Encouragement to catechesis and the sacraments

Jacob Jordaens. (1593-1678)
The Veneration of the Eucharist. c.1630.
Oil on canvas.
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Zenit reports on on the meeting which Pope Benedict XVI had with the parish priests of Rome. At the meeting the Pope encouraged priests to to catechise parishioners about the depth of the liturgy and the meaning of the sacraments as encounters with God.

"He noted, "What is really important for me is that the sacraments [...] not be something foreign along with more contemporary endeavours." He added, "It can easily happen that the sacrament remains somewhat isolated in a more pragmatic context and becomes a reality that is not altogether inserted in the totality of our being."

The Pontiff stressed the need for catechesis in the parishes.

He affirmed that it is important that God "not be distant but reconcilable, concrete, that he enter our lives and really be a friend with whom we can talk and who talks with us."

He continued, "We must learn to celebrate the Eucharist, learn to know Jesus Christ, the God with a human face, up close, really enter into contact with him, learn to listen to him and to allow him to enter into us."

Sacramental communion, explained the Holy Father, is not just taking a piece of bread, but rather is opening "my heart so that the Risen One will enter the context of my being, so that he is within me and not just outside of me, and thus speaks with me and transforms my being."

"He gives me the sense of justice, the dynamism of justice, in zeal for the Gospel," noted Benedict XVI.

He affirmed, "This celebration, in which God not only comes close to us, but enters into the fabric of our existence, is essential to really be able to live with God and for God and to take the light of God to this world."

Body of Christ

The Pope stated that this understanding also "leads me to the other because the other receives the same Christ, as I do."

He continued: "Hence, if the same Christ is in him and me, we also are no longer separate individual beings. Herein lies the birth of the doctrine of the Body of Christ, because we have all been incorporated if we receive the Eucharist correctly in the same Christ.

"Hence, my neighbour is truly close: we are no longer two separate 'I's, but we are united in the same 'I' of Christ."

The Pontiff told the pastors that "Eucharistic and sacramental catechesis must really go to the depth of our existence, to be, in fact, education to open myself to the voice of God, to let myself be opened to break this original sin of egoism and to open my existence profoundly, so that I will really be just."

He noted, "We must all learn the liturgy better, not as something exotic but as the heart of our being Christian, which does not open easily to a distant man, but which is, on the other hand, precisely openness to the other, to the world."

The Holy Father emphasised: "We must all collaborate in celebrating the Eucharist ever more profoundly: not only as a rite but as an existential process that touches me profoundly, more than anything else, and changes me, transforms me and, by transforming me, sparks the transformation of the world that the Lord desires and of which He wishes to make me an instrument."


Jacob Jordaens, a Flemish artist, was born in 1593 into the family of an Antwerp linen merchant

In 1615, he joined the St. Lukas Guild and, in 1621, became its deacon.

Jordaens painted religious, mythological, historical subjects, portraits and genre scenes, and big monumental decorations.

Jordaens did not visit Italy and never tried to imitate the Italian style.

After Rubens’ death, Jordaens became the leader of the Antwerp school, carrying out innumerable commissions for Church and Court between 1640 and 1650, including 22 pictures for the salon on Queen Henrietta Maria at Greenwich, work for the Scandinavia and French courts.

In 1650, the artist adopted Calvinism, but continued to receive commissions from the Catholic Church.

Jordaens was fined 200 pounds and 15 shillings for scandalous or heretical writings between 1651 and 1658.

George Mulvany (1809–69; director 1862–69) Keeper of the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, in 1865 had a bargain by purchasing Jordaens’s large Veneration of the Eucharist for only £84

Rubens` The Triumph of the Eucharist series (tapestries) was the most ambitious of the four tapestry series Rubens designed in the course of his career. It reflected the passionate devotion of the Belgians towards the Eucharist. In the following years, the series by Rubens stimulated a slew of imitations featuring dramatic figures in billowing costumes set within tromp l'oeil architectural frames and tapestries within tapestries.

The first designer to pick up on the illusionist scheme of the Eucharist series was Jacob Jordaens

Life-size figures in shallow architectural settings produced an effect of spontaneity and a pleasurable illusionist effect. The architectural frames had the merit of being easier to weave in tapestries than complex landscape grounds.

William Shakespeare ?

The Telegraph reports that after three years of meticulous analysis, x-rays and infrared imaging, experts claim to have uncovered the only surviving portrait of William Shakespeare painted during his life

"The oil canvas is thought to have been painted in 1610 - six years before the playwright's death - when he was about 46 years old.

It remained in the same family for centuries and was inherited by art restorer Alec Cobbe. In 2006, he visited the National Portrait Gallery and saw a painting of Shakespeare that hangs in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington.

