Fake 205

A stretch of Manor Green road is full of gas works at the moment, but in among the gas works, I picked up three booklets on the strength of the front cover, snapped above. I thought that perhaps a party of school children had been taken to Hampton Court Palace and some of these little handouts were being discarded on the way home.

But I was quite wrong. When I got home, BH actually opened one and it turned out to be a handout from some lot of bible bashers - holy rollers as my mother used to call them.

And inside I found a cheap reprint of a section of St. John's Gospel. I did not bother to investigate further, but I did think that the booklet was sailing under false colours. And anyway, who on earth is going to trouble with such stuff? Is there a significant pool of people who have the appetite but not the purse for it?

Back with the gas works, Gemini did quite well on reminding me of the name of the utility services company doing the work, to be found at reference 2. He also reminded me that vacuum excavators are much less likely to damage other services than conventional diggers - and I had been wondering about all the other services, some quite badly knocked about, which I had seen down the holes.

He was also quite knowledgeable about holy rollers: I had wondered whether it was a phrase my mother had brought with her from North America, which was indeed the case. It also seems that 18th and 18th century enthusiasts were quite into physical manifestations of their faith, and some went in for rolling in the aisles when they had steam up. Bible basher is perhaps a better term for people dishing out Scripture, while holy rolling is more about an enthusiastic, rather physical style of worship.

I then remembered from our recent viewing of 'A man for all seasons', previously noticed at reference 3, a suggestion that More did most of the heavy lifting for the book which earned Henry VIII, him of the six wives, his title 'Defender of the Faith'. A suggestion which More, in the film, energetically denied.

A conversation with Gemini more or less established that heavy lifting is putting it a bit strongly. The current view seems to be that Henry VIII was a well educated man for a monarch of his day and was indeed the power behind the book. Nevertheless, one might reasonably describe it as the work of a small committee, with More taking the role of editor; tidying up and polishing up the more or less complete manuscript for the printer.

Once again, it was a conversation with Gemini which produced the goods. A conversation which might have started with a question but which then moved on.

I also learned something of the curious history of the title, with the Pope revoking the Catholic flavoured title and the English Parliament, some time later, reinstating it with a Protestant flavour. But its continued use - on, for example, our coins - does seem a little economical with the truth, if unimportant. And Gemini goes so far as to offer some other nonsenses of the same sort, from other countries. We all do it!

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/07/fake-204.html.

Reference 2: https://jdtutilities.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/07/wife-selling.html. In the event, it took two shifts to get through the film, now a freebie from the BBC. But I thought it wore its more than fifty years rather well, even if the character playing Henry was rather irritating. Orsen Welles excellent as Wolsey.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_of_the_Seven_Sacraments. I had not realised - or perhaps forgotten - that Henry's effort took the form of a successful book.

Reference 5: Assertio Septem Sacramentorum (English and Latin) - O'Donovan,  L. O.; Gibbons, J. - 1908. For the truly curious. About 200 of the near 500 pages are occupied by introductory material of one sort or another. The first page of the text proper is snapped above - on indulgences, the sale of which was a hot topic at the time of writing. From the Internet Archive.

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