honour corruption villainy holiness
riding in fragrance of sunlight (side by side
all in a singing wonder of blossoming yes
riding) to him who died that death should be dead
humblest and proudest eaderly wandering
(equally all alive in miraculous day)
merrily moving through sweet forgiveness of spring
(over the under the gift of the sky
knight and ploughman pardoner wife and nun
merchant frere clerk somnour miller and reve
and geoffrey and all) come up from the never of when
come into the now of forever come riding alive
down while crylessly drifting through vast most
nothing's own nothing children go of dust
e.e.cummings
It's a splendid poem on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. I came across it again when being asked how I taught Chaucer. For it had shaped my Chaucer courses during those many years of teaching, at Berkeley, Quincy, Princeton, Boulder. For books are Ezekiel's bones, libraries being that great valley, into which life can be breathed by reading.
But there is also that wisdom of 'honour corruption villainy holiness' riding together in sunlight and shadow. A medieval poem had it 'Fas et nefas ambulans'.
Our gypsies! We love them dearly. And they confessed they lied. Their mother did not need the operation. Their house in Buzau is large. Their children are in school. Vandana was not deported but went home. The two, Maria and Vandana, worked to have money to buy land and build their own houses. They had worked so well we told them we would have paid them for the truth. It has put us in a compromising situation. For we had protested to the Assessor for Immigration in Florence about the 'deportation'. We had spoken with the Romanian Government about the school fees and the medical care. We had gone to Foundations to get help for new roofs and for education. So we had 'corruption' and 'villainy' mixed together with 'honour' and 'holiness'.
We've decided we will still try to put together the proposal for the European Union, putting this experience into the category of 'formation', of both our guests and ourselves their hosts. I must go to Buzau to see what is needed and write that into the proposal. We keep remembering their great courtesy, intelligence, energy. Eating together at table was enchanting. They are much better behaved than Italians, Assunta saying there was never a spot on the tablecloth. They gardened and carpentered and sewed so well, doing what you needed done before you spoke, continuing long after you asked them to stop and had paid them, and always saying 'Thank you'. And even their confessing is in their favour. And the lie was a white one. But now I am making retribution to all who were generous. And apologising to those whom I innocently misled. It reminds me of Chaucer's Franklin's Tale!
Bless you,
He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Edwin Markham
Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family
Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei, 'English Cemetery'
Piazzale Donatello, 38, 50132 FIRENZE, ITALY
juliana@tin.it http://www.umilta.net http://www.florin.ms
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com
http://monatessa.blogspot.com
Friday, September 28, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
EMBRACING THE SHADOW
On Sunday I was recording Carlo Poli's readings from Dante's Commedia. You can hear these readings at http://www.florin.ms. We were discussing the scenes in Dante where he seeks to embrace friends - who are now shades - and how his arms meet only themselves. I, for ever the teacher, mentioned that these scenes are borrowed from Virgil and from Homer, where heroes embrace dead fathers. With us were also three Rroma (gypsies), two sisters and a husband, listening to Dante in Italian, two being unable to read, but all three looking at Botticelli's drawings of the Commedia. In a library in Florence we were experiencing Dante, himself now only a shade, but who comes alive in pages of books, just as do our dead poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Walter Savage Landor, buried in this 'English' Cemetery, come alive again as we read and record their poetry (again, http://www.florin.ms). Elizabeth Barrett Browning creates her second heroine, Marian Erle, who mirrors herself with her spaniel hair, in Aurora Leigh, a self-taught gypsy.
Have been doing much thinking - and our library much collecting - on this theme of rejecting or of embracing the shadow. We avoid, hate and dread what we do not know. Particularly poverty. And that very behaviour creates ever more poverty, and then even genocide against it. It takes racist forms. It is behaviour that creates slavery. It is murderously unjust.
In recent days visitors to our library or books sent to it have also echoed this theme and its embracing of shadows to find them friends and almost fathers. I recorded a Brazilian Indian reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning's second Sonnet from the Portuguese. Then a Maori chief from New Zealand, blind and deaf, recorded his genealogy and recited a Maori poet on 'Rain', while the rain poured down on Florence. You can hear them on the Piazzale Donatello blog. Then an Australian sent a study on the discrimination against the Aborigine. And I remembered the book given me by Aborigine in Melbourne, where they had studied theology, including the Bible in its original languages, and decided that what was needed was the acknowledging of the act of Melchisadek, the indigenous priest king of an agricultural Palestinian people, giving bread and wine to the nomadic, cattle herding Abraham, come from Iraq to invade his land. Melchisadek embraced Abraham. Hebrew lay families embraced that ritual, the mother at the Sabbath blessing the candles, the father the bread and wine. Jesus adopted it for the Eucharist where all are One.
We are now writing a proposal to the European Union in this year, which is celebrating multiculturalism, where our cemetery and its library shape two simultaneous projects. The first where we reach out to the Italians in diaspora, in Australia, in Canada, in Argentina, in America, where they are forced into 'English Only', and also to others, to give them Dante. Whose name means gift. Observing that in America Jewish and Chinese immigrants study their own language and culture on weekends, attending American schools on weekdays, and thus have two languages and are consequently more intelligent, quickly rising into the professional classes as doctors, lawyers and university professors. While Italian and other Catholic immigrant groups, forbidden their own language, their own culture, largely remain as pizza cooks. If Dante could be shared on Saturdays and Sundays in churches in the Italian diaspora?
Our second project is with the Rroma (gypsies) from Romania, an apprenticeship where we teach the parents how to write their names so they can have their babies back from hospital, where they learn paper marbling, where they garden in the Cemetery and hopefully later help with the restoration of tombs, learning skills they can then use in Romania to support their families. Always we say it is important to have both cultures, to preserve their own with its strong families while entering into ours. The Rom are Europe's largest minority. Every day I listen to their language which I love. But when I began filling out the forms for the European Union proposal I was presented with a list of languages, world languages, and Rom, or Romany, was not included there. In Europe they, as immigrants, have not been allowed to work, only to beg, and in desperation they steal, not much, it's for survival, consequently they are hated murderously. The Romanian Rom in Florence live under plastic in fields at the ends of bus lines. How to break down this poverty-enforcing genocidal prejudice? We have been doing it with building gypsy cradles and with Karen Graffeo's splendid photographs. With friendship. With gifts of used clothing, food, work.
Karen is American, her own family having been share croppers in James Agee's Now Let us Praise Famous Men published during the Great Depression and its poverty. Karen has taken that understanding from America's poorest to Europe's poorest. At first she traditionally photographed in black and white. But the Rom said 'No'. The photographs should be in full colour. And now they are, showing their love of beauty. These hang now in our library, amidst Bibles and books in many languages, books about indigenous and nomadic peoples and the discrimination they face, in particular the Rom. It is here that our first Rom mother, Hedera, who cannot read, whose baby Leonardo I baptized, told us the Gospel: 'He was so poor he was born in a stable, not even a house, and he was kept warm by the animals there, the cows, the horses. They were so hungry that he gave them bread and fish and potatoes. And then the envious killed him'. Listen to her Alleluia she would sing to her new-born child.
A note on the flags. I had vowed to show no flags on my websites. Julien Benda in his Betrayal of the Intellectuals showed how nation states and their jingoistic flags and arms race industries caused wars. But Italy's flag is based on Beatrice's garb in Dante's Purgatorio of red, white and green. And the Rom flag is based on India's Wheel of Life. The Rom have no national boundaries, no army, their flag the green of the earth, the blue of the sky, the red wagon wheel.
A prayer that our proposal be accepted. That, instead of spurning shadows with annihilating dread, we come to embrace them with joy, finding in them ourselves, as Christ did with lepers, Samaritans, Syro-Phoenician women . . .
Bless you,
Julia
He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Edwin Markham
Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family
Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei, 'English Cemetery'
Piazzale Donatello, 38, 50132 FIRENZE, ITALY
juliana@tin.it http://www.umilta.net http://www.florin.ms
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com
http://monatessa.blogspot.com
On Sunday I was recording Carlo Poli's readings from Dante's Commedia. You can hear these readings at http://www.florin.ms. We were discussing the scenes in Dante where he seeks to embrace friends - who are now shades - and how his arms meet only themselves. I, for ever the teacher, mentioned that these scenes are borrowed from Virgil and from Homer, where heroes embrace dead fathers. With us were also three Rroma (gypsies), two sisters and a husband, listening to Dante in Italian, two being unable to read, but all three looking at Botticelli's drawings of the Commedia. In a library in Florence we were experiencing Dante, himself now only a shade, but who comes alive in pages of books, just as do our dead poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Walter Savage Landor, buried in this 'English' Cemetery, come alive again as we read and record their poetry (again, http://www.florin.ms). Elizabeth Barrett Browning creates her second heroine, Marian Erle, who mirrors herself with her spaniel hair, in Aurora Leigh, a self-taught gypsy.
Have been doing much thinking - and our library much collecting - on this theme of rejecting or of embracing the shadow. We avoid, hate and dread what we do not know. Particularly poverty. And that very behaviour creates ever more poverty, and then even genocide against it. It takes racist forms. It is behaviour that creates slavery. It is murderously unjust.
In recent days visitors to our library or books sent to it have also echoed this theme and its embracing of shadows to find them friends and almost fathers. I recorded a Brazilian Indian reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning's second Sonnet from the Portuguese. Then a Maori chief from New Zealand, blind and deaf, recorded his genealogy and recited a Maori poet on 'Rain', while the rain poured down on Florence. You can hear them on the Piazzale Donatello blog. Then an Australian sent a study on the discrimination against the Aborigine. And I remembered the book given me by Aborigine in Melbourne, where they had studied theology, including the Bible in its original languages, and decided that what was needed was the acknowledging of the act of Melchisadek, the indigenous priest king of an agricultural Palestinian people, giving bread and wine to the nomadic, cattle herding Abraham, come from Iraq to invade his land. Melchisadek embraced Abraham. Hebrew lay families embraced that ritual, the mother at the Sabbath blessing the candles, the father the bread and wine. Jesus adopted it for the Eucharist where all are One.
We are now writing a proposal to the European Union in this year, which is celebrating multiculturalism, where our cemetery and its library shape two simultaneous projects. The first where we reach out to the Italians in diaspora, in Australia, in Canada, in Argentina, in America, where they are forced into 'English Only', and also to others, to give them Dante. Whose name means gift. Observing that in America Jewish and Chinese immigrants study their own language and culture on weekends, attending American schools on weekdays, and thus have two languages and are consequently more intelligent, quickly rising into the professional classes as doctors, lawyers and university professors. While Italian and other Catholic immigrant groups, forbidden their own language, their own culture, largely remain as pizza cooks. If Dante could be shared on Saturdays and Sundays in churches in the Italian diaspora?
Our second project is with the Rroma (gypsies) from Romania, an apprenticeship where we teach the parents how to write their names so they can have their babies back from hospital, where they learn paper marbling, where they garden in the Cemetery and hopefully later help with the restoration of tombs, learning skills they can then use in Romania to support their families. Always we say it is important to have both cultures, to preserve their own with its strong families while entering into ours. The Rom are Europe's largest minority. Every day I listen to their language which I love. But when I began filling out the forms for the European Union proposal I was presented with a list of languages, world languages, and Rom, or Romany, was not included there. In Europe they, as immigrants, have not been allowed to work, only to beg, and in desperation they steal, not much, it's for survival, consequently they are hated murderously. The Romanian Rom in Florence live under plastic in fields at the ends of bus lines. How to break down this poverty-enforcing genocidal prejudice? We have been doing it with building gypsy cradles and with Karen Graffeo's splendid photographs. With friendship. With gifts of used clothing, food, work.
