Katy Perry in Saint Somewhere

“I gotta fly to Saint Somewhere
I’m close to bodily harm”

– James William Buffett

In this case, the designated warm-weather saint is Tropez.

Tropez is not one of the more famous saints, is he?. He’s an early Christian martyr, a Roman soldier who converted, then refused to renounce his faith. It was in the reign of Nero, so long ago that as many as ten of the eleven faithful apostles were still alive! Nine of them supposedly died in the same era, 60-80 AD, although exact dates are not known. The only one said in Christian lore to have predeceased Tropez (AKA Torpes of Pisa) was James, son of Zebedee, who was martyred in Jerusalem around 44 AD by King Herod Agrippa I. According to Christian tradition, it was only John, the other son of Zebedee, who lived to a ripe old age, allegedly shuffling off the mortal coil around 100 AD in Ephesus.

Zebedee?

To my knowledge, ol’ Zebedee never did anything especially holy. Virtually nothing is known of him other than that he was a fisherman who was trying to earn a living when Jesus asked two of his sons to fish for men instead, presumably leaving ol’ Zeb short-handed on the nets. Despite knowing almost nothing about him, the Roman Catholic Church made him a saint. Apparently donating his semen to two apostles, and being the husband of a devoted follower of Jesus, was contribution aplenty. He was sort of a reverse nepo baby. His feast day is March 15th. I wonder whether anyone celebrates that day.

How do I know something about this? I (unhappily) attended an elementary school named after Zeb’s wife, Salome. We pronounced it “sa-LOAM,” for reasons unknown to me, perhaps to distinguish her from the “SA-lo-may” Salome who danced for Herod and asked for the head of John the Baptist as payment for her sexy solo lambada.