Unthinkable Wings

Are you familiar with the Blackadder I episode where he's made Archbishop of Canterbury, and sets up a nice trade in holy relics.

Also - in the cathedral in Brussels last year, we saw a fragment of the true cross, which had been covered in silver as a sort of reliquary by the Irish (with rather nice evangelists' emblems); and then when it was taken to Belgium, encased in a further reliquary.

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That Blackadder episode is great - especially the deathless exchange

Baldrick: That finger of John the Baptist is a fake.
Blackadder: How on earth would you know?
Baldrick: You can only get them in boxes of ten.

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I hope that the cardinal would approve of the fate of his remains, too. (And while I appreciate some of what Peter Tatchell has done, I do wish that he would break out of his tunnel vision from time to time.)

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Um, what has Peter Tatchell done?

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Articulating the case for civil liberties for minority groups, including in one particular case an old friend of mine (whom I haven't actually seen since he became a she...); while most of the stunts are counterproductive, and his harrowing of people like David Hope mistaken (if one can be glad to be gay, one should also let someone leave their sexuality a 'grey area') the attempted citizens' arrest of Robert Mugabe raised a cheer here.

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What's the connection with the post? I must be missing something ...

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Tatchell has been arguing against the translation of Newman's remains on the grounds that this would separate Newman from the friend whom he wanted to be buried alongside; Tatchell casts the relationship in contemporary homosexual terms, or so it has been reported.

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Ah, I see; thanks.

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Tatchell casts the relationship in contemporary homosexual terms, or so it has been reported.

I haven't read that specifically attributed to Tatchell, but I have heard it. I assume the Vatican will be going into the matter, but while I don't personally mind one way or the other, I think it's risky to jump to conclusions on such matters. There's certainly a long tradition of monastic 'spiritual friendships' which, while tending to be expressed in language we might think suggestive of a sexual element, were at least in theory not sexual or expressed in a physical manner (which is the only bit older morals would have cared about, of course).

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There were similar relationships in the army; two senior early eighteenth-century army officers were buried in the same tomb by their request after serving and living together for decades. A fourteenth-century example is the relationship between Edward II and Piers Gaveston, often assumed to be homosexual (and the basis for the charges of sodomy against Edward II at the time of his deposition, it's usually assumed) but described by a 1990s author as adoptive brotherhood, I think.

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It wouldn't matter so much if Peter Tatchell was only his own worst enemy, rather at times also being the worst enemy of the people he claims to speak for.

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True enough.

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rivrea.livejournal.com

Bah. The cathedral in my hometown has a splinter of the Holy Cross as well, so why would I need to buy one on e-bay...? It's probably more hygienic than the Virgin Mary on grilled cheese miracle, though.

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Very true; if nothing else, it can't go mouldy.

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bookwormsarah.livejournal.com

I saw a BBC headline on the website a few days ago saying something about Newman being exhumed. I thought "That was quick, he's only just died" until I realised (several days later) that it wasn't *Paul* Newman they were talking about...

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Heh!

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davidbrider.livejournal.com

Okay. I may be going slightly mad. There's this idea/story/vague possibility of a really crack novel that I'm sort of meaning to write where a relic of the True Cross ends up being sold on an internet auction site.

I sort of feel that reality has rather beaten me to it now.

*mmph*

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