Karen is American, her own family having been share croppers in James Agee's Now Let us Praise Famous Men published during the Great Depression and its poverty. Karen has taken that understanding from America's poorest to Europe's poorest. At first she traditionally photographed in black and white. But the Rom said 'No'. The photographs should be in full colour. And now they are, showing their love of beauty. These hang now in our library, amidst Bibles and books in many languages, books about indigenous and nomadic peoples and the discrimination they face, in particular the Rom. It is here that our first Rom mother, Hedera, who cannot read, whose baby Leonardo I baptized, told us the Gospel: 'He was so poor he was born in a stable, not even a house, and he was kept warm by the animals there, the cows, the horses. They were so hungry that he gave them bread and fish and potatoes. And then the envious killed him'. Listen to her Alleluia she would sing to her new-born child.
A note on the flags. I had vowed to show no flags on my websites. Julien Benda in his Betrayal of the Intellectuals showed how nation states and their jingoistic flags and arms race industries caused wars. But Italy's flag is based on Beatrice's garb in Dante's Purgatorio of red, white and green. And the Rom flag is based on India's Wheel of Life. The Rom have no national boundaries, no army, their flag the green of the earth, the blue of the sky, the red wagon wheel.
A prayer that our proposal be accepted. That, instead of spurning shadows with annihilating dread, we come to embrace them with joy, finding in them ourselves, as Christ did with lepers, Samaritans, Syro-Phoenician women . . .
Bless you,
Julia
He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Edwin Markham
Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family
Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei, 'English Cemetery'
Piazzale Donatello, 38, 50132 FIRENZE, ITALY
juliana@tin.it http://www.umilta.net http://www.florin.ms
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com
http://monatessa.blogspot.com
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
POEMS PENNYEACH AND MOSAIC
Dearworthiest Family, Dearworthiest Godfriends,
Many have asked me to write an autobiography. But I did years ago, back in the days of manual typewriters and carbon paper, no photocopiers, no word processors. Remember how one mistake meant you had to retype the entire page! Its unique manuscript never reached my father's agent. So I rewrote it, again manually, with my newest baby beside me in the play pen, back in the 60's. I had promised my husband I would write this novel to get us out of debt. But I had no more energy left to market it.
Now I share with you the poems and the novel/autobiography I wrote for my husband and our sons. So much easier these days to include with the poems, with the stories, also the paintings and drawings of so long ago. And to correct mistakes without having to retype whole pages!
Poems Pennyeach are at http://www.umilta.net/poems.html and there is also an audio book of these at http://www.umilta.net/poemspennyeach.mp3
Mosaic is at http://www.umilta.net/mosaic.html and http://www.umilta.net/mosaic2.html
This mosaic I saw at 21 in Murano on the Venetian Lagoon. The two peacocks at the vase represent the Shekinah, the Eucharist.
Bless you,
Julia
Dearworthiest Family, Dearworthiest Godfriends,
Many have asked me to write an autobiography. But I did years ago, back in the days of manual typewriters and carbon paper, no photocopiers, no word processors. Remember how one mistake meant you had to retype the entire page! Its unique manuscript never reached my father's agent. So I rewrote it, again manually, with my newest baby beside me in the play pen, back in the 60's. I had promised my husband I would write this novel to get us out of debt. But I had no more energy left to market it.
Now I share with you the poems and the novel/autobiography I wrote for my husband and our sons. So much easier these days to include with the poems, with the stories, also the paintings and drawings of so long ago. And to correct mistakes without having to retype whole pages!
Poems Pennyeach are at http://www.umilta.net/poems.html and there is also an audio book of these at http://www.umilta.net/poemspennyeach.mp3
Mosaic is at http://www.umilta.net/mosaic.html and http://www.umilta.net/mosaic2.html
This mosaic I saw at 21 in Murano on the Venetian Lagoon. The two peacocks at the vase represent the Shekinah, the Eucharist.
Bless you,
Julia
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
TOGETHER LET US SWEETLY LIVE:
THE SINGING AND PRAYING BANDS
JONATHAN DAVID AND RICHARD HOLLOWAY
This book is now published and is wonderful. To order: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s07/david.html. Descendants of slaves, with ancestral and present trauma in the form of first servitude, then poverty, these families have kept alive consoling traditions. I am minded that in ancient times, millennia before Christ, kindness was counselled; in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the selfish criminal being devoured by a monster, the harmoniously married couple who have been generous to the poor, living their afterlife in beautiful gardens. Today, when I travel back to America I do not find kindness amongst the jet set. On planes one meets with coldness, with fear, with isolation. The courtesy, the kindness, the warmth, the humanity, one meets instead on Greyhound buses, now much my favoured form of travel.
There are many photographs of these white-garbed Blacks, and, like those by Karen Graffeo of the Rom, taken in love. There is the CD of the powerful haunting music, this democracy of music where all the people count, all their sorrows, all their joys. And the words of the hymns are pure poetry, for these had had ancestors who learned their Judaeo-Christianity from clandestine ministers who illegally taught them to read and write. See for this the story by Frances Trollope in Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, where the white minister who secretly helps the slaves is himself lynched by the white community.
I heard Jesus say
I am the way, I am the root and branch of David. I am that I am.
You are the same God that heard Daniel when he prayed in the lion's den
Heard Rachel when she prayed in the cliffs of the mountain;
You heard the three Hebrew boys when they prayed in the fiery furnace.
You are the same God
That heard me one day
When I was lying.
Next door to Hell.
It is a book about faith, about kindness, about joy, about sacred poetry. It is exactly the book this library has needed for its section on trauma and indigenous and nomadic peoples. Its photographs are taken by my oldest son, Richard Holloway.
Posted by Julia Bolton Holloway at 4:40 PM
TOGETHER LET US SWEETLY LIVE:
THE SINGING AND PRAYING BANDS
JONATHAN DAVID AND RICHARD HOLLOWAY
This book is now published and is wonderful. To order: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s07/david.html. Descendants of slaves, with ancestral and present trauma in the form of first servitude, then poverty, these families have kept alive consoling traditions. I am minded that in ancient times, millennia before Christ, kindness was counselled; in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the selfish criminal being devoured by a monster, the harmoniously married couple who have been generous to the poor, living their afterlife in beautiful gardens. Today, when I travel back to America I do not find kindness amongst the jet set. On planes one meets with coldness, with fear, with isolation. The courtesy, the kindness, the warmth, the humanity, one meets instead on Greyhound buses, now much my favoured form of travel.
There are many photographs of these white-garbed Blacks, and, like those by Karen Graffeo of the Rom, taken in love. There is the CD of the powerful haunting music, this democracy of music where all the people count, all their sorrows, all their joys. And the words of the hymns are pure poetry, for these had had ancestors who learned their Judaeo-Christianity from clandestine ministers who illegally taught them to read and write. See for this the story by Frances Trollope in Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, where the white minister who secretly helps the slaves is himself lynched by the white community.
I heard Jesus say
I am the way, I am the root and branch of David. I am that I am.
You are the same God that heard Daniel when he prayed in the lion's den
Heard Rachel when she prayed in the cliffs of the mountain;
You heard the three Hebrew boys when they prayed in the fiery furnace.
You are the same God
That heard me one day
When I was lying.
Next door to Hell.
It is a book about faith, about kindness, about joy, about sacred poetry. It is exactly the book this library has needed for its section on trauma and indigenous and nomadic peoples. Its photographs are taken by my oldest son, Richard Holloway.
Posted by Julia Bolton Holloway at 4:40 PM
Saturday, June 16, 2007
NEW/OLD TECHNOLOGIES
Dearworthiest Godfriends,
For years I have yearned to combine sound and sight, music and text and image. Writing, after all, is an ancient technology for recording sound, spoken words, sung words. Greatly daring I have bought an IPod and a Mac mini to make all this possible. My PC is absolutely mute! We never could get its sound card to work.
If you go to http://www.umilta.net and scroll down to:
Newest
Voice Recording of Westminster Julian Manuscript: Julian1.mp3, Julian2.mp3, Julian3.mp3, Julian4.mp3
Martin Buber's Julian of Norwich
Song Recording of Lydia McCauley, Sabbath Day's Journey: 'And All Shall Be Well'
Voice Recording of Quaker John Woolman, Plea for the Poor: Woolman1.mp3, Woolman2.mp2, Woolman3.mp3, Woolman4.mp3
Voice Recording of Augustine, Confessions IX, on Time, with Ambrose, 'Deus Creator Omnium
Song and Voice Recording of Hedera, who is Rom from Romania, singing 'Alleluia'
you will find you can even mix and match these voices, all Godfriends, the recordings of Julian done by Julie and Ilya in Oxford, those by Lydia McCauley, Hedera Cjuraru, myself, in motets - which are very medieval! And if anyone can give us suggestions for improvement I should be most grateful. Am still learning the ropes as to how to podcast, etc.
But on a more serious note. Could I have your prayers, perhaps even further help, for a Rom family. Doina is the mother whose baby Stefano was kept in the hospital in Florence because they thought she was too poor to have him. I got them back to Romania by telling the woman judge that Roman Polanski had said it is worse to be an orphan than to be poor. I taught Doina and Luca how to write their names, in our library, which they then repeated in the courtroom, everyone holding their breath as this couple slowly wrote out the letters that said their names. Then Doina and Luca returned here with their fourteen-year-old Walter, leaving Stefano and Cristina with the grandparents. Walter is wonderful, can read and write, speaks Italian extremely well after only three months here, and reads Italian and English. I gave him Alan Mandelbaum's parallel text paperback of Dante's Paradiso and he was ecstatic, took it back to the camp, a field at the end of the bus line where they sleep under plastic and which the police constantly raid, taking everything they own. and he was reading Dante to the grown-ups, all of them loving it. Then he got hit-run while begging at the traffic lights, has his broken ankle in plaster, Assunta finding crutches for him. Doina told me the police, the carabinieri, were on the side of the Italian man in the car who ran over his leg, not on the side of this brilliant, kind, courteous boy on foot begging who can read Dante. At least the ambulance took him to the hospital where they plastered his leg. I looked at the x-rays today. Italy is good about giving free medical care to strangers. But nothing else.
By the way they love Karen Graffeo's photographs of the Rom. So do our other Rom Romanian family of Maria, Alexandra her sister-in-law, Aliena her mother, Benoni and Daniel her brothers. And so also do the 'gadgee', the non-gypsies, us, who see these beautiful photographs of these joyous people in our library with their babies in rocking cradles and swaddling bands and learn to appreciate, not despise them. See http://www.florin.ms/karengraffeo.html. Also http://www.florin.ms/chuppa.html. Gypsies are Europe's largest minority and have no civil rights, were holocausted in WWII, receive no compensation, everyone is afraid of them, hating them murderously. The Romanian Rom were slaves of the Orthodox monasteries from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. I have found them to be courageous, honest, kind, courteous, intelligent, musical, beautiful, clean people, caring more for their families than for anything else. In Hedera's 'Alleluia' you can hear their voice.
