Unicorn Trade by Anderson, Poul. Part six

A vast number of saints got into the calendar during the Dark and Middle Ages, before canonization had become a controlled procedure. Some were historical enough, though their claims to sainthood are, to put it politely, arguable. St. Olaf of Norway is still accepted, but even in medieval times people admitted that he didn’t attain any state of grace till rather late in life. One of my ambitions is to go onto the campus of St. Olaf College, a strait-laced Lutheran institution in my home town, barricade myself on the water tower, and through a bullhorn read aloud some of the racier passages from the original chronicles of the patron—murders, robberies, booze hoistings, illegitimate son, and all.

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Charlemagne was canonized by an anti-Pope at the request of Frederick Barbarossa; his festival was celebrated in some parts till fairly recently. The Byzantine Empress Zoe, whose career would have made Theodora blush, is a saint in the Eastern church though naturally not among the Romans: likewise Alexander Nevsky, because he stopped a bunch of Catholic invaders. In late years the Vatican has been re-examining the credentials of its saints and has dropped a lot of them, especially the fictitious ones. St. Hippolytus, for instance, who was said to have been dragged to death by horses, is merely Theseus’ son from pagan Greek legend. St. Philomena has likewise been declared to be fabulous. I mean fabulous in the original sense of the word. The modern sense could be applied to the legendary St. Mary the Egyptian, a pilgrim to the Holy Land who worked out her passage in an interesting capacity.

However, no right-thinking Anglophile can go along with this business of demoting St. George to apocryphal status. Impossible. Utter nonsense. St. George doubtful? Gad, sir, that sort of thing just isn’t said. Least of all where the servants might overhear. Shows you how schism is bound to turn into sheer heresy, by Jove. Ever since those Romans left the C. of E.. ., St. George for merrie England! God send the right! Death to the French! But first a pint at the George and Dragon….

One perfectly genuine saint often confuses people. The Scandinavians have an ancient cus-

A BLESSEDNESS OF SAINTS

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torn of lighting bonfires on Midsummer Eve; but who’s this here Sankt Hans they talk about?

Getting back to fictional ones, though, it’s surprising how many purely literary instances I can think of offhand. Norman Douglas’ South Wind has a St. Dodecanus who—even in the probability-world of the novel—looks implausible. Karen tells me there’s a St. Katy the Virgin who was a pig (again using the word in its original sense) but she can’t remember any details. There is certainly a pig that goes to Heaven in Der Heilige Antonius von Padua, Wilhelm Busch’s hilarious parody of the medieval Lives of the Saints. (He also originated the Katzenjammer Kids, way back in the last century; they were Max und Moritz then.) Science fiction fandom has an Order of St. Fantony. The most famous hallows in science fiction it-_ self are surely Boucher’s Aquin—though here again you’re left in doubt whether the sanctity is real—and Miller’s Leibowitz. Fritz Leiber’s robots in The Silver Eggheads have a cult of saints with names like Karel and Isaac.

Not all are so pleasant. I once described an accursed church of St. Grimmin’s-in-the-Wold, and a sonnet by H.P. Lovecraft warns you: “Beware St. Toad’s cracked chimes.” But of course the ultimately sinister figure in this subclass of dubiously benevolent imaginary saints is Trinian.

Some names lead me to wonder about their possible calendrical origin. Who was the St. Peter (Ste. Pierre) Smirnoff whose name adorns vodka bottles? Any killjoys who claim that “Ste.”

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stands for “Societe” and is a feminine form anyway, will please take their business elsewhere. I want to believe in some good, kind, white-bearded holy man who passed the miracle of turning water into vodka. Does St. Exupery derive from a Christian named Exuperius, whom Nero martyred by shooting him from a catapult? St. Gaudens and St. Saens likewise revive a flagging sense of wonder.

There are millions of St. Johns. About forty years back, a Robert St. John was a well-known journalist and radio personality. He was also bearded, long before this was fashionable. The story goes that once he was waiting for a friend in a hotel lobby. A stranger came up and asked who he was. “I am St. John,” he replied, a bit miffed at not being recognized. “Ah,” said the stranger, “here for the Baptist convention, I suppose?”—I shall always think of him as St. John the Commentator.