NOTE: this diary was supposed to be published last night but was delayed due to the snowstorm that blanketed the Northeast and knocked out power to most of Western Massachusetts. Right now I'm posting this from a terminal at the University of Massachusetts library, which is pretty much the only place between Athol and West Springfield with electricity. My apologies to all for the delay!
And now, back to your regularly scheduled silliness....
Back in 1969 something miraculous happened: my aunt Betty won a contest.
The contest, sponsored by Regal Crown Sours, asked entrants to complete a four line jingle extolling the deliciousness of their small, sticky, incredibly sour and incredibly good flagship product. The grand prize was two weeks at Club Med, which was far more rustic forty years ago than it is today, and far more oriented to young bronzed singles on the make.
Why Betty, a spinster who was about as bronze as a newly baked Bisquick shortcake, wanted a Club Med vacation in the first place is a mystery. Even more mysterious is why her entry was chosen; contestants were supposed to write a line that rhymed with “delightfully sour,” and she wrote “They make you feel joyful instead of dour.” Mum maintained to her dying day that Betty must have been the only person who bothered to enter since the correct pronunciation of “dour” is closer to “doour” than “dower,” and it’s quite possible she was right.
Regardless of why Betty wrote her masterpiece, and why her entry was chosen, chosen it was. And since Betty realized as soon as she read a brochure on Club Med that she didn’t really want an antidote for civilization, she wrote to the good folk at Regal Crown asking if they could possibly provide an alternative trip for her and her sister.
This Regal Crown agreed to do, in the form of a three week trip for two to Spain, Portugal, and Mallorca. And since Mum knew very well that my father, God love him, was such a wretched cook that there was an excellent chance that she’d come home to find that he and I had expired of pellagra, rickets, scurvy, or a similarly entertaining nutritional deficiency, Betty struck a deal with Regal Crown allowing her to bring her young niece for half the price an adult tourist would pay.
And so my uncle Oscar sent Regal Crown a check, Mum and I got a joint passport, Dad laid in a supply of menus from local take-out places, and off we went. It was the first time any of us had ever been overseas, and it was quite the adventure; Betty had studied Spanish in high school twenty-five years earlier and kept trying to communicate with bewildered shop girls who couldn’t understand why the American was convinced that she wanted a “cordoba” purse when she was pointing at the “maroon” version. She also had a distressing habit of ambling across the streets of Lisbon and Madrid despite speeding cabs, wondered aloud why everything had garlic in it, had too much wine at a Chinese restaurant in Lisbon and fell asleep in her chicken chow mein, and nearly drove Mum to homicide the day she stepped onto the balcony of our hotel in Palma di Mallorca and loudly proclaimed “Look at the crum-bums down in the pool!” while pointing straight at the rest of our tour group.
Of course I thought it was all hilarious. I may not have understood exactly why Mum winced when Betty returned from a bullfight and called Franco “the little man with the mustache,” but it still made me laugh so hard I couldn’t sleep. And as much as Betty complained about the food, the accommodations, and our tour guide, a dark complected fellow named Angelo who was well aware of his own good looks, we managed to have a good time visiting the Prado, the Tower of Belem, a glorious Mediterranean cove known as “the fjord of Mallorca,” and the stunning Gothic cathedral in Toledo.
We also toured the National Palace in Madrid. I was vaguely disappointed that there was no king in residence, but I still mightily impressed by the grand architecture, the gilt furniture passed down from various Habsburg and Borbon monarchs, and the historical artifacts on display. I didn’t understand half of what we saw, but I still liked it –
Until we walked into the chapel and I saw a long brown thing in a glass case in front of the altar.
I hadn’t worn my glasses that day so I had to squint. And as I edged closer and realized just what was in that glass case, I grabbed Mum’s hand so hard it was a miracle I didn’t break her fingers.
“Mommy?” I said in a quivering voice. “Is that a dead body?”
“Yes, honey,” she said, half-whispering so the rest of the group could hear Angelo. “That’s St. Felix.”
“Oh,” I said, and shut my eyes tight. And I kept them shut until we were out of the chapel, and I shut them again each time we entered a room until Mum assured me that the coast was clear.
That was my first experience with what the Roman Catholic Church calls an incorruptible saint, and it gave me nightmares for weeks. Mum tried to explain that St. Felix had been a very good and holy man, not a nightmarish THING, and that I didn’t need to burrow under the blankets every night so he wouldn’t come and haul me away to his coffin, but I either couldn’t or wouldn’t listen. I was a good little Protestant from the Midwest and had no idea that Catholics kept dead bodies on display, and it was at least a year before I stopped lumping poor St. Felix in with Barnabas Collins, the Headless Horseman, and the usual childhood monsters.
I’ve been back to Europe four times since then, once each to Italy, England, Wales, and Austria, and have seen more than my share of churches, cathedrals, tombs, relics, and votive offerings. I no longer dream of St. Felix, and even if I did I wouldn’t be afraid, since he looks a lot more like a coconut than a monster to my adult eyes.
That doesn’t mean I’m in the habit of seeking out holy corpses. Far from it. For all my love of medieval art and architecture, and my fascination with medieval folkways and culture, there’s still enough of a Midwestern Protestant in me that the mere idea of saints under glass and holy body parts leaves me slightly queasy. That many surviving relics are more ridiculous than anything else doesn’t help, especially when I read about the cult of the head of John the Baptist as a child (he evidently grew a new one for Herod to remove) or the thirteen beautifully preserved Holy Foreskins left over from the circumcision of Jesus, each in its own elegant little reliquary.
As puzzling as the medieval cult of the saints is to me, though, modern veneration of relics puzzles me even more. One would think that belief in levitating saints, bleeding lances, and miraculously relocated Holy Houses of the Holy Family would have faded long since, replaced by the more practical, less mystical faith of the Berrigans or Dorothy Day.
Of course, this being a diary about Books So Bad They’re Good, one would be wrong.
It's All Saints' Day on Tuesday, and so tonight I commend to you two well written, informative, fascinating, and utterly deranged books on saints, their cults, and their relics. One is by a Jungian psychologist and polymath who did a huge amount of research that led him straight to one of the great hoaxes of our time. The other is by a Carmelite tertiary who never met a pious legend she didn’t believe:
The Cult of the Black Virgin, by Ean Begg. Black Madonnas are those enigmatic images of the Virgin and Child with dark hands and faces. Although many are simply Madonnas carved from dark wood, or painted over a brownish gesso that has darkened the original paint, many others are clearly intended to represent a black or dark skinned woman. Most art historians believe that these are either based on the medieval cult of St. Sarah the Egyptian, patron saint of the Roma (Gypsy) people, or stem from sermons by St. Bernard of Clairvaux associating the Church and the Virgin Mary with the phrase "niger est, sed pulcher" (I am black but comely) from the Song of Songs.
Ean Begg disagrees.
Originally trained in languages at Jesus College, Oxford, Ean Begg is yet another of the many, many polymaths responsible for Books So Bad They're Good. Over the years this stocky, white haired man has served as the headmaster of a private school, spent two years as a Dominican monk, studied psychoanalysis at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, devoted ten years to the famous Work of esotericist G.I. Gurdjieff, and worked as the sales manager for John Harvey & Sons of cream sherry fame. Currently he's a fellow of the Guild of Pastoral Psychology, a British organization devoted to the intersection of depth psychology, spirituality, and the writings of pioneering psychiatrist C.G. Jung. He's an intelligent, serious-minded man, and has spent many years studying Black Madonnas in hopes of sussing out the true reason for their existence.
The Cult of the Black Virgin is the fruit of his long investigation, and impressive fruit it is. Begg discusses the possible connections of the Black Madonnas as the ancient Goddesses of what Marija Gimbutas called "Old Europe," the worship of dark-skinned Isis and her son Horus in pre-Christian Egypt, the Gnostic meaning of Black Madonnas, the Cathars, and the cult of St. Sarah. Much of the book is devoted to an impressive gazetteer of Black Madonnas, many of which are in southern France, although examples exist in most European countries.
Alas, Begg's research did not extend to art history; there's only a brief mention of the Song of Songs connection, at least as compared to the discussion of Isis and the Great Goddess. Worse, there's very little about the actual cult of St. Sarah. For all his intelligence and seemingly scholarship, it seems that Begg either didn't or couldn't find any sources about the people who still regard St. Sarah as their patroness, or he'd know that both the Roma and the French regard their saint as entirely Christian, not Gnostic or pre-Christian.
Worst of all, though, is the assertion partway through the background material that St. Sarah was the child of Jesus by his wife, Mary Magdalene.
That's right. Ean Begg is yet another believer in the "Jesus was a Merovingian" hoax promulgated by right-wing French gadfly Pierre Plantard and the Priory of Sion. This surprisingly durable fraud, which originated with a hotel owner near Rennes-les-Chateau trying to attract business to his remote hostelry, holds that - you guessed it - Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, who was pregnant with their child at the time of the Crucifixion. Their descendants later became the Merovingian kings of France, and at least one (Plantard, actually the son of a butler and a concierge) was still alive to lead France back to its glory days of mystical priest-kings before the evil Pepin the Short deposed the last Merovingian king in 752. It was popularized by the execrable Holy Blood, Holy Grail and has appeared in a surprising number of books ever since, from esoteric monographs on the Holy Grail to Dan Brown's inexplicably popular The Da Vinci Code. It's been debunked numerous times but seems to have become firmly embedded in modern folklore, especially when the Knights Templar and the Freemasons are involved; as my friend Walter put it, one of the reasons he liked National Treasure was because it was one of the few movies about the Masons that didn't cast them either as villains or associated with Merovingian Jesus.
In Begg's defense, Plantard and his buddies hadn't been exposed when he first wrote The Cult of the Black Virgin, so he could plead ignorance. That doesn't excuse the book being reprinted numerous times since the Priory of Sion was debunked, or the acceptance of everything the Priory said without consulting actual theologians or historians. That Begg has gone on to write other books that explicitly cash in on the hoax, notably In Search of the Holy Grail and the Precious Blood, makes it quite clear that he is more interested in the story than historical fact.
It's a shame that the book is so flawed; Black Madonnas are interesting regardless of whether they have any connection Mary Magdalene or not, and the gazetteer is fascinating and quite useful for anyone interested in this little known representation of the Virgin. The curious traveler might be best served by cutting the book in half and laughing themselves sick over the Jungian Merovingian St. Isis of France portions in the airport while using the second part to guide the actual journey.
Eucharistic Miracles, by Joan Carroll Cruz. The Eucharist, also know as The Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, and the Blessed Sacrament, is the ritual meal of bread and wine distributed to Christians during services. Instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper, it is very distantly related to the breaking of matzoh and sprinkling of wine at the Passover seder, although modern Christians see it as far more than just a Jewish ritual adapted by a first century rabbi who foresaw his own martyrdom.
This is particularly true of Roman Catholics. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation teaches that the Communion wafer and chalice of wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus when the priest consecrates them during Mass. Much of the doctrinal strife of the Reformation came about because Protestants rejected this in favor of what they called consubstantiation, the belief that the bread and wine were only symbols of Jesus' body and blood, not the True Presence of Christ. And though modern science would seem to argue against belief in transubstantiation, the Catholic Church holds to this belief even now, fifty years after Vatican II and five hundred years after the Reformation.
One of today's most faithful and pious Catholic writers would agree. Joan Carroll Cruz, author of such informative, well researched, and utterly credulous works as Relics, The Incorruptibles, Miraculous Images of Our Lord, Miraculous Images of Our Lady, and Secular Saints, believes implicitly in transubstantiation, the healing power of holy shrines, and the accuracy of every single story about relics and saints from The Golden Legend on down, and her considerable (and growing) body of work makes it quite clear that she is more than happy to share her beliefs with the world.
Cruz, born in 1931 (although one would never know it from her official portrait, which seems to have been taken just the Kennedy administration), was raised and educated in New Orleans. After a rigorous education by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, she married, raised five children, and embarked upon a long career as a writer about the Catholic faith, Catholic saints, and Catholic relics. Her non-fiction includes The Incorruptibles, Relics, Miraculous Images of Our Lord, Miraculous Images of Our Lady, Secular Saints, and Angels & Devils, and as one might expect, all center on some aspect of Catholicism. She also wrote a curious romance novel, Desires of Thy Heart, about a widowed king and a pious virgin being forced into a celibate marriage for political reasons. It all ends happily, but only after the heroine flees to a nunnery so her husband can have their marriage annulled and fulfill his vow of celibacy. The one reader review I was able to find called this exciting plot twist "stagnant," and that, plus a cover that seems to have been assembled from bad 1970s clip art, augurs a potential future diary, possibly for Valentine's Day.