Bless you,
Julia
"You see," writes Catherine of Siena, speaking in the person of the eternal Father, "this sweet and loving Word born in a stable, while Mary was journeying; to show to you, who are travellers, that you must ever be born again in the stable of knowledge of yourselves, where you will find Him born by grace within your souls."
Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family
Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei, 'English Cemetery'
Piazzale Donatello, 38, 50132 FIRENZE, ITALY
juliana@tin.it http://www.umilta.net http://www.florin.ms
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com
http://monatessa.blogspot.com
Dearworthiest Godfriends,
For years I have yearned to combine sound and sight, music and text and image. Writing, after all, is an ancient technology for recording sound, spoken words, sung words. Greatly daring I have bought an IPod and a Mac mini to make all this possible. My PC is absolutely mute! We never could get its sound card to work.
If you go to http://www.umilta.net and scroll down to:
Newest
Voice Recording of Westminster Julian Manuscript: Julian1.mp3, Julian2.mp3, Julian3.mp3, Julian4.mp3
Martin Buber's Julian of Norwich
Song Recording of Lydia McCauley, Sabbath Day's Journey: 'And All Shall Be Well'
Voice Recording of Quaker John Woolman, Plea for the Poor: Woolman1.mp3, Woolman2.mp2, Woolman3.mp3, Woolman4.mp3
Voice Recording of Augustine, Confessions IX, on Time, with Ambrose, 'Deus Creator Omnium
Song and Voice Recording of Hedera, who is Rom from Romania, singing 'Alleluia'
you will find you can even mix and match these voices, all Godfriends, the recordings of Julian done by Julie and Ilya in Oxford, those by Lydia McCauley, Hedera Cjuraru, myself, in motets - which are very medieval! And if anyone can give us suggestions for improvement I should be most grateful. Am still learning the ropes as to how to podcast, etc.
But on a more serious note. Could I have your prayers, perhaps even further help, for a Rom family. Doina is the mother whose baby Stefano was kept in the hospital in Florence because they thought she was too poor to have him. I got them back to Romania by telling the woman judge that Roman Polanski had said it is worse to be an orphan than to be poor. I taught Doina and Luca how to write their names, in our library, which they then repeated in the courtroom, everyone holding their breath as this couple slowly wrote out the letters that said their names. Then Doina and Luca returned here with their fourteen-year-old Walter, leaving Stefano and Cristina with the grandparents. Walter is wonderful, can read and write, speaks Italian extremely well after only three months here, and reads Italian and English. I gave him Alan Mandelbaum's parallel text paperback of Dante's Paradiso and he was ecstatic, took it back to the camp, a field at the end of the bus line where they sleep under plastic and which the police constantly raid, taking everything they own. and he was reading Dante to the grown-ups, all of them loving it. Then he got hit-run while begging at the traffic lights, has his broken ankle in plaster, Assunta finding crutches for him. Doina told me the police, the carabinieri, were on the side of the Italian man in the car who ran over his leg, not on the side of this brilliant, kind, courteous boy on foot begging who can read Dante. At least the ambulance took him to the hospital where they plastered his leg. I looked at the x-rays today. Italy is good about giving free medical care to strangers. But nothing else.
By the way they love Karen Graffeo's photographs of the Rom. So do our other Rom Romanian family of Maria, Alexandra her sister-in-law, Aliena her mother, Benoni and Daniel her brothers. And so also do the 'gadgee', the non-gypsies, us, who see these beautiful photographs of these joyous people in our library with their babies in rocking cradles and swaddling bands and learn to appreciate, not despise them. See http://www.florin.ms/karengraffeo.html. Also http://www.florin.ms/chuppa.html. Gypsies are Europe's largest minority and have no civil rights, were holocausted in WWII, receive no compensation, everyone is afraid of them, hating them murderously. The Romanian Rom were slaves of the Orthodox monasteries from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. I have found them to be courageous, honest, kind, courteous, intelligent, musical, beautiful, clean people, caring more for their families than for anything else. In Hedera's 'Alleluia' you can hear their voice.
Bless you,
Julia
"You see," writes Catherine of Siena, speaking in the person of the eternal Father, "this sweet and loving Word born in a stable, while Mary was journeying; to show to you, who are travellers, that you must ever be born again in the stable of knowledge of yourselves, where you will find Him born by grace within your souls."
Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family
Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei, 'English Cemetery'
Piazzale Donatello, 38, 50132 FIRENZE, ITALY
juliana@tin.it http://www.umilta.net http://www.florin.ms
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com
http://monatessa.blogspot.com
Friday, May 18, 2007
FATHER NATHANAEL
Dearworthiest Godfriends,
I was thinking of how blessed we Godfriends are. Godfriend Father Nathanael's icon of Julian being loved by all, even pirated for book covers and web essays, that he had created in Ohio. Godfriend Lydia McCauley's Sabbath Day's Journey CD with its song from Julian 'And All Shall be Well', recorded in Washington. Godfriends Julie Dresvina and her Ilya in Oxford creating the recording of the reading Julian's Westminster Manuscript text, Godfriend Sister Anna Maria Reynolds in Ireland having first edited that text. Godfriend Petter Sammerud from Norway, but also in Amsterdam, in India, with his Madonna and Child, his three lilies now in bloom. And myself in Florence putting all these together in a CD for you. This combining of Orthodoxy, Anglicism and Catholicism and so much else about the figure of Julian and the medieval - and modern - Friends of God. 'Blessed may we be.'
Then, yesterday, came two copies of Reflections on the Human Vocation, published by Providence College, because they had included Father Nathanael's most beautiful icon
having written to him and receiving permission to publish it with the caption 'by the hand of the monk Nathanael © 2007 Monastic Brotherhood of St Theodore the Studite, Galion, Ohio' in an essay by Father Joseph J. Guido O.P., 'Five Years After the Towers Fell: Finding God in Difficult Times'. Validating the Oliveleaf Website on trauma healing that is an integral part of the Julian Website
Then, this morning, sadly, this, just as I sat down to the computer to write to Father Nathanael:
Dear Julia,
I know you were much respected by Fr. Nathanael. With sadness I need to inform you that he passed into eternal life this past day, Friday afternooon, May 18 at about 5:45, EST here in Ohio. He was very ill for about a week with what turned out to be a staph infection, and on this past Wednesday suffered a massive stroke. After receiving Holy Anointing and being tonsured to the Great Schema, this morning by our Metropolitan Maximos, he died this afternoon. I recommend him to your prayers. May his memory be eternal!
+Fr. Nicholas
Our icon of Julian is magnificent, created in fasting and prayer. I placed it on the altar of Norwich Cathedral during my lecture there in 1999. Our prayers for our beloved Father Nathanael, who had brought it to me with its paint still wet where I was giving a paper in Kalamazoo, who came into the room, late, beard flowing, blue Irish eyes, cane and all, knocked over the projector, plunging us into profound darkness, to my greeting 'Welcome, Father Nathanael'. Though I had not before met him, it could only have been him. He and his prayerful icon have sustained me now for many years.
It is perfect, this icon. Showing Julian as Benedictine, praying the Advent Antiphon, 'O Sapientia', where the mother prays to her as-yet unborn Child, contemplating on all these things in her heart, Julian mirroring Mary, ourselves, beholding it, mirroring Julian. Father Nathanael told me he took the face of Julian from Fra Angelico's face of Mary in the Cook Tondo in Washington's National Gallery. He told me, too, he had been a jeweller, until arthritis made him change that to painting.
And how did I, a hermit in Italy, come to know Father Nathanael in Ohio? It was back in the pioneering days of the Internet, a Discussion List on the Ordination of Women, when I was Anglican, when I believed women could be priests though that vocation was not mine. Father Nathanael on the same list was adversarial. We become Godfriends, I became Catholic, with mutual respect for each other. His fragrant beeswax candles are on our prayer table beside his most beautiful icon.
Blessed be his memory for ever.
"You see," writes Catherine of Siena, speaking in the person of the eternal Father, "this sweet and loving Word born in a stable, while Mary was journeying; to show to you, who are travellers, that you must ever be born again in the stable of knowledge of yourselves, where you will find Him born by grace within your souls."
Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family
Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei, 'English Cemetery'
Piazzale Donatello, 38, 50132 FIRENZE, ITALY
juliana@tin.it http://www.umilta.net http://www.florin.ms
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com
http://monatessa.blogspot.com
Dearworthiest Godfriends,
I was thinking of how blessed we Godfriends are. Godfriend Father Nathanael's icon of Julian being loved by all, even pirated for book covers and web essays, that he had created in Ohio. Godfriend Lydia McCauley's Sabbath Day's Journey CD with its song from Julian 'And All Shall be Well', recorded in Washington. Godfriends Julie Dresvina and her Ilya in Oxford creating the recording of the reading Julian's Westminster Manuscript text, Godfriend Sister Anna Maria Reynolds in Ireland having first edited that text. Godfriend Petter Sammerud from Norway, but also in Amsterdam, in India, with his Madonna and Child, his three lilies now in bloom. And myself in Florence putting all these together in a CD for you. This combining of Orthodoxy, Anglicism and Catholicism and so much else about the figure of Julian and the medieval - and modern - Friends of God. 'Blessed may we be.'
Then, yesterday, came two copies of Reflections on the Human Vocation, published by Providence College, because they had included Father Nathanael's most beautiful icon
having written to him and receiving permission to publish it with the caption 'by the hand of the monk Nathanael © 2007 Monastic Brotherhood of St Theodore the Studite, Galion, Ohio' in an essay by Father Joseph J. Guido O.P., 'Five Years After the Towers Fell: Finding God in Difficult Times'. Validating the Oliveleaf Website on trauma healing that is an integral part of the Julian Website
Then, this morning, sadly, this, just as I sat down to the computer to write to Father Nathanael:
Dear Julia,
I know you were much respected by Fr. Nathanael. With sadness I need to inform you that he passed into eternal life this past day, Friday afternooon, May 18 at about 5:45, EST here in Ohio. He was very ill for about a week with what turned out to be a staph infection, and on this past Wednesday suffered a massive stroke. After receiving Holy Anointing and being tonsured to the Great Schema, this morning by our Metropolitan Maximos, he died this afternoon. I recommend him to your prayers. May his memory be eternal!
+Fr. Nicholas
Our icon of Julian is magnificent, created in fasting and prayer. I placed it on the altar of Norwich Cathedral during my lecture there in 1999. Our prayers for our beloved Father Nathanael, who had brought it to me with its paint still wet where I was giving a paper in Kalamazoo, who came into the room, late, beard flowing, blue Irish eyes, cane and all, knocked over the projector, plunging us into profound darkness, to my greeting 'Welcome, Father Nathanael'. Though I had not before met him, it could only have been him. He and his prayerful icon have sustained me now for many years.
It is perfect, this icon. Showing Julian as Benedictine, praying the Advent Antiphon, 'O Sapientia', where the mother prays to her as-yet unborn Child, contemplating on all these things in her heart, Julian mirroring Mary, ourselves, beholding it, mirroring Julian. Father Nathanael told me he took the face of Julian from Fra Angelico's face of Mary in the Cook Tondo in Washington's National Gallery. He told me, too, he had been a jeweller, until arthritis made him change that to painting.
And how did I, a hermit in Italy, come to know Father Nathanael in Ohio? It was back in the pioneering days of the Internet, a Discussion List on the Ordination of Women, when I was Anglican, when I believed women could be priests though that vocation was not mine. Father Nathanael on the same list was adversarial. We become Godfriends, I became Catholic, with mutual respect for each other. His fragrant beeswax candles are on our prayer table beside his most beautiful icon.