It had been accepted as a life portrait of Shakespeare, but was discredited 70 years ago. Mr Cobbe saw the painting and realised the similarities with the painting he had inherited.

Believing his painting to be the original, he contacted Professor Stanley Wells, chairman of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, who was initially sceptical.

Investigations were carried out by Professor Rupert Featherstone, director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute at Cambridge University which focuses on conservation of easel paintings, Hamburg University where they dated the oak panelling of the painting and Tager Stonor Richardson, which carried out infrared imaging. Mark Broch, curator of the Cobbe Collection also carried out painstaking research.

Prof Wells said: "My first impression was scepticism - I am a scholar. But my excitement has grown with the amount of evidence about the painting.

"I am willing to go 90 per cent of the way to declaring my confirmation that this is the only life time portrait of Shakespeare. It marks a major development in the history of Shakespearian portraiture."

The painting will go on display at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 23, Shakespeare's birthday. "

Not Waving but Drowning

Gustave Le Gray 1820 - 1882
The Great Wave, Sète, 1857
Albumen print from two collodion-on-glass negatives
35.7 x 41.9cm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Not Waving but Drowning


Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.


Stevie Smith
(1902 - 1971)


Stevie Smith was subject to periods of depression during her life and was preoccupied with death, but as a release or consolation.

Her best-known poem ‘Not waving but drowning' was written in 1953 and reveals her feelings of sadness and isolation at this time. It is a bleak yet comic poem

Her poetry has strong underlying themes of love and death, it is whimsical but fiercely honest and direct.

Here one can hear the poet reading aloud her work at the Edinburgh Festival in 1965.

Étienne Dupérac or du Pérac (1520 — 1607)

Étienne Dupérac or du Pérac (1520 — 1607)
Section of St Peters Basilica 1602
Graphite on Paper
338 x 473 mm
Private collection

Étienne Dupérac or du Pérac (1520 — 1607)
St. Peter's, dome and drum, interior section and elevation, and labeled details (recto) St. Peter's, moulding profiles, details (verso), early 16th-mid 16th century
Dark brown ink, black chalk, and incised lines; sheet: 11 13/16 x 17 5/16 in. (30 x 44 cm0
The Metropolitan Museum, New York

Étienne Dupérac or du Pérac (1520 — 1607)
Michelangelo`s Design for the Capitoline Square 1569
Engraving

Étienne Dupérac or du Pérac (1520 — 1607) was a French painter, draughtsman and engraver

He arrived in Rome in 1559

His engravings of modern Rome served to transmit architectural and gardening ideas to France and the north of Europe.

He returned to France by 1578,and was commissioned to paint the Cabinet des Bains at the Château de Fontainebleau, to design parterres for gardens and then, under Henri IV, to provide designs for the Tuileries in Paris.

Sacrae Historiae Acta

Nicolas Chapron or Chaperon, artist
French, 1612 - 1656
Three of 54 Etchings - from Sacrae Historiae Acta, 1649
Etchings
25 x 29.4 cm (image)

Nicolas Chaperon (Châteaudun, bapt. 19 October 1612 — Lyon 1656) was a French painter, draughtsman and engraver, a student in Paris of Simon Vouet whose style he adopted before he was further matured by his stay in Rome (1642-51) in the studio of Nicolas Poussin.

He made a name for himself with his suite of 51 - 54 engravings after the Raphael Loggie of the Vatican, Rome, edited and published in 1649: The frontispage reads:

"Nobilissimo viro dno Aegidio Renard ... Sacrae historiae acta a Raphaele Urbin in Vaticanis xystis ad picturae miraculum expressa. Nicolaus Chapron Gallus a se delineata et incisa D.D.D. Romae MDCXXXXIX ... Petrus Mariette excudit"

Many of the etchings can be seen on the website of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

A Century of Wasted Opportunities

Andrea di Cristoforo Bregno (1418 – Rome 1506)
The Funeral Monument to Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (died 1464)
Polychrome relief of Saint Peter flanked by the kneeling cardinal and the Angel of Resurrection.
Marble
San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

Anthony Kenny is a former Master of Balliol College, Oxford.

In the TLS he reviews two new books of Nicholas of Cusa and Erasmus:

Nicholas of Cusa:WRITINGS ON CHURCH AND REFORM, Translated by Thomas M. Izbicki: 688pp. Harvard University Press. £19.95 (US $29.95); and Desiderius Erasmus:
IN PRAISE OF FOLLY AND POPE JULIUS BARRED FROM HEAVEN: Translated by Roger Clarke 334pp. Oneworld Classics. £8.99 (US $17.95)

At the same time he provides an essay which is a tour de force on how the Catholic Church failed to save itself from the Reformation

It is perhaps a period of history which is not known well enough. The repercussions from the events and disputes within that period still reverberate today.

