Martyrs and Me
by Joyce Gemperlein
NOVEMBER 2, 2009 TAGS:
I grew up very slowly in the country, obsessively shielded from the nasty details of life and death -- except for stories like this:
“He spent six months naked in the marshes, beset constantly by vicious blood-sucking flies and mosquitoes, in the hope of destroying his last bit of sexual desire. The terrible conditions and attacking insects left him so deformed that . . . they could recognize him only by his voice.”
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, while my siblings watched "Leave it to Beaver," "Flipper" and reruns of "The Howdy Doody Show," I gobbled up what I now recognize were the seeds of my love for obituaries and a fondness for graphic, colorful stories.
Stretched out on the gold plush carpet of my bedroom, I read and re-read Lives of the Saints, a small, thick, burgundy-colored book stamped in gold. It contained the life stories of virtuous people I was to emulate in order to get to Heaven.
I make no excuses for my favorites being the ones that detailed martyrdom, even though I never once wished to die for God.
These chronicles were rich in the details of scourging, beheadings, dismemberment by lions, immersion in boiling oil, skinning or roasting alive -- among other jaw-dropping horrors.
My Lives of the Saints, which included a thin ribbon to mark the reader’s place, contained more blood and scare-the-children factors than the contemporary television shows "Dexter," which is about a lovable serial killer; and "24," in which the end of the world seems always nigh.
These days, the supposedly true stories in Lives of the Saints would be on Page 1 in every newspaper: “Woman Survives Flogging, Being Boiled in Grease, Fed to Beasts and Burned: Finally Dies of Beheading” (St. Martina).
Or a story like that of St. Polycarp would be featured on the nightly television news: After he was condemned to be burned to death, the flames arched over Polycarp’s head, refusing to consume him. This forced tormentors to stab him, which “resulted in such a great amount of blood that it extinguished the fire.”
Despite its gruesome details, Lives of the Saints was – and still is in its many revised editions -- sanctioned by the Catholic
Church. When I was growing up, it was customarily given to second-graders (about age 7) as a gift for their first Holy Communion, which is the consuming of a consecrated host dipped in wine, which symbolizes Christ’s sacrifice. (My next-best gift that day was a two-wheeled bicycle.)
Some might think that the takeaway from these saintly stories for young children was to eschew virginity and stubbornness in order to survive. But the Catholic Church saw the purpose of Lives of the Saints – it contains 365 tales, one for every day of the year – quite differently.
In the copy published in 1955, which I still own, the preface reads in part:
“The advantages which Catholics derive from reading [these stories] are numerous because they are not only sources of knowledge, but also handmaids of virtue and perennial fountains of progress in perfection. In perusing the following biographical sketches of God’s saints . . . we are unconsciously moved to imitate them . . . thus drawn nearer to men and women truly great and good.
“By admiring their actions, we learn to follow their examples . . . the reader will find in the Lives of the Saints numberless motives to console him in adversity, to counsel him in doubt, to support and strengthen him in temptation, to caution him against impending dangers and to rebuke him in his transgressions.”
That edition, edited by Rev. Hugo Hoever, was only one of many versions of the original, which contained 1,600 stories and was published anonymously between 1756 and 1759. It was written over a 30-year period by the Rev. Alban Butler, a British Roman Catholic priest and hagiographer – a person who studies saints – who lived from 1709 to 1773.
Even as a child, I never seriously considered emulating these saints, and I suspect that I liked their stories because they were to Laura Ingalls Wilders’ Little House on the Prairie what the Harry Potter books are to the Yellow Pages.
But to this day, I am incredulous and relieved that the bloody content of my Lives of the Saints escaped the attention of my strict and fearful mother.
Unknown to her, a woman who never, ever talked about the birds and the bees, Lives of the Saints eased me into the wide world of sex.
The saintly stories were peopled with something called “virgins,” for whom the bad guys had particular contempt.
Around the age of 8, I consulted a dictionary and, eventually, connected the dots to figure out what St. Julia did not want to do, thus enraging a public official into having her “struck in the face, her hair torn out and, finally, suspended on a cross until she expired.”
Somehow, reading at a young age that St. Agatha died a martyr after having her breasts cut off caused no nightmares. But if this is what it took to be a good Catholic, I failed to see the worthiness of the goal.
Instead, I saw my first obituaries in Lives of the Saints as fabulously juicy and jaw-dropping stories, lessons not in the way to live, but instead in the art of telling tales of life and death.
