Hagiography: The Quiz, or A Tale of Two Twelve-Year-Olds

Relating to my post from yesterday, I read something fascinating this morning. There are two accounts of saints, both martyrs, young girls of twelve. One was written well after the fact and cannot be verified, but her martyrdom is reputed to have happened in the fourth century. The other account is based on actual eyewitness accounts of an event that happened at the beginning of the twentieth century. See if you can fit the account with the martyr:

Martyr A: She lived in a non-Christian country and was arrested on suspicion of being a Christian. Asked to deny her faith, she gave a spirited rebuttal and kept going on about her faith during her torture until her examiner said in exasperation, "Just behead the horrid, talkative thing!"

Martyr B: She was stabbed while trying to preserve her chastity. On her deathbed she forgave her attacker.

Can't you hear the heavens opening and the angels singing as a bright light bathes Martyr B? But she is actually Maria Goretti, who was murdered in 1902. It is the account of young Saint Reparata that has her miraculously chatting on and on about her faith from within a furnace, where the flames don't burn her. I just read about her this morning in Magnificat and was struck by the fact that here was a saint I can relate to! Thinking of the 12-year-old girls I know (and the one I was sometime back in the Triassic Era), I can imagine the young, vivacious girl not shutting up until her head was cut off much more easily than the sweet thing that forgives her vicious attacker. I find it hard enough as an adult to forgive petty slights; I cannot imagine the average self-absorbed preteen being big enough to forgive someone who had first tried to rape her and then stabbed her. Maria Goretti is a saint we mostly admire from a distance, say, "Wasn't that amazing of her," and then go about our business. Little Reparata is someone I can empathize with: faced with the prospect of being tortured and killed for her faith, she works up all her courage not to apostasize and then can't shut up about not denying her faith. To me it is just fascinating that the unreliable, ancient account feels more true to life than the modern one.

Famous Hat