Happy Wednesday! Today in the Saintly Smackdown it's an East Coast vs. West Coast kind of day as Chief Seattle (namesake of that hip city in the Pacific Northwest goes up against St. Botulph (namesake of that tough town in Eastern Massachusetts we call Boston). Or, if you'd prefer, it's coffee vs. tea -- Starbucks vs. the Boston Tea Party. Whatever, it's sure to be an intriguing matchup.
In yesterday's saintly action, Josephine Bakhita ran away from Eric Lidell 57% to 43% to advance to the Saintly Sixteen.
Sip your coffee and/or tea and go vote!
Chief Seattle
Chief Seattle, whose name in his own language was Sealth, was a chief, warrior, orator, and diplomat. He led the Suquamish and Duwamish people in the Northwest. Sealth was a large man, nicknamed “Le Gros” (the big guy) by French traders. His voice was strong, with reports that it could travel more than half of a mile. He worked closely with white settlers and colonizers, especially David “Doc” Maynard, as they arrived in Washington state. Against Sealth’s wishes, Maynard named the city of Seattle in his honor.
Around 1848 at the age of 62, Sealth was baptized by the Roman Catholic Church and given the name Noah. His relationship with the settlers and colonizers was complicated. He worked closely with them and benefitted from partnership with them, but he also refused to learn English, perhaps suggesting discomfort with their ever-growing presence.
That discomfort would prove to be warranted, when the territorial governor of Washington, Isaac Stevens, began seizing (with money and force) tribal lands and expelling the tribal members to reservations.
In 1854, Sealth gave a speech in his native tongue in protest of the governor’s actions. Published thirty years later in English, the speech became popular in the 1970s and has been influential in the modern environmental movement. There is quite a bit of debate about the authenticity of the speech as many of the ideas in it too easily apply to contemporary concerns.
In 1855, the Port Madison Treaty was formally signed, and Sealth and the Suquamish were settled on a reservation across the Puget Sound, south of the city that bears his name.
Three years later, old and poor, Sealth spoke one last time on record, asking the Congress of the United States to ratify the treaty. Their inaction had left him and his people poor and vulnerable. He lamented, “I have been very poor and hungry all winter and am very sick now. In a little while I will die. When I do, my people will be very poor; they will have no property, no chief and no one to talk for them.”
Sealth died in 1866. He is a saint commemorated by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. His feast day is June 7.
Collect for Chief Seattle
Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart, that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Botulph
Botulph may never have parked a car in Harvard Yard, but he still left his mark on the city of Boston. Or, rather, his name.
Some sources say the city in Massachusetts takes its name from the town in Lincolnshire, a county in the East Midlands of England, which takes its name from Botulph (the thinking goes something like this: Botulph’s Town… Bo’s Town… Boston).
Botulph’s name, spelled in various ways, also pops up on St. Botolph Street, Boston College’s Botolph House, and the private St. Botolph Club in Boston. It appears in the names of five towns and villages and more than 70 churches in England, according to the Church of St. Botolph-without-Bishopsgate in London, where the poet John Keats was baptized.
For someone so popular, little is known about the details of Botulph’s life. He built a Benedictine monastery in about 654 in a place called Icanhoh, according to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was compiled about two centuries later. The place has generally been identified with Boston, Lincolnshire, although its actual location is disputed. It also was rumored to be haunted.
The monastery later was destroyed by Danish invaders, and Botulph’s relics made their way to a number of churches, including Westminster Abbey. Their journeys may be the reason why Botulph is considered patron saint of travelers.
Another document from the Middle Ages, The Life of St. Ceolfrith, mentions an abbot named Botolphus who was “a man of remarkable life and learning, full of the grace of the Holy Spirit.”
Perhaps that’s enough to be remembered for.
That and his wicked awesome name.
Botulph is honored as a saint in several Christian traditions. In addition to travel, he is the patron saint of boundaries and trade. His feast day is celebrated on June 17 in the Church of England.
Collect for Botulph
O Lord Jesus Christ, you became poor for our sake, that we might be made rich through your poverty: Guide and sanctify, we pray, those whom you call to follow you under the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, that by their prayer and service they may enrich your Church, and by their life and worship may glorify your Name; for you reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Chief Seattle: E.M. Sammis, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=515165
Botulph: Public domain
102 comments on “Chief Seattle v. Botulph”
Chief Seattle (Brother earth; sister sky) although AGAIN today I wasn't permtted to vote the conventional way 🙁
I knew nothing about the sainted Seattle, but now I do, and I think he is "worthy" caring more about his people and others, than he did about himself.
I did not have enough information about Saint Botulph
The Boston equivalent to Starbucks is definitely Dunkin'Donuts!
hard to pick until I read the prayer for each saint. that is what offered more insight into each person and swayed my vote.
I agree with Kay. Neither was inspiring. Kinda lukewarm about the last few rounds to be honest. Maybe be I'm not so much in the missionary team. More social justice warriors. Bit still loving this and learning
I think, perhaps, that Lent Madness is becoming a bit of a victim of its own success. Many of the major “Saints” have already competed, and those who have not won must wait a few years to participate again.
However, I still believe that each of these persons’ lives can still teach us about being followers of Jesus and serve as examples of a way of life spent faithfully trying to live up to the kind of lives to which Jesus calls us. We may not have a plethora of social media information on the deeds of these saints, given the times in which they lived, but that doesn’t prevent us from pondering their lives.
For today, I appreciate the difficulty faced by early monastics in their work keeping knowledge alive and in demonstrating a faithful life. Boltoph gets my vote today, but I agree with many of the comments that we have much for which to atone in our treatment of indigenous peoples.