Joyce Gemperlein is a regular contributor to Obit.
“He spent six months naked in the marshes, beset constantly by vicious blood-sucking flies and mosquitoes, in the hope of destroying his last bit of sexual desire. The terrible conditions and attacking insects left him so deformed that . . . they could recognize him only by his voice.”In the late 1950s and early 1960s, while my siblings watched "Leave it to Beaver," "Flipper" and reruns of "The Howdy Doody Show," I gobbled up what I now recognize were the seeds of my love for obituaries and a fondness for graphic, colorful stories.
Stretched out on the gold plush carpet of my bedroom, I read and re-read Lives of the Saints, a small, thick, burgundy-colored book stamped in gold. It contained the life stories of virtuous people I was to emulate in order to get to Heaven.
I make no excuses for my favorites being the ones that detailed martyrdom, even though I never once wished to die for God.
These chronicles were rich in the details of scourging, beheadings, dismemberment by lions, immersion in boiling oil, skinning or roasting alive -- among other jaw-dropping horrors.
My Lives of the Saints, which included a thin ribbon to mark the reader’s place, contained more blood and scare-the-children factors than the contemporary television shows "Dexter," which is about a lovable serial killer; and "24," in which the end of the world seems always nigh.
These days, the supposedly true stories in Lives of the Saints would be on Page 1 in every newspaper: “Woman Survives Flogging, Being Boiled in Grease, Fed to Beasts and Burned: Finally Dies of Beheading” (St. Martina).
Or a story like that of St. Polycarp would be featured on the nightly television news: After he was condemned to be burned to death, the flames arched over Polycarp’s head, refusing to consume him. This forced tormentors to stab him, which “resulted in such a great amount of blood that it extinguished the fire.”
Despite its gruesome details, Lives of the Saints was – and still is in its many revised editions -- sanctioned by the Catholic Church. When I was growing up, it was customarily given to second-graders (about age 7) as a gift for their first Holy Communion, which is the consuming of a consecrated host dipped in wine, which symbolizes Christ’s sacrifice. (My next-best gift that day was a two-wheeled bicycle.)
Some might think that the takeaway from these saintly stories for young children was to eschew virginity and stubbornness in order to survive. But the Catholic Church saw the purpose of Lives of the Saints – it contains 365 tales, one for every day of the year – quite differently.
In the copy published in 1955, which I still own, the preface reads in part:
“The advantages which Catholics derive from reading [these stories] are numerous because they are not only sources of knowledge, but also handmaids of virtue and perennial fountains of progress in perfection. In perusing the following biographical sketches of God’s saints . . . we are unconsciously moved to imitate them . . . thus drawn nearer to men and women truly great and good.
“By admiring their actions, we learn to follow their examples . . . the reader will find in the Lives of the Saints numberless motives to console him in adversity, to counsel him in doubt, to support and strengthen him in temptation, to caution him against impending dangers and to rebuke him in his transgressions.”
That edition, edited by Rev. Hugo Hoever, was only one of many versions of the original, which contained 1,600 stories and was published anonymously between 1756 and 1759. It was written over a 30-year period by the Rev. Alban Butler, a British Roman Catholic priest and hagiographer – a person who studies saints – who lived from 1709 to 1773.
Even as a child, I never seriously considered emulating these saints, and I suspect that I liked their stories because they were to Laura Ingalls Wilders’ Little House on the Prairie what the Harry Potter books are to the Yellow Pages.
But to this day, I am incredulous and relieved that the bloody content of my Lives of the Saints escaped the attention of my strict and fearful mother.
Unknown to her, a woman who never, ever talked about the birds and the bees, Lives of the Saints eased me into the wide world of sex.
The saintly stories were peopled with something called “virgins,” for whom the bad guys had particular contempt. Around the age of 8, I consulted a dictionary and, eventually, connected the dots to figure out what St. Julia did not want to do, thus enraging a public official into having her “struck in the face, her hair torn out and, finally, suspended on a cross until she expired.”
Somehow, reading at a young age that St. Agatha died a martyr after having her breasts cut off caused no nightmares. But if this is what it took to be a good Catholic, I failed to see the worthiness of the goal.
Instead, I saw my first obituaries in Lives of the Saints as fabulously juicy and jaw-dropping stories, lessons not in the way to live, but instead in the art of telling tales of life and death.
Joyce Gemperlein is a regular contributor to Obit.
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