St. Anthony’s Tongue

more reminiscences from the Veneto, 2003

I owe St. Anthony an apology for what I did in Padua. When I went to venerate his tomb and venerate his relics late that evening before we embarked for Venice, it was with a group of semi-agnostic curiosity-seekers in tow.

There are only two ways Catholics can approach relics. Or perhaps not. My idiosyncratic acquaintance Vera (one of the so-called Maenads, who are actually remarkably sober) manages a third way, but I’ll come to that later. Either you embrace them vigorously as the theological fruit of the Incarnation, or you get, as Strongbad said so succinctly, the jibblies. Maybe not the jibblies, but at least you consider signing up for the Unitarians for a couple of months.

The Church’s long history of venerating the bodies of the saints fascinates me, perhaps because I believe it answers to a real human need to have tangible reminders of the past around us. The physicality of the Faith, which you encounter in a vivid and even graphic sense in Italy, is a great testament to Her truth. While perhaps somewhat unnerving to modern sensibilities, those golden reliquaries and the dozens of grinning skulls on black marble tombs stand as reminders of the General Resurrection.

It’s a call to be familiar with the body, either corrupted or glorified. For my part, I’ve given a nickname to the skeleton on the tomb at the church next door to Studio back in Rome. I think Mort’s rather suitable, don’t you?

On the other hand, there is some hint of that enjoyable head-game called “Shock the Agnostic.” Not that it’s too terribly hard.

Non-believers of a certain stripe are used to seeing religion as drab, dull, a little bit reticent. The province of silly old biddies of both sexes. At the very least, seeing that some of us still take the old traditions seriously, that someone would encase a sacred chunk of some saint in silver and gold—well, that might be enough to shock them out of their complacency.

There’s plenty of that in Italy, trust me—even an ordinary pilgrimage statue can be plenty weird, like the “Smiling St. Zeno” in Verona who has a fish dangling from his crook, and the strangeness factor is easily upped when you get to second-class relics—like St. Lawrence’s gridiron in Rome—and then, trumping it all are the body parts, sometimes very interesting particular body parts indeed.

Coming from Irish-Catholic America, evangelized by priests from a war-zone country where non-Protestant churches, much less an apostle’s finger, were rare, Europe and particularly Italy are powerful antidotes to the Cartesian temptation to see the Faith as exclusively spiritual, disembodied or even Gnostic. The teenager who throws Christ over for Buddha in search of “something more exotic” can’t possibly try that line of argument when he’s standing in front of a half-preserved jawbone of a medieval Franciscan preacher.

For that matter, it might remind him that the central pillar of the Faith, the Eucharist, is pretty wild stuff. And I mean that in all seriousness; a God that allows Himself to be touched, much less eaten—it screws with our cozy, comfy, half-inbred Deist notions.

I think that’s why I get so excited over bits of saints. To some extent the novelty of seeing two dozen waxy-looking local virgin martyrs at every turn is wearing off. I’m now holding out for the big guys, the Apostles and Doctors. Or at least some recognizable body parts as opposed to those tiny third-class bits that crowd every sacristy from Turin to Salerno.

So, maybe in retrospect, I had a good-enough reason to publicize my friends about the various portions of St. Anthony displayed at his shrine in Padua. At the best, it would be a teachable moment, and at the worst, apart from the gross-out factor, they’d have something weird to write home about. I mean, a sanctoral tongue, you wouldn’t want to miss that.

Incidentally, it’s not just the tongue. They have his vocal chords and also “the sacred chin,” which went missing for a time when it was stolen in 1991 by masked bandits who were working for a Venetian mobster who wanted it as leverage to get clemency.

That alone proves how universal Anthony’s appeal is, in a perverse sort of way. If you’re going to introduce someone to relics, maybe St. Anthony is a good place to start. Everyone loves St. Anthony; even the most execrably-catechized Catholic remembers the little rhyming prayer to him that their kindergarten teacher taught him: St. Anthony, St. Anthony, something is lost and needs to be found / Please come round. The fact he’s a Franciscan, a bit more cuddly in the popular mind than my edgier favorites, the firebrand Dominicans, also helps.

