When in Rome-6

In which we search all day for a Cardinal who turns out to be a Lobster...

But first, some thoughts on peddling wares in Rome. Empirically speaking, Catherine and I have noticed that the endless array of persons attempting to sell you things tend to fall into a limited series of groups. You have your selfie stick purveyors, your florists, your artists, and my own personal favorite, the African wood-carvers. The Selfie tribe tends to cluster around the big sights, Pantheon, Coliseum, and are the easiest to fend off. Avoiding eye contact can sometimes be enough. The florists, well, you've seen the damage they can inflict. Amazingly, there are several of these guys all in different places with the same strategy. Uncanny. Do they go to professional street development classes together? What would that be like? You have to call their bluff big time or you and everyone you love is toast. We were right up to the danger zone yesterday when one florist tribesman actually went so far in his free flower charade as to leave some on the ledge next to us. We had to quickly communicate to each other with panicked expressions. No one move. No one move a muscle. Eventually the velociraptor got tired of baiting us and took his flowers back. We lived to walk around with change another day.

On the one hand, these peddling tactics are honed to a fine science. Yet, I do question some larger strategic decisions. For instance, if I pass over a rug with wooden elephants (and motorcycles?), am I likely to purchase identical items only ten feet later? Or from a third twenty feet later? Maybe it breaks tourists down, Sahara style. Or perhaps it is shrewd visual bombardment so that by the time you get to the fourth, your visual cortex is so primed for wooden elephants that it's basically a stimuli-response situation. I don't know. I also don't know where I'm going to put them all...

Oh, we did find Trajan's column the other day, which was pretty much like Marcus Aurelius' column except it is next to the altare della patria which is a massive marble structure in the Venetian plaza. I like to think of it as an architectural explosion of worship to the secular Italian state. St. Peter on top of Trajan's column is giving it the cold shoulder. He does not approve of State-Gods.

On Sunday, we managed to make it to St. Mary Major for mass. This is, quite possible, the most impressive church I've ever seen. Shout out to Romanesque. It also didn't hurt that three bishops were celebrating and a massive Corpus Christi procession took place. First impressions are just so important. Stephen decided to up the ante by making women hold his hand in line for communion. Unbelievable. A cardinal also saw me strolling him around and gave me a pat on the back while still moving. Sort of awesome, but hard to interpret such a vaguely bro-tastic move. Was he saying 'been there, man'? Unlikely. 'Keep on keeping on'? Possibly.

When we left mass we were greeted by a sea of Filipinos engaged in a colorful parade. Turns out that it was a Marian parade. It also turns out that they take such parades quite seriously. It was a kind of Litany of Loreto meets women from the Old and New Testament meets all the flowers and balloons they could get their hands on. All in all, pretty great.

Today was Coliseum day. We happily joined the bustle of tourists walking from the center of town past the ruins and to that most recognizable icon of ancient Rome. The peddlers were out in force. I tried stonewalling one but he had a parakeet which he put on my shoulder as I was walking past. What was I supposed to do? Walk faster? Well played, parakeet man, well played. We did manage to walk around the entire structure with little Stephen. The structure is staggering, although it was a little strange to imagine brutal contests to the death and criminal executions going on for sport in a building that one bazillion people are using as a background for their duck-face pictures. I think the marble was stripped at one point to be used for churches. A practice with which I am totally on board with (it complements the repurposing of Roman siege engines for cathedral construction quite nicely). A sort of 'plunder the Egyptian gold' situation.

But I haven't even talked about today's main attraction: San Pietro in Vinculo. Apparently, not far from the Coliseum there is a basilica tucked away called St. Peter in Chains, a reference to the book of Acts and the record of his imprisonment in Jerusalem. Even though the church is close, it's still off the beaten track and it took us forever to find it. It also closes from 12:30 to 3:00, so after we found it we had to come back later. However, it was 100 percent worth it for two reasons.

1) It houses Michelangelo's statue of Moses
2) Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa is buried there.

The Michelangelo is self-explanatory...

 

but Cardinal Nicholas is a recent favorite of mine and keeps coming up as a favorite of many awesome German-speaking people, Gadamer, Blumenberg, Balthasar, you name it. He's one the last great interpreters of Dionysus in the West as well as a Renaissance man of many talents scientific, political, and philosophical. So, discovering that his final resting place was in Rome and that I could see it was an unexpected gift. He is depicted in the church as kneeling with his cardinal's hat at St. Peter's feet as an angel is breaking the apostle's chains on there side. Glorious.

