Word: samsonized
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...Samson of the Ivy League got a crew cut Saturday...
King & Prophet. Some of the questions were easy enough for a Sunday school class-such as "Who smote a lion and a bear?" (answer: Samson) or "Give the names of two Biblical shepherds, one of whom became a king, the other a prophet" (David and Amos). Others demanded an almost photographic memory of the prophetic books and chronicles. Example: "Give six instances where a man or a woman prevented war or bloodshed." By the time of the second round, half of the contestants had dropped out of competition; Mitchell and Krasniansky were neck and neck for the lead...
...Hooly Monke. While medieval monasteries waxed rich in land holdings, Bury St. Edmunds had fallen deeply into debt to Jewish moneylenders at the end of the 12th century. Then a strong, stubborn monk, appropriately named Samson, became abbot shortly after a young boy was found murdered. The Jews were blamed. Eight years later 57 Jews were massacred in the town. Samson got the King to expel the Jews from Bury St. Edmunds, and shortly cleared the abbey's debt, wresting back the glory that the monastery once enjoyed...
...abbot was the embodiment of a militant monk. History records that he begged the King to go on a crusade. Hoving concludes that Samson might well have commissioned the cross. Perhaps he was the abbot whom Chaucer mocked in his Prioress's Tale for his false piety over a murder...
Concludes Hoving more mildly of Samson's cross: "It expresses what was in the wind throughout the entire Christian world during the late 12th century, for the cross is symbolic of the crusading spirit, both good and evil...