Rocky Cape Christian Community

Santa Eulalia de Mérida (Saint Eulalia) kicking over the idols, as pictured by Jan Luyken in the Martyrs' Mirror.

 
When the Apostle Paul preached the Gospel in Iconium, Tecla, a beautiful and very wealthy virgin, listened from her palace across the street and got converted. There was only one problem. Tecla was engaged to be married to a famous and powerful young man. The young man flew into a rage, blamed Paul for sorcery, and had him thrown into gaol.
 
During the night, Tecla, unwilling to give up her newfound faith, or to see Paul die, found her way down to the gaol, paid off the guards with her jewels, and fled with him from the city. Wherever Paul went through years following, she travelled with him, even as far as to Tarragona in Spain. Thousands were converted by Paul's preaching and through her testimony. But in Armenia she fell into the hands of her pagan enemies. They threw her into a pit of poisonous serpents that refused to bite her. Then they hitched oxen to her arms and legs to pull her apart. But the oxen lost their strength and could not do it. Then they tried to burn her at the stake, but the fire did her no harm and spread out to burn her captors instead. Finally, they threw her to the lions who only licked her wounds and healed her.
 
Seeing they could not kill Tecla, the Armenians let her go and she lived by herself in a cave, in the mountains. There a band of soldiers came to rape her. But Tecla prayed and the cave collapsed, leaving only one arm exposed. Local believers came and buried that arm with great respect.
 
During the 1300s the people of Tarragona in Spain, one of the cities Tecla had visited, sent an expedition to Armenia to find her remains. For a golden throne, forty Andalusian horses and 2000 Mallorcan cheeses the king of Armenia agreed to let the Spaniards take the holy relics back home where she became the patron saint of the city. Then, two hundred years later, Spanish soldiers plundering Cuscatlán in Central America (a land they called "El Salvador"), named one of the towns they founded "Santa Tecla" in her honour.
 
* * * * *
 
Did you like that story?
 
Even if you did, I dare say you believed only a very small part of it. You are not the only one. . . .
 
Well do I remember the noisy streets, brightly painted houses, and crowded roaring buses of Santa Tecla in El Salvador. But for a number of years during the 1970s and 80s, the city had a problem. The pope decided its lovely patron saint, Santa Tecla herself, had never existed and that her relics in Tarragona were absolute fakes!
 
The people, both of El Salvador and Spain were outraged. "What do you mean?" they roared. "After all the miracles Santa Tecla has done for us, all these years she has blessed us for venerating her, how DARE you say she never existed!"
 
For a number of years the city appeared on maps as "Nueva San Salvador" but the popular outcry never died down, and even we Mennonites kept on using the name "Santa Tecla" for the city and the great church that everyone knew by that name alone. Finally the pope backed down, the people got their way and Santa Tecla reappeared on the church calendar, on the map, and as patron saint of Tarragona and the city named for her in Central America.
 
* * * * *
 
"What's the difference?" I suppose he thought. "What is more important, knowing the Truth, or letting the people keep faith in what they have always believed? Perhaps it would even be harmful to upset their tender consciences. . . ."
 
Many centuries after the Spanish rescued Santa Tecla's remains from Armenia, I worked for a Mennonite publishing house in New Mexico. One of my first jobs was to edit a Spanish-language book on Christian martyrs, based on stories from the Martyrs Mirror (a seventeenth century book first published by Mennonites in the Netherlands).   
 
It did not take me long to discover, with only superficial research, that the book contained both inspiring Truth, many accurate accounts, and -- unfortunately, but not surprisingly -- a lot of mediaeval legends. I did not hold it against Thieleman Jansz van Braght and the early editors of the Martyrs' Mirror. They lived in the 1600s. They had limited resources at hand. They were only human, and like us, they sometimes erred in their judgement. The story of Santa Eulalia (pictured above), for example, is even more fishy than the one of Santa Tecla. Although she is patron saint of Oviedo in Spain, no authority has been able to determine if she was one or two (or more) people, when she lived, or whether she existed at all.
 
What surprised me was what happened when I brought this to the attention of my editorial overseers. Were they happy to learn the truth about the Martyrs Mirror? Did they share the spirit of the thousands of legitimate martyrs the book tells about, who died for the Truth, and who risked all they had on dismantling the facade of hypocrisy and fake religion that had grown up around the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
 
You should have heard them.
 
Questioning the Martyrs Mirror, I quickly discovered, is as dangerous as questioning the King James Version in a Baptist church, or the shroud of Turin in Italy. Modern day Anabaptists, I soon discovered, not only venerate their martyr ancestors. They even venerate the book that tells about them!
 
Forget about the truth. Who needs that? The only issue at stake, for many of us (as with the people of Santa Tecla in El Salvador), is how to keep our faith, our religion, and our "time honoured customs" intact, at all costs. But the cost includes our entry into another Dark Age. Are you ready for that?
 
Or will you choose the Truth and the Light -- being simple enough to ask like the child about the Emperor's new clothes?
 
Whether Santa Eulalia existed or not, we have idols left to kick out of the Lord's temple (and out of our lives) today. Like Jesus did.
 
May he have mercy upon us!
 
Peter
 
Rocky Cape Christian Community
19509 Bass Highway
Detention River, Tasmania 7321
Australia
www.thecommonlife.com.au