Profs with the Inferno on their syllabus for next semester need to buy an XBox 360 or a PS3, if only to know what they’re up against. The game’s not even out yet, but look at today’s Google search results for “Dante’s Inferno” (searched without quotes):

#1) Dante’s Inferno: The Game
#2) Dante’s Inferno: Part 1 of the Divine Comedy

So next semester, when someone brings up Dante’s role in the slaughter of the Muslims at Acre in class discussion, you can’t say you weren’t warned.

I hope everyone’s having a good Nth-Shopping-Day-Until-Christmas Day.* I know some of you have been checking the site with trepidation, worried that some morning’s refresh will bring a long to-do list to add to your holiday stress. Well, let me put your mind at ease. The medieval scribe responsible for my calendar places only one feast on the busy pre-Christmas week, The Feast of St. “Doubting” Thomas the Apostle, on December 21. I’d like to think they reserved the day for that “Holy crap, is it really almost Christmas again? Surely not!” feeling we all get this time of year.

‘Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world’s whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;
I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave
Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown’d the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know ; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love ; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am none ; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.

Via Kotaku.

To celebrate, witness Princess Peach as the Virgin Mary:

Yes, it’s sacrilegious, but also oddly pleasing, nevertheless. And like I always say, there’s always room for a little Toad upskirt action.

Nothing funny, sacrilegious, or scatological about this one, from Bodleian MS Douce 93:

No scandal, just a pretty little tree-top castle found in the margins of a fifteenth-century Dutch book of hours. The king and queen there in the turret give the whole thing a Mr. Rogers vibe that I just kind of dig. And if you’re wondering, that’s St. George a’dragon-slayin’ there in the historiated initial.

Things get rolling this month, liturgically speaking, on December 6 with a saint who might sound familiar: St. Nicholas of Bari, better known these days as that jolly old elf, Santa Claus.

The man who inspired all those red suits and fake beards lived in the fourth century and was the Bishop of Myra, a little town in what is today the southern part of Turkey. According to early medieval tradition, Nicholas was the scion of a wealthy family and used his considerable assets to help the poor and unfortunate. But rather than giving the poor and unfortunate Rock’m Sock’m Robots or Charlies-in-the-Boxes, as we might expect, the proto-Santa instead tossed bags of gold into the windows of the (immediately thereafter) much more fortunate. Actually, the gold-through-the-window trick was only done once, to pay the dowries for the three daughters of a wealthy man who had lost all his money and who was getting ready to give his daughters up to be prostitutes. If only that part of the legend had made it through the Norman Rockwellizing of the last few decades! Just think: instead of telling your children to be good for goodness sake, you’d have to almost sell them to whorehouses every December. OK, I know that sounds harsh, but the yearly bag of gold through the window would surely make up for it. In the most popular medieval version of his story, Nicholas is credited with bringing three children back from the dead who had been decapitated and pickled in a brine tub by a malevolent innkeeper. This is how you most often see Nicholas, standing over what looks like a bathtub with three naked children in it (see image above left). Ah, the Christmas we could have had, if the people at Coke and Hallmark had been medievalists: naked children and bathtubs everywhere–Santa coming up through the drain, leaving presents in our soap dishes if we’re nice (and pickles if we’re naughty), then departing on his bathmat drawn by three flying naked kids.

If you scroll back up to the picture from the medieval calendar I’m using at the top of this post, you’ll see that December 8 is marked by a Fleur de Lis that may or may not be trying to catch the fish beneath it on a line. On this day, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception is celebrated. The Fleur de Lis is one of Mary’s many symbols, and the fish is presumably Christ. Why Christ is trying to swallow the letter E is anyone’s guess.

Mary has a hard enough life, what with having to appear on the grilled cheese sandwiches, retaining walls, and turtle bellies of the faithful and doesn’t need me searching for a lame joke to make about her big day, so instead I’ll just note in passing that Mary is the patron saint of the United States. This seems a bit presumptuous of us Americans, taking Jesus’s mom as our patron, but what are we if not presumptuous?

