Beastly beatitudes
Today: Miles Klee, culture writer at Rolling Stone, author of the novel Ivyland, and co-author, with Mads Gobbo, of the story collection Double Black Diamond.
Issue No. 503
Saint Guinefort
Miles Klee
Saint Guinefort
by Miles Klee
Although I am a holy man, my devotion was purified in the flames of heresy. Now, at the dusk of a life that bent to confession, younger priests all ask me to say what strange, ungodly things I saw. To answer them in their immaturity would only exalt the false beliefs I long ago put to an end. But my coldest silence has not kept them from hearing of the so-called Saint Guinefort. A trace of the story survives.
So I write truth here, that I may combat ridiculous legend.
It happened thirty winters ago. And while I wasn’t young then—in fact I was even then what the young call old—I’d yet to find my nose for demons. I went to Lyon, its confluent rivers the site of stirring martyrdom. Saint Blandina: a Christian slave whom the Romans tortured, burned and tied to a stake for the delectation of wild beasts. Miraculously, the animals refused to harm her. (And so the human torture resumed.)
My object in this countryside, other than preaching and tutoring, was to convert the Waldensians, that loathsome sect of dirty poor souls with a nearly pagan idea of the world. They rejected all to do with money, even the repair of clothes. Still more troubling, they were unconvinced of the authority of the Church: to them, holy water should slake thirst if not used in aspersion, and for Eucharist they took unconsecrated altar bread, and even fish.
It wasn’t good bread, either.
Keep us breathing fire!
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