A Quick Trip to Italy, Miscellanea I

Florence: Duomo

Additional views:

Some details:

Another view from the Palazzo Vecchio:

Florence: Palazzo Vecchio

A different view of the Palazzo Vecchio:

The top of the Torre; notice the stairs:

A painting of Hercules:

A view from a window. On the left, the Duomo. On the right, the tower of the Museo Bargello.

Looking northwest out over Florence:

Tuscan hills rising behind Santa Croce:

A putto statue:

Looking up at the Torre:

Another view of the David copy in the Piazza della Signoria:

A closer look at the Hercules statue in the Loggia:

to be continued

Clear Shine the Hills

Of a Toyokuni Color-Print
by William Ernest Henley

Was I a Samurai renowned,
Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow?
A histrion angular and profound?
A priest? a porter?--Child, although
I have forgotten clean, I know
That in the shade of Fujisan,
What time the cherry-orchards blow,
I loved you once in old Japan.

As here you loiter, flowing-gowned
And hugely sashed, with pins a-row
Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned,
Demure, inviting--even so,
When merry maids in Miyako
To feel the sweet o' the year began,
And green gardens to overflow,
I loved you once in old Japan.

Clear shine the hills; the rice-fields round
Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow,
A blue canal the lake's blue bound
Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo!
Touched with the sundown's spirit and glow,
I see you turn, with flirted fan,
Against the plum-tree's bloomy snow . . .
I loved you once in old Japan!

Envoy

Dear, 'twas a dozen lives ago;
But that I was a lucky man
The Toyokuni here will show:
I loved you--once--in old Japan.

The third stanza comes very near to flawless.

Some Poem Drafts

Except for the last one, all of these are inspired by other poems. The first is based on a passage in the Kalevala (Runo 21); the second on one of the odes of Gregory of Narek, the images of which it follows fairly closely (it is 13A in Terian's The Festal Works of St. Gregory of Narek); the third on a short stretch of passage from the Old English poem The Seafarer; the fourth from one of the poems in Ezra Pound's Cathay.

Ale

Ale, you are the drink delicious,
stripping sorrow from the drinker,
bringing song to all the people;
may they shout with mouths sweet-gilded
as the lords are made to wonder,
ladies, too, to contemplate it.

Soon the song will fade and falter,
joys will fall to shameful silence,
if the ale is brewed too badly,
if the drink has not its goodness;
soon the singers lose their voices,
soon the songs are dim and tepid,
soon the guests are dull with quiet,
soon the songbirds stop rejoicing,
if the beer is sour and wretched.

Ale, you are the drink delicious,
bringing joy to any people,
urging song upon their voices;
may your brew be laughter golden,
may your taste be pure and good!

Gregory of Narek Sings of the Transfiguration

The gem-rose was bright, sunlit;
a bloom spread above from the sea;
from the far, wide sea it burst.
It glittered like fruit, like saffron,
like fruit in thick leaves, psalm-sung,
in David's fair song remembered.

In bright rose-bouquet hues shone.
Rose were the branches of poplar,
cedar and cypress rose high.
The valley-lily shone brightly.
North wind blew softly, a breeze;
from the south showered gentle mists.

Dew kissed the lily, pearl-like,
droplets of bright dew from sun-clouds.
All bright stars circle on high,
constellations bright like lilies.
Praise to the Father, the Son,
the Holy Spirit, Three and One.

Seafaring

I ache, grim-ridden, this ship a place of cares,
waves a-wilding,
anxious nightwatch extending
in worry at trembling cliffs.
Cold-enchained my feet, frost-bound, chill-clasped,
but cares boil hot in the heart,
hunger eating from inside the sea-tired soul.

Mei Sheng Ponders

Verdant the verdure by the river,
where willows overflow the way,
the lady, pale and pausing,
puts forth small hand upon the door.
Once a lady of the nighttime,
she became a drunkard's lady;
he leaves in drunkenness and stumbling.
Too often is she alone.

Misery

May this verse into oblivion fall,
and nevermore remembered be,
that none may of your life recall
or save you for a memory;
may none remember how you lied,
or how our love within you died.
So I curse you, though it curse me!

May this verse into oblivion fall,
that none your treasons may revive,
that none your evil may recall,
that none may think you once alive;
may your shade through silence glide
who in this life our love denied.
So I curse you, though it curse me!

Apud Quem Vivunt

An interesting passage by Aquinas:

...pueri in maternis uteris existentes nondum prodierunt in lucem, ut cum aliis hominibus vitam ducant. Unde non possunt subiici actioni humanae, ut per eorum ministerium sacramenta recipiant ad salutem. Possunt tamen subiici operationi Dei, apud quem vivunt, ut quodam privilegio gratiae sanctificationem consequantur, sicut patet de sanctificatis in utero.

Children in the maternal womb have not yet been born so as to lead a life with other human beings. Thus they are not able to be subject to human action so as by such ministry to receive the sacrament [of baptism] unto salvation. They are able however, to be subject to the action of God, in Whose presence they live, so as to attain by a sort of privilege sanctifying grace, as is obvious with those sanctified in the womb.

Aquinas [ST 3.68.11 ad 1, my translation; Dominican Fathers translation here]

A privilege is a law that concerns itself with a single person; the examples of those sanctified in the womb that Aquinas has in mind would be the Virgin Mary, the prophet Jeremiah, and John the Baptist.

PSA

obtuse: unintelligent, stupid; from Latin obtusus, dull, blunt, the state belonging to the edge of a blade that has been heavily beaten.

obscure: difficult to understand, not widely known, hidden in darkness; from Latin obscurus, dark, hidden, unintelligible, secret, as in something covered up.

abstruse: difficult to understand; from Latin abstrusus, concealed, hidden away, as in something pushed out of view.

St. Anselm on 'Facere' and Making Someone Dead

Today is the feast of St. Anselm of Canterbury. A bit of something from Anselm's philosophical fragments (I use Jasper Hopkins's translation).

Let us now understand doing (causing) in terms of a classification. Since a doing (causing) is always either in relation to being or in relation to not-being, (as has been said), we will be obliged to add “to be” or “not to be” to the distinct modes of doing (causing) in order for them to be clearly distinguished.

The Latin for 'doing/causing' here is facere, which means, 'making something so'; as Anselm notes, we can substitute it for any verb, even paradoxically one that means making something not to be so. We'll just look at what can be meant when we talk about making something to be such-and-such.

Accordingly, we speak in six modes about causing [to be]: in two modes when a cause (A.1) causes to be, or (A.2) does not cause not to be, that very thing which it is said to cause [to be]; and in four modes when it (A.3 - A.6) either does or does not cause something else to be or not to be. For, indeed, we say of any given thing “It causes something to be” either because it (1) causes-to-be the very thing which it is said to cause [to be], or because it (2) does not cause this very thing not to be, or because it (3) causes something else to be, or because it (4) does not cause something else to be, or because it (5) causes something else not to be, or because it (6) does not cause something else not to be.

