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eagna-eilis · 8 months

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Ach-To and Irish Archaeology

The sequels were my entry into Star Wars and I never would have gone to see The Force Awakens if I wasn't an archaeology nerd.

During the production of Episode VII, a decent number of people with an interest in our archaeological heritage here in Ireland were quite worried about the impact of filming on one of our only two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the island known as Skellig Michael down off the coast of Kerry.

I went to the film to see if any potential damage was worth it, or if they'd do something unspeakably stupid with it in-universe. I wanted to see if it was respected.

And holy hell I was NOT disappointed. I think I walked out of TFA sniffling to myself about how beautiful the Skellig looked and how it seemed like its use as a location was not just respectful but heavily inspired by its real history.

See, Skellig Michael was a monastic hermitage established at a point when Christianity was so new that the man who ordered its founding sometime in the first century CE was himself ordained by the Apostle Paul. The fellah from the Bible who harassed all and sundry with his letters, THAT Apostle Paul. This is how old a Christian site the Skellig is. It predates St. Patrick by at the very least two hundred years.

The steps we watch Rey climb were originally cut NEARLY TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO. They have been reworked and repaired many many times since, of course. Still, the path the camera follows Daisy Ridley up is as much an ancient path built by the founders of a faith in real life as it is in the movies.

A hermitage was a place where monks went to live lives of solitude and asceticism so as better to achieve wisdom. The practice is common to many of the major world religions, including the myriad East Asian faiths which inspired the fictional Jedi.

It is said that the hermitage and monastery were originally built with the purpose of housing mystical texts belonging to the Essanes, one of the sects of Second Temple Judaism which influenced some of the doctrines of Christianity. They also, according to what I have read, characterised good and evil as 'light' and 'darkness' and were celibate.

As such, the use of the island in TFA and TLJ does not merely respect Skellig Michael's history, it honours it. It is framed as somewhere ancient and sacred, which it is. It is framed as a place where a mystic goes to live on his own surrounded by nature that is at once punishing and sublime, which of course it was. It shown to be a place established to protect texts written at the establishment of a faith, which it may well have been.

This level of genuine respect for my cultural heritage by Rian Johnson in particular is astonishing. I don't think anyone from outside the US ever really trusts Americans not to treat our built history like it's Disneyland. Much of the incorporation of the Skellig's real past into a fictional galactic history occurs in TLJ, which is why I'm giving Rian so much credit.

It's Luke's death scene which makes the honouring of Irish archaeological history most apparent though.

Johnson takes the archaeological iconography back a further three thousand years for his final tribute to my culture's beautiful historical temples. This time, he incorporates neolithic passage tomb imagery, specifically that of Newgrange, which is up the country from the Skellig.

I think if you understand what the image represents then it makes a deeply emotional scene even more resonant.

The scene I'm referring to is Luke's death.

As he looks to the horizon, to the suns, we view him from the interior of the First Jedi Temple. The sunset aligns with the passageway into the ancient sanctuary, illuminating it as he becomes one with the Force.

As for Newgrange, every year during the Winter Solstice it aligns with the sunrise. The coldest, darkest, wettest, most miserable time of the year on a North Atlantic island where it is often cold, wet, and miserable even in the summer. And the sun comes up even then, and on a cloudless morning a beam of sunlight travels down the corridor and illuminates the chamber inside the mound.

You guys can see this, right? The similarity of the images? The line of light on the floor?

Luke's death scene is beautiful but I think it's a thousand times more moving with this visual context. Luke's sequel arc isn't merely populated by a lore and iconography that honour the place where the end of his story was filmed, I think that incorporation of that history and mythology honours Luke.

We don't know for sure what the Neolithic people believed, religion-wise. We know next to nothing about their rituals. We know that there were ashes laid to rest at Newgrange. There is some speculation that the idea was that the sun coming into the place that kept those ashes brought the spirits of those deceased people over to the other side.

It's also almost impossible not to interpret the sunlight coming into Newgrange as an extraordinary expression of hope. If you know this climate, at this latitude, you know how horrible the winter is. We don't even have the benefit of crispy-snowwy sunlit days. It's grey and it's dark and it's often wet. And every single year the earth tilts back and the days get long again.

The cycle ends and begins again. Death and rebirth. And hope, like the sun, which though unseen will always return. And so we make it through the winter, and through the night.

As it transpired the worries about the impact of the Star Wars Sequels upon Skellig Michael were unfounded. There was no damage caused that visitors wouldn't have also caused. There also wasn't a large uptick in people wanting to visit because of its status as a SW location, in part I think because the sequels just aren't that beloved.

But they're beloved to me, in no small part because of the way they treated a built heritage very dear to my heart. I think they deserve respect for that at the least.

#star wars meta #ach-to #irish history #Irish Archaeology #first jedi temple #skellig michael #newgrange #luke skywalker #the last jedi #early christianity #neolithic #historical parallels in star wars #star wars and history #star wars and mythology #star wars and archaeology

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blueiskewl · 1 year

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A 14th-Century Papal Bull Discovered in Poland

A lead seal found in northwestern Poland has been identified as a rare papal bull from the reign of Pope Boniface IX (1350-1404). It was discovered in 2021 north of a former cemetery in the village of Budzistowo by metal detectorists with the PARSĘTA Exploration and Search Group. Dirt and corrosion made it difficult to identify at first. Specialists in Kraków cleaned and conserved it, revealing the inscription that marks it as the seal of Boniface IX.

