St Ann

My friend Su Yian is widely read and had a knack for drawing startling but perceptive parallels. On Sunday, I mentioned in a rather off-handed way that St. Ann, said to be the mother of St. Mary Virgin, is probably a fictitious saint; to which her response was, "So even the Bible had fan fiction!" To which the only sensible answer is "yes".

Fan fiction refers to fiction written by fans of a work instead of the original creators and it arises from a hunger for knowledge about a fictional world and the characters that inhabit it. The information available about the fictional world is necessarily limited by the prolificity of the writer who created it but the internet has permitted the enlargement and elaboration of these worlds by legions of fans who create and post stories on dedicated websites and newsgroups. The largest fan fiction universe is probably the Star Wars universe, and LucasArts even publishes the books of this extended universe. In the extended Star Wars universe there even exist characters who do not exist in the films (for example, the character of Jacen Solo, son of Han Solo and Leia Organa). J. K. Rowling's world has also been similarly explored by hordes of fans made impatient by the two year interval between Harry Potter books.

I can only think that Christianity itself engendered such fervour and dedication in its converts. We know little, if anything, about Jesus' twelve disciples outside of what is recorded in the four gospels; but traditions exist that tell us Peter achieved martyrdom in Rome, while Thomas was despatched to preach the gospel in India. Paul's story is cut short in the book of Acts: we believe he was martyred in Rome following his imprisonment, but letters were subsequently fabricated (letters addressed to Timothy and to Titus, the so-called "Pastoral Epistles") that if true, require Paul to have undertaken a rather improbable fourth missionary journey: i.e., Paul had to be released from his imprisonment in Rome, bugger off on a fourth missionary journey that includes Spain (larger and more ambitious than any of his previous three missionary journeys and otherwise unattested), then find himself imprisoned again in Rome before being beheaded on the Ostian Way. We know that the early church was awash with this sort of fan fiction: apocryphal gospels of Thomas, of Peter and of Judas; fabricated epistles ascribed to Paul and other apostles; books purporting to describe the course of Mary's life (the Transitus Mariae describes how the surviving apostles were miraculously transported to the house of the virgin at Mount Olivet to witness her glorious assumption into heaven). Christian converts immersing themselves in the writings of scripture were dissatisfied by the incomplete stories of these heroes and heroines, and so invented stories to fill the gaps. It is perhaps not surprising that in this confusion of gospels and epistles, three fictional letters leaked into the canon. This tradition of fan fiction continued for centuries and as late as the 18th century there appeared a devotion to the "15 Secret Tortures of Christ", receiving even the imprimatur of Pope Clement XII. Mary's corporeal assumption (twice declared heresy in the the 5th and 6th centuries) was declared dogma by Pius XII in 1950 (Munificentissimus Deus).

http://www.abu.nb.ca/ecm/topics/event14.htm
http://www.starharbor.com/santiago/secrets.html