4) There's a long list of saints often depicted holding staffs, but the least obscure is probably St. Joseph. Joey-boy is said to have been marked as chosen by God when his staff flowered like a lily. I didn't see anything on that stained glass to identify the dude, but then I'm no expert. There's a brooch holding his cloak together - maybe someone else recognizes the symbol on it?
6) I seem to remember my Catechesis teacher telling us that purple was the color of penitence and mourning. I do know that it's the liturgical color for Advent, the season leading up to Bebeh Jebus' birth. Aside from that, purple has a long history in the classics as the color of blood - those Greek dudes seemed to think it was more poetical to bleed purple than the infinitely more prosaic Catholic tradition of bleeding red.
None of those really seem to fit with what Show was going for, though. Mostly I just thought it looked cool behind Anna's red hair. ^.^
And dude. I'm right there with you swooning over Paradise Lost. Images like "...with it rose Satan involved in rising mist" just knocked my socks off when I read it.
ETA: D'oh! I see I am slow on the uptake, and someone has already addressed the purple issue. 'Pologies.
St. Joseph as in Jesus' foster father? That's...way more interesting than I thought it was. Especially with the use of 'Anna' and, as you pointed out, the purple of Advent. O_O
Yep, that dude. :) The Catholic Church got a lot of mileage out of holding up the Holy Family as the role model for husband/wife relations (particularly in their campaign to vilify sexuality by maintaining Mary's perpetual virginity and insisting that she and Joseph only ever engaged in a "spiritual" marriage) and so there's a lot of extra-Biblical lore surrounding those two.
Yeah, there were several half-siblings involved. But the medieval church maintained that when the Bible said "Jesus' brothers," they actually meant "spiritual brothers." Never mind that the Gospels' original language make a distinction between disciples and brothers...
A lot of it had to do with the writings of men within the church who decided, independent of Scripture, that enjoying sex was sinful. Paul (who came to God through divine revelation, not through actually studying any sacred text) elevated celibacy as more virtuous than marriage. St. Augustine in particular stands out as the dude who spent much of his young life having wanton sex (and a kid) with his mistress. Then he found God, dumped her, and devoted all his scholarly efforts to demonstrating that original sin was All About Sex, and enjoying fornication - ever - made the baby Jesus cry.
The fact that God told his first creations to be fruitful and multiply (along with other inconvenient verses) doesn't count. Cuz, hey. New Testament, new covenant, NEW RULES.
/end babble
Sorry I just dumped all that on you. *sheepish* And I mean no disrespect to Christians or Christianity, either. I just get kind of heated when talking about the history of sex and the church. Centuries of repression and the resulting marginalization of those evil seductresses - women - makes the Duckie kind of volatile and ranty.
Hey, no worries. You're preaching to the (Jewish) choir here. There's a lot of stuff about Christian doctrine I don't get, especially the Roman Catholic Holy Mystery stuff. My faith is full of bizarre stuff, but we do believe in sex. And on that note, this week's parashat was Sodom and Gomorrah. Good times.
Ooh, the whole bit with Lot and the hot angels? (By the context, I'm guessing a parashat is kind of like a reading?) I've always been fascinated with that story, particularly because I've heard that it's perceived pretty differently in Judaism than in Christianity.
parashat is the Hebrew word for the weekly reading, yeah. The cool thing is that every temple/synagogue/yeshiva reads the same parashat on the same day.
I don't know how it would be different...I mean, it's all pretty squicky in that part. I did learn today that 'washing one's feet' is a euphemism for sex. Which TOTALLY freaked me out because I went to Episcopal School for many years and all I could think about was the Jesus washing the Disciples' feet and that's just WRONG. But, I was reassured to learn from the Rabbi, that the Gospel authors may have been looking to a Levite tradition of washing one another's feet in the Temple and not, in fact, suggesting a Jesus-centric orgy.
6) I seem to remember my Catechesis teacher telling us that purple was the color of penitence and mourning. I do know that it's the liturgical color for Advent, the season leading up to Bebeh Jebus' birth. Aside from that, purple has a long history in the classics as the color of blood - those Greek dudes seemed to think it was more poetical to bleed purple than the infinitely more prosaic Catholic tradition of bleeding red.
None of those really seem to fit with what Show was going for, though. Mostly I just thought it looked cool behind Anna's red hair. ^.^
And dude. I'm right there with you swooning over Paradise Lost. Images like "...with it rose Satan involved in rising mist" just knocked my socks off when I read it.
ETA: D'oh! I see I am slow on the uptake, and someone has already addressed the purple issue. 'Pologies.
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And, also, how do you be fruitful and multiply while vilifying sex? I just...never got the Catholic Church. Like at all.
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A lot of it had to do with the writings of men within the church who decided, independent of Scripture, that enjoying sex was sinful. Paul (who came to God through divine revelation, not through actually studying any sacred text) elevated celibacy as more virtuous than marriage. St. Augustine in particular stands out as the dude who spent much of his young life having wanton sex (and a kid) with his mistress. Then he found God, dumped her, and devoted all his scholarly efforts to demonstrating that original sin was All About Sex, and enjoying fornication - ever - made the baby Jesus cry.
The fact that God told his first creations to be fruitful and multiply (along with other inconvenient verses) doesn't count. Cuz, hey. New Testament, new covenant, NEW RULES.
/end babble
Sorry I just dumped all that on you. *sheepish* And I mean no disrespect to Christians or Christianity, either. I just get kind of heated when talking about the history of sex and the church. Centuries of repression and the resulting marginalization of those evil seductresses - women - makes the Duckie kind of volatile and ranty.
Reply
Hey, no worries. You're preaching to the (Jewish) choir here. There's a lot of stuff about Christian doctrine I don't get, especially the Roman Catholic Holy Mystery stuff. My faith is full of bizarre stuff, but we do believe in sex. And on that note, this week's parashat was Sodom and Gomorrah. Good times.
Reply
Ooh, the whole bit with Lot and the hot angels? (By the context, I'm guessing a parashat is kind of like a reading?) I've always been fascinated with that story, particularly because I've heard that it's perceived pretty differently in Judaism than in Christianity.
Reply
I don't know how it would be different...I mean, it's all pretty squicky in that part. I did learn today that 'washing one's feet' is a euphemism for sex. Which TOTALLY freaked me out because I went to Episcopal School for many years and all I could think about was the Jesus washing the Disciples' feet and that's just WRONG. But, I was reassured to learn from the Rabbi, that the Gospel authors may have been looking to a Levite tradition of washing one another's feet in the Temple and not, in fact, suggesting a Jesus-centric orgy.
Reply
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