Laughter at the Foot of the Cross Quotes

“Invicem insanire videmur: Each to the other we seem insane.”
― M.A. Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross

“Nothing, he argued, could kill a joke like pity.”
― Anthony Grafton, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross

“In the light of what Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus wrote it is amusing to find that Thomas himself became the butt of a jest which embodied what they both loathed. Thomas was silently composing a hymn in his mind while eating a lamprey. He finished hymn and lamprey together. To give thanks to God for his hymn he muttered one of Christ’s seven last words on the Cross, Consummatum est! — ‘It is finished!’ Bystanders were shocked. They thought he was lightly referring to the lamprey he had just consumed.”
― M.A. Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross

“Madness is the key. Elijah laughed at the frenzied priests of Baal because he knew with prophetic certainty that they were mad; the hooligan boys who laughed at Elisha did so because they thought he – and his God – were mad. High priests, soldiers, crowds and thieves laughed at Christ during his trial and passion, sure that the wretched fellow was mad: he had insane delusions about rebuilding the Temple in three days and being the Son of God (just as today cartoonists may sketch a madman as someone who believes he is Napoleon).”
― M.A. Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross