MY APOLOGIES TO READERS who emailed to scold me about the slow pace of postings. (“A blog is supposed to keep going.”) I should have admitted this a full week ago, but I have gone fishing for a few weeks.

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Though not necessarily in the ordinary way. The ancient story Tobias and the Angel comes a bit closer to the mark. Often considered biblical, it is not. The Book of Tobit is part of the Apocrypha, a narrative collection rejected by the early Church Fathers. Nonetheless, it has prompted some marvelous painting.

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The tale begins with Tobit, who defies a law that forbids burying murdered Jews. (There is analogy to Antigone here. It lies in an individual’s defiance of an inhumane law that refuses burial and, thereby, disparages the dead.) Tobit is punished for his insurrection by being blinded by birds. The sightless father, no longer able to travel, sends his son Tobias to a faraway town to collect a debt due him. Along the way, a stranger befriends Tobias and guides him to the town.

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Along the way, the pair kill and dissect a huge fish. Tobias does not yet know his protector and companion is the angel Raphael. But under the angel’s guidance, a poultice is made of the fish’s guts that later restores the father’s eyesight. And—as anything angelically devised should—dispels a demon. Meanwhile, the angel guides Tobias across the Tigris to safety.

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Verrocchio’s version, with Tobias a young boy and the fish a mere trifle, is the best-known version. But there are so many. Tobias grows older in some and the fish can be quite ferocious at times:

For reasons of my own, it is the fish I am after. A fish with salutary healing powers. An aquatic miracle worker and demon-slayer—one that grills up nicely, like a fresh sardine.  Nevertheless, I would gladly settle for an angel as evocative of divine command as this fine Florentine one:

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© 2011 Maureen Mullarkey