Bullae were round seals, usually made of lead, that were hung on silk strings affixed to the parchments of official proclamations and documents. They were legally valid and highly recognizable signatures. Metallurgic analysis found that this one was made of pure lead derived from galenite deposits in Cyprus, Sardinia, Greece and Spain. This composition indicates the bull is original, not a later copy.

The reverse inscription reads: BONI/FATIUS/PP:VIIII. The obverse features the images of Saint Peter and Saint Paul identified by the inscription SPASPE above their heads.

In the 9th century, what is now Budzistowo was founded by Pomeranian tribes as the fortified settlement of Kołobrzeg. The settlement was on the Parsęta River 2.5 miles from its mouth on the Baltic Sea, and was rich in salt, fish, iron ore and arable land. The Polish Piast dynasty conquered the area in the 10th century, and Kołobrzeg grew into a regional center of the trade in salt and salt-cured fish.

It became a seat of a bishopric in 1000, but the area would only become thoroughly Christianized in the 12th century. St Mary’s church was built at that time. It was converted into an abbey in the 13th century when German settlers founded a new town of Kołobrzeg on the Baltic and the former Pomeranian stronghold was renamed Old Kołobrzeg. A monastery for Benedictine nuns was then built in Old Kołobrzeg.

Historians hypothesize that the bull was kept at the Benedictine monastery, based on a reference in the comprehensive history of Kołobrzeg written by the 18th century Pastor Johann Friedrich Wachsen. He recorded that in 1397, Boniface issued a letter of indulgence for the Benedictine nuns. It guaranteed a full indulgence to anyone who visited the local church.

With no relic relating to the monastery surviving to this day, [Dr Robert Dziemba, the head of the Kołobrzeg History Department,] says that if it is proved that this bull is the same one referenced by Wachsen it would be nothing short of “a historical revelation”. […]

Dziemba speculates that this particular papal bull may have been lost in the 16th century.

“After the 1534 congress in Trzebiatów introduced Lutheranism to Pomerania, the document simply lost its value,” he said. “Maybe the bull was thrown out when the duchy took control of the monastery as a result of this congress – but maybe it was lost centuries later. We will probably never know when and why it was discarded.”

The conserved bull has gone on display in the Museum of Arms in Kołobrzeg.

#A 14th-Century Papal Bull Discovered in Poland #Pope Boniface IX #lead seal #metal detecting #archeology #archeolgst #ancient artifacts #history #history news #ancient history #ancient culture #ancient civilizations #medieval history #middle ages #dark ages

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catalinadearagonsblog · 17 days

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"In the 1520s, England too was a country bursting with relics. Catherine had kissed them at Canterbury, Walsingham, Westminster and St Paul’s, and followed Elizabeth of York’s example of going into labour clutching the birthing girdle of the Virgin Mary. And these relics were accessible to the people in small parish churches, not just in the large cathedrals and monasteries. In Shelford visitors might see phials of Mary’s milk and part of her churching candle, in Kaldham the finger bone of St Stephen was on display, in Burton-on-Trent pilgrims might see the staff of St Modwena, and part of the shirt of St Thomas could be found at Derby. Clothing, girdles, combs, hair, bones and bodily fluids could be found housed all around the country as an essential component of pre-Reformation Catholicism, accessible, powerful and defining. Catherine was an important religious leader in England, teaching by example. Among the artefacts that accompanied her on her travels were pictures of Mary and her mother, St Anne, and St Elizabeth, who must have had particular resonance for Catherine, as she had miraculously conceived and given birth to a child even after the onset of her menopause."

Amy Licence, Catherine of Aragon: An Intimate Life of Henry VIII's True Wife

#catherine of aragon #katherine of aragon #catalina de aragon

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officialyourdailyinspiration · 12 days

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Today in Christian History

Today is Thursday, April 25th, 2024. It is the 116th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; Because it is a leap year, 250 days remain until the end of the year.

62: Death of Mark the Gospel writer while imprisoned in Alexandria in the eighth year of Nero, according to Vetus martyrologium romanum (an old Roman collation of martyr accounts).

799: Pope Leo III is attacked, his eyes stabbed, and his tongue torn. He recovers and later crowns Charlemagne as emperor.

1449: The ineffectual Council of Basel ends.

1479: Death of Sylvester of Obnorsk, a Russian Orthodox hermit who had lived off roots and bark. Eventually he had established a monastery.

1564: John Calvin, reformer of Geneva, dictates his last will and testament to notary Peter Chenalat.

1595: Death from a fever in the convent of St. Onofrio of Italian poet Torquato Tasso. Ironically, he was supposed to receive a laurel from the pope on this day in recognition of his epic poems, among which Jerusalem Delivered had been the most acclaimed.

1735: Death at Epworth, England, of Samuel Wesley, curate, author, and father of Methodist revival leaders John and Charles Wesley.

1800: Death at East Dereham, Norfolk, England, of English poet William Cowper (pictured above). Despite lifelong depression, he had produced enduring hymns, including, “Oh For a Closer Walk with God” and “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” Dementia had led him to believe he was damned.

