South Wind | Page 9

necromancers who dwelt in a region so hot, and with light so dazzling,
that their eyes grew on the soles of their feet. Here he laboured for
eighty years, redeeming them to Christianity from their magical and
bloodthirsty practices. In recompense whereof they captured him at the
patriarchal age of 132, or thereabouts, and bound him with ropes
between two flat boards of palmwood. Thus they kept the prisoner,
feeding him abundantly, until that old equinoctial feast drew near. On

the evening of that day they sawed the whole, superstitiously, into
twelve separate pieces, one for each month of the year; and devoured of
the saint what was to their liking.
During this horrid banquet a femur or thigh-bone was accidentally cast
upon a millstone which lay by the shore, having been borrowed by the
Crotalophoboi from the neighbouring tribe of Garimanes a good many
years previously and never returned to them by reason, they declared,
of its excessive weight. There it remained till, one day, during a potent
sirocco tempest, the stone was uplifted by the force of the waters, and
miraculously wafted over the sea to Nepenthe. Forthwith a chapel was
built on the spot, to commemorate the event and preserve the sacred
relic which soon began working wonders for the good of the island,
such as warding off Saracenic invasions, procuring plentiful vintages,
and causing sterile cattle to produce offspring.
In later years the main church was dedicated to Saint Dodekanus and
the relic moved thither and enclosed within that silver statue of the
saint which is carried abroad in procession at his annual festival, or on
any particular occasion when his help is to be invoked. And all through
succeeding ages the cult of the saint waxed in pomp and splendour.
Nobody, probably, has done more to foster pious feelings towards their
island-patron than the Good Duke Alfred who, among other things,
caused a stately frieze to be placed in the church, picturing in twelve
marble tablets the twelve chief episodes in the life of the Saint--one for
each month of the year. This frieze indeed was admired so unreservedly,
so recklessly, that the Good Duke felt it his duty to remove the
sculptor's eyes and (on second thoughts) his hands as well, in order that
no other sovereign should possess works by so consummate a master of
stonecraft. There the disciplinary measures ended. He did his best to
console the gifted artist who was fed, henceforward, on lobsters,
decorated with the order of the Golden Vine, and would doubtless have
been ennobled after death, had the Prince not predeceased the sculptor.
Such, briefly, is the history of Saint Dodekanus, and the origin of his
cult on Nepenthe.
Legends galore, often contradictory to this account and to one another,

have clustered round his name, as was inevitable. He is supposed to
have preached in Asia Minor; to have died as a young man, in his
convent; to have become a hermit, a cobbler, a bishop (of Nicomedia),
a eunuch, a politician. Two volumes of mediocre sermons in the
Byzantine tongue have been ascribed to him. These and other crudities
may be dismissed as apocryphal. Even his name has given rise to
controversy, although its origin from the Greek word DODEKA,
signifying twelve and alluding to the twelve morsels into which his
body was superstitiously divided, is as self-evident as well can be. Thus
a worthy young canon of the church of Nepenthe, Giacinto Mellino,
who has lately written a life of Saint Eulalia, the local patroness of
sailors--her festival occurs twelve days after that of Saint
Dodekanus--takes occasion, in this otherwise commendable pamphlet,
to scoff at the old-established derivation of the name and to propose an
alternative etymology. He lays it down that then pagan inhabitants of
the island, desirous of sharing in the benefits of Christianity which had
already reached the mainland but left untouched their lonely rock, sent
a missive to the bishop containing the two words DO DEKANUS: give
us a deacon! The grammar is at fault, he explains, because of their
rudimentary knowledge of the Latin tongue; they had only learnt,
hitherto, the first person singular and the nominative case--so he says;
and then proceeds to demonstrate, with unanswerable arguments, that
Greek was the spoken language of Nepenthe at this period. Several
scholars have been swayed by his specious logic to abandon the older
and sounder interpretation. There are yet other conjectures about the
word Dodekanus, all more or less fanciful. . . .
If the Crotalophoboi had not devoured the missionary Dodekanus, we
should assuredly never have heard of Monsignor Perrelli, the learned
and genial historian of Nepenthe. It was that story, he expressly tells us,
which inflamed him, a mere visitor to the place, with a desire to know
more about the