What was also interesting in the early accounts of the martyrdom was how the
blood and brains were described as like the roses and lilies of martyrdom,
and that the blood was sponged up and squeezed out into the nearby well, the
water from that well then used to fill pilgrims' phials. Sorry, my books are
inaccessible, but see Guernes de Pont St Maxence, etc.
Norwich has a similar account of a miracle at the shrine of St William,
where someone vomits and is relieved of an evil spirit, the monks sponging
up the polluting mess, and proclaiming the miracle. Sorry about the
gruesomeness of all this. But it does seem, a la Mary Douglas, that sanctity
and pollution, purity and danger, go hand in hand, and, au Victor Turner,
that pilgrimage and commerce do so likewise.
____
Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family
via del Partigiano 16, Montebeni, 50014 FIESOLE, ITALY
[log in to unmask]
http://members.aol.com/juliansite/Juliansite.htm
'Lord, of your goodness, give me yourself: for you are enough to me.
I may not ask anything that is less, that is so worthy of you. If I ask
anything less, ever I want, for only in you I have all.'
Julian of Norwich, Westminster Manuscript
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