A Very Unusual Wedding

Check this out.

“The Marriage of Captain Martin de Loyola to Beatriz Clara Coya, Princess of Peru.”

Yes, he’s a grandnephew of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Yes, she was a royal Inca maiden (ñusta), the daughter of Sayri Tupac, an Incan king, and Cusi Huarcay, his queen (Coya) and blood sister.

(In a VERY unusual move, after Sayri Tupac and Cusi Huarcay converted to Christianity and were baptized, the pope granted a dispensation to allow them to have their marriage convalidated; and in fact, the Bishop of Cuzco remarried them with a Catholic nuptial Mass in 1558. It’s usual for pagan natural marriage to be convalidated, but not brother-sister marriage! OTOH, I don’t think they were having any more children at that point, so maybe that’s why. Also, to be fair, about half the Spanish royalty back then were such cross-cousins that they might as well have been siblings, so the Pope was probably a bit resigned.)

Captain Martin Onez Garcia de Loyola came to Peru at the age of 17, as part of the new viceroy’s staff. He gained his fame in 1572, for capturing the rebel king Tupac Amaru and his camp.

Beatriz’s dad the king had died in 1561, at which point Beatriz and her dad’s money were put into Spanish guardianship, and Beatriz was put into a convent school. Cusi Huarcay betrothed her daughter to Cristobal Maldonado, a relative of the Maldonado family that was housing her. This was taken badly by the Spanish, who sent the Maldonados away and put Beatriz back into the convent. Cusi Huarcay remarried to a Spanish soldier, but she was still never allowed to go home to Vilcabamba.

The Spanish then made a treaty with some of the Incan holdouts, which promised her betrothal to an Incan prince, Quispe Tito, son of the royal claimant Titu Cusi Yupanqui.

But a few years later, when the new viceroy asked if she would rather stay in the convent or marry. Beatriz said she’d rather marry, and the viceroy married her to Captain de Loyola. She was only 15 or 16, and her husband was about 21.

The viceroy conferred Peruvian estates on them (which was good, because Martin’s side of the family wasn’t the money/land side). They seem to have been happy together.

He was made the Spanish governor of Chile in 1592, and she came with him to La Concepcion. He named a town and a fort after his wife. Unfortunately, he was killed by the Mapuche and his head was taken and kept by them, only to be returned to the Spanish years later. He died on Christmas Eve, 1598.

The princess returned to Lima, where she died two years later, in 1600.

Her daughter lived on. She had been born in 1593, and was now about 7 years old. To prevent political problems, and because she didn’t have much maternal family that was still alive, she was sent to Spain to be raised by the Loyolas. (And honestly, there’s not a ton of difference between living up in the Andes and living in the Pyrenees, except that Lima was a crazy town for women back then.)

She arrived in Valladolid, Spain, in 1603. It was the royal capital at the time. The king assigned her guardianship to Juan de Borja de Castro, the Conde of Mayalde, who was one of her dad’s cousins by marriage. (His first wife was Lorenza de Onaz y Loyola, daughter of Beltran Ibanez de Loyola, who was the ruling lord of Loyola, and hence the land/money side of the family. She had died in 1575.) Juan was the second son of St. Francis Borgia. His wife at the time, who survived him, was Francisca de Aragon y Barreto, and her kids succeeded him.

Juan died in 1606, when Ana was about 13. The king set her up with her own household, where she lived with her nurse, her butler, and her doctor. In 1610, Ana received a court ruling that returned her the income from her towns in Peru, which probably improved her finances a lot. When she turned 18, the king picked out a husband for her.

So the other marriage shown is the later marriage, in 1611, of Don Juan Enriquez de Borja to Martin and Beatriz’ daughter, Ana Maria Lorenza Garcia Sayri Tupac de Loyola y Coya Inca.

Juan was the grandson of St. Francis de Borja y Aragon, who took on the dukedom of Gandia, after Francis abdicated to become a Jesuit. His parents were Alvaro de Borja y Castro, a diplomat, and Elvira Enriquez de Almansa y Borja, who was Marquesa of Alcanices in her own right. (Yup, his parents were cousins. Spanish nobility, just like the royalty.)

These influential new relations complained to the Spanish king about the many historical wrongs done to the Peruvian people, and got their new daughter-in-law tons of political concessions. Her domains were made free of taxes and of the viceroy and governor’s control, which is quite a lot to get. The situation was supposed to go on as long as the “princess of Peru” had descendants, which unfortunately only lasted until 1741. You could definitely write an alternate history if the domain had survived.

Recently, in 1982, King Juan Carlos reassigned the title to a lady of the House of Loyola, but since Spain doesn’t own Peru anymore, it’s strictly honorary.

Anyway, all this made St. Iggy and St. Frank not just fellow Jesuits, but posthumously, family! Multi-racial family! (Several ways, through more than one marriage, too.) Which is why they are in the picture together.

But yeah, the Spanish were all such racists, blah blah blah.

After King Philip II gave the title and lands to Ana, she and Juan traveled to Peru in 1615. They lived in Lima for five years, and then moved to the Yucay Valley in 1620. In 1627, they moved back to Madrid, where Ana died and was buried. The couple had 8 kids. Three became nuns, and two died childless as knights of Calatrava and Santiago, respectively. The kids’ family name was “de Borja y Loyola-Inca.”

St. Callisthene, Another Female Doctor

St. Callisthene of Ephesus was a beautiful and well-educated young woman of good family; her father was an imperial bureaucrat, the eparch Adauctus. They were both Christians. Her mother was dead, and we don’t know her name.

Unfortunately, Callisthene caught the eye of co-Emperor Galerius (the other co-emperor was Constantius, at this point), who wanted to marry her. The eparch refused the flattering offer for his daughter’s hand, on the grounds that he didn’t want to marry his Christian daughter to a pagan husband.

