Vatican Museum

This morning, before we heard the bad news about Reggie, my buddy John and I went to the Vatican Museum. The Vatican Museum was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I have no photographic evidence of the event. We got up bright and early, killed our breakfast, and sped over to the Vatican Museum around 9 am, which was perfect timing. There was absolutely no wait whatsoever. I think this had something to do with the Papal Audience; since the Pope has one every Wednesday at 10 am, everyone was in line to get into the seating on the Piazza San Pietro while we just walked in to the Museum. Not so when we left a little after noon. The line followed the walls of the Vatican for nearly half a mile. I read somewhere that the Vatican Museum averages over 4 million visitors a year. No wonder, it's really amazing. Julius II founded the place in the 16th century. He was invited to an archaeological dig where the Laocoon statue was being uncovered. He luckily visited the site as they were unearthing it from the ground, and with the haughtiness of a world leader declared that he had to have it. The statue was already promised to another collector, but Julius said that he would pay ten times the asking price. Money talks and Julius got what he wanted. Julius built a collection of antiquities around this statue and thus began the Vatican Museums.

I've heard people say that the Vatican Museums are intimidatingly large, but we didn't have a problem with that. It is a large complex, but we only spent half the day there and saw a good majority of the stuff. We got through the modern art galleries, classical, Egyptian, and statuary museums, as well as the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel. I really enjoyed the hallways leading up to the Raphael Rooms. For most tourists, it's a long hallways that's kind of a filler to moderate traffic flow into the really famous rooms. People look at the stuff on the walls, which isn't very impressive by itself, but I found really gratifying with my incomplete knowledge of Latin. The hallways are painted with maps of all of Italy and its environs. Each area is blown up into sections of only a couple miles at a time with some fantastic Latin descriptions, informing the reader about what rivers, forests and mountains are prominent there, what minerals and trade products grow well in the region, and show little pictures of each town and village. The ceilings are painted mostly with biblical and church history stories, many of military iconography. My favorite was a picture about a guy named King Theodore being thrown into hell. It looked like two bishops were throwing him down into burning damnation. I researched online for a bit and found to what this could be referring. St. Thomas Aquinas says in his Exposition on the Psalms of David:

Et in synodo Toletana quidam Theodorus Mopsuestenus, qui hunc ad litteram de David exponebat, fuit damnatus, et propter hoc et propter alia multa; (Super Psalmo 21 n.1)

And in the church council of Toletana (Toledo?) a certain Theodore Mopsuestenus, who was explaining this according to the letter of David, was damned both on account of this and many other things.

Apparently, this Theodore had some teachings in his early writings that were antithetical to the reigning members of the Church. After he died, some condemn him pretty heartily. I don't think this is what the picture depicted, since he wasn't a king, but it could possibly be related.

I also enjoyes a certain picture in the Raphael Room. It was pretty funny, but also kind of gross. In one of the large epic military scenes, there's a dwarf. This dwarf is super ugly and really deformed. He looks out of the painting right at you while putting on a helmet as if making fun of the war behind him. The best part is that if you look closely, the dwarf is showing off his balls. Raphael must have gotten bored with painting all this highy and mighty elegant stuff and decided to put in some bawdy elements. I almost laughed out loud when I realized it.

Besides that, the Sistine chapel was beautiful. I won't go into all the details because you can open up any art book or look at any website and get the whole thing. It was really cool seeing the artwork that I spent a whole semester studying for my upper level writing requirement at Michigan. I know more about the Libyan sibyl Michelangelo painted than I ever really cared to, but it was great to actually view it.

The rest of the Museum was good too. They had a ton of Roman statuary and a decent, yet kind of small, Egyptian exhibit. The modern art was good, but there wasn't anything too exciting. A couple paintings did interesting things with color, there were some of Salvador Dali's paintings, and an immense 7 piece bronze artwork showing Pentecost and bishops, priests, and laymen looking upon the scene as if there. There was also an area that showed some museum workers as they were cleaning dirty reliefs. To steal the words Ferris Buehler, the Museum "is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend it."

Reginald Foster

On his way to class today, Father Foster fell. I don't know all the details, but it was bad enough that he had trouble standing back up. Some other classmates got him a chair and he sat in it until the ambulance came. I know it's always bad to assume, but I think he broke his hip. Always thinking of the students, Reggie made sure one of us brought our next homework sheet in for the rest of the class to work on in his absence. I hope he's okay. If everyone could say a prayer for him, I'd really appreciate it. It's sad to see someone so full of life and zeal for what he's doing have to deal with the problems of old age. I'll update on the situation asap.

