I recently contributed an essay about St. Anthony of Padua, lost objects, lending books and an economy of sharing to Loyola Marymount University Magazine’s series on loss. I love the idea that God sent the devil disguised as a monster to stop a book thief — a sentiment we here at the JML wholeheartedly endorse. 😊
You can read the first few paragraphs here and the rest at LMU Magazine’s website.
As a collector of Catholic trivia, I could tell you that St. Anthony of Padua is the patron saint of lost objects. (That’d probably be a 200-point answer on hypothetical Catholic Jeopardy.) But I didn’t know the origin story of this saint/patronage pairing until recently.
According to the hagiography, Anthony was teaching young Franciscans at a Bologna monastery in the 1220s. One day, a jaded novice who was done with the Franciscan life left it all behind — left it all, that is, except for Anthony’s hand-annotated book of the Psalms, which the novice stole. These were the days before the printing press, so books were hand-copied and especially valuable.
Anthony realized the book was missing and began to pray. He asked God to have mercy on the erstwhile novice and for the return of the book. And here’s the most outrageous part of the legend: God, apparently, commanded the devil to intervene, who appeared to the young man in the form of a horrible monster. “Go back and restore immediately that which you have stolen,” the monster says in one retelling of the story, “otherwise I will kill you and throw you into the river.” The novice, petrified and ashamed, returned the book to Anthony, apologized, and reentered the religious life.