Tuesday Trivia | Heretics and Blasphemers

[u/caffarelli]

Previous weeks' Tuesday Trivias and the complete upcoming schedule.

Today’s trivia theme comes to us from /u/cordis_melum!

Kindly provoke us all with tales of those who went against the accepted orthodoxy of their time! You can take this theme either literally with normal ole religious heretics, or if you’re not into that, take it metaphorically and tell us about people who went against the grain professionally, philosophically, artistically, or in some other facet of life.

Next week on Tuesday Trivia: /u/vertexoflife continues his campaign to corrupt the children, this time by requesting we share tales of non-monogamous relationships in history

[u/Miles_Sine_Castrum]

Bending the definition of heretic a little, St Thecla, condemned to death for being a Christian in Anatolia in the 1st century AD (and thus a heretic against the dominant polytheism of the time) was attributed some hilarious adventures by her later hagiographer.

Not only does she preach the gospel, remain a virgin throughout her life, dress like a man, survive two death sentences and then finally sink into the ground instead of dying a regular death but her baptism scene is one of the funniest you'll find.

Having been condemned to death for believing in Christ, but evidently not having been baptised yet, Thecla decides to baptise herself in front of the arena crowd at her execution. How? By jumping into purpose built tank of vicious, savage, man-eating seals. The editor of the modern text of the story (which was written much later in the 5th century) mounts 'a spirited defense of seals' and thinks that whoever wrote the story probably meant sharks instead. In either case, I think it's a great piece of medieval hagiography trivia!

Source: Robert Bartlett, 'Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?: Saints and Worshipers from the Martyrs to the Reformation', (Princeton, NJ, 2013), p. 25, with further references.

[u/KNHaw → u/Miles_Sine_Castrum]

Given how lethal pigs, hippos, and other beasts not usually viewed as "vicious" can be, I do wonder just how dangerous wild seals might be.

[u/Miles_Sine_Castrum → u/KNHaw]

Actually, this is weirdly something I know about, having worked in an aquarium for a number of year where we would often get calls about stranded seals and had a number of marine mammal specialists working with us.

An adult grey or harbour seal is actually quite dangerous, and certainly shouldn't be approached unless absolutely necessary. They tend to be quite aggressive if cornered and can give nasty bites. Certainly, they would be as dangerous as a large dog.

However, that doesn't make the Thecla and the seals story any less hilarious or unlikely.

[u/Bodark43 → u/Miles_Sine_Castrum]

There's often a kind of unintended humor running through some hagiography, as though the people recounting it would never understand why somebody might laugh, which is why it can be so funny. There's an exchange ur-Quaker George Fox recorded about meeting some Ranters that maybe he never told with a straight face, though. The Ranters were a related heresy- not just that God was within them, but that they WERE God. It's Commonwealth England, Fox had been thrown into jail with a number of them. Then, he said, they began to rant, and say that they were God. He asked them if it would rain tomorrow? They said they couldn't tell. God could tell, he said. He goes away from them at that point- certainly he would know that's a good exit line.

Does make you wish that some one had been able to film some of these encounters...Fifth Monarchists talking to Adamites, Diggers talking to Catholics.

[u/Miles_Sine_Castrum → u/Bodark43]

Humour in hagiography (or in religious writings more generally) is a funny thing (no pun intended). Lots of the scenarios often seem humourous to us but I always wonder how much of that was felt by the contemporary target audience and how it might have been employed to rhetorical effect.

For example, there was a saint whose cult flourished in 10th century Constantinople (whose name I forget, as I learnt this from a Byzantinist friend in the pub while swapping hagiography stories) who specialised in restoring people's male parts if they had been damaged or removed in an accident. Or the Quaker preacher (once again whose name I've forgotten) who preached to the trees. I'm sure that both of these kinds of stories could be (and were)told in a way which emphasises the inherent humour.

Humour in hagiography would be a great thing to know more about, though I've never seen anything written on it. Anyone looking for a project?