At 16:51 29/12/98 -0800, you wrote:
>This will [also] be a bit long.
A charming story of St Thomas of Canterbury, found in Latin in "Materials
for the Life of Thomas Beckett", Rolls Series, ed. Howlett. There is a
somewhat romanticised version of the story in "The Miracles of Our Lady
Saint Mary" by Evelyn Underhill.
You and I content ourselves with wearing a hair-shirt, but Beckett wore
hair-underpants (femoralia) as well, and not only in Lent. Once, having
been exiled by Henry II, he crossed the channel and galloped to the
Cistercian monastery of Pontigny. Here he found that, with all his
galloping, he had worn a hole in his hair-underpants. This would have been
no problem in Canterbury, where he had a woman to do his darning; but he
had not brought her with him, and was embarrassed to ask anyone else.
He made his way into the choir of the church and slipped off his femoralia.
Taking a needle and thread he tried to darn them himself, but, never having
tried such a thing before, he made no progress with the task and grew more
and more frustrated.
And then - a blessed miracle! Our Lady appeared, and, smiling sweetly, took
the underpants from him, saying "This is women's work." She then darned
them so expertly that no mend was visible. Thomas burst into tears at this
sign of Our Lady's great humility.
After Beckett's martyrdom, the femoralia were displayed as a relic at
Canterbury, where they were in fact the highlight of the pilgrimage. They
would be dipped into water, which would be drunk by those suffering from all
kinds of diseases. This usually made them violently sick, which often had
the effect of shifting whatever was ailing them and brought about many cures.
I suspect that there is an allusion to the sacred femoralia in Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, when the Host tells the Pardoner,
"Thou woldest make me kisse thyn olde breech,
And swere it were a relik of a seint,
Thogh it were with thy fundement depeint!
The Supple Doctor.
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