He gives examples, which we can go through; I'll call the people in question John and Bob.

(1) John makes Bob dead (directly)

When someone who kills a man with a sword is said to cause him to be dead, [it is said] in the first mode. For he directly (per se) causes the very thing which he is said to cause.

Thus, if I say, "John makes it so that Bob is dead", I can mean that John actually kills Bob (his action in and of itself makes Bob dead).

(2) (2) John does not make Bob not to be dead (directly)

If I say, "John makes it so that Bob is dead", I could also mean that Bob is dead, and John is able to make him not-dead, but is not doing so.

(3) John makes Bob dead (by making something else make him dead)

If I say, "John makes it so that Bob is dead", I could also mean that John arranged it so that something else would make Bob die -- for instance, by hiring an assassin.

(4) John makes Bob dead (by not making something else make him not dead)

Anselm's examples are if John made it so that Bob is dead by not giving Bob a weapon to defend himself when someone was attacking him, or by not stopping the killer from killing Bob.

(5) John makes Bob dead (by making something else not make him not dead)

In (4), John made Bob to be dead by not giving him a weapon to defend himself; in (5), John might make Bob to be dead by removing his weapon so he can't defend himself.

(6) John does not make Bob not to be dead (by not making something else not make him dead)

It accords with the sixth mode when the one who did not cause the killer not to be armed, by removing his weapons, is accused of having killed the victim—or when the man who did not lead the intended victim away so that he would not be in the presence of the killer is so accused. These individuals too did not kill directly. Rather, they killed indirectly—viz., by not causing something else not to be.

So here John makes Bob to be dead by not making the thing that killed Bob not to be.

As he sums up:

Now, in the five modes after the first mode efficient causes do not cause what they are said to cause. Nevertheless— since the second mode does not cause not to be what the first mode causes to be, and since the third mode causes something else to be, and the fourth mode causes something else not to be, and the fifth mode does not cause something else to be, and the sixth mode does not cause something else not to be—efficient causes are said to cause what the first mode causes (as I have exemplified in every mode).

One could imagine a mystery novel built around these ways of making someone dead.

Anselm goes on to note that the same classification applies if we are talking about causing something not to exist -- after all, if John makes Bob to be dead, that's the same as making him not alive. Likewise, not causing something to be works in a similar way, since if John makes Bob to be dead, he does not make him to continue living, so, although the examples are less obvious, we could talk about ineffective causes of death in just the same way we talked above about effective ones. In fact, we have four sets of six:

making Bob to be dead
not making Bob not to be dead
making Bob not to be alive
not making Bob to be alive

The reason is the paradox noted above: facere (like doing in English) can substitute for any verb, including those that mean not doing something.


For those interested in modal logic, Sara Uckelman has an interesting paper on what agentive logic would fit Anselm's discussion of facere best.

A Quick Trip to Italy, Part XIV

The most famous sightseeing spot in Milan, of course, is at the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which we see here from inside its courtyard:

Santa Maria delle Grazie was built under the Sforza family. The Dominican convent to which it was attached was designed by the great Milanese architect Guiniforte Solari. It's not known for sure who designed the church itself. The traditional attribution is to Donato Bramante, but it could also be designed by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo; both architects were active in the Duchy of Milan during the right time period -- indeed, they sometimes collaborated. I didn't get any pictures of the inside of the church, but you can take a virtual tour online, with Italian commentary if you'd like it (click the fourth icon for the view of the inside of the church). It actually looks better online; it was quite dim and unlit when we were there. The church was hit by Allied bombardment in 1943, and was severely damaged. The refectory was almost destroyed, too, with one wall alone surviving, which had to be held up by sandbags. On that wall is the reason why Santa Maria delle Grazie is one of the most famous sightseeing attractions in the world: in the late fifteenth century Leonardo da Vinci painted a mural for the monks to look at while eating, The Last Supper. Unfortunately, you need reservations well in advance to get in to see it, and we were not able to get reservations for the time we were in Milan.

We were running out of time, so we headed back to the hotel. We stopped briefly, however, at another Milanese attraction, the Castello Sforzesco. Here is one of its towers (the Torrione di Santo Spirito, I believe):

The most famous architectural element of the Sforza Castle is the Torre del Filarete, seen here from inside the Cortile delle Armi:

It gets its name from its architect, Antonio di Pietro Averlino, more commonly known as Filarete. He was a Florentine who spent most of his career in Rome, but had to flee the city at some point when he was accused of trying to steal the head of John the Baptist (i.e., the relic that the Romans had traditionally claimed was the head of the Baptizer) from the church of San Silvestro in Capite. He eventually came to Milan to work on the Duomo and was hired to help restore the glory of Sforza Castle, which had seen better days by that point. (It was nearly destroyed by the republicans of the Golden Ambrosian Republic, and so Francesco's Sforza's restoration was a deliberate statement of warning to, and superiority over, any republican sympathizers.) The current Filarete Tower was restored in the early twentieth century on the basis of old drawings.

Here we look opposite of the Torre del Filarete to the Porta Giovia and Torre di Bona:

A large number of museums can be found throughout the castle. Like much of the Milan, the castle was heavily damaged in World War II; the museums help make restoration and preservation viable.

We were, however, running out of time, so we headed out....

One of the more striking buildings in Milan is the Milano Centrale railway station, which is a mix of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. It was opened in the 1930s. It was designed by architect Ulisse Stachini and deliberately modeled on Union Station in Washington, DC, although a number of changes were introduced into the original design, particularly under Mussolini. Here we catch a brief glimpse of one wing of it at night, looking across the Piazza Duca d'Aosta:

And the next day we flew away. Here are the Alps from Malpensa Airport; somewhere out there, out of sight, is Switzerland:

I'll follow at some point with some miscellaneous pictures.

Ten Fathoms Deep on the Road to Hell

Derelict
Cap'n Billy Bones his song
by Young Ewing Allison

Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The mate was fixed by the bos'n's pike,
The bos'n brained with a marlinspike
And Cookey's throat was marked belike,
It had been gripped
By fingers ten;
And there they lay,
All good dead men,
Like break-o'-day in a boozing-ken—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of the whole ship's list—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and be damned and the rest gone whist!—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore—
And the scullion he was stabbed times four.
And there they lay,
And the soggy skies
Dripped all day long
In upstaring eyes—
In murk sunset and at foul sunrise—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the Murder mark—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
'Twas a cutlass swipe, or an ounce of lead,
Or a yawing hole in a battered head—
And the scuppers glut with a rotting red,
And there they lay—
Aye, damn my eyes—
All lookouts clapped
On paradise—
All souls bound just contrariwise—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.

