I had pointed out in a previous message that dog saliva was reputed to have
curative powers, one of the reasons he's one of those good/bad "symbols."
Should've made the connection. I guess dog is to Roch as crow is to
Benedict.
K
----- Original Message -----
From: "B.M.COOK" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2000 3:02 PM
Subject: Re: St Roch
>
> I always thought St Roch was patron saint of dogs. I am sure that in a BBC
> programme about dogs a few years ago there was a sequence showing the town
> in Italy where St Roch is primarily venerated where dogs are given a good
> time at the festival. There was even a prayer of St Roche in which a dog
> asks his master to deal justly with him - sensible things, not the
> sentimental trash usually associated with a "doggie's prayer".
>
> While I was in New York last summer I saw a statue of St Roch in the
> Cloisters Museum which shows him exhibiting the bubo in his groin and
> attended by a dog who is leaping up at him holding a flat loaf in its
mouth.
>
> I understood that St Roch was invoked against the plague because he
himself
> had suffered it and recovered, and that his recovery was due in no small
> measure to the activities of his dog who brought food for his master
> (scavenged presumably from the unsupervised kitchens of other plague
> victims) when he was too weak to help himself, and licked his master's
> buboes so that the swellings burst outwards and not inwards.
>
> As one who shares her home with a furry friend, St Roch stands well to the
> front of our personal pantheon...
>
> Brenda M. Cook.
>
>
>
>
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