June 16 -- Feast of Saint Cyricus

This is one of those saints who gets called by all sorts of variations on his name -- everything from St. Cyr to Quiricus. It makes him a little tougher to track down because he is Cyricus the Child Martyr, not Cyricus who was martyred with Smaragdus (what a great name!). I guess there are a couple dozen saints named Cyricus, but today's saint was a three-year-old with faith, guts, and a mean set of claws.

He and his mom, Julietta, were getting hassled for being Christians during the reign of Diocletian. They rolled out of Antioch, which was getting too hot for them, and sped on down to Tarsus. However, the governor there was also on guard against these strange trinitarian monotheists (yeah, try explaining that while you're on trial in a capital case). When Julietta and her son were denounced, busted, and brought before him, he picked up the three year old boy while he questioned the mother.

I like to imagine the menace of this scene. A beloved child whose life you have tried to save is being held, paternally, but the judge who is one word away from sentencing you to death. What will become of the kid? Execution? Slavery? Adoption, leading to a life of idolatry and an afterlife of damnation? I figure Julietta had to pause a moment, just to find the best path forward, not only for her soul, but for that of her son. Perhaps, she must have figured, if I burn some incense before the idol, maybe I can save my life and continue to raise my son in the Christian faith so that at least his soul will be saved...

Fortunately, the young lad had a mind and soul of his own, not to mention ten well-honed fingernails. He ripped at the governor's face and upon being dropped, testified to the power of the one true God. The Governor picked him up and threw him down a set of stairs to his death. He then had the flesh ripped from Julietta's sides with a pair of hooks, following which she was decapitated. Their corpses were flung on a garbage heap, but were recovered by the faithful who kept their relics.

By now, you're wondering what this has to do with Charlemagne, whose picture (more or less) appears above. That emperor was, after all, about five centuries after Diocletian. It seems that Charlemagne had a dream that he was boar hunting and came upon a naked child in the woods. A boar had turned on Charlemagne and would have killed him, but the child promised to save the Emperor if he covered his nakedness. The dream was interpreted to mean that Charlemagne should put a new roof on the Cathedral of St. Cyr, which he did. I understand that there is a stained glass window of a naked child riding on a boar, but I thought that I'd be running a risk of arrest on child porn charges if I google-imaged it, so instead we have Christopher Lee.