This year at Pennsic, I will be teaching a class called "Sexy, Silly, Scheming Saints." (First Wednesday, August 1, 10:00 am, AS4) This class will be focused on fun saint stories from the Golden Legend, a medieval book of saints lives. If you come, here are the stories you can expect to hear:
- St. Basil helps a slave who turned to the devil out of lust for his master's daughter
- Emperor Nero conceives and gives birth to a frog
- St. Nicholas helps a moneylender who has been cheated by a clever debtor
- St. John the Almsgiver pays the same beggar three times
- A prefect has designs on St. Anastasia's maidservants but instead caresses and embraces kitchen implements thinking that it is the servants
- St. Julian causes a man pretending to be dead to actually die
- St. George kills a dragon
- St. Nicholas saves a greedy noble's son
- The Scrooge-like conversion of Peter the tax collector
- Josephus brings a hated slave before Titus to cure him of paralysis
- St. Marina, while cross-dressing as a monk, is accused of rape
- The ghost of St. Gregory kills his successor
- Pope Leo cuts off his own hand to avoid temptation and has it restored by the Virgin Mary
- St. Patrick accidentally wounds the King of the Scots, with a happy conclusion
- St. Andrew helps a bishop who has been beguiled by the devil in the form of a beautiful woman
- A virgin of Antioch is placed in a brothel, but a Christian knight exchanges clothes with hers so that she can preserve her virtue
If any of these sound interesting, I invite you to come to my class and hear the full versions! Also, you may catch a few of them as I camp hop around Pennsic.
