was probably Quintus Cornelius Pudens, and his mom was named Priscilla. (St. Pudens is mentioned by name in 2 Timothy 4:21.)