Dubious Deeds of the Saints Trivia Quiz

Answer: On a platform atop a tall pillar

From an early age, St. Simeon Stylites (the name is derived from the Greek "style", meaning "pillar") believed in the power of suffering to bring him into the presence of God. As a teenager, he was expelled from a monastery for being too strict in his self-punishments, having been rescued by the monks after fasting to unconsciousness. Outside the monastery, he continued his self-imposed program of asceticism and austerity, fasting for six days a week during Lent and confining himself to small spaces and uncomfortable positions. However, his reputation as a holy man drew so many visitors to his hermitage that he had no time for prayer or meditation -- hence, the pillar.

He lived in a small platform on top of the pillar, about twelve feet (four meters) square, moving from column to column as awed pilgrims built him higher and higher ones. (The highest was reportedly some fifty feet (fifteen meters) high.) He died in the year 459, nearly 70 years old; in 37 years, he never touched the ground (although he did preach sermons and entertain ladder-wielding visitors). Strangely, St. Simeon was a bit of a trendsetter: for the next hundred or so years, it was quite a fad for hermits to place themselves on tall columns.

Answer: She disfigured herself by applying pepper and lye to her face.

Poor St. Rose! She, and many other early female saints, believed that feminine beauty was an occasion of sin to men, inspiring them to wicked and lustful thoughts. When this was combined with prominent parents pushing her to make an advantageous marriage, and the emphasis of suffering and self-martyrdom as a path to God, it's understandable why she took a path that seems so extreme today.

Her self-mortification did not stop when she entered the convent. "Lord, increase my sufferings, and with them increase Your love in my heart," she wrote, and she took those words to heart. In her convent, she wore a spiked metal crown (which she hid with wreaths of roses), fasted regularly, and slept on a bed of stone and broken glass - but her sufferings were eased by frequent, ecstatic visions of God. She died in 1617, at the age of 31, and was canonized fifty-four years later.

Answer: A book of psalms

The story goes that St. Columba secretly made a copy of St. Finnian's psalter, a book which would have contained not only the psalms from the Bible but also various explanations, prayers and calendars. Plagiarism, it seems, has always been frowned upon: St. Finnian believed that this copy detracted from his work, and he appealed to Dermott, High King of Ireland, for a judgment. "To every cow its calf; to every book its copy," Dermott ruled, awarding the copy to St. Finnian -- but St. Columba, says the legend, refused to accept this failure. Soon the clans of the feuding priests became involved, and in 561 more than three thousand men died in the ensuing Battle of Cúl Dreimhne. (St. Columba's side won; neither he nor St. Finnian participated directly in the battle.)

Faced with excommunication for his role in the bloodbath, St. Columba talked his way to a missionary exile instead; he would, he said, save as many souls as had died in the battle. In 563 he founded an abbey at Iona, and ministered to the Picts until his death at age 75 in the year 597.

The infamous copied psalter is still said to exist, in fragmentary form: the vellum fragments of the Cathach of St. Columba can be seen in Dublin, in the National Museum of Ireland.

Answer: St. Philomena

"LUMENA PAX TECUM FI" read the tiles marking the small grave in the Catacomb of St. Priscilla; once the tiles were rearranged, the inscription became "PAX TECUM FILUMENA" ("Peace with you, Filumena"). The body inside was that of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl, buried with glass vessels said to contain her blood. From these simple relics, a mania began. Decorations on the tiles (a leaf, a palm, arrows, and anchors) were said to show the dead girl's virginity and martyrdom. Various healing miracles were reported around the world; three people claimed to have received visions of St. Philomena's life, showing her as a princess martyred for her insistence on dedicating her virginity to Jesus Christ. Although they all gave similar accounts of the girl's life, we must remember that almost the same story is told of practically every other early female martyr too.

The shuffling of the tiles on St. Philomena's grave proved to be her downfall. Other graves in the same catacomb showed that such inscriptions were written _after_ the tiles were placed on the tomb -- so the disarrangement of the tiles meant that they could not have come from that grave. Perhaps there was a martyr Philomena, though we will never know her age or her resting place; perhaps the nameless child in the strange grave is in Heaven as well. But for Philomena the girl martyr, favorite of Romantics, there is no evidence at all.

Answer: He talked the wolf into becoming a vegetarian.

Appealing to the wolf's better nature would not have occurred to very many people, but St. Blaise, a healer, always had a special outlook on life. Named bishop of Sebaste for his service to his fellow man, he was more famous for his rapport with wild animals -- which came in very handy when dealing with the wolf. Admonishing the carnivore that the pig was also a friend of his, St. Blaise instructed it to return the pig -- which it promptly did, hanging its head shamefully. A proud Saint Blaise fed the wolf with milk (it would have been too much to ask it to become a vegan), but according to one variation the pig did not long survive its adventure: the widow slaughtered it and fed it to the grateful saint!