Blessed be his memory for ever.
"You see," writes Catherine of Siena, speaking in the person of the eternal Father, "this sweet and loving Word born in a stable, while Mary was journeying; to show to you, who are travellers, that you must ever be born again in the stable of knowledge of yourselves, where you will find Him born by grace within your souls."
Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family
Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei, 'English Cemetery'
Piazzale Donatello, 38, 50132 FIRENZE, ITALY
juliana@tin.it http://www.umilta.net http://www.florin.ms
http://piazzaledonatello.blogspot.com
http://monatessa.blogspot.com
Sunday, April 29, 2007
SACRED: DISCOVER WHAT WE SHARE
It was my seventieth birthday present to myself. Accepting the British Library's invitation to 'Sacred: Discover What We Share'. In 2001 we had organized an international conference in Florence on The City and the Book, centred on the alphabet and the Bible as the basis of our western culture, neither of them European in origin. Then we had submitted a proposal to the European Union for digitizing the great Bible manuscripts in the major European libraries. We were turned down. It was the year the EU was strongly anti-religion. That was how I first came to know Ilana Tahan of the British Library. It was she who invited me. For one of the earliest surviving Hebrew Bibles is owned by them and needing to be digitized.
The Exhibition is magnificent, Torahs, Gospels, Korans. Present at its opening were all the Peoples of the Book, Jews, Christians, Muslims. Admiring how much beauty there is in these books. And learning how much each owed the other. The Gospels in Arabic, like a Koran. A Hebrew manuscript, for celebrating the Passover within a family, illuminated like a Christian one. It is from Barcelona and Linda and Michael Falter who showed it to me, have created a facsimile edition of it.
The Exhibition presented how each carried out their liturgies, at birth, at marriage, at death. I could not resist telling of Karen Graffeo's marvellous chuppa that we created in Florence for a wedding in Florida, where I, a Christian hermit, pencilled the names of the Jewish ancestors on white silk, these being then embroidered by Muslim gypsies in gold thread, all the Peoples of the Book working together for the Jewish wedding. See http://www.umilta.net/chuppa.html
It was my seventieth birthday present to myself. Accepting the British Library's invitation to 'Sacred: Discover What We Share'. In 2001 we had organized an international conference in Florence on The City and the Book, centred on the alphabet and the Bible as the basis of our western culture, neither of them European in origin. Then we had submitted a proposal to the European Union for digitizing the great Bible manuscripts in the major European libraries. We were turned down. It was the year the EU was strongly anti-religion. That was how I first came to know Ilana Tahan of the British Library. It was she who invited me. For one of the earliest surviving Hebrew Bibles is owned by them and needing to be digitized.
The Exhibition is magnificent, Torahs, Gospels, Korans. Present at its opening were all the Peoples of the Book, Jews, Christians, Muslims. Admiring how much beauty there is in these books. And learning how much each owed the other. The Gospels in Arabic, like a Koran. A Hebrew manuscript, for celebrating the Passover within a family, illuminated like a Christian one. It is from Barcelona and Linda and Michael Falter who showed it to me, have created a facsimile edition of it.
The Exhibition presented how each carried out their liturgies, at birth, at marriage, at death. I could not resist telling of Karen Graffeo's marvellous chuppa that we created in Florence for a wedding in Florida, where I, a Christian hermit, pencilled the names of the Jewish ancestors on white silk, these being then embroidered by Muslim gypsies in gold thread, all the Peoples of the Book working together for the Jewish wedding. See http://www.umilta.net/chuppa.html
Saturday, April 07, 2007
BUONA PASQUA,
we say in Italy.
Our Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence is filled with flowering bulbs, sweet-scented hyacinths, narcissi, daffodils, tulips, and wild strawberries and wild violets, on the tombs, while Petter's lilies are about to flower in their great pot. A New Zealander sending her aunt's ashes there wanted her also remembered here, so my Rom and I planted these bulbs in the Fall to find this 'Winter of Our Discontent, Made Glorious Spring', the Resurrection.
Just down the street, in a cell at San Marco, Fra Angelico painted Mary Magdalene reaching out to Christ as Gardener, and on the monks' dormitory's wall, the Angel and the Virgin, both scenes with spring flowers.
Tonight we shall go to Mass at the Santissima Annunziata, one square before the church and cloister of San Marco, on our bicycles.
In the nineteenth century John Roddam Spencer Stanhope's daughter Mary died, he sculpting her tomb with daffodils on its marble beside those by Lord Leighton for Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Holman Hunt's for his wife, which he shaped like a great ark floating on waves, a dove with olive branch in its beak.
We have planted a blue hyacinth by the tomb of Nadezda, who came at 14, a black slave from Nubia, baptised with the name meaning 'Hope' in a Russian Orthodox family, and who is buried here, her story told in Cyrillic on her tomb.
We plan next to plant a pomegranate by Lord Leighton's tomb for Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And speaking of pomegranates and Easter do read 'The Highland Shepherd'
http://msgr.ca/msgr-6/The_penultimate_WORD_2007_April.htm
We are preparing again to read Dante's Commedia in our library in a cemetery in Florence as we did several years ago, this time recording it. And with the honoraria from lectures given in America, especially those on our writers, sculptors and preachers against slavery, we shall be able to have the Marchese Torrigiani, from whose garden our now lost, chemically-killed, plants had originally come, replant them. We have forbidden the hired gardeners to use any more poison on the soil and are weeding the luscious stinging nettles ourselves, using rubber gloves, trowels and baskets. We would love to cook and eat them but dare not because of all the traffic fumes about us.
BUONA PASQUA, A BLESSED EASTER. And may we heal this earth of all our polluting that there may be life for all, food for all, flowers for all.
Julia and Assunta
we say in Italy.
Our Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence is filled with flowering bulbs, sweet-scented hyacinths, narcissi, daffodils, tulips, and wild strawberries and wild violets, on the tombs, while Petter's lilies are about to flower in their great pot. A New Zealander sending her aunt's ashes there wanted her also remembered here, so my Rom and I planted these bulbs in the Fall to find this 'Winter of Our Discontent, Made Glorious Spring', the Resurrection.
Just down the street, in a cell at San Marco, Fra Angelico painted Mary Magdalene reaching out to Christ as Gardener, and on the monks' dormitory's wall, the Angel and the Virgin, both scenes with spring flowers.
Tonight we shall go to Mass at the Santissima Annunziata, one square before the church and cloister of San Marco, on our bicycles.
In the nineteenth century John Roddam Spencer Stanhope's daughter Mary died, he sculpting her tomb with daffodils on its marble beside those by Lord Leighton for Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Holman Hunt's for his wife, which he shaped like a great ark floating on waves, a dove with olive branch in its beak.
We have planted a blue hyacinth by the tomb of Nadezda, who came at 14, a black slave from Nubia, baptised with the name meaning 'Hope' in a Russian Orthodox family, and who is buried here, her story told in Cyrillic on her tomb.
We plan next to plant a pomegranate by Lord Leighton's tomb for Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And speaking of pomegranates and Easter do read 'The Highland Shepherd'
http://msgr.ca/msgr-6/The_penultimate_WORD_2007_April.htm
We are preparing again to read Dante's Commedia in our library in a cemetery in Florence as we did several years ago, this time recording it. And with the honoraria from lectures given in America, especially those on our writers, sculptors and preachers against slavery, we shall be able to have the Marchese Torrigiani, from whose garden our now lost, chemically-killed, plants had originally come, replant them. We have forbidden the hired gardeners to use any more poison on the soil and are weeding the luscious stinging nettles ourselves, using rubber gloves, trowels and baskets. We would love to cook and eat them but dare not because of all the traffic fumes about us.
BUONA PASQUA, A BLESSED EASTER. And may we heal this earth of all our polluting that there may be life for all, food for all, flowers for all.
Julia and Assunta
Thursday, December 21, 2006
AN OLIVE TREE FOR PEACE
Our friend, who is a magnificent Irish scholar, and who regularly sends us Carageen moss for use in our paper marbling, has this Christmas sent a card saying an olive tree is given in our name to a farming family in Palestine. It shows two women harvesting olives, a dove perched in one of the olive trees. And she writes about remembering the beauty of our Tuscan olive groves. And our own four olive trees in this courtyard from which we give so many blessed leaves for the healing of trauma.
OxFam writes of the possibility of giving a camel, a cow, a sheep. Unicef, of giving sachets of water and salts for correcting dehydration in sick children and thus saving their lives. All these, the best Christmas gifts.
As I think on all the trauma today, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, in Palestine and Israel, in Iraq and Iran, Africa with its AIDS orphans, its child soldiers, so much terror in so many places in the world, I remember John Kenneth Galbraith saying the sources of conflict and violence are caused by economic desperation. Julian's sense of 'And all shall be well' translates rightly the Hebrew 'Shalom', of a wellness, of a wholeness, of prosperity, the true peace the angels sing to men of good will. Anorexic women despair of freedom, their only freedom being death. Suicide bombers despair of freedom, their only freedom, death, of themselves and others. The Greek sense of peace, 'irene', was merely a cessation, a truce, in ever on-going hostilities. Shalom is different and for all.
One passes through our four olive trees, after braving the roaring traffic about this piazzale, to come to the peace of our library and our tombs. Our library stocked with books on trauma and indigenous and migrant peoples, our cemetery with its many scripts and languages commemorating its many persons who worked tirelessly against slavery in the nineteenth century and for better health for women and children and for freedom from tyranny, statues of 'Hope', and even the black fourteen year-old slave from Nubia, baptised in a Russian Orthodox family with the name of 'Nadezhda', 'Hope'.
And now we have a dream in which many are sharing, of turning this abandoned cemetery in the midst of city traffic into the garden it once had been, with orange and lemon trees and azalea bushes, through digging a cellar into our hill for keeping them in winter, called here a 'limonaia', and of planting daffodils, irises, roses, lavender. Look about us and see how divorced we now are from nature, our clothes all like machines, our cars separating us from greenery. It could be a most peaceable revolution to plant a garden in the midst of a city. To travel on bicycles. And to give olive trees to Palestinians, sheep to Afghans, camels to Ethiopians, cows to Somalians, sachets of life-saving salts to sick babies. We have very little time to turn this earth, this Gaia, back into a garden, a Paradise, for our grandchildren.
Thank you, Maire, for this most lovely of gifts, and a Blessed Christmas to all Godfriends,
Bless you,
Julia
Trocaire, http://www.trocaire.org/globalgift/
OxFam http://www.oxfamunwrapped.com/
UNICEF http://www.unicef.org/childsurvival/index.html
Our friend, who is a magnificent Irish scholar, and who regularly sends us Carageen moss for use in our paper marbling, has this Christmas sent a card saying an olive tree is given in our name to a farming family in Palestine. It shows two women harvesting olives, a dove perched in one of the olive trees. And she writes about remembering the beauty of our Tuscan olive groves. And our own four olive trees in this courtyard from which we give so many blessed leaves for the healing of trauma.
OxFam writes of the possibility of giving a camel, a cow, a sheep. Unicef, of giving sachets of water and salts for correcting dehydration in sick children and thus saving their lives. All these, the best Christmas gifts.
