April
by Ella Higginson
Hey, pretty maid! Whence comest thou
With violets linked about thy brow,
And zone of buttercups' own gold?
The currant blossoms round thee fold
Their delicate beauty, red and sweet,
And star-flowers faint beneath thy feet.
Thou dear coquette! A tear, a frown,
Dark lashes drooping shyly down,
To bid one hope the while he fears,
Then sudden laughter thro' thy tears;
May all thy sweethearts now take care,
And of thy ravishments beware.
See how the soft wind kisses thee,
And how the rough wind misses thee,
And fruit trees blow and bend and sigh
When thy glad feet come twinkling by;
And thou dost laugh thro' sparkling tears
And kisses fling at hopes and fears.
Ah, May is fair, and June is sweet,
And August comes with loitering feet;
July's the maid to lie and dream,
Beside some blue and lilied stream;
But April's sweetheart never yet
Could her tear-mingled smiles forget.
Saturday, April 02, 2016
Tear-Mingled Smiles
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Philosophy, Academic Research, and Practical Engagement
I hope that after this week I'll be able to get back into more of the usual kinds of posts; the past three weeks have been hectic and this week hasn't been any sort of slow-down at all.
However, I notice that Frodeman and Briggle's argument that philosophy has lost its way continues to stir up some discussion. Besides Soames's response, which I questioned here, skholiast at "Speculum Criticum" had two posts commenting on the discussion:
* Philosophy Departments, Nihilism, Psychic Research, and the Continental / Analytic Divide. And a few other things you didn't think were related. Part i
* Philosophy Departments, Nihilism, Psychic Research, and the Continental / Analytic Divide. And a few other things you didn't think were related. Part ii
Recently there has been some back-and-forth on the subject in Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective:
* Maring, Luke. “Abandoning the Academy is the Single Worst Thing Philosophers Could Do: A Reply to Frodeman and Briggle.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 5, no. 3 (2016): 54-58.
* “Comments on Luke Maring’s Post Regarding ‘When Philosophy Lost Its Way'”, Bob Frodeman and Adam Briggle.
* “Philosophy, the Academy, and the Public: A Reply to Frodeman and Briggle”, Luke Maring
* “Is Anyone Still Reading? A Second Response to Maring”, Adam Briggle and Bob Frodeman
* Bowman, W. Derek. “Philosophy Hitherto: A Reply to Frodeman and Briggle.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 5, no. 3 (2016): 85-91.
* "Toward New Virtues in Philosophy: A Reply to Derek Bowman," Bob Frodeman and Adam Briggle.
They also reposted a discussion (of the original article and Soames's response) by Steve Fuller at ABC Religion and Ethics.
Maring's arguments, I think, make a significant misstep in assuming that philosophical participation in academia necessarily means participating in academia in the way in which philosophers happen to do so now; but as has been pointed out by a few people, in fact the way philosophers participate in academia currently is largely the result of historical contingencies -- the narrowing of philosophy discipline-wise did not occur simply by philosophical participation in academia (which, in any case, happened for centuries, during some of which philosophy was absolutely thriving) but by a particular philosophical group (those that opposed the treatment of psychology as a science and especially the creation of Psychology Departments) getting the funding and institutional recognition of themselves as the Philosophy Department, and then others, usually at first with similar views, doing the same. The whole thing is a result of a particular set of moves in academic politics at a certain time, not an inevitable result of academic engagement.
Maring also has a conception of the ideals of academic research that I regard as problematic, although I don't think it is as central to the issue at hand:
This is how it often does work, to be sure. That this is how it is "supposed to work" is much more dubious, however. If you look at cases where you can really and indisputably see the kind of thing that Maring has in mind, what you generally get are cases where either (1) the ideas are of very little general interest in the first place and thus almost entirely ivory tower; or (2) the ideas are in fact important to society, and disasters build up because the academic field struggles to keep the public informed and so the public responds by filling the void with whatever seems good at the time. I can hardly imagine that Maring thinks that the ideal of academic research is to study evolutionary theory that the public continually misunderstands so that biologists are constantly having to deal with the consequences of the misunderstanding. But this is one perfectly good example -- and not at all isolated -- of exactly the sort of thing he is describing. And arguably the lesson that has been learned is that ordinary everyday biologists can't just sit around waiting for people to come into the classroom to learn these things.
Nor, it should be pointed out, has this always been seen as the way academic research should work in the first place. If you look at a lot of nineteenth-century academics, they often saw themselves, or at least described themselves, as partners with the public in their inquiry. Natural history in the nineteenth century flourished because it consisted of a constant cooperation and interaction between university researchers and a broader public outside of academia -- yes, the researchers often did the work of hammering out the difficult technicalities, but they were technicalities arising out of a broader discussion rather than just an academic one, and those technicalities were only of value to the extent that they could be brought back to that broader discussion. It wouldn't have made much sense to see it in Maring's way -- to do something on the scale of natural history, particularly at the time when collections were often just getting started and field work could sometimes be quite expensive and time-consuming, you needed the help of more than just a few researchers at universities even to deal with the basics. So why not get the gardeners and hikers, and the public generally, involved in collecting and identifying specimens? A lot of the great work in nineteenth-century natural history was done by amateurs working with experts, either immediately or by correspondence. Nor is natural history the only area of academic interest in which this was the case. Bringing scientific results to the broader public was part of what scientists saw themselves as doing; there's a reason why a lot of top nineteenth-century academics are often out and about talking to people outside of academia -- indeed, not uncommonly, people who may not have had more than a basic education in the first place. And, on the other side, there's a reason why things like Faraday's Christmas lectures were immensely popular.
Nor is it even the case that this is the way it has always been seen today. Academic mathematicians often deal with the most technical of technicalities; a lot gets done that only experts with time on their hands explicitly devoted to the problem can do. But mathematics has always had an important, non-stop interaction between experts and amateurs -- indeed, for very much the same reason that natural history in the nineteenth century did. Mathematics is an endless field; no matter how expert you are, it's a sign of irrationality to think you and a small band of others can always on your own do all the work that needs to be done. The dabbling of mathematical amateurs has often made very useful discoveries in mathematics; and the amateurs in making those discoveries have freed up the professionals to build on them and do other things that need to be done to get the math in good order. And in other fields, there is a slow increasing appreciation of the work of non-academics -- citizen science and the like.
And indeed, this is precisely the problem with Maring's characterization: he assumes that "the milieu that makes really impactful work possible" is necessarily an academic one. But historically it has sometimes been the interaction between academics and the broader public that actually created this milieu. And fields in which this has not been the case have tended to be very narrow fields in the first place. Big, sprawling fields like natural history or mathematics have at times had to spill out of academia to get the research done in the first place. Now, perhaps the conditions of philosophy are different, or maybe the conditions of academia have changed enough that it should now be usually done differently even if there are exceptions like certain fields of mathematics. (Certainly it's true that natural history started freezing the amateurs out toward the end of the nineteenth century and the more recent attempts to start up active cooperation have been sporadic and limited.) But the point is that Maring's conception of academic research is not written in stone in the foundations of the halls of learning. It's just the status quo. And precisely the point of Frodeman and Briggle was that the status quo requires treating philosophy as a narrow and very limited discipline. If we are talking about how academic research is supposed to work, Maring's claim can't be taken uncritically; it is precisely the thing that would need to be established.
I think Bowman's argument starts on a stronger foot. He argues that "reluctance to engage with practical affairs was a feature of philosophy long before the advent of the modern university" and then sets out to show that in fact philosophers are doing a lot of practical engagement anyway. The problem is that his example of the reluctance to engage with practical affairs -- Socrates and Plato -- doesn't seem to involve any actual reluctance to engage with practical affairs. Yes, philosophers were sometimes ridiculed -- but the ridicule itself is part of the actual engagement between the philosophers and the public. Aristophanes' The Clouds was not some obscure little work in an obscure venue; it was a criticism of Socrates, who was already a public figure, in the most public venue in the ancient Greek world. It's true that Plato's Socrates is clearly limited in his options as to how he can operate, but this is quite clearly not put forward as a restriction by Socrates himself, but simply by the unwillingness of the citizens of Athens. (And notably, Socrates in Plato's Gorgias says that he's the only one of his contemporaries who practices the true politics.) And the reluctance of Plato's philosopher-kings to rule is quite clearly just due to the fact that the Kallipolis is rigged so that corruptions leading to injustice are difficult to find -- just as parenthood is obscured to make nepotism impossible, and the noble lie is perpetuated simply to make bribery impossible, so the only people allowed to rule are those who aren't motivated simply by a desire to rule, so that self-aggrandizement is impossible. But there's nothing even here about a reluctance for engagement in practical affairs; 'practical affairs' is much broader than 'ruling the city'. What Bowman actually seems to be picking up on is the ancient view that philosophy requires leisure, that philosophy should not be subordinated to other affairs simply because the latter get labeled as more 'practical' or 'useful'. This is not ambivalence about practical engagement; this is an insistence that philosophy has value in its own right.
Frodeman and Briggle seem to be running out of steam at this point; their responses have been getting weaker as time goes on. But, of course, the question is still worth considering.
However, I notice that Frodeman and Briggle's argument that philosophy has lost its way continues to stir up some discussion. Besides Soames's response, which I questioned here, skholiast at "Speculum Criticum" had two posts commenting on the discussion:
* Philosophy Departments, Nihilism, Psychic Research, and the Continental / Analytic Divide. And a few other things you didn't think were related. Part i
* Philosophy Departments, Nihilism, Psychic Research, and the Continental / Analytic Divide. And a few other things you didn't think were related. Part ii
Recently there has been some back-and-forth on the subject in Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective:
* Maring, Luke. “Abandoning the Academy is the Single Worst Thing Philosophers Could Do: A Reply to Frodeman and Briggle.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 5, no. 3 (2016): 54-58.
