A Quick Trip to Italy, Part II

The museums of Florence have a splendid system called the Firenze Card, which gives you direct access to seventy-two of the museums of Florence for seventy-two hours. I cannot stress how much it is worth the price. To get your money's worth, you'd need to see four or five museums, but this is not a difficulty at all.

(1) Florence is highly walkable, and almost every museum is within a five- to ten-minute walk from another museum. It's not uncommon to have multiple museums in one piazza.

(2) Talk of 'museums' is a bit misleading if we are considering how much you are getting for the cost, since we tend to think of a museum as a completely separate thing from another museum. The card actually covers museum tickets, and some sights in Florence involve multiple museum tickets. If you see the Duomo, for instance, and want to take in all the sights of the Duomo, that's actually five distinct tickets -- one for the Battistero di San Giovanni, one for the Campanile di Giotto, one for the Cripta Santa Reparata, one for the Cupola, and one for the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. (The Cathedral itself is free to visit.) The Palazzo Vecchio and the Torre d'Arnolfo are two distinct tickets despite being in the same building, and despite the fact that one is accessed through the other.

(3) You can visit more museums with the card than you otherwise could, because it reduces, massively, the number of lines you stand in and the amount of time you have to stand in them. You don't have to keep standing in line to get a ticket, because you have one for them all, and things are often set up so that those with the card have a separate line. (The most striking example of this was the Uffizi, notoriously a difficult museum to get into because you may have to stand in line for a couple of hours; through the Firenze Card line it took us less than ten minutes.)

For Monday, we went down to the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio to activate the card, and since we were there already, that's where we started.

Around 1300, the people of Florence decided to build a magistrate's hall that would be appropriate to their conception of the city, and so they enlisted Arnolfo di Cambio, who was also designing the Duomo, to build it. He incorporated certain elements of prior palaces on the spot, most notably (it seems) the rectangular tower that combines with the projecting crenallated battlement that makes the building so striking. Given the origin of the tower, it is not actually centered, but it's almost not noticeable if you just glance at it, given the position of the building in the square.

The original name was the Palazzo della Signoria, because it was the center of power for the Signoria, the ruling body of the Republic of France. The name was changed multiple times through the years as the governing authority in Fiorenza shifted; Cosimo I de'Medici made it his official seat in 1540. In 1549, however, Cosimo moved the seat of government again to the Palazzo Pitti, thus giving it its current name: the Old Palace. Despite no longer being the primary seat of government, the Palazzo Vecchio continued to play an important role in governance. It would again become the seat of government in the nineteenth century when Florence was the temporary capital of United Italy, and the Palazzo Vecchio was chosen symbolically as the seat of government from 1865-1871. Since then it has been a city museum, but for symbolic purposes it remains technically the seat of government for the City of Florence; the Mayor of Florence has an office there and it is a meeting place for the City Council.

One of the most noticeable things about the palace is its entrance. Michelangelo's David was originally designed for the entrance of the building, where it remained from 1504 to 1873. It was then moved to the Accademia Gallery, for preservation reasons, and a replica was put in its place in 1910, but if you want to see how the statue was intended to be experienced, you have to see the replica in the Piazza della Signoria:

The other statue flanking the entrance is the Hercules and Cacus of Baccio Bandinelli. It was originally supposed to be done by Michelangelo, and Bandinelli, unfortunately, has suffered intense criticism through the centuries for not having been born Michelangelo, and not doing a statue exactly the way Michelangelo would have, but the statue does work nicely in its place and apparently the Medici themselves were pleased with it. The club, as it turns out, is aluminum and is (obviously) not the original bronze club. Nobody knows what happened to the original club; it was only discovered that it was not the original club in the 1990s when the statue was undergoing restoration. The slaying of Cacus was an event during Hercules' Tenth Labor, and the two statues together therefore represent spiritual strength (David) and physical strength (Hercules) -- a message by the Medicis to any republicans left who might oppose them. But the Medicis also showed a bit of restraint by recognizing that their power was not absolute: the text on the frontispiece above the door has a Christogram and refers to Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords.

The inside is richly decorated in ways too many to enumerate. Here, for instance, is a ceiling:

A statue of a putto with a dolphin by Andrea del Verocchio:

The Salone dei Cinquecento is quite striking:

The Salone was built in 1494 by Simone del Pollaiolo. In 1494, the Medici were in exile; it was Girolamo Savanorola who held the reins of power. He commissioned the hall in order to serve as the meeting place of the Grand Council of Florence; when the Medicis returned, it was enlarged by Giorgio Vasari. Vasari and his assistants painted scenes from the life of Grand Duke Cosimo on the ceiling. The raised stage was designed and built by Bandinelli for Cosimo to hold audiences with ambassadors.

Throughout one finds various artifacts emblematic of Florence or of the Medici that have been donated by collectors. Here is a death mask for Dante:

And here is a bust of Machiavelli:

Two other things that caught my eye in particular. One is an embroidered icon from the fifteenth century, of very good workmanship:

Embroidered icons are an excellent idea in many ways; while they have existed through much of Christian history (particularly in situations in which one needs icons to be highly portable), they should be more common than they are. Given the time and skill required to produce detailed pictures by needlework, pictorial embroidery is able to be an art quite as high as painting. And here is a statue of Saint Catherine of Siena:

One of the most striking rooms is the Stanza delle Mappe geografiche, also sometimes called the Stanza della Guardaroba. Originally a storeroom for valuables, the walls were painted with maps by Fra Ignazio Dante, showing the world as it seemed to be in the sixteenth century. The maps are all Mercator projections. Gerardus Mercator had only published his world map using Mercator projections in 1569, and Fra Ignazio was painting the maps at about the same time, so these maps were literally at the cutting edge of cartography when they were painted. At the center of the room there is the mappa mundi, which unfortunately has seen better days. It still makes an impressive picture:

It is always worthwhile to ascend the Torre d'Arnolfo and look out at the city. This view from the Tower, looking eastward, is of the Basilica of Santa Croce, which, alas, we never had a chance to reach. It is also called the Tempio dell'Itale Glorie because some of the most famous Italians in history are buried there:

Here we have the Duomo, of course, which is to the north:

And looking westward we have the River Arno:

Down in the Piazza della Signoria, there are a few other things worth noting. One is the Fountain of Neptune sculpted by Bartolomeo Ammannati in the sixteenth century:

It is an impressive work, although it has taken a severe beating over the years, from damage by vandals to bombing by the Bourbons. And, of course, there is the famous Loggia dei Lanzi. It was originally the place Grand Duke Cosimo housed his German mercenaries (they were pikemen, hence the Lanzi nickname), but was re-worked as a terrace from which the princes of Florence could watch events going on in the square. It is now an open-air sculpture gallery:

In this picture you can see a statue of Menelaus holding Patroclus, a very old one from the third century BC, although it has obviously been restored and modified; The Rape of the Sabine Woman, by Giambologna, which is in some ways the most important statue on the terrace, being the earliest recorded single statue involving multiple figures that was designed to be seen from all sides; and a statue of Hercules and Nessus, also by Giambologna. In the background you can see two of several statues of women. There are other sculptures not visible in this photograph; here is a good 360-degree panoramic view of the entire Loggia.

to be continued

Lent XXXV

You know it has ever been my desire to become a Saint, but I have always felt, in comparing myself with the Saints, that I am as far removed from them as the grain of sand, which the passer-by tramples underfoot, is remote from the mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds.

Instead of being discouraged, I concluded that God would not inspire desires which could not be realised, and that I may aspire to sanctity in spite of my littleness.

Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Chapter IX

A Quick Trip to Italy, Part I

Things have been quite slow around here, content-wise, for the past two weeks, because last week I was in Italy on a family vacation (and, of course, had to cram a lot of preparation into the week before). The trip was something of a whirlwind trip, a little of this and a little of that, but it was quite enjoyable.

