Men who do the things you describe are not saints, whatever their position in the church hierarchy may be. Ordination does not make a saint. We must not put our trust in princes, nor in sons of men, but in God.
With regard to St. Fechin, this story about him does of course call for a skeptical response from us (although not, I would argue, skepticism toward the Christian idea of sanctity itself). Either the facts in this tale are muddled, or else the sanctity of Fechin is doubtful. My initial response was concern for the author/transmitter of the story, who presumably was a Christian monk and ought to know the difference between godliness and ungodliness in such a clear case. So I went and read the original source material and was pleased to find that the medieval storyteller and his audience were not under any delusions regarding the moral of the story. St. Fechin is by no means held up as an example of holiness in this tale, rather it is God and St. Gerald that are vindicated. You can read what I posted below to see what I mean.
"institutional "holiness" is in all cases suspect to the extent that power is involved"
True, Mr. Poe. With that I could hardly agree more.
And it's no problem if you don't feel up to reading what I posted below. I had already posted it before I read your comment. I only mentioned it because it could illustrate my point.
'folks who live in a truly godly manner do not see themselves as "exalted" in some way, nor do they need labels declaring such, nor do they ever stand as someone fit to bestow these labels upon others.'
Very true, and every actual saint would agree. You can spot a holy person by the vigorousness with which they deny being holy.
While in the humorous mode, I can't help thinking that in that pic of your daughter she appears at first glance to have a green Afro of immense proportions!
In a land this fecund it's hard to imagine anyone needing to starve here, though the Irish Famine was almost entirely a modern, man-made catastrophe. That I *can* imagine, as if electricity prices go much higher I may need to flee to America to avoid starvation myself.
The west of Ireland is a harsh place. Even where I am, which is not the harshest by any means, the wind, wet and damp make growing anything very hard. But people were of course forced out here, and at the height of the famine the country was still exporting corn. It was a political/structural catastrophe more than a meteorological one. Empire and capitalism, as usual.
But it does amaze me that a small country of just five million people, with a lot of good land and a broadly healthy culture, can manage to get almost everything wrong, from the state of the roads to the health service. There's almost nothing the Irish state can't mess up. About the only thing it seems to be good at at the moment is cracking down on the freedoms of its citizens.
Brilliant! Is there a subtext here on disease x as well, paul, or is that just a bit of nostalgia for the good ol' days of the machine essays on my part? ;)
Thanks for this series, I look forward to reading each one.
There was a query about why there seems to be no Holy Wells in the USA..not sure if that is the case but it seems to be and my thinking is because we are a Protestant country. Mary and saints are not part of this fabric..and really seen as superstitious idolatry . A spring is be just a geological landmark.
A year or two ago we traveled to the northern part of California’s Great Central Valley, and visited the headwaters of the Sacramento River, the river whose tributaries drain the Sacramento Valley, the northern half of the Great Central Valley. The river begins as a small brook fed by a spring. People go there with large containers, believing that the spring water is pure, and take quantities of the water home with them.
But also gathered around the spring were some "counter culture" or meditative types, one sitting in a lotus position, and if memory serves someone chanting “ooommmm” or perhaps playing some sort of cymbals. And above and around us was the unmistakable fragrance of cannabis.
Very good! This was an emotional rollercoaster! Mass graves, famine, millions dead, a dry well, a tainted saint and then the brilliant joke! Perfect. We humans, got to love us, warts and all.
The reference to the healing of the eyes reminds me of something I saw on a television program years ago. It had to do with an Orthodox Church in Turkey, probably in Istanbul/Constantinople, or maybe on one of the islands nearby, although possibly in Izmir/Smyrna. Anyway, what I do remember is that a spring or well close to the church was described, by a local Turkish Muslim, as having water that was good for the eyes. I believe the church is dedicated to Saint George, but I’m not at all sure of this.
Still, the healing power of water is a theme associated with at least a couple of Orthodox religious sites in Turkey which attract Muslim as well as Christian people, as witness the following, the result of quickly done recent research:
Not sure I would trust a well near a cemetary, at least for any physical contact with the water. At a very old cemetary near me there's a hand pump provided so people can water flowers on the graves. Locals use it to get water for washing and toilet flushing in case of power outages (which were regular occurrences here until about three years ago when the regional utility went on a tree trimming binge to rival the deforestation of the Amazon. We miss our shade.). A sign on the pump warns not to drink the water. The first time we availed ourselves of it, I used some for sponge bath since the blackout coincided with my return from a camping trip where I hadn't properly bathed for a week. I splashed a little water in my mouth in the process and a few hours later became violently ill, remaining so for two days. The corpse water, we dubbed it, was for flushing only after that.
The wikipedia article may not make it clear whether St. Fechin's prayer for pestilence was condemned in the old story, but it certainly was. I looked up that passage in the Latin life of St. Geraldus, and this is what it tells:
During a time of famine, Ireland's rulers attribute the scarcity of food to overpopulation, and so they summon clerics from all over Ireland to a conference. When the monks arrive, they are told to fast and pray for God "concerning the burdensome multitude of the lower classes [populi inferioris], that He might deign to remove a part of them through some epidemic, that by this means the rest should be able to live more conveniently". Two of the abbots summoned there are found to excel the others in holiness, St. Gerald and St. Fechin, and so decision-making seems to fall to them.
St. Gerald insists that the request was an unrighteous one "because God is able to feed many with a small amount, just as He fed the sons of Israel in the wilderness with manna, and five thousand men with five loaves of bread."
But St. Fechin bows to the numbers and prestige of those who are afraid of over-population "because all the elites [maiores], are begging that the too-large number of common folk [vulgi] might be removed by some illness."
An angel of the Lord appears to someone in a dream and says: "Alas, that you have not asked for food from the Giver of all good things, for He would not have denied you this, for it is not any more difficult for God to multiply food than to multiply men. But because against God's will you have for the death of the lower class of the people, therefore by the righteous judgment of God the elites themselves will die."
And that is what happens. The kings of Ireland all die of the plague along with many others until only a third part of the people survives. St. Fechin himself dies of the same disease "because he had given the others his consent", and many other monks with him. St. Geraldus, however, is spared.
As you said, Paul, we need not assume that St. Fechin really committed this a dreadful deed. After all, this story is found only the Vita Sancti Geraldi, which was written exalt the name of St. Gerald, perhaps even at the expense of the patrons of rival monasteries, or so we may suspect. The Vita Sancti Fechini says nothing about this plague (although it is a curiously incomplete account: it never tells how he died -- secondary sources indicate that he did in fact die of that plague, which was indeed a historical one). Instead of an account of his death, the Vita Sancti Fechini ends with a delightful hymn which includes the following verse:
Quendam cecum et sanauit, | And he healed a certain blind man,
Cuius pedes aqua lauit, | Whose feet he bathed with water,
Mox recepto lumine; | His sight was restored soon after;
I wonder if that water came from the well you visited.
I am reading an account of an American who visited Ireland during the famine with the purpose of alleviating suffering. The author mentions that a father she has been feeding Indian meal so that he can work on the public road has to bury his starved daughter at night. The explanation the author gives is that the father would not have been paid for missing work during the day. I wondered if this was the plight of the fathers who buried their unbaptized children in the cellini at night. I don't think we can judge any of the things the Irish Catholics have done without a full understanding of the Penal Laws they suffered under and the manufactured Famine. Here is the link to the story about the starving father: https://www.libraryireland.com/annals-famine-ireland/first-starving-person-and-means-of-preserving-him.php
So-called leaders have always been apt to mass murder when they thought it desirable. Witness, within memory, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, who have murdered millions of their civilians. Beyond them in history are scores of leaders who have sacrificed their own for political reasons, including a series of presidents who slaughtered nearly the whole of the American Indians, one of whom took it upon himself to start the Civil War which slaughtered millions of Americans.
Men who do the things you describe are not saints, whatever their position in the church hierarchy may be. Ordination does not make a saint. We must not put our trust in princes, nor in sons of men, but in God.
With regard to St. Fechin, this story about him does of course call for a skeptical response from us (although not, I would argue, skepticism toward the Christian idea of sanctity itself). Either the facts in this tale are muddled, or else the sanctity of Fechin is doubtful. My initial response was concern for the author/transmitter of the story, who presumably was a Christian monk and ought to know the difference between godliness and ungodliness in such a clear case. So I went and read the original source material and was pleased to find that the medieval storyteller and his audience were not under any delusions regarding the moral of the story. St. Fechin is by no means held up as an example of holiness in this tale, rather it is God and St. Gerald that are vindicated. You can read what I posted below to see what I mean.
"institutional "holiness" is in all cases suspect to the extent that power is involved"
True, Mr. Poe. With that I could hardly agree more.