* “Comments on Luke Maring’s Post Regarding ‘When Philosophy Lost Its Way'”, Bob Frodeman and Adam Briggle.
* “Philosophy, the Academy, and the Public: A Reply to Frodeman and Briggle”, Luke Maring
* “Is Anyone Still Reading? A Second Response to Maring”, Adam Briggle and Bob Frodeman
* Bowman, W. Derek. “Philosophy Hitherto: A Reply to Frodeman and Briggle.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 5, no. 3 (2016): 85-91.
* "Toward New Virtues in Philosophy: A Reply to Derek Bowman," Bob Frodeman and Adam Briggle.
They also reposted a discussion (of the original article and Soames's response) by Steve Fuller at ABC Religion and Ethics.
Maring's arguments, I think, make a significant misstep in assuming that philosophical participation in academia necessarily means participating in academia in the way in which philosophers happen to do so now; but as has been pointed out by a few people, in fact the way philosophers participate in academia currently is largely the result of historical contingencies -- the narrowing of philosophy discipline-wise did not occur simply by philosophical participation in academia (which, in any case, happened for centuries, during some of which philosophy was absolutely thriving) but by a particular philosophical group (those that opposed the treatment of psychology as a science and especially the creation of Psychology Departments) getting the funding and institutional recognition of themselves as the Philosophy Department, and then others, usually at first with similar views, doing the same. The whole thing is a result of a particular set of moves in academic politics at a certain time, not an inevitable result of academic engagement.
Maring also has a conception of the ideals of academic research that I regard as problematic, although I don't think it is as central to the issue at hand:
But, as I explained before, that is not how academic research works. Even if they do not directly impact the public, our small individual contributions create the milieu that makes really impactful work possible. To repeat an example: John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has been hugely influential; Rawls was in a position to write his book only because he was immersed in an academic back-and-forth, most of which the public never saw. The public does not read most philosophical scholarship (or scientific scholarship, or anthropological scholarship, or…). That is not a problem; that is how academic research is supposed to work.
This is how it often does work, to be sure. That this is how it is "supposed to work" is much more dubious, however. If you look at cases where you can really and indisputably see the kind of thing that Maring has in mind, what you generally get are cases where either (1) the ideas are of very little general interest in the first place and thus almost entirely ivory tower; or (2) the ideas are in fact important to society, and disasters build up because the academic field struggles to keep the public informed and so the public responds by filling the void with whatever seems good at the time. I can hardly imagine that Maring thinks that the ideal of academic research is to study evolutionary theory that the public continually misunderstands so that biologists are constantly having to deal with the consequences of the misunderstanding. But this is one perfectly good example -- and not at all isolated -- of exactly the sort of thing he is describing. And arguably the lesson that has been learned is that ordinary everyday biologists can't just sit around waiting for people to come into the classroom to learn these things.
Nor, it should be pointed out, has this always been seen as the way academic research should work in the first place. If you look at a lot of nineteenth-century academics, they often saw themselves, or at least described themselves, as partners with the public in their inquiry. Natural history in the nineteenth century flourished because it consisted of a constant cooperation and interaction between university researchers and a broader public outside of academia -- yes, the researchers often did the work of hammering out the difficult technicalities, but they were technicalities arising out of a broader discussion rather than just an academic one, and those technicalities were only of value to the extent that they could be brought back to that broader discussion. It wouldn't have made much sense to see it in Maring's way -- to do something on the scale of natural history, particularly at the time when collections were often just getting started and field work could sometimes be quite expensive and time-consuming, you needed the help of more than just a few researchers at universities even to deal with the basics. So why not get the gardeners and hikers, and the public generally, involved in collecting and identifying specimens? A lot of the great work in nineteenth-century natural history was done by amateurs working with experts, either immediately or by correspondence. Nor is natural history the only area of academic interest in which this was the case. Bringing scientific results to the broader public was part of what scientists saw themselves as doing; there's a reason why a lot of top nineteenth-century academics are often out and about talking to people outside of academia -- indeed, not uncommonly, people who may not have had more than a basic education in the first place. And, on the other side, there's a reason why things like Faraday's Christmas lectures were immensely popular.
Nor is it even the case that this is the way it has always been seen today. Academic mathematicians often deal with the most technical of technicalities; a lot gets done that only experts with time on their hands explicitly devoted to the problem can do. But mathematics has always had an important, non-stop interaction between experts and amateurs -- indeed, for very much the same reason that natural history in the nineteenth century did. Mathematics is an endless field; no matter how expert you are, it's a sign of irrationality to think you and a small band of others can always on your own do all the work that needs to be done. The dabbling of mathematical amateurs has often made very useful discoveries in mathematics; and the amateurs in making those discoveries have freed up the professionals to build on them and do other things that need to be done to get the math in good order. And in other fields, there is a slow increasing appreciation of the work of non-academics -- citizen science and the like.
And indeed, this is precisely the problem with Maring's characterization: he assumes that "the milieu that makes really impactful work possible" is necessarily an academic one. But historically it has sometimes been the interaction between academics and the broader public that actually created this milieu. And fields in which this has not been the case have tended to be very narrow fields in the first place. Big, sprawling fields like natural history or mathematics have at times had to spill out of academia to get the research done in the first place. Now, perhaps the conditions of philosophy are different, or maybe the conditions of academia have changed enough that it should now be usually done differently even if there are exceptions like certain fields of mathematics. (Certainly it's true that natural history started freezing the amateurs out toward the end of the nineteenth century and the more recent attempts to start up active cooperation have been sporadic and limited.) But the point is that Maring's conception of academic research is not written in stone in the foundations of the halls of learning. It's just the status quo. And precisely the point of Frodeman and Briggle was that the status quo requires treating philosophy as a narrow and very limited discipline. If we are talking about how academic research is supposed to work, Maring's claim can't be taken uncritically; it is precisely the thing that would need to be established.
I think Bowman's argument starts on a stronger foot. He argues that "reluctance to engage with practical affairs was a feature of philosophy long before the advent of the modern university" and then sets out to show that in fact philosophers are doing a lot of practical engagement anyway. The problem is that his example of the reluctance to engage with practical affairs -- Socrates and Plato -- doesn't seem to involve any actual reluctance to engage with practical affairs. Yes, philosophers were sometimes ridiculed -- but the ridicule itself is part of the actual engagement between the philosophers and the public. Aristophanes' The Clouds was not some obscure little work in an obscure venue; it was a criticism of Socrates, who was already a public figure, in the most public venue in the ancient Greek world. It's true that Plato's Socrates is clearly limited in his options as to how he can operate, but this is quite clearly not put forward as a restriction by Socrates himself, but simply by the unwillingness of the citizens of Athens. (And notably, Socrates in Plato's Gorgias says that he's the only one of his contemporaries who practices the true politics.) And the reluctance of Plato's philosopher-kings to rule is quite clearly just due to the fact that the Kallipolis is rigged so that corruptions leading to injustice are difficult to find -- just as parenthood is obscured to make nepotism impossible, and the noble lie is perpetuated simply to make bribery impossible, so the only people allowed to rule are those who aren't motivated simply by a desire to rule, so that self-aggrandizement is impossible. But there's nothing even here about a reluctance for engagement in practical affairs; 'practical affairs' is much broader than 'ruling the city'. What Bowman actually seems to be picking up on is the ancient view that philosophy requires leisure, that philosophy should not be subordinated to other affairs simply because the latter get labeled as more 'practical' or 'useful'. This is not ambivalence about practical engagement; this is an insistence that philosophy has value in its own right.
Frodeman and Briggle seem to be running out of steam at this point; their responses have been getting weaker as time goes on. But, of course, the question is still worth considering.
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Maronite Year XXXIX
The Feast of the Annunciation is normally on March 25, but, of course, this year that occurred during Triduum, which takes precedence. So it was shifted to the next open day after, which, because Easter Monday is treated as an extension of Easter Sunday, is today.
While Annunciation is important, the structure of the Maronite calendar tends to de-emphasize it somewhat; the primary commemoration of the Annunciation is in Advent, feasts that don't fall on Sunday tend to be de-emphasized in general, and the existence of this feast of the Annunciation is primarily a testimony to a combination of the great age of the feast and the tendency of Maronites to recognize Latin holidays as well as their own. However, these are both powerful influences, and while March 25 tends for Maronites to be in practice the secondary celebration of the Annunciation, they certainly do celebrate it and treat it as important.
The Feast of the Announcement to Mary
Galatians 3:15-22; Luke 1:26-38
The Angel went to Nazareth, Alleluia:
"Peace, O Mary, maiden given great grace,
blessed are you among women, greatly favored!
Have no fear! Your God is gracious to you,
and you shall conceive a Son whose name is Jesus."
Mary was with wonder filled: "I am but a girl,
a maiden; how can I bear a son?"
"Mary, the Holy Spirit overshadows you,
with divine might is descending on you,
You shall bear God's Son. With God all is possible."
Then did the holy Virgin say, "Let it be so,
for I am the handmaiden of the Lord!"
O Mary, receiving peace from God, you give peace;
you restored Eve's children to their true place;
in you the Word was made flesh to dwell among us.
O Lord, we do not understand and are amazed;
we are blinded by Your eternal flame.
The incense of our prayer alone can we give;
we hide behind its smoke in Your presence,
for great is the might that comes upon Your altar!