December 11 marks the Feast of Pope St Damascus I, an important early pope who presided over Christianity during its transition from fringe cult to state religion. He’s the guy who put Jerome to work translating the Bible and oversaw the Council of Rome that fixed the Christian scriptural canon. For an early Christian there’s a fair amount known about him, leaving less room for interesting miracle stories in his vita. *Yawn*

So, moving right along, December 13 sees the Feast of St Lucy, also known as St. Lucia. According to the legend, Lucy was a Sicilian girl betrothed to a pagan, but chose to give her dowry to the poor and retain her virginity instead of getting married. The would-be groom was not impressed and turned her over to the Roman authorities, who sentenced her to be defiled in a brothel. When the soldiers came to take Lucy to the brothel, however, her body was as heavy as a mountain and she could not be moved. Annoyed, the Romans doused her with oil and set her on fire, but the she remained unburnt. So they stabbed her in the throat with a dagger, but she continued to preach and sing, ala St. Cecilia, even with a knife sticking out of her neck. Unwilling to leave it at that, her Roman captors gouged out her eyes. After her eyes were magically restored, the Romans gave up trying to be creative and just killed her.*

By the Julian calendar’s reckoning, St. Lucy’s Day marks the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. According to my Swedish former DGS, extremely traditional Scandinavians mark St. Lucia’s Day by having their eldest daughter serve them coffee and cake while wearing a candle-wreath on her head, but he had had quite a bit of holiday “glögg” and might have been putting me on.**

Predictably, the saint with the magically re-appearing eyes is the patron of the blind. And because of her unfortunate case of dagger-in-the-throat-itis, she’s also the patron of those with strep throat and other throat-related woes. The Sicilians venerate her because of her ancestry, and the Swedes because she is thought to have delivered the country from famine.

And there you have it, the saints for the first half of December. Check back in two weeks for the awfully crowded second half of the month.

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*I’m not sure, but I think the moral of the story here is, “If at first you don’t succeed at killing a religious rabble-rouser, try, try again. And while you’re at it, try the less symbolic means of execution, because saints’ magic only protects them against ironic or overly-meaningful death.”
**Regardless, his Saint Lucia parties were always very pleasant and introduced me to the oddly delicious combination of blue cheese and gingersnaps. Try it, if you don’t believe me.

Oh St. Cecilia, I’m down on my knees, I’m begging you please to forgive me for leaving you out of my November saints roundup. Though it’s hardly my fault. The calendar I was using forgot you, too, and had to wedge you into the gap between Clement and Edmund. Like so:

See how easy she is to miss? In fact, I’m not 100% sure that “Cecilia” isn’t just Clement wearing a wig. The resemblance is uncanny! Anyway…

November 22 is/was the Feast of St. Cecilia, patron saint of music and musicians. Chaucer’s second nun was quite fond of her, but if your Chaucer prof was feeling short on time that tale probably got cut from the syllabus.*

According to her legend, Cecilia was a pious, virginal Roman convert to Christianity. Though beautiful, she remained a virgin throughout her short life, which sounds impressive until you learn that she also had an invisible flaming-winged guardian angel who would slay anyone who tried to touch her in an unclean manner. And so after telling her betrothed, Valerian, about the angel she convinced him to convert to Christianity, too, and to live with her in Christian chastity. In some accounts, there was heavenly music at her wedding that only the faithful could hear.

Eventually, the Roman authorities heard about the miracles that attended Cecilia’s piety and those she was converting through her preaching and example and sentenced her to death by being boiled in a bath. When after a whole night she was miraculously unboiled, the Romans instead sent an executioner to behead her. The axeman struck her three times, but was unable to fully sever her head.** She bled from the neck for three days, preaching and singing throughout, until she finally died.

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*On account of it being boring, boring, boring.
**When reached for comment, Cecilia’s guardian angel reportedly said, “Look, I’m a virginity-guarding guardian angel. If it’s above the waist, it’s someone else’s problem. Sure, I’ll block two axe blows, but any more and the flaming-winged angel union’ll be all over me.”

From Medium Large’s Illustrated and Admittedly Incomplete History of the Turducken:

Text:

Historians cite that the layering or–as it is known in Drake’s Cakes Circles–“yodeling” of animals…

harkens back to the Middle Ages, when the church temporarily lifted the ban on combining different species to trick Jews into not eating kosher. (Balloon: Wait… do I taste dolphin?)

Back then farmers would hide livestock inside one another to avoid paying higher husbandry taxes, to conceal golden-egg-laying geese from brigands or to give them something to do besides dying, wishing they were dead, and watching with envy as others died before them.

If you’re interested, there’s more pre-medieval and post-medieval history in the panels above and below these. Check them out.