St. Blaise was martyred for his faith around AD 316; since the vicious animals of the arena refused to harm him, he was beaten with wool combs and finally beheaded. One of his last miracles was the healing of a small child who was choking on a fish bone, a deed which makes him the patron saint of throats.

Answer: He wished to serve only the bravest, most powerful master.

The story goes that St. Christopher (then going by a name that may have been Offerus, or Reprebus, or possibly Gorm) first served his father, but offered his services to the king after hearing his father complain about the taxes the king imposed. St. Christopher was then shocked to realize that the king was not the strongest master after all: the king kept expressing fear of the devil! So St. Christopher joined the service of Satan, but left again when he realized that the devil cowered in front of churches and crosses. Dedicating himself to the service of God -- the biggest boss of all -- he used his strength to carry travelers across a swift-moving river. His name, which literally means "Christ-bearer," comes from the legend that he once carried the Christ child on his back, nearly drowning because of the weight of the world's sins. He was martyred after performing a miracle on the riverbank, and remains one of the world's most popular saints (despite being removed in 1969 from the official calendar of the Catholic Church, due to the lack of evidence as to whether he ever existed at all).

Interestingly, St. Christopher is portrayed in Eastern Orthodox legend as a cannibal who literally had the head of a dog, but who did not let that stop him from serving God! Today, it is thought that this unusual description may arise from an ancient literary convention, whereby members of "barbaric" outsider tribes were described in terms that separated them from all of humanity, as well as from civilization.

Answer: She converted Valerian to Christianity and persuaded him to take a vow of celibacy.

Like many female martyrs of the time, St. Cecilia had wealthy parents who were intent on forcing her into a marriage she did not want. Unlike many of those martyrs (St. Barbara, for example, or St. Agnes) she chose to submit to a wedding ceremony (to go by "Lives of the Saints," a torturous execution was the standard alternative in these situations). She is said to have drowned out the noise of the wedding music by singing a hymn in her heart, a solution which led to her becoming the patron saint of music.

When the guests had gone away and she was left alone with her new husband, St. Cecilia persuaded him to become a Christian, after which he was better able to respect her vow of celibacy -- and took one of his own. They were martyred later for their faith, only a few days apart.

A number of other early martyrs were also associated with celibacy within matrimony; for example, Andrew the Apostle was said to have been executed after persuading the wife of a Roman governor to take a unilateral oath of celibacy. Her husband was not pleased about this change in the nature of their marriage!

Answer: To enter the convent, she had to step over the prone body of her grieving fourteen-year-old child.

As his mother approached the convent, Celse-Bénigne -- the fourteen-year-old in question -- attempted to block her path by lying down on the threshold. A priest traveling with them asked her, "Can the tears of a child shake your resolution?" In fact, this stiffened her resolve, and she stepped over her child. From 1610 until her death (at the age of 69) in 1641, St. Jane de Chantal was instrumental in the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, which she founded with St. Francis de Sales for women who (for reasons of health, age or temperament) were not suited to an ascetic life, but who still wanted to devote themselves to God.

In the saint's defense, we must note that, at that time, young teenagers were seen as much more adult than they are today. Before taking the habit, she had subjected herself to seven years living and working in her father-in-law's oppressive home, so that she could make sure that her children's property rights were respected, and throughout her life she continued to pray for her children and to guide them in their faith. She felt their separation deeply. "I know one person," she said of herself when asked about her concept of a martyrdom of love, "whom love cut off from all that was dearest to her, just as completely and effectively as if a tyrant's blade had severed spirit from body."

Answer: She could smell their sin, and wanted to avoid the stink.

A peasant and an orphan, St. Christina led an apparently unremarkable life until about the age of 21, when she startled mourners by rising -- all the way to the rafters! -- at her own funeral. Returning to the ground at the order of the priest, she told the crowd that she had seen heaven, hell, and purgatory, and that she had returned among them to pray for the souls of those caught in the latter place. For the next 50+ years, she avoided the stink of people, lived in extreme poverty, and experienced continued seizures and ecstasies -- reportedly leading souls from purgatory to paradise during the latter.

Some of her contemporaries believed her insane or possessed by demons; others, pointing to her unwavering obedience to a local prioress, believed that her actions reflected the purgatorial suffering of the souls to whom she was devoted. Never formally beatified or canonized, she is nonetheless popularly venerated as the patroness of mental health.

Answer: Guinefort was a dog.

The cult of Guinefort, a greyhound belonging to an anonymous master, was strong in southeastern France by the middle of the thirteenth century. His guilt-stricken master planted a grove of trees around the faithful dog's grave, and local peasants and villagers visited it to ask the dog to pray for their children's health and safety.

This did not amuse Etienne de Bourbon, a Church inquisitor from the region north of Lyon. In 1261, he wrote of his shock at learning that Guinefort was NOT a holy man -- and of his rather harsh decision to have the dog's bones exhumed and burned! Nevertheless, faithful parents continued to visit Guinefort's grove and to pray for his intercession until the middle of the twentieth century.