Of the many food gifts that Carla and Alberto brought on their visit (lucky me!), the one most tempting tonight is the bag of Sebaste Tenerelli: soft hazelnut nougat. Made simply with hazelnuts (42%), sugar, honey, glucose syrup, potato starch, egg whites and ‘aromi’, these little bites are a fabulous reminder of the ‘Tonda Gentile delle Langhe’, Piemonte’s – and Italy’s – most prized variety of hazelnut. 

According to the Consorzio Tutela Nocciola Piemonte’s website, though they produce less than 10% of the country’s production, the Piemontese are serious about their hazelnuts, declaring those in the Cuneo region to have IGP (Indicazione Geographica Protetta) status.

Sebaste, like many family-owned businesses, has been making their nougat since 1885. Their website describes the history of the company, indicating that while modernization in production has occurred over the years, the original recipe has remained more or less the same for four generations. 

How do these family business models work?  While I can’t trace my family back four generations, I doubt that I’d have found shoemaking, my grandfather’s trade, one that I would wish to pursue … but then again, immigrant shoemakers weren’t exactly creating empires.

I am in the process of preparing some material on John the Baptist in Biblical and Church History. There is a tradition that John was buried at Samaria. This is one of those late traditions that reflect the understanding of believers in the centuries following the time of John.

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor makes some comments on this in the fifth edition of The Holy Land. See our earlier reference to the book here.

Christian tradition very quickly (before 361) identified Samaria as the site of the infamous birthday party at which Herod Antipas had John the Baptist executed (Mark 6:17-29). With greater probability Josephus locates the murder at Machaerus in Jordan (Antiquities 18:119). This information, however, was not available to all Christians, and the much more accessible Samaria was associated with the name of Herod, who had held a wedding party there and much later executed two of his sons there. The fact that the two Herod’s were father and son would not have bothered the popular credulous mind. Two churches were built in John’s honour, one near Herod’s temple and the other in the modern village. (The Holy Land, 5th edition, 461)

Samaria is in the West Bank of Israel, under the Palestinian Authority. It has been impossible to visit Samaria on a regular basis for many years. My last visit was in 2000, but I was trying to use the “latest” in digital technology. The photos are not very good. Another thing to remember about important sites like this is that they are not well maintained. Here is a photo of the Church of St. John that I have scanned from a 1984 slide.

At the Biblical Studies Info Page I keep a list of good sources for photos (check Scholarly, then Photos). None of these have a photo of this site. On May 19, 2005, some scholars associated with the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem made a visit to Sebaste (Samaria). There are several good photos of approximately 800 x 600 pixels, with commentary. These are stashed away in the archives of the web site. Perhaps you can access them here. These photos include the Iron Age site belonging to the time of the Divided Kingdom, and the Herodian and Roman site from the time of the New Testament (Acts 8).

Here is a comment from the Franciscan site about the two churches at Sebaste identified with John.

The Alleged Discovery of the Baptist’s Head. It is not known what happened to the head consigned to Herodias; but as early as the fourth century, stories begin to appear about the finding of the supposed relic. One such inventio took place in Sebaste in the place regarded as the Baptist’s prison. A church associated with this discovery was erected near the acropolis, while the large church containing the tomb was below to the east, in the cemetery area.

The cathedral from the mid-12th century, now a mosque, is said to enshrine the tomb of John the Baptist. The church is in the village of Sebaste. I am taking the liberty of showing you the photo of the exterior of the church from the SBF web site.

]]> http://chiarajato.wordpress.com/?p=105 Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:28:39 +0000 Chiara Jato http://chiarajato.wordpress.com/?p=105 http://eotd.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/9-march-320ad-%e2%80%93-40-martyrs-of-sebaste/ Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:44:27 +0000 Last Writes http://eotd.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/9-march-320ad-%e2%80%93-40-martyrs-of-sebaste/

Imagine being left out on a frozen lake completely starkers with your bits at the mercy of the icy elements. Enough to make you change your religion huh?

Not so 40 soldiers in 320AD (although some say 306AD), who were subjected to the ultimate form of cold-hearted torture, according to the Orthodox Church.

Their oppressors were the Romans whose sole aim was to make them turn from their beloved Christianity back to paganism led by Emporer Lucinius.

The soldiers were led out to the lake, stripped of their clothes and left stranded to freeze the faith out of them. Fires were then lit by the lakeside and warm baths were at the ready to entice the men away from their beliefs.

Chilly. Will he?

Unable to endure the freezing temperatures it apparently worked for one soldier, albeit briefly. He is said to have turned his back on Christ in favour of warmth. Or did he? And if he did was it shortlived?

In a site dedicated to the martyrs, the narrative suggests that that night there was a God-like experience and one of Lucinius’s soldiers defected and joined the frozen group, bringing the numbers back up to 40. While others say the soldier who wimped out was so ravaged by the cold that he died on his way to warmth across the frozen lake. The final option is that he came to his senses and by the morning he had suddenlt rediscovered God and rejoined his icy mates.

Talking of his mates, sadly the freezing conditions had failed to kill them, so they were defrosted and slowroasted on a huge funeral pyre instead. But not before having their legs anachronistically smashed to smithereens with ’sledgehammers’.

In case you were wondering, the 40, by some sources’ reckonings, are: Acacius, Aetius, Aglaius, Alexander, Angus, Athanasius, Candidus, Chudion, Claudius, Cyril, Cyrion, Dometian, Domnus, Ecdicus, Elias, Eunoicus, Eutyches, Eutychius, Flavius, Gaisus, Gorgonius, Helianus, Heraclius, Hesychius, John, Lysimachus, Meliton, Nicholas, Pholoctemon, Priscus, Sacerdon, Servian, Sisinus, Smaragdus, Theodulus, theophilus, Valens, Valerius, Vivanus and Zanthias.

Their feast day falls on 9 March in the East and 10 March in the Western world.

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