The period (1417-1517) is fascinating yet, as Kenny describes it, "the most tragic in the history of the Church."


"To the ecclesiastical historian the century immediately preceding the Reformation (1417–1517) is one of the most fascinating and also the most tragic in the history of the Church.

In 1417, the Council of Constance elected Pope Martin V, putting an end to decades of schism in which there had been two, and eventually three, rival claimants to the papacy. In 1517, Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation with his Ninety-Five Wittenberg theses.

In the hundred years in between, Christian Europe was a cauldron of seething conflicts: between Greek and Latin, between papalists and conciliarists, between scholastics and humanists, and between kingdoms and principalities large and small. The century was a tragedy of lost opportunities: the division among the political powers caused the loss to the Turks of Constantinople and much of Eastern Europe; the failure of every attempt to reform the Catholic Church from within led to the break-up of Christendom into separate and warring confessions. Two figures stand out who, nobly but vainly, tried in different ways to arrest the descent into the abyss: Nicholas of Cusa (or Cusanus) at the beginning of the century, and Desiderius Erasmus at the end.

The Council of Constance had deposed the schismatic Pope who convened it, and defined the conciliarist thesis that a general council was the supreme body in the Church, which popes must obey. It also called for councils to be regularly held to oversee papal activity. The first such council was convened at Basle in 1431, with Nicholas of Cusa (then a young university canonist) as one of its prominent members. On behalf of the Council he negotiated with the Hussites in Bohemia, urging them to rejoin the Church which they had left because of its refusal of the chalice to the laity. In 1433 he wrote his major work on church government, The Catholic Concordance, a manifesto of conciliarism.

In the abstract, there was much to be said for the notion of a constitutional papacy subject to the authority of a council representative of the different parts of Christendom. Unfortunately, the Council of Basle proceeded to bring the idea into rapid disrepute. The reforms it proposed got no further than the diversion of church taxes from Rome to local prelates and princes, and when the reigning Pope, Eugenius IV, complained of its activities, it declared him deposed. In 1439, when the last thing the Church needed was another schism, it elected an antipope, Felix V. But by this time Nicholas had lost patience with his Basle colleagues, and had gone over to Eugenius.

In 1437, Nicholas was sent by the Pope on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople to invite the Byzantine Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople to join an attempt to end the schism between the Greek and Latin Churches. Outmanoeuvring the assembly at Basle, which was also negotiating with the Greeks, Eugenius held a council in Italy, which at Florence in 1439 proclaimed the reunion of the two Churches. The Pope smuggled into the decree a statement of papal supremacy.

The Latins hoped that as a result of the Council, the Greek Church would accept a number of disputed doctrines. The Greeks hoped that the Western nations would come to their aid against the Turks. The hopes of both sides were dashed. The doctrinal concessions of the Emperor and Patriarch in Florence were disowned in the East, and in the absence of effective European aid, Constantinople fell in 1453.

The division between Basle and Rome continued after the Council of Florence. The German princes of the Holy Roman Empire in 1439 declared themselves neutral between the two. Nicholas laboured as Papal Legate to bring them over to the Roman side, notably at the Diet of Frankfurt in 1442. These efforts were crowned when in 1449 the antipope Felix resigned, the Council of Basle dissolved itself, and the German Emperor accepted the authority of Eugenius. On the other hand, Nicholas failed in the task of reconciling the Hussites to the papacy’s repudiation of a compromise they had been offered by the divines of Basle. Within the Catholic domain, he instituted a programme of reform of corrupt religious orders, restoring discipline among friars, monks and nuns. But the reforms did not survive his death.

The handsomely produced volume in the I Tatti series presents, with an en face translation, the Latin text of a number of Nicholas’s lesser-known works related to these diplomatic and reforming endeavours. We are given three pamphlets from the conciliar phase, supplementary to The Catholic Concordance. There follow six works after the change of allegiance, notably the speech at the Diet of Frankfurt, which earned Nicholas the title of “The Hercules of the Eugenians”. Several sermons about St Peter give a moderately papalist explanation of the text “You are Peter, and on this rock I shall build my Church”. The final section of the volume ends with a bull Nicholas drafted for Pope Pius II (Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, a fellow ex-conciliarist) on reform of the Church in its head and members. It provides for a trio of eminent independent assessors to evaluate and amend, against precise standards, the performance of pope, cardinals and curia. Sadly Pius, preoccupied with a crusade against the Turks, never put the programme into effect.

