In true autumn fashion it had been a wet and windy week, with no clear middays at all. Even this one was chancing it as clouds massed from the west, but it stayed clear enough to see the Sun. The alignment had moved a surprisingly long way both north and west in 11 days, and my hopes of a clean shot from the wide expanse of Gracechurch Street were dashed. Instead I could just about line it up by crouching under a half-open metal shutter opening to an access alley that Google says belongs to the UPP Group. I scurried north at midday to see if there was a better view from Lombard Street, but this was a little too far north, and the edge of UPP’s building cut off any chance of the alignment. So, more guesswork, and a vague hint at where it would have been seen from.
The corner of Lombard and Gracechurch Streets was the site of St Benet’s church mentioned in the last post. As with Saints Magnus and Olaf I’d never heard of St Benet, and I looked him up hoping for another memorable Norwegian. Instead Saint Benedict of Nursia was a 6th Century Italian, now Patron Saint of Europe no less, whose info box on Wikipedia calls him “Founder of the Benedictine Order, Exorcist and Mystic”. There are surely stories in those few words.
You don’t even have to dig too deep to find some of them. Even his Wikipedia entry says that there were two poisoning attempts on his life, which is pretty good going for a saint. First up, they hauled him from his cave of solitude to abbot some monks, and the rank and file of the monastery were so pissed off with his methods that they poisoned his drink. Fortunately for Benedict he prayed and the poisoned chalice shattered, and the plot with it. After this he went back to his cave, probably sensibly, but a local priest tried to get him with the old poison bread trick. Again he prayed and this time a raven swooped down and took the bread, saving his life. What happened to the raven is not recorded, but it’s unlikely to have made it glad (as Olaf may have wanted). The foiled poisoner then attempted to discredit him by sending some prostitutes to tempt the monks, which is quite a ruse in its own right. Whatever the monks did, I hope the prostitutes were paid. Those old saints clearly lived quite the life in the early days of Christianity. Incidentally, the previous Pope, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, named himself after Saint Benedict, as recounted here.
Shard Analemma 