Fifteen men of 'em good and true—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Every man jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold,
With a ton of plate in the middle hold,
And the cabins riot of stuff untold,
And they lay there
That had took the plum,
With sightless glare
And their lips struck dumb,
While we shared all by the rule of thumb—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

More was seen through the sternlight screen—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Chartings ondoubt where a woman had been!
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
A flimsy shift on a bunker cot,
With a thin dirk slot through the bosom spot
And the lace stiff-dry in a purplish blot.
Or was she wench...
Or some shuddering maid...?
That dared the knife—
And took the blade!
By God! she was stuff for a plucky jade—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
We wrapped 'em all in a mains'l tight
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight—
With a yo-heave-ho!
And a fare-you-well!
And a sullen plunge
In the sullen swell,
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell!
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

"Dead Man's Chest" is, of course, a completely fictional sea-shanty invented by Robert Louis Stevenson for Treasure Island. But from the beginning people have thought the fragment of the song Stevenson gives too perfect not to cry out for completion. This extremely violent one, written in 1891 by Young E. Allison, from Louisville, is arguably the most popular, since it was used for some of the early musical versions of Treasure Island.

Astell and Pascal

An interesting comment by Jacqueline Broad (in The Philosophy of Mary Astell) on the link between Pascal and Mary Astell:

In another manuscript, she observes that 'Pensées de Pascal are profound, solid, just, full of noble sentiments[,] good sense & true reasoning, clearly yet concisely express'd in proper language'.

In the footnote she explains further:

These words are written in Astell's handwriting on the first flyleaf of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's personal copy of Pierre Bayle's Pensées Diverses (4th ed, 1704), held in Lord Harrowby's private library at Sandon Hall, Staffordshire. With 'a just Indignation', Astell remarks that, by comparison with Pascal's work, Bayle's Pensées are a 'loose, rambling, incoherent, rhapsody, w^th all y^e affectation of Method, Reasoning & Exactness, full of words, w^th every thing strain'd to a latent ill meaning or else very impertinent, Trifling, or worse.'

[Jacqueline Broad, The Philosophy of Mary Astell, Oxford UP (New York: 2015), p. 57 and 57n51.]

This sort of thing, the discovery of little connections in unexpected places, is one of the things I very much enjoy about the history of philosophy.

Fortnightly Book, April 17

The recent Italy posts have decided the next Fortnightly Book for me: The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim's Progress, Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker City's Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land, by Mark Twain.

The Innocents Abroad was easily Mark Twain's most popular work in his lifetime. Published in 1869, it is Twain's presentation of a real trip abroad. The Quaker City, a former US naval ship, was steaming across the Atlantic on a pleasure cruise -- the first transatlantic pleasure cruise ever -- and taking a circuit that would stop at Marseilles, Genoa, Leghorn, Naples, Palermo, Athens, Corinth, Constantinople, Sebastopol, Smyrna, Beirut, Joppa, Alexandria, Malta, Cagliari, Palma, Valencia, Madeira, and Bermuda before returning home, with excursions at most of the stops. The whole thing would be about five months. Twain was along as the traveling correspondent for the Daily Alta California. He sent back about 51 letters to the newspaper as part of its Holy Land Excursion feature. After he returned and was considering getting permission to use the letters for a book, he gave a lecture called, "Pilgrim Life"; they were so successful that he reworked them as a new lecture, "The American Vandal Abroad", and began hawking it on the general lecture circuit. Humorous lecturers were still relatively rare, so reviewers occasionally dinged him for his frivolousness -- but he packed the house. You can read one version of that lecture online. The book itself was worked up from the letters and lectures, with considerable revision at some points, and became the first step in Mark Twain's literary fame.

The Innocents Abroad is the first of his travel works; as such, it is in some ways his roughest, but also his most lighthearted and least cynical. I've read it before, but it has been some time, and it should be interesting to re-read his account of Northern Italy and his (highly critical and often anti-Catholic) discussion of the Papal States. Italian Unification was going on; Twain's American sympathies are entirely with Garibaldi, but Rome would not fall to the Kingdom of Italy until September 20, 1870. I don't remember much of anything about the book's Holy Land portion, so I will have to pay close attention there, too.

Maronite Year XLII

Fourth Sunday of the Resurrection
Hebrews 13:18-25; John 21:1-14

The God of peace raised our Lord Christ;
we have a Shepherd for our flock.
Through the blood of His covenant,
may He complete our works in His will,
making us like Him in glory.

Lovely is Sunday, brightest day!
The devil has been overcome;
death has been defeated with life;
the promise of peace has appeared;
hope showers on those in the tombs;
the disciples rejoice in Christ,
for they have seen the Son of God.
They gathered in the upper room,
crying, Praise to You, Lord and God!

Today the Lord rose from the tomb;
death and the devil He conquered.
Your servants praise You, O Savior!
Your saints rejoice in Your great Name,
which gives life to Adam's children.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes; and The Return of Tarzan

Introduction

Opening Passages: From Tarzan of the Apes:

I heard this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the tale.

From The Return of Tarzan:

"Magnifique!" ejaculated the Countess de Coude, beneath her breath.

Summary: John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, is dispatched to British West Africa to investigate complaints that blacks are being mistreated; he goes with his young wife Alice, who is pregnant with their child. They never make it to their intended destination, however, and find themselves on a jungle-touched shore, many, many miles from civilization. Being resourceful people, they survive for a while, building a cabin and bringing their son into the world; but it is a hard thing, and they both die. The son is saved due to the compassion of an ape named Kala, whose only baby has just died; she takes the boy as her own, defending his place in her ape-tribe, where the apes call him 'White Skin': Tarzan. A human boy is more helpless than any ape; but if the point can be reached where the boy's survival can be reasonably assured, the boy has something that outmatches any ape. The fortunes of Tarzan are tied with this, human reason, by which a single man with a tiny bit of leisure can have more ingenuity than an entire civilization of apes. He discovers his father's cabin, not knowing its relation to himself, and by innate curiosity and years of study teaches himself to read and write English, a language he cannot speak.

One day a new group of people is marooned on the same coasts, including William Cecil Clayton, who has become Lord Greystoke in the absence of the rightful heir to the title, and Jane Porter, an American girl from Baltimore. Through his help, they survive to be rescued. Tarzan in the meantime saves the life of a French officer, Paul D'Arnot, and from him learns to speak his first human language: French. With D'Arnot's friendship Tarzan learns the ways of civilization and sets out to find Jane again. He discovers that she has promised her hand to another, and because of it, he renounces any attempt to reclaim his title, returning instead to France, not knowing what he will do with himself alone in white man's civilization.

Which, indeed, proves to be an interesting question as we pick up in the sequel, since Tarzan soon discovers that civilization can be more perilous than the jungle as he finds himself thrust into the middle of a seamy world of blackmail, espionage, and assassination, facing off against the Russian villain, Nikolas Rokoff. This eventually leads him to Algeria on a mission for the French war ministry, and then off to Cape Town. On the way to Cape Town, however, he is pushed overboard by Rokoff and marooned again in his old haunts. He is adopted into the native Waziri tribe and discovers an ancient outpost of Atlantis, called Opar, where the human race has begun to degenerate into bestial ways, or, indeed, worse, since (as we discover throughout The Return of Tarzan) the ingenuity of human reason does not confine itself to good.

