Thursday, January 24, 2008
The Barley Eater
Today is the saint's day of Macedonius the Barley Eater, who spent more than 40 years living in a deep pit in the Syrian desert, eating only barley mixed with water - he's about halfway down this list. What cards these ascetic saints were... It was also on this day that, in 1984, the first Apple Mac went on sale, and, in 1935, the first canned beer, courtesy of the Kreuger Brewing Co of Virginia - barley and water again.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I disagree.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is not enough to disagree. One needs to "disagree vehemently".
ReplyDeleteMacedonius sounds a tough customer. We could do with more of his kind: "He was ordained priest by Flavian of Antioch, who was obliged to use artifice to induce him to leave his mountain abode; and ordained him, without his being aware of it, during the celebration of the eucharist. When informed of what had occurred, Macedonius, imagining that his ordination would oblige him to give up his solitude and his barley diet, flew into a passion ill becoming his sanctity; and after pouring out the bitterest reproaches against the patriarch and the priests, he took his walking staff, for he was now an old man, and drove them away."
Thanks for that, Mark - I'm really warming to the old Barley Eater...
ReplyDeleteNige, long ago I read a wonderful book called The Desert Hermits. It wasn't by Peter Brown, who wrote equally fascinating things on stylites. That's what we need on the vacant Trafalgar Square plinth: a stylite. Surprised Mark Wallingford hasn't cottoned on to that for next year's Turner Prize.
ReplyDeleteA capital idea in every sense, Captain.
ReplyDeleteNige, do you think living forty years in the corner of a Starbucks and injesting nothing but triple low-fat moccachinos would merit canonization?
ReplyDeletereligion is bonkers. not as bonkers as american lager in cans though.
ReplyDelete