The best thing about splitting the saints calendar into two halves is that it gives me two opportunities to be late posting a calendar each month. So without further ado…

November 16 commemorates the death of St. Hugh of Lincoln–not to be confused with Little St. Hugh of Lincoln who Chaucer wrote about–a darn popular saint in England, but not really anywhere else. Since he lived in the late twelfth century, his Vita (saintly biography) is more concerned with his skill as an administrator than with anything interesting. Though, it should be noted, he did have an attack swan that guarded him as he slept. Pet swans that beat people up for you, you don’t see that every day–unless you’re St. Hugh of Lincoln, of course, but you’re not.

The Feast of St. Edmund the Martyr rolls around* every November 20th. Lots of saints get the title “the Martyr” attached to their name, but St. Edmund clearly deserves it more than most. As King of the East Angles, Edmund was defeated and captured by Ivar the Boneless’s marauding Danes. When Edmund refused to renounce his faith, his captors first beat him soundly with cudgels. When this produced no change, they tied him to a tree and scourged him with a whip for the rest of the day. When Edmund still wouldn’t submit, they shot him with arrows until he bristled like a hedgehog, then had him beheaded and threw the head into the woods. After the Danes left, Edmund’s friends scoured the woods looking for his head, which called to them, saying “here I am”, until they found it nestled between the paws of a (wild but magically tamed) wolf. I’d like to believe that this was the medieval precursor to the modern game of Marco Polo. For a while, Edmund was the patron saint of England, but he was eventually replaced by that glory hound St. George the dragonslayer.

November 23 is the Feast of Pope St. Clement of Rome, who was either the second, third, or fourth successor to the first Pope, St. Peter, depending on which unreliable list of early popes you consult. He was martyred by being tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea, which means as a saint he’s cursed to carry an anchor with him when he sits for portraits (like the one at the top of the page).

St. Catherine, whose feast is celebrated on November 25 is the medieval art historian’s favorite female saint, because she’s easy to spot. Just look for the woman with a smug look about her standing next to a wheel. According to legend, Emperor Maximinus ordered her put to death on a wheel, but when she touched said wheel, it broke. This didn’t get her off the hook, though; Maximinus just had her beheaded instead. Catherine is the patron saint of damn near everybody with even a passing association with a wheel: potters, spinners, spinsters, milliners, knife sharpeners, mechanics, millers,wheelwrights, and so on. Seems a bit strange to me, people who need their wheels to work praying to a saint whose claim to fame is making wheels not work. Because she also had a habit of converting anyone sent to convince her of anything, she’s also the patron of those who spin words: lawyers, philosophers, secretaries, teachers, etc. Feminist scholars love Catherine, because of another part of the legend that says she refused to marry a man unless he could prove himself her better in every way. Predictably, no one ever could, so she stayed chaste for the rest of her life.

St. Linus is listed by all the ancient Christian records as the first successor to St. Peter. Some calendars (including MS. Rawl. D. 939, the poorly illustrated calendar I’m following) put his feast on November 25th, though these days it’s celebrated in September. You’ll be excused if you celebrated it last month, but really do make an effort to keep to my calendar from here on out. Other than his name and his place as Pope #2, next to nothing is known about Linus. The Liber Pontificalis*** says he’s responsible for the now-ignored rule that says that women must cover their heads in church, and that’s about it.

St. Andrew‘s feast closes out the month on November 30. He’s sort of a big deal, being the first Apostle called by Christ and with his brother Peter one of the two fishermen asked to become “fishers of men.” According to medieval accounts, Andrew was sentenced to be crucified, but demanded that he be tied to the cross instead of nailed and also that the cross by X-shaped instead of T-shaped, because he thought himself unworthy to be crucified in exactly the same way as the Savior. Thus, you can usually recognize Andrew as the guy strapped to the big X, as in the picture at the top of this post. Because of his original job, Andrew is the patron of nautical men of all types. He’s also the patron saint of rope makers, because, apparently, rope makers always stop listening to the story of St. Andrew when he calls for the rope and just assume he must have used the rope to miraculously escape his captors and, possibly, to save Christmas.

Well, what do you know, that’s the end of the saints for this month. Check back in mid-to-late December for the saints of early December, and, heck, probably some time in January for the late-December saints.

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*Like a severed head thrown into the woods. Confused?** Keep reading.
**Not confused? Stop waiting till the end to read all the footnotes so that I can properly confused you.
***In Latin: The Big Book of Saints.