Storytelling for Week 2: Saint Felix and the Spider

Saint Felix and the Spider

During the reign of the Roman Emperor Decius, a decree was made that all imperial subjects must make heathen sacrifices to the glory of the emperor, or else face risk torture and execution. Many Christians refused to follow Decius’s decree, and among these was the pious Bishop Felix.

Aware of Felix’s disobedience to their emperor, the soldiers of Nola sought to bring death to the good priest. The soldiers assaulted his home, but found him absent from his abode. From then on the Roman soldiers patrolled the roads day and night in hopes of catching Felix and slaying him. In their thirst for the rebellious priest’s blood, they accosted travelers constantly, interrogating them and asking if they had seen the bishop on the road.

One day the soldiers came across a beautiful maiden, clad in simple but elegant robes of purple. The soldiers couldn't help but stop and admire the woman, with her wavy raven locks and alabaster skin. One of the soldiers managed to close his gaping mouth long enough to approach the woman and speak to her.

“Maiden,” the soldier said. “Have you perchance seen the Bishop Felix on this road? Answer true, or—“ The soldier cut off his words, not able to bring himself to threaten so beautiful a woman.

The maiden gazed at the questioning soldier with dark, sleepy eyes. “I have not seen the bishop.”

“Very well,” the soldier said, his resolve to further press the question withering beneath the maiden’s lovely, heavy-lidded gaze. “Our apologies for disturbing your business.”

The woman offered the soldiers a kind smile before gliding past them and continuing down the road with measured, graceful strides.

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Several hours later, Felix took off his long wig, grateful to relieve his head of its burden of black tresses. He thanked God not for the first time for his naturally feminine face and for there not being anything in church doctrine concerning the matter of disguising oneself as a woman.

The bishop sat in a clearing that he had spotted just off the trail he had been following, his sweat-matted back leaning against a humongous tree as wide as a castle turret. He was brushing dust from his tired limbs when he heard a high-pitched voice off to his right.

“Hail, Felix of Nola!” the cheerful voice greeted.

Felix looked to his right, but saw no one. By chance, his eyes flicked downward, and he spotted a palm-sized spider staring up at him with four liquid eyes. Startled, the bishop scrambled away from the arachnid.

“It’s okay, I don’t bite! Well I do, but I won’t bite you! Kay?”

Felix gasped in amazement, noting how the words really did seem to come from the spider, the syllables emitting from its tiny body with each rhythmic movement of its mandibles.

“It’s a miracle!” Felix exclaimed.

“Thanks, but I prefer to be called Peter,” the spider said.

“Are you a messenger from God, sent to tell me of what I must do to survive Decius’s persecution?” Felix asked.

“I dunno about all that,” Peter said, “but I was sent here for a reason. Here it comes right now!”

The ominous sound of clanking metal and shouts echoed forth from behind Felix.

Whirling around, Felix caught sight of a soldier on the nearby road. He trembled at the glimmer of the soldier’s sword as he pointed it in the bishop’s direction while shouting an alarmed cry.

“C’mon, follow me!” Peter said.

Desperate, Peter followed after the arachnid as it scuttled around to the opposite side of the tree trunk he had been resting against. There lay a large hole that went deep into the tree.

“Get in there!” Peter ordered.

“But surely the soldiers will look there,” Felix said.

“Trust the God-sent talking, prophetic spider and get in!” Peter insisted.

Felix reluctantly got into the hole, fleeing as deep as he could inside its shadow-swathed recesses.

Peter’s tiny form perched on the edge of the hole. “Time for me to get to work!”

Suddenly the spider jumped from the bottom lip of the hole’s entrance to its top edge, and a silken thread now bridged the gap the arachnid had leaped. Peter didn't stop there. He burst into a flurry of motion, leaping about the hole’s entrance like a tiny acrobat, all the while forming a tapestry of web that grew ever more intricate by the second. The sound of clinking metal and barking cries growing louder was lost on Felix’s ears as he found himself entranced by the spider’s work, marveling at the way Peter darted around with supernatural speed while simultaneously creating a work of art that no human could ever hope to replicate.

And then the spider was finished, his web complete, beautiful in how the sunlight played against its silver filaments. Through the holes in the web, Felix saw a squad of soldiers come into view and froze, suddenly reminded of the danger he was in. One of the soldiers looked in the direction of the hole the bishop hid in, and Felix held his breath in fear.

“Nobody is hiding in there,” another soldier said to the one who was looking in Felix’s direction. “Look at that web. If he got in the tree hole, the web would have been broken. No spider could have spun such a fine, strong web in so short a time after someone climbed into the hole.”

The soldiers agreed and moved on, and Felix breathed a sigh of a relief.

Peter sat in the middle of his beautiful web, his many eyes seeming to look contentedly at Felix.

Decius’s reign of terror over Christians eventually ended, and Felix, after a time of hiding, survived to help people and serve the Lord for many years after, and he never forgot the spider that God had sent to preserve his life during his time of great need.

Author’s Note: I based this story on “The Ballad of Saint Felix” in the “Saints and Animals” stories of the Biblical Unit. Since Felix is a bit of a trickster in the ballad, I retained this same theme for my story, only gave it a whimsical spin by making the bishop disguise himself as a woman rather than as an ordinary pilgrim. Continuing with this idea of a light-hearted spin on the story, I gave the spider that spins the web that hides Felix from his hunters the ability to talk, so as to add a little bit of humorous interaction into the narrative. I’m happy that I was able to include a lot of descriptive details in this story. This more descriptive approach did make me go over the word count at first, but a little bit of editing allowed me to retain some of the imagery while still keeping the narrative brief.

Saint Felix attacked and hidden by a spider's web. These guys aren't wearing very Roman-like clothing, but medieval artists were rarely sticklers for historical detail.  (Wikipedia Commons)

Bibliography

Book: The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts

Author: Abbie Farwell Brown

Year published: 1900

Web Source: Mythology and Folklore Un-Textbook