We arrived in Milan on Sunday, March 13, but immediately took the high-speed train to Florence; Trenitalia was quite efficient and the entire train system in Italy is easy to use once you figure out how it works. It's less scenic than you might expect, though. Having come off a redeye flight and a train ride, we weren't in much of a condition to do anything that day, but it's impossible to miss the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, usually just known as the Duomo di Fiorenza, and the hotel was a surprising well-run boutique hotel right next to it. The view of the Duomo from one room, in which you get a bit of the campanile or belltower (it was a more spectacular view at night, but there's so much light on the cathedral at night that it was difficult to get a good picture of it):

And the view from another:

The original church, Santa Reparata, was built somewhere around the fifth century; by the thirteenth century it was practically falling down and was utterly inadequate for the increasingly bustling town. A new church was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1294; the final result was much larger than Arnolfo had planned, in part, I believe, because in the course of the construction, the relics of Saint Zenobius, patron saint of Florence, were re-discovered, thus stirring up greater interest in the project. Much of the ultimate look for the cathedral (and for later Renaissance churches) was influenced by the Baptistry, which had been built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; Arnolfo, before designing the cathedral itself, had built up some of the decoration on it. I wasn't able to get a picture of the Battistero that I liked, so here's one from Wikimedia:


^{Georges Jansoone; CC BY-SA 3.0}
In 1401, a design competition was held for a new set of bronze doors for the Baptistry ; the commission was won by Lorenzo Ghiberti, who worked for decades to complete them, and are some of the most famous doors in the world, known as the Porte del Paradiso (a name for them that is usually said to go back to Michelangelo). The current Baptistry doors are actually replicas; Ghiberti's originals are in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, which, unfortunately, was closed the entire time I was there.

Construction on the Campanile began in 1334 under Giotto di Bondone:

By 1418 a design competition was held for the one and only part of the cathedral that was still unbuilt, the dome. Filippo Brunelleschi managed just to edge out Ghiberti in the contest. The basic parameters had been set by Arnolfo di Cambio's design, but the dome called for was not obviously even technically possible -- it had to be a very large, very high dome without any buttresses, but without buttresses a dome that size would be subject to severe hoop stress, and thus naturally tend to start bulging out. In other large domes, you would usually have supported the dome from the inside while building it, but in this case the dome was being built over a working cathedral, which sharply limited what you could do to keep the dome in place during construction. Scaffolding would be a problem -- you would ordinarily need an immense amount of wood to build the supporting scaffolding, and Tuscany is not heavily wooded. And what materials would you use for that size? Stone would be too heavy. Other big domes, like that of Rome's Pantheon, used concrete, but you had to have the right recipe, and the old recipes were all lost. So Brunelleschi began a series of innovative architectural solutions to apparently insoluble problems: no supporting scaffolding was used; the dome was primarily built out of brick, which is both lighter and easier to work with than stone; the dome is in fact hollow, a double-shell, to make it lighter; the skeleton is quite rigid; the scaffolding for workers was cantilevered; and much more. Khan Academy has a good summary of the engineering genius Brunelleschi poured into the dome.

Thus Florence's most characteristic landmark. Ironically, I never actually had time to go in, or to go up and see the sights from Giotto's Campanile, which is a shame -- but there is so much to do in Florence that seeing it all is simply impossible.

to be continued

Strive Not the Less

Sonnet VII
by Petrarch
translated by Charles Tomlinson

Intemperance, Ease, and Pleasure's beds of down
So rule the world, that every virtue's dead;
And Nature's course is so by Fashion led,
That her wise teaching men now scarcely own;

And every light benign of Heaven is gone,
By which life's path, in honour, we may tread;
So that men gaze in wonder when 'tis said
There are who feed the stream of Helicon.

Thus speak the crowd, all basely bent on gain,
"Who now the laurel crown or myrtle prize?
Philosophy both poor and naked goes."

Who court the Muse have few to sympathise.
But, gentle Friend, strive not the less to obtain,
The wreath that such high work as thine bestows.

Maronite Year XXXIII

Sha'neenee, or Hosanna Sunday, is the usual Maronite name for what in the West is usually called Palm Sunday. Celebrating Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, it emphasizes the lowliness of His coming, and begins the march of Passion Week.

Hosanna Sunday
Philippians 1:1-13; John 12:12-22

We are hardly worthy to praise Your name,
You who are seated on a lofty throne,
You whom the seraphim praise with great joy,
singing, "Holy, Holy, Holy," on high!
The cherubim beneath You bless Your deeds,
with rush of wind and fire hymn Your light.
We are hardly worthy of Your mercy,
but we will sing Your praise at Your coming:
Hosanna, Hosanna, Son of David!

We are hardly worthy to praise Your name;
divinity rode on humanity;
You chose an ass's colt to be Your steed;
You chose the acclamation of children;
from mouths of babes You have drawn Your defense;
You have taken sinners and made them pure.
Zion grew uneasy at Your entry,
but we will sing Your praise at Your coming:
Hosanna, Hosanna, Son of David!

Maronite Year XXXII

With the day before Palm Sunday (or Hosanna Sunday, as it is more often called), we shift into the narrative preparation for Easter, with the events that lead to Palm Sunday and also anticipate Easter itself: the raising of Lazarus and its aftermath.

Saturday of the Raising of Lazarus
1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:5; John 11:55-12:11

Remember, Lord, how we have walked before You,
how we have sought to do what is good in Your eyes;
You have called us to be an elect people,
a priesthood of kings, a nation of holiness,
drawn out of darkness to sing praise to our Lord.

In raising Lazarus, You began the great march,
the march of mercy, the work that saved our lost souls;
You said to our dead and lifeless hearts, "Come forth!"
What is dead, by Your power is raised to full life,
The flow of time is turned back by Your power.

In raising Lazarus from the dead, O Lord,
You showed all humanity Your divinity,
You who ride upon the mighty cherubim;
soon You will humbly enter Jerusalem's gates,
on a colt, displaying Your humanity.

Lent XXXIV

...pride, although it is a special kind of sin by reason of its proper object, is nonetheless a sin common to all sins by reason of the diffusion of its governance. And so also we call pride the root and queen of all sins, as Gregory makes clear in his work Morals.

Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 8.2.

[Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, Regan, tr., Oxford University Press (Oxford: 2003) p. 328.]

Maronite Year XXXI

The Friday of the the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness serves for the Maronite calendar as the fortieth day of Lent; it serves as a stopping-point to sum up Lent before we get to Holy Week itself.

Friday of the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness
2 Thessalonians 3:6-18; Luke 4:1-13

Have mercy on us, O Lord;
You are rich in mercy.
In Your great compassion,
blot the record of our wrongs.
Fasting and prayer make the soul pure;
through them mercy pours from heaven's heights.

From the Jordan Jesus came,
full of the Holy Spirit;
in the wilds He was tempted.

Satan said, "Make these stones bread."
"We do not live by just bread;
we live by the word of God."

"Worship me; all will be yours."
"It is written, 'Serve the Lord,
Him alone shall you worship.'"

"Show Yourself the Son of God!
God's angels will protect You!"
"Do not tempt the Lord Your God."

Wash us clean, O Lord our God;
purify us from sin,
the sin You always see.
Washed, we will be white as snow.
Fasting and prayer radiate light;
through them the devout are made like Christ.

Lent XXXIII

...every act of sexual lust is a sin either because of the disorder of the act or even because of the disorder of teh desire alone, which disorder primarily and intrinsically belongs to sexual lust. For Augustine says in the City of God: "Sexual lust is not the sin of beautiful and pleasant bodies but of souls wickedly loving bodily pleasures to the neglect of moderation, which makes us fit for things that are spiritually more beautiful and pleasant."

Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 15.1.

[Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, Regan, tr., Oxford University Press (Oxford: 2003) p. 422.]

Lent XXXII

And the sin of gluttony does not consist of the external acts regarding the very consumption of food except as a consequence, namely, insofar as the consumption results from an inordinate desire for food, as is also the case regarding all the other sins related to emotions. And so Augustine says in his Confessions: "I do not fear the uncleanness of food eaten with bread but the uncleanness of inordinate desire." And so it is evidence that gluttony chiefly regards emotions and is contrary to moderation regarding the desires and pleasures in food and drink.

Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 14.1. 'Emotions' really should be 'passions', in both cases here.

[Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, Regan, tr., Oxford University Press (Oxford: 2003) p. 406.]

Lent XXXI

The accumulation of temporal goods contrary to justice is always a mortal sin. And so Hab. 2:6 says: "Woe to those who pile up things not their own." Likewise, the accumulation of temporal goods, even if not contrary to justice, is a mortal sin if one makes them one's end.

Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 13.2 ad s.c. 3.

[Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, Regan, tr., Oxford University Press (Oxford: 2003) p. 395.]

Lent XXX

And anger indeed signifies a desire for some evil, that is, the harm one seeks to inflict on a neighbor, but anger desires that evil under the aspect of good, namely, righteous vengeance, not under the aspect of evil. For an angry person seeks to injure another in order to avenge an injury inflicted on the person....Therefore we should say regarding the question at issue that anger will be good and virtuous and called zealous if it be a desire for vengeance insofar as it is really righteous. But anger is a sin if it should belong to a vengeance apparently and falsely righteous. And Gregory in his work Morals calls such anger sinful.

Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 12.2. The Latin for 'vengeance' here is 'vindicatio'.

[Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, Regan, tr., Oxford University Press (Oxford: 2003) p. 378.]

Lent XXIX

Spiritual apathy is contrary to the precept to keep holy the Sabbath, which as a moral precept commands repose of the mind in God.

Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 11.3 ad 2. I really don't like the translation of 'spiritual apathy' for acedia here; better to stick to sloth, for all the potentially misleading assocations: that is, being grieved at one's own spiritual good because of its difficulty.

[Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, Regan, tr., Oxford University Press (Oxford: 2003) p. 368.]

That Heaviest Weight of All to Bear

Who Shall Deliver Me?
by Christina Rossetti

God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.

All others are outside myself;
I lock my door and bar them out
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.

I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?

If I could once lay down myself,
And start self-purged upon the race
That all must run ! Death runs apace.

If I could set aside myself,
And start with lightened heart upon
The road by all men overgone!

God harden me against myself,
This coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease and rest and joys

Myself, arch-traitor to myself ;
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
My clog whatever road I go.

Yet One there is can curb myself,
Can roll the strangling load from me
Break off the yoke and set me free.

Maronite Year XXX

The last Sunday of Lent in the Maronite calendar is given to the story of the healing of blind Bartimaeus. Unsurprisingly, the aspect of salvation it focuses on is enlightenment.

Sunday of the Healing of the Blind Man
2 Corinthians 10:1-7; Mark 10:46-52

Praise and honor to the One who said,
"Let there be light," so there was light!
Praise to the Father, the Source of Light!
Praise to the Son, true Light from Light!
Praise to the Spirit, shining greatly,
bright from the Father and the Son.
Lord have mercy on us and save us!
O Light from Light and God from God,
You became man to heal our nature,
like us in all things except sin,
shining and scattering the darkness.

Light of the wise and Joy of the just,
who rescues us from the darkness,
You have dawned; night's power is broken,
death is destroyed, hell overcome.
By your healings you enlighten us;
You opened the eyes of the blind,
brought light to begging Bartimaeus,
that You might teach that You are light,
that Your way is free from all darkness.
Son of David, You are God's own Christ,
shining and scattering the darkness.

We do not battle mere flesh and blood;
we war against this world's spirit,
powers of darkness in high places.
We have no weapon but Your light;
it destroys the fortresses of death.
We were blind; You gave us pure light,
You made crooked paths straight before us.
Take courage, O Church, and rise up!
Your Lord by grace is calling for you.
Given sight through faith, now follow Him,
shining and scattering the darkness.

Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters

Introduction

[Because this two-volume work is a selection out of Vasari's biographical sketches, it doesn't make much sense to do an 'Opening Passage'.]

Sample Passage:

In the vicinity of Prato, which is at the distance of some ten miles from the city of Florence, and at a village called Savignano, was born Bartolommeo, according to the Tuscan practice called Baccio. From his childhood, Bartolommeo evinced not only a great inclination but an extraordinary aptitude for the study of design; and by the intervention of Benedetto da Maiano, he was placed under the discipline of Cosimo Roselli, being taken into the house of certain of his kinsfolk who dwelt near the gate of San Piero Gattolini, where Bartolommeo also dwelt many years, for which reason he was always called Baccio della Porta, nor was he known by any other name. (Vol 2, p. 5)

Summary: I found Vasari's work to be interesting for the same reason that I often enjoy biographies of poets: it is a look at art from the workmanship side, and takes the details of workmanship seriously. In a very real sense one can read Vasari's lives of the painters as a series of studies on the interrelation of talent, education, and reward in good painting, by one who was familiar with all three, and, interestingly enough, the relation of these three things in painting to good character in general, as part of that form of good life that is suitable to painters.