Also, looks like his crest was a lobster. Hilarious.

When in Rome-5

The difference between two parents watching a baby and one parent watching a baby is sort of like the difference between swimming with two arms and trying to swim with one. Catherine's been spending a lot more time at the archives lately, which is good! That's why we're here, after all. And yet, flying solo with the U.S.S Vomitorium takes a little ingenuity. Mostly, I try to convince him that he has a perpetual sleep deficit and that it is always nap-time. If dramatized, imagine something like this.

Act 1, Scene 1 La Vita Dolce con un'Piccolo Bambino

Enter characters Dad and Baby

Me: Well, that was a hoot playing around for a while, kid. I'd like to read a book now. How's about a nap?

Baby: *blink blink*

Me: Great! Into the holding crate, I mean crib, with you.

Baby: *stretches out* *pushes up really hard* *looks at me with huge baby eyes*

Me: Sleepy, right?

Baby: *cries, throws up, and endangers two buses of civilians both equally far away but one is full of old grandmas and the other is full of convicts*

Me: Not sleeping and setting up a moral dilemma? Guess you don't want nap-time

Scene

But no, in actuality he sleeps a lot which is wonderful. And he is just wonderful too. See?

 

Today's plan was to meet Catherine at the Greg around one so we could eat lunch when she got out from reading Jesuit chicken-scratch notes. This baby, however, did not make it easy to prepare sandwiches. He loves grabbing plastic wrap, glasses, barometers, pretty much anything that looks distinctive enough that it might taste good in his mouth. After much wrangling, we hit the streets.  

And immediately got lost. But that was all part of the plan (sort of). I suspected something like this might happen so I left an hour and a half early. As the tiny gods of Roman street traffic would have it, we ended up wandering through what I think was the piazza with an important civic building (parliament, senate, something deliberative and political). As well as some more familiar sights (elephant obelisk and the Gesu church)
 

 

But, most importantly, Baby and I stumbled across Marcus Aurelius' victory column (patterned on Trajan's).

 

 

Massive. Even by giant column and obelisk standards. I was intrigued by how each inscription on the base gave a slightly different take on the significance of the column. One, as best as I could make it out, was about how Marcus Aurelius conquered the Armenians and the Germans. Pretty straightforward. Another was about how the pillar was restored from miserable degradation. But one side interpreted the pillar from the vantage point of Christ over the nations. Something to the effect of, Christ has triumphed over the Romans and the Barbarians through preaching and the cross. This encompasses all the other commemorations as Christ both takes men captive and restores them to His image and likeness. A statue of St. Peter is on the top of Trajan's column and a statue of St. Paul is on this one. I'm sure someone must have thought of his letter to the Ephesians and the description of Christ's triumph through the words of the Psalmist. He led a throng of captives when he ascended, giving gifts to his people.

 

Let me also inform you that cobblestones and hills make pushing a baby in a stroller an Olympic sport. Seriously, is this baby bobsledding right now? Are we on the side of a wall? While wandering, we also stopped in Chiesa Santa Maria sopra Minerva which, as its name implies, was built over the temple of Minerva. Now it's the final resting place to Fra Angelico, Catherine of Siena, and (possibly?) Cajetan, as well as a million beautiful side chapels.

 

Only made it up one side with the camera before Baby started objecting. I'll get pictures of the big-name tombs another time. Really stretch out the suspense. Because you never know when dead people will surprise you.

Arrived at the Greg with a few minutes to spare so we checked out the bookstore. What do Jesuit bookstores right outside the Greg and the Pontifical Biblical Institute want you to have? Everything.

 

Historical-critical biblical studies, medieval and patristic commentary, ancient philosophy... the Jesuits just want it all. Then Catherine came out, we ate our sandwiches, and this baby posed shamelessly.

 

che bello! Tomorrow, an attempt at the Sistine Chapel, whatever that is.

 

 

 

When in Rome-4

Pasta and pesto were acquired last night to form the basis of our first self-cooked Roman meal. Great fun. Our landlady provided us with a stack of English-Italian movies and we tried watching La Dolce Vita but alas, it didn't work and we couldn't even stream it from Amazon. It's difficult to signal the market with profit-data when I have no outlet for my cash-flow. Give me instant foreign film access anywhere in the world. So instead, we watched Roman Holiday which was a hoot.

This morning Stephen was a little sunbeam, albeit a sunbeam that still throws up on me like clockwork. Oh, let the record also show that he woke up at five in the morning and fell back asleep while I could not. So that was fun.