Ostia

Last Sunday, our class went to Ostia. Ostia was the Roman port since Rome itself is something like 16 miles from the shoreline. Cicero himself said this was probably a huge benefit to the city, since it got all the advantages of the trade possibilities inherent with being a seaport, without the all the detriments: towns on the sea were said to be the worst areas for the degradation of morals and depths of crime. Blame it on the sailors and the pimps. We read some Plautus describing how the "ladies of the night" in some cases even knew the names of the sailors before they entered the port in order to more easily seduce them and take all their money. The cities also usually had to deal with pirate ships selling and stealing wares before Rome granted Pompey huge powers in order to rid the Mediterranean of this particular scourge. Ostia used to be pretty much right near the mouth of the Tiber, but over the years changes in the landscape transformed the environment; in the 1500s there was a huge flood that washed away the Tiber's bed and moved it away from the city. Because some time during Tiberius' reign Ostia lost most of its importance with regard to trade, a lot of the city was abandoned and left in decently good shape. Mussolini's huge nationalistic attempts to rediscover Rome's history pumped huge amounts of cash into digging up Ostia, and because of that we can see what we see today. For the majority of buildings, only parts of the first floor survived. Some buildings were lucky and had parts of the second.

Ostia is a huge site. We were there for 9 hours and I don't think we covered all of it. We did see the majority of the interesting things. Ostia has a lot of the things one would think of when one plans a city: granary storage, small commercial buildings like market stalls, an amphitheater, big houses, crowded apartments, bath complexes, temples, butchers, et cetera. I really liked the floor mosaics. They were made of just black and white stones, but were pretty intricate for only being bichrome. One in the floor of a bar said something to the effect of "If you're thirsty, come here and drink!" with a big picture of a goblet. There were a lot of aquatic pictures too. The fish seller had pictures of different fish, the market stalls had elephants, dolphins, and people. The fireman's guild hand some great pictures of bull sacrifices.

Another thing I really liked was the Mithraeum. It's an underground temple where the citizens would worship Mithras, an Eastern god. Not a lot of solid information exists, but it's known that it was an initiatory order that was highly accepted by soldiers and lesser nobles until paganism's outlaw by Theodosius in 394. The key things accepted about the cult are that it arose either in Persia or Asia Minor and has something to do with Mithras when he sacrifices a bull. I've attached a photo of the Mithraeum in Ostia that's kind of misleading. It looks larger and lighter than it actually is. It's small and dank, especially for a tall guy like me. The statue of Mithras has lost its hand with the dagger.



After a great lunch with the whole group, we went through a hotel and bath complex where it's thought (almost certainly) that St. Augustine stayed and his mother Monica died. This is a pivotal part of the Confessions since Monica played a key role in Augustine's conversion to Catholicism. Her death really struck Augustine hard and he shows it in his writing, ending his book with a plea for everyone who reads it to remember and pray for his mother. We read the section dealing with her death in the courtyard in which it happened. Very eerie, but very cool.

This weekend we'll be celebrating the Holy Day of Peter and Paul, the patrons of Rome. Should be an interesting experience; the whole city is supposed to shut down. I'm off to do some reading before class. Ciao!

St. John and Centro Storico

The last few days I've been doing some touristy stuff trying to see the city. I plan to visit all four of the basilicas in Rome; so far I've been to St. Peter's and St. John Lateran. St. Peter's, of course, is the ultimate basilica. It's immense, rich, and filled with tons of people at all times. St. John's is pretty impressive as well. On Thursday morning, my buddy John and I decided to go visit it instead of doing homework. It's the original papal seat and still holds that claim, even though St. Peter's is de facto more important these days. The church itself has some pretty old inscriptions on the inside; my favorite part was touring the Lateran Palace where the Lateran Pact was originally signed. This was a pact between Mussolini and the Vatican demarcating where each one held power, establishing the Vatican as a state, and pretty much giving the Church some sweet deals: until the 80s when it was resigned with the Italian socialists, the Church got free water, free garbage removal, and a yearly base charge for electricity. Priests also got some sort of stipend for saying prayers in all of the churches in Rome, even though the majority of the priests never did their duty and just took the money. The room in which they signed the pact has a nice little guestbook signed by Benito Mussolini and Cardinal Gasparri (the Pope didn't show up), as well as some other dignitaries from each side. The Palace had a bunch of ceiling decorations displaying Biblical stories and other scenes painted by a group of twelve painters. There was one room in which I'm pretty sure the painters either didn't know their Latin or just royally screwed up. The ceiling is supposed to show the four seasons: two of the seasons are depicted as an old man covering himself tightly with his cloak and a young woman surrounded by greenery. Now I'm no expert, but I think the old man signifies "winter" and the young woman "spring". Yet the old man was labelled "Ver" (Spring) and the woman "Hyems" (Winter). Guess even then people had problems with the language. I've included a picture of St. John's just as a reference: since I don't have a cord to upload my pictures, I'll have to upload them later. Maybe I'll do it as a one picture per day thing. We'll see.

Roma and Reginaldus

I've been here in Rome about two and a half weeks now and I'm more than due to post again on how things have been going. My stay at the Centro has been quite enjoyable. The place is right by Piazza San Pancrazio and close to Villa Doria Pamphilli. It's about a thirty minute walk to St. Peter's and a little bit more to the Forum/Coliseum. The area is a bit quieter than the rest of town; not that many tourists come out this way, so we're pretty much surrounded by Italians living their lives normally. It's an excellent combination of residential and commercial. The only thing I haven't been able to find so far is a decent grocery store, but apparently Italians keep hours that usually have those closed during the afternoon, which is the only time I search for them.

