Is There a Patron Saint for Internet Trolls
You can make a good case for bringing that honor to Jerome
Don’t ask me why a contentious message board battle — one that ended with the Almighty Ban Hammer coming down on the thread’s original poster — led me to wonder if the Vatican has been keeping up with the times enough to assign a patron saint to Internet trolling, but there I was Googling away in search of that information.
After all, in the Middle Ages, it was not only the virtuous who were assigned patrons. Sinners too had their patrons: by some accounts jolly old St. Nicholas is the patron of prostitutes, pawn brokers, and repentant thieves. Elsewhere we see that one St. Vitalis of Gaza is the actual patron of fallen women. It is said that this Vitalis — a hermit monk from the deserts around Gaza, moved at the age of 60 to Alexandria, where he posed as a day laborer.
At the end of each day, he’d visit a local brothel, acquire the services of one of the women within, hand over his wages, and then instead of receiving sexual favors, he would say he just wanted to talk. And then he would tell these women they were better than their profession and that it was never too late to change. If they were willing, he’d make marriage and dowry arrangements and such, but the women must keep this all a secret.
And because he kept all this a secret, he acquired a reputation as Alexandria’s Top Dog Cat Daddy Whoremonger Numero Uno, and eventually, for reasons that are obscure, this caused him to be beaten to death. Was the killer a pimp tired of this weirdo messing with his business, or did Vitalis die at the hands of an overzealous Christian?
Purportedly Vitalis was found to be clutching a scrap of scripture in his hand: Corinthians 4:5, which reads “Therefore, do not make any judgment before the appointed time, until the Lord comes, for he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will manifest the motives of our hearts.”
And that’s what happened at his funeral: “Dozens (if not hundreds) or former prostitutes attended his funeral, and each testified that she owed her soul to Vitalis.”
Well there I go again on another tangent, but it got me to thinking, could a Vitalis-like approach work on incorrigible internet trolls?
And if you wanted to enlist a saint in that cause, who might that be? One man thinks St. Jerome is your guy.
What a character he was: a priest, translator, theologian and inveterate writer on all matters, born in the Fourth Century in what is now Croatia, he is usually portrayed in his lair — a man cave that would be rockin’ even by modern standards. Books everywhere, a cluttered desk, and….his motherfucking pet lion lounging contentedly at his feet or handing over a paw for thorn removal.
He was wildly popular amongst the upper-class women of his day and at least once was hauled before a tribunal of priests for straying a little beyond merely spiritual exercises with a certain widow named Paula, who assisted in his creation of the Vulgate — the first Latin translation of the Hebrew bible. (Whether or not there was any Holy Hanky Panky, both Paula and Jerome wound up saints.)
(Jerome with Paula and a Mother Superior. “Well, what had happened was….”)
And he was always feuding with other leading Christians of the day, like the bishop was to become St. Ambrose. Jerome coyly wrote in his journal that he would avoid saying what he really thought of Ambrose.
Ambrose a bishop of Milan, at the present time is still writing. I withhold my judgment of him, because he is still alive, fearing either to praise or blame lest in the one event, I should be blamed for adulation, and in the other for speaking the truth.
I mean, that’s some Mark Twain’s posthumous diary level cattiness right there.
On another occasion he was called upon to refute a religious pamphlet by one Helvidius:
I was requested by certain of the brethren not long ago to reply to a pamphlet written by one Helvidius. I have deferred doing so, not because it is a difficult matter to maintain the truth and refute an ignorant boor who has scarce known the first glimmer of learning, but because I was afraid my reply might make him appear worth defeating.
Dayyyum, “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” a millennium-plus pre-Jay Z.
Another alleged heretic, a man named Jovinian, came in for even more bile:
Very few days have elapsed since the holy brethren of Rome sent to me the treatises of a certain Jovinian with the request that I would reply to the follies contained in them, and would crush with evangelical and apostolic vigour the Epicurus of Christianity. I read but could not in the least comprehend them. I began therefore to give them closer attention, and to thoroughly sift not only words and sentences, but almost every single syllable; for I wished first to ascertain his meaning, and then to approve, or refute what he had said. But the style is so barbarous, and the language so vile and such a heap of blunders, that I could neither understand what he was talking about, nor by what arguments he was trying to prove his points. At one moment he is all bombast, at another he grovels: from time to time he lifts himself up, and then like a wounded snake finds his own effort too much for him.
In other words, Jerome basically said “Tl;dr, bullshit.” And again, that is a first-rate takedown even by modern standards. H.L. Mencken nods approvingly and raises a glass of pilsner in his grave.
I might need to see about investing in a pet lion if it can help me rise to such lofty heights of invective.
Anyway, all these passages were cited by modern day Catholic writer Henry Karlson as examples of trolling, but they aren’t really. It’s a common mistake — mere arguing, or critical lambastings like these, are not always or even usually trolling, and if Karlson’s case for Jerome as patron of internet trolls ended there, I would think that case extremely weak. But then….then Karlson digs up a quote that makes it abundantly clear that Jerome was very much in fact a troll of epic proportions.
“I have often myself feigned a controversy to practise declamation,” Jerome once confessed.
And there you have it. As succinct a definition of trolling as there is, along with an admission to having practiced it often. It isn’t quite all the way there — some trolls add in a layer of sadism for sadism’s sake — but I think Jerome would have acknowledged that at a glance and perhaps even succumbed to such ugliness from time to time.
So if you find yourself embroiled in a debate with a troll, why not try taking the Vitalis approach. Slide into their DMs and tell them are loved, one of God’s creatures just like the majestic elephant and the lowly worm, the fragrant magnolia and the thorny mesquite. Who knows? It just might work.
And all the while, if you have a prayer in your heart to spare for them, do like Bo Diddley and…