And apparently Adauctus didn’t think Galerius was going to take no for an answer, or convert in order to marry, because he sent his daughter away, disguised as a young man.

Adauctus was exiled to Armenia, and then beheaded there. He is considered to be a martyr.

Callisthene moved to Nicomedia and then to Thrace, where she earned her bread as a doctor (still dressed up as a guy). At one point, she healed a young woman of an eye disease, and her parents were so impressed that they offered to marry her off to “him.” She had to reveal her true sex to them; and they kept her secret and praised God.

She decided to move along, and ended up living as a hermit “monk” in the wilderness.

After many years of persecuting Christians, Emperor Galerius died (releasing the famous Edict of Toleration as one of his last acts, and begging Christians to forgive him and pray for him). Callisthene then happened to meet Constantia, the wife of the new co-Emperor, Licinius. She helped Callisthene take back her identity and get back her father’s confiscated goods, and even helped get Adauctus’ body returned to Ephesus.

Callisthene founded a church in Ephesus where her father was reburied, and she gave away all his money to the poor. She eventually died in Ephesus; and her day is on October 4, along with her father.

The wedding proposal timeline in the traditional legend is a little confusing. Probably this is about something that happened when Galerius was already powerful, but hadn’t yet been made a Caesar or an Emperor.

The “lucky” girl who ended up marrying Galerius, when he was made Emperor Diocletian’s heir and thus a Caesar, was Diocletian’s daughter Valeria (known as Galeria Valeria). Her mother was called Aurelia Prisca. They were possibly secret Christians during Diocletian’s time, and were certainly sympathetic to Christians. There’s a very sad story about them in Lactantius’ history, and they seem to have been Christians by the time of their execution by drowning, after the deaths of Diocletian and Galerius. They are commemorated as martyrs in the East: St. Valeria and St. Alexandra (we don’t know why — maybe Alexandra was Prisca’s baptismal name).

St. Jerome as a Kid in the Catacombs

When St. Jerome was young (he says he was a “puer,” a boy, and he was about twelve) and was sent to study in Rome, he used to go along with his Christian friends on Sunday afternoon trips to the catacombs, to visit and pray at the tombs of the apostles or the other martyrs (or just to test their courage and explore places, because they were boys). And we know this because he talks about it in his Commentary on Ezekiel (40, 5-13).

“Often we would enter those crypts which have been hollowed out of the depths of the earth, and which, along the walls on either side of the passages, contain the bodies of buried people. Everything was so dark that the Prophet’s saying, ‘Let them go down alive to the underworld’ (Ps. 55: 15) seemed almost to have been fulfilled.

“Here and there a ray of light, admitted from above, relieved the horror of blackness, yet in such a way that you imagined that it was not so much a window as a funnel pierced by the light itself as it descended.

“Then we would walk back with feet feeling our way, wrapped in ‘unseeing night’ (Seneca the Younger, Thyestes, 668: “nocte caeca”), with Virgil’s line recurring to us: ‘Everywhere the terror” in our hearts, “and silence itself at the same time” terrified us. (Aeneid, Bk. 2, 1, 755: “Terror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.”)”

So… yeah, St. Jerome apparently did this a lot, even though it scared the dickens out of him and the other kids. Not exactly an advertisement for taking the Scavi tours in Rome, I gotta say!

I wish I’d known about this quote at Halloween time. It’s a good one for supporting spooky stuff.

(And immediately afterward, Jerome uses it to explain several Scriptural quotes about God dwelling in darkness as well as light, and the majesty and terror of darkness and silence.)

(Translation mostly taken from a footnote in Cain’s translation of St Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians. It is in the CUA Press Fathers of the Church series.)

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.

St. Hosanna?

Yes, Hosanna is a name. It’s usually spelled Osanna (Italian) or Osanne (French), and it’s also found as a French surname (Ozanne). There’s also the medieval English spelling of Osenna (although Osanna and Osanne were more popular). In Montenegro, it’s Ozana. The Hebrew is something like Hoshana.

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First, it’s the name of a saintly Saxon princess, Osana or Osanna, of the same royal family as Osred, Oswyth, etc. (So it might not have any relation to “hosanna,” or it might be a deliberate pun.)

The main story about her is from Giraldus Cambrensis (several hundred years later), which just says it was a very bad idea for a priest’s concubine to sit on her tomb in church like it was a bench. Married priests were a thing in the pre-Augustine of Canterbury English church; but concubinage was naughty even then. So the date of the story and marital status of the woman and priest kinda make a difference to how you interpret the story.

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In many Catholic countries, it has been the custom to give a baptismal name to babies after their day of birth (or the day they were found, if they were abandoned or adopted), if that day is a saint’s day or a holy day.

Apparently, in medieval France, babies born on Palm Sunday were sometimes given the name Osanna, which was the medieval spelling of Hosanna. (Because Jesus was welcomed into Jerusalem with palm branches and shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David!”)

The name seems to have been used in England only during the 1200’s and 1300’s, and never really caught on. It was more popular in France.

Here’s an Irish legal case dealing with piracy and stealing a whole ship, in which Osanna Berrechoun, one of the French/Breton shipowners, had her case for getting the ship back jeopardized, because people in Dundalk, Dublin, and Wales mistook her given name for “Susanna.”

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In Italy in the 1400’s, a woman with the given name Osanna Andreasi became famous for her visions and locutions (starting at age five) and her stigmata (in the form of swellings not wounds, and received at age 30). Her dad’s noble family was Hungarian, and her mom was a Gonzaga. She was born on January 17, so presumably she wasn’t named that because of Palm Sunday.