As I think on all the trauma today, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, in Palestine and Israel, in Iraq and Iran, Africa with its AIDS orphans, its child soldiers, so much terror in so many places in the world, I remember John Kenneth Galbraith saying the sources of conflict and violence are caused by economic desperation. Julian's sense of 'And all shall be well' translates rightly the Hebrew 'Shalom', of a wellness, of a wholeness, of prosperity, the true peace the angels sing to men of good will. Anorexic women despair of freedom, their only freedom being death. Suicide bombers despair of freedom, their only freedom, death, of themselves and others. The Greek sense of peace, 'irene', was merely a cessation, a truce, in ever on-going hostilities. Shalom is different and for all.
One passes through our four olive trees, after braving the roaring traffic about this piazzale, to come to the peace of our library and our tombs. Our library stocked with books on trauma and indigenous and migrant peoples, our cemetery with its many scripts and languages commemorating its many persons who worked tirelessly against slavery in the nineteenth century and for better health for women and children and for freedom from tyranny, statues of 'Hope', and even the black fourteen year-old slave from Nubia, baptised in a Russian Orthodox family with the name of 'Nadezhda', 'Hope'.
And now we have a dream in which many are sharing, of turning this abandoned cemetery in the midst of city traffic into the garden it once had been, with orange and lemon trees and azalea bushes, through digging a cellar into our hill for keeping them in winter, called here a 'limonaia', and of planting daffodils, irises, roses, lavender. Look about us and see how divorced we now are from nature, our clothes all like machines, our cars separating us from greenery. It could be a most peaceable revolution to plant a garden in the midst of a city. To travel on bicycles. And to give olive trees to Palestinians, sheep to Afghans, camels to Ethiopians, cows to Somalians, sachets of life-saving salts to sick babies. We have very little time to turn this earth, this Gaia, back into a garden, a Paradise, for our grandchildren.
Thank you, Maire, for this most lovely of gifts, and a Blessed Christmas to all Godfriends,
Bless you,
Julia
Trocaire, http://www.trocaire.org/globalgift/
OxFam http://www.oxfamunwrapped.com/
UNICEF http://www.unicef.org/childsurvival/index.html
Sunday, December 10, 2006
THE CHURCH OF THE BADIA. FLORENCE AND DANTE, 26 November 2006
Signorelli, Dante
Alinari
Augustus Hare
For this year’s Christmas Letter let me share the gist of what I said at the Mass for the Poor in the Florentine Badia’s church two Sundays ago. I began by saying Giovanni Boccaccio lectured on medieval Dante’s Commedia in this very church during the Renaissance. And this was right because Dante grew up beside this church. When he was a child he would have heard the monks singing the liturgy of the Mass and of the Hours, Matins, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, as they had for centuries before him and as they still do here today. We hear these psalms and hymns in the Purgatorio and the Paradiso of the Commedia. But not in the Inferno, which is only filled with groans, sighs, screams, the discords of despair of those who have chosen to distance themselves from God.
In Dante’s day, this church, which was part of an ancient monastery, was more beautiful. After Dante’s boyhood, but before Boccaccio’s time, it was rebuilt by Arnolfo di Cambio and filled with fine paintings by Giotto, the gold leaf dancing with the light of candles. The church later was completely changed and made shadowy in the baroque style. The beautiful tender Madonna with her Child, which recalls the numerous similes in Dante’s poetry about mothers nursing babies with their milk, was removed from the altar. It is now in the Uffizi; one may still see it but in a cold museum. Of these pictures below the first is by Giotto, the second by our Norwegian artist guest and it shimmers by candlelight in our library, and the third is by a participant in the Mass for the Poor, who would be so grateful if you would buy prints of it. It was Petter who taught Bruno how to print his engravings.
Giotto
Petter Sammerud
Bruno Vivoli
Dante tells us he wrote his Commedia not in Latin but in Italian, so that even women and children could understand it, in Florence and in all of his Italy. Like the Gospel revealed to the lowly. Like St Francis’ Canticles. In his similes we find workmen and farmers, women and children, an old tailor threading his needle, a mother rocking the cradle and singing, pilgrims journeying from afar, workers in foundries and furnaces, and many many others. Dante remembers the good bread of Tuscany, made without salt and which does not mildew. The poem becomes our mirror, reflecting also this city. Dante writes a Comedy, not at all a Tragedy about kings and their hollow power. It is a poem of hope, a Magnificat. It is the most famous poem in the world.
Dante writes the Commedia in exile from Florence, but with the memory of this Badia, of the little and very ancient church of St Martin beside it founded by Irish pilgrims centuries earlier, of the Bargello, of the Palazzio del Popolo (now called ‘Vecchio’, for it is seven hundred years old), of the Duomo, many of these built or planned by Arnolfo di Cambio or his father. All these fine buildings were within the walls and the gates built by Arnolfo di Cambio using the stone first built into the Ghibelline ‘towers of pride’ and within this painting. This wall for the common defense was repaired in the Renaissance, then in the Victorian period torn down to make way for boulevards for traffic. The painting below in the Cathedral, the Duomo, shows Dante outside the walls as an exile, preaching the Commedia to his city, its gate being the same as that for Hell and for Purgatory. The three gates are Arnolfian.
Domenico da Michelino, Dante and Florence, Cathedral
On Hell Gate Dante has God write:
Per me si va nella città dolente,
Per me si va nell’etterno dolore,
Per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto Fattore:
Fecemi la Divina Potestate,
La Somma Sapienza e’l Primo Amore.
Through me you enter the city of sorrow,
Through me you go into eternal pain,
Through me you go amongst the lost people.
Justice moved my High Architect,
I was made by Divine Power,
By Highest Wisdom and by Primal Love.
But when we go the other way through the Arnolfian gate of Purgatorio we leave behind all sorrow to enter into love – as I explained when lecturing on this poem in Attica State Prison.
The Commedia tells us of Dante’s exile become pilgrimage, first through Hell where Dante as sinner meets many mirroring sinners, then Purgatorio where Dante shares in purgation from them with others, finally, in Paradise, where he soars into the hevens with Beatrice Portinari, daughter of Folco Portinari the founder of Santa Maria Nuova Hospital. The Commedia as poem heals the city of Florence and ourselves. In the last canto of the Paradiso, its Canticle of Canticles, we meet Bernard singing his hymn to the Madonna, which Filippino will show in a painting brought to the Badia in 1530, and which Professor Giorgio La Pira, Mayor of Florence, Founder of the Mass for the Poor, so much loved
Alinari
Filippino, Vision of Saint Bernard, Badia
The words of Bernard’s hymn in Dante’s Paradiso are placed on the facade of the Misericordia, words which I read to my visitors. Then we turn to gaze upon the great Cathedral of Florence, its Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore:
Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio,
umile e alta più che creatura,
termine fisso d’etterno consiglio,
tu se’ colei che l’umana natura
nobilitasti sì, che ’l suo fattore
non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura.
Nel ventre tuo si raccese l’amore,
per lo cui caldo ne l’etterna pace
così è germinato questo fiore.
Virgin Mother, daughter of your son,
humble and higher than any creature,
fixed goal of eternal counsel,
You are she who ennobled human nature
so that the Creator
did not disdain to become your Creation.
In your womb is bound up the love
through whose warmth in eternal peace
is thus germinated this flower.
I left out of my talk in the Badia that often when I shared with gypsy mothers in the street blessed bread and postcards of Dante, like the one above, they would ask ‘Was he a saint?’ and when I said ‘No’, explaining however that he had preached to his city about mercy, they would kiss the postcard as if it were an icon and share it with their children.
All is well here. We have saved the English Cemetery. Now we must restore it. Gypsy Maria and Daniel, from Romania and who come to the Mass for the Poor, today have weeded out all the stinging nettles (I supplied them with gloves and trowels). A month ago they, with their other brother Benoni, planted two enormous boxes filled with daffodil bulbs, which will come up in the Spring. Next, I hope to teach them tomb cleaning and restoration. Unlike Hedera or Luca, they are already literate, in both Roman and Cyrillic alphabets and love reading our polyglot tombstones of English, American, Russian and Swiss burials.
A thousand blessing for Christmas, Epiphany, and 2007.
Signorelli, Dante
Alinari
Augustus Hare
For this year’s Christmas Letter let me share the gist of what I said at the Mass for the Poor in the Florentine Badia’s church two Sundays ago. I began by saying Giovanni Boccaccio lectured on medieval Dante’s Commedia in this very church during the Renaissance. And this was right because Dante grew up beside this church. When he was a child he would have heard the monks singing the liturgy of the Mass and of the Hours, Matins, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, as they had for centuries before him and as they still do here today. We hear these psalms and hymns in the Purgatorio and the Paradiso of the Commedia. But not in the Inferno, which is only filled with groans, sighs, screams, the discords of despair of those who have chosen to distance themselves from God.
In Dante’s day, this church, which was part of an ancient monastery, was more beautiful. After Dante’s boyhood, but before Boccaccio’s time, it was rebuilt by Arnolfo di Cambio and filled with fine paintings by Giotto, the gold leaf dancing with the light of candles. The church later was completely changed and made shadowy in the baroque style. The beautiful tender Madonna with her Child, which recalls the numerous similes in Dante’s poetry about mothers nursing babies with their milk, was removed from the altar. It is now in the Uffizi; one may still see it but in a cold museum. Of these pictures below the first is by Giotto, the second by our Norwegian artist guest and it shimmers by candlelight in our library, and the third is by a participant in the Mass for the Poor, who would be so grateful if you would buy prints of it. It was Petter who taught Bruno how to print his engravings.
Giotto
Petter Sammerud
Bruno Vivoli
Dante tells us he wrote his Commedia not in Latin but in Italian, so that even women and children could understand it, in Florence and in all of his Italy. Like the Gospel revealed to the lowly. Like St Francis’ Canticles. In his similes we find workmen and farmers, women and children, an old tailor threading his needle, a mother rocking the cradle and singing, pilgrims journeying from afar, workers in foundries and furnaces, and many many others. Dante remembers the good bread of Tuscany, made without salt and which does not mildew. The poem becomes our mirror, reflecting also this city. Dante writes a Comedy, not at all a Tragedy about kings and their hollow power. It is a poem of hope, a Magnificat. It is the most famous poem in the world.
Dante writes the Commedia in exile from Florence, but with the memory of this Badia, of the little and very ancient church of St Martin beside it founded by Irish pilgrims centuries earlier, of the Bargello, of the Palazzio del Popolo (now called ‘Vecchio’, for it is seven hundred years old), of the Duomo, many of these built or planned by Arnolfo di Cambio or his father. All these fine buildings were within the walls and the gates built by Arnolfo di Cambio using the stone first built into the Ghibelline ‘towers of pride’ and within this painting. This wall for the common defense was repaired in the Renaissance, then in the Victorian period torn down to make way for boulevards for traffic. The painting below in the Cathedral, the Duomo, shows Dante outside the walls as an exile, preaching the Commedia to his city, its gate being the same as that for Hell and for Purgatory. The three gates are Arnolfian.
Domenico da Michelino, Dante and Florence, Cathedral
On Hell Gate Dante has God write:
Per me si va nella città dolente,
Per me si va nell’etterno dolore,
Per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto Fattore:
Fecemi la Divina Potestate,
La Somma Sapienza e’l Primo Amore.
Through me you enter the city of sorrow,
Through me you go into eternal pain,
Through me you go amongst the lost people.
