March 24th, 2019
Headsman
March 24 is the feast date of Saint Pigmenius, the patron saint of pigmen.
In the hagiography, Pigmenius was a Christian scholar who numbered among the instructors of the young royal relative destined to switch back to paganism and become reviled of Christians as the Emperor Julian the Apostate.
Fleeing the new order, Pigmenius headed to Persia and as the Roman martyrology recounts it, there
he lived four years and went blind. After four years he was addressed in a dream vision by the Lord Jesus Christ, saying: “Pigmenius, return to Rome, and there you will regain your sight.” Getting up the following morning, he had no fear, but immediately got into a ship and came to Rome. After four months, he entered the city; he began to ascend the hill on the Via Salaria with a boy, feeling his way with a cane. And behold, Julian the emperor, travelling in his golden robes, saw Pigmenius from afar; recognizing him, he ordered him to be summoned. When he had been brought, Julian said to Pigmenius: “Glory be to my gods and goddesses that I see you.” Pigmenius replied: “Glory to my Lord, Jesus Christ, the crucified Nazarene, that I do not see you.” In a rage, Julian ordered him to be thrown off a bridge into the Tiber.
So he got to dunk on the emperor, before he got dunked by the emperor.*
However, this book (French) makes the interesting argument that the fourth century Pigmenius was a reinvention of a 1st century Roman saint of similar name, to whom subsequent legends attributed a fictitious eastern sojourn.** “It is this ‘orientalization’ of Pigmenius that connected it to the time of Julian,” runs the argument. For, once Julian’s death in battle in those precincts made the East an overwhelming shadow in Roman minds, “Julian’s story melded somehow with the legends which ran over the distant lands where it had unfolded and the oriental traditions, were ‘Julianized'” — Pigmenius’s among them.
* As the editor of this martyrology remarks in a footnote, this snappy retort was actually borrowed by the hagiographer from stories of Maris, Bishop of Chalcedon, to whom is attributed a similar exchange:
Julian: Thy Galilean God will not heal thy sight.
Maris: I thank God for depriving me of the power of beholding thy face.
** Comparable, the author claims, to the Persian excursions of Saint Cyriacus.
On this day..
- 1925: Henri Olivier, thyroid donor - 2020
- 1673: La Chaussee, for the giblet pie - 2018
- 1823: John Newton, wife-beater - 2017
- 1823: John Newton, violent spouse - 2016
- 1950: Johann Trnka, the last executed in Austria - 2015
- 1873: Mary Ann Cotton, serial poisoner - 2014
- 1936: George W. Barrett, the first to hang for killing an FBI man - 2013
- 2010: Modise Mokwadi Fly, Botswana pol - 2012
- 1882: William Heilwagner, onion weeder - 2011
- 1794: Jacques Hebert and his followers - 2010
- 1945: Max Schlichting, for realism - 2009
- 1944: Ardeatine Massacre - 2008
Entry Filed under: Ancient,Drowned,Execution,Famous Last Words,God,Intellectuals,Italy,Martyrs,Power,Religious Figures,Roman Empire,Summary Executions,Uncertain Dates
Tags: julian the apostate, march 24, rome, saint pigmenius, tiber
July 3rd, 2008
Headsman
On this date, Antonio della Pagliara was hanged across the Tiber from the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome for heresy.
The present-day view from the square where Paleario is
thought to have been put to death, over the Ponte Sant’Angelo’s span across the Tiber to the Vatican’s imposing citadel.
Better known as Aonio Paleario (English Wikipedia entry | the considerably deeper Italian), the humanist scholar grew into his intellectual career just as Martin Luther’s doctrine was shaking Christendom.
Paleario’s positions were dangerously — and at length, fatally — close to Protestantism. He counted himself a humanist, a great admirer of Erasmus, who from the Low Countries managed to hold his critical positions without running afoul of the Catholic Church.
This would prove an increasingly difficult trick as the century unfolded … especially in the pope’s back yard.
Paleario’s most particular offenses were to take what amounts to the Lutheran side on the primacy of scriptural text over ecclesiastical tradition, and of salvation through Christ alone without the Church’s intermediation. (He also denied Purgatory.)
Since the Italian academic also cottoned to the Protestant-humanist critique of clerical corruption, he pitched Martin Luther and John Calvin on the notion of convening a Christendom-wide ecclesiastical council to reconcile competing sects. He seems to have wanted to reconcile the reformist current of humanism still within the Catholic tradition, and that of those critics who had broken, perhaps not yet irrevocably, with Rome.
The effort ultimately foundered. Instead, the curia-approved Council of Trent formulated a Roman Catholic doctrine that insured the permanent schism with Protestantism.
The Counter-Reformation was on. Still, with contending theologies — and contending polities — afoot in the Italian quiltwork plus his own towering reputation as the greatest orator in Italy, Paleario was able to find protectors and carry on. He taught in Siena, Lucca and Milan for more than three decades, surviving two bouts with the Inquisition before a Rome in crackdown mode finally pinned a heresy rap on him.
By that time, the septuagenarian didn’t much bother to fight it.
If your Eminences have so many credible witnesses against me, there is no need to give yourselves or me any further trouble … Judge, therefore, and condemn Aonio; satisfy my adversaries, and fulfil your office.
The office was fulfilled consuming the old man in flames, but they did extend the favor of hanging him (and apparently exposing the corpse for several days) first.
A book uncertainly attributed to Paleario, Beneficio di Criso (The Benefit of Christ’s Death) is available free at Google Books.
On this day..
- 1936: Saburo Aizawa, incidentally - 2020
- 1623: Claes Michielsz Bontebal, Maurice murder moneybags - 2019
- 1941: 3,500 Jews at the Khotyn Fortress ... but not Adolph Sternschuss - 2018
- 1939: Ramiro Artieda, Bolivian serial killer - 2017
- 1741: Prince, Tony, Cato, Harry and York - 2016
- 1865: Okada Izo, barbarian-expeller - 2015
- 1817: Two-fifths of the condemned in Valenciennes - 2014
- 1969: Lee Soogeun, North Korean defector - 2013
- 1945: Dr. Achmad Mochtar, quiet hero - 2012
- 1648: The leaders of the Salt Riot - 2011
- 1972: Three Somali officers for an attempted coup - 2010
- 1931: Ernesto Opisso - 2009
Entry Filed under: 16th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,God,Hanged,Heresy,History,Intellectuals,Italy,Papal States,Power,Public Executions,Wrongful Executions
Tags: 1570, antonio della pagliara, aonio paleario, castel sant'angelo, catholic church, catholicism, council of trent, humanism, inquisition, john calvin, july 3, martin luther, philosophy, piazza di ponte, ponte sant'angelo, Protestant Reformation, protestantism, roma, rome, theology, tiber
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