Mar 11 2009
Saint Polycarp - Patron Saint of Earaches
It’s been a long time since I’ve update the old middleofnowhere blog - no real valid excuse other than sheer laziness. I was sick for a couple of weeks, but nothing that should have kept me producing page afer page of mindless drivel.
With that in mind and with St. Patrick’s day inching ever closer, I’ve decided to pay homage to a couple of Saints who really got the short end of the stick in terms of the whole “sacrifice to recognition” ratio.
To start, I present to you Saint Polycarp, Patron Saint of Earaches. Earaches, you ask? Yup. How does one become a Saint and be handed this title? Perhaps he himself suffered from tinnitis? Maybe he invented the Q-Tip? Close.
At 86, Polycarp was led into the crowded Smyrna stadium to be burned alive. The flames did not harm him and he was finally killed by a dagger. The centurion ordered the saint’s body burned. The Acts” of Polycarp’s martyrdom are the earliest preserved, fully reliable account of a Christian martyr’s death.
Maybe he was stabbed in the ear?