Osanna longed to study theology but her father forbid her; so she was miraculously taught to read, and then the Virgin Mary taught her theology in a long series of visions. At the age of 14 (which was considered just barely adulthood for apprenticeship purposes, although one didn’t have full rights for contracts), she took the first set of vows as a Third Order Dominican, took the habit, and then told her dad about it… or rather, she said she had made _a_ vow to wear the habit until she had accomplished what else she had vowed to do. Um. Yeah. Technically true….

Both her parents died young and left a lot of kids, so she acted as mother and father to them until all of them came of age, when she was 37. (At that time, she finally felt able to leave home in good conscience and join a convent of 3rd Order Dominican ladies; and she took final vows.) She also took care of all the family business until the oldest of her brothers came of age. Her cousin Federico I Gonzaga, the duke of Mantua, put her in charge of looking after his wife and kids while he was away at the wars. His son, Francesco II Gonzaga (who became duke), and his famous wife Isabella d’Este from Ferrara, also thought highly of her, and took her counsel on religious matters and affairs of state, as well as relying on her prophetic gifts. (Isabella’s dad was a supporter of Lucia Brocadelli, St. Lucia of Narni, and Isabella was sorry that she never got to take Osanna to meet Lucia.)

We have TWO contemporary biographies of her: Beatae Osannae Mantuanae by Sylvester of Ferrara (1505, in Latin); and Libretto de la Vita e Transito (1507, in Tuscan), by Girolamo de Monte Oliveto, one of her close associates. He also wrote a book of Colloqui between them about spiritual subjects, as well as preserving her letters.

(Her house is also open for tours! Scroll down for pics.There’s a museum and garden there, too. They have the surviving bits of her habit on display as relics, and that is one nicely fitted and constructed bodice. Niiiice. Costumers, take note. But boy, her arms were tiny, probably thanks to her ascetic practices, unless that’s a habit saved from her girlhood.)

Bl. Osanna of Mantua died in 1505. Her incorrupt body is in Mantua’s cathedral of St. Peter. Her memorial day is on June 18. (She was made a venerable in 1515, according to Isabella d’Este’s request; and she was beatified in 1694.)

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There’s another famous blessed by the same name — Blessed Osanna of Cattaro, aka Bl. Ozana of Kotor. This lady was from a remote part of Montenegro or Slovenia, and her given name was Katarina (because she was born on St. Catherine’s Day). Her background in older books in English is presented as being just from back in the waybacks… but she was actually from a married Orthodox priest’s family, the Kozics; and her uncle was an Orthodox monk who became bishop of Zeta. She longed for more, and spent a lot of time praying while shepherding her family’s flocks.

Her father, Fr. Pero Kozic, died early when she was 14; and she felt that God wanted to her to go to the big port city of Kotor (owned by Venice, and under the Patriarchate of Venice), where she could “pray better.” Her mother let her go, and she became a houseservant to earn her bread. She came home to Catholicism and learned to read and write. She used her spare means to help the poor. She wanted even more, and became an anchoress. At age 21, after an earthquake destroyed her first anchorhold, she moved to another and became a Dominican nun, and took Osanna as her religious name (after Osanna of Mantua). So many women were interested in joining her that a new Dominican convent was built next to her new anchorhold’s church, and she was their founder without ever setting eye on the convent itself.

She ended up using her prayers for fighting plague; and she was once asked by her bishop to give a speech, successfully urging everyone to defend Kotor from an Ottoman armada.

She died on April 27, 1565, and was beatified in 1927. In 1930, when her body was moved to a new tomb, her body was found incorrupt and flexible of joints, with perfect hands and fingernails, although her feet were totally gone. (Possibly somebody had stolen/collected her feet as relics, at some point in the centuries.) Her day is April 27.

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Finally, there’s also the French surname “Ozanam,” which originally was the Jewish surname “Hosannam.”

Blessed Frederic Ozanam, a professor at the Sorbonne, was one of the founders of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, in 1833. He was a layman, who married Amelie Soulacroix in 1841, and became the father of Marie Ozanam in 1845. He died in 1853. A book by Ozanam about medieval Franciscan poets.

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Ozanam would make a cool name for a boy, especially if you like the nickname Oz but not Oswald, Osred, etc.

If you want to use the name for a girl, Osanna or Ozana is probably better than Hosanna (because the syllable “ho” has unfortunate connotations). It might be confused with Osama, though.

What Tekakwitha Means

It literally means something like “She pushes things” or “She comes toward things with her hands.”

But what the earliest dictionaries show is that it has the connotation of “She puts things in order.” The image is of someone pushing things so that they line up nicely.

It is possible that there was some play on words involved, but “She bumps into things” is an incorrect translation.

Given that one of the meanings of the Greek “Logos” is “order,” “She puts things in order” is a very significant name.

The pronunciation of Kateri and Tegakwitha apparently varied according to dialect of the speaker. There are two main ones:

Gadelli DeGAHkweeta

Kateri TegaKWEEta.

Apparently the damage done by smallpox to the saint’s eyes was not such as to make her nearsighted, but rather, it made her eyes sensitive to light. That is why, from early childhood on, she was accustomed to wear a blanket or cloth in a hood or visor style, so as to shade her eyes.

She doesn’t seem to have been bullied in childhood about this, or much else, according to the earliest sources. She was an adopted daughter of the village chief, after all.

A lot of times, it was believed that people who had misfortunes were watched and protected by spirits, in compensation, especially if they were cheerful and brave about the misfortune. So it would have been considered unlucky to give her a hard time. (And anyway, people liked her.)

Not so much later on, when her family orchestrated the bullying. Punishing the antisocial and recalcitrant, by such permitted bullying, would have been seen as helpful and good. People who didn’t agree would be under pressure not to disagree publicly. (Although tons of people seem to have voted with their feet, at that time. Obviously a chief who tries to get his way by bullying a young girl is no longer a wise or effective chief, and it’s a lot worse when she’s a nice kid and a member of his own household.)