And it's no problem if you don't feel up to reading what I posted below. I had already posted it before I read your comment. I only mentioned it because it could illustrate my point.
'folks who live in a truly godly manner do not see themselves as "exalted" in some way, nor do they need labels declaring such, nor do they ever stand as someone fit to bestow these labels upon others.'
Very true, and every actual saint would agree. You can spot a holy person by the vigorousness with which they deny being holy.
It’s a mess.
But deep speaks to deep, no matter where we find ourselves with respect to religious lines drawn.
I love your honesty.
Great post! I'm really enjoying this series on holy wells. Thanks Paul
The whole way through I was waiting for the Féchín joke 😆.
I just couldn't resist.
It'd have been very disappointing if you had. And you have pre-empted a disintegration of the comments into Father Ted quotations...
While in the humorous mode, I can't help thinking that in that pic of your daughter she appears at first glance to have a green Afro of immense proportions!
I'll mention that to her!
So glad you didn’t resist, as that’s the first I’d heard it and it caught me completely off guard; I chuckled so hard I almost spit up my coffee!
Dammit Helen! I had 14 good ones written and here you defanged em all.
😆😂
So Féched up...
In a land this fecund it's hard to imagine anyone needing to starve here, though the Irish Famine was almost entirely a modern, man-made catastrophe. That I *can* imagine, as if electricity prices go much higher I may need to flee to America to avoid starvation myself.
The west of Ireland is a harsh place. Even where I am, which is not the harshest by any means, the wind, wet and damp make growing anything very hard. But people were of course forced out here, and at the height of the famine the country was still exporting corn. It was a political/structural catastrophe more than a meteorological one. Empire and capitalism, as usual.
But it does amaze me that a small country of just five million people, with a lot of good land and a broadly healthy culture, can manage to get almost everything wrong, from the state of the roads to the health service. There's almost nothing the Irish state can't mess up. About the only thing it seems to be good at at the moment is cracking down on the freedoms of its citizens.
I thought you might be interested in knowing about this book. https://www.amazon.com/Ireland-1845-1850-Perfect-Holocaust-Perfect/dp/0989610616/ref=sr_1_1?crid=20CEE9HP07CJO&keywords=irish+famine+books+by+author+chris+fogarty&qid=1705867244&sprefix=chris+fogarty%2Caps%2C318&sr=8-1
This was my favorite well write up. My mind couldn't help correlating current events though.
You made a dad joke!
Enjoying the travels as always.
I'm most curious about the dry well. I'm going ask some of my naturalist and hydrologist friends about what factors can cause that to happen.
It's my right as a dad. Indeed, it's an obligation.
If you find out about the dry wells, do let us know.
Brilliant! Is there a subtext here on disease x as well, paul, or is that just a bit of nostalgia for the good ol' days of the machine essays on my part? ;)
Vaccine passports were a gift from the Lord, and don't let anyone tell you any different.
There it is. See, I was pronouncing it like “fetchin’” in my head. I’ll be ready next fechin time. :)
Thanks for this series, I look forward to reading each one.
There was a query about why there seems to be no Holy Wells in the USA..not sure if that is the case but it seems to be and my thinking is because we are a Protestant country. Mary and saints are not part of this fabric..and really seen as superstitious idolatry . A spring is be just a geological landmark.
A year or two ago we traveled to the northern part of California’s Great Central Valley, and visited the headwaters of the Sacramento River, the river whose tributaries drain the Sacramento Valley, the northern half of the Great Central Valley. The river begins as a small brook fed by a spring. People go there with large containers, believing that the spring water is pure, and take quantities of the water home with them.
But also gathered around the spring were some "counter culture" or meditative types, one sitting in a lotus position, and if memory serves someone chanting “ooommmm” or perhaps playing some sort of cymbals. And above and around us was the unmistakable fragrance of cannabis.
We get that kind of thing at wells here sometimes. But only when the Catholic Babushkas have their backs turned.
Very good! This was an emotional rollercoaster! Mass graves, famine, millions dead, a dry well, a tainted saint and then the brilliant joke! Perfect. We humans, got to love us, warts and all.
The reference to the healing of the eyes reminds me of something I saw on a television program years ago. It had to do with an Orthodox Church in Turkey, probably in Istanbul/Constantinople, or maybe on one of the islands nearby, although possibly in Izmir/Smyrna. Anyway, what I do remember is that a spring or well close to the church was described, by a local Turkish Muslim, as having water that was good for the eyes. I believe the church is dedicated to Saint George, but I’m not at all sure of this.
