Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun (12 page)

In Greek, "Peter" is "
Petros
." The Greek
word
petra
means "stone."
Jesus's
pun therefore was,
"You are Rocky, and I will build my church on this rock."

 

 

If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have the clothes on your back!

 

A somewhat complex theological argument which split the world of Christian Theology during the 4
^th
century was the question of whether in the Trinity the Son (incarnated as Jesus
Christ) was equal to the God the Father or inferior to Him. The leader of the "egalitarians" was a
bishop named Athanasius. His view, that Father and Son were equal, was supported by the ecumenical council at
Nicaea
in 325, but it was subsequently rejected by the ecclesiastical establishment. Athanasius was condemned to death, and he fled from
Alexandria
,
Egypt
, and along with some supporters boarded a ship and sailed up the
Nile
. A massive manhunt ensued,
his enemies in pursuit and he and his followers eluding them. At one point a ship carrying his enemies, sailing south, passed his ship sailing north. Not
recognizing him, the enemy captain called out, "We are seeking the bishop Athanasius. Have you seen him?"

"Yes," the captain of Athanasius' ship called back, "and he isn't far from here."

Encouraged by the reply, the enemy ship sailed on.

 

The same argument led to an interesting incident a half century later. The
Athanasian
point of view carried the day, but the contrary view,
Arianism
(the Son was inferior to the
Father), still had many adherents.

Arcadius
, the eldest son of the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, was declared co-ruler with
his father in 383 A.D. when he was five years old. At his coronation a local elderly bishop behaved with obsequious deference to Theodosius, but treated
Arcadius
with disrespectful condescension. Outraged at the impertinent impudence of the bishop, Theodosius ordered him arrested and imprisoned. As the soldiers dragged the bishop from the hall, the old man cried
out, “Thus be it ever to any man who denies the equality of the Father and the Son!" Startled and amused, Theodosius then had the bishop released.

 

Saint Patrick, as everyone knows, brought Christianity to
Ireland
during the 6
^th
century and in the process baptized many local chieftains into the Christian faith. One of these chieftains, or kings, was named
Aengus
, a sincere and devout man whose understanding of Christianity was, to put it politely, rudimentary.

Patrick was an old man when he baptized
Aengus
, and by that late time of his life he leaned heavily upon a wooden walking stick (the ancestor of the shillelagh, perhaps.) In any event, as he baptized the king, Patrick had unwittingly rested the sharp tip of the stick upon the instep of
Aengus
' foot. As the saint leaned upon the stick during the ceremony, the stick stabbed through the king's foot, breaking his bones and resulting in an effusion of blood.

At last Patrick looked down and realized what he had done. He fell to his knees and begged the king's forgiveness, which was cheerfully given. But when Patrick asked why
Aengus
had not said anything about the injury and the accompanying pain,
Aengus
replied simply, “I thought it was part of the ritual.”

 

Tomás
de Torquemada was the "grand inquisitor" of 15
^th
century
Spain
, that is to say
the man who was in charge of the Spanish Inquisition, the official name for which was the Holy
Office. The original purpose of the Inquisition was to ferret out those Spaniards who were pretending to be Catholics but were in reality Muslims or Jews. (After the
reconquista
many
Spaniards of those faiths underwent sham conversions in order to keep their property and remain
in
Spain
. They were suspected of outwardly conforming to Catholicism while secretly practicing their real religions.) The inquisitors often had difficulty deciding which of the accused were true Catholics and which were engaging in deceit. Once, while interrogating a cell filled with prisoners,
Torquemada's solution to the problem was simple. "Kill them all," he said. "God will know his own."

 

Martin Luther, the 16
^th
century Protestant reformer, was a scholar, linguist, professor,
priest, prolific writer, political figure, and a man who rocked 16
^th
century
Europe
to its very foundation. He was also a German, and as such had affection for beer. He reportedly had a
large beer stein upon the side of which was inscribed, in this order, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and the Ten Commandments. It was said that Luther was the only man in
Wittenberg
who could drain the stein down to the Fifth Commandment in one draught.

 

Luther may have been a cheerfully Germanic imbiber of the gift of the hops, but he was
also a quite serious theologian of staggering historical impact. In 1529 his close friend Philip Melanchthon, at the behest of
Count Philip of Hessen, organized a meeting with the Swiss Protestants led by
Huldrich
Zwingli
in hopes of uniting the reform movement against the Roman Catholic Holy Roman Emperor. Luther and Zwingli agreed on most points of Theology, but they differed on one crucial point: the nature of the Eucharist (the Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, etc.). Zwingli maintained that the bread and wine merely symbolized the Body and Blood of Christ; Luther maintained that there existed a sacramental union by which Christ's true body and blood were really present "in, with, and under the bread and wine." Christ, Luther argued, did not say "This symbolizes my body," or "This symbolizes my blood"; His words were very clear.

It was also clear to all present that they had reached an impasse when in mid-argument
Luther took a piece of chalk from a pocket in his robe and wrote in the center of the round table
the words
Hoc
est
corpus
meum
,
"This is my body." He then circled the Latin quotation, sat
back, glowered at Zwingli, and said not another word.