In the meantime, Jane, Clayton, and Nikolas Rokoff (under an assumed name) find themselves marooned not far from where everyone, it seems, is always marooned. Jane's life is again saved by Tarzan, who has completed the "cycle of evolution" by living again with his original tribe of apes. The sequel ends with a marriage as the first book had ended with the threat of a marriage, and we see Tarzan returning once more to civilization.

Burroughs writes by what may be called the method of inversions; he delights in turning things upside-down. The English aristocrat is raised by apes. Civilization is more dangerous than the wild. Beasts are more noble and honorable than most men. The perfection of manhood is achieved among the animals of the jungle. The last representatives of what was once the greatest of all civilizations have become degraded to something hardly recognizable as human. Jane, having survived the jungle, goes back home to live in Wisconsin, which, indeed, is in some ways about as opposite to the African jungles of Tarzan as one can imagine.

Burroughs is often criticized for trying to drive stories by coincidences, as witnessed, for instance, by the multiple maroonings of obviously connected people in the same place at convenient times, but I think to some extent this ignores an important feature of all these fortunate and unfortunate happenstances. In general they tend to be doublings that intensify the inversions. Kala is the double of Alice and also her inversion. Lord Greystoke is the contrasting double of Lord Greystoke; at the same moment that the real Lord Greystoke is eating raw flesh in the jungle, the other Lord Greystoke is sending his steak back for being undercooked. The two maroonings of Tarzan of the Apes are contrasted by the presence of Tarzan to assist the second marooned party; the two maroonings of The Return of Tarzan create an inverted double of the originals. The Arabic girl and the Oparian girl are doubled inversions of the others, each assisting Tarzan, one honorably and nobly, and the other selfishly. The first book ends with threat of marriage, the second book ends with marriage -- and a double marriage, at that. Exotic Opar inverts exotic France in civilization and is its double in peril. Through the course of the two books, Tarzan rises from ape to primitive man to civilized man, then descends from civilized man to primitive man to ape; the relation between Jane and Tarzan in the one book is the inverted double of their relation in the other. This is not a mere accident of these two books alone; doublings are extremely common throughout all the Tarzan books, and the very nature of the character, the ape-man, the civilized savage, would guarantee the existence of inversions throughout, even if it weren't the case that the author was obviously enjoying all the paradoxes.

I had thought that I had never read The Return of Tarzan before, but enough of it was familiar that I must have at some point. In any case, Tarzan of the Apes and The Return of Tarzan are best read together; they form a completed circle and make for an integrated story, particularly as the latter begins soon after the former ends and it is the latter, not the former, that really brings us to a point suitable for an ending.

The Greeks often recognized three parts to human life: reason, thymos, and desire. Civilization in these books knows plenty of reason and plenty of desire, but of thymos it knows very little. Thymos is that in us which rises to the difficult challenge; and civilization tends to limit the opportunities for the development of this. Indeed, it may well produce Men without Chests, to borrow C. S. Lewis's phrase for it, who, in the end, are merely cunning manipulators out for selfish ends. Tarzan is raised above the beasts of the jungle by reason, but ironically it is thymos, learned from the beasts of the jungle, that raises him above merely ordinary men. Human greatness lies not merely in civilization but in heroism; and we find a heroism civilizaton cannot teach in Tarzan of the Apes.

Favorite Passages: From Tarzan of the Apes:

When in a short time they had reached the beach, only to find no camp in sight, Philander was positive that they were north of their proper destination, while, as a matter of fact they were about two hundred yards south of it.

It never occurred to either of these impractical theorists to call aloud on the chance of attracting their friends' attention. Instead, with all the assurance that deductive reasoning from a wrong premise induces in one, Mr. Samuel T. Philander grasped Professor Archimedes O. Porter firmly by the arm and hurried the weakly protesting old gentleman off in the direction of Cape Town, fifteen hundred miles to the south. (p. 131)

From The Return of Tarzan:

Jane Porter shuddered. "The mysterious jungle," she murmured. "The terrible jungle. It renders even the manifestations of friendship terrifying." (p. 192)

Recommendation: Recommended.

----------

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes, Signet (New York: 2008).

Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, Ballantine (New York: 1992).

Where Eternal Prayer is Living

In the Gothic "Duomo" of Milan
by Ruby Archer

Come, chastened light, thou spirit of the sun!
Come, wander where eternal prayer is living;
Come, with a glow from saintly garments won,
Wake the dark walls unto thy wealth of giving.

Glide with thy vivid foot along the aisles,
And touch the fretted marble with thy fingers.
Mingle with tapers borne by priestly files,
Caress the fragrant incense where it lingers.

But leave the dim confessional in gloom,—
Peer not to learn a secret faltered lowly.
Kneel now, and mourn before a chaliced tomb,
Revere the dignity of marble holy.

Lo! 'Tis the Virgin and the Jesus child,
And at their feet some hand hath offered flowers—
Roses and pansies—pure, devout, and mild
As that loved face that blesseth all the hours.

Go, chastened light, thy wings are free again.
Go, meet the sun beyond the sacred portal.
Proclaim that thou hast been in fane of men
And found it worthy of the gods immortal!

Like Multitudinous Forks of Fire

Milan Cathedral
by Herman Melville

Through light green haze, a rolling sea
Over gardens where redundance flows,
The fat old plain of Lombardy,
The White Cathedral shows.

Of Art the miracles
Its tribes of pinnacles
Gleam like to ice-peaks snowed ; and higher,
Erect upon each airy spire
In concourse without end,
Statues of saints over saints ascend
Like multitudinous forks of fire.

What motive was the master-builder’s here?
Why these synodic hierarchies given,
Sublimely ranked in marble sessions clear,
Except to signify the host of heaven.

A Quick Trip to Italy, Part XIII

On Friday we went to Milan, about a three hour ride by high-speed rail.

Mediolanum is an old city, with a very long history. It was settled by Celts in the fifth century BC and conquered by Romans in the third century BC. For a period of time under Domitian it was the capital of the Western Roman Empire. It was a major site of conflict between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. It was one of the major cities of the Italian Renaissance. After Napoleon invaded Italy, it was the capital of the Cisalpine Republic, and later of his Kingdom of Italy. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, its opera houses and theaters were among the greatest in the world. Mozart and Verdi debuted works here. Milan has almost always been a thriving trade center and today is one of the economic powerhouses of Europe.