1879: Consecration of J. B. Lightfoot as Bishop of Durham. A renowned English New Testament scholar, he had left Cambridge and a life of scholarship to devote the remaining ten years of his life to church administration.

1889: Death at Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, of Anzentia Igene Perry Chapman. A member of the Free Methodist Church, she wrote a number of hymns, including, “Thou Shalt Rest at Eve,” and “We’ll Never Say Goodbye.”

1917: Ordination of Paul Sasaki as a priest in the Anglican Church in Japan. He will become bishop of Nippon Sei Ko Kei (an independent church organization within the Anglican Communion), and suffer imprisonment for his refusal to bring Nippon Sei Ko Kei under the authority of a government-ordered church coalition.

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portraitsofsaints · 10 months

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Saint Charbel Makhlouf

1828-1898

Feast day: July 24

Saint Charbel, born in a small village in Lebanon, to a poor religious family, entered the Maronite Monastery of St. Maroun, (A Lebanese Maronite order) at 23 and was ordained a priest in1859. He served there for 16 years, then retired to the hermitage of Sts. Peter and Paul. Charbel lived a severe ascetic life of prayer, mortification, and self-denial and had a remarkable devotion to the Eucharist. He had a massive stroke while saying Mass on Christmas Eve and died 7 days later. For 45 days a bright light surrounded his tomb. The monks exhumed his body and it was found incorrupt. For approximately 62 years a viscous liquid came from his body. Many miracles are attributed to his intercession.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

#catholic art #catholic men #catholic faith #Catholic pictures #Maronite saint

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homomenhommes · 5 months

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … December 14

c.530 – Venantius Fortunatus (d.circa 600/609) was a Latin poet and hymnodist in the Merovingian Court, and a Bishop of the early Catholic Church. He was never canonised but was venerated as Saint Venantius Fortunatus during the Middle Ages.

Born in Treviso, near Ravenna in Italy, he spent his time as court poet to the Merovingians. After visiting the tomb of St. Martin of Tours at St. Hilary at Poitiers, he decided to enter a monastery.

He continued to write poetry, some of which have a permanent place in Catholic hymnody, for instance the Easter season hymns "Vexilla Regis" and the "Pange Lingua" (Sing, O my tongue, of the battle). Three or four years before he died he was made bishop of Poitiers. Although never canonized, he was venerated as a saint in the medieval church, and his feast day is still recognized on 14th December each year.

Like Paulinus of Nola, St Venantius's poetry also includes some decidedly secular verse of the romantic sort. That this celebrates male love is clear from its inclusion in the Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse.

"Written on an Island off the Breton Coast" You at God's altar stand, His minister And Paris lies about you and the Seine: Around this Breton isle the Ocean swells, Deep water and one love between us twain. Wild is the wind, but still thy name is spoken; Rough is the sea: it sweeps not o'er they face. Still runs my lover for shelter to its dwelling, Hither, O heart, to thine abiding place. Swift as the waves beneath an east wind breaking Dark as beneath a winter sky the sea, So to my heart crowd memories awaking, So dark, O love, my spirit without thee.

Fortunatus died in the early 600s. He was called a saint after his death, but was never formally canonized.

1791 – Today is the birthday of the Irish poet Charles Wolfe (d.1823). Born at Blackhall, County Kildare, Wolfe attended Trinity College, Dublin between 1809 and 1814 and was ordained as a Church of Ireland priest in 1817. He is remembered for his poem "The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna", written in 1816 and much collected in 19th and early 20th century anthologies.

Wolfe's sexuality is often disputed, many believe he was homosexual. He certainly had an extremely intense friendship with the Rev. Thomas Meredith for whom he wrote two gushing epithets. Wolfe died from tuberculosis caught from a cow at the age of 32. Yes. A cow. Even into the mid-20th century tuberculosis was commonly transferred via milk.

1901 – King Paul of Greece (d.1964) reigned as king of Greece from 1947 to 1964. He may have been bi-sexual.

Paul was born in Athens, the third son of King Constantine I of Greece and his wife, Princess Sophia of Prussia. He was trained as a naval officer. On 9 January 1938, Paul married Frederika of Hanover at Athens. They had three children.

Before his marriage he is alleged to have invited the homosexual literary muse, Denham Fouts, on a cruise of the Aegean Sea, perhaps because they were lovers. However, Fouts's friend John B. L. Goodwin said Fouts often made up stories about his life, and literary critic Katherine Bucknell thought many of the tales about him were myth.

During most of World War II, when Greece was under German occupation, he was with the Greek government-in-exile in London and Cairo. From Cairo, he broadcast messages to the Greek people.

Paul returned to Greece in 1946. He succeeded to the throne in 1947, on the death of his childless elder brother, King George II.

1951 – Today's the birthday of American actor and puppetteer Paul Zaloom. He's best known for his role as the character Beakman on the television show Beakman's World, based on the Universal Press Syndicate syndicated comic strip You Can With Beakman and Jax created by Jok Church.

Paul Zaloom was educated at The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, and began his entertainment career at Goddard College with artists in residence the Bread and Puppet Theater, a troupe specializing in self-invented, home-made theater. One of their performance locations was Coney Island, where Zaloom is said to have given advice to the "unofficial Mayor of Coney Island", Dick Zigun, on how to bring in the crowds. In his solo work he utilizes found-object animation, in which he takes objects as varied as coffee pots and humidifiers and turns them into elements of political satire. His personal politics are liberal; he has referred to Elizabeth Dole and Margaret Thatcher as "right wing nut jobs." He has also been a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy since the early 1980s, having helped to lead a disarmament march during the Cold War.

