Thursday 30 May 2019

thrones and dominions

Located in the closed research town of Sarov (its original name restored in 1995 by President Boris Yeltsin at the residents’ request from its designation as Arzamas-16, affectionately referred to as Los Arzamas after its sister city, Los Alamos) the Russian Federal Nuclear Centre is receiving some gentle scrutiny and rebuke for the purchase of some icons and other religious material related to native saint Seraphim (*1754 - †1833).
Although the former presence of a monastery at this location does not exactly account for the connection with the popular figure or explain while his holy relics were taken on an October 2016 Soyuz mission to the International Space Station—Joseph of Cupertino (the Italian village in Apulia and not the Apple headquarters its named after) a reported dullard of a priest however with a penchant for levitation and in general the capacity for wonder and awe is the patron of astronauts and cosmonauts (Feast Day 18 October), having met his untimely demise during preparations for another celebration involving fireworks and an accident that launched Joseph into the sky, honouring a local seems like a wise thing to do in any case. Before travelling into space, Seraphim’s mortal remains were feared destroyed in the Bolshevik Revolution until later discovered as an exhibit in a museum of superstition, saved and subsequently repatriated to Sarov.