What do you do when you lose something and can’t find it? A typical Brazilian sympathy is to invoke the number one employee of the Celestial Department of Lost and Found: São Longuinho. Just don’t forget, when the object magically reappears, to say thank you by jumping up and down three times – preferably accompanied by three little screams (and well alone, to avoid jokes and gossip).
Is there a more bizarre form of gratitude in human history? But the most curious thing is that nobody knows where this bouncy superstition came from – heard several folklorists and none of them had the slightest idea of its origin, except for speculations relating the triad of pinchos to the Holy Trinity.
São Longuinho, a saint celebrated on March 15, is especially popular in Spain and Brazil – but here there is only one church with his image, in Guararema, in the interior of São Paulo. “Longuinho comes from Longinus, a common name for martyrs”, says theologian Décio Passos, from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). Longinus, in turn, comes from the Greek lonkhe, which means spear. According to historians of religion, Longinus was called Cassius and was one of the Roman centurions chosen to watch over Christ on the cross. “On Good Friday, Cássio stuck his spear in the heart of Jesus and ended up getting a jet of blood in his eyes”, says Father Aparecido Pereira, a scholar of hagiographies (biographies of saints) and editor of the newspaper O São Paulo, of the Metropolitan Curia. Cassius suffered from an eye problem – or “spiritual blindness”, according to some accounts – and at that moment he was healed instantly.
He converted to Christianity and took refuge in Caesarea, where he became a monk. Discovered, he was beheaded, like so many other Christian martyrs.
The story of São Longuinho is quoted in the New Testament by Matthew (27:54), Mark (15:39) and Luke (23:47).
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