October 2 is the feast date of Saint Eleutherius of Nicomedia,* a martyr circa 303 who was accused of trying to burn down the palace of the Christian-persecuting emperor Diocletian.
One notices him in 2020 for a rather less pious achievement, however: he appears in the Simpsons episode In Marge We Trust** as a stained-glass icon come to life to banter with the town pastor during the latter’s crisis of faith.
While Saint Eleutherius is a real entry in the martyrology, not all the other witty apparitions in this episode can say the same. Alongside actual martyrs Saint Lucian and Saint Bartholomew, there’s a fictitious “Saint Donickus” who is simply a tribute to the episode’s writer, Donick Cary.
* Nicomedia was an old Greek-founded Anatolian city on the Sea of Marmara that had stood capital of the empire’s easternmost quadrant under Diocletian’s four-way division of power. It was here that Diocletian unleashed his great persecution of 303 by razing the church and issuing an anti-Christian Edict of Nicomedia. Within a few years of this persecution, Nicomedia would be supplanted as the capital by Byzantium/Constantinople, but it still exists to this day: it’s now the Turkish city of Izmit.
** This episode is also notable for the memorable B-plot, with Homer Simpson — the cartoon character, of course, not the real-life executed guy of that name — discovering that his face is a Japanese detergent icon known as Mr. Sparkle.
On this day..
- 1937: The Parsley Massacre begins
- 1930: Gordon Northcott, the Wineville Chicken Coop Murderer
- 1417: Catherine Saube, retroactive Anabaptist?
- 2012: Moussa Agh Mohammed, by Ansar Dine in Timbuktu
- 1850: Henry Leander Foote, sex crazed
- 1829: George Swearingen, Maryland sheriff
- 1901: James Edward Brady lynched for criminal assault
- 1629: Jeronimus Cornelisz and other Batavia mutineers
- 1876: Marie Louise Houghton escapes capital murder prosecution
- 1828: Jose Padilla executed
- 1941: Karel Treybal, Grand Master
- 1780: Major John Andre, Benedict Arnold's handler