Very little of this is obvious, though. Rome always feels very big and overcrowded; Milan, the second most populous city of Italy, rarely feels so, with plenty of walkable areas and gardens all over the place. You can hardly move around in Rome's historic center without stumbling on something ancient; Milan's ancient Roman history only very rarely comes out. And in World War II, as the economic center of Italy, Milan was very heavily bombed throughout the war. Almost a third of its buildings were destroyed; very few of its great medieval and Baroque buildings and monuments escaped being at least damaged, and some vanished entirely. Milan, almost everywhere, seems very modern, because Milan, almost everywhere, is indeed very modern.

But despite the pulverization of so much of its history, Milan still has treasures. The most obvious is the Cathedral of Santa Maria Nascente -- most often known as the Duomo di Milano:

A photograph does not in any way do it justice. The Duomo, the heart of the Ambrosian Rite of the Latin Church, is the largest church in Italy. (St. Peter's is larger, but, of course, it is not technically in Italy.) It is usually said to be the fifth largest church in the world. It is over 10,000 square meters in area, over 440,000 cubic meters in volume, and it took nearly six centuries to build. The fortunes of the cathedral are closely connected with the history of Milan.

In 1385, Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Pavia seized Milan by overthrowing his uncle Bernabo by breaking a few promises. Bernabo was, however, very unpopular with the Milanese because of his very oppressive taxes. Using his new position as Signore of both Pavia and Milan, he went on to take Verona, Vicenza, and Padua (although he would later lose the last of these). One of the things he did as his fortunes were quickly rising was promise to the Milanese a grand new cathedral. The Milanese, happy to be out from the heel of the taxing taskmaster, were enthusiastic about the project -- so Gian Galeazzo, very cleverly, began to take donations for it, and the first stone was laid in 1386. Construction proceeded quite swiftly, and soon half the brick structure was built. But Gian Galeazzo died of fever in 1402, and very little was done afterward, although bits and pieces would be done here and there. The very Gothic cathedral got a few High Renaissance touches here and there.

In 1564, St. Carlo Borromeo became Archbishop of Milan, and one of his insights was to recognize that the guild controlling the construction of the cathedral was part of the problem; he used his influence to change the statutes and appoint Pellegrino di Tibaldo de Pellegrini as chief engineer. They planned on toning down the Gothic character of the cathedral (Gothic was increasingly seen as a Franco-German style) and giving it a more Italian Renaissance flair. But there was an immense of cathedral there, and an immense amount of cathedral yet to be done. Construction continued through the sixteenth century into the seventeenth, when the facade finally began to be developed. Construction continued through the seventeenth century into the eighteenth century, and in 1762, the Madonna's Spire was erected by Carlo Pellicani, with a gold-plated bronze statue of Mary placed on top of it, the Madonnina:

We were in Milan the day after Italian Unification Day, so that's why the Virgin Mary is waving the Italian flag. The Madonnina is one of the key touches of Milan. By tradition, no building in Milan is allowed to be higher than the Madonnina. But, tall as the Madonna's Spire is, Milan is a city of skyscrapers, and has been for decades! How can this be? When the Pirelli Tower was built in the 1950s in Milan, it was the tallest building in Italy. So they made a small replica of the Madonnina and put it at the top of the building. Skyscraper or now, it is still not higher than the Madonnina! When the Palazzo Lombardia rose even higher, they did the same. They did the same with the Allianz Tower of CityLife. One of the most famous folk songs in Milan, often regarded as the anthem of the city, refers to the Madonnina in its chorus:

Oh mia bela Madunina, che te brilet de luntan,
tüta d'ora e picinina, ti te dominet Milan,
sota a ti se viv la vita, se sta mai cui man in man.

It was written by Giovanni D'Anzi in the 1930s, and this bit means something like, "O my beautiful Madonnina, you shine brightly from afar; wholly golden and tiny, you rule over Milan. Life is lived beneath your feet without twiddling one's thumbs."

Life went on, and then came Napoleon. He wanted to be crowned King of Italy in the Duomo, so he promised the archbishop that if they finished the facade, he would reimburse the entire expense. That finally got things in full gear; the facade was finished and Napoleon was crowned King there in 1805. He then went off to fight in Russia and never got around to reimbursing anyone.

Arches and spires continued to be built through the nineteenth century. The last gate was put in on January 6, 1965, and this is usually the date given for the end of construction -- although there are still parts of the cathedral where you find blocks of stone that are supposed to be carved into statues at some point. There's so much going on with the cathedral, however, that you wouldn't notice it unless you were looking for it. It makes for an impressive whole.

Here is one of the doors, not the largest:

Inside, it is like a forest of columns. We were only allowed on the right-hand side (and thus actually missed a number of the most famous features of the cathedral).

St. Charles Borromeo, of course, is quite prominent here:

Now we will descend into the crypt, under the grand altar of Milan Cathedral, and receive an impressive sermon from lips that have been silent and hands that have been gestureless for three hundred years.

The priest stopped in a small dungeon and held up his candle. This was the last resting-place of a good man, a warm-hearted, unselfish man; a man whose whole life was given to succoring the poor, encouraging the faint-hearted, visiting the sick; in relieving distress, whenever and wherever he found it. His heart, his hand, and his purse were always open. With his story in one's mind he can almost see his benignant countenance moving calmly among the haggard faces of Milan in the days when the plague swept the city, brave where all others were cowards, full of compassion where pity had been crushed out of all other breasts by the instinct of self-preservation gone mad with terror, cheering all, praying with all, helping all, with hand and brain and purse, at a time when parents forsook their children, the friend deserted the friend, and the brother turned away from the sister while her pleadings were still wailing in his ears.

(Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, Chapter XVIII)

Even just seeing the right side of the church, there was a lot of it. And we came out again; a truism, perhaps, but perhaps also a bit less of one than it would be with another building. People sometimes get lost in forests.

What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems in the soft moonlight only a fairy delusion of frost-work that might vanish with a breath! How sharply its pinnacled angles and its wilderness of spires were cut against the sky, and how richly their shadows fell upon its snowy roof! It was a vision!—a miracle!—an anthem sung in stone, a poem wrought in marble!

to be continued

Full Many a Spiry Pinnacle

Milan Cathedral
by John Ruskin

The heat of summer day is sped ;
On far Mont Rose the sun is red ;
And mark you Milan's marble pile
Glow with the mellow rays awhile !
Lo, there relieved, his front so high
On the blue sky of Italy !
While higher still above him bear,
And slender in proportion fair,
Fretted with Gothic carving well,
Full many a spiry pinnacle ;
And dazzling bright as Rosa's crest,
Each with his sculptured statue prest,
They seem to stand in that thin air
As on a thread of gossamer.
You think the evening zephyr's play
Could sweep them from their post away,
And bear them on its sportful wing
As autumn leaves, wild scattering.

Ruskin was not a fan of the Milan Cathedral, however; he regarded it as a barbarous mish-mash, and the "spiry pinnacles" were practically the only thing he thought good in it.

