2008-10-07 - 3:29 p.m.
Monk Fight (PART II)
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When the High Patriarch of the Christians in Constantinople (the Pope) made a motion the priests would diligently collect it in squares of silk and dry it in the sun. They would mix it with musk, amber and benzoin, and, when it was quite dry, powder it and put it in little gold boxes. These boxes were sent to all Christian kings and churches, and the powder was used as the holiest incense for the sanctification of Christians on all solemn occasions, to bless the bride, to fumigate the newly born, and to purify a priest on ordination. As the genuine excrements of the High Patriarch could hardly suffice for ten provinces, much less for all Christian lands, the priests used to forge the powder by mixing less holy matters with it. That is to say, the excrements of lesser patriarchs and even of the priests themselves. This imposture was not easy to detect. So much for it...
-excerpt from Shaharazad's eighty-ninth night of storytelling
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I think we all knew that it was going to come to this, I've ordered the boxed set of the Thousand and One Nights. Therefore, I will soon have an extraneous copy of Volume I which I'm delighted to have the opportunity of giving away. Be forewarned that the Mardrus and Mathers translation includes every single story, and that some of these are actually just boring moral and/or religious treatises. Please don't blame the authors, these sort of stories were unavoidable in the realm of medieval literature (Chaucer wrote plenty of them too) and the overwhelming majority of stories are not of this type but rather, scandalous and entertaining. That said, who wants a 644 page book asks ELOFTING@HOTMAIL.COM.
