medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Similarly, or not, occasional old country churches in Greece will have a
hole -- in a wall or in a stone iconastasis -- through which one climbs
on the saint's feastday. A friend in a village told me that one of the
sports for the village children on that night was to watch the fat
ladies climb through & hope one would get stuck. It seems to have been
regarded as a minor miracle that no one ever stuck.
DW
Jon Cannon wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Not just hands, but entire bodies. Openings for the insertion of body
> parts are perhaps the defining feature of saints's shrine bases:
> survving examples can be seen, for example, in that of St Osmund at
> Salisbury cathedral (probably c1220). Nearly contemporary (late c12)
> scenes of the shrine base of Thomas Becket in the Trinity CHapel
> windows at Canterbury show people emerging from such holes, though it
> is hard ot see how they could fit.
>
> The aim was to get one's aiming limbs as near as possible to the
> saintly body.
>
> Jon Cannon
> ... who should really be asleep
>
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