This bibliotheque is quiet, and I'm downloading openoffice to type my
paper, trying to get this paper started, feel like I'm talking about
bones an awful lot. 11,000 virgins' bones for that matter, because I want to combine my love of Hildegard's tuneage, morbid churches, weird old stuff, and swank art into one fine piece of 8-page scholarship. Or something.
So in class today we were talking about relics getting tricked out, and saints, and everyone getting really into the Virgin Mary and the God of the Universe being so intimidating that we needed to make him a cute little baby to deal with it better, and the construction of giant cathedrals that sometimes fell down when they were trying to one-up the town over, which led to sundry absurd scrawlings in the margins of my notes along these lines.
ugly renaissance babies, yo.
some martyr holding his intestines wrapped around a stick. Can't find a photo but it looked like his inside were some kind of carnival food.
and of course Lee Dorian how could I forget you
So in class today we were talking about relics getting tricked out, and saints, and everyone getting really into the Virgin Mary and the God of the Universe being so intimidating that we needed to make him a cute little baby to deal with it better, and the construction of giant cathedrals that sometimes fell down when they were trying to one-up the town over, which led to sundry absurd scrawlings in the margins of my notes along these lines.
I used to love to creep out my students when I taught Catechism, telling them of how some of the saints had their fingers and other didgets cut out of their bodies and worn on a chain around some priests neck, or on display in a glass case in a cathedral. They particularly liked the stories of the incorrupt saint's. I told them if the were good they could die and be incorrupt, too. :-) Had to keep the class interesting. I also bribed them with donuts, bagels, and juice boxes since the class was on Saturday mornings and they were missing their cartoons.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah....ugly Renaissance babies....and fat Renaissance naked women, a favorite of 6th grade boys.
I wish more people like you taught PSR classes! Evidently they used to hold them in the ossuary back in the day, which would have been way spooky.
DeleteOne of me and Randal's favorite saints right now is Hugh of Lincoln, who was known for biting off chunks of Mary Magdalene's bones and putting them in a big gold ring that encompassed four of his fingers. He also had a fondness for the creatures of the forest, a pet guardian swan, and told the people in his town to stop being mean to the Jews.
So yeah, this class rules because it delves into some of the strangeness but without the "wow we're so much more enlightened and they were stupid" angle.
I always thought that "The Incorruptibles" would make some swank comic book characters. And it's still interesting to me that Vatican II de-sainted a whole lot of folk.