It was raining softly when the bus reached Padua. Some of the Maenads and I grabbed lunch at the local Brek, one of a strange Italian chain of budget restaurants that can only be described as Wolfgang Puck’s idea of fast food. They cook the pasta in front of you and the ingredients always seem to be fresh, so you don’t agonize over the contents of, say, the strangely tomato-free pomodoro sauce from the tourist menu or the vacuum-packed tramezzino from that culinary blasphemy, Mr. Panino. It’s cheap, reliable and the cafeteria setup and weird décor is a small price to pay.

Weird décor, yes. The room we were eating in seemed to be named after the circus strongman-turned-Egyptologist Belzoni, and was decorated with the requisite papyri and various miscellanea from Cecil Rhodes’s garage sale. Belzoni seems to be a local boy-done-good, but St. Anthony trumped everyone else easily. Incidentally, the cafeteria was the ugliest building on the piazza.

The girls went off to investigate shopping possibilities and I excused myself to stroll down the Corso Garibaldi towards the river. I passed a store display window decorated with dummies whose heads were covered in paper bags with smiley faces magic-markered on them, as well as another of those Giuseppe-slept-here statues of the redshirted liberator. Then there was a delicate little half-alpine baroque campanile and a newsstand selling not only next year’s Mussolini calendar but one with pictures of Che Guevara as well, in an attempt, it seems, to offend as many people as possible.

Padua’s architecture is a curious, if pleasant mix. The three main squares of the city are those of the Frutti, Erbe and Signori, the fruits, herbs and Lords, which respectively held markets and government buildings. A sensible enough arrangement.

The only eyesore is the palazzo de ragione, one of those monster town meeting halls that dot northern Italy with a roof like an overturned galleon hull. It resembles nothing so much as an idiot-medieval version of Palladio’s basilica at Vicenza. You can understand why the Vicentine city-fathers got Andrea to reface it. Still, the teeming market halls that cluster beneath it are a marvel, far more lively than the starchy, gentrified shops under the basilica. They’re full of fresh, fishy, salty, meaty smells, though I also spotted a rather tasteful signboard advertising Carne Equine, which gave me pause. The second one I’d seen that week.

The inside of the hall, which we glimpsed later at dusk, is a vast space roofed with a complex web of medieval beams. The frescoes are a medieval maze full of saints, bishops, tradesmen and allegories of the liberal arts, a sober riot of faded blue and gold. Unlike the exterior, I’d hate to see this hall classicized.

I spent a pleasant portion of the afternoon seated under a loggia in front of a closed theological bookstore sketching the quiet little Cathedral piazza, just down the street from the Piazza Signori. The sun was forgiving and warm amid the clearing clouds and chill air.

The Cathedral front is one of those endlessly-unfinished blank walls that are a testament to Domani and serve as the focus for a Beaux-arts cottage-industry for proposals to re-face it, naturally, none of which ever get taken up. Its silhouette is nonetheless complex, mysterious, almost irrational in its near-Venetian splendor. As you slowly move past the elaborate Romanesque cupolas and drums of the attached baptistery, you see a slow and stately procession of Venetian brick Gothic apses and a lofty lead-sheathed dome that is half San Marco, half Santa Maria della Salute rising over the crossing.

We saw the nave at twilight, whitewashed walls full of delicate dusky shadows as the transepts receded into the darkness. Its forms were massive and strong, Serlian delicacy transmuted into a prophesy of Edward Lutyens. The plan was, to put it mildly, curious, with not one but two crossings with transepts, a lantern over one and the dome over the other, but the idiosyncrasy was lost amid the building’s powerful, stark ornamentation.

Heavy, vigorously crude pietra serena capitals and cornices rose above us, a provincial memory of the great island churches of Venice that we would see in a few days’ time. A handful of ornamental sparks, gilt on the high altar and tasseled hanging baldacchini, gave a trace of life to this empty sepulcher. It was spare and solemn and powerful, a tribute to the Spartan myth of the Venetian republic that had ruled her terrafirma with an iron fist.

