Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Calling All Saints

Now that the pagan holiday is over, it's time to celebrate the pious. Welcome to All Hallowed Saints Day, where monks are skewered and nuns are burned alive. Whether sacrificed by idolators or the Catholic church, it's all for the Greater Good.

Take St. Fluvius, for example. Born a small child, he grew to be a devout recluse. Content to breathe the clean third century Tuscany air and pray for 18 hours a day, he was aroused from his reverie one day by an ugly pitchforked mob. They demanded he bow down before a statue of Baal they had wheeled into the room and pledge his allegiance to it. "Nothing doing," was Fluvius's earnest reply. These turned out to be his final words as he was in short order boiled alive in oil, set ablaze (they had to dry him off first) and fed to wild dogs. Two centuries later, Fluvius was canonized, as is the custom for shabbily treated anchorites. He was given a festival day (I think it's in April) which is celebrated to this day by someone, somewhere, no doubt.

2 comments:

Steph said...

Geee... how on earth did I miss that post! Have you ever thought about making a kind of encyclopedia with your creatures? I mean a paper one...

Jay King said...

You're really dipping into the archives here, Steph.

No, never really considered a book. I'm not ready to face the rejection of countless publishers. I do need to re-shoot some of these old faces, though. It's obvious the writing was more important to me back then than the faces themselves.