This final paper is the most impressive among a collection of texts which, it must be said, are of very uneven interest. It must also be added that the texts have been very inadequately translated. Admittedly, Cusanus’s Latin can be crabbed and difficult: but in the English text we meet not only misunderstandings of particular terms, but a failure to distinguish between subjects and objects and between indicatives and subjunctives. The confusion is such that the sense of the original is sometimes totally reversed, and at least once the Latin text is amended in order to bring it into harmony with an English mistranslation.

During his busy life Nicholas wrote a number of significant mathematical and philosophical works, the best known of which is On Informed Ignorance of 1440. Human knowledge, he there argues, is so limited that rational attempts to reach the ultimate truth are like a polygon inscribed in a circle: however many sides we add to the polygon, it will never coincide with the circumference. In philosophy, Nicholas stands on the cusp between medieval and modern ways of thought. By the time of his death in 1464, the dominant intellectual current was humanism. In the fifteenth century “humanism” did not mean the replacement of religious values with secular ones. Rather, it denoted a belief in the educational value of the “humane letters” of Greek and Latin classics. Humanists turned away from the technical logical and philosophical studies of scholasticism, and placed new emphasis on the study of grammar and rhetoric. They believed that their scholarship, when applied to the ancient texts, would restore to Europe forgotten arts and sciences, and when applied to the Bible and the Church Fathers, would help Christendom to a purer and more authentic understanding of Christian truth.

Five years after Cusa’s death, there was born in Rotterdam the man who came to be regarded as the prince of the humanists, Desiderius Erasmus. Educated in the devout community of the Brethren of the Common Life, Erasmus became an Augustinian friar and was ordained priest in 1492. Life in a religious order did not suit him, however, and he became an independent scholar, studying and teaching in Paris, Oxford, Cambridge and Louvain. In 1499, on his first visit to England, he met Thomas More, eight years his junior, and was introduced by him to the eight-year-old Prince who was to become Henry VIII.

Erasmus and More remained lifelong friends. They shared an enthusiasm for humanism and a distaste for scholasticism: Erasmus had been unhappy at the Sorbonne and More mocked the logic he had been taught at Oxford. The two of them collaborated in a translation into Latin of the works of the Greek satirist Lucian.

In 1511, Erasmus dedicated to More a light-hearted Latin work with the punning title Encomium Moriae, which translates as Praise of Folly. According to his own account, this was composed on a long horseback journey from Italy to England, and written down during a brief illness in More’s house. It is this work which is now offered in a paperback English edition by Oneworld Classics. The Latin text is not printed en face, but an appendix includes a portion of it sufficient to convince the reader that Roger Clarke’s translation, while idiomatic and sometimes racy, is quite faithful to the original.

No one today is going to read Praise of Folly for laughs. By the time the reader has deciphered the classical allusions by referring to Clarke’s generally excellent notes, the jokes have worn rather thin. Folly speaks in the first person throughout, claiming credit for most human institutions. Were it not for folly, who would ever get married? It is their foolishness that makes women and babies attractive, and only folly keeps families together (“What divorces, or worse, would take place everywhere, were it not for the support and nourishment that the domestic companionship of man and wife draws from flattery, from teasing, from permissiveness, deceit, dissimulation!”). Riches, reputation and learning bring far less happiness than folly does, and all human activity is full of folly.

Through the mouth of Folly, Erasmus presents himself as the court jester of the Renaissance, mocking all the professions: physicians, alchemists, lawyers, theologians, even grammarians like himself. He shows the futility of the pomp of secular and ecclesiastical courts; he aims some of his fiercest barbs at superstitious practices encouraged by rapacious priests. He jeers at the chauvinism whereby each nation prides itself about its own special gifts. (Britons, we are told rather surprisingly, claim as their speciality good looks, music and fine meals).

The book moves from mockery of the follies that surface in every age of human history to denunciation of the ills peculiar to the dissolute courts of the Renaissance and the corrupt institutions of the unreformed Church. This second prong of the attack is given a sharp point in the second text included in the Oneworld volume, Pope Julius Barred from Heaven, a witty dialogue in which St Peter, the keeper of the keys of heaven, refuses to admit, or to recognize as his successor, Julius II, the warlike Pope who died in 1513. The dialogue was published anonymously, and Erasmus himself always denied that he was its author. Some modern scholars accept his denial, but most readers, then and now, have assumed that it is his work.

From the time of Pius II, the popes had devoted the greater part of their energies to building and defending a mid-Italian princedom. In pursuit of this, they used both temporal and spiritual weapons, creating their own armies and excommunicating their enemies. Julius II was the most pugilistic of all the popes, tramping through Italy at the head of his armies, clad in silver armour, thwacking any cardinal who fell behind in the march. He was an abomination to Erasmus, who hated war as the worst of human crimes.