Old Venice’s memory is ubiquitous but not overpowering here. The University’s administration building is housed in the vast old capitanato with a blue-dialled zodiacal clock and a relief of the lion of San Marco. Another winged lion stands atop a high pillar, mimicking the column of the piazetta before the Doge’s palace.

Ah yes, the University. Padua’s the home of another of those anarchic, ancient Italian universities, just like her sister Bologna. Students periodically rose up in revolt against their professors. If I recall correctly, one time it happened when the faculty canceled vacation, preventing them from being able to attend the raucous Venetian carnevale.

There were dozens of semi-obscene satirical posters plastered all over the place poking fun at student leaders—we’d seen them in Vicenza as well—while the students themselves seemed to be engaging in another time-honored evening ritual of open-air striptease. A large crowd of them were watching a co-ed strip herself down in front of a block of academic offices. At least Professor Nessman told me it was probably a ritual. The woman seemed to be taking the lead, at least, but it still was a little unnerving. I decided to spare the catechesis, though I think I shouted something suitably indignant.

Holy tongues and studious strippers. Strange place, Padua.

St. Anthony’s tomb stood on the edge of the old city, and it was dark by the time we navigated our way through the twisty side-streets towards the wide piazza that fronts on the vast façade of the Basilica. It rises, half-oriental and Venetian, in a myopic dream of domes disappearing into the floodlit night.

Oh yeah, and they expected us to see it all in about ten minutes.

Despite the growing darkness, souvenir carts were still set up in the square, peddling the usual junk-drawer assortment of rosaries, brand-spanking-new icons and garish holy-card-quality plaques. More interestingly, large trays of banded candles were being peddled. They ranged between oversized baptismal taper to midget Paschal candle size, some tall, some small, some absolutely huge. I later discovered it was customary for the faithful to purchase one to leave behind in veneration at the saint’s tomb, finding large numbers of snuffed-out tapers lying in metal pans around the sepulcher.

The church was cavernous, suffused with a pale green subterranean gloom. Gothic arches and piebald striped pillars flanking dozens of frescoed saints ensconced in tromp l’oeil arches gave it an almost Moorish grandeur, seeming a backdrop out of Parzifal. The high altar was immense, bristling with tapers and gesticulating saints all gazing on a lofty crucifix. My reverie was interrupted by a small knot of my friends eager to get down to business. “So, Matty, let’s see about that tongue,” said one eagerly. I was all too happy to play tour-guide.

We flew past mosaick’d side-altars and medieval murals teeming with virgins and martyrs and found a well-lit fiberglass sign hanging oddly against the medieval surroundings that directed us to the Saint’s tomb, a vast altar of white marble gleaming in the floodlights. We followed the crowds of pilgrims, filing clumsily around the ambulatory, brushing our hands against the bronze plaque marking his body, perhaps out of reverence or faint confusion or a little of both. The ten minutes were ticking past, and besides my friends’ curiosity, for my own sake I didn’t want to miss the relic either.

Another nice, well-lit sign, like something you’d see in an airport, this time pointing me to the Chapel of Relics. And that was enough for us. We sped down the curve of the ambulatory, past darkened chapels, and there it was. The anticipation was driving me nuts—either this’d be a sacred moment, or my shot at seeing one of the greatest saints of the Franciscan Order would be marred by a bunch of hangers-on looking for a cheap thrill, and it would probably be largely my own fault. The oratory stood at the head of the basilica, directly on-line with the high altar, the apex of St. Anthony’s cultus.

The chapel was a curvilinear baroque riot of dappled rose marble and wild crowding cherubim. A raised ambulatory studded with statues ringed the vast reliquary reredos screening the entire back wall of the circular chapel, its three arches framing a complex tangle of gilt rococo strapwork supporting a jeweled constellation of dozens upon dozens of pinnacled ostensories and monstrances, gem-studded chalices and patens and ciboria. Inscriptions identified the complex web of sanctoral identities, crumpled parchment signatures of theologians framed in gold and everything from first to third class of a dozen more obscure virgins, martyrs and confessors. Overhead, a gilt sunburst framed the stucco dove of the Holy Ghost.

