I'm on a course at the moment
where to purchase arjuna Even a medieval definition of sainthood conceals some intriguing rough edges. What do you do about John the Baptist, a martyr who just predeceased Christ? Is he a Christian saint? Emphatically yes, said the Church ??? well, then, what about the babies whom King Herod massacred in a vain effort to kill the baby Jesus, the "Holy Innocents"? Yes again, though when you commemorate them in the Church's worship, don't put on quite such a show as you would for John the Baptist. Some prominent saints aren't even human: they are angels, chiefly Michael, who is named in the Bible, and who can be sought out in appropriately high places such as St Michael's Mount or Mont St-Michel. The angel Raphael has gathered all sorts of specialisms: not just healing but ??? in the lively imagination of one late medieval German abbot called Johannes Trithemius ??? the invention of?writing and the popularisation of music (well, you do have time on your hands when you're convalescing). The most surprising medieval saint is a dog, Saint Guinefort, a French greyhound wrongly accused of killing his master's baby when in fact he had defended the child. That's an example of the tension between popular and official views of sainthood, since a Dominican without a sense of humour dug up the bones of the canine saint and had them burned, to snuff out Guinefort's cult. Hundreds of miles from Provence, the good folk of Beddgelert in Snowdonia are still proud of another wronged medieval dog's grave (Gelert, the hound of Llewelyn the Great), which illustrates that one feature of a successful saint is?to generate compelling storylines.