While Annunciation is important, the structure of the Maronite calendar tends to de-emphasize it somewhat; the primary commemoration of the Annunciation is in Advent, feasts that don't fall on Sunday tend to be de-emphasized in general, and the existence of this feast of the Annunciation is primarily a testimony to a combination of the great age of the feast and the tendency of Maronites to recognize Latin holidays as well as their own. However, these are both powerful influences, and while March 25 tends for Maronites to be in practice the secondary celebration of the Annunciation, they certainly do celebrate it and treat it as important.
The Feast of the Announcement to Mary
Galatians 3:15-22; Luke 1:26-38
The Angel went to Nazareth, Alleluia:
"Peace, O Mary, maiden given great grace,
blessed are you among women, greatly favored!
Have no fear! Your God is gracious to you,
and you shall conceive a Son whose name is Jesus."
Mary was with wonder filled: "I am but a girl,
a maiden; how can I bear a son?"
"Mary, the Holy Spirit overshadows you,
with divine might is descending on you,
You shall bear God's Son. With God all is possible."
Then did the holy Virgin say, "Let it be so,
for I am the handmaiden of the Lord!"
O Mary, receiving peace from God, you give peace;
you restored Eve's children to their true place;
in you the Word was made flesh to dwell among us.
O Lord, we do not understand and are amazed;
we are blinded by Your eternal flame.
The incense of our prayer alone can we give;
we hide behind its smoke in Your presence,
for great is the might that comes upon Your altar!
Monday, March 28, 2016
A Quick Trip to Italy, Part VII
Across from the House of the Vestal Virgins is the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina:
In July of 138, Emperor Hadrian died, leaving Antoninus as his heir. Antoninus's wife, Faustina, was widely admired and imitated among Roman women. When the Empress died in 140, Antoninus convinced the Senate to deify her and to build a temple to her in the Roman Forum. After Antoninus Pius died in 161 and was deified as well, Marcus Aurelius had Senate re-dedicate the temple to both Antoninus and Faustina. The inscriptions reads, "Divo Antonino et Divae Faustinae Ex S.C.", i.e., "To divine Antoninus and divine Faustina, by decree of the Senate". At some point in the early Middle Ages, the temple was repurposed as a church, the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda. (Nobody knows the origin of the 'Miranda' part of the name.) In the fifteenth century, Pope Martin V gave the church to the Collegio degli Speziali, a guild of chemists and herbalists, giving it its full name of San Lorenzo de' Speziali in Miranda, and a descendant institution, the Collegio Chimico Farmaceutico, still makes use of the nearby guildhall. Not long after parts of the temple were hauled off to help repair St. John Lateran. The building was returned to its character as ancient temple for the visit of the Emperor Charles V in 1536, but the church still exists inside part of the temple, accessed from the other side. After that point, the general area became a cattle market, which is why one of its Italian names for the longest time was Field of Cows; the return to display of ancient remains began in serious in the nineteenth century.
One of the great architectural mysteries of the temple is why there are angle doubled grooves cut into the pillars of the temple; nobody knows why this was done. An old theory is that at some point in the Middle Ages this was done in a failed attempt to destroy the portico, the grooves being cut for ropes, but this is purely speculative, and, as some people have pointed out, it's unclear, if you were trying to pull down the pillars, why anyone would attempt to do it in this way -- or, indeed, why, failing to do it in this way, they would not have simply tried another until they succeeded. More recently people have suggested that they may have been cut to help support a temporary structure at some point, or that they might have been a side effect of the occasional building of other structures around the gateway.
A little farther on, also across from the House of the Vestal Virgins, you can see the remains of the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine:
It was the largest building of its day, and the largest ever built in the forum, and its large groin vaults were closely studied by architects in the Renaissance who worked with large buildings. The effect of the size is quite impressive even now, but nothing of the Basilica survives except its north aisle -- as many large buildings are, it was vulnerable to earthquakes, and over the centuries it has had to endure a few. (Its only surviving great column was carted off in the seventeenth century after one of these earthquakes to St. Mary Major, where it still stands in the Piazza.)
Walking along in the general direction of the Colosseum one soon comes to the Arch of Titus:
'
The Arch is an interesting monument in its own right. It was constructed by Domitian in the 80s to commemorate the victories of his elder brother Titus, and in particular the victory in the Siege of Jerusalem in AD 70. Thus the northward panel depicts Titus in triumphant procession, led by Valor and crowned by Victory:
But the southward panel is even more interesting, because it shows Titus bringing home the spoils, and one of the looted trophies is very, very recognizable:
Notice the Great Menorah from the Temple. Other objects that are identifiable are the golden trumpets, the firepans for the altar, and the Table of Shewbread. There's good evidence that these trophies in the panel were originally painted golden-yellow.
There are some inscriptions on the arch. On one side is, Senatus Populusque Romanus divo Tito divi Vespasiani filio Vespasiano Augusto, "The Roman Senate and People, to divine Titus Vespasian Augustus, son of divine Vespasian". Another is Insigne religionis atque artis, monumentum, vetustate fatiscens: Pius Septimus, Pontifex Maximus, novis operibus priscum exemplar imitantibus fulciri servarique iussit. Anno sacri principatus eius XXIV, "The monument, notable for religion and for art, had weakened with age: Pius VII, Supreme Pontiff, by new works in imitation of the ancient exemplar, commanded it to be reinforced and preserved in the 24th year of his sacred reign."
Soon after we came to the most famous sports stadium in the world:
The Flavian Amphitheater, the largest amphitheater built in the ancient empire, was begun by Vespasian in 72 and was finished by his son Titus in 80. It could hold approximately 50,000, perhaps as many as 80,000, spectators. Nobody knows how it got its most common name, the Colosseum (or Coliseum); the most common suggestion is that there was a statue, or colossus, associated with it at some point.
Domitian remodeled it and put in the hypogeum, the underground tunnels for the animals and slaves.
The fortunes of the Colosseum went up and down throughout the Middle Ages, with the building being used at times for various odd functions and at other times for a quarry. A turning point was reached under Pope Benedict XIV in 1749; he argued that it was a site of Christian martyrdom, and thus forbade its use as a quarry and consecrated it to the Passion of Christ. There is in fact no evidence that any Christians were ever martyred there, although it is certainly possible that some were. It's even rare for there to be any attribution of martyrdom to the building in legend; Ignatius of Antioch, by a very late tradition, is sometimes said to have been fed to lions here, but that's almost all, and medieval pilgrimage guides tend not even to mention it at all. (Most Christians who were martyred seem actually to have been martyred at the Circus Maximus.) The association with martyrdom seems to have been an entirely modern idea, beginning to gain ground in the sixteenth century. However, the idea meant that people stopped using it as a source of stone and that money and effort were put into maintaining it. A cross was placed in it (fairly recently, I believe):
Pope Benedict XIV also began to do Stations of the Cross in the Colosseum, and every evening of Good Friday the Popes have continued the tradition. They were doing preliminary set-up for this when we were there.
After the Colosseum, we went searching for the Circus Maximus. We walked past the Arch of Constantine:
The Arch, the last and largest of the great Roman triumphal arches, was dedicated in 315 to celebrate Constantine's victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. Famously it is a mix of new work and spolia from other arches, since, it is sometimes said, Constantine could not find sculptors up to his standards. In reality, there are any number of things that might be true here; the Arch may have been rushed into construction, so the spoliage could perhaps have been a time-saving maneuver. Some people have even suggested that the Arch was actually built by Maxentius, and Constantine just repurposed it after his victory, using parts from other monuments to get it together in short order. Because the Arch is such a mix of styles, it has long been a key evidence in attempts to reconstruct the history of art, and its possible decline, in the late Roman Imperial period. The main inscription:
It reads in English: "To Emperor Caesar Flavius Constantinus, greatest, pious, and blessed Augustus: because he, inspired by the divine and by greatness of mind, has delivered the state from the tyrant and all of his followers at one time, with his army and just force of arms, the Senate and People of Rome have dedicated this arch, decorated with triumphs."
And finally we came to the Circus Maximus. At one time it was the greatest entertainment venue in the world, although now it is little more than a large ditch:
Now a public park, it still functions occasionally as an entertainment venue for concerts, and it seems to be common enough for people to incorporate it into their evening walks.
Thus we had toured a bit of ancient Rome.
Returning from the Circus Maximus to our hotel, we got turnd around a bit and passed by the Theatre of Marcellus:
It was originally planned by Julius Caesar, but he died before construction could begin, and it fell to Augustus to finish it. It was later used as a fortress and then as part of a residence for the Orsini.
In all the wandering, I also snapped a quick picture of some churches. Here is the Basilica di Sant'Anastasia al Palatino:
It is one of the stational churches for Lent. There has been a church on this site since the third or fourth century; the current one is a seventeenth century restoration. According to a very old tradition, Saint Jerome said Mass here. Despite its history, it almost ceased to exist in the early twentieth century because no one ever went there. A restoration in the 1960s revived it a bit. But it had to be closed in the eighties and nineties because its foundations were crumbling; they have since been restored. Since its re-opening it has become one of the most flourishing churches in the area.
Here is a relatively minor church, Santa Maria della Consolazione:
I didn't even know what church it was; I had to search online for it. It used to be near an execution site for criminals; an icon was put here to console them while they were being executed, and thus the name. That's a story you would never expect beforehand. It became a notable spot in the fifteenth century when someone was being hanged nearby; the man had claimed he was innocent, and when they tried to hang him, it somehow failed. So, as was common, since he had survived the attempt to kill him, they cut him down. He claimed to have had a vision of the icon, with the Virgin reaching out her hand and supporting him. So a church was built to house the icon. It was rebuilt in the sixteenth century, when it was connected to a hospital, which itself was associated with a number of saints. The hospital no longer operates and is now a police station; and the streets around it have been restructured, leaving this once flourishing church in a very bustling piazza no more than a very lonely and isolated church in the middle of a zigzag of narrow streets.