More touchingly, in a plain display-case below the curve of the ambulatory was the tattered grey-brown habit in which the saint’s holy body had been laid to rest centuries earlier, reverently removed from the tomb at the most recent of its canonical identifications in 1981. They had placed his cracked and worn bones in a plexiglass box and sealed it with ribbons and wax to preserve the preacher’s identity for another generation.

And then there was the star of the show, the fragments of holiness that justified this grand panoply of sacral gold and heavenly gems. In the crowded center arch, amid the whorls of gilding, at the lowest register laid a strange and unsettling reliquary, a great crystal ball flaming up from a bronze book, combining the saint’s attributes of fiery tongues and learned tomes. In the glass sphere, eerily fogged with perspiration and humidity, were St. Anthony’s incorrupt vocal chords, a testimony to his preaching that had only been discovered when the tomb was last opened.

At eye level was the eerie sacred chin, encased in a golden bust-shaped reliquary of almost Slavic, Byzantine opulence. Intricate lapis-blue enamel whorled around brow and shoulders, around the vast filigreed halo that ringed the head’s crown. And where the face would have been, the gentle, sweet face so familiar from so many preconciliar sentimental illustrations, was a glass dome, a sphere like a medieval spaceman’s helmet, the mottled, toothed jaw within a peculiar mottled brown-pink.

And above was the tongue. Enshrined in its pinnacled ostensory, it looked like some obscure spiny sea-invertebrate. Yet it was a miracle it still existed, shriveled or not, rather than having returned to dust epocha ago.

We filed around the horseshoe-shaped ambulatory, some staring, some asking me for explanations as I ran through the same little sermonette about five times, others simply nodding in serene puzzlement. A few Italians who had wandered in our group bothered to cross themselves. I paused by Professor Nessman, standing at the entrance. “It’s amazing,” I muttered, overcome with the weird wonder of it all. “Oh yes,” he concurred eagerly as he glanced back at me, though I realized he was busy fascinating himself with the ceiling plasterwork. I don’t think he got within ten feet of the sacred chin.

I sort of shrugged and went back to hovering on the edge, trying to see if I could turn this into a catechizable moment. Eventually I paused over by the worn wooden desk manned by a Minorite friar and mumbled how much it was for the pamphlets on the Shrine. He gently told me it was just a donation, and I started dropping coins into the slot. He quickly told me to stop and handed me the booklet. I whispered Pace back to him and smiled a farewell.

At least now I knew there was another person in that chapel who believed.

***

When I got back to the bus, I was eager to find out what Vera thought, shock, delight or mere puzzlement. She’d wandered off at some point and I’d missed her in the Chapel. She likes her saints in neat little tombs; she’s neither hot nor cold on relics, though, being an artist like myself, she understands perfectly the equilibrium of body and soul that Catholicism preaches. Though unlike me, she doesn’t quite go for the gory Latinate flourishes of gilded skulls, black Requiem chausibles or morbid memento mori tombs that I tend to see as the logical conclusion of that doctrine. So, none of the fun stuff. Naturally, I was curious to hear what her reaction would be. Plus, she’s so difficult to shock: I couldn’t miss out on a great opportunity like this.

Well, Vera is Vera—she’s the sort who colors outsides the lines and it still turns out like Rembrandt. She’d managed to avoid the whole problem entirely and had taken the opportunity to track down a Friar and go to Confession.

Perhaps she chose the better half. I tromped up the stairs to the second story of the bus, feeling completely foolish. Had anyone gotten anything out of this, or had I just simply made the Church’s pious customs look weird? Had my little plan backfired on me? I shrugged and tried not to think about it.

Then a funny thing happened. People piped up once the bus started rolling. Curious souls wanted to know what miracles the great saint had done, how he had earned that enameled halo that ringed the reliquary of the sacred chin. What had he preached? Why had he preached? And so soon all the popular tales of the sermon to the fish, of the donkey who knelt down before the Sacrament, of the miser’s lost heart were soon whirling through the imagination of all my friends, eagerly perusing the pamphlets they’d picked up on the way out that they might have sooner just discarded.

All that because of a dried-up tongue that looked like a sea urchin. It seems to me that St. Anthony, silenced by death, is still as great a preacher today as he was during those long-ago days of the early Franciscans. And so it should be.