Week 7 Extra Credit Reading: Saints and Animals

For this week's extra credit reading, I skimmed through the Biblical unit, and I found the Saints and Animals Unit. The most interesting chapter to me was the Ballad of Saint Felix.This story is from the Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts by Abbie Farwell Brown (1900).

The Ballad of Saint Felix

 I liked the way the story was formatted. Since it was a ballad, the story was written like a song. There was a rhyming scheme with perfect paragraph breaks. I actually read the ballad out loud, and there was a nice rhythm to the ballad. Overall, the story of Saint Felix was quite interesting. An emperor was slaying all the Christians in the land. Being a Bishop, Felix was a target in the Emperor's persecution. To escape the Emperor, Felix dressed as an old beggar and pass through the soldiers undetected. He runaway as fast as he could until he couldn't run anymore. He then found a hiding place in a crack of a wall. Luckily, a spider saved Felix's life by creating a thick web that covered the crack. The soldiers never found Felix. Felix survived in that wall because everyday a Christian lady would pass bread through the web until the persecution was over.

I liked this story mostly because it deals with the persecution of Christianity. It's unbelievable to think that people were jailed, tortured, and even put to death because of their religion. Even more unbelievable is the fact that persecution due to religion still occurs today.

Saint Felix. Source.