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.

 

 

 

 

When in Rome-3

Now, yesterday after getting back and napping (don't you hate it when you wake up even more tired?) we went out to dutifully search for a supermercato. John had given us a few places to check out and we thought it was time to start stocking the apartment larder. As usual, our carefully copied directions proved fruitless in the long run, though I believe we were in the general area. Luckily, in Rome, you always end up somewhere worth being (and I think we're getting better at navigating this organically grown civic labyrinth). We spotted a cooperative owned market and grabbed some supplies. Unlike WalMart or Target, there isn't one large room organized into separate aisles and sections. It's mostly living room sized areas connected by doorways and at least one escalator. Sort of like a mini-Rome with food, not sure what's going to be around the corner but there's probably something you want. Found a few familiar brands of beer (Belgian ales mostly) as well as the Lavazza brand of coffee we use at the restaurant. But we limited ourselves to some pasta, fruit, and some cookies (gotta have breakfast, right?). On the way back, we stopped at Ciao Checca which is Italian fast-food, I guess. But that basically means it's normal food cooked quickly and served in to-go boxes. Had an Italian lager (fine, but nothing to write home about. Oh wait...) and Catherine had blood-orange juice with a little bit of pampelmo.  And we both ordered ravioli which was pretty tasty. The seating area was strangely reminiscent of 2001:A Space Odyssey with sheer, white walls and large glass panes opening onto the street.

Today we went out in search of the Jesuit Curiae (the other location where Catherine will be doing archival work) which turns out to be right next/in Vatican City (I never can tell). For baby transportation, we tried the stroller today which Martina had provided for us. For the most part, he was pretty chill about the whole operation. I think he is experiencing sensory overload most of the time (I know I am). He even slept a bit while we were walking around. We found ourselves turned around more than once but we managed to find our way there and track down those wily Jesuits. Again, there is no way I can talk about everything we saw today but I hope to pick out a few places in the next weeks to really get good pictures of and describe. The highlights for today were crossing the Tiber for the first time (which included some magnificent bridges), and entering St. Peter's square (again, going to wait until I've been there a few times before trying to talk about it).

What struck me today was the whirligig character of Roman (and especially Vatican) crowds. With so much truly historic and sacred art and architecture, there is an abundance of unrelated spectacle. For instance, besides the innumerable souvenir carts and shops, I saw a performance artist dressed as the Grim Reaper smoking a cigarette. I think people are partly drawn here because they want to be associated with something worth seeing. Something of permanent visual significance. Along one of the bridges that provide an excellent view of St. Peter's basilica there was also set up a massive car advertisement that prevented you from seeing the former without the latter. But maybe Walter Benjamin's distinction is helpful here. Sacred art is that which is not infinitely reproducible and has a presence which remains even when veiled or not looked at. Advertisements and performances cease when they lose their audience, but the functionality of churches, religious artwork, or even catacombs and sarcophagi persist even apart from their use as photogenic background material for hollow selves.

We enjoyed a lazy late lunch close to our apartment. As usual, Stephen has declared himself the Prince of all Romans and received his due worship from the waiters and customers. This baby is getting heavier. He's even somewhat crawling. Great strides. We're heading out for another grocery run. This time we'll probably make it.