Justice moved my High Architect,
I was made by Divine Power,
By Highest Wisdom and by Primal Love.
But when we go the other way through the Arnolfian gate of Purgatorio we leave behind all sorrow to enter into love – as I explained when lecturing on this poem in Attica State Prison.
The Commedia tells us of Dante’s exile become pilgrimage, first through Hell where Dante as sinner meets many mirroring sinners, then Purgatorio where Dante shares in purgation from them with others, finally, in Paradise, where he soars into the hevens with Beatrice Portinari, daughter of Folco Portinari the founder of Santa Maria Nuova Hospital. The Commedia as poem heals the city of Florence and ourselves. In the last canto of the Paradiso, its Canticle of Canticles, we meet Bernard singing his hymn to the Madonna, which Filippino will show in a painting brought to the Badia in 1530, and which Professor Giorgio La Pira, Mayor of Florence, Founder of the Mass for the Poor, so much loved
Alinari
Filippino, Vision of Saint Bernard, Badia
The words of Bernard’s hymn in Dante’s Paradiso are placed on the facade of the Misericordia, words which I read to my visitors. Then we turn to gaze upon the great Cathedral of Florence, its Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore:
Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio,
umile e alta più che creatura,
termine fisso d’etterno consiglio,
tu se’ colei che l’umana natura
nobilitasti sì, che ’l suo fattore
non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura.
Nel ventre tuo si raccese l’amore,
per lo cui caldo ne l’etterna pace
così è germinato questo fiore.
Virgin Mother, daughter of your son,
humble and higher than any creature,
fixed goal of eternal counsel,
You are she who ennobled human nature
so that the Creator
did not disdain to become your Creation.
In your womb is bound up the love
through whose warmth in eternal peace
is thus germinated this flower.
I left out of my talk in the Badia that often when I shared with gypsy mothers in the street blessed bread and postcards of Dante, like the one above, they would ask ‘Was he a saint?’ and when I said ‘No’, explaining however that he had preached to his city about mercy, they would kiss the postcard as if it were an icon and share it with their children.
All is well here. We have saved the English Cemetery. Now we must restore it. Gypsy Maria and Daniel, from Romania and who come to the Mass for the Poor, today have weeded out all the stinging nettles (I supplied them with gloves and trowels). A month ago they, with their other brother Benoni, planted two enormous boxes filled with daffodil bulbs, which will come up in the Spring. Next, I hope to teach them tomb cleaning and restoration. Unlike Hedera or Luca, they are already literate, in both Roman and Cyrillic alphabets and love reading our polyglot tombstones of English, American, Russian and Swiss burials.
A thousand blessing for Christmas, Epiphany, and 2007.
Monday, December 04, 2006
DON CUBA AND FLORENCE
Dearworthy Godfriends,
There are aspects of Florence I particularly love. One of them is that the city comes together to celebrate its great citizens, not the powerful and wealthy but who are those who are humble, who sacrifice, who live for others. Fioretta Mazzei's funeral was like that, Avvocato Torricelli's was like that, and yesterday Don Cuba's [pronounced 'cooba'] as well. Danilo Cubattoli, who died at 80, was ordained priest in 1948, refusing the restrictions of a parish, being simply a prison chaplain. Paolo Coccheri and I visited him in hospital and there he was joking, everyone loving him, when we all knew he was dying, and he was still as handsome as in this photo.
Yesterday we first gathered in the Carmine where he lay, his red motorcycle helmet at his feet in the coffin, a pink rose on his breast, in his priestly vestments, the Polizia Penitenziaria standing on guard. For he rode a motorbicycle and not only that, he knew how to repair it expertly. And everyone was smiling, remembering his joy. Our Russian Orthodox priest came and kissed him and sang prayers. Then we processed behind the coffin as it was carried down the aisle out the door to a most glorious rainbow and walked together through the streets of San Frediano, the poor area of Florence, to its major church, which when we arrived was already filled to standing room only, marquises and counts mingled with convicts and the poor, for everyone loved Don Cuba. The Cardinal and the auxiliary bishop both celebrated. The great gonfalone of the city, the banner with the red lily on white, held by men similarly dressed in red and white, the city's tribute. Then people spoke, a city official in the red, white and green sash, the Orthodox priest saying 'Cuba' believed in the Man of God as including all, if not the Church of God, and that he was his spiritual father, who took him in, a stranger, prison officials and convicts spoke, about how he mediated between them all with laughter. The prisoners had wanted the funeral Mass in the prison. Which was not possible. So, instead, they came to the great church to share in it with us. Finally the Cardinal spoke, saying a convict receiving Communion had put a piece of paper in his hand with a poem on it, which the eminent Cardinal then read, saying Don Cuba had loved everybody, especially those with black hearts, with tattooed arms, that he was both clown and confessor ('giullare e confessore'). Don Cuba, when asked by the worst criminals if it was possible to have God's mercy, resoundingly said 'Yes'. And had told their stories to undo the hardness of our hearts.
Dearworthy Godfriends,
There are aspects of Florence I particularly love. One of them is that the city comes together to celebrate its great citizens, not the powerful and wealthy but who are those who are humble, who sacrifice, who live for others. Fioretta Mazzei's funeral was like that, Avvocato Torricelli's was like that, and yesterday Don Cuba's [pronounced 'cooba'] as well. Danilo Cubattoli, who died at 80, was ordained priest in 1948, refusing the restrictions of a parish, being simply a prison chaplain. Paolo Coccheri and I visited him in hospital and there he was joking, everyone loving him, when we all knew he was dying, and he was still as handsome as in this photo.
Yesterday we first gathered in the Carmine where he lay, his red motorcycle helmet at his feet in the coffin, a pink rose on his breast, in his priestly vestments, the Polizia Penitenziaria standing on guard. For he rode a motorbicycle and not only that, he knew how to repair it expertly. And everyone was smiling, remembering his joy. Our Russian Orthodox priest came and kissed him and sang prayers. Then we processed behind the coffin as it was carried down the aisle out the door to a most glorious rainbow and walked together through the streets of San Frediano, the poor area of Florence, to its major church, which when we arrived was already filled to standing room only, marquises and counts mingled with convicts and the poor, for everyone loved Don Cuba. The Cardinal and the auxiliary bishop both celebrated. The great gonfalone of the city, the banner with the red lily on white, held by men similarly dressed in red and white, the city's tribute. Then people spoke, a city official in the red, white and green sash, the Orthodox priest saying 'Cuba' believed in the Man of God as including all, if not the Church of God, and that he was his spiritual father, who took him in, a stranger, prison officials and convicts spoke, about how he mediated between them all with laughter. The prisoners had wanted the funeral Mass in the prison. Which was not possible. So, instead, they came to the great church to share in it with us. Finally the Cardinal spoke, saying a convict receiving Communion had put a piece of paper in his hand with a poem on it, which the eminent Cardinal then read, saying Don Cuba had loved everybody, especially those with black hearts, with tattooed arms, that he was both clown and confessor ('giullare e confessore'). Don Cuba, when asked by the worst criminals if it was possible to have God's mercy, resoundingly said 'Yes'. And had told their stories to undo the hardness of our hearts.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Saturday, December 02, 2006
CHRISTMASTIDINGS
It is time for the Annual Christmastide Newsletter, I realize, as English Christmas cards, complete with English robin redbreasts, arrive!
I was able to see my remaining beloved sons and grandchildren this past March and will do so again this year. Last year, with 100 dollars in my pocket for two weeks, travelling through Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas by bus, I found people were so kind. This coming year am not so impoverished but choosing to travel by bus because people on planes are scared and therefore scary. Will be speaking at Georgetown, Little Rock and Wellesley on Julian of Norwich, on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on the English Cemetery, on Brunetto Latino, on 'Women in our Own Write/Right' to pay my way there.
This year Assunta and I made our promises at Mass in the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, joining the Ordine Secolare of the Servi di Maria, the Servites being founded in the thirteenth century by seven rich young men, sons of Florentine merchants, who gave up all to be hermits, sharing a vision of the Virgin. Then my Spiritual Director had me become a Lady of Justice of the Knights Hospitallers, founded during the Crusades to care for pilgrims, and he keeps writing to me as 'Dame Julia'. Then I renewed my monastic Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience in the church of the Santissima, at the altar beneath its miraculous painting, said to be finished by an angel, of the Annunciation. It is a busy life, running a cemetery, a library, a publishing house, several websites, caring for Orthodox and Muslim gypsies, five families and a camp, finding time also for prayer, for the Offices, for the Eucharist, which I do by getting up at 4:30 a.m. each day. Perhaps the opposite of being a hermit, an anchoress. And sensing that all I do is Quaker, is Anglican, is Catholic, is of all the Peoples of the Book and beyond.
The Cemetery, which was threatened with closure and abandonment, has a new lease on life. I've painted the gates and had curving handrails made for its stairs, we've planted, with the help of two gypsy brothers and their sister, Benoni, Daniel, and Maria, two enormous boxes of daffodil bulbs, I've spoken about it at the Armstrong Browning Library's celebration of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Bicentennial, had the Comune of Florence, our city government, lay a huge laurel wreath on her restored tomb, designed by Lord Leighton. Then the Museo Archeologico Nazionale discovered us, for this Cemetery was founded in 1827, the Swiss Evangelical Church buying the land for it from the Grand Duke, the following year the Grand Duke funding Champollion and Rosellini's Expedition to Egypt and Nubia, and they now have an Exhibition of the Egyptian Motives in the 'English' Cemetery, and held an event here at which I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning's translations from the African Latin poet, Apuleius, and they also restored Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb. Next we shall have the tombs of Walter Savage Landor, Ann Horner and William Somerville restored, this last in honour of Mary Somerville, who taught herself mathematics, became a member of the Royal Society, discovered two planets, and taught mathematics to Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who then, with Charles Babbage, invented the computer. Best of all the Comune of Florence has given us traffic lights and a cross walk so our lives are no longer at daily risk.
Assunta and I discovered the Giardino Torrigiani, a magical place that Elizabeth Barrett Browning loved, and from which came many of the now-destroyed plants in this Cemetery. So, with the help of Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina we are going to be re-planting all these to make this place the English garden, the Paradise, it once was. And so many people are helping us, three thousand having signed our petition to UNESCO, people coming with plants and bulbs, people buying our books we print, sew and bind, and people most generously giving books to the library. For I have turned the 'English' Cemetery into a sort of international 'People's Park', inviting all to participate and they do.
A professor at Little Rock has published a book on Brunetto Latino and yours truly. I was invited to give a paper at the conference on Brunetto Latino in Basel, Switzerland, and found I could get there and back on a Swiss Railpass for 20 euro, so went. Had given up research on him for many years. Only to find I am now Dean of Brunetto Latino Studies, and so am revising the bibliography I published 20 years ago, and finding, too, so much of the new scholarship cites and footnotes my work. I offered joint authorship with my husband when he was seeking tenure. Am spending the mornings now either amongst medieval manuscripts in the Laurentian, the Riccardian and National Libraries or amongst books and articles in the Società Dantesca Italiana, catching up on twenty years of work! But sadly even the Società Dantesca Italiana is being modernized, all its beautiful hand-crafted doors being ripped out, thrown away and replaced with plastic ones, its frescoed walls destroyed. It was the Wool Guild, the Arte della Lana and is just opposite Orsanmichele, the great medieval granary built to feed even the enemy in time of famine, which has the most beautiful Madonna and Bambino, before whom I used to light candles year after year for our three sons.