Class with Reginald Foster takes place in the afternoon at a small, gated elementary school that's run by nuns. The class takes place in a basement/auditorium underneath the church which seems to be barely used when it's not used by us. The class consists of about 50 people from a plethora of backgrounds: there are priests, teachers, students, people who want to do classics as a profession and a few who do it as a hobby, Americans, Canadians, and Europeans. It's great talking to different people to find out why they're taking his class. Most people hear about it by word of mouth.

Reginald is a character. He's extremely intelligent and well-versed in all things Latin. Every day he comes in wearing the same blue shirt and jeans. He's told us before that some of the bishops refer to him as the "electrista" since he looks more like an electrician than a priest. At first, Reginald can come off as loud, harsh, short tempered, and set in his ways. He constantly threatens that those who get the easy stuff wrong should talk to him after class since he's "got money stashed away for a taxi cab back to the airport". "Latin will kill you!" he remarks whenever a tough intricacy is explained. Once you start to get past his rough exterior, he's a lovable, hilarious man who really wants to see his students succeed. He's got the old school, taught-by-nuns way of learning, but just like those nuns, his heart is really in the right place. Once we sit down, after a few introductory exercises, we begin with his infamous "sheets", huge 1x2 foot pieces of paper filled to the brim with Latin from every age from classical to modern day. Some of the old stuff we read is Tibullus' anti-war poetry (Let another man dig up gold from the ground!) and Ovid's Heroides. Some of the newer things we've read were "De Fumo", concerning the health issues inherent in smoking cigarettes, and "quomoda ad gubernandum autoraedora adeptus sim", or, "how I got my driver's license". Canonical law, miracle plays, Augustan poets, medicine, letters praising God, death, and infamy all come into play. We sing songs and talk about things that are happening right now, in Latin. We've visited museums and walked the steps Caesar took on the Ides of March. All in all, it's been a pretty good few weeks. I'm excited for the next few. I'll update this more regularly in the future about my escapades in class and add a couple posts about what else I did earlier on. Until then, I'll be out enjoying the Roman sun for as long as it's out today. Ciao!

Actual Trip

Our trip differed slightly from our original plan. Here's the actual trip as we traveled:

Blue: Colin and Brett
Green: Colin, B, Brett
Red: Colin
Purple: B and Brett



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An American in Rome

Well, I've finally made it to Rome. After two and a half weeks of running around Europe like crazy, I'm situated in the Trastevere region. It's quite nice to relax after such a hectic schedule. I'm still in need of a decent grocery store and new batteries for my camera, but besides that all is well. I start class tomorrow afternoon; my books still haven't shown up through the mail yet. Soon I hope. For the next couple of posts I'll be pretty much quoting the little bit of journaling I did on the road. There were two times I actually got the opportunity to write my thoughts down: the train to Barcelona, and an early night before an early wakeup in Barcelona. I'm sorry if it sounds stilted or trite, I've been pretty tired for the whole trip. I'll try to chop it up into segments concerning each country we stayed in:

Wow, this trip has gone by pretty darn fast. It's amazing to think about ll we've seen and done. The thing that blows my mind the most is how language works in Europe. America is completely "English-only" in the vast majority of places. Here, everyone from the hot dog and doner vendor to the museum attendant to the train station worker speaks multiple languages. I've seen one guy speak English, German, Italian, and Spanish all within a five minute time span. How fortunate they are to live in a society that forces you to challenge your mind linguistically every single day.

Today we were pretty lucky. After waiting in line for an hour, we bought tickets to Barcelona after the train was supposed to leave. It was ten minutes late, so we hopped on with little time to spare. Apparently the French train workers are on strike, so getting out of France to Spain was a pain. On our way in, we had to wait for about an hour in Monaco for no apparent reason, and getting out wasn't much faster.We're now on our way via Marseilles and Montpellier.

London was a brilliant city. I really enjoyed it. The parks were gorgeous. My favorite was Hyde Park, but those surrounding Buckingham Palace were nice as well. We watched the changing of the guard outside the palace; that was terribly boring. To think that the UK spends that much money on soldiers and spectacle just to bring in more tourist dollars. I guess if it's economically feasibile, it makes sense from a business point of view, but for me it really sends the wrong message. London seems to want to be recognzed for the power of its hierarchy and military (proponents would call it tradition and history). I just think there are so many better ways to be spending that sort of money. But then again, America spend the great plurality of its budget on the military. Maybe both should realize better priorities.

Besides that, London is a place I could live easily. Even though everything was really expensive, the pubs were fun and inviting. They had that historical appeal as well as good food and beer. The fish and chips portions were huge at both places we went. Table service was much less in your face in some places and non-existent in others. The Underground was efficient and quite useful, even though the station nearest to our hostel is closed until Oct. 2009. It was a bit of a walk, but good exercise. It got us good and tired for bed.