Mark Twain on the Duomo of Milan

At last, a forest of graceful needles, shimmering in the amber sunlight, rose slowly above the pygmy housetops, as one sometimes sees, in the far horizon, a gilded and pinnacled mass of cloud lift itself above the waste of waves, at sea,—the Cathedral! We knew it in a moment.

Half of that night, and all of the next day, this architectural autocrat was our sole object of interest.

What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems in the soft moonlight only a fairy delusion of frost-work that might vanish with a breath! How sharply its pinnacled angles and its wilderness of spires were cut against the sky, and how richly their shadows fell upon its snowy roof! It was a vision!—a miracle!—an anthem sung in stone, a poem wrought in marble!

Howsoever you look at the great cathedral, it is noble, it is beautiful! Wherever you stand in Milan or within seven miles of Milan, it is visible and when it is visible, no other object can chain your whole attention. Leave your eyes unfettered by your will but a single instant and they will surely turn to seek it. It is the first thing you look for when you rise in the morning, and the last your lingering gaze rests upon at night. Surely it must be the princeliest creation that ever brain of man conceived.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, Chapter XVIII

Two New Poem Drafts and Some Poem Re-Drafts

(The second is based on a rare version of the apocryphal Psalm 151.)

Vale

Elusive is the vale,
an evening-colored petal
quivering in violet breezes.

The moon is full tonight
over fireflies in the air,
drunken stars in inky darkness,
iridescence on the petal.

A Song of David

Less was I than all my brothers,
youngest of my father's sons,
a simple shepherd of the flock,
a ruler of kids and goats.

I fashioned from the reed a pipe;
my fingers shaped a fair harp;
thus gave I glory to the Lord.
The mountains cannot tell Him.
The hills cannot proclaim His Name.

Take up my words, tall-topped trees,
sing my melodies, baaing sheep.
Who will else declare or speak?
The Lord our God has seen all things;
our God gives His attention.

He sent His anointing prophet:
Samuel came to grace me.
My brothers went out to meet him,
handsome-formed and handsome-faced.
They were tall and their hair was thick,
but God did not make them kings.

He fetched me from behind the flock,
anointed me with pure oil,
and made me prince of His people,
ruler in his covenant.

Birds Hunting Crickets

The sky is so blue you could dive right in and swim,
the sun so bright that it burns like hidden sin,
the breeze so cool upon harsh, sunburned skin;

I'd give a penny for your thoughts,
but you're probably thinking of him,

so instead I'll muse on truth and rule of law
and watch birds hunting crickets outside the coffee shop.

The Moon Sang Soprano

The moon sang soprano to the bass of the sea:
The fish danced in schools and pavaned ecstasy
As the waves crashed the shore with a drum-beaten bliss
That was voiced by a deep and unending abyss.
The tide measured time and the waves measured shore
As the song like a chorus resounded the more;
The moon sang its light, and that moonlight was borne
By the weight of the sea in the sound of its horn.

Astraea

The stars fell down; we felt
the light shift vivid red
and somewhere in Orion's belt
you fell down dead.
Your dreams whispered in ears
not made to hear your song,
beyond their sundry fears;
self-destroying, headlong,
they sullied face and name
with thoughts good sense would quell,
like moth to nova-flame,
like unfound souls to hell;
still you stood, stood still,
unchanged by the changing winds,
a quiet rill
opposing rushing tides of men.
All stars fail; in sharp light
they will forever fall
into eternal night,
that deepest night that conquers all;
and all too soon.
Your words ring in our heads.
Beneath some strange and weirding moon
your spirit fled.

Willow

The hollow-laden willow waves the leaflets of its limbs
in winds that whip around it through the shadowed evendim;
my heart is hale and singing with a hymn of hope and praise,
a hymn of hope and praise that I have learned from summer rain,
a healing psalm so soulful that it saves from fear and pain
and lengthens out like prayer all the wonders of my days.
With the waving of the willow I with spirit rise and sway
as the raindrops, kissed by moonlight, on my eyelids leap and play.

Birthtime of Beauty and of Poesy

April Sonnets
by Francis Bennoch

No. I: April Kind

April, though treacherous and changeling named,
Wanton and wayward in thy nature, still
Revealest thou those mysteries that fill
All hearts with love's deep sympathy, and famed
For blooms that odorous balm distil.
Birthtime of beauty and of poesy:
When birds betrothed melodious from the hill
Rain down their morning song of ecstasy.
When amorous bees toy fondly with the flower,
And drain its humid sweets deliriously,
Faint with excess, in love's delicious bower
Softly infolded, blossom-couched he lies:
Whilst draughts of fragrant dew oblivious sleep supplies.

April, 1855.

No. II: April Cruel

April, ah me! how swiftly changes come,
How soon the month we love we learn to hate,
When boughs deflowered hang down disconsolate,
And clouds of grief make dark our garden home,
Where genial sunshine lingering loved to wait;
With joy we grafted in thy wounded rind
The fairest branch that ever blossom bore;
Clasped close, incorporate as one combined,
A newborn rapture trembled in thy core
As budding life expanded, more and more
We longed to reap the fruit; but woke to find
Hope in a morning blighted ; from the shore
A ruthless wind stole with untimely frost,
And all thy cherished bloom was shrivelled, loosed, and lost.

April, 1855.

A Quick Trip to Italy, Part XII

Heading back from St. Peter's Square we passed, of course, Castel Sant'Angelo:

Castel Sant'Angelo is the Mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, built in the second century; it was used to store the ashes of the Roman emperors for the next several decades. The ashes seem to have been scattered in one of the sacks of Rome, and most of the original decorations of the building have been lost. According to a legend, the Archangel Michael appeared at the top of the building to signal the end of a plague in the sixth century, which is the reason for the current name. In the late Middle Ages, the building became a fortified castle for the popes; it later became a prison and, beginning in 1901, a museum. A statue of an angel was first put on top of the building in the sixteenth century; that original marble statue was replaced by a bronze statue made by Peter Anton von Verschaffelt in 1753, which is still there.