Praying for Peace in this war-torn world. Praying for Courage that we recognize the Prince of Peace as born in a stable, in a concentration camp, of which there are now far too many. Praying for Love for all, which leads me to the ending of Mary Somerville's book, 'On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences', published in 1838.
'These formulae, emblematic of Omniscience, condense into a few symbols the immutable laws of the universe. This mighty instrument of human power itself originates in the primitive constitution of the human mind, and rests upon a few fundamental axioms, which have eternally existed in Him who implanted them in the breast of man when He created him after His own image'.
It is time for the Annual Christmastide Newsletter, I realize, as English Christmas cards, complete with English robin redbreasts, arrive!
I was able to see my remaining beloved sons and grandchildren this past March and will do so again this year. Last year, with 100 dollars in my pocket for two weeks, travelling through Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas by bus, I found people were so kind. This coming year am not so impoverished but choosing to travel by bus because people on planes are scared and therefore scary. Will be speaking at Georgetown, Little Rock and Wellesley on Julian of Norwich, on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on the English Cemetery, on Brunetto Latino, on 'Women in our Own Write/Right' to pay my way there.
This year Assunta and I made our promises at Mass in the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, joining the Ordine Secolare of the Servi di Maria, the Servites being founded in the thirteenth century by seven rich young men, sons of Florentine merchants, who gave up all to be hermits, sharing a vision of the Virgin. Then my Spiritual Director had me become a Lady of Justice of the Knights Hospitallers, founded during the Crusades to care for pilgrims, and he keeps writing to me as 'Dame Julia'. Then I renewed my monastic Vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience in the church of the Santissima, at the altar beneath its miraculous painting, said to be finished by an angel, of the Annunciation. It is a busy life, running a cemetery, a library, a publishing house, several websites, caring for Orthodox and Muslim gypsies, five families and a camp, finding time also for prayer, for the Offices, for the Eucharist, which I do by getting up at 4:30 a.m. each day. Perhaps the opposite of being a hermit, an anchoress. And sensing that all I do is Quaker, is Anglican, is Catholic, is of all the Peoples of the Book and beyond.
The Cemetery, which was threatened with closure and abandonment, has a new lease on life. I've painted the gates and had curving handrails made for its stairs, we've planted, with the help of two gypsy brothers and their sister, Benoni, Daniel, and Maria, two enormous boxes of daffodil bulbs, I've spoken about it at the Armstrong Browning Library's celebration of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Bicentennial, had the Comune of Florence, our city government, lay a huge laurel wreath on her restored tomb, designed by Lord Leighton. Then the Museo Archeologico Nazionale discovered us, for this Cemetery was founded in 1827, the Swiss Evangelical Church buying the land for it from the Grand Duke, the following year the Grand Duke funding Champollion and Rosellini's Expedition to Egypt and Nubia, and they now have an Exhibition of the Egyptian Motives in the 'English' Cemetery, and held an event here at which I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning's translations from the African Latin poet, Apuleius, and they also restored Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb. Next we shall have the tombs of Walter Savage Landor, Ann Horner and William Somerville restored, this last in honour of Mary Somerville, who taught herself mathematics, became a member of the Royal Society, discovered two planets, and taught mathematics to Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who then, with Charles Babbage, invented the computer. Best of all the Comune of Florence has given us traffic lights and a cross walk so our lives are no longer at daily risk.
Assunta and I discovered the Giardino Torrigiani, a magical place that Elizabeth Barrett Browning loved, and from which came many of the now-destroyed plants in this Cemetery. So, with the help of Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina we are going to be re-planting all these to make this place the English garden, the Paradise, it once was. And so many people are helping us, three thousand having signed our petition to UNESCO, people coming with plants and bulbs, people buying our books we print, sew and bind, and people most generously giving books to the library. For I have turned the 'English' Cemetery into a sort of international 'People's Park', inviting all to participate and they do.
A professor at Little Rock has published a book on Brunetto Latino and yours truly. I was invited to give a paper at the conference on Brunetto Latino in Basel, Switzerland, and found I could get there and back on a Swiss Railpass for 20 euro, so went. Had given up research on him for many years. Only to find I am now Dean of Brunetto Latino Studies, and so am revising the bibliography I published 20 years ago, and finding, too, so much of the new scholarship cites and footnotes my work. I offered joint authorship with my husband when he was seeking tenure. Am spending the mornings now either amongst medieval manuscripts in the Laurentian, the Riccardian and National Libraries or amongst books and articles in the Società Dantesca Italiana, catching up on twenty years of work! But sadly even the Società Dantesca Italiana is being modernized, all its beautiful hand-crafted doors being ripped out, thrown away and replaced with plastic ones, its frescoed walls destroyed. It was the Wool Guild, the Arte della Lana and is just opposite Orsanmichele, the great medieval granary built to feed even the enemy in time of famine, which has the most beautiful Madonna and Bambino, before whom I used to light candles year after year for our three sons.
Praying for Peace in this war-torn world. Praying for Courage that we recognize the Prince of Peace as born in a stable, in a concentration camp, of which there are now far too many. Praying for Love for all, which leads me to the ending of Mary Somerville's book, 'On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences', published in 1838.
'These formulae, emblematic of Omniscience, condense into a few symbols the immutable laws of the universe. This mighty instrument of human power itself originates in the primitive constitution of the human mind, and rests upon a few fundamental axioms, which have eternally existed in Him who implanted them in the breast of man when He created him after His own image'.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
LA BADIA E DANTE, 26 novembre 2006
‘Ave, o Maria, piena di grazia; il Signore è con te; tu sei benedetta fra tutte le donne e benedetto il frutto del tuo seno, Gesù. Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, prega per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ora della nostra morte. Amen’.
Signorelli, Dante
Alinari
Augustus Hare
Oggi parlerò di Dante Alighieri, della Divina Commedia e di Firenze. Giovanni Boccaccio tenne le letture della Commedia di Dante nella Badia Fiorentina proprio perché il giovane Dante visse accanto a questa chiesa. Durante la sua fanciullezza deve aver udito i monaci che cantavano la Liturgia della Santa Messa e l’Ufficio delle Ore per glorificare Dio, con le Lodi, la Terza, la Sesta, la Nona, i Vespri e la Compieta, come hanno fatto per secoli prima e dopo di lui. E noi stessi possiamo udire questi canti gregoriani e questi salmi in latino intrecciati nelle pagine in italiano del Purgatorio e del Paradiso. In Inferno manca la musica, in particolare la musica sacra; in quel luogo possiamo udire soltanto rumori, sospiri, grida, urla disperate, i suoni cacofonici di quelli che sono lontani da Dio per propria scelta.
Al tempo di Dante questa chiesa, parte di un antico monastero, era molto diversa, anche più bella. Dopo la sua fanciullezza, ma prima di Boccaccio, fu riedificata da Arnolfo di Cambio e raccoglieva numerose e bellissime opere di Giotto con lo sfondo oro che brillava al lume delle candele. La chiesa in epoca più tarda fu trasformata completamente in stile barocco e prevaleva il chiaroscuro; fu rimossa la bellissima, tenera Madonna con Bambino di Giotto che era posta sull’altare, un dipinto che sembrava compendiare, come quello di Orsanmichele, le numerosissime similitudini presenti nella Commedia che parlano di una madre, del suo latte, e di un bambino. Il dipinto è ora conservato alla Galleria degli Uffizi: si può sì vedere, ma in un freddo museo.
Giotto
Petter Sammerud
Bruno Vivoli
Dante afferma che la sua Commedia è scritta in italiano, e non in latino, perché sia comprensibile non solo ai potenti ma anche alle donne, ai ragazzi, ai poveri, alla sua propria città e all’Italia tutta. Come il Vangelo rivelato agli umili. Come le cantiche di San Francesco. Dante non ha scelto di scrivere una tragedia sui re che fondano il loro agire sul falso potere, ma ha scelto di cantare una commedia, un Magnificat. Egli crea tre cantiche in volgare, dove in cinquecento similitudini sparse in tutto il testo troviamo artigiani e contadini, donne con i loro bambini, un vecchio sarto con l’ago in mano, una madre che dondola la culla del suo bambino, peregrini che vengono da lontano, operai che lavorano in una fornace e tante altre figure tratte dal mondo reale. Dante ricorda il pane di Firenze, che è senza sale ma dura a lungo. L’altrui pane, invece, sa di sale; non è così dolce, e presto ammuffisce. Nel poema vediamo noi stessi come in uno specchio che riflette anche questa città. Una commedia, osserva Dante, inizia nell’acerbità ma termina prosperamente. La Divina Commedia è cristiana, non pagana. E’ il poema della speranza. E’ il poema sacro che trasforma Firenze nella città di Dio. E’ il più famoso poema del mondo.
Dante scrisse la Commedia quando era in esilio da Firenze, ma con la memoria commossa di questa Badia, della piccola e antichissima chiesa irlandese di San Martino, della Torre della Castagna dei Priori, del Bargello (edificato dal padre di Arnolfo di Cambio), del Palazzo del Popolo e del Duomo (entrambi progettati da Arnolfo). Tutte queste opere erano racchiuse nella cinta muraria guelfa di Arnolfo, edificata utilizzando le pietre delle torri della superbia dei ghibellini che erano state abbattute dalla Repubblica del Primo Popolo di Firenze per la difesa comune. Questa bellissima cerchia muraria con le sue porte e le sue torri di difesa fu poi abbattuta nell’Ottocento da Giuseppe Poggi per fare posto ai viali, sul modello dei boulevard della moderna Parigi. La cartolina riproduce il dipinto custodito in Duomo, e mostra Dante fuori dalle mura che come esule spiega la Divina Commedia a Firenze, sul lato sinistro è raffigurata la porta dell’Inferno, alle spalle del poeta il monte del Purgatorio, e nella parte superiore sono raffigurati i cieli del Paradiso. Le tre porte, la porta di Firenze, quella dell’Inferno e del Purgatorio, sono le porte di Arnolfo.
Domenico da Michelino, Dante and Florence, Cathedral
E sulla porta arnolfiana dell’Inferno Dante ha scritto:
Per me si va nella città dolente,
Per me si va nell’etterno dolore,
Per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto Fattore:
Fecemi la Divina Potestate,
La Somma Sapienza e’l Primo Amore.
Ma quando assieme al poeta varchiamo la porta arnolfiana del Purgatorio lasciamo indietro tutta questa angoscia per entrare nell’amore.
La Commedia è un poema che racconta dello stesso esilio di Dante, esilio che diventa pellegrinaggio, prima nell’oscurità dell’Inferno, dove il poeta come peccatore incontra molti altri peccatori, poi in Purgatorio, dove il poeta condivide la sua pena con quella degli altri, e infine in Paradiso, dove sale alla visione celeste con Beatrice Portinari, figlia di Folco Portinari, fondatore dell’Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova. La Commedia è il poema della guarigione di Firenze. Nell’ultima Cantica del Paradiso Dante e noi incontriamo San Bernardo che rivolge un inno alla Madonna – la scena sarà poi raffigurata da Filippino ne La Visione di San Bernardo, un dipinto che fu trasferito in questa chiesa nel 1530, e che il professore Giorgio La Pira, sindaco di Firenze e fondatore della Repubblica di San Procolo, amò molto.