It is possible that her family was under the impression that bullying and starving her would cause the spirits to pity her, and therefore the spirits would send her a vision, and therefore they could get her out of Christianity. But yeah, obviously that didn’t work if that was their idea.

Actually depriving Kateri of food on Sundays and holidays, because she declined to work on those days (even though she did enough work for two on her workdays) was drastically against the principles of the Mohawks and other Iroquois. The general idea was that everyone would eat if there was any food in the village, although it was common for people to be too proud to ask for food (and for their neighbors to find a tactful way to “trade” for it instead of making it a gift).

So basically she was being treated either like a captive, or like a criminal, or like someone being put on a vision quest. (But that was usually guys.)

Shrug. It’s hard to say, since people do break their principles when frustrated or growing toxic. We shouldn’t expect anything different of people in the olden days, or from different cultures.

Anyway, I will again recommend… The Life and Times of Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks, by Ellen H. Walworth.

The Iroquois Book of Rites, by Horatio Hale. Tons about clan structure, differences between tribes of the Confederacy, etc.

Another good book if you can find it is The Iroquois Trail: Dickon among the Onondagas and Senecas, by Professor M.R. Harrington. t’s a sequel to Dickon among the Lenape, which is a fictional introduction to the Delaware Indians and to the general beliefs of Algonquin/Woodland tribes.

St. Kateri Tekakwitha – We Actually Know a Lot

There are a lot of books about St. Kateri that are called Lily of the Mohawks, but here’s the best one. It blends anthropology, archaeology, locality knowledge, and historical primary sources to provide a really insightful biography of St. Kateri Tekakwitha and her world. (Btw, the real name of the Mohawks is Kanienkas, “people of the flint” or “people of the chert.”)

Yes, it’s a little outdated in style, but it’s much more packed with information than anything else I’ve found.

The book points out that one contemporary biographer, Chauchetiere, who knew her personally, said that she was more knowledgeable about important crafts than most other women her age.

She was primarily a fieldworker like other women, and cooking and fetching water was her duty just like that of most young women. Of course she also could tan leather and make it into clothing, and do decorative porcupine-quillwork and elk-hide decoration. She could sew with deerbone needles and deer sinew thread. She could make burden-straps for carrying wood, which were made out of woven wood fiber (such as basswood). She could make eel-skin or wood-fiber ribbons, and decorate them with red sturgeon-paste. She could make wampum belts of the biggest and fanciest kind, which was not surprising when raised in the local chief’s household. She could also make fishing nets, which she was particularly good at, and which was an unusual accomplishment. She could make wooden boxes. She could make water buckets. She could make poles for hanging and drying corn. She could weave bark mats. She could also work in stone, making pestles for pounding maize.

Chauchetiere sums it up by saying that “…her dexterity furnished her with plenty of occupation.”

Since smallpox had damaged her eyes and made them sensitive to light, it is particularly impressive that she got so much done.

Another thing that is mentioned in this biography, and which I have NEVER seen elsewhere, is that despite her shyness, she was also known for her kindly humor among friends.

Chauchetiere says about her life in her old village, “When she chose to say something for a laugh, no one had anything to complain about, and they liked her company. She never resented the raillery which was constantly aimed at her, on account of her desire to remain unmarried.”

However, her closest relatives were so used to her being biddable and meek that they went nuts over her refusal to marry (several times, mind you). So she wasn’t always a Cinderella (although she was always a hardworker, and not treated exactly as if she were their own), but she really did get treated like a slave after her refusals began. In the end, her patience (and probably, the disapproval of others in the village) wore down her relatives to acceptance.

She brought down their wrath again — not when she decided to become a Christian, like her mother, and not even when she actually got baptized. Most of the village was interested in, or neutral toward, Christianity by that time. (Although her uncle opposed it, especially after the renowned warrior Kryn decided to go live in the new Christian town of St. Francis Xavier, and called other Christians to leave the village and come with him.)

The problem lay with St. Kateri refusing to work on Sundays and holy days.

Mind you, she apparently worked enough for two on every other day of the year. And there were various taboo days that various men and women kept, traditionally. But her relatives decided not to let her eat on her rest days.

Which, of course, was exactly the sort of fasting that she was longing to do, and that her spiritual adviser, Father de Lamberville, wouldn’t allow. (Facepalm.)

Her relatives also got some young boys to throw rocks at her and yell names at her, when going to the chapel for morning and evening services, and apparently drunk guys would routinely follow and threaten her. They also didn’t call her by name at home, instead calling her “Christian” as a slur. (Which again was not particularly effective, and was probably taken by her as flattering.) She just ignored all this.

Since her uncle was the chief and he was all for it, of course things got worse. One day, a drunk young guy rushed into the longhouse and made as if to chop her up with a tomahawk. She just stood there and looked down, baring her neck to him, and he fled.

Things calmed down for a while, until one day an aunt of hers decided that St. Kateri must have slept with her husband. She was so vocal about this that the priest actually had to ask Kateri about it, although of course nothing had happened. And that’s why the priest advised her to leave town, despite her reluctance to abandon all family ties. And so that’s why Kateri finally left home. (Yeah, I guess that wouldn’t be in any books for kids.)

But even after it was time, she was apparently too shy to ask to travel with other “Praying Indians,” even though her sister by adoption and her brother-in-law, as well as her neighbor, already lived there. Plus, she was too much of a political hot potato for anyone to offer to take her.

Except for one guy — a hotheaded Oneida man named Hot Ashes, who had become a fervent Christian after ending up living at the Christian town for a while, and after being persuaded by his wife Garhoit. He became chief of the Oneidas living in the Christian town. He was brave, kindhearted, and good at tricks that prevented trouble. So of course, he was just the guy to rescue St. Kateri, along with Kateri’s brother-in-law, and a Christian Huron friend from the village of Lorette.