Catherine had an appointment at the Greg for noon so we had some time for exploring. We went back to the Piazza Navona to look at the remarkable fountain and the Church of St. Agnes. Actually, there are three fountains and they are all pretty awesome. The middle one, at least, is by Bernini and represents four major rivers including the Nile (whose face is covered because the source had not yet been discovered). And, like so many random places in Rome, it's topped with an obelisk. A legit Egyptian obelisk? Why? Caesars or maybe Napoleon. I mean, if you're the boss of the world, wouldn't you steal a pillar with hieroglyphs? I guess Augustus had to top Julius' mid-life Cleopatra crisis with the archaeological equivalent of a Ferrari. Different times.

Also, saw a dude leading a tour around a telling amusing stories about Bernini being a class clown. Turns out it was a professor of theology from the Augustine Institute who works with our friend John Seahorn. Profile here: https://www.augustineinstitute.org/faculty/sri/ He talked  with us for a little bit while we were all in St. Agnes' church (which is stunning but we were not allowed to take pictures... so I guess visualization is up to you on this one.) Anyway, hope we see Professor Dude Sri again.

And before I forget, this time of wandering brought us (accidentally) to my favorite moment of the day. Discovering the French church of King Saint Louis.

Besides awesome statues of King Louis and Joan of Arc (still no pictures allowed, sorry. I didn't feel like breaking the rules that close to guards with automatic weapons. A semi-regular sight in the city of infinite embassies...) there was a glorious side chapel devoted to St. Matthew with a triptych of Caravaggio's. Not prints. Not copies. The real deal. The calling of Matthew, his writing of the inspired sacred Gospel, and his martyrdom. As Gadamer tells us, museums are the inventions of Enlightenment shmucks (maybe he doesn't say 'shmucks'). Real art should be experienced as a function of something greater than art. Bottom line: breath-taking and prayer-inducing to encounter such an integrated sacred space. Here are the images contained within a tiny side-chapel.

 

 

 

We finally made it to the Greg and had a chance to look around before Catherine's meeting. The space was impressive and it's humbling to be in a college that has survived and thrived after the suppression and reinstitution of the entire Jesuit order. You can't keep a good Ignatian down.

 

 

Baby and I waited outside during the meeting, doing our best to look like impoverished refugees to see if someone would cast a few coins our way. No luck. I think the nice stroller blew our cover. Gelato was forthcoming later, I had blood orange flavor with strawberry (blood oranges, as Esther told us, are basically the only oranges Italians know exist. Which is okay, because they are tasty.)

 

Then we all took a massive nap. Like, four hour nap. Jet lag is a beast. Concluding that, I strapped on my magic baby carrier and we proceeded to the Spanish Steps, of Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton fame. We had the privilege of being 100% played by a flower salesman.

 

Sleazy Flower Dude: (To Catherine) Very pretty! Have a flower!

Us: (being so canny) No no! We don't need it.

SFD: Don't worry! It is free for you being so pretty.

Us: (being less canny) Well, uh, if it's free I guess it's okay.

SFD: Such pretty baby!

Us: Goodbye then!

SFD: Hey, what about my money??

Us: Uh.... here you go.

 

 

 

Classic. Lesson learned, I suppose, because we were able to successfully fend off the exact same tactic not an hour later from a totally separate SFD. In between massive statues of Poseidon and Athena, no less....

 

As you will see in the pictures, we stopped by the Pantheon again to swallow our tongues and bask in immensity. Also, where else could we drink such overpriced cappuccini? For what it's worth, now that we are actually in Rome and cannot escape, we decided it might be worthwhile to learn some Italian. So, we're giving it a shot on the Duolingo site (thanks Andersons!).

 

 

 

Finally, other favorite surprise moment of the day. Giant surprise monument to OT Marian typology (this goes out to all you Scott Hahn junkies out there... which is just a reminder of normal patristic, I guess). I kid you not. So epic. So awesome. Statues of Ezekiel, David, Isaiah, and Moses with corresponding citations. I prefer my exegetical choices immortalized in stone.

 

Isaiah 7:44 "Behold, the virgin shall conceive."

 

Ezekiel 44:2 "This gate shall remain shut."

 

 

Genesis 3:15 "I shall place enmity between you and the woman."

Psalm 45:5 "The Most High has sanctified his tabernacle."

 

 

Tomorrow we'll head back to the Piazza di Spagna and try to hit up the Keats-Shelley museum (right??). Probably.

 

All y'all in the States? Keep it real.