And above is the church of San Nicola in Carcere. Nobody knows for sure where it got the 'in prison' tag; since it incorporates the remains of previous temples, some have suggested that there was a jail associated with them. It is one of the stational churches for Lent and is famous for its celebrations of Our Lady of Pompeii and Our Lady of Guadalupe. It is said to have a reproduction of the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe that was sent here in 1773. Mussolini's meddlings with Rome and the twentieth-century passion for ancient remains led to the destruction of most of the medieval neighborhood of the church and a restructuring of the area that left this ancient parish church with almost no parish. So it was made a dependent church of Santa Maria in Portico in Campitelli.
It was by accident, but the three churches happen to make an interesting study of the lives of old churches.
One last picture for the day, the Quirinal Palace shining over the rooftops:
And that was Wednesday.
to be continued
In July of 138, Emperor Hadrian died, leaving Antoninus as his heir. Antoninus's wife, Faustina, was widely admired and imitated among Roman women. When the Empress died in 140, Antoninus convinced the Senate to deify her and to build a temple to her in the Roman Forum. After Antoninus Pius died in 161 and was deified as well, Marcus Aurelius had Senate re-dedicate the temple to both Antoninus and Faustina. The inscriptions reads, "Divo Antonino et Divae Faustinae Ex S.C.", i.e., "To divine Antoninus and divine Faustina, by decree of the Senate". At some point in the early Middle Ages, the temple was repurposed as a church, the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda. (Nobody knows the origin of the 'Miranda' part of the name.) In the fifteenth century, Pope Martin V gave the church to the Collegio degli Speziali, a guild of chemists and herbalists, giving it its full name of San Lorenzo de' Speziali in Miranda, and a descendant institution, the Collegio Chimico Farmaceutico, still makes use of the nearby guildhall. Not long after parts of the temple were hauled off to help repair St. John Lateran. The building was returned to its character as ancient temple for the visit of the Emperor Charles V in 1536, but the church still exists inside part of the temple, accessed from the other side. After that point, the general area became a cattle market, which is why one of its Italian names for the longest time was Field of Cows; the return to display of ancient remains began in serious in the nineteenth century.
One of the great architectural mysteries of the temple is why there are angle doubled grooves cut into the pillars of the temple; nobody knows why this was done. An old theory is that at some point in the Middle Ages this was done in a failed attempt to destroy the portico, the grooves being cut for ropes, but this is purely speculative, and, as some people have pointed out, it's unclear, if you were trying to pull down the pillars, why anyone would attempt to do it in this way -- or, indeed, why, failing to do it in this way, they would not have simply tried another until they succeeded. More recently people have suggested that they may have been cut to help support a temporary structure at some point, or that they might have been a side effect of the occasional building of other structures around the gateway.
A little farther on, also across from the House of the Vestal Virgins, you can see the remains of the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine:
It was the largest building of its day, and the largest ever built in the forum, and its large groin vaults were closely studied by architects in the Renaissance who worked with large buildings. The effect of the size is quite impressive even now, but nothing of the Basilica survives except its north aisle -- as many large buildings are, it was vulnerable to earthquakes, and over the centuries it has had to endure a few. (Its only surviving great column was carted off in the seventeenth century after one of these earthquakes to St. Mary Major, where it still stands in the Piazza.)
Walking along in the general direction of the Colosseum one soon comes to the Arch of Titus:
The Arch is an interesting monument in its own right. It was constructed by Domitian in the 80s to commemorate the victories of his elder brother Titus, and in particular the victory in the Siege of Jerusalem in AD 70. Thus the northward panel depicts Titus in triumphant procession, led by Valor and crowned by Victory:
But the southward panel is even more interesting, because it shows Titus bringing home the spoils, and one of the looted trophies is very, very recognizable:
Notice the Great Menorah from the Temple. Other objects that are identifiable are the golden trumpets, the firepans for the altar, and the Table of Shewbread. There's good evidence that these trophies in the panel were originally painted golden-yellow.
There are some inscriptions on the arch. On one side is, Senatus Populusque Romanus divo Tito divi Vespasiani filio Vespasiano Augusto, "The Roman Senate and People, to divine Titus Vespasian Augustus, son of divine Vespasian". Another is Insigne religionis atque artis, monumentum, vetustate fatiscens: Pius Septimus, Pontifex Maximus, novis operibus priscum exemplar imitantibus fulciri servarique iussit. Anno sacri principatus eius XXIV, "The monument, notable for religion and for art, had weakened with age: Pius VII, Supreme Pontiff, by new works in imitation of the ancient exemplar, commanded it to be reinforced and preserved in the 24th year of his sacred reign."
Soon after we came to the most famous sports stadium in the world:
The Flavian Amphitheater, the largest amphitheater built in the ancient empire, was begun by Vespasian in 72 and was finished by his son Titus in 80. It could hold approximately 50,000, perhaps as many as 80,000, spectators. Nobody knows how it got its most common name, the Colosseum (or Coliseum); the most common suggestion is that there was a statue, or colossus, associated with it at some point.
Domitian remodeled it and put in the hypogeum, the underground tunnels for the animals and slaves.
The fortunes of the Colosseum went up and down throughout the Middle Ages, with the building being used at times for various odd functions and at other times for a quarry. A turning point was reached under Pope Benedict XIV in 1749; he argued that it was a site of Christian martyrdom, and thus forbade its use as a quarry and consecrated it to the Passion of Christ. There is in fact no evidence that any Christians were ever martyred there, although it is certainly possible that some were. It's even rare for there to be any attribution of martyrdom to the building in legend; Ignatius of Antioch, by a very late tradition, is sometimes said to have been fed to lions here, but that's almost all, and medieval pilgrimage guides tend not even to mention it at all. (Most Christians who were martyred seem actually to have been martyred at the Circus Maximus.) The association with martyrdom seems to have been an entirely modern idea, beginning to gain ground in the sixteenth century. However, the idea meant that people stopped using it as a source of stone and that money and effort were put into maintaining it. A cross was placed in it (fairly recently, I believe):
Pope Benedict XIV also began to do Stations of the Cross in the Colosseum, and every evening of Good Friday the Popes have continued the tradition. They were doing preliminary set-up for this when we were there.
After the Colosseum, we went searching for the Circus Maximus. We walked past the Arch of Constantine:
The Arch, the last and largest of the great Roman triumphal arches, was dedicated in 315 to celebrate Constantine's victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. Famously it is a mix of new work and spolia from other arches, since, it is sometimes said, Constantine could not find sculptors up to his standards. In reality, there are any number of things that might be true here; the Arch may have been rushed into construction, so the spoliage could perhaps have been a time-saving maneuver. Some people have even suggested that the Arch was actually built by Maxentius, and Constantine just repurposed it after his victory, using parts from other monuments to get it together in short order. Because the Arch is such a mix of styles, it has long been a key evidence in attempts to reconstruct the history of art, and its possible decline, in the late Roman Imperial period. The main inscription:
It reads in English: "To Emperor Caesar Flavius Constantinus, greatest, pious, and blessed Augustus: because he, inspired by the divine and by greatness of mind, has delivered the state from the tyrant and all of his followers at one time, with his army and just force of arms, the Senate and People of Rome have dedicated this arch, decorated with triumphs."
And finally we came to the Circus Maximus. At one time it was the greatest entertainment venue in the world, although now it is little more than a large ditch:
Now a public park, it still functions occasionally as an entertainment venue for concerts, and it seems to be common enough for people to incorporate it into their evening walks.
Thus we had toured a bit of ancient Rome.
Returning from the Circus Maximus to our hotel, we got turnd around a bit and passed by the Theatre of Marcellus:
It was originally planned by Julius Caesar, but he died before construction could begin, and it fell to Augustus to finish it. It was later used as a fortress and then as part of a residence for the Orsini.
In all the wandering, I also snapped a quick picture of some churches. Here is the Basilica di Sant'Anastasia al Palatino:
It is one of the stational churches for Lent. There has been a church on this site since the third or fourth century; the current one is a seventeenth century restoration. According to a very old tradition, Saint Jerome said Mass here. Despite its history, it almost ceased to exist in the early twentieth century because no one ever went there. A restoration in the 1960s revived it a bit. But it had to be closed in the eighties and nineties because its foundations were crumbling; they have since been restored. Since its re-opening it has become one of the most flourishing churches in the area.
Here is a relatively minor church, Santa Maria della Consolazione:
I didn't even know what church it was; I had to search online for it. It used to be near an execution site for criminals; an icon was put here to console them while they were being executed, and thus the name. That's a story you would never expect beforehand. It became a notable spot in the fifteenth century when someone was being hanged nearby; the man had claimed he was innocent, and when they tried to hang him, it somehow failed. So, as was common, since he had survived the attempt to kill him, they cut him down. He claimed to have had a vision of the icon, with the Virgin reaching out her hand and supporting him. So a church was built to house the icon. It was rebuilt in the sixteenth century, when it was connected to a hospital, which itself was associated with a number of saints. The hospital no longer operates and is now a police station; and the streets around it have been restructured, leaving this once flourishing church in a very bustling piazza no more than a very lonely and isolated church in the middle of a zigzag of narrow streets.