Hadrian also built the Pons Aelius across the River Tiber, part of which makes up the current Ponte Sant'Angelo:

In the sixteenth century Raffaello da Montelupo, who had sculpted the original stone angel for the top of Castel Sant'Angelo was commissioned to decorate the bridge with fourteen statues of angels. By the late seventeenth century they weren't aging well, so Clement IX commissioned Bernini, near the end of his life, to design replacements. Bernini had the idea of ten angels holding the Instruments of the Passion of Christ. He managed to do two of them with his son Paolo, the Angel of the Crown of Thorns and the Angel of the Superscription. Neither, however, is on the bridge: the pope liked them so much that he kept them, so the current versions of those angels are copies of Bernini's statues by other artists. The Angels are:

(1) The Angel of the Column
(2) The Angel of the Whips
(3) The Angel of the Crown of Thorns
(4) The Angel of the Sudarium
(5) The Angel of the Garment and Dice
(6) The Angel of the Nails
(7) The Angel of the Cross
(8) The Angel of the Superscription
(9) The Angel of the Sponge
(10) The Angel of the Lance

We lunched in the Piazza Navona, which is built on the site of the ancient Stadium of Domitian:

The church is Sant'Agnese in Agone. The 'in Agone' is actually just the earlier name of the plaza, which was corrupted over time to 'navona'. The church marks the spot where St. Agnes of Rome was supposed to have died in the early fourth century (the other major church devoted to her, St. Agnes Outside the Walls, marks her burial spot). The current church was built in the seventeenth century; Pope Innocent X had his family residence in the recently built Palazzo Pamphili immediately to the left of the current church, and he wanted to make the church that was previously there a chapel appropriate to his new family home. He commissioned Girolamo and Carlo Rainaldi to design it. The Rainaldi plan was extremely controversial, though, and they were replaced by Francesco Borromini, who had to use the Rainaldi floor plan but made liberal changes in other respects. Borromini became frustrated with his employers and resigned the commission; Carlo Rainaldi took over again. Carlo was replaced by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. And shortly afterward, Bernini was replaced by Carlo again. (Different members of the Pamphili family seem to have had different tastes in architects.)

In front of the church is one of the most famous fountains of Rome, Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi:

Each of the Four Rivers is from a different continent, symbolizing the spread of papal authority: the Danube, the Nile, the Ganges, and the Rio de Plata.

After lunch, we headed to our next destination: the church of Saint Mary and the Martyrs, or, as it is better known, the Pantheon:

While the Pantheon was (as the inscription suggests) commissioned by Marcus Agrippa in the reign of Augustus, that version seems to have been destroyed, and the one that currently exists appears to be a restoration that wasn't actually completed until the second century in the reign of Hadrian. Its dome is, after two thousand years, still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome, and it is one of the best preserved of all ancient Roman buildings. In the seventh century, the Emperor Phocas gave it as a gift to Pope Boniface IV and it became a Christian church. A number of notable people are buried there, including King Vittorio Emanuele II, but the most notable is the the artist Raphael Sanzio. Alas, I did not get a good photograph of his tomb; here is one from Wikimedia:


And that was Thursday, and the end of Rome. One of the things that is very clear is how little we actually saw: even for places we visited, like the Forum or St. Peter's, we only saw small slices. Everywhere there were too many things to see, not enough time, and too many things to work around to see what we could. It would have been nice to see some other things -- St. Mary Major, for instance -- but it was not to be. The Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Museums were what I most wanted to see -- but they were undergoing restoration, so, just like Florence, I didn't have any opportunity to see my only must-see thing. But it is better that the Raphael Rooms be preserved than that I should see them, and with such an abundance of things to see it would be foolish to complain.

We then returned to the original city into which we had flown, Milan.

to be continued

The Goddess of the White Man

Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" was written on the occasion of the American invasion of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. Shortly after it came out, an American author wrote a scathing satirical response to it, noting a point of some significance: it was never the white man who actually had to carry the white man's burden.

The Black Man’s Burden
by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Take up the white man’s burden,
The yoke ye sought to spurn;
And spurn your father’s customs;
Your father’s temples burn.
O learn to love and honor
The white God’s favored sons.
Forget the white-haired fathers
Fast lashed to mouths of guns.

Take up the white man’s burden,
Your own was not enough;
He’ll burden you with taxes;
But though the road be rough,
“To him who waits,” remember,
“All things in time shall come;”
The white man’s culture brings you
The white man’s God, and rum.

Take up the white man’s burden;
‘Tis called “protectorate,”
And lift your voice in thanks to
The God ye well might hate.
Forget your exiled brothers;
Forget your boundless lands;
In acres that they gave for
The blood upon their hands.

Take up the white man’s burden;
Poor simple folk and free;
Abandon nature’s freedom,
Embrace his “Liberty,”
The goddess of the white man
Who makes you free in name;
But in her heart your color
Will brand you “slave” the same.

Take up the white man’s burden;
And learn by what you’ve lost
That white men called as counsel
Means black men pay the cost.
Your right to fertile acres
Their priests will teach you well
Have gained your fathers only
A desert claim in hell.

Take up the white man’s burden;
Take it because you must;
Burden of making money;
Burden of greed and lust;
Burden of points strategic,
Burden of harbors deep,
Burden of greatest burdens;
Burden, these burdens to keep.

Take up the white man’s burden;
His papers take, and read;
‘Tis all for your salvation;
The white man knows not greed.
For you he’s spending millions —
To him, more than his God —
To make you learned, and happy,
Enlightened, cultured, broad.

Take up the white man’s burden
While he makes laws for you,
That show your fathers taught you
The things you should not do.
Cast off your foolish feathers,
Your necklace, beads, and paint;
Buy raiment for your mother,
Lest fairer sisters faint.

Take up the white man’s burden;
Go learn to wear his clothes;
You may look like the devil;
But nobody cares who knows.
Peruse a work of Darwin —
Thank gods that you’re alive —
And learn the reason clearly: —
The fittest alone survive.

The Perfection of the Mind

True knowledge, and not science falsely so called, is a 'divine thing,' as an excellent pen has proved it. For to know is to perceive truth, and the perception of truth is a participation of God Himself who is the truth, and the participation of God is the perfection of the mind.

[Mary Astell, in The Christian Religion, section 262, as quoted in Jacqueline Broad, The Philosophy of Mary Astell, Oxford UP (New York: 2015), p. 40.]

Broad comments:

Norris is the 'excellent pen' to whom Astell refers, and the passage in question appears in the second part of his Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World (1704), where he says that since 'truth is of a divine extraction, and has a real divinity in its nature, what a divine thing must all true science be'. Astell's subsequent point likewise echoes Norris's observation that 'the Truth which we see is Divine, and...the knowledge which we have of Truth, is, in some degree a participation of the Divine Nature, and a kind of possession of God himself.'

Broad is referring to Part II of An Essay Toward a Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World; she could also have noted the role played by truth as perfective of the mind in Part I (e.g., p. 334):

But besides, how comes Truth to be Perfective of our Minds? That it is so, may well be supposed our Understanding being then confessedly most perfect, when in the fullest Possession of Truth, when it has the clearest and largest View of it. But does not the whole Perfection of the Mind consist in its Union with God? Is not he our only perfective and beatifying Object, and can any thing else but his Divine Substance be the Good of our Souls?

A Quick Trip to Italy, Part XI

There was quite a bit of preparation going on everywhere around St. Peter's for a number of upcoming events, so it took some work to get around them. Rather than the usual way, our guide took us indirectly through the Treasury. No photography was allowed, but we saw several of the tombs of the popes. (I thought Paul VI's was interesting; it's just a plain slab, but it draws attention to itself for that very reason, as if you had been walking by a decorated wall and suddenly came to a completely blank section; all the others blend into the architecture, but that one sticks out in an obvious way.)