Still, the healing power of water is a theme associated with at least a couple of Orthodox religious sites in Turkey which attract Muslim as well as Christian people, as witness the following, the result of quickly done recent research:
https://www.sharedsacredsites.net/2013-fieldwork-saint-demetrios
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_St._Mary_of_the_Spring_(Istanbul)
Not sure I would trust a well near a cemetary, at least for any physical contact with the water. At a very old cemetary near me there's a hand pump provided so people can water flowers on the graves. Locals use it to get water for washing and toilet flushing in case of power outages (which were regular occurrences here until about three years ago when the regional utility went on a tree trimming binge to rival the deforestation of the Amazon. We miss our shade.). A sign on the pump warns not to drink the water. The first time we availed ourselves of it, I used some for sponge bath since the blackout coincided with my return from a camping trip where I hadn't properly bathed for a week. I splashed a little water in my mouth in the process and a few hours later became violently ill, remaining so for two days. The corpse water, we dubbed it, was for flushing only after that.
The wikipedia article may not make it clear whether St. Fechin's prayer for pestilence was condemned in the old story, but it certainly was. I looked up that passage in the Latin life of St. Geraldus, and this is what it tells:
During a time of famine, Ireland's rulers attribute the scarcity of food to overpopulation, and so they summon clerics from all over Ireland to a conference. When the monks arrive, they are told to fast and pray for God "concerning the burdensome multitude of the lower classes [populi inferioris], that He might deign to remove a part of them through some epidemic, that by this means the rest should be able to live more conveniently". Two of the abbots summoned there are found to excel the others in holiness, St. Gerald and St. Fechin, and so decision-making seems to fall to them.
St. Gerald insists that the request was an unrighteous one "because God is able to feed many with a small amount, just as He fed the sons of Israel in the wilderness with manna, and five thousand men with five loaves of bread."
But St. Fechin bows to the numbers and prestige of those who are afraid of over-population "because all the elites [maiores], are begging that the too-large number of common folk [vulgi] might be removed by some illness."
An angel of the Lord appears to someone in a dream and says: "Alas, that you have not asked for food from the Giver of all good things, for He would not have denied you this, for it is not any more difficult for God to multiply food than to multiply men. But because against God's will you have for the death of the lower class of the people, therefore by the righteous judgment of God the elites themselves will die."
And that is what happens. The kings of Ireland all die of the plague along with many others until only a third part of the people survives. St. Fechin himself dies of the same disease "because he had given the others his consent", and many other monks with him. St. Geraldus, however, is spared.
As you said, Paul, we need not assume that St. Fechin really committed this a dreadful deed. After all, this story is found only the Vita Sancti Geraldi, which was written exalt the name of St. Gerald, perhaps even at the expense of the patrons of rival monasteries, or so we may suspect. The Vita Sancti Fechini says nothing about this plague (although it is a curiously incomplete account: it never tells how he died -- secondary sources indicate that he did in fact die of that plague, which was indeed a historical one). Instead of an account of his death, the Vita Sancti Fechini ends with a delightful hymn which includes the following verse:
Quendam cecum et sanauit, | And he healed a certain blind man,
Cuius pedes aqua lauit, | Whose feet he bathed with water,
Mox recepto lumine; | His sight was restored soon after;
I wonder if that water came from the well you visited.
I am reading an account of an American who visited Ireland during the famine with the purpose of alleviating suffering. The author mentions that a father she has been feeding Indian meal so that he can work on the public road has to bury his starved daughter at night. The explanation the author gives is that the father would not have been paid for missing work during the day. I wondered if this was the plight of the fathers who buried their unbaptized children in the cellini at night. I don't think we can judge any of the things the Irish Catholics have done without a full understanding of the Penal Laws they suffered under and the manufactured Famine. Here is the link to the story about the starving father: https://www.libraryireland.com/annals-famine-ireland/first-starving-person-and-means-of-preserving-him.php
So-called leaders have always been apt to mass murder when they thought it desirable. Witness, within memory, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, who have murdered millions of their civilians. Beyond them in history are scores of leaders who have sacrificed their own for political reasons, including a series of presidents who slaughtered nearly the whole of the American Indians, one of whom took it upon himself to start the Civil War which slaughtered millions of Americans.
One of the best endings to your posts thus far. Thank you, Paul. Christ God keep you.