And above is the church of San Nicola in Carcere. Nobody knows for sure where it got the 'in prison' tag; since it incorporates the remains of previous temples, some have suggested that there was a jail associated with them. It is one of the stational churches for Lent and is famous for its celebrations of Our Lady of Pompeii and Our Lady of Guadalupe. It is said to have a reproduction of the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe that was sent here in 1773. Mussolini's meddlings with Rome and the twentieth-century passion for ancient remains led to the destruction of most of the medieval neighborhood of the church and a restructuring of the area that left this ancient parish church with almost no parish. So it was made a dependent church of Santa Maria in Portico in Campitelli.
It was by accident, but the three churches happen to make an interesting study of the lives of old churches.
One last picture for the day, the Quirinal Palace shining over the rooftops:
And that was Wednesday.
to be continued
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Fortnightly Book, March 27
I have been puzzling over what to do for the next fortnightly book. My original idea was Tristram Shandy, but there are some reasons for not doing that now. (1) On my trip to Italy, I took Sigrid Undset's massive Kristin Lavransdatter to read, and I am about two-thirds of the way through. Given other things I have to do, I don't think I'm up to finishing Kristin and starting Tristram simultaneously. (2) The past three weeks have been utterly exhausting for me, so it might be a good idea to start up the series again with something lighter.
So I am going with Tarzan of the Apes. It was first serialized in 1912 in All-Story Magazine, with the book published in 1914. It was an instant hit, and provided a perfect material for the newly developing cinematic arts -- since the first silent Tarzan movie in 1918, it has come to the screen again and again. Edgard Rice Burroughs would eventually write twenty-three Tarzan novels.
If I have time, I will also read the sequel, The Return of Tarzan, in which Tarzan tangles with the last outpost of Atlantis.
So I am going with Tarzan of the Apes. It was first serialized in 1912 in All-Story Magazine, with the book published in 1914. It was an instant hit, and provided a perfect material for the newly developing cinematic arts -- since the first silent Tarzan movie in 1918, it has come to the screen again and again. Edgard Rice Burroughs would eventually write twenty-three Tarzan novels.
If I have time, I will also read the sequel, The Return of Tarzan, in which Tarzan tangles with the last outpost of Atlantis.
Maronite Year XXXVIII
Resurrection Sunday needs no particular introduction. But Easter opens a special week, the Week of Hawareyeen, or, as it is often translated, White Week. During the weekdays of White Week, also called the Week of Weeks, the readings celebrate the appearances of Christ after His resurrection: to Mary Magdalene (Monday), at the Sea of Tiberias (Tuesday and Wednesday), the Road to Emmaus (Thursday), the Upper Room (Friday and Saturday). The running theme through the week is that the joy of the Resurrection never ends.
Great Sunday of Resurrection
Philippians 2:1-11; Matthew 28:1-10 (Midnight)
1 Corinthians 15:12-26; Mark 16:1-8 (Morning)
I.
O great Savior, You reconciled heaven and earth,
shedding Your own blood on the wood of the cross.
Through Your rising You brought joy to heaven and to earth,
You brought peace and faithfulness where there was none.
Make Your faithful, O Lord, rejoice always in Your peace.
Your mercy is great, Lord, beyond all words;
with Your resurrection You gladden us.
Let us rejoice in the day You have made,
the dawning day that sent the night fleeing.
On this crowning jewel of all days and feasts,
grant us forgiveness of all of our sins.
Through the incense of prayer grant justice,
through the sacrifice of praise grant comfort.
Make your children radiant with true light
that we may celebrate the greatest feast,
the feast that never ends, with all Your saints.
Treasury of reconciliation,
Source of peace, send us the Spirit of peace.
By peace was Noah saved from the great flood;
by peace the dove led him to the sure land.
By peace the sea parted for Israel;
by peace they crossed over to Your freedom.
By peace the angel came to the Virgin;
by peace You gave peace through the Word made flesh.
By peace You calmed the storm upon the sea;
by peace You calmed the fear in quaking hearts.
Your peace You gave us, Your peace You left us,
a peace that surpasses understanding;
may Your church be one in the kiss of peace.
that Your justice may ever be our way
and Your peace our foundation in all things.
O Lord, Your death has put to death the oldness in us;
through Your resurrection we are clothed anew.
Let us celebrate passover with unleavened bread,
the sweet bread of sincerity and justice,
and not with the old leaven of our old deeds.
II.
Light from Light, God from God, You endured death of body,
yet You live forevermore in the Spirit.
By this day of Your great resurrection from the dead,
grant us blessings without end, hope without failing,
turn us from the death of sin that we may praise Your name.
You made us in Your image, O Lord God,
and the Son of God restores that image,
through Your compassion bringing salvation.
Source of life, You became a man for us,
descended to the dead to bring great joy;
You who raise the dead obeyed to the death,
led human captivity to freedom,
dispelled all darkness and awoke the just.
Destroying death, You brought glory and peace,
calling forth nations to sing God's praises.
Maker of life, by Your rising grant life;
Crafter of men, sculpt us in Your image,
restoring our marred features to true form.
Adorn us with the vestment of glory,
that in Your light we may see divine light.
The sharp blade entered Your side on the cross;
the baptismal waters pour forth today.
A crown of thorns You wore upon Your head;
You crown us with immortal life today.
Darkness covered the earth at Your dark death;
the world is radiant with light today.
The disciples fled, scattered with terror;
they are brought together in hope today.
Creation groaned with anticipation;
gladness covers the universe today.
The omnipotent was nailed to the cross;
by Your power the dead have life today.
All people mocked the Lord with scoff and scorn;
throughout the world the church is heard today.
Your resurrection is a fount of joy,
a joy that surpasses understanding;
may Your church shout forth the joy You have brought,
that the world may know the message of hope,
and that You have made all things new today.
For three days You were buried in the tomb for us all;
by Your resurrection You broke death's cold bonds.
Through Your grace, break the bonds of sin that enslave our souls.
Invest us with immortality and light,
that we Your children may give You glory forever.
Great Sunday of Resurrection
Philippians 2:1-11; Matthew 28:1-10 (Midnight)
1 Corinthians 15:12-26; Mark 16:1-8 (Morning)
I.
O great Savior, You reconciled heaven and earth,
shedding Your own blood on the wood of the cross.
Through Your rising You brought joy to heaven and to earth,
You brought peace and faithfulness where there was none.
Make Your faithful, O Lord, rejoice always in Your peace.
Your mercy is great, Lord, beyond all words;
with Your resurrection You gladden us.
Let us rejoice in the day You have made,
the dawning day that sent the night fleeing.
On this crowning jewel of all days and feasts,
grant us forgiveness of all of our sins.
Through the incense of prayer grant justice,
through the sacrifice of praise grant comfort.
Make your children radiant with true light
that we may celebrate the greatest feast,
the feast that never ends, with all Your saints.
Treasury of reconciliation,
Source of peace, send us the Spirit of peace.
By peace was Noah saved from the great flood;
by peace the dove led him to the sure land.
By peace the sea parted for Israel;
by peace they crossed over to Your freedom.
By peace the angel came to the Virgin;
by peace You gave peace through the Word made flesh.
By peace You calmed the storm upon the sea;
by peace You calmed the fear in quaking hearts.
Your peace You gave us, Your peace You left us,
a peace that surpasses understanding;
may Your church be one in the kiss of peace.
that Your justice may ever be our way
and Your peace our foundation in all things.
O Lord, Your death has put to death the oldness in us;
through Your resurrection we are clothed anew.
Let us celebrate passover with unleavened bread,
the sweet bread of sincerity and justice,
and not with the old leaven of our old deeds.
II.
Light from Light, God from God, You endured death of body,
yet You live forevermore in the Spirit.
By this day of Your great resurrection from the dead,
grant us blessings without end, hope without failing,
turn us from the death of sin that we may praise Your name.
You made us in Your image, O Lord God,
and the Son of God restores that image,
through Your compassion bringing salvation.
Source of life, You became a man for us,
descended to the dead to bring great joy;
You who raise the dead obeyed to the death,
led human captivity to freedom,
dispelled all darkness and awoke the just.
Destroying death, You brought glory and peace,
calling forth nations to sing God's praises.
Maker of life, by Your rising grant life;
Crafter of men, sculpt us in Your image,
restoring our marred features to true form.
Adorn us with the vestment of glory,
that in Your light we may see divine light.
The sharp blade entered Your side on the cross;
the baptismal waters pour forth today.
A crown of thorns You wore upon Your head;
You crown us with immortal life today.
Darkness covered the earth at Your dark death;
the world is radiant with light today.
The disciples fled, scattered with terror;
they are brought together in hope today.
Creation groaned with anticipation;
gladness covers the universe today.
The omnipotent was nailed to the cross;
by Your power the dead have life today.
All people mocked the Lord with scoff and scorn;
throughout the world the church is heard today.
Your resurrection is a fount of joy,
a joy that surpasses understanding;
may Your church shout forth the joy You have brought,
that the world may know the message of hope,
and that You have made all things new today.
For three days You were buried in the tomb for us all;
by Your resurrection You broke death's cold bonds.
Through Your grace, break the bonds of sin that enslave our souls.
Invest us with immortality and light,
that we Your children may give You glory forever.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Waiting
If creation is full of expectancy,
that is because it is waiting
for the sons of God to be made known.
Created nature has been condemned to frustration;
not for some deliberate fault of its own,
but for the sake of him who so condemned it,
with a hope to look forward to;
namely, that nature in its turn
will be set free from the tyranny of corruption,
to share in the glorious freedom of God’s sons.