The men arrived in Caughnawaga and were guested by Father De Lamberville. Kateri’s uncle was away, talking to the Dutch, so the other elders of the tribe came to greet the visitors. And then Kateri happened to show up, just in time to hear Hot Ashes saying that Christianity had turned him from a dog into a man. Heh!

The elders left and Kateri stayed, to tell the priest that she had decided that he was right and that she should go. Her brother-in-law revealed that he had come for that very purpose, and had even taken beaver skins to the Dutch first, in order to lay a false trail. Hot Ashes then said that he was heading to see the Oneidas and spread the Gospel on his way, and would travel on foot. But Kateri should go in the canoe with her BIL and the Huron man, and go live in the Christian town. So they set off secretly, and nobody caught her.

But her aunts figured out quickly that she was gone, and sent messengers to her uncle. He was coming back and walked right past without recognizing her BIL, who was going to Schenectady to buy some bread for the journey, while Kateri and the Huron guy hid in the woods. When the BIL came back and told Kateri about it, she took it as a sign from God that she was supposed to go.

While they traveled cross-country, somehow Kateri’s uncle managed to track down their party. One of the men pretended to be hunting birds, and shot off his gun. At this signal, Kateri hid in the woods, and the other man came out in the open, lay down, and started puffing on his pipe. Kateri’s uncle boggled. Obviously these guys were not fleeing with his niece, but just messing around on their own time. He decided that the aunts must have been freaking out over nothing, and went back home, embarrassed to even say anything to the men.

So after a while, the party continued their journey. They had hid another canoe on the shores of Lake George, and they used it now to paddle back to the Christian town. Chauchetiere summed it up by saying, “Her journey was a continual prayer.”

When she got to St. Francis Xavier du Sault, she presented a letter of introduction from Father de Lamberville. It said, “You will soon know the treasure I have sent you.”

I had never heard of any of this. Seriously… sometimes the old books are better.

From then on, the book adheres closely to her two contemporary biographers, Chauchetiere and Cholenec, who both knew Kateri personally. We learn about her life in the longhouse of her mother’s old friend, Anastasia Tegonhatsihongo, and how her short but happy life advanced in the faith.

Because it was so long a time between visits by the bishops, sadly Kateri was never Confirmed. And yet, we have the ability and often don’t get Confirmed, today.

She received First Communion at Christmas, during her first year at the Christian village, and received it a second time at Easter. Again, we have so many more chances to receive, but do we make the most of it?

As in South America with the Spanish Jesuits and Franciscans, the French Jesuits also taught their converts to wear their rosaries as a protectice sacramental. Interestingly, the Iroquois and Huron not only wore them around their necks, but also as wreaths around their heads. That sounds very striking.

Another thing I learned is that the typical picture of St. Kateri praying in the woods in the snow, is actually a picture of what she did in her free time, when staying in a winter hunting camp instead of in town. (This was how the Mohawks prevented winter game shortages — by scattering around in the wild, each longhouse family in a different place.)

Another thing this book talks about is St. Kateri’s best friend, Therese Tegaiaguenta. She had struggled with alcoholism after her conversion, and then suffered a terrible winter in which her husband died, and then the other hunting camp members turned to cannibalism. Getting over this was why she found it helpful to join Kateri in practices of mortification.

Yeah… I guess that doesn’t belong in a kid’s book, either.

The book also talks about how Kateri did meet the nuns in Montreal, and was inspired by their way of life, with their school and hospital. The book also mentions the first Indian nun in Canada, Marie-Therese Gannansagwas, who became a teacher.

Another interesting thing is that the Jesuit Fathers were not aware of all the austerities and mortifications that Kateri was doing. Most of the Christian converts did their own things, without revealing them to others, possibly because that was common in their old way of life. Having a means to show both devotion and bravery was to everyone’s taste in the village, not just to Kateri.

Unfortunately, her excessive zeal also messed with her health, which is why people are supposed to get spiritual direction about any extraordinary devotional practices. She died a saint; but it might have been helpful if she had lived longer on this earth, too.

One of the most touching moments in the book is how her final illness took place in Lent, during the busy planting time. But after her friends and family having to leave her alone during the daytime, one day the priests brought her the Blessed Sacrament. Kateri was overjoyed to hear about this, but then sad that she no longer had any good, clean shirt to wear, having given away so much. She confided this to her friend Therese, who got her dressed nicely in her own borrowed shirt before the Lord’s visit.

Everyone knew that Kateri was close to death, and one day she had to assure them that she wouldn’t die until they got back from the fields. And she didn’t. Her last words were an encouragement to her friend Therese Tegaiaguenta, not to fall back into alcoholism or bad habits, and her priest was there to witness it. She promised her friend as she had promised others, “I will love you in heaven. I will pray for you. I will help you.” Her last words were “Jesus, I love you.”

She was a long time dying, but it was also a time of joy. People crowded to see her face. “She died as if she had gone to sleep.” And then her face changed “little by little,” and appeared “more beautiful than when she was living.” It was April 17, 1680, and she was 24 years old.

Cholenec says that about 15 minutes after her death, all her smallpox scars miraculously disappeared. He was so startled that “I gave a great cry” and called out for the other priest and for the rest of the people, who ran in and saw the miracle. He remembers that his first thought was that Kateri’s soul must have just entered into Heaven.

Kateri’s body was dressed and laid out, her hair oiled and braided, her feet put into the best moccasins, and she laid in state. While everyone was visiting, some French guys from La Prairie arrived and followed the crowd, then talked to the priest, wondering what the deal was with this gorgeous sleeping girl. When they heard that she was dead, they ran back and threw themselves at her feet, asking for her prayers. Then they begged to make her coffin, which they did. And that’s why we have her relics today.

