An updated repost from the archives.
This year the Perseid meteor shower (summer’s best celestial event which began in July and ends around Sept 1) will peak on August 12-13th. The meteors are the most visible between midnight and an hour before dawn, and can best be seen in the Northern Hemisphere. The name “Perseids” is derived from the constellation Perseus. Perseus, in turn, is a demi-god in Greek Mythology. He’s the son of a human woman named Danae and Zeus, the king of the Greek gods. Perseus became famous for slaying Medusa, the monster with serpents for hair, and for marrying Andromeda.
Anyway, during the second century (around 150 AD), a man named Ptolemy was mapping the sky and naming the constellations after Greeks myths–including the stories about Perseus’ life. Fast forward to 258 AD, when a Catholic saint named St. Lawrence was martyred on August 10, during the middle of the Perseid meteor shower. It didn’t take long for legends about St. Lawrence to build up and for his feast day to become associated with the Perseid meteor showers… hence why this meteor shower is also called the “tears of St. Lawrence”.
Historians believe that St. Lawrence, the patron saint of libraries and librarians, the poorest of the poor, comics, and chefs, was martyred on August 10, 258 AD, give or take a day or so. That uncertainty meant that, during the Middle Ages, people celebrated this saint’s feast day over three days, August 9-11. But why did people spend three days, in the middle of the busy agricultural season, honoring this saint? Because, not only did he perform many, many miracles during the dark days of the early christian church, St. Lawrence is best known for his courageous actions in the face of a horrific death.
In case you’ve never heard of this saint, he has the distinction of being the first saint to be grilled to death over an open gridiron. (hence his devotion to/from chefs). St. Lawrence is also known as the father of comics because, supposedly, while he was being burned to death he said to the Roman soldiers standing nearby, “I’m done on this side. Turn me over.”
But let me back up for a bit. St. Lawrence was born on December 21, 225 AD and when he was 22 years old, he became a deacon in Rome under the tutelage of Pope Sixtus. At this time (according to the historian and Bishop of Carthage, St. Cyprian), Christians were being persecuted all over the Roman Empire. Their lands, property, and wealth were confiscated and they were murdered in the street. Because of the persecution, many Christians went into hiding with nothing to their name. When St. Lawrence became an archdeacon, he was given two jobs. The first was to hand out the church’s wealth to those most in need. So St. Andrew used the church’s money to buy and hand out food, clothing, and anything else these people needed. Since these christians were not allowed to use money (or risk getting caught and killed), St. Andrew made all the purchases and handed out supplies in secret.
His second job was to protect all of the written works the church was collecting at this time. These works would, eventually, form the core of the Vatican library. Rome wanted to burn every document the church had collected, but St. Andrew began hiding these documents. After a few months of this, Pope Sixtus (a man of great power and influence) died and the prefect of Rome went to St. Lawrence and demanded all the church’s money and every document they owned. According to St. Ambrose’s notes on this event, St. Lawrence said he needed …”three days to gather the wealth. He worked swiftly to distribute as much Church property to the indigent as possible to prevent it from being seized by the prefect. On the third day, at the head of a small delegation, he presented himself to the prefect. When ordered to deliver the treasures of the Church, he presented the city’s indigent, crippled, blind, and suffering, and declared that these were the true treasures of the Church: “Here are the treasures of the church. You see, the church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor!”
As you can imagine, Rome’s prefect (who worked for Emperor Valerian) was not happy with St. Lawrence’s cleverness. St. Lawrence had spent all the church’s money and hidden all of the church’s documents. So the prefect had St. Lawrence arrested, imprisoned, and sentenced to death. After this, the history is a bit sketchy. According to legend, St. Lawrence was killed by being grilled to death on a gridiron. And, like I mentioned above, tradition has him joking about his death by asking the soldiers to turn him over. That quip made him an early church legend and is still talked about today. But in the early 20th century, a historian named Rev. Patrick Healy found a simple error in the historical texts. The church announced the death of a martyr with the words “Passus est” which means “He suffered“. But Rev. Healy found a mistake in the early texts describing St. Lawrence’s death. The P in “passus” was left off and the announcement read as “Assus est” which means “He roasted.” Was this a deliberate mistake? Or even a mistake at all? Was St. Lawrence beheaded like other martyrs at the time? Or was he roasted to death because of his cheekiness?
No one really knows, but tradition has kept the story of St. Lawrence being roasted instead of beheaded. And, honestly, it makes for a better story. Especially when you take into consideration the date and month that he died. Not long after his death, people began noticing something in the summer night skies, especially around the dates between Aug 9-11 — a cosmic display of meteor showers. Now we call this annual event the Perseid Meteor Shower. This event looks like falling stars are streaming outwards from the Perseus Constellation and across the entire summer sky and are best seen during those three days in August. Because of the timing of this event, and the fact most people didn’t understand what was happening, this spectacular streak of light was (and still is) called “St. Lawrence’s Flaming Tears” or “Tears of St. Lawrence”.
This year the event will happen August 12-13th, and despite the nearly full moon you may still see cosmic dust moving at 130,000 mph across the sky. And if you do, remember the tears of St. Lawrence–the real man who died to protect the poor and his library while at the same time keeping his sense of humor.