Chief Seattle won my vote. His dedication and perseverance to help his people was remarkable.
Honestly, I'm left wondering whether a man who was forcibly baptized and given a "Christian Name" would have wanted to be in a saints' bracket.
Voted for Botulph, because I'm guessing the answer is no
Was going to vote for the chief. When you connected it to Starbucks, it became anathema to vote for him
Though Seattle my bracket does vote
Now St. Botulph I choose to promote.
A Bostonian bred
To his banner I'm led;
Pay no heed to what others emote.
It seems to me that this and yesterday’s pairing don’t stack up well against saints such as — well, the Apostles, for example, and Mother Theresa, for another. Where are the good works, the miracles, the writings? Is refusing to run on a Sunday really grounds for canonization, or even an example to be emulated? It’s not clear from his biography what Seattle actually did to deserve veneration, besides accepting baptism. Similar comments might be made concerning the other contestants, though Botulph is recognized as a saint even though we don’t know much about why he deserved it.
I guess we need to remember, in considering candidates, that “saint” means “holy.” These seem to have been nice enough people, but not of extraordinary sanctity.
Read the well researched biography of Sealth: Chief Sealth and the towwn that took his name (The change of worlds for the native peoples and settlers on Puget Sound by David M. Buerge. (Amazon has it) -- Seattle Sue
And so does Portland's legendary independent bookstore, Powell's.
https://www.powells.com/book/chief-seattle-the-town-that-took-his-name-the-change-of-worlds-for-the-native-people-settlers-on-puget-sound-9781632171351
$12.98 U.S.
This is my first Lent Madness. it's a lot of fun. However, I don't feel like we're getting enough info on these folks. maybe there isn't much to be had, but I'm not sure what separates them as Saints. we rarely learn anything about their spiritual life or what it was about them that caused them to be recognized as a Saint.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the current vote status. It is shortly after midnight on the West Coast of the U. S. so I doubt many will see this before the "polls" close and I doubt any change will happen to the outcome, but I feel I must explain why I voted for Saint Botolph (the spelling I encountered when I first head about him over two decades ago).
I have some Cherokee ancestry, but I have some reservations (pun not exactly intended, I just don't have a better word to use here) about Chief Seattle Sealth being in the running for Lent Madness.
Yes, he did his best as a tribal chief for his people from what I have read, but other than being baptized by the Roman Catholics what did he do in terms of showing his faith? Did he encourage members of his tribe to become Christians? Did he encourage Christian missionaries to come and teach the faith amongst his people? Was his baptism by the Roman Catholic Church a result of true conversion of heart to Christianity or was it just another act of white western cultural assimilation hoisted upon an indigenous person? (That he was given the baptismal name of Noah, rather than chose a name like Sudan's Patron Saint, Saint Josehine Bakhita did when she was baptized is rather telling, in my opinion.) What are the reasons that the ELCA honors him? Did they do it to check a box for diversity or did he become a Lutheran and promote the faith in some way?
I'm not saying that Chief
SeattleSealth was not a Christian, I just do not see enough information provided to show a lived life of faith, just a life lived as best he could in the face of increasing encroachment by non-indigenous peoples, especially white ones.At least Saint Botolph was written about by at least one person in the Middle Ages as, "a man of remarkable life and learning, full of the grace of the Holy Spirit." And that is something worth honoring.
Chief
SeattleSealth would get my vote if we we voting on a bracket involving well known indigenous leaders in 19th Century America. But this is not that, this is Lent Madness and we are voting on saints and when I vote on a saint, I want to see some saintly behavior. Some fruit of the Spirit, if you will.P.S.
I'm from Portland, (the one with the roses, not the one with the lobsters). The city of Seattle is our rival in some things. Especially football. The true sort of football. The sort played with a black and white sphere, not a pointy-ended brown clump. (We used to be basketball rivals, but their NBA team moved to Oklahoma.)
And speaking of Portland, Portland is only called Portland, after the city in Maine, because of how a tossed penny landed in 1845. If the coin had landed the other way, we would still have been named for a co-founder's hometown, but we would have be named Boston instead. (See https://www.koin.com/news/portland/one-high-stakes-coin-toss-is-why-portland-isnt-named-boston/ to read more about this.)
I hope Saint Botolph will once again appear on a Lent Madness bracket in the a few years (or less) and get further along that this year. And I'd also like to know what percent of the votes for Chief
Seattlewere cast from King County, Washington (a county named for a certain previous Lent Madness contestant).Having lived in Seattle for 33 years I voted for Chief Sealth. My daughter met the love of her life when she went to graduate school in Boston, so I'm now a double coaster:-)
I'm surprised that the author of the biography of the Duwamish Chief didn't use the spelling currently preferred by his people, Si’ahl. This spelling shows better how to say his name, and where the English spelling came from.
For that matter, I'm surprised that none of the biography from the Duwamish seemed to make it into the Lent Madness bio.
https://www.duwamishtribe.org/chief-siahl
I'm also surprised that there was no mention of the Treaty of Point Elliot in the biography. Chief Si’ahl was the top line signer for all the original resident peoples. It is the Point Elliot Treaty that governs much of the relations between the US and Native governments today.
The Point Elliot Treaty is on display at the Hibulb Cultural Center in Tulalip, Washington, as I write this.
I acknowledge that in Everett, Washington, I live on the traditional lands of the Snohomish people, who are now a part of the Tulalip Tribes.
Any of you living in the area of the Salish Sea within reasonable driving distance of the Tulalip Reservation should make a visit to view the document governing our relations today. It is as if the Declaration of Independence has come to visit.
https://www.hibulbculturalcenter.org/Exhibits/PowerOfWords