In 1512 Julius, battered in conflict and ailing in health, called a council to meet at the Lateran to emend a Church now universally agreed to be corrupt. This was the last chance to reform Catholicism from within along conciliarist lines. The opportunity was not taken. Shortly after it was convened, Julius died and was succeeded by the Medici Pope Leo X, who effectively tore up the reform agenda. Only five years later the issues were brought back by Luther to haunt the papacy for ever. When at last a reforming council was convened, at Trent in 1545, it represented only a portion of Christendom. One of its results was the placing of Praise of Folly on an Index of Forbidden Books."


For more about Nicholas of Cusa, you may wish to consult this site

Map of Rome 1549

Sebastian Munster (1488-1552)
Romanae urbis situs, quem hoc Christi anno 1549 habet
From Cosmographiae Universalis (1550)
Printed: Basel (H. Petri)

Assisted suicide again

George Pitcher in The Telegraph produced a compelling and moving piece against assisted suicide.

It is called "The assisted suicides are anything but dignified".

It was inspired by the "latest selfish and demeaning death-on-demand spectacle of British "suicide tourists", in this case wine tycoon Peter Duff and his wife Penelope, travelling to Switzerland to dispose of themselves exposes the (literally) breathtaking flippancy of the organisations involved. Dignitas, the Zurich-based organisation that assists suicides, must be one of the most disgusting enterprises on the planet. But the British-based Dignity in Dying lobby group gives it a run for its money"

One was also struck by the number of adverse comments.

A Papal Mass in the Sistine Chapel in the 16th Century

Ambrogio Brambilla 1549 - 1629
MAIESTATIS PONTIFICIAE DUM IN CAPELLA XISTI SACRA PERAGUNTUR ACCURATA DELINEATIO
This accurate sketch of Papal grandeur while a mass is celebrated in the Sixtine Chapel 1578
Engraving
53 x 39 cm
Published in 1582 by Claudio Duchetti

TEXT: S[anctissi]mo D[omino] N[ostro] celebrante missa o[mn]es Card[ina]les et Ep[iscop]i sunt parati pluvialibus et mitris. Quando celebratur p[onti]f[ic]e S[anctissimo] D[omino] N[ostro] Papa Card[ina]les cappas habent rubeas vel violaceas iuxta temporis consuetudinem et Ep[iscop]i et Praelati h[ab]ent cappas violaceas. Familia S[anctissimi] D[omini] N[ostri] semper rubeo vestitur.

Signature: ROMAE. Claudii Ducheti formis Nepot. Ant. Lafrerii 1582. Ambrosius brambilla fec.



An early engraving of the Sistine Chapel shows the full pomp of a papal religious ceremony, with the pope, the entire papal curia, and the singers in their box (lower right) gathered around a lectern.

Every important participant is identified by a number corresponding to a legend at the bottom of the page. The pope on his throne at the left is no. 4, and the papal singers in their "cantoria" are no. 51

The order of the rites for the celebration of mass were prescribed by a congregation in charge of ceremonies, and codified in an elaborate printed manual that was regularly updated. This book acted as a script for the pope and clergy to use throughout the ritual year.

A Master of Ceremonies (n. 46) sits on the dais closest to the pope, since he is responsible for the smooth unfolding of the rites and maintenance of the orders of precedence that characterize the papal court in this period.

Brambilla takes care to differentiate members of the exclusively male crowd outside the gate, none of whom are identified by number, so that we can recognize tonsured monks, foppish Frenchmen, Easterners in their Phrygian caps, local dandies, pages and soldiers.

Seated almost directly across the chapel from the pope is the secular governor of the city (n. 12), and in the middle of the long bench on the same side are the leaders of various countries who might be present in Rome and attending the mass that day (n. 10).

Every person and item of ritual furniture (the altar with its book, candlesticks and crucifix laid out, the papal throne to the left with its honorific baldacchino) is numbered and then labeled in the key below, so that viewers of the print can learn every arcane detail of this aspect of the papal mass.

The entire scene takes place against the backdrop of Michelangelo's fresco of the Last Judgment (n. 57)

Benediction Of The Pope In St. Peter's Square 1581-1586

Ambrogio Brambilla 1549 - 1629
Benediction Of The Pope In St. Peter's Square (1581-1586)
Engraving
40 x 55.5 cm
Publisher: Lafreri and Duchetti

Caption: DISEGNO DELA BENEDITIONE DEL PONTEFICE NELA PIAZA DE SANTO PIETRO
Drawing of the Blessing of the Pope in Piazza of St Peter`s, Rome

Caption: Christicolae huc alacres concu(r)rite saepe fideles: Hic deus in terris numinis alta subit.
Translation: Always faithful Christians, assemble here eager: here God ascends a height in the earths of the divine