The whole of nature, as we know,
groans in a common travail all the while.
And not only do we see that,
but we ourselves do the same;
we ourselves,
although we have already begun to reap our spiritual harvest,
groan in our hearts,
waiting for that adoption
which is the ransoming of our bodies from their slavery.
It must be so,
since our salvation is founded upon the hope of something.
Romans 8:22-24 [Knox]
Maronite Year XXXVII
Great Saturday of the Light
Romans 5:1-11; Matthew 27:62-66
O Lord, we have battled!
We have fought to exhaustion;
we have borne long combat,
we have known the endless ordeal.
In the night we have watched;
we held the line despite the pain;
we served Your covenant.
Have mercy on us, Most High God,
for you are rich in grace.
In compassion blot out our sins.
Wash us clean, purely clean,
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day.
Your will we disobeyed;
You we offended with our sins.
Your judgment was righteous
on we who were born into sin.
But You love faithfulness,
and You have taught us Your wisdom,
planted truth in our hearts;
now sprinkle us with Your mercy,
cleanse us with hyssop wand,
that we may be made right and true,
washed whiter than pure snow.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day.
How great is Christ's bright love!
Who can understand its vastness?
Its scope is truly great,
its width, its length, its height, its depth.
It was seen on the cross,
in His passion and death for us.
Love is the light of grace;
by it mysteries are unveiled,
without it none are known.
Christ loved to the border of love:
He died for us, His friends.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day.
We in hope await peace.
We are confident of glory,
confident in trouble,
knowing that pain proves endurance,
that endurance proves faith,
that proved faith is ground for sure hope.
Turn Your eyes from our sins,
blot out the record of our guilt!
Breathe new life into us
as we await resurrection.
Strengthen us in Your grace.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day.
Romans 5:1-11; Matthew 27:62-66
O Lord, we have battled!
We have fought to exhaustion;
we have borne long combat,
we have known the endless ordeal.
In the night we have watched;
we held the line despite the pain;
we served Your covenant.
Have mercy on us, Most High God,
for you are rich in grace.
In compassion blot out our sins.
Wash us clean, purely clean,
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day.
Your will we disobeyed;
You we offended with our sins.
Your judgment was righteous
on we who were born into sin.
But You love faithfulness,
and You have taught us Your wisdom,
planted truth in our hearts;
now sprinkle us with Your mercy,
cleanse us with hyssop wand,
that we may be made right and true,
washed whiter than pure snow.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day.
How great is Christ's bright love!
Who can understand its vastness?
Its scope is truly great,
its width, its length, its height, its depth.
It was seen on the cross,
in His passion and death for us.
Love is the light of grace;
by it mysteries are unveiled,
without it none are known.
Christ loved to the border of love:
He died for us, His friends.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day.
We in hope await peace.
We are confident of glory,
confident in trouble,
knowing that pain proves endurance,
that endurance proves faith,
that proved faith is ground for sure hope.
Turn Your eyes from our sins,
blot out the record of our guilt!
Breathe new life into us
as we await resurrection.
Strengthen us in Your grace.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day.
Lent XL
With regard to Christ's death, His patience and constancy in enduring death are commended, and all the more that His death was the more despicable: but in His honorable burial we can see the power of the dying Man, who, even in death, frustrated the intent of His murderers, and was buried with honor: and thereby is foreshadowed the devotion of the faithful who in the time to come were to serve the dead Christ.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 3.51.2 ad 1
Friday, March 25, 2016
God's Foolishness
To those who court their own ruin,
the message of the cross is but folly;
to us, who are on the way to salvation,
it is the evidence of God's power.
So we read in scripture,
I will confound the wisdom of wise men,
disappoint the calculations of the prudent.
What has become of the wise men, the scribes,
the philosophers of this age we live in?
Must we not say that God
has turned our worldly wisdom to folly?
When God shewed us his wisdom,
the world, with all its wisdom,
could not find its way to God;
and now God would use a foolish thing,
our preaching,
to save those who will believe in it.
Here are the Jews asking for signs and wonders,
here are the Greeks intent on their philosophy;
but what we preach is Christ crucified;
to the Jews, a discouragement,
to the Gentiles, mere folly;
but to us who have been called,
Jew and Gentile alike,
Christ the power of God,
Christ the wisdom of God.
So much wiser than men is God's foolishness;
so much stronger than men is God's weakness.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 [Knox]
A Quick Trip to Italy, Part VI
The last installment ended with looking out over the Forum Magnum, or Forum Romanum, after having seen the Forum of Trajan and the Forum of Caesar. In long ages ago, the Forum was an extremely marshy area among the hills, but the development of irrigation technologies made it possible to give the area a proper drainage and build. However, one of the consequences of this is that the area covers over more quickly than many other ruins do; erosion from the higher area around increases the height of the ground at a brisk pace -- at least, at a brisk pace for the slow creep of sedimentation. This means that the Forum through its centuries has picked up many layers, since as the ground rose, people just paved over what was there before. Here's an interesting map showing the Forum in two of the different stages -- red for the Republic and black for the Empire -- whose remnants we can still recognize:
Here is the Basilica Aemilia:
The Basilica Aemilia was begun by Marcus Fulvius Nobilior in about 179 BC on the site of what had originally been a butchers' market; it was originally called the Basilica Fulvia. It seems to have taken the name Basilica Aemilia because it was actually only completed by Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Marcus Fulvius's successor and political enemy, if we assume that Lepidus's building was the same as Nobilior's rather than a neighboring one. The building underwent reconstructino in 55 BC by Lucius Aemilius Lepidus Paullus; Julius Caesar had bribed Paullus for support, and Paullus funded the reconstruction with the bribe money. Various events required various restorations in the centuries, but at some point, people just stopped maintaining it, and it fell to ruin. And so with the whole area.
As I mentioned before, we were visiting the day after the Ides of March, so the Ara di Cesare was especially notable decorated with the remnants of the previous day's festivities. A plaque with a quotation from Appian's Civil Wars 2.148:
The full passage from which this little excerpt is taken:
That's actually quite ominous, if you know your Roman history. But it was also a long time ago, and the remains of the previous day's festivities were still to be seen. Flowers on the altar:
The remains of laurel crowns:
I didn't get a good look, snapping the picture hastily in passing, but I believe that this is the Arch of Septimius Severus, to commemorate his Parthian victories and those of his sons:
The ruins of the Temple of Vesta:
The Temple of Vesta was one of the most important buildings in Ancient Rome. It was said to have been built by the heroic-age king Numa Pompilius, although the remains we have are clearly from some later reconstruction or expansion. It housed the hearthfire of Rome itself (the remains above, in fact, are the last bit of the hearth); the most important legal documents and sacred artifacts of the City were stored there. If the flame went out, the Romans took it as a sign that disaster was about to strike, and it was assiduously maintained until Emperor Theodosius extinguished the flame in 394 after the Battle of Frigidus. Most of the destruction of the Temple only occurred in the sixteenth century; what we see of it now was reconstructed in the twentieth.
It seems appropriate to quote Ovid (Fasti, Book VI):
The Temple was located in a sacred grove as part of a complex that included the Regia (the house of the king) and the House of the Vestal Virgins. When Theodosius dissolved the College of Virgins, the House of Vestal Virgins continued to be used as a residence, first for Imperial officials, then for officials in the papal curia, until it just fell out of use in about the eleventh century or so. Here we have the courtyard in the House of the Vestal Virgins, the Atrium Vestae, as the sky is lightly starting to sprinkle:
And a room off to the side:
And more of it rising on Palatine Hill above the courtyard:
And here we are looking down into the Atrium:
And, finally, looking back across what we had just toured:
to be continued
Here is the Basilica Aemilia:
The Basilica Aemilia was begun by Marcus Fulvius Nobilior in about 179 BC on the site of what had originally been a butchers' market; it was originally called the Basilica Fulvia. It seems to have taken the name Basilica Aemilia because it was actually only completed by Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Marcus Fulvius's successor and political enemy, if we assume that Lepidus's building was the same as Nobilior's rather than a neighboring one. The building underwent reconstructino in 55 BC by Lucius Aemilius Lepidus Paullus; Julius Caesar had bribed Paullus for support, and Paullus funded the reconstruction with the bribe money. Various events required various restorations in the centuries, but at some point, people just stopped maintaining it, and it fell to ruin. And so with the whole area.
As I mentioned before, we were visiting the day after the Ides of March, so the Ara di Cesare was especially notable decorated with the remnants of the previous day's festivities. A plaque with a quotation from Appian's Civil Wars 2.148:
The full passage from which this little excerpt is taken:
The people returned to Caesar's bier and bore it as a consecrated thing to the Capitol in order to bury it in the temple and place it among the gods. Being prevented from doing so by the priests, they placed it again in the forum where stands the ancient palace of the kings of Rome. There they collected together pieces of wood and benches, of which there were many in the forum, and anything else they could find of that sort, for a funeral pile, throwing on it the adornments of the procession, some of which were very costly. Some of them cast their own crowns upon it and many military gifts. Then they set fire to it, and the entire people remained by the funeral pile throughout the night. There an altar was first erected, but now there stands the temple of Caesar himself, as he was deemed worthy of divine honours; for Octavian, his son by adoption, who took the name of Caesar, and, following in his footsteps in political matters, greatly strengthened the government which was founded by Caesar, and remains to this day, decreed divine honours to his father. From this example the Romans now pay like honours to each emperor at his death if he has not reigned in a tyrannical manner or made himself odious, although at first they could not bear to call them kings even while alive.
