Tonight, I’m off to a bonfire of my vanity, rather than a more generic bonfire of the vanities which would call for the righteous roasting of anything which might encourage sin.
Let me explain and, since it’s Wednesday and there’s always time for a little wordsmithery, before I set fire to the pyre I’m going to investigate some history and wordalicious etymology.
Back in the 1490s, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was ruining his former patrons, the de Medicis, by preaching that luxury and ostentatious excess were sinful. (And, yeah, those Medicis knew a thing or two about ostentation.)
The good people of Florence, egged on by Savonarola, in the spirit of abstinence called for by the upcoming Lent, spent Shrove Tuesday 1497 chucking anything that might tempt them to sin – mirrors, cosmetics, musical scores and instruments, playing cards, paintings, books – onto a fire.
This wasn’t the first falò delle vanità, bonfire of the vanities, but it is the most well-remembered, at least in part because it was said that the great Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli consigned some of his own paintings to the pyre. Che cavolo!
Things didn’t end well for Savonarola – only fifteen months later, after being excommunicated and tortured, he was hanged and burned in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, along with two other friars. Their ashes were dumped in the Arno to prevent his followers from making relics of his bones.
And, yeah, that’s the Arno in Pisa – stop being picky. Its the same river and it brings us to the etymology of bonfire which is that it is a bone fire. That is a fire in which you’re burning bones.
Why, you might ask. Or even, what sort of monster are you?
Firstly, they don’t have to be human bones. Don’t go all wicker man on me, alright?
Secondly, burning bones is a great way to turn them into a nice, friable fertiliser. So, you bring the beasties in from their summer pastures after harvest, knowing there’s not enough feed for them all for the winter, and after the butchering and everything is done you’ve got a pile of carcasses which need burning to make fertiliser for the fields for the next year’s crop.
And, oh, is that the time? Somehow it’s the end of October and time for Samhain, so you build up bonfires – bonefires – and make a party of it. You drive the rest of the cattle between two of the bonfires and you pass through them too, as a cleansing ritual. The wall between the worlds is thin, so you make sure you appease the spirits of the fae and of the dead.
So the bonfires (with or without their bones) were being lit at that time of the year (preferably by a fire made by friction = force-fire, needs-fire or neatsfire, neat being an Old English word for cattle) long before the Catholic Church moved its celebration of All Hallows from the 13th of May to the 1st of November, and long before English justice saw Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators drawn, hung, mutilated and quartered for their conspiracy to blow up King James and the parliament on 5 November 1605. A ‘guy’ has been burnt in effigy on that date – Bonfire Night – ever since.
Because what’s a bonfire without at least a few (notional) bones?
And what’s it all got to do with my vanity?
Well, I’m off to have one of my manuscripts critiqued, tonight, by the CSFG novel critiquing group. If producing a book is like producing a child, which it really isn’t, this is like asking some other parents to tell you how ugly your kid is. No, honestly, tell me. I can take it.
Actually, it’s more like taking all the things you’re proud of in your work and watching while others throw them onto a bonfire.
Well, it will be cold tonight, here. About 4 decrees Celcius. Books, as Mr Bradbury told us, burn at 232 Celsius. And bones, as it happens, will become friable due to the breakdown of collagen at around that temperature too.
Still, even if all I’m left with is the charred remains, they’ll make a good fertiliser for the next version of my manuscript.