The legend of Brendan the Navigator, who celebrated Easter
Eucharist on the back of a whale, mistaking it for an island, is
famous: 116 medieval Latin manuscripts are mentioned in the
Oxford Book of Saints, with many translations. But less well
known is the reaction of an Anglo-Latin writer, preserved in a
late 12th- or early 13th-century MS in Lincoln College, Oxford,
protesting at the notion that a man with the cure of three
thousand souls should abandon his duties to gallivant across the
ocean, adding for good measure that the salvation of devils,
which formed part of the tale, was contrary to the Catholic
faith. (I refer to the recent publication by David Howlett, in
The English Origins of Old French Literature (Dublin, 1996), 112-
18.)
And here is a story about St Ivo from William Carr, _Remarks of
the Government of severall Parts of Germanie, Denmark, Sweedland
. . ._ (Amsterdam, 1688):
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And now because I am Speakeing of Pettyfogers, give me leave to
tell you a story I mett with when I lived in Rome, goeing with a
Romane to see some Antiquityes, he shewed me a Chapell dedicated
to one St Evona a Lawyer of Brittanie who he said came to Rome to
Entreat the Pope to give the Lawyers of Brittanie a Patron, to
which the Pope replyed that he knew of no Saint but what was
disposed of to other Professions, at which Evona was very sad and
earnestly begd of the Pope to think of one for them: At the last
the Pope proposed to St Evona that he should goe round the Church
of St. John de Latera blind fould, and after he had said so many
Ave Marias, that the first Saint he layd hold of, should be his
Patron, which the good old Lawyer willingly undertook, and at the
end of his Ave Maryes, he stopt at St. Michels Altar, where he
layd hold of the Divell, under St. Michels feet, and cryd out,
this is our Saint, let him be our Patron, so beeing unblindfolded
and seeing what a Patron he had chosen, he went to his Lodgings
so dejected, that in a few moneths after he die'd and coming to
heavens Gates knockt hard, whereupon St Peoter [sic] asked who it
was that knockt so bouldly, he replyed, that he was St. Evona the
Advocate, Away, away said St. Peter here is but one Advocate in
heaven, here is no roome for you Lawyers, O but said St. Evona, I
am that honest lawyer who never tooke fees on both sides, or ever
pleaded in a bad Cause, nor did I ever set my Naibours together
by the Eares, or lived by the sins of the people; well then said
St. Peter, come in; This newes coming downe to Rome a witty Poet
writ upon St. Evonas Tomb these words: St. Evona un Briton,
Advocat non Larron, Haleluiah.
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The Breton advocate who was no thief is buried at Treguier, not
at Rome; but he is honoured there by a fine Borromini church
(Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza), commissioned in 1642 by Pope Urban VIII
and based on the Barberini bee, whose sting is supposedly
imitated in the spiral of the lantern and whose hive is
represented by pervasive hexagons. The facade is by Giacomo della
Porta. There is now no altar of St Michael in St John Lateran.
Bonnie Blackburn
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Bonnie Blackburn
67 St Bernard's Road
Oxford OX2 6EJ
tel. 01865 552808 fax 01865 512237
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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