St. Anthony of Padua was a medieval saint who gained great fame in Italy for his zealous rooting out of heretics. As a preaching friar he might be heard to shout: “There are 27 known heretics in the State Department.” But he didn’t just discover heretics; he employed miracles to cure them of their heresy. Most of these miracles involved the use of animals, for he seemed to get along quite well with critters.
On one occasion, having discovered a person harboring heretical opinions, Friar Anthony, to convince the heretic of his errant ways, caused the fishes in a nearby lake to lift up their heads and listen to him. Now unlike Doctor Doolittle who talked to the animals, Friar Anthony preached to them. And he preached one fine sermon to those attentive fishes. And when those fishes all shouted “Amen!” at the conclusion of the sermon, that heretic was converted and stayed converted.
Another day, another heretic (there was no shortage of heretics – still isn’t), Anthony caused the man’s mule, after three days of no food, to kneel down and pray instead of rushing to eat a bundle of hay that was set before it. Another conversion.
St. Anthony was also known as a protector of animals (although starving a mule for three days might be considered counter-intuitive) particularly of pigs. A contemporary described him as the universally accepted patron of hogs, frequently having a pig for a companion – possibly because, as a hermit living in a hole in the earth and eating roots, he and the hogs had in common both their diet and their lodging.
What with his lifestyle and zealousness, he cut short his days, departing on June 13, 1231, at the age of 35, leaving pigs and heretics alike to their own devices.
Face Down in a Cranberry Bog, Part 2: the killer returns
Not entirely sure I was doing the right thing, I waded a foot or two into 
the bog, and standing over him, in water up to mid-calf, I lifted his head to look at his face. I wasn’t an expert on bodies in or out of bogs, but I was pretty sure he was dead. I hoped it wasn’t because he had ignored all those signs and waded into the bog.
Dropping his face back into the bog with a mumbled apology, I looked up and panicked momentarily when I saw the silent figure silhouetted against the hazy sunshine. I clambered up the slope and found myself facing my bicyclist She stood there silently – trembling, vulnerable, wanting desperately to be tucked into the reassuring arms of a person pushing sixty.
“Is…is he…?” she stammered.
“Dead? I think so.”
“Oh,” she whimpered and began to cry softly.
“I’m sorry. Is it somebody you know…knew?”
She shook her head in jerking affirmation. “I…I killed him.”
“You killed him?” A stupid reply. Her three well-chosen words did not leave themselves open to speculative interpretations.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I really didn’t. Could you help me?”
Here, for all I knew, stood Charlotte Corday or Lucretia Borgia, blood-stained hands stretching out to ensnare me in her fiendish crime. She didn’t just want me to condone the killing of this stranger whose only fault as far as I knew was a lousy taste in boxer shorts. She wanted me to help cover up the crime, as though helping her with her corpse was on a par with afternoon tea or casual sex.
“How did you kill him?” I asked, looking before leaping.
She lowered her eyes. “We were making love and he died.” She probably didn’t see the chill that I felt surge through my face, this bicycling Jezebel who had smiled at me for a week only to betray me in a cranberry bog with a man who wore red boxer shorts. And now, fresh from her tryst, she sought my help.
“How did he die? I don’t think I understand.” I was pretty sure I understood – but I wanted suffering, a little humiliation perhaps.
“You mean in detail?” I didn’t answer. “We were, well you know, over there at the edge of that big pond thing.” She pointed to a spot at the edge of the bog just five feet up from her stone cold paramour.
“Why there?” I persisted, in my role as unrelenting grand inquisitor.
“That’s where we were standing when it started to happen. It just happened; we didn’t plan it or anything.” She was getting a little testy now. “We were… you know, and he was grinning at me but then his eyes got real wide, his face got red, and he just sort of went limp and rolled over and down the hill. And he hasn’t moved since.” She began to cry hard, and I regretted the ferocity of my interrogation. “I don’t know what to do. We shouldn’t have been here together. It would be terribly embarrassing for a lot of people.”
Had I been standing outside myself – outside my big mouth – listening as I spoke, I’d probably think he really isn’t saying that, is he? But he was. I mean I was. “You go,” I said. “I’ll report it to the police. Everything will be all right.”
She looked at me with an expression of mingled astonishment and adoration, as though I were her savior, which I guess I was. “If you think that’s best. I’ll do whatever you think is best.” I wonder what it looks like to watch a person pushing sixty turn to silly putty faster than Lot could say “Don’t look b…”
“Maybe we could meet somewhere later, so I can tell you how it goes,” I said as unemotionally as I was capable of.
“Okay.” Her little smile was tentative, but it was a smile.
“How about the beach at ‘Sconset?”
“Okay.”
“In two hours?”
“Okay.”
continued
Wretched Richard's Almanac 