We also saw the tomb of Queen Christina of Sweden, which I was happy to see. Queen Christina is an interesting historical character. She was the polymathic queen who invited Rene Descartes to her court to organize a scientific academy. They did not get along well at all, and quarreled, it is said, over whether it was more important for her to study physics or Ancient Greek, so she mostly stopped seeing him, and he died of pneumonia not long afterward. In 1652, Christina began to study the Catholic faith, and she abdicated her throne in 1654, setting out for the Catholic countries of Europe; she then officially converted in Brussels. She soon came to Rome, which she would visit several times, and would die in Rome in 1689 at the age of 62. She asked to be buried in the Pantheon, but Pope Clement X decided to bury her in St. Peter's. You can see a picture of her sarcophagus here. I didn't even think to look for her monument in the church, but here's a nice picture of it from Wikimedia:


So we finally came up inside St. Peter's; almost the first thing we could see was this:

You can see, of course, part of the inscription around the base of the dome, Christ's words to St. Peter, in Latin: Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam. Tibi dabo claves regni caelorum -- You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church; I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

A very old tradition says that St. Peter was executed at the Circus of Nero on October 13, in the Year of Our Lord 64. His remains were rumored to have been buried somewhere on the Vatican hill near the Circus. The Emperor Constantine ordered that the shrine that had come to be built to commemorate St. Peter's death and burial should be upgraded to a basilica, and St. Peter's Basilica -- now called Old St. Peter's Basilica -- began somewhere around 320 and took about three decades to build. The church grew in importance over the next few centuries, but also suffered the ravages of time; for instance, it was sacked and heavily damaged when in 846 a Muslim raiding party sacked it and a few other important buildings outside of Rome itself. Its fortunes the next few centuries were not all that much better, since the decampment of the Popes to Avignon led all the churches of Rome to be neglected for decades, so the church was in very poor condition by the fifteenth century. Some efforts were made to restore it, Leon Battista Alberti being one of the architects to try his hand at it.

Then Pope Julius II decided to tear the whole thing down. It was a shocking and controversial proposal: the church represented the continuity of the papacy, it was a symbol of the claims of the See of Rome to be in right authoritative succession from Peter himself and to be sanctified, so to speak, with the blood of Peter's martyrdom. And it was also a massive project. Julius seems to have decided to tear it down and rebuild around 1505. He would start the project, and it would continue through the papal reigns of Leo X, Adrian VI, Clement VII, Paul III, Julius III, Marcellus II, Paul IV, Pius IV, St. Pius V, Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, Urban VII, Gregory XIV, Innocent IX, Clement VIII, Leo XI, Paul V, Gregory XV, Urban VIII, to be finished up in 1626 in the reign of Innocent X.

A great design contest was held, and Donato Bramante's design won. He had the idea of a Greek Cross:



It was to be topped with a dome inspired in part by the Pantheon and in part by Brunelleschi's dome in Florence. Over time, however, the design changed as different architects were put in charge of it. There was an increasing tendency to change the design from a Greek Cross to a Latin Cross, however.

The key early architect was certainly Michelangelo, in his seventies, who did not want the job but took it under pressure from Paul III. Up to him, the work had progressed very slowly, and there were many competing ideas playing off of Bramante's original conception. It was Michelangelo who unified all the previous ideas into one conception; he reverted to Bramante's Greek Cross plan, however. And it was Michelangelo, allowed a free hand, who really got the building going.

The most important contribution of Michelangelo, however, was to redesign the dome, taking ideas from all the previous suggestions and blending them together as only Michelangelo could do. He died before finishing it, however, and it has been a matter of controversy since whether the ovoid, rather than hemispherical, shape of the dome was actually Michelangelo's final intent or not.

The next major architect to be involved was Carlo Maderno, who was appointed in 1606 by Paul V. At this point, opinions were reverting back to a Latin Cross design, and there was also a general feeling that the new St. Peter's should be on the same ground as the old St. Peter's. So Maderno proposed the extension of the nave to meet both these requirements, which was built very quickly. It works beautifully, from the inside; it greatly amplifies the already significant space. The facade, which Maderno also did, is usually considered not to work quite so well.

One of the most visible things inside is the Papal Altar with its famous baldacchino:

Urban VIII appointed Gian Lorenzo Bernini papal architect after Maderno, and one of his first tasks was to design the baldachin or canopy over the Papal Altar, which only the Pope can use. Urban VIII trusted him completely: he was given a blank check, no budget restrictions at all. Bernini's design is essentially a freestanding bronze sculpture that fits neatly into the immense space beneath the dome while still allowing free view of the Cathedra Petri behind it. It took nine years to make and an immense amount of bronze that could only be obtained by raiding bronze from various sources, including the Pantheon.

It was Bernini who also created the bronze throne housing the Chair of Peter, which symbolizes the apostolic authority of Peter himself:

There are better pictures easily found online; as I mentioned before, there was a great deal of preparation going on, meaning that walking around the church was somewhat restricted and more crowded than usual, so it was difficult to take good pictures inside.

It was also Bernini who designed the striking tomb for Pope Alexander VII:

The tomb was in an odd place, right above a door, but Bernini made use of that very fact in a brilliant fashion. Notice Death itself in front, partly covered by the shroud, the skeleton with the hourglass. There are two women on each side, Charity and Truth; the one you can see from this angle is Charity.

Here is a mosaic, based on a painting by Raphael:

Vatican City, of course, has the most advanced mosaic workshop in the world, and one reason is that the major churches, like St. Peter's, have few paintings -- they use mosaics instead. But the mosaic-work is so well done that you can hardly tell that it is mosaic rather than painting if you just glance at it.

The most famous work of art in the basilica, however, is again by Michelangelo, and is so popular that they have to put it behind glass to preserve it:

And then we went out. Here is the view of St. Peter's Square from St. Peter's itself, followed by a series of pictures as we walked down and around the Square, which was itself cordoned off:

The masterstroke of Bernini's contribution to the basilica is certainly the two-part piazza, starting with a trapezoidal section near the entrance and then suddenly swinging open to a wide circular section that contextualizes the gigantic facade so that it is more easily taken in, and yet also somehow makes the whole thing seem even larger. Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Maderno, Bernini, over a hundred and twenty years: this is what goes into building the world's basilica.

to be continued

Maronite Year XLI

After New Sunday, the Maronites return to the liturgy of Easter for most of the Sundays of the Resurrection Season.

Third Sunday of the Resurrection
2 Timothy 2:8-13; Luke 24:13-35

On this day the Lord arose from the tomb;
death and the devil He conquered with life,
thus giving life to Adam's progeny.

This is our gospel: Christ rose from the dead;
because of Him we fear not chain nor bond,
but bear all for the salvation of all,
dying in Him that we may live in Him,
by passion preparing to reign with Him.
Was it not thus that Christ suffered for us?

Your servants praise You, for You conquered death.
Your saints glory; You sealed them with Your Name,
thus giving life to Adam's progeny.