On August 10th in this blog I quoted Avicenna’s comment, “Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned,” remarking that this was obviously written before student surveys.

Following up a hint in Fr. Z’s blog, I now find that things have changed less than I thought.  They had something like student surveys after all.

The martyr, St. Cassian of Imola, was a teacher at the Forum of Cornelius.  We read that when he refused to sacrifice to the Romans gods, the judges reflected that “the weaker the hand, the more painful was the sentence of martyrdom.”  Therefore they commanded, "Let the scourger, that is, the schoolteacher, be pricked, cut, and stabbed to death by his own scholars, with styles, awls, pens, penknives, and other sharp instruments such as children make use of in school."

According to tradition, the pupils were only too happy to help out.