In 1992 Zaloom starred in the cable TV children's science program Beakman's World. The show moved to CBS in 1993 and aired for four seasons. Zaloom has also written, designed and performed eleven full length one-man shows, including Fruit of Zaloom, Sick But True, Mighty Nice, and The Mother of All Enemies, the latter a shadow-puppet show featuring traditional Middle-Eastern comic puppet character Karagoz. His latest effort tackles social issues such as privacy, the war on terrorism, and discrimination based on sexual orientation and ethnicity. Aside from shadow puppetry, Zaloom's idiosyncratic work utilizes techniques such as overhead projection, government document expose, cantastoria picture performance, toy theater, as well as hand, rod, found object, and dummy puppets.

Zaloom has described himself as "a Gay, Buddhist, agnostic, quaker, secular humanist knucklehead."

1955 – Hervé Guibert (d.1991) was a French writer and photographer. The author of numerous novels and autobiographical studies, he played a considerable role in changing French public attitudes to AIDS. He was a close friend and lover of Michel Foucault.

Guibert was born in Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine, to a middle-class family and spent his early years in Paris, moving to La Rochelle from 1970 to 1973. In his teens Hervé Guibert lied about his age to work at the magazine 20 ans eventually leading to a job with Le Monde. After working as a filmmaker and actor, he turned to photography and journalism. In 1978, he successfully applied for a job at France's prestigious evening paper Le Monde and published his second book, Les aventures singulières (published by Éditions de minuit). In 1984, Guibert shared a César Award for best screenplay with Patrice Chéreau for L'homme blessé. Guibert had met Chéreau in the 1970s during his theatrical years.

Guibert's writing style was inspired by the French writer Jean Genet. Three of his lovers occupied an important place in his life and work: Thierry Jouno, director of an institute for the blind whom he met in 1976, and which led to his novel Des aveugles; Michel Foucault, whom he met in 1977; and Vincent Marmousez, a teenager of fifteen who inspired his novel Fou de Vincent.

In January 1988 Guibert was diagnosed with AIDS. From then on, he worked at recording what was left of his life. In June the following year, he married Christine, the partner of the late Thierry Jouno, so that his royalty income would eventually pass to her and her two children. In 1990, Guibert publicly revealed his HIV status in his roman à clef "À l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie" (published in English as To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life). Guibert immediately found himself the focus of media attention, featured in newspapers and appearing on several television talk shows.

Two more books also detailing the progress of his illness followed: Le Protocole compassionnel (published in English as The Compassionate Protocol) and L'Homme au chapeau rouge (published in English as The Man In The Red Hat), which was released posthumously in January 1992, the same month French television screened La Pudeur ou l'impudeur, a home-made film by Guibert of his last year as he lost his battle against AIDS. Almost blind as a result of disease, he attempted to end his life just before his 36th birthday, and died two weeks later.

1960 – Bob Paris, American bodybuilder and Gay rights advocate, born; The former Mr. Universe, and International Federation of BodyBuilders professional bodybuilder, Bob Paris is a writer, public speaker and civil rights activist. He acknowledged his sexuality in the July 1989 issue of Ironman magazine and has graced the covers of scores of magazines worldwide. After Paris officially came out as a Gay man in the media, he and his then-partner, Rod Jackson, became involved in marriage equality advocacy, started successful non-profits, lectured on a wide variety of Gay civil rights issues, and made many television, radio, newspaper and magazine appearances. The two separated in 1995. Today, Paris lives with his spouse of eleven years, Brian, on an island near Vancouver, British Columbia. Bob and Brian were legally married after Canada equalized the marriage laws in 2003.

In addition to his writing career, Bob Paris remains a committed civil rights advocate as well as a motivational speaker, model and actor. In 1998, he made his New York stage debut, starring at Carnegie Hall opposite Bea Arthur, Sandy Duncan and Tyne Daly in the Broadway musical, Jubilee as the character Mowgli. He is one of the subject of photographer Herb Ritts' gorgeous book, Duo. His official website is: http://www.bobparis.com/

1968 – Yotam Ottolenghi is an Israeli-English chef, restaurateur, and food writer. He is the co-owner of six delis and restaurants in London, as well as the author of several bestselling cookbooks, including Ottolenghi (2008), Plenty (2010), Jerusalem (2012) and Ottolenghi Simple (2018).

Ottolenghi was conscripted into the Israeli Defense Forces in 1989, serving three years in IDF intelligence headquarters. He then studied at the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students of Tel Aviv University, where in 1997, he completed a combined bachelor's and master's degree in comparative literature; his thesis being on the philosophy of the photographic image. While working on his thesis, Ottolenghi served as a night copy editor for Haaretz.

In 1997, Ottolenghi and his then-partner Noam Bar moved to Amsterdam, where he edited the Hebrew section of the Dutch-Jewish weekly NIW and considered getting his doctorate in comparative literature. Instead, he moved to London to study French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu.

