ACCESS recently stumbled
across a history of cataloguing, though on closer inspection it may
have been written by Woody Allen or Benny Hill.
The entry on
the Patron Saint of Cataloguers is clearly, a long entry. To
wit:
June 21,
762 A.D.
Death of
St. Minutia, patron saint of catalogers. The birth date of St.
Minutia is unknown. The only reliable chronicle has an unlucky
lacuna: "Sa. Minutia in [.......an]no domini nata est", where
only the last two missing letters can be supplied with any
certainty. Vitae of the saint written later naively abbreviate
the "...no domini" as 'n.d.', and this is the form
traditionally cited for her birth. Minutia is said to have
been born in the former Roman province of Nova Panonia (part
of the present day Czech Republic), in the village of Sineloco
(modern day Odnikud). Her time and place of birth, therefore,
are usually given as "s.l., n.p., n.d."
Happily, a
generous amount of hagiographical material on St. Minutia has
survived, perhaps the most popular of which is a collection of
her homilies and sayings, including the motto most closely
associated with her: "Non pilus tam tenuis ut secari non
possit."* She appears to have had some interest in
ecclesiastical architecture; one early vita has references to
a church which was built using plans drawn up by Minutia
herself. The actual building has not survived, but there is a
fragment from a contemporary description: "On either side of
the main entry, St. Minutia caused innumerable added entries
to be placed, such that people marvelled at the great
multitude of doors, and rebuked the Saint for the labor wasted
in putting them there. 'No labor has been wasted', she
answered them patiently, 'for by these means no one will be
barred from my church through a lack of access.'" Another
account explains that her plans were an improvement on earlier
designs which had called for a single entry at the east end,
near the tabernacle; the inconvenience of relying on this
so-called corporate entry was immediately recognized and
rectified by the saint.
She was,
not surprisingly, an influential member of her convent. There
are a number of references to her reorganization of its
agricultural property: she is said to have divided the land
into holdings devoted to permanent crops (fixed fields) and
holdings given over to crop rotation (variable fields). The
variable fields were further divided into smaller parcels
(subfields) assigned individually to peasants attached to the
convent. Minutia is also renowned for her role as a mediator
between the warring factions so prevalent in those chaotic
times. She was continually optimistic in even the most
threatening circumstances and was careful never to anticipate
a conflict, although she quickly resolved them when they
arose. *translation: There is no hair too fine to be
split.
