Argyropoulina died of the plague 2 years later, and — what do you have to do to be a saint?! — Saint Peter Damian said: “Nor did she deign to touch her food with her fingers, but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden instrument with two prongs and thus carry to her mouth. . . . this woman’s vanity was hateful to Almighty God; and so, unmistakably, did He take his revenge. For He raised over her the sword of His divine justice, so that her whole body did putrefy and all her limbs began to wither.”
Here's the Wikipedia article on Saint Peter Damian. Highlights: "[H]e introduced a more-severe discipline, including the practice of flagellation... Another innovation was that of the daily siesta...
Peter often condemned philosophy. He claimed that the first grammarian was the Devil, who taught Adam to decline deus in the plural. He argued that monks should not have to study philosophy, because Jesus did not choose philosophers as disciples, and so philosophy is not necessary for salvation."
So with Damian you get to slough off the difficult studies and take naps... but you've got to self-flagellate. Now, that might seem weird, but it's a trade-off of a sort that lots of people would choose to make if given crisply stated options.
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४० टिप्पण्या:
Seinfeld has a joke about the Chinese. They've seen the fork and they're stickin with the sticks.
If he was alive today St. Peter Damien would be a Democrat politician.
A plague tag. How 2020.
If gross mistakes are made early, is all that follows tainted?
“...philosophy is not necessary for salvation."
True. This Damian chap’s name has been dogged by that stupid Exorcist II association but deserves better. I like crisply defined terms.
So he suffered from "severe insomnia" yet innovated the daily siesta? OK.
This reads like the New Yorker discussing Melania.
In many cultures one eats with the fingers of the right hand, because the left hand is used for unclean things.
To be clearer, I appreciate crisply defined options. Big Bill Strunk & EB White fan!
I believe her title was Dr. Maria Argyropoulina, thank you very much.
The fork is as equally feminized as chopsticks, and using hands and fingers is distinctly unsanitary. What are we, cave dwellers?
Real men stab their food. Bring back sharpened, battle-ready tableware. What the Sun King did to knives was shameful, and a sad day in our collective history.
this one's Furcate
St. Catherine, though not into self flagellating, was scourged and imprisoned. She was scourged so cruelly and for so long that her whole body was covered with wounds
I would love to see a picture of that clergyman's fingers. I've never been able to stab a piece of food with my own.
"So with Damian you get to slough off the difficult studies and take naps... but you've got to self-flagellate."
Depends...is 'self-flagellate' a euphemism for 'pulling it off'?
If it is, then you get to sleep all day and jerk off when you want.
Kind of like a lazy Jeffrey Toobin.
Not bad work in the Dark Ages...
"A plague tag. How 2020."
Click it. There are lots of old posts. And I have never used it for coronavirus. Only for the bubonic plague.
"philosophy is not necessary for salvation"
True, no?
I don't see that St. Damian necessarily advocated SELF-flagellation. (Indeed, his mistrust of philosophy would argue against it, as much philosophizing could be regarded as self-flagellation.)
I suspect he would've been cool with hiring a professional. A bracing way to awaken from one's siesta.
The Sacrament of Confession was invented so people could unload the guilt for their sins without having to self-flagellate.
Whatever the flaws of St. Peter, Maria certainly deserved a certain amount of censure. It's not just that she had slaves, but her slaves were eunuchs who were made to cut her food into dainty proportions....I think both St. Peter and Maria didn't have their priorities in order. The world is full of inequity and injustice. You have to start somewhere to make the world a better place, but table manners would not be my first choice.
I have never used it for coronavirus
Of course. But 2020 has echoes of such times. The hysteria has been plague-level all year as the media hyped meaningless "case" numbers and warned of overwhelmed systems and pretended that we have to change our behavior forevermore vis-a-vis mask wearing. All that is very very plague-theatre-ish given the very low incidence of death* and serious illness resulting from this bad flu year. The tag provokes thought. Whether I click through or not.
*Compared to real plague years, and of course every death is too many yadda yadda...
Philosophy is not necessary for salvation, indeed. But perhaps salvation itself isn't necessary.
As to flagellation, there are Muzzie sects that still practice it--which should tell you all you need to know.
Narr
Crisply rational
Not to be confused with St Damien of Molokai. Now that was a genuine saint!
"Not to be confused with St Damien of Molokai. Now that was a genuine saint!"
Was that the guy who would go surfing on his days off?
Hang seven!
I'm an early riser and turn on the 1st local news in the morning just so I can catch the opening weather summary. When I don't get a chance to mute it or change the channel quick enough, I've noticed they then open EVERY half hour segment with the "new cases and yesterday's deaths".
I've wondered if our friendly news providers think there are lots of people sitting at home who can't wait to get the so-called updated daily numbers, or is this just something with which their corporate masters make them lead every news show?
Didn't Jesus drink from cups, even though God clearly made the palms of our hand sufficient to cup liquids?
Wow, let's really be culturally anachronistic and judge Saint Damian based on the very little we know about him or his context.
Whatever his faults, I would have bought Pete a beer for “the first grammarian was the Devil.”
Where are eunuchs today, when we need them? Oh, wait...
---Hang seven!
LOL
Catch-22 has a short but titillating discussion of self-flagellation early in the book.
Some play, maybe Lion in Winter?, has a line about the nobles sitting at table, stabbing each other with the new forks introduced at Court by the Queen.
These two subjects, forks and flagellation, pop up every now and then in literary efforts.
I won't start a discussion of sporks; that would be just odd.
@Kai Akker
Glad somebody got it : )
I thought the Hawaiian Damian had been unmasked as a racist or something.
Narr
mikee mentions sporks. I call them fpoons
Remember that Maria Argyropoulina was coming from the Byzantine court to Italy (Venice), and she, more or less rightly, thought that she was moving from Where It's Happenin' (Byzantium) out to where the heretical (i.e. non-Orthodox) hicks & rubes live in provincial Italy. I strongly suspect that she, as was the Byzantine wont, never let the hicks & rubes around her forget for one minute that they were hicks & rubes. They clearly reciprocated the disdain.
You also have to believe in God of Abraham, His Son Jesus Christ, and The Holy Spirit.
So, probably not for everybody.
"So with Damian you get to slough off the difficult studies and take naps... but you've got to self-flagellate."
Sounds like a lot of the woke these days.
Wonder what the Almighty thinks about someone who asks for his steak to be well-done.
Philosophy is your thinking over what the other guy said when he sold you some crap in the bazaar.
Religion is the smile of a dog around the fire after a long day.
The fork was inspired when some nameless unknown tied three knives together, where a single spear would no longer do, to kill his enemies.
Later, he showed his wife, and she said sure that’s great, and all, but what she really wanted was something sort of like that, only a little more refined.
In Europe, contrived murder during beer fueled banquets was a risk. So there was and is a rule that you can only have one knife and must cut one piece from your meat then set it down while you eat it. Europeans are uncontrollable!
Here's where salvation happens. It's not intellectual, it's visceral. Fall to the bottom of where you think you have control. Cry out. One example might be you sit down beside the dumpster behind the convenience store where you begged enough money to get another 40-ounce.
God. Help me. Oh Jesus, help me.
Ask Chuck Colson. He hit bottom. You can have the fattest pension this world has ever seen, and then..it doesn't mean anything.
Men create religions, and take their power from it.
When all is said and done...it comes down to one human being crying out.
Natural forks? The Chinese call them the chopsticks your mother gave you.
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