Caption: Sacris dum manibus populo benedicit amice Assistas: Petri nam gerit ipse vices
Translation: O friend, let yourself stand in the crowd while he blesses with sacred hands: for this very man bears the successions of Peter

Caption: Praesulis hic summi benedictio celsa notatur. Hac cruce signatos demonis ars refugit
Translation: Here, the lofty blessing of the greatest bishop is noted. Here the arts of the devil flee the signs by the cross

Signature: CLAUDII DUCHETTI FORMIS AMBROSIUS BRAM. FECIT
Translation: By the models of Claudio Duchetti Ambrogio Brambilla made it

From: University of Chicago Library Department of Special Collections, A Descriptive Catalogue of Engravings from the University of Chicago Library's Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, Chicago, 1973


Brambilla hailed from Milan.

His presence in Rome was first recorded in 1577

He produced a number of engravings for Duchetti

He produced maps, engravings of Rome and its buildings as well as a book of portraits of the Popes.

Pope Gregory XIII was Pope from 1572 to 1585. Pope Sixtus V was pontiff from 1585 to 1590. Presumably the Pope in the above engraving is either of these two

In 1505, Pope Julius II made a decision to demolish the ancient building of St Peters and replace it with something grander which is the building we see today. Te new building continued around the old basilica. It was only on the first day of Lent, February 18, 1606, under Pope Paul V, the demolition of the remaining parts of the Constantinian basilica began.

The new and the old are seen in the engraving above.

But certainly in the 1580s, St Peters Square was a much different place from that existing today.

Station

Tibor Kovács (b.1959)
Station
Oil on wood
Private collection

Speculum Humanae Salvationis

The Tree of Virtues and the Tree of Vices.
Speculum humanæ salvationis , Chapter XVI.
Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek Darmstadt, Hs 720, fol. 1 verso

Opening page with decorated initial M.
Minute for Le Miroir de la Salvation humaine .
Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels, Ms. 9249–50, fol. 1 recto.

Second page with decorated initial S.
Minute for Le Miroir de la Salvation humaine .
Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels, Ms. 9249–50, fol. 1 verso.

Opening page miniature of the translator's presentation.
Le Miroir de l'humaine Salvation .
The Hunterian Museum Library, Glasgow, Ms. 60, fol. 1 recto.

a. Mary Conquers the Devil.
b. Judith Decapitates Holofernes.
Le Miroir de l'humaine Salvation , Chapter XXX.
Musée Condé, Chantilly, Ms. fr. 139.

Compiled at the beginning of the fourteenth century for the use of preaching monks and clerics, the Speculum humanæ salvationis was a widely used volume in the late Middle Ages. There exist today more than 350 manuscripts in Latin and translations into Dutch, French, German, English, and Czech

The Speculum was a compilation made primarily from commentaries on and adaptations of the Bible.

The text and pictures of the Speculum are devoted to the interpretation of the New Testament through prefigurations in the Old, the so-called typological system, which was the medieval way of relating the Old Testament to the life of Jesus Christ. Originating in Asia Minor with the Greek Fathers, it passed into Western thought and was greatly spread by the influence of St. Augustine

The Speculum is entirely concerned with the Fall and Redemption and with their prefiguration in the Old Testament.

For more see the digital book: A Medieval Mirror: Speculum Humanae Salvationis 1324–1500 By Adrian Wilson & Joyce Lancaster Wilson [UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS] (1985)

The roots of modern Relativism

David Wootton is Professor of History at the University of York.

In The Times Literary Supplement he has publishd a review of Keith Thomas,THE ENDS OF LIFE: Roads to fulfilment in early modern England 393pp. Oxford University Press. £20 (US $34.95).

Thomas was President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford from 1986 to 2000, knighted in 1988, President of the British Academy (1993–7), and for many years a key figure in the supervision of Oxford University Press.

In the book, Thomas discusses the birth of modern Relativism in England between 1530 and 1780


David Wootton writes:

"What makes life worth living? “Charity”, St Paul says, in the King James version – “love” in more modern translations. Happiness, most say. “Without love no happiness”, said Milton, turning the two answers into one.

A friend of mine, close to death, made a long journey to see the Rothko exhibition at the Tate. He had no doubt there could be no better way to spend what might have been his last day.

At such times our choices say a great deal about who we are; much of the rest of the time our answers are not to be trusted. Keith Thomas’s book looks at the answers to this question between 1530 and 1780.

He excludes, as far as he can, getting to heaven (in which he has little interest) and the life of learning (which he has discussed elsewhere). He also omits wine, women and song, along with hawks, hounds and horses. That leaves military prowess, work, wealth, reputation, friendship and fame – which is certainly plenty to be getting on with.

