There are some saints who are very popular, have a
strong devotee base and are an important presence in people’s everyday
lives.
But among the twenty thousand names recorded in the Bibliotheca Sanctorum one finds some really rather strange, if not “anomalous”, or unusual characters too.
“The anomalous saints”
is in fact the title of a new book which has just been published by EdB
publishers.
It describes the “unusual forms of Christian life”.
It is a
posthumous work by the great hagiographer and Belgian Benedictine monk,
Reginald Gregoire, who passed away last year.
After publishing numerous books on the saints, Fr.
Gregoire decided to create a list of all saints who are seen as
problematic figures. Some are dubious from a historical point of view,
while the life descriptions of others seem very similar to other
figures’ backgrounds.
But Gregoire’s book also looks at certain
figures who come across as anomalous when set against our usual
conception we have of sainthood.
Browsing through the book’s pages, the reader discovers that Serapion – a 4th
century monk – was called the Sindonite, an adjective which was
probably roughly equivalent to today’s term “nudist”. The saint wore
just a shroud (a linen tunic) as a symbol of absolute poverty.
Then
there is David the Dendrite of Thessaloniki (6th century)
spent his life atop a tree as a sign of penitence.
Not to mention the
“transvestite” female saints – this is in fact far more common in
hagiography than one would expect – who for years pretended to be men to
escape violence or for other reasons. St. Paula the Bearded is another
very strange case. She was venerated at Avila, Spain and according to a
19th century legend she apparently took refuge in a chapel to
get away from a young man with evil intentions and prayed for help
before the cross. The legend says when she left the chapel she had a
beard and moustache growing on her face and this made her harasser run
away.
But Gregoire’s book is not all amusing stories
like this. The events surrounding the lives of some saints lead to far
more serious questions: the Virgin Lidvina, a Dutch 19th
century mystic was an anorexic. Her biography proved interesting for the
history of medicine.
In the cases of other saints, there was a
dangerously fine line between martyrdom and suicide. This problem
existed in ancient times and in 852 a council at Cordova, in 852, forbade any one to offer himself to martyrdom (the Catholic Church has always forbade this too).
Another interesting case is that of the
cephalophores, saints who carried their own heads: Fr. Gregoire has
collected as many as 80 cases of martyrs who are described or depicted
with a head in hand. Unbelievable though this may sounds, there is a
theological tradition behind this, according to which the profession of
the faith had the last word over violent death.
Another chapter of the book is called
“Nevertheless” and contains the names of those saints who are seen as
model Christians despite being protagonists in some strange events.
There is the case of Giuseppe Calasanzio, the founder of a religious
order who came under investigation by the Holy Office.
Other saints like
the 15th century Dominican friar, Vincenzo Ferrer, were followers of the antipopes.
The book is a remainder that sainthood is far more
complex than it may at first appear.
There are cases in the history of
the Church where emotions influenced the decision to make certain
figures saints too hastily.
The aim is not to destroy the image of the
saints, on the contrary, these cases are testimony to how Church skims
off the foam of devotion, to help other true saints rise to the surface.