As for the well-known picture of her with a cross in her hand, that was drawn by Chauchetiere after having a vision telling him to make a picture of her, and he drew her as she had appeared to Anastasia after her death, with her cross in hand, telling her of what joy the cross had given her, and advising her to find the same joy. Chauchetiere also had a vision of her warning him of a future tornado that would turn the mission church upside down, despite it being made of stone. (Three priests, including Chauchetiere, then survived being scooped up by the tornado and dumped under wreckage, with barely a scratch.)

So that’s the story. A lot fuller than what they tell kids.

The funny thing is… that St. Kateri was born in the same village where St. Rene Goupil died, and where St. Isaac Jogues was tomahawked. Her mother was a captive Algonquin Christian, and her father was a Mohawk warrior, who fell in love with her and apparently had a happy marriage with her, until smallpox killed both of them and Kateri’s brother.

All this sadness ended up turning into something good.

Euripides and St. Romanos the Melodist

In Euripides’ tragedy Hecuba, the Trojan princess Polyxena is sacrificed to the ghost of Achilles, by the Greeks. Hecuba and Polyxena talk about this in the light of Polyxena being married to the god Hades, and finally Hecuba speaks about her daughter as “a bride unwedded.” (In the accusative.)

Of course, the Akathist Hymn directly calls Mary “O bride unwedded.” (In the vocative case.) It was almost certainly a deliberate literary reference.

The Hecuba play seems to have been very popular with Christians, as providing a pagan example of a young virgin dying with bravery and dignity. And it seems that both writers describing the deaths of Christian martyrs (male and female), and the martyrs themselves, used Polyxena as a source of inspiration, and of a righteous pagan heroine.

The interesting thing is that St. Romanos, by turning Polyxena’s title into one of the Virgin Mary’s, points out the sacrificial and martyr-like dimensions of Mary’s life, even though Mary was not martyred and did not die a human sacrifice.

Mary willingly committed her entire life to God by saying (along with Jepththah’s virgin daughter) “Be it done to me according to your will,” Nor did Mary turn back when warned that swords would pierce her heart. She was a heroine, and her life was a testimony.

All that said… Euripides must have been very startled to have become regarded as one of the pagan pre-Christian prophet-poets, and part of the Holy Spirit’s Preparation for the Gospel. (Much like Virgil must have been.) He seems to have been very influential on Paul and some of the Evangelists, too – probably because studying his plays (in writing) was a standard part of Greek education.

There is a St. Polyxena who’s supposed to be from Spain, the sister of St. Xantippe and the sister-in-law of St. Probus. Her day is Sept. 23.

A full-cast reading of Euripides’ Hecuba in English translation, from Librivox. The play takes place at about the same time as The Trojan Women.

Even More about Bl. Terence Albert O’Brien

October 30 is Bl. Terence Albert/Toirdhealbhach O’Brien’s memorial day, and the day of his martyrdom! He was the Bishop of Emly and the titular bishop of Calama, in Numidia.

https://www.dib.ie/biography/obrien-terence-albert-muiris-o-briain-aradh-a6496 is his page at the Dictionary of Irish Biography. Good stuff with footnotes.

De Processu Martyriali blog has a great article about him by Reginald Walsh, O. P., copied over from the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 1894 (“Some of Our Martyrs: Terence Albert O’Brien and Companions”) We learn that he was also called Frater Albertus Brian, Frater Bernardinus, and Albertus Bernardinus. A man of many names!

The treatment of his body is alluded to, fairly often, but this article explains it. His hanged body was left hanging from the gallows for three hours, and various Roundhead soldiers played pinata with it, with their muskets. At the end, his body was apparently beat up to unrecognizability.

However, his head was cut off and spiked up on the city walls, apparently at one of the river gates. And here’s a new fact — the head stayed incorrupt for at least four years, according to a contemporary writer. (I don’t know what happened to his head after that.)

A podcast interview with a guy writing a new book about Bl. Terence Albert O’Brien! Coool! (Roundtower Podcasts: Oct. 25, 2021 – “Discussing Blessed Terence Albert O’Brien with Mr. Paul McGregor.”)

I’m really impressed by this guy, Paul McGregor. He’s a convert from London, now living in Limerick, and very influenced by our Nashville Dominicans who serve over there.

Stained glass window depicting Bl. Terence Albert, from St. Ailbe’s in Emly.

I guess that Bl. Terence Albert is getting more popular, because I’ve just seen my first advertisement for stuff related to him, from a Catholic store. It’s a “healing oil.”

Apparently this Irish store’s procedure is that they find churches with altars dedicated to various saints, and then they bring their oils there and sit them on the altar for a while. Which isn’t wrong… but it’s not really enough to make it a sacramental. Calling the oils “dedicated” to a saint (as they do) is probably about as far as you can go, unless there’s relics in the altar related to that saint. (In which case, you could argue that the oils become third-class/fourth-class relics.)

But it’s not bad. It’s the sort of thing you do for yourself, if you go on a pilgrimage. And rubbing an oil on yourself isn’t going to hurt you, if the ingredients aren’t bad. It comes with a book of “Irish Blessings.” (And if the oil were a sacramental, then you’d be buying the book and getting the sacramental as a gift. Because blessed sacramentals and/or relics cannot be sold, only given away.)

They do have some fairly unusual/obscure saints too, like St. Charles of Mount Argus (who reminds me a lot of Bl. Solanus Casey).

They’ve even got some for a guy who’s not even a Servant of God yet (um… bold move, Cotton), a Wisconsin priest called Fr. Peter Rookey who served in Ireland, Italy, and the US, and who apparently had a healing gift. Here’s his cause’s website – he just died in 2014. Work with the cause was apparently assigned to an auxiliary bishop of Chicago, Jeffrey Grob. (The oil doesn’t seem shady; it’s just that the store is a little quick off the starting line to offer merch.)