That's actually quite ominous, if you know your Roman history. But it was also a long time ago, and the remains of the previous day's festivities were still to be seen. Flowers on the altar:
The remains of laurel crowns:
I didn't get a good look, snapping the picture hastily in passing, but I believe that this is the Arch of Septimius Severus, to commemorate his Parthian victories and those of his sons:
The ruins of the Temple of Vesta:
The Temple of Vesta was one of the most important buildings in Ancient Rome. It was said to have been built by the heroic-age king Numa Pompilius, although the remains we have are clearly from some later reconstruction or expansion. It housed the hearthfire of Rome itself (the remains above, in fact, are the last bit of the hearth); the most important legal documents and sacred artifacts of the City were stored there. If the flame went out, the Romans took it as a sign that disaster was about to strike, and it was assiduously maintained until Emperor Theodosius extinguished the flame in 394 after the Battle of Frigidus. Most of the destruction of the Temple only occurred in the sixteenth century; what we see of it now was reconstructed in the twentieth.
It seems appropriate to quote Ovid (Fasti, Book VI):
I foolishly thought for ages that there were statues
Of Vesta, later I learnt there were none beneath her dome:
An undying fire is concealed with the shrine,
But there’s no image of Vesta or of fire.
The Temple was located in a sacred grove as part of a complex that included the Regia (the house of the king) and the House of the Vestal Virgins. When Theodosius dissolved the College of Virgins, the House of Vestal Virgins continued to be used as a residence, first for Imperial officials, then for officials in the papal curia, until it just fell out of use in about the eleventh century or so. Here we have the courtyard in the House of the Vestal Virgins, the Atrium Vestae, as the sky is lightly starting to sprinkle:
And a room off to the side:
And more of it rising on Palatine Hill above the courtyard:
And here we are looking down into the Atrium:
And, finally, looking back across what we had just toured:
to be continued
Maronite Year XXXVI
The two major events in a Maronite Church on Good Friday are the Signing of the Chalice and the Adoration of the Cross.
Great Friday of the Crucifixion
Hebrews 12:12-21; John 19:31-37
Have mercy on us, O Lord, from Your great mercy;
blot out our sins according to Your grace.
Wash our garments pure as snow, and cleanse our souls,
for we do not pretend we have no sin,
for we see our sins and know our iniquity.
Against You we have sinned, doing evil;
we are judged by Your justice and saved by Your love.
By Your cross, remove hate and strife.
Upon the cross, O Lord, Your side was pierced by spear.
The Church approaches You with open hands,
in hope to receive the Blood and living water,
the signs that You are divine and human;
May we be worthy to praise the chalice You give,
which was filled with salvation on the cross:
the blood of forgiveness poured down in Your passion.
By Your cross, calm tempest and wrath.
From before our birth we bore the burden of man,
swept away by the revolt of Adam;
but You have made divine things manifest to us.
You have sprinkled us that we may be cleansed,
washed us clean that we might be whiter than pure snow.
You have anointed us with great gladness,
and our bones shall leap up with joy on the last day.
By Your cross, humble the haughty.
By grace, O Lord, clothe us with the robe of justice,
the vestment for serving Your mysteries,
the bright uniform of Your heavenly kingdom.
May we be worthy to praise Your chalice,
to rejoice in the Blood in which we are baptized.
With the threefold crown of faith, hope, and love,
crown us kings and queens in the kingdom of our God.
By Your cross, establish Your Church.
O Lord, turn Your face away from our wickedness,
blot out all record of our transgressions.
Create in us a clean and reasonable heart,
a bright temple for Your Holy Spirit,
and refresh our spirits with Your glory.
Shower us with the joy of salvation,
strengthen us with the anointing Spirit of God.
By Your cross, protect Your people.
Engrave on our hearts the image of Your passion;
conform us to the mercy of Your death.
Between two thieves You were raised on the wood of shame,
in mortality naked on the cross,
that the sons of Adam may be robed in glory.
Your cup was filled with salvation for us,
and by the wine of Your Blood we rejoice with hope.
By Your cross, pardon all sinners.
Shall we not speak of Your ways to the unrighteous,
we who were unrighteous but may be cleansed?
With the blood of ages our clothes were stained, O Lord,
but by Your Blood they are made like white light.
Open our lips that we may praise Your great justice,
God of our salvation, let us rejoice,
for You who wished more than sacrifice gave Yourself.
By Your cross, bring truth to our words.
Of Your own free will You offered Yourself for us;
You did not complain that You bore our sins.
You are the Lamb of God who takes away all sin;
by Your humility we are raised up.
Therefore Your Father has given You a nation,
a royal priesthood delivered from death,
because You gave Your soul to death and bore our sins.
By Your cross, sanctify Your flock.
Is any sacrifice better than contrition?
Repentance is a gift the Lord loves.
Spread Your graces richly among Your people, Lord,
build up the walls of Your Church and guard it.
Receive, O Lord God, the sacrifice of justice
upon the altar of Your merciful cross,
by Your Blood and living water purify us.
By Your cross, raise us to new life.
Great Friday of the Crucifixion
Hebrews 12:12-21; John 19:31-37
Have mercy on us, O Lord, from Your great mercy;
blot out our sins according to Your grace.
Wash our garments pure as snow, and cleanse our souls,
for we do not pretend we have no sin,
for we see our sins and know our iniquity.
Against You we have sinned, doing evil;
we are judged by Your justice and saved by Your love.
By Your cross, remove hate and strife.
Upon the cross, O Lord, Your side was pierced by spear.
The Church approaches You with open hands,
in hope to receive the Blood and living water,
the signs that You are divine and human;
May we be worthy to praise the chalice You give,
which was filled with salvation on the cross:
the blood of forgiveness poured down in Your passion.
By Your cross, calm tempest and wrath.
From before our birth we bore the burden of man,
swept away by the revolt of Adam;
but You have made divine things manifest to us.
You have sprinkled us that we may be cleansed,
washed us clean that we might be whiter than pure snow.
You have anointed us with great gladness,
and our bones shall leap up with joy on the last day.
By Your cross, humble the haughty.
By grace, O Lord, clothe us with the robe of justice,
the vestment for serving Your mysteries,
the bright uniform of Your heavenly kingdom.
May we be worthy to praise Your chalice,
to rejoice in the Blood in which we are baptized.
With the threefold crown of faith, hope, and love,
crown us kings and queens in the kingdom of our God.
By Your cross, establish Your Church.
O Lord, turn Your face away from our wickedness,
blot out all record of our transgressions.
Create in us a clean and reasonable heart,
a bright temple for Your Holy Spirit,
and refresh our spirits with Your glory.
Shower us with the joy of salvation,
strengthen us with the anointing Spirit of God.
By Your cross, protect Your people.
Engrave on our hearts the image of Your passion;
conform us to the mercy of Your death.
Between two thieves You were raised on the wood of shame,
in mortality naked on the cross,
that the sons of Adam may be robed in glory.
Your cup was filled with salvation for us,
and by the wine of Your Blood we rejoice with hope.
By Your cross, pardon all sinners.
Shall we not speak of Your ways to the unrighteous,
we who were unrighteous but may be cleansed?
With the blood of ages our clothes were stained, O Lord,
but by Your Blood they are made like white light.
Open our lips that we may praise Your great justice,
God of our salvation, let us rejoice,
for You who wished more than sacrifice gave Yourself.
By Your cross, bring truth to our words.
Of Your own free will You offered Yourself for us;
You did not complain that You bore our sins.
You are the Lamb of God who takes away all sin;
by Your humility we are raised up.
Therefore Your Father has given You a nation,
a royal priesthood delivered from death,
because You gave Your soul to death and bore our sins.
By Your cross, sanctify Your flock.
Is any sacrifice better than contrition?
Repentance is a gift the Lord loves.
Spread Your graces richly among Your people, Lord,
build up the walls of Your Church and guard it.
Receive, O Lord God, the sacrifice of justice
upon the altar of Your merciful cross,
by Your Blood and living water purify us.
By Your cross, raise us to new life.
Lent XXXIX
...the gifts of the Holy Spirit are seven in number for the sake of helping us suffer in the same spirit as Christ. In accepting his passion, Christ was moved to endure his sufferings by the will of the Father, by the needs of humanity, and by the strength of his own virtue. He was moved by the will of the Father, which he knew through understanding, loved through wisdom, and reverenced through fear. He was moved by our needs, which he was led to understand through knowledge and for which he was led to show compassion through piety. Not least of all, he was moved by the strength of his own virtue, which counsel made capable of farsighted choice, and fortitude, of vigorous achievement.
Bonaventura, Breviloquium, Monti, tr. Franciscan Institute Publications (Saint Bonaventure, NY: 2005), p. 189 [Part V, Chapter 5, Section 6].
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Showing
Beloved,
let us love one another;
love springs from God;
no one can love without being born of God,
and knowing God.
How can the man who has no love have any knowledge of God,
since God is love?
What has revealed the love of God,
where we are concerned,
is that he has sent his only-begotten Son into the world,
so that we might have life through him.
That love resides,
not in our shewing any love for God,
but in his shewing love for us first,
when he sent out his Son to be an atonement for our sins.
Beloved,
if God has shown such love for us,
we too must love one another.
1 John 4:7-4:11 (Knox)
Maronite Year XXXV
Thursday of the Mysteries
1 Corinthians 11:23-32; Luke 22:1-23
O Christ, Word of God, one with the Father,
You became man and submitted yourself to law,
that we might worship in spirit and truth.
You fulfilled the law that it might be light for us.
You washed the feet of Your own disciples
that we might learn humility and gracious love.
O Christ, Word of God, one with the Father,
You observed the holy Passover of the lamb
that You might become our Passover Lamb.