 

Oliver Cromwell, Lord High Protector of the Puritan Commonwealth of England after the
execution of King Charles I, had an interesting perspective on both faith and food. It was customary to say grace before meals (ask the blessing, give thanks, etc.), and Cromwell's grace
was to say the least an unusual one:

"Some have appetite and no meat. Some have meat and no appetite. I have both. Thanks be to God!"

 

When St. Francis of
Assisi
announced his decision to become a monk, his father was furious. His father was a successful, wealthy merchant who had prospered greatly from the
Commercial Revolution then beginning in
Italy
, and he had every expectation that his son would follow in his footsteps. For young Francis to choose a life of poverty (i.e., abandoning the family
business), chastity (i.e., no grandchildren for his parents), and obedience (but not to him) was incomprehensible to his father. When he confronted his son in the public square, surrounded by curious onlookers, his father tried every argument he could think of to talk his son out of the
foolish future he had chosen, all to no avail. At last he resorted to parental authority: "You must
obey me! If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even have the clothes you are wearing!"

Whereupon Francis stripped naked, turned, and walked away.

 

In 1414, Jan Hus, the Bohemian (i.e., Czech) religious reformer (or heretic, as Roman Catholics would have it) travelled to
Constance
,
Switzerland
, to defend his views before an
ecumenical council of the Church. Though he had already been excommunicated and his life was
thus in danger, he trusted the guarantee of safe passage he had been granted by Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor. He shouldn't have. He was tried for heresy, convicted, and burned at the
stake.

Bohemia and England had been closely connected ever since Princess Anna of Bohemia
had married King Richard II of England in 1382, and events in each country were closely followed in the other. In the Czech language the name Hus means "goose"; and when Hus was burned at the stake, the English added the expression "His goose is cooked" to their figures of
speech.

 

When asked about the afterlife, Confucius said, “Not know life. How know death?” (Literal translation from the Chinese.) And when asked about reputation, Confucius said, “It is not sufficient to be loved by righteous men. One must seek also to be hated by unrighteous men.”

 

Not wishing to be a lightning rod for trouble, the author has chosen to phrase the following anecdote in a somewhat vague manner.

When a small religious minority in a certain city did not accept a certain person as a prophet, he ordered the execution of the men in their community, some 800 in all. They
were beheaded in groups of six, their heads and bodies cast immediately into a long trench. After
all 800 had been killed, their property was distributed amongst their murderers. The property
included over 1000 women (who were, of course, property, not people), one of whom was particularly beautiful. This religious leader claimed her as
his own, and he asked her to marry him. The woman, whose husband, father, and brothers had just been beheaded, for some inexplicable reason declined the honor.

Mohandas
Karamchand
Gandhi (the Mahatma, or "Great Soul") was educated in England
during the height of the power of the British Empire, and he spent a good deal of time trying to figure out why this people from a small distant island had grown so great. He read widely and explored possible explanations for British predominance. One idea that he considered seriously
was that the British ate meat, unlike the vegetarian Hindus. (The Hindu tradition
of
Ahimsa,
usually translated as non-violence, though it has karmic implications, is at the root of Hindu
vegetarianism.)

Deciding to see if consumption of meat would make him stronger, he ate a few bites of
roasted goat at a London restaurant operated by Sikhs. He spent the rest of the night sleeping
fitfully and awakening from a recurring nightmare in which a live goat was thrashing about and bleating madly in his stomach. He never touched meat again.

 

Pontius Pilate, the Roman official governing
Judea
in 33 A.D., presided over the trial and
crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Though he ordered the execution to pacify an angry mob, Pilate did
not believe Jesus to be guilty of the charges levied against Him. According to account of the trial
recorded in the Gospel of John, when Jesus said, "Everyone who is of the truth
heareth
my voice," Pilate responded, "What is truth?"

This cryptic question has sparked volumes of speculation as to the meaning of Pilate's words, but the explanation is actually quite simple. The Romans had a fondness for wordplay,
and a very popular game was the creation of anagrams. The letters in the Latin words, "Quid
est
veritas
?", what is truth, can be rearranged as "
Est
vir
qui
adest
," which means, it (truth) is the man right here; in other words, Pilate believed Jesus. The incident is recorded in the Gospel of St. John, who witnessed the trial, heard
what Pilate said, and obviously remembered it. But he was a Jew, not a Roman, and his knowledge of Latin was in all likelihood rudimentary. Though he remembered Pilate's words, he probably didn't get the joke.

 

When
St. Augustine
was a young man, he struggled greatly with the temptations of “the devil, the world, and our flesh,” as the Bible describes them. His struggle is reflected in a famous prayer from his youth: “O Lord, grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

In later years he and his mother, St. Monica, travelled from Milan to Rome, where they discovered much to their chagrin that worship practices differed from what they were accustomed to back home. (In Milan, for example, it was customary to fast on Saturday; in Rome it was not.) Confused as to the proper way to behave, they consulted their friend and pastor, St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan. He settled the matter by saying, simply and eventually famously, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”