Alinari
Filippino, Vision of Saint Bernard, Badia
Alcune parole di quell’inno del Paradiso sono scolpite sulla lapide posta sulla facciata della Misericordia, parole che spesso leggo ai miei ospiti stranieri, e volgendo poi lo sguardo posso assieme a loro ammirare la bellissima Santa Maria del Fiore:
Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio,
umile e alta più che creatura,
termine fisso d’etterno consiglio,
tu se’ colei che l’umana natura
nobilitasti sì, che ’l suo fattore
non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura.
Nel ventre tuo si raccese l’amore,
per lo cui caldo ne l’etterna pace
così è germinato questo fiore.
Gloria al Padre e al Figlio e allo Spirito Santo
Come era in principio, ora e sempre
nei secoli dei secoli. Amen.
L’eterno riposo dona loro, o Signore,
e splenda ad essi la luce perpetua.
Riposano in pace. Amen.
Buona Domenica a tutti voi.
‘Ave, o Maria, piena di grazia; il Signore è con te; tu sei benedetta fra tutte le donne e benedetto il frutto del tuo seno, Gesù. Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, prega per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ora della nostra morte. Amen’.
Signorelli, Dante
Alinari
Augustus Hare
Oggi parlerò di Dante Alighieri, della Divina Commedia e di Firenze. Giovanni Boccaccio tenne le letture della Commedia di Dante nella Badia Fiorentina proprio perché il giovane Dante visse accanto a questa chiesa. Durante la sua fanciullezza deve aver udito i monaci che cantavano la Liturgia della Santa Messa e l’Ufficio delle Ore per glorificare Dio, con le Lodi, la Terza, la Sesta, la Nona, i Vespri e la Compieta, come hanno fatto per secoli prima e dopo di lui. E noi stessi possiamo udire questi canti gregoriani e questi salmi in latino intrecciati nelle pagine in italiano del Purgatorio e del Paradiso. In Inferno manca la musica, in particolare la musica sacra; in quel luogo possiamo udire soltanto rumori, sospiri, grida, urla disperate, i suoni cacofonici di quelli che sono lontani da Dio per propria scelta.
Al tempo di Dante questa chiesa, parte di un antico monastero, era molto diversa, anche più bella. Dopo la sua fanciullezza, ma prima di Boccaccio, fu riedificata da Arnolfo di Cambio e raccoglieva numerose e bellissime opere di Giotto con lo sfondo oro che brillava al lume delle candele. La chiesa in epoca più tarda fu trasformata completamente in stile barocco e prevaleva il chiaroscuro; fu rimossa la bellissima, tenera Madonna con Bambino di Giotto che era posta sull’altare, un dipinto che sembrava compendiare, come quello di Orsanmichele, le numerosissime similitudini presenti nella Commedia che parlano di una madre, del suo latte, e di un bambino. Il dipinto è ora conservato alla Galleria degli Uffizi: si può sì vedere, ma in un freddo museo.
Giotto
Petter Sammerud
Bruno Vivoli
Dante afferma che la sua Commedia è scritta in italiano, e non in latino, perché sia comprensibile non solo ai potenti ma anche alle donne, ai ragazzi, ai poveri, alla sua propria città e all’Italia tutta. Come il Vangelo rivelato agli umili. Come le cantiche di San Francesco. Dante non ha scelto di scrivere una tragedia sui re che fondano il loro agire sul falso potere, ma ha scelto di cantare una commedia, un Magnificat. Egli crea tre cantiche in volgare, dove in cinquecento similitudini sparse in tutto il testo troviamo artigiani e contadini, donne con i loro bambini, un vecchio sarto con l’ago in mano, una madre che dondola la culla del suo bambino, peregrini che vengono da lontano, operai che lavorano in una fornace e tante altre figure tratte dal mondo reale. Dante ricorda il pane di Firenze, che è senza sale ma dura a lungo. L’altrui pane, invece, sa di sale; non è così dolce, e presto ammuffisce. Nel poema vediamo noi stessi come in uno specchio che riflette anche questa città. Una commedia, osserva Dante, inizia nell’acerbità ma termina prosperamente. La Divina Commedia è cristiana, non pagana. E’ il poema della speranza. E’ il poema sacro che trasforma Firenze nella città di Dio. E’ il più famoso poema del mondo.
Dante scrisse la Commedia quando era in esilio da Firenze, ma con la memoria commossa di questa Badia, della piccola e antichissima chiesa irlandese di San Martino, della Torre della Castagna dei Priori, del Bargello (edificato dal padre di Arnolfo di Cambio), del Palazzo del Popolo e del Duomo (entrambi progettati da Arnolfo). Tutte queste opere erano racchiuse nella cinta muraria guelfa di Arnolfo, edificata utilizzando le pietre delle torri della superbia dei ghibellini che erano state abbattute dalla Repubblica del Primo Popolo di Firenze per la difesa comune. Questa bellissima cerchia muraria con le sue porte e le sue torri di difesa fu poi abbattuta nell’Ottocento da Giuseppe Poggi per fare posto ai viali, sul modello dei boulevard della moderna Parigi. La cartolina riproduce il dipinto custodito in Duomo, e mostra Dante fuori dalle mura che come esule spiega la Divina Commedia a Firenze, sul lato sinistro è raffigurata la porta dell’Inferno, alle spalle del poeta il monte del Purgatorio, e nella parte superiore sono raffigurati i cieli del Paradiso. Le tre porte, la porta di Firenze, quella dell’Inferno e del Purgatorio, sono le porte di Arnolfo.
Domenico da Michelino, Dante and Florence, Cathedral
E sulla porta arnolfiana dell’Inferno Dante ha scritto:
Per me si va nella città dolente,
Per me si va nell’etterno dolore,
Per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto Fattore:
Fecemi la Divina Potestate,
La Somma Sapienza e’l Primo Amore.
Ma quando assieme al poeta varchiamo la porta arnolfiana del Purgatorio lasciamo indietro tutta questa angoscia per entrare nell’amore.
La Commedia è un poema che racconta dello stesso esilio di Dante, esilio che diventa pellegrinaggio, prima nell’oscurità dell’Inferno, dove il poeta come peccatore incontra molti altri peccatori, poi in Purgatorio, dove il poeta condivide la sua pena con quella degli altri, e infine in Paradiso, dove sale alla visione celeste con Beatrice Portinari, figlia di Folco Portinari, fondatore dell’Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova. La Commedia è il poema della guarigione di Firenze. Nell’ultima Cantica del Paradiso Dante e noi incontriamo San Bernardo che rivolge un inno alla Madonna – la scena sarà poi raffigurata da Filippino ne La Visione di San Bernardo, un dipinto che fu trasferito in questa chiesa nel 1530, e che il professore Giorgio La Pira, sindaco di Firenze e fondatore della Repubblica di San Procolo, amò molto.
Alinari
Filippino, Vision of Saint Bernard, Badia
Alcune parole di quell’inno del Paradiso sono scolpite sulla lapide posta sulla facciata della Misericordia, parole che spesso leggo ai miei ospiti stranieri, e volgendo poi lo sguardo posso assieme a loro ammirare la bellissima Santa Maria del Fiore:
Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio,
umile e alta più che creatura,
termine fisso d’etterno consiglio,
tu se’ colei che l’umana natura
nobilitasti sì, che ’l suo fattore
non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura.
Nel ventre tuo si raccese l’amore,
per lo cui caldo ne l’etterna pace
così è germinato questo fiore.
Gloria al Padre e al Figlio e allo Spirito Santo
Come era in principio, ora e sempre
nei secoli dei secoli. Amen.
L’eterno riposo dona loro, o Signore,
e splenda ad essi la luce perpetua.
Riposano in pace. Amen.
Buona Domenica a tutti voi.
Friday, November 17, 2006
ANGELICOS, LOST AND FOUND
Dearworthiest Godfriends,
Last night and the night before were the lecture given by Michael Liversidge of Bristol University on two Fra Angelico paintings he has found.
They had actually been owned by my paleography teacher, Professor Jean Preston, who had acquired them in California where she was Curator of the Ellesmere Chaucer Manuscript at the Huntington Library, then brought to Princeton by her, where she was Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts and where I first saw them, then finally brought to Oxford where she retired.
Jean was never concerned about monetary value, loving her many fine possessions for their beauty, their meaning, sharing them with her friends. Among them were the Kelmscott Chaucer, books by Eric Gill, a Pre-Raphaelite painting.
When I first saw the Fra Angelicos I thought they were real, while she thought they were nineteenth-century fakes, believing instead her fake ivories, made in the nineteenth-century, were medieval. All jumbled together in a small comfortable house with no concern about security, whatsoever.
I consulted with Jean on the Julian edition and it was she who identified the hand of one of the Julian manuscripts as that of a Syon Abbey nun. Her knowledge of paleography was superb, particularly of English hands.
Somehow there is a sadness that in having identified these two small panels as from the Pala of San Marco they are now in the world of commerce and wealth. Once they were for the people, and as part of the Canon of the Mass, two Dominican saints, hallowing Florence. Even the central panel shows Saints Cosmos and Damian, St Cosmos turning towards the Medici with a look of reproach. Fra Angelico painted these in Cortona in answer to the Cosimo de' Medici commission. It is in Rome he paints the most beautiful San Lorenzo giving the wealth of the Church to the poor, it is in outlying churches to Florence that he paints the most sacred Annunciations, it is in his own Priory of which he was Prior, at San Domenico, nestled beneath Fiesole, that he paints the dead Christ on the Cross, hidden for centuries under white wash, its present Prior giving me this for you.
Bless you,
Julia
Dearworthiest Godfriends,
Last night and the night before were the lecture given by Michael Liversidge of Bristol University on two Fra Angelico paintings he has found.
They had actually been owned by my paleography teacher, Professor Jean Preston, who had acquired them in California where she was Curator of the Ellesmere Chaucer Manuscript at the Huntington Library, then brought to Princeton by her, where she was Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts and where I first saw them, then finally brought to Oxford where she retired.
Jean was never concerned about monetary value, loving her many fine possessions for their beauty, their meaning, sharing them with her friends. Among them were the Kelmscott Chaucer, books by Eric Gill, a Pre-Raphaelite painting.
When I first saw the Fra Angelicos I thought they were real, while she thought they were nineteenth-century fakes, believing instead her fake ivories, made in the nineteenth-century, were medieval. All jumbled together in a small comfortable house with no concern about security, whatsoever.
I consulted with Jean on the Julian edition and it was she who identified the hand of one of the Julian manuscripts as that of a Syon Abbey nun. Her knowledge of paleography was superb, particularly of English hands.
Somehow there is a sadness that in having identified these two small panels as from the Pala of San Marco they are now in the world of commerce and wealth. Once they were for the people, and as part of the Canon of the Mass, two Dominican saints, hallowing Florence. Even the central panel shows Saints Cosmos and Damian, St Cosmos turning towards the Medici with a look of reproach. Fra Angelico painted these in Cortona in answer to the Cosimo de' Medici commission. It is in Rome he paints the most beautiful San Lorenzo giving the wealth of the Church to the poor, it is in outlying churches to Florence that he paints the most sacred Annunciations, it is in his own Priory of which he was Prior, at San Domenico, nestled beneath Fiesole, that he paints the dead Christ on the Cross, hidden for centuries under white wash, its present Prior giving me this for you.
Bless you,
Julia
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