This year offers an excellent opportunity for the Perseid Meteor shower, peaking on the morning of Monday, August 13. We already have lots of information about viewing the shower, which you can see elsewhere on Earth & Sky. So I will say a few words here about history related to the shower.
Timelapse photo of the Perseid Meteor shower with an “allsky” camera, Guffey, Colorado, by Chris Peterson. Photo courtesy of Peterson and the Cloudbait Observatory, and used with permission.
The early centuries after Christ were often unpleasant for Christians and sometimes especially the clergy. One such unfortunate soul was Saint Lawrence — patron saint of archivists, librarians, comedians, cooks, brewers, students, launderers, confectioners, and cutlers.
Lawrence, one of the seven deacons of Rome in the Third Century AD, was probably feeling a bit uneasy when Emperor Valerian ordered Pope Sixtus II and four of his deacons beheaded on one day, followed by two more deacons on the following day. However, Lawrence was apparently a pretty gutsy guy. When the prefect of Rome ordered Lawrence to surrender the Church’s treasures, Lawrence evidently felt that he had nothing to lose. He would die anyway, so he chose to go out with a statement of faith and defiance. According to tradition, when he appeared before the Roman officials he brought along a number of the City’s poor, lame and infirm, proclaiming that “These are the treasures of the Church!”
Evidently the Roman authorities failed to appreciate Lawrence’s point, and decided to execute him. The most frequently quoted story is that he was strapped to a large gridiron — a metal framework faintly resembling the shape of a modern football field and used much like a rotisserie — and barbecued somewhat past well done. Some stories even claim that his disdain and contempt for the Roman authorities helped him maintain enough composure to claim to his torturers that one side of him was done, and that they should turn him over to roast the other.
However there is doubt about the Roman barbecue, and since the other Church officials were beheaded and it may be that Lawrence suffered the same fate.
This was August 10, A.D. 258. At approximately the same time, the Perseid Meteor Shower was near its peak (although it wasn’t called the Perseids at the time). The faithful who remained after their Church hierarchy had been executed may have noted the fiery streaks across the night sky. These “shooting stars” must have appeared more like blazing tears, because the annual celestial downpour later became known as “Saint Lawrence’s Tears.” Today the Church recognizes August 10 as a feast day for Saint Lawrence. Whether the early Christians actually saw this at the time of Lawrence’s death is questionable, and the association is likely a later one.
Oh, and what about that “mummified head?” As mentioned above, most modern scholars think that Saint Lawrence was beheaded rather than burned. Even if he was roasted, there are stories of him being buried so he apparently was not incinerated. There are also reports that after burial the tomb was reopened (to inter another saint) at which time Saint Lawrence’s mummified head was removed a s relic.
We could not confirm this, and it certainly isn’t on any ordinary tourist’s must-see agenda, but there are some who believe that the martyred Saint’s mummified head may be on display in the Vatican’s secret archives
Larry Sessions
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This article is a version of an article I originally wrote for my website, North American Skies in 1996. A version of it also appeared on Space.com in 2001.
Additional references to Lawrence’s head:
The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1842 (via Google Book Search)
The Dublin Review, 1884 (via Google Book Search)
Not to detract from the gruesome nature of this post but I was just reading in Harpers (Sep. 2007) during my lunch about a man who offered the use of his own noggin to a museum’s exhibit on shrunken heads. Small world. Viva la Perseids!
And then there is Einstein’s brain living under a desk for something like decades. It’s not only a small world (now you’ve got that silly little ditty cycling through my brain!), it’s weird!
LS
Well, I was awake and about the house early Monday morning but the weather channel said we were in a cloudy situation in our town so I did n’t get dressed into my car and go to a local cemetery where I have viewed star shine on other occasions. One year I was working on a night shift and the gal I was working with and I took turns going outside to look up at St.Laurence’s tears. It was a great show that year and we both enjoyed it. I had never heard the meteor shower called tears before but it is a dramatic possibility, isn’t it? That particular saint is the patron saint of one of my four sons–I will have to remember to tell him about it before August l0 next year.
Yeah, I didn’t have any luck,either. Next year the moon will be about full, so the conditions won’t be great, but there!
LS
I didn’t get to see it because I live in south-central Austin. Maybe next time.