Friday, February 15, 2019

The Patron Saint of Undisturbed Reading Time


It wouldn't take much effort to properly identify the saint whom the sculpture above is actually supposed to represent, but I must admit I have no interest in that.

Instead, I admire the quiet efficiency with which that sword in the saint's right hand is likely to discourage all comers from disrupting the saint's focus on the book in his left.

Of course since most interruptions of our reading time these days are from our various electronic devices--or our own addiction to such devices--the saint has his work cut out for him. But, then, he would never had been beatified if he hadn't already shown some capacity for performing miraculous interventions.

4 comments:

  1. Well, I suppose you could use the sword as a bookmark when you hopped down for a coffee?

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    1. It would have also been extremely useful back in the days when one still had to cut the pages of a book to read it.

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  2. I think it's Saint Paul.

    https://aleteia.org/2018/10/03/why-is-st-paul-depicted-carrying-a-sword/

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    1. Yes, thank you for the link, Alex, that does indeed seem to be who it is. I also happened upon another statue of a sword-carrying saint in a different church whose engraved base explicitly identified him.

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