Thomas starts by defending himself against the charge of anachronism. “Self-fulfilment” is a nineteenth-century word, with no early modern equivalent. When Roger North became Attorney General, in the late seventeenth century, his brother said “his condition of life was like that of a plant set in a proper soil, growing up from small beginning into expanded employment”. Here, says Thomas, “we can see something approaching the modern concept of self-realization”. Except, of course, for the fact that plants are not self-reflexive.

But Thomas is certainly right to think that early modern men and women did think that life should have a purpose – Aristotle had told them so. Where, increasingly, they differed from Aristotle was in thinking that any purpose would do. All classical and medieval philosophers thought there was a hierarchy of goods that one might choose to pursue, and that there was only one summum bonum. Even the Epicureans, who thought that the purpose of life was eudaimonia (felicity), thought that there was a right and a wrong way to go about obtaining it. Self-restraint, not self-indulgence, was the key. This great tradition was broken in the mid-seventeenth century, and a small linguistic change marks the break point: people stopped talking about felicity, and began to talk about happiness.

Thomas Hobbes was sure that every sensible person must want personal security. But after that, one could equally well choose tennis, poetry, or wealth. As Bentham later put it, push-pin was of equal value with music. There is, Hobbes said, no “summum bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers”. Nor, in Hobbes’s scheme of things, much prospect of happiness, for desire was constantly succeeded by desire. There was only one real end, and that was death. At the heart of Thomas’s account is this revolutionary moment, the first triumph of relativism.

But Thomas leaves us with a chicken-and-egg story. Did Hobbes reach the view that “there is no such thing in the world” as “an utmost end” because he was an Englishman, caught up in a world where the old aristocratic values of valour and honour were increasingly under attack? Or did the English (or at least the godless English) become relativists because they read too much Hobbes, Locke and Bentham, and too little Aristotle and Epicurus?

There is another curious feature to the book. Its recurrent theme is the replacement of aristocratic values by bourgeois values, and one might expect Thomas to seek to give both viewpoints fair treatment. But he can scarcely hide his impatience with aristocratic culture. The idea that “the supreme end of life” might be “the performance of deeds of military prowess” seems simply incomprehensible to him. He quotes Barnaby Barnes holding forth on the delights of slaughtering the enemy, only to conclude “What fun indeed!”. As for the aristocracy’s idea of honour, “their claim to sole occupancy of the moral high ground rested upon a gross misrepresentation of the outlook of their inferiors” – surely true, although one might equally claim that plenty of scholarly and pacific humanists made a good living out of misrepresenting the aristocracy.

Thomas’s book ends with John Dryden’s “bleak but defiant” translation of Horace:

Not Heav’n’ itself upon the past has pow’r;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour."

(italics and emphasis added)

With the destruction of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle class, are we now living in an era where Hobbes, Locke and Bentham reign supreme ?

Perhaps at this stage it is also worth reminding ourselves of the words of the then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger in his homily prior to the conclave which would elect him as Pope in April 2005:

"How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves ¬ thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth.

Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14).

Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along by every wind of teaching", looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.

We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.

However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an "Adult" means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth. "

The Temptation of Christ

Joos de Momper (1564-1634/5)
Landscape with the Temptation of ChristOil on oak panel, 51 x 83 cm
National Gallery, Prague
Augustin Hirschvogel, (1503 – February 1553)
Landscape with the Temptation of Christ , 1545
Etching. 10.4x17.4 cm
State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Lama Sabachthani

Morris Kestelman 1905-1998
Lama Sabachthani [Why have you forsaken me?] 1943
Oil on canvas
Imperial War Museum, London

Kestelman was the son of European Jewish immigrants and he was brought up in the East end of London.

His philosophy of art was always "to revel in the sunny side of life . . . heaven knows we all need the solace we can get from art."

However in the early 1940s, during the Second World War, the scale of the Nazi genocide of the Jewish race was gradually becoming apparent.

The above painting is the artist`s response to the news from the Continent.

The impact of the news was keenly felt in many quarters of British society.

Various policy prescriptions were advanced to try to aid the plight of the Jew in Europe. None seemed to attract much support. The following are links to the Debates in the House of Commons and House of Lords in 1943, when the question was discussed. From them one gets an idea of the context of the times in which the painting was executed:

HC Deb 19 May 1943 vol 389 cc1117-204 1117 : Refugee Problem

House of Lords Debate:Refugee Problem: Deb 28 July 1943 vol 128 cc836-72

The painting depicts a scene of mourning: a group of Jewish men, women and children weep and mourn over a mound of corpses.

The title is taken from the opening verse of Psalm 22: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

These of course were the last words of Christ on the Cross

The psalm starts with a declaration that the psalmist has been deserted by God.

There is then a complex dialogue that restates the omnipotence of God and yet also elucidates present torment and anguish. The psalmist meditates on the possibility that God might not rescue, and applied to this context where intervention seemed neither feasible nor imminent, it questions the very rule and presence of God. But the psalm ends on a positive note: the triumph of God over evil and injustice.



Psalm 22

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, and am not silent.

3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the praise of Israel.

4 In you our fathers put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.

5 They cried to you and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not disappointed.

6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by men and despised by the people.

7 All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads:

8 "He trusts in the LORD;
let the LORD rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him."

9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you
even at my mother's breast.

10 From birth I was cast upon you;
from my mother's womb you have been my God.

11 Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.

12 Many bulls surround me;
strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.

13 Roaring lions tearing their prey
open their mouths wide against me.

14 I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted away within me.

15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.

16 Dogs have surrounded me;
a band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.

17 I can count all my bones;
people stare and gloat over me.

18 They divide my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothing.

19 But you, O LORD, be not far off;
O my Strength, come quickly to help me.

20 Deliver my life from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dogs.

21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;
save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

22 I will declare your name to my brothers;
in the congregation I will praise you.

23 You who fear the LORD, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!

24 For he has not despised or disdained
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.

25 From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
before those who fear you will I fulfill my vows.

26 The poor will eat and be satisfied;
they who seek the LORD will praise him—
may your hearts live forever!

27 All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him,

28 for dominion belongs to the LORD
and he rules over the nations.

29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
those who cannot keep themselves alive.

30 Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.

31 They will proclaim his righteousness
to a people yet unborn—
for he has done it.

A Papal Procession 1846 (8th November 1846)

Giovanni Olivieri
Esatta relazione della cavalcata con la quale la santita` di N.S. Papa Pio IX si porto` a prendere il solenne possesso della basilica lateranense e delle ceremonie che in essa seguirono il giorno 8 novembre 1846./Description of the procession of Pope Pio IX on 8 November 1846, to the Basilica di S. Giovanni in Laterano. (1846)
21, [3] p., [1] folded leaf of plates ill. 19 cm. with engravings

Does history repeat itself ?

The gloomy news in the United Kingdom is presently dominated by the tale of the effective collapse of two Scottish Banks: the Bank of Scotland and The Royal Bank of Scotland.

Blame seems to be presntly heaped on one Scottish banker in particular.

This of course is not the first time that Scottish bankers have caused problems on a large scale.

Sir William Paterson (born April, 1658 in Tinwald, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland - died in Westminster, London, on 22 January 1719) after helping to found The Bank of Scotland and The Bank of England led Scotland into theinfamous Darien scheme, which in effect bankrupted the then Scottish economy,leading to the Act and Treaty of Union of 1707.

Even more famous or infamous, is John Law (bap. 21 April 1671 – 21 March 1729)

In August 1717, he bought the Mississippi Company, to help the French colony in Louisiana.He helped found the Compagnie Perpetuelle des Indes on 23 May 1719 and eventually became head of effectively the Central bank of France. In 1720 the bank and company were united and Law was appointed Controller General of Finances to attract capital. Speculation in the shares and lack of proper capitalisation caused the company's two branches, the trading arm and the bank arm, to collapse simultaneously. The economic crisis not only affected France but the whole of WEstern Europe.

By the end of 1720 he was dismissed and eventually died in poverty in Venice in 1729.

Ash Wednesday

François Marius Granet 1775-1849
La cérémonie des cendres dans une église de Rome/ The ceremony of distributing ashes in a church in Rome 1844
Pen, black pencill, brown ink, aquarelle 24cm x 37cm
Musée du Louvre département des Arts graphiques, Paris

Granet`s most famous painting is of Capuchins celebrating Mass in Rome. Ingres was jealous of him

His subjects were of historical or romantic interest.

This drawing of a contemporary scene is of historical interest: a ceremony taking place over 160 years ago and still taking place today.

Carnevale ... at Viareggio (Tuscany)

Carnevale is before Lent

There are numerous carnevali all over Italy. The carnevale at Viareggio is usually televised. The floats are excellent. The preparation for the floats takes all year.

Last year (2008) this was one of the floats:

The Chair of St Peter

The Cathedra Petri or Chair of Saint Peter

The Cathedra Petri or Chair of Saint Peter is the chair preserved in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, enclosed in a gilt bronze casing that was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and executed 1647–53.

It is the symbol of the authority of the Bishop of Rome and of his primacy in the Church.

The reliquary by Bernini is also in the shape of a chair

The chair encased in the reliquary was given by Charles the Bald to Pope John VIII in AD 875.

Its medieval simplicity is reminiscent of the Coronation Chair of the British monarch in Westminster Abbey.