The first teacher of every painter is nature, and the painter by his designs seeks to imitate nature, selecting "the brightest parts from her best and loveliest features" (Vol. 1, p. 21). Some, like Giotto or Michelangelo, have an extraordinary innate talent and drive to learn from nature directly; they are, as Vasari says of Giotto, "induced by nature herself to the arts of design" (Vol. 1, p. 21). Those who are "by nature disposed to the cultivation of the arts" have a sure foundation for a good life, one which can be extended by study; this may be built upon by "character and manners calculated to render them acceptable to all men"; but to achieve true greatness one must be noticed (Vol. 1, p. 50).

The natural talent and study which makes good painting possible needs to be encouraged by reward, "for there are many minds, which might remain dormant if left without stimulus, but which, being excited by this allurement, put forth all their efforts, not only for the acquirement of their art, but to attain the utmost excellence therein" (Vol 1., p. 66). On the other side, however, we have the examples of painters like Sebastiano del Piombo that show that this is not a universal rule, however, good it may be in general:

...the liberality of just and magnanimous princes has, in certain instances, produced a contrary effect, seeing that there are many who are more disposed to contribute to the advantage and utility of the world while in depressed and moderate condition than when exalted to greatness and possessing an abundance of all things. (Vol 2., pp. 340-341)

We see something similar to this with study, which is essential to serious painting, but at the same time can be done badly. Thus the painter Paolo Uccello ruined his native talent by an excessive, almost obsessive, focus on studying perspective, and the quality of the work of Jacopo da Pontormo declined through his life because, instead of cultivating the excellences of his early style, he devoted himself to studied imitation of Northern European painters. As Vasari says in reflecting on the latter, "he who ventures to do himself violence and seeks to force nature does but ensure the ruin of those good qualities which had been imparted to him" (Vol. 2, p. 290). And Vasari repeatedly notes the importance of what one studies in one's youth -- a matter almost of accident, but which can have significant effects on the quality of one's work later. And study itself can get you only so far; as Vasari notes, providence, seeing so many artists struggling in "ardent studies pursued without any result" (Vol 2., p. 107), decided to show them the perfection of art by simply making Michelangelo.

A similar issue can be found with good character. You have painters like Fra Angelico, whose saintly character is part of his skill in painting, in a way that shows that the two are capable of combining in a powerful way. Vasari is likewise very clear that all of the greatest painters had at least some excellent character traits that made them admirable men as well as admirable painters, and that the two ways of being admirable are in some way connected -- and yet others may be overrated because their character gives them an ability to please that does not have much to do with the quality of their work.

We see then throughout the fragility of greatness of painting. Where natural talent is wanting, one can only get so far. But natural talent also requires cultivation, and each form of cultivation has pitfalls. The external cultivation of reward provides the incentives of wealth and glory to intensify the latent motivation to paint -- but in some cases it may have the opposite effect. The personal cultivation of study is a powerful thing -- but it may ruin or mislead as well as stimulate. And the innermost cultivation, that of good character, diligent, sweet-tempered, thoughtful, gives a grace to one's work -- sometimes. Painting itself is a fragile art -- Vasari is already full of stories of destroyed masterpieces -- but the conditions for great painting are themselves fragile. Talent, character, study, and reward: they all must come together, and do so in the right way, for real and lasting greatness to be achieved.

Favorite Passage:

It is related that the prior of the monastery was excessively importunate in pressing Leonardo to complete the picture [of the Last Supper]. He could in no way comprehend wherefore the artist should sometimes remain half a day together absorbed in thought before his work, without making any progress that he could see; this seemed to him a strange waste of time, and he would fain have had him work away as he could make the men do who were digging in his garden, never laying the pencil out of his hand. Not content with seeking to hasten Leonardo, the prior even complained to the Duke, and tormented him to such a degree that the latter was at length compelled to send for Leonardo, whom he courteously entreated to let the work be finished, assuring him nevertheless that he did so because impelled by the importunities of the prior.