Ottolenghi met his partner Karl Allen in 2000; they married in 2012 and live in Camden with their two sons, Max and Flynn. In 2013, Ottolenghi "came out as a gay father" in a Guardian essay that detailed the lengthy process of conceiving Max via gestational surrogacy, an option that he believes should be more widely available to those who cannot conceive naturally.

Ottolenghi served as a pastry chef at three London restaurants: the Michelin-starred Capital Restaurant, Kensington Place, and Launceston Place in Kensington New Town. In 1999, he became head pastry chef at the artisanal pastry shop Baker and Spice, where he met the Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi, who grew up in Jerusalem's Old City. Ottolenghi and Tamimi bonded over a shared language—Hebrew—and a joint "incomprehension of traditional English food".

His debut cookbook Ottolenghi was published in 2008 and has sold over 100,000 copies. Six volumes have followed: the all-vegetable cookbooks Plenty (2010) and Plenty More (2014); Jerusalem (2012); Nopi (2015); the dessert cookbook Sweet (2017); and Ottolenghi Simple (2018).

Ottolenghi's bestselling cookbooks have proven influential, with The New York Times noting that they are "widely knocked-off for their plain-spoken instructions, puffy covers, and photographs [that Ottolenghi] oversees himself, eschewing a food stylist". In 2014, the London Evening Standard remarked that Ottolenghi had "radically rewritten the way Londoners cook and eat", and Bon Appetit wrote that he had "made the world love vegetables".

1989 – Amini Fonua is a Tongan competitive swimmer.

Fonua was born and raised in Ponsonby, Auckland, New Zealand to Tongan lawyer Sione Fonua and British-born mother Julie. He holds dual Tongan and New Zealand citizenship. His family includes two other sisters.

Fonua's swimming career began at the Roskill Swimming Club based at Cameron Pool in Auckland, coached by Sandra Burrow from 1999–2007. He broke numerous Auckland and New Zealand Age Group Records under Burrow's tenure. He then moved to West Auckland Aquatics in 2007, and was coached by Donna Bouzaid. In the Fall of 2008, Fonua enrolled at Texas A&M on a swimming scholarship. While at Texas A&M he was a peer voted Team Captain, Big XII Conference Champion, NCAA All-American, and recipient of The Aggie Heart Award. He graduated with a Telecommunication and Multi-Media degree, with a Minor in Creative Writing in May 2013.

He was the first Tongan swimmer to win a gold medal in international competition, when he took gold in the 50 metre breaststroke at the 2010 Oceania Swimming Championships.

In preparation for the 2012 London Olympics Fonua was trained by New Zealander and designated head coach for Tonga, Jon Winter. He served as his nation's flag-bearer in the 2012 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations. As a swimmer at the 2012 Summer Olympics, he competed in the Men's 100 metre breaststroke, failing to reach the semifinals.

Fonua made an international comeback at the 2015 Pacific Games in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. He created history by becoming the first ever Tongan athlete to ever win 3 Gold medals at a Pacific Games by sweeping the Breaststroke events, setting 2 Games Records in the process (50 m and 100 m Breaststroke). He is the only Tongan athlete in history to ever hold dual Oceania and Pacific Games titles.

Fonua is openly gay and an advocate for LGBT rights.

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eternal-echoes · 3 months

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“Just as the sixteenth-century attack on the monasteries by the Crown debilitated the network of charity that those institutions had supported, the French Revolution's eighteenth-century attack on the Church likewise struck at the source of so much good work. In November 1789, the revolutionary French government nationalized (that is, confiscated) Church property. The archbishop of Aix en Provence warned that such an act of theft threatened educational and welfare provisions for the French people. He was right, of course. In 1847, France had 47 percent fewer hospitals than in the year of the confiscation, and in 1799 the 50,000 students enrolled in universities ten years earlier had dwindled to a mere 12,000.1”

- Thomas E. Woods Jr., Ph.D., “How Catholic Charity Changed the World,” How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

—

1. Michael Davies, For Altar and Throne: The Rising in the Vendée (St. Paul, Minn.: Remnant Press, 1997), 11.

#Catholic #Christianity #quotes #Thomas E. Woods #Western Civilization #charity

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marsellabarsoum · 2 months

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Youssef Antoun Makhlouf was born in 1828, in Bekaa Kafra (North Lebanon). He had a true Christian upbringing, which had given him a passion for prayer. Then he followed his two hermit uncles in the hermitage of the St Antonious Kozhaya monastery and was converted to monastic and hermetical life.

In 1851, he left his family village and headed for the Our Lady of Maifouk monastery to spend his first monastic year, and then he went to the St Maron monastery in Annaya, where he entered the Maronite Order, carrying the name Charbel, a name of one of the Antioch church martyrs of the second century. On November 1st. 1853, he exposed his ceremonial vows in St Maron’s monastery - Annaya. Then he completed his theological studies in the St Kobrianous and Justina monastery in Kfifan, Batroun.

He was ordained a priest in Bkerky, the Maronite Patriarchate, on July 23rd, 1859. He lived 16 years in the St Maron's monastery – Annaya. From there, he entered, on February 15th, 1875, the St Peter & Paul hermitage, which belongs to the monastery. He was a typical saint and hermit, who spent his time praying and worshipping. Rarely had he left the hermitage where he followed the way of the saintly hermits in prayers, life and practice.