Cruz's non-fiction is just as unusual as her novel; to give but one example, Relics, which is about the physical remains and possessions of saints famous and obscure, devotes two pages to the echoing, otherworldly voice of Bl. Clelia Barbieri, a 19th century religious foundress who evidently still sings along with the choir in the church where her nuns worship. That this might, just might be due to the acoustics in the church, or the fervent wish of nuns hoping for a second miracle to support a case for canonization, is never mentioned, perhaps because this might make the miracle seem less holy.
There is also a noticeable, and somewhat discordant, political and social conservatism running through Cruz's work; her section on Dorothy Day in Saintly Women of Modern Times begins with several pages defending her inclusion as a Servant of God, since she was a former Communist, had had an abortion, and had lived with a man out of wedlock...but since all this happened before Day's conversion to Catholicism, it was excusable as youthful mistakes. Besides, her work among the poor was right in line with the work of St. Francis, so despite Day's persistent habit of supporting radical causes, including being arrested, made it all but impossible for Cruz not to include her. It certainly seems to have been a near thing, though.
This social conservatism is what makes Eucharistic Miracles stand out, even amongst Cruz's rigorously traditional books.
That's not to say that Eucharistic Miracles isn't every bit as credulous, and full of miraculous Hosts, miraculous Blood, miraculous saints who meditated on the Real Presence and then levitated, levitating Hosts, levitating Blood, etc., as the rest of Cruz's work. It is, plus there's a long, long section about the spiritual benefits of holding vigils and prayers while adoring a Host, miraculous or not. No, gentle readers, what puts Eucharistic Miracles into a class by itself is the complete absence of any hint that some of these manifestations of God might have been part of the ugliest and most vicious strain in medieval Catholicism: anti-Semitism.
Carol Walker Bynum's Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond is a long, carefully researched, and marvelously written look at how hatred of Jews, and the wish to pump up local economies, came together in 14th and 15th century Germany to produce a virtual epidemic of bleeding Hosts and accompanying pilgrimage sites. Although Bynum concentrates on the Holy Blood of Wilsnack, she provides enough context that the reader will come away enlightened and somewhat sickened at just how many German towns and churches decided that a eucharistic miracle and a pogrom were the perfect way to drive out the local Jews and bring hordes of the faithful to worship, and of course spend plenty of money on food, lodging, souvenirs, and gifts to the church.
The feeling of sickness only increases when one realizes that Cruz, who never met a miracle she didn't like, doesn't mention Wilsnack once. It's not because the shrine was broken up by Protestants; Cruz mentions this more than once, always with a regretful note about the sacred wafers being "lost" during the French Revolution or the Reformation. And it's certainly not because Wilsnack was obscure; it was one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations of its time, and one can still see the huge, never completed church that the locals built to accommodate the hordes of the faithful until the Reformation swept through the area. And it's not because Germany wasn't a hotbed of Host miracles during the Middle Ages; there are all too many places near Wilsnack, and even more in the south, near Austria, where local Jews desecrated Hosts out of hatred for Jesus, often bribing Catholic servants to sneak a wafer or two out of church so it could be beaten, burned, stamped on, and have nails driven through it until it turned into bleeding flesh (or sometimes even the Christ Child).
Cruz almost certainly knew about Wilsnack and its ilk; she mentions a much more obscure Germanic Host miracle, Seefeld, and includes several pictures of the church, artwork depicting the nasty fate of the blaspheming knight Oswald Milser, and a curious panel depicting the miracle itself that shows the sinner wearing a quilted patchwork coat. She also seems to have realizes that "miracles" accusing Jews of Host desecration had to whitewashed in some way, since several of her accounts mention only that "a non-Christian" had stolen a Communion wafer for unspecified nefarious purposes. Why this one, or all the others in its area, aren't so much as mentioned is not clear...but Wonderful Blood does show a picture of an anti-Semitic painting once displayed at the church in Wilsnack, so it's not hard to guess at least some of the reasons.
Joan Carroll Cruz is still writing, although recent books have concentrated on holy people, not holy objects or corpses. Her current publisher, Our Sunday Visitor, is closer to the mainstream than TAN Books, the traditionalist press that issued most of her masterpieces, and one wonders if they asked her to write about something less controversial (and ridiculous).
And oh, for the curious...Cruz doesn't mention St. Felix in The Incorruptibles, her book about miraculously preserved saints (all of whom seem to end with wax or metallic masks covering their dessicated faces). No idea why, but it certainly was a disappointment to me.
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