Leonardo, knowing the Prince to be intelligent and judicious, determined to explain himself fully on the subject with him, although he had never chosen to do so with the prior. He therefore discoursed with him at some length respecting art, and made it perfectly manifest to his comprehension that men of genius are sometimes producing most when they seem to be labouring least, their minds being occupied in the elucidation of their ideas, and in the completion of the conceptions to which they afterwards give form and expression with the hand.... (Vol 1, pp. 316-317)

Recommendation: It takes an interest in Italian Renaissance painters, but if you have that, it is definitely Recommended.

Lent XXVIII

Good as such cannot make a person sad, but one can be sad about good as understood under the aspect of evil, whether real or apparent. And envy in this way consists of chagrin at the good of another, namely, insofar as the good of another is an impediment to one's own excellence.

Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 10.1 ad 6.

[Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, Regan, tr., Oxford University Press (Oxford: 2003) p. 353.]

Through Dim Labyrinths of Sleep

The Dream
by Arthur Christoper Benson

I dreamed that I was dead, and smiling lay
Glad as a child, that wakens in the dawn,
And sees, across the dewy glimmering lawn
The light that brings some longed-for holiday.

So this was all, I said, and death is o'er;
The shadow that has lain across the years
Is safely passed, and I have done with fears,
And I am glad and free for evermore!

Then with small joyous laughter I addressed
My heart to peace and wonder, when a flame
Of terror seized my spirit, mournful pain;
Dull sadnesses that would not let me rest;
And through dim labyrinths of sleep I came
Back to the cruel day, back to my chain.

Lent XXVII

Many human beings are stirred to spiritual deeds for the sake of some temporal goods, but the disordered covetousness of temporal goods is not on that account sinless. So also although many perform virtuous deeds for the sake of glory, the disordered desire for glory is not on that account sinless, since we should perform virtuous deeds for their own sake, or rather for God's sake, not for the sake of glory.

Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 9.1 ad 6. 'Glory' here means (following a definition by Augustine) 'clear recognition accompanied by praise'.

[Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, Regan, tr., Oxford University Press (Oxford: 2003) p. 344.]

Infallibility

The Hans Küng drinking game, if you don't know it, consists in listening to a lecture by the Swiss theologian Hans Küng and taking a drink every time he takes a theological topic -- infallibility, the Trinity, Christology -- and makes it about himself. Actually, it should probably be kept entirely theoretical because, as you know if you have ever been subjected to watching a lecture by Hans Küng, you would get very drunk, dangerously drunk, very quickly. Theology for Hans Küng seems to have as its subject the Twelve Labors of Hans Küng. I thought of that a bit when I read Küng's recent appeal to Pope Francis on the subject of papal infallibility, which he does, indeed, make primarily a discussion of his own experiences and travails.

I find the comments section somewhat more interesting, as the readers of the National Catholic Reporter quickly end up running through pretty much every possible anti-infallibility position imaginable. Most interesting of all was that some of the commenters start arguing that the problem is not papal infallibility but magisterial infallibility -- which is actually more sensible than anything Küng himself usually argues, since the doctrine of papal infallibility is just that the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of Truth, has an infallible authority to teach, and that the Church, insofar as it is animated by the Holy Spirit, sometimes in teaching does so out of the Holy Spirit's infallible authority to teach, and that the Pope's teaching, when he is teaching as successor of Peter and sign of the apostolic unity of the Church, is one of the ways in which the Church does so. Since the Holy Spirit necessarily has infallible teaching authority, the bulk of the doctrine rests entirely on the nature of the teaching authority of the Church. Once you grant that the Church has any kind of magisterial infallibility, the only question left with regard to papal infallibility is whether the Pope ever, in any exercise of his office, is the 'official voice' of the Church, or, to put it another way, whether the Church ever teaches in this way by way of the Pope as successor of Peter. (And if you look at the definition of the doctrine by Vatican I, you notice immediately that the primary bulk of the argument is papal primacy, the sense in which the Pope guides and speaks for the entire Church; papal infallibility is treated as nothing but a particular clarification of papal primacy, and the actual definition explicitly connects papal infallibility with ecclesial infallibility.)