The Meeting of David and Abigail. Peter Paul Rubens. National Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Fun with Sheep and Lighted Candles

Today, we have a rather interesting memorial listed in some calendars, that of the prophetess St. Abigail, wife of King David the Prophet. Old Testament saints are few and far-between on most calendars; in the west, the Maccabean Martyrs were the only so honored in the Tridentine rite (but for some reason were relegated to local calendars in 1969: so much for ecumenism). Farther on back, in western Europe during the Middle Ages, Abel's feast was celebrated on the second of January and Adam and Eve's on the vigil of Christmas. However, in the east, the Old Testament saints were widely honored, and still are in both the Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic church year. In eastern-influenced Venice one can find icons of the long-suffering St. Job (sometimes oddly conflated with St. Humphrey the nudist) and a church dedicated to Moses. Indeed, until the most recent edition of the Ramsgate Book of Saints, they were given equal billing with their more recent Christian cousins in the text, with references to St. Isaiah, St. Ezekiel, St. Zechariah, ad infinitum. Incidentally, today is also the feast of St. Joshua, Moses' successor and the first of the Judges of Israel, and also that of another judge, St. Gideon. We seem to be up to our neck in Israelites today, and I think I like it.

In this vein it is perhaps appropriate that St. Anna the Prophetess, one of the last saints of the old dispensation, be remembered today as well. She, in addition to her notable role at Christ's presentation in the Temple with St. Simeon Senex (meaning "old man" in Latin, the root of both senator and senile which isn't a surprise), also watched over the Virgin while She lived in the Temple previous to Her betrothal to Joseph.

More recently, today is also the feast of three different saints all named Giles. The most famous, also called Aegidius, seems to have some sort of weird association with sheep I can't quite fathom. According to one source, in Spain it "was formerly the custom to wash the rams and color their wool a bright shade on Giles' feast day, tie lighted candles to their horns, and bring the animals down the mountain paths to the chapels and churches to have them blessed." Frankly, I feel sorry for the sheep with that whole circus-esque death-defying flaming candles of doom hullabaloo. Among the Basques, today the shepherds return from the mountains and attend Mass with the utmost ceremony with their crooks and their best rams (which must be rather messy), kicking off a big day of processions, dancing, and more sheepish fun.

In England, convicted criminals were presented with a "St. Giles' bowl" of ale before they were hanged. He seems to be another one of those saints invoked against sterility, and is also invoked by people afraid of the night, lepers, the insane, cripples, handicapped people, spur-makers, people associated with sheep and rams in particular, epileptics, those breast-feeding (huh?), breast-cancer victims, and hermits, who probably need someone to talk to anyway. The other two Giles didn't do nearly as much and are rather on the esoteric side of hagiography. The only thing which really distinguishes one from the other is the friendship the Giles from Borgo San Sepolcro had with St. Arcanus, though bear in mind that Arcanus means something close to "obscure" in Latin. There's also St. Constantius today, a former bishop of Aquino mentioned by St. Gregory the Great, which suggests there must just be something holy in the groundwater there, what with a certain plus-sized Dominican being from that general area.