They’ve also got pashmina prayer shawls, which they acknowledge are not blessed, but just prayed over by laypeople. But they come with a nice box and a nice scripture verse and flower, and they sure as heck have some obscure saints. (St. Luke Baanabukintu, patron saint of amnesia and memory loss?) So if you want to give somebody a really nerdy Irish and Catholic gift, that might do the trick.

St. Patrick’s Owner

I never caught this.

The name of St. Patrick’s owner (who was a druid of rank) was named Mil-chu. And a mil-chu (large + greyhound, hound) was an Irish wolfhound.

And when Patrick was out herding sheep and guarding them from wolves, his friend was a mil-chu.

And when he caught a ride with pirates and got shipwrecked back in Roman territory (either in Gaul or Britain), his job was taking care of the mil-chu cargo.

One of St. Patrick’s converts and supporters, who granted him land in Down, was named Di-chu.

St. Patrick, pray for us!

St. Anthony’s Treehouse

In the last days of his life, St. Anthony of Padua went on retreat to Campo San Pietro, a few miles from Padua, where there was a little Franciscan friary. It was right next to an estate that was owned by Lord Tisone, a member of the Third Order Franciscans.

The estate had a huge and beautiful walnut tree with six huge main branches radiating from its trunk. On seeing it, St. Anthony must have said something about wishing that he could climb that tree.

So Lord Tisone, himself, built three little treehouse “cells” on the branches of the tree — one for St. Anthony, and two for the guys taking care of him, Brother Luke and Brother Roger. He put little mats around them for comfort and safety, and I guess he helped the friars with ladders. (Probably used for harvesting the nuts.) St. Anthony prayed, meditated, and even wrote up there, in his treehouse. He went back to the friary for meals and singing the Hours.

(UPDATE! You can visit the place where the treehouse was! It’s a little chapel called “Santuario del noce,” or “Sanctuary of the Nut Tree.” Apparently it’s a nice place to visit by bike. The town is known today as Camposampiero, all one word. Here’s the official website of the chapel; and the tab “Tela d’abside” will show you a post-medieval artist’s impression of St. Anthony preaching to the local folks, from a perch in a tree.)

After a few days, Anthony fell ill while eating at the friary. He decided to go home, and the friars got him a carriage and sent him back to Padua. They met a monk named Vinoto on the way, who had been coming to visit Anthony at Campo San Pietro. He must have been alarmed, because he advised Anthony to stop a little way ahead, outside of Padua’s walls, at the convent of the Poor Clares in Arcella. They took him in.

He went to Confession, sang “O Gloriosa Domina” (his favorite Marian hymn in times of trouble), and then focused his eyes as if seeing something. His friends asked him what he was looking at, and he told them, “I see my Lord Jesus Christ.” They gave him Extreme Unction and sang the penitential psalms with him. He died on June 13, 1231, in the evening. He was only 36.

After his death but on the same day, he appeared to one of his old professors in Vercelli. He told the abbot that he had left Padua and was “going to his own country,” and then touched his throat and healed an injury there, before vanishing. Since Anthony was known to travel around a lot, the poor professor originally thought Anthony was just stopping by, on his way back to Lisbon. Everybody was very astonished when the professor kept looking around for Anthony, whom nobody else had seen. But later they learned of Anthony’s death, and understood what had happened.

Back in Padua, the Poor Clares and the friars were hesitant to announce Anthony’s death, because they knew it would make a big scene. But while they were wondering what to do, various children throughout the city simultaneously began to weep, and to yell out, “Anthony is dead! The holy father is dead, the great preacher is dead!”

So yeah… that’s an odd one.

The next couple of days in Padua were super-crazy, because everyone in the neighborhood closest to Arcella wanted to keep the body there, and were prepared to fight… and the rest of Padua wanted the body in the Franciscan church, St. Mary’s; or in the Cathedral. And they were also prepared to fight. Finally they got everybody to agree to abide by the decision of the bishop, who passed it onto the Franciscan superior, who passed it onto the voting of the friars, who basically inquired in prayer after the will of God. And the friars passed back their decision — that the body should go to St. Mary’s, with the other friars — to the bishop of Padua.

(But you know, the Middle Ages was all about centralized authoritarian rule by oppressors.)

So St. Anthony was entombed in St. Mary’s, in a nice sepulcher, and immediately the miracles started. Anything and everything got healed, everything else asked for was done. It was just an outpouring of God’s grace. And everybody who had been involved in the neighborhood wars went to the tomb and begged forgiveness from God.

And this is why St. Anthony of Padua was canonized within a year of his death, on Pentecost in May on 1232. There was one cardinal who wanted the canonization to be delayed for at least another six months, to make things a tad more normal… and he had a vision that changed his mind. The next day, he had barely left his house before he ran into a bunch of Paduans come to plead with him — and before they could start, he told them that he was already on board.

So yeah, sometimes “santo subito” is not just a good idea, it’s God’s idea!

Miracles are signs of God’s will and His love for us. The love is there, whether miracles are easily visible or not. But sometimes, we need that sign. And sometimes, God gives us signs in abundance.

St. Anthony of Padua’s Forensics

St. Anthony of Padua was called that because he died there. He was born in Lisbon, and his original name was Fernando Martins de Bulhoes (or de Bouillon), because his dad’s name was Vicente Martin de Bulhoes, or originally, de Bouillon. (His mom’s name was Teresa Pais Taveira.)

One of the lesser-known stories about his life is that his parents lived near two feuding families. One of the family members killed a member of the other family, and then panicked. He snuck the body into the garden of Vicente’s house and buried it as well as he could, to hide it.

Well, of course if somebody goes missing, there’s going to be a search of the area. And if a dead body is found in somebody’s garden, it looks like the garden owner must have been the murderer… so Vicente was arrested. The rest of the family was also arrested, on the grounds that they must have known, and abetted the murder.

At this point, God told St. Anthony that his dad was in trouble, and that he was supposed to go to Lisbon and save his dad. So St. Anthony went to his superior at the Franciscans in Padua, asked for permission to leave, got permission, packed up and left…

And got picked up by an angel. And suddenly found himself in Lisbon, 1500 miles away.

Apparently he just checked in with the Franciscans in Lisbon, no big deal.

So the next morning, he headed over to see the judge of the case, protesting that his dad was innocent, and so was the rest of the family. The judge was apparently not impressed that a saint was talking to him, and told him that his family was guilty as sin. So Anthony asked to see the coarpse of the murdered man.

The judge went with Anthony to see the corpse, to prevent any funny business.

Anthony addressed the body, and asked the man to tell them whether Vicente, or any member of the de Bouillon family, had killed him.

The corpse sat up, said that he hadn’t been killed by any de Bouillons, and then went back to being dead. (He didn’t reveal who did kill him.)

The judge was convinced by this and let the whole family go home. St. Anthony hung out with them for the rest of the day, told the other Franciscans he was leaving Lisbon, and… got carried back to Padua by another angel.

Angel Express. Quicker than the Concorde.

There’s also a story that St. Anthony briefly bilocated to Lisbon to vindicate his father from charges of malfeasance, since apparently the dad thought honor was sufficient proof and that you didn’t need receipts. Apparently having an angry saint bilocate into court is a move worthy of Perry Mason, because the dad’s accusers instantly confessed. (But next time, get receipts.)

St. Anthony also performed miracles that vindicated the honesty of unjustly accused women, and rebuked their jealous, abusive husbands. The remarkable thing is that these miracles also turned the hearts of the husbands, and permanently made them into gentle people.

In general, his preaching, miracles, and examples seem to have been remarkable for changing stubborn people’s minds, and getting bad people to become good.

St. Anthony’s Sermon to the Fish

St. Anthony of Padua famously is said to have preached to fish, when humans wouldn’t listen to him. But that’s not the whole story.

What happened was that he was in Rimini, which was having a lot of trouble with various medieval heresies. Anthony was already famous, and he had some success in Rimini with his preaching. But a lot of people just listened and went away again, or refused to come. So he went around preaching in various places in the city, making himself hard to avoid.

So one day, he decided that he’d go down to the riverside, close to the sea, to preach. He called out to the people working there, and got some attention. And then he made a rhetorical flourish, and called out, “Come, o you fish of the sea and the river, to hear the Divine Word which faithless and treacherous men refuse to hear.”

And the fish all popped their heads out, and listened. And apparently they even hung out in groups of separate species, making it really obvious that it was all the different kinds of fish that lived in the area. (Medieval people really liked organization, and it does make it really obvious that this was a miracle.) Also, they didn’t die up on the surface, which is pretty miraculous in itself.

St. Anthony stopped waiting on the human audience to increase, and preached to the fish.

Apparently he gave them a full Scholastic type of sermon, preaching on the various benefits given to them by God, from the way water is a great environment for life, to the various Biblical starring roles of fish. He ended his sermon by telling the fish that they should always remain thankful for these gifts.

Apparently the fish received this well, bowing their heads prayerfully and thankfully, and then waited around until St. Anthony blessed them and dismissed them. Then they swam away, perfectly fine.

All this happened in full view of hundreds of Rimini people. His mission success improved a lot after this.

(This story cracks me up. Obviously St. Francis preached to birds, but he was more a five minute sermon kind of guy. The material St. Anthony used — it must have been twenty or thirty minutes, at least.)

Saints Everybody Heard in Their Own Language

There’s dispute about St. Francis Xavier. Fine.

But apparently a huge crowd of pilgrims who were in Rome for Easter, did in fact hear St. Anthony of Padua preaching miraculously in their own tongues, when he was preaching in only one language, to everyone simultaneously. There was sworn testimony to this effect presented for his canonization, which included the eyewitness testimony of the pope and a ton of other Church hierarchy folks. So that seems pretty definite!

The book about St. Anthony where I read this did mention in passing that St. Bernardino of Siena did this too, at the Council of Florence. I’ve never heard this before, and will have to look into this.

He also mentions St. Ludovic Bertrand (who?) and St. Francis Solano in South America.

St. Luis Beltran, aka Lluis Bertran or Louis Bertrand, was a missionary in the Americas; but he was a Dominican. He’s one of the patron saints of Colombia. He was related to St. Vincent Ferrer on his dad’s side, and apparently took after his cousin in the working of miracles.

For a guy in the Order of Preachers… he basically had no natural talent for preaching. His voice is described as “raucous,” and his memory was unreliable (which basically meant you were seen as stupid, since the art of memory was the foundation of scholarship and rhetoric). He also had no sense of humor that anybody could detect, which was weird for a medieval guy.

But because he was so darned earnest and fervent, and because he was the kind of person who was happy to tend plague victims up close and personal, somehow he managed to put across his preaching, to the point that the churches couldn’t hold all the people who came to listen. St. Teresa of Avila consulted him about reforming her Carmelite order.

But he asked to go to the Americas as a missionary, and his superiors didn’t refuse him. He defended the rights of natives, while convincing them to willingly convert by the thousands. (And yes, it’s documented that they heard and understood his Spanish/Catalan preaching in their own languages.) He recorded every baptism with his own hand, and many of these baptismal registers still survive. He baptized at least 32,000 people during the seven years of his mission, mostly in Colombia and Panama.

He was sent back as a sabbatical, pleaded for the rights of the Indians at the Spanish court, and then pleaded to be sent back to work. His order decided against it, and used him in Spain for the rest of his life. He fell ill while preaching at Valencia Cathedral, had to be carried down the stairs from the pulpit, and died on October 9, 1581.