Thomas J. Craughwell - Saints Behaving Badly: The Cutthroats, Crooks, Trollops, Con Men, and Devil-Worshippers Who Became Saints

Saints Behaving Badly

The Cutthroats, Crooks, Trollops, ConMen, and Devil-Worshippers Who Became Saints

Thomas J. Craughwell

Published by Doubleday

a division of Random House, Inc.

Doubleday and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin areregistered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Book design by Nicola Ferguson

The cataloging-in-publication data is on file at the Library ofCongress.

ISBN-13: 978-0-385-51720-1 ISBN-10: 0-38S-S1720-3

Copyright 2006 by Thomas J. Craughwell

For Alex and Steven Mezzomowho never behave badly

Where is Mary Magdalene?

I cansee the reviewers' complaints now. How can you write a book about saints whostarted out as notorious sinners and omit the most famous converted sinner ofall?

Theshort answer is "Mary Magdalene was not a notorious sinner."

Granted,centuries of paintings and sculptures have shown her draped in a loose redrobe, her long, luxurious hair flowing free, her shoulders and sometimes evenher breasts exposedthe very image of female sensuality. But art is not alwaysevidence, especially so in this case. The inescapable fact remains that nowherein the four gospels does it ever say that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute or inany other way sexually promiscuous. True, the gospels of Mark, Matthew, andLuke say that Christ cast seven devils out of Mary Magdalene, but that is noreason to assume that the demons made her "a sure thing." Christ castdevils out of plenty of men, too, but no one suggests that they werelicentious. Luke does mention an anonymous "woman who was a sinner,"but he never suggests this woman was Mary Magdalene.

Where,then, did we get this notion of Mary Magdalene as a harlot? There is evidencethat in the first century of the Christian era Mary's hometown, Magdala, or elMejdel, on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, had an infamousreputation. About the year AD 75 the Roman authorities actually leveled theplace and dispersed its depraved inhabitants. Perhaps the first Christians feltthat anyone who came from el Mejdel had to be bad.

It ismore likely, however, that Mary Magdalene the Prostitute is a composite ofseveral New Testament women. There are lots of Marys in the gospels: Mary themother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarusbeing the most prominent. In an attempt to simplify things, at the end of thesixth century Pope St. Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) asserted that Luke'sanonymous sinner, Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, and Mary Magdalenewere all the same woman. The el Mejdel theory is plausible, but St. Gregory is the most probable source for our misconceptions about theMagdalene.

Inpassing I'd like to mention that the current craze forrehabilitating/rediscovering/reimagining Mary Magdalene has done nothing toclarify the situation. About a year ago a group of Mary Magdalene aficionadosmanaged to convince the pastor of a Catholic parish in northern New Jersey tolet them use his church for a freewheeling service they wanted to conduct inhonor of their favorite saint. The pastor gave them permission to use thebuilding, but barred his parish clergy from presiding at, or even attending,the function. It was just as well. A local newspaper that covered the eventreported that during the service a newly composed "Litany of MaryMagdalene" was read out to the attendees, listing Mary's supposedattributes. My personal favorite was the invocation "O, most inclusiveone!"

Ofcourse, suburban neo-Gnostics are not the only ones guilty of distorting thesaints; perfectly orthodox Christians have been doing so for centuries.Christian art, whether in marble or in plaster, on canvas or on a laminatedholy card, shows us saints who are blissful and pure, who appear incapable ofever uttering a cross word let alone spending years and years hip deep inmortal sin. In other words, most depictions of saints make sanctity look easy.

Atleast since the nineteenth century many authors have gone out of their way tosanitize the lives of the saints, often glossing over the more embarrassingcases with the phrase "he/she was once a great sinner." I don't doubtthe hagiographers' good intentions, but I can't help thinking it is misguidedto edit out the wayward years of a saint's life. In the early centuries of theChurch and all through the Middle Ages writers of saints' lives were perfectlycandid about saints whose early lives were far from saintly. It is from theseancient sources that we learn of the bloodbath St. Olga unleashed on herhusband's assassins; of St. Mary of Egypt trolling the streets of Alexandriafor new sexual conquests; of the obscenely rich St. Thomas Becket looking downat a poor man almost freezing to death in the street and refusing to give himhis cloak.

Thepoint of reading these stories is not to experience some tabloid thrill, but tounderstand how grace works in the world. Every day, all day long, God pours outhis grace upon us, urging us, coaxing us, to turn away from everything that isbase and cheap and unsatisfying, and turn toward the only thing that iseternal, perfect, and truethat is, himself.

What isa saint? A saint is a person who tries to imitate Jesus Christ, who strives topractice the virtues to a heroic degree. Lots of people are good, and somepeople around us show glimmers of saintliness from time to time, but a man or awoman whose entire life, all day, every day, is devoted to self-sacrificinggood works and intense periods of conversation with God (commonly known asprayer), these individuals are rare indeed. Most of us will never know a saint.

Saintsneed not be infallibly perfect all the time. As I mentioned earlier, for the2000 years of the Church's history, hagiographers gloried in the lives of greatsinners who became great saints. Their message is reassuring: if these peoplecan be saved, then so can you!

Butjust as the old storytellers did not whitewash the misdeeds of the saints,neither did they minimize the effort involved in conversion. A conversionexperience is not magic; it is only the first step in a lifetime of striving toavoid the old sins, grow in virtue, and conform one's unruly, rebellious willto the will of God. All that is hard to do, as these stories will show.

[1st century] feast day: September 21

No one likestaxes. But antitaxanimosity was especially intense in ancient Israel during the first century ofthe Christian era. In the gospels tax collectors (also known as publicans) arefrequently mentioned in the same breath as harlots and sinners.

If taxcollectors had a lousy reputation two thousand years ago, they deserved it.Under the Romans, the governor of each province was responsible for collectingthe tax on land. Other taxeson individuals, on personal property, on importsand exportswere subcontracted to private individuals who paid the Romans a feein advance for the right to collect whatever Rome had levied on the conquerednations of its empire. These freelance tax collectors profited from thistransaction by overcharging and extorting as much as they could get out of thetaxpayers. The Romans didn't careas long as they got the full balance of whatwas due. The Jews, on the other hand, cared quite a lot. In their eyes Jewishtax collectors were shameless crooks who committed the twofold crime ofcollaborating with heathens and preying upon their own people. Little wonderthat the Jews of Christ's day regarded tax collectors with loathing.

Matthew,also called Levi in the gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke, was a tax collectorat Capernaum, a Roman garrison town. He was sitting at his table in the customshouse, shaking down his neighbors, when Jesus Christ walked by. Our Lord hadjust healed a paralyzed man; now he was about to reconcile a sinner."Follow me," Christ said. To the surprise of the Roman guards, theclerks, and the taxpayers, Matthew got up, left the money where it lay on thetable, turned his back on a life of government-sanctioned larceny, and joinedthe handful of men we know as the twelve apostles.