By Your Body and Your Blood we are purified,
saved by Your death, reborn by Your rising,
raised to heavenly heights by Your abounding love.
In the desert the people tempted God,
demanding the food for which they hungered.
"Why does the Lord leave His people to starve?
Can God spread a table in the desert?"
They did not believe, nor trust in His help.
But He in mercy opened up the skies,
raining down heavenly bread for their food.
The bread of angels was eaten by men,
abundant provision beyond all hope.
O Christ, Word of God, Savior of the world,
Your great compassion was a divine compassion,
and You stooped to help the sinner in need.
You descended to him that You might exalt him;
By your assumption of humanity,
You invested our race with Your divinity.
O Christ, Word of God, Savior of the world,
as Lamb of God, You bore the sins of the whole world.
By Your love You became the Paschal Lamb,
the fulfillment in grace and truth of Passover.
You offered Yourself a true sacrifice,
and gave us the food and drink of salvation.
Lent XXXVIII
...seven gifts are given by the Holy Spirit to help us act effectively. For if our actions are to be fruitful, we must be helped to distance ourselves from evil, and this is done by fear. We must also be aided to progress in good, both that demanded by God's command and that of supererogation. In what is demanded, we are helped by knowledge, which directs our actions, and by piety, which helps us carry them out; in matters that are of supererogation, we are aided by counsel, which directs us, and by fortitude, which helps us carry them out. Lastly, we must find our rest in the Most High, both by knowing the supreme truth and loving the supreme good; the first comes about through the gift of understanding, the second through the gift of wisdom, in which there is true repose.
Bonaventura, Breviloquium, Monti, tr. Franciscan Institute Publications (Saint Bonaventure, NY: 2005), p. 189 [Part V, Chapter 5, Section 7].
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
A Quick Trip to Italy, Part V
On Wednesday morning, we left for Rome.
Our hotel was in the Trevi district, so the first Roman sight we saw was the Fontana di Trevi:
Nobody knows for sure what 'Trevi' means, but the most plausible and commonly accepted etymology is that it's just the short form of tre vie, because the fountain is found where three very old streets meet. According to legend, in the days of Augustus a bunch of thirsty Roman soldiers met a young virgin girl who led them to a spring about eight miles from Rome. According to some late sources, the virgin was called Trivia, and that is another possibility for the origin of 'Trevi'. Hearing about this, the legend goes, Augustus Caesar ordered the creation of an aqueduct from the spring to Rome to feed the Baths of Agrippa. You can see the story represented on the fountain (upper left-hand and right-hand sides).
A fountain was eventually put in place, but in 1629, Pope Urban VIII decided that there needed to be something a bit more impressive at that location. So he held a design contest, and the design was awarded to Nicola Salvi. The whole fountain took thirty years to build, and Salvi died in the meantime; it was finished by Giuseppe Pannini in 1762 when a sculpture of Oceanus by Pietro Bracci was put in the central position. It is now perhaps the most famous fountain in the world, and is certainly the largest Baroque-style fountain in the world.
The church of Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi is right there at the fountain:
The current church was completed in 1650 by Cardinal Mazarin, and has a fairly distinctive facade because nobody imitated it -- the Romans made fun of it and called it The Canebrake. The church is most famous because it has all the hearts of the popes from Sixtus V to Leo XIII; which, you must admit, is a very unique kind of collection. The building to the left of the church is the Palazzo Castellani; if it weren't in the way, I could have given you a picture of the Quirinal Palace, for which it was once the parish church.
Rome is not as easy to navigate, nor as friendly to tourists, as Florence, so it helps to have a tour guide. (Tour guides have to be properly licensed, and apparently it is both difficult to pass the licensing test and the police rigorously enforce the license requirements.) Our tour guide was Ilaria Marsili, who was excellent. Tuesday afternoon we met up with her to explore ancient Rome, particularly around Palatine Hill.
We started near the Altare della Patria, which commemorates Vittorio Emanuele II and the Unification of Italy:
That's the Italian interpretation of 'gaudy monstrosity'. It is immense and pretentious, to the point that it is almost ridiculous, and its visibility is about the only aesthetic feature it has going for it. Apparently it was very controversial almost from the beginning because building it required destroying an entire neighborhood of Rome near the Capitoline Hill. It does have one redeeming feature, since when it inevitably gets destroyed at some point in the future, whether that's centuries away or millenia, it will leave lots of room for much better monuments.
Our real interest, however, was in the Forums. Here's a nice layout (from Wikimedia) of the Roman Forums, as they would originally have been:
One of the most famous monuments in the Forums is Trajan's Column:
It was built to commemorate Trajan's victories in the Dacian Wars. Here you can see a bit of the detail of the relief:
Because of its great height, building it was a significant engineering achievement in its day -- the Romans were good at lifting things with cranes, but the Column is too tall for Roman cranes, and they had probably primarily used a lifting tower with a lot of pulleys. It's actually hollow, with a spiral staircase instead which was designed to let people come out on the top deck and see the Forum from there. Originally there was a statue of Trajan at the top, but it vanished through the centuries. Pope Sixtus V had a bronze statue of St. Peter placed on top of it in 1587, which is still there today:
Trajan's Forum was the last of the Forums in the complex to be built; it was intended to stun and amaze. Originally 980 feet by 607 feet, only fragments remain, with some of the pillars re-erected to suggest the original to the imagination:
In Trajan's Forum is Trajan's Market, a very large complex of what would once have been shops and offices:
On Trajan's side of the street, the Romans have sensibly put up a statue of Trajan:
Across the street, in front of Caesar's Forum, there is the statue of Julius Caesar:
He's decorated because we were there the day after the Ides of March.
Caesar's Forum:
And where we will be heading next:
to be continued
Our hotel was in the Trevi district, so the first Roman sight we saw was the Fontana di Trevi:
Nobody knows for sure what 'Trevi' means, but the most plausible and commonly accepted etymology is that it's just the short form of tre vie, because the fountain is found where three very old streets meet. According to legend, in the days of Augustus a bunch of thirsty Roman soldiers met a young virgin girl who led them to a spring about eight miles from Rome. According to some late sources, the virgin was called Trivia, and that is another possibility for the origin of 'Trevi'. Hearing about this, the legend goes, Augustus Caesar ordered the creation of an aqueduct from the spring to Rome to feed the Baths of Agrippa. You can see the story represented on the fountain (upper left-hand and right-hand sides).
A fountain was eventually put in place, but in 1629, Pope Urban VIII decided that there needed to be something a bit more impressive at that location. So he held a design contest, and the design was awarded to Nicola Salvi. The whole fountain took thirty years to build, and Salvi died in the meantime; it was finished by Giuseppe Pannini in 1762 when a sculpture of Oceanus by Pietro Bracci was put in the central position. It is now perhaps the most famous fountain in the world, and is certainly the largest Baroque-style fountain in the world.
The church of Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi is right there at the fountain:
The current church was completed in 1650 by Cardinal Mazarin, and has a fairly distinctive facade because nobody imitated it -- the Romans made fun of it and called it The Canebrake. The church is most famous because it has all the hearts of the popes from Sixtus V to Leo XIII; which, you must admit, is a very unique kind of collection. The building to the left of the church is the Palazzo Castellani; if it weren't in the way, I could have given you a picture of the Quirinal Palace, for which it was once the parish church.
Rome is not as easy to navigate, nor as friendly to tourists, as Florence, so it helps to have a tour guide. (Tour guides have to be properly licensed, and apparently it is both difficult to pass the licensing test and the police rigorously enforce the license requirements.) Our tour guide was Ilaria Marsili, who was excellent. Tuesday afternoon we met up with her to explore ancient Rome, particularly around Palatine Hill.
We started near the Altare della Patria, which commemorates Vittorio Emanuele II and the Unification of Italy:
That's the Italian interpretation of 'gaudy monstrosity'. It is immense and pretentious, to the point that it is almost ridiculous, and its visibility is about the only aesthetic feature it has going for it. Apparently it was very controversial almost from the beginning because building it required destroying an entire neighborhood of Rome near the Capitoline Hill. It does have one redeeming feature, since when it inevitably gets destroyed at some point in the future, whether that's centuries away or millenia, it will leave lots of room for much better monuments.
Our real interest, however, was in the Forums. Here's a nice layout (from Wikimedia) of the Roman Forums, as they would originally have been:
One of the most famous monuments in the Forums is Trajan's Column:
It was built to commemorate Trajan's victories in the Dacian Wars. Here you can see a bit of the detail of the relief:
Because of its great height, building it was a significant engineering achievement in its day -- the Romans were good at lifting things with cranes, but the Column is too tall for Roman cranes, and they had probably primarily used a lifting tower with a lot of pulleys. It's actually hollow, with a spiral staircase instead which was designed to let people come out on the top deck and see the Forum from there. Originally there was a statue of Trajan at the top, but it vanished through the centuries. Pope Sixtus V had a bronze statue of St. Peter placed on top of it in 1587, which is still there today:
Trajan's Forum was the last of the Forums in the complex to be built; it was intended to stun and amaze. Originally 980 feet by 607 feet, only fragments remain, with some of the pillars re-erected to suggest the original to the imagination:
In Trajan's Forum is Trajan's Market, a very large complex of what would once have been shops and offices:
On Trajan's side of the street, the Romans have sensibly put up a statue of Trajan:
Across the street, in front of Caesar's Forum, there is the statue of Julius Caesar:
He's decorated because we were there the day after the Ides of March.
Caesar's Forum:
And where we will be heading next:
to be continued
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)