St Charbel lived in the hermitage for 23 years. On December 16th, 1898 he was struck with an illness while performing the holy mass. He died on Christmas' eve, December 24th, 1898, and was buried in the St Maron monastery cemetery in Annaya.

Few months later, dazzling lights were seen around the grave. From there, his corpse, which had been secreting sweat and blood, was transferred into a special coffin. Hordes of pilgrims started swarming the place to get his intercession. And through this intercession, God blessed many people with recovery and spiritual graces.

In 1925, his beatification and canonization were proposed for declaration by Pope Pious XI. In 1950, the grave was opened in the presence of an official committee which included doctors who verified the soundness of the body. After the grave had been opened and inspected, the variety of healing incidents amazingly multiplied. A multitude of pilgrims from different religious facets started flocking to the Annaya monastery to get the saint's intercession.

Prodigies reached beyond the Lebanese borders. This unique phenomenon caused a moral revolution, the return to faith and the reviving of the virtues of the soul.

#st charbel #christian #aanaya #lebanon #shotoniphone #photography #sky #view #pray #saint charbel

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cassianus · 10 months

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Can the Ladder, a work written by a hermit monk who lived 1,400 years ago, say something to us today? Can the existential journey of a man who lived his entire life on Mount Sinai in such a distant time be relevant to us?

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

After 20 Catecheses dedicated to the Apostle Paul, today I would like to return to presenting the great writers of the Church of the East and of the West in the Middle Ages. And I am proposing the figure of John known as Climacus, a Latin transliteration of the Greek term klimakos, which means of the ladder (klimax). This is the title of his most important work in which he describes the ladder of human life ascending towards God. He was born in about 575 a.d. He lived, therefore, during the years in which Byzantium, the capital of the Roman Empire of the East, experienced the greatest crisis in its history. The geographical situation of the Empire suddenly changed and the torrent of barbarian invasions swept away all its structures. Only the structure of the Church withstood them, continuing in these difficult times to carry out her missionary, human, social and cultural action, especially through the network of monasteries in which great religious figures such as, precisely, John Climacus were active.

John lived and told of his spiritual experiences in the Mountains of Sinai, where Moses encountered God and Elijah heard his voice. Information on him has been preserved in a brief Life (PG 88, 596-608), written by a monk, Daniel of Raithu. At the age of 16, John, who had become a monk on Mount Sinai, made himself a disciple of Abba Martyr, an "elder", that is, a "wise man". At about 20 years of age, he chose to live as a hermit in a grotto at the foot of the mountain in the locality of Tola, eight kilometres from the present-day St Catherine's Monastery. Solitude, however, did not prevent him from meeting people eager for spiritual direction, or from paying visits to several monasteries near Alexandria. In fact, far from being an escape from the world and human reality, his eremitical retreat led to ardent love for others (Life, 5) and for God (ibid., 7). After 40 years of life as a hermit, lived in love for God and for neighbour years in which he wept, prayed and fought with demons he was appointed hegumen of the large monastery on Mount Sinai and thus returned to cenobitic life in a monastery. However, several years before his death, nostalgic for the eremitical life, he handed over the government of the community to his brother, a monk in the same monastery.

John died after the year 650. He lived his life between two mountains, Sinai and Tabor and one can truly say that he radiated the light which Moses saw on Sinai and which was contemplated by the three Apostles on Mount Tabor!

He became famous, as I have already said, through his work, entitled The Climax, in the West known as the Ladder of Divine Ascent (PG 88, 632-1164). Composed at the insistent request of the hegumen of the neighbouring Monastery of Raithu in Sinai, the Ladder is a complete treatise of spiritual life in which John describes the monk's journey from renunciation of the world to the perfection of love. This journey according to his book covers 30 steps, each one of which is linked to the next. The journey may be summarized in three consecutive stages: the first is expressed in renunciation of the world in order to return to a state of evangelical childhood. Thus, the essential is not the renunciation but rather the connection with what Jesus said, that is, the return to true childhood in the spiritual sense, becoming like children. John comments: "A good foundation of three layers and three pillars is: innocence, fasting and temperance. Let all babes in Christ (cf. 1 Cor 3: 1) begin with these virtues, taking as their model the natural babes" (1, 20; 636). Voluntary detachment from beloved people and places permits the soul to enter into deeper communion with God. This renunciation leads to obedience which is the way to humility through humiliations which will never be absent on the part of the brethren. John comments: "Blessed is he who has mortified his will to the very end and has entrusted the care of himself to his teacher in the Lord: indeed he will be placed on the right hand of the Crucified One!" (4, 37; 704).

The second stage of the journey consists in spiritual combat against the passions. Every step of the ladder is linked to a principal passion that is defined and diagnosed, with an indication of the treatment and a proposal of the corresponding virtue. All together, these steps of the ladder undoubtedly constitute the most important treatise of spiritual strategy that we possess. The struggle against the passions, however, is steeped in the positive it does not remain as something negative thanks to the image of the "fire" of the Holy Spirit: that "all those who enter upon the good fight (cf. 1 Tm 6: 12), which is hard and narrow,... may realize that they must leap into the fire, if they really expect the celestial fire to dwell in them" (1,18; 636). The fire of the Holy Spirit is the fire of love and truth. The power of the Holy Spirit alone guarantees victory. However, according to John Climacus it is important to be aware that the passions are not evil in themselves; they become so through human freedom's wrong use of them. If they are purified, the passions reveal to man the path towards God with energy unified by ascesis and grace and, "if they have received from the Creator an order and a beginning..., the limit of virtue is boundless" (26/2, 37; 1068).

The last stage of the journey is Christian perfection that is developed in the last seven steps of the Ladder. These are the highest stages of spiritual life, which can be experienced by the "Hesychasts": the solitaries, those who have attained quiet and inner peace; but these stages are also accessible to the more fervent cenobites. Of the first three simplicity, humility and discernment John, in line with the Desert Fathers, considered the ability to discern, the most important. Every type of behaviour must be subject to discernment; everything, in fact, depends on one's deepest motivations, which need to be closely examined. Here one enters into the soul of the person and it is a question of reawakening in the hermit, in the Christian, spiritual sensitivity and a "feeling heart", which are gifts from God: "After God, we ought to follow our conscience as a rule and guide in everything," (26/1,5; 1013). In this way one reaches tranquillity of soul, hesychia, by means of which the soul may gaze upon the abyss of the divine mysteries.

The state of quiet, of inner peace, prepares the Hesychast for prayer which in John is twofold: "corporeal prayer" and "prayer of the heart". The former is proper to those who need the help of bodily movement: stretching out the hands, uttering groans, beating the breast, etc. (15, 26; 900). The latter is spontaneous, because it is an effect of the reawakening of spiritual sensitivity, a gift of God to those who devote themselves to corporeal prayer. In John this takes the name "Jesus prayer" (Iesou euche), and is constituted in the invocation of solely Jesus' name, an invocation that is continuous like breathing: "May your remembrance of Jesus become one with your breathing, and you will then know the usefulness of hesychia", inner peace (27/2, 26; 1112). At the end the prayer becomes very simple: the word "Jesus" simply becomes one with the breath.

The last step of the ladder (30), suffused with "the sober inebriation of the spirit", is dedicated to the supreme "trinity of virtues": faith, hope and above all charity. John also speaks of charity as eros (human love), a symbol of the matrimonial union of the soul with God, and once again chooses the image of fire to express the fervour, light and purification of love for God. The power of human love can be reoriented to God, just as a cultivated olive may be grafted on to a wild olive tree (cf. Rm 11: 24) (cf. 15, 66; 893). John is convinced that an intense experience of this eros will help the soul to advance far more than the harsh struggle against the passions, because of its great power. Thus, in our journey, the positive aspect prevails. Yet charity is also seen in close relation to hope: "Hope is the power that drives love. Thanks to hope, we can look forward to the reward of charity.... Hope is the doorway of love.... The absence of hope destroys charity: our efforts are bound to it, our labours are sustained by it, and through it we are enveloped by the mercy of God" (30, 16; 1157). The conclusion of the Ladder contains the synthesis of the work in words that the author has God himself utter: "May this ladder teach you the spiritual disposition of the virtues. I am at the summit of the ladder, and as my great initiate (St Paul) said: "So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love' (1 Cor 13: 13)!" (30, 18; 1160).

At this point, a last question must be asked: can the Ladder, a work written by a hermit monk who lived 1,400 years ago, say something to us today? Can the existential journey of a man who lived his entire life on Mount Sinai in such a distant time be relevant to us? At first glance it would seem that the answer must be "no", because John Climacus is too remote from us. But if we look a little closer, we see that the monastic life is only a great symbol of baptismal life, of Christian life. It shows, so to speak, in capital letters what we write day after day in small letters. It is a prophetic symbol that reveals what the life of the baptized person is, in communion with Christ, with his death and Resurrection. The fact that the top of the "ladder", the final steps, are at the same time the fundamental, initial and most simple virtues is particularly important to me: faith, hope and charity. These are not virtues accessible only to moral heroes; rather they are gifts of God to all the baptized: in them our life develops too. The beginning is also the end, the starting point is also the point of arrival: the whole journey towards an ever more radical realization of faith, hope and charity. The whole ascent is present in these virtues. Faith is fundamental, because this virtue implies that I renounce my arrogance, my thought, and the claim to judge by myself without entrusting myself to others. This journey towards humility, towards spiritual childhood is essential. It is necessary to overcome the attitude of arrogance that makes one say: I know better, in this my time of the 21st century, than what people could have known then. Instead, it is necessary to entrust oneself to Sacred Scripture alone, to the word of the Lord, to look out on the horizon of faith with humility, in order to enter into the enormous immensity of the universal world, of the world of God. In this way our soul grows, the sensitivity of the heart grows toward God. Rightly, John Climacus says that hope alone renders us capable of living charity; hope in which we transcend the things of every day, we do not expect success in our earthly days but we look forward to the revelation of God himself at last. It is only in this extension of our soul, in this self-transcendence, that our life becomes great and that we are able to bear the effort and disappointments of every day, that we can be kind to others without expecting any reward. Only if there is God, this great hope to which I aspire, can I take the small steps of my life and thus learn charity. The mystery of prayer, of the personal knowledge of Jesus, is concealed in charity: simple prayer that strives only to move the divine Teacher's heart. So it is that one's own heart opens, one learns from him his own kindness, his love. Let us therefore use this "ascent" of faith, hope and charity. In this way we will arrive at true life.

Vatican, Feb. 11, 2009

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orthodoxadventure · 6 months

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In rocky Herzegovina, not far from the city of Trebinje, there sits the Monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul. Church Tradition preserves testimony that the apostles Paul and Titus passed through the area and preached on their way to Dalmatia. In the mountains, not far from the monastery is St. Paul’s cave, where the apostle stayed. The churches of the monastery date back to ancient times, as evidenced by the architectural excavations and scholarly research conducted there.

The larger Basilica of the Apostle Peter was restored back in 1906 by the efforts of the hieromartyr Metropolitan Peter Zimonjic, who suffered from the Croatian Ustaše in 1941. The smaller church is dedicated to the apostle Paul. It was in a dilapidated state for centuries but was fully restored in 2007. In fact, it was built over the existing basilica, on a triconch1 plan. The remains of the ancient basilica and baptistery are carefully preserved within it. It is now an active church where the Divine Liturgy is again celebrated. In its original fresco iconography, the events of the apostolic age and the history of the Serbian Church are intertwined.

Photos and text by Hieromonk Ignaty (Shestakov), translated by Jesse Dominick / OrthoChristian.com

#Christianity #Orthodox Christianity #Architecture #History #Religion

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lidathedefiant · 4 months

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There's an eight-day span of Northern Reaches travel that takes place in an abandoned monastery. The short of it is, there's a blizzard. This is when they encounter the terror-feeder.

Because my brain cannot work without all the data, I went looking for ancient monastery floor plans so I can make my own. Enter the Plan of St. Gall, which did not depict St. Gall but was found at St. Gall.

I guess this bad boy dates from like the 13th century and is the only example we have an architectural drawing at this scale from this time period. It may have survived because somebody was like OOOO PAPER and it got a new life as a saint biography. But don't quote me on any of that. I'm more interested in what it says than how it came to be.

What I do know is this thing is absurdly difficult to parse. Latin is not a language I know well, and I'm really just flying blind.

Some things I've found that just cannot be right:

A room labeled "aliud" which just means... "something else"??

"Domur bubulcorum" -- so cow bedroom? Which makes sense as this was a fully-functional monastery, but then right beside it is "conclave aprecularum", which is the "priests' chamber", or the "concalve appecularum" (depending on if I can read the handwriting), which is the "room of glasses"??? (S/o to @im-a-luxury--few-can-afford for pointing out it's probably milk jars.)

A space at the top of the sanctuary that describes being gently squeezed through the crypt -- "per crypta strycta mite bynt".

Above the crypt on the opposite side, we've got "Hic paul(y), magni breemur/bremur/bramur/brumur", which is "Here's Paul," and then either "loud noise", "future big breaking", or "we are very proud".

It seems like they're doing that thing where the S sound is sometimes written as f, and also maybe the German ß is involved but the handwriting may just be that bad.

All of this is to say, someone else had better have translated this, because good gracious I cannot. I've tried. It's not happening.

#shoutout to where they stitched the little rips with actual thread #this thing is amazing #fantasy writing #monastery #plan of st. gall #architecture #historical architecture #history #latin #latin language #translation #translation fail #architectural drawing

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thepastisalreadywritten · 5 months

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SAINT OF THE DAY (November 25)

Catholics and other Christians around the world celebrate today, November 25, the memorial of St. Catherine of Alexandria, a revered martyr of the fourth century.

St. Catherine was the subject of great interest and devotion among later medieval Christians.

Devotees relished tales of her rejection of marriage, her rebuke to an emperor, and her decision to cleave to Christ even under threat of torture.

Pope John Paul II restored the celebration of her memorial to the Roman Catholic calendar in 2002.

Catherine's popularity as a figure of devotion, during an era of imaginative hagiography, has obscured the facts of her life.

It is likely that she was of noble birth, a convert to Christianity, a virgin by choice (before the emergence of organized monasticism), and eventually a martyr for the faith.

Accounts of Catherine's life also agree on the location where she was born, educated, and bore witness to her faith.

The Egyptian city of Alexandria was a center of learning in the ancient world, and tradition represents Catherine as the highly educated daughter of a noble pagan family.

It is said that a vision of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus spurred her conversion. The story has inspired works of art, which depict her decision to live as a virginal “spouse of Christ.”

Emperor Maxentius ruled Egypt during Catherine's brief lifetime, a period when multiple co-emperors jointly governed the Roman Empire.

During this time, just before Emperor Constantine's embrace and legalization of Christianity, the Church was growing but also attracting persecution.

Catherine, eager to defend the faith she had embraced, came before Maxentius to protest a brutal campaign against the Church.

At first, the emperor decided to try and persuade her to renounce Christ.

But in a debate that the emperor proceeded to arrange between Catherine and a number of pagan philosophers, Catherine prevailed – with her skillful apologetics converting them instead.

Maxentius' next stratagem involved an offer to make her his mistress.

She not only rebuffed the emperor but also reportedly convinced his wife to be baptized.

Enraged by Catherine's boldness and resolve, the Emperor resolved to break her will through torture on a spiked wheel.

Tradition holds that she was miraculously freed from the wheel, either before or during torture. Finally, she was beheaded.

Maxentius later died in a historic battle against his co-Emperor Constantine in October of 312, after which he was remembered disdainfully, if at all.

St. Catherine, meanwhile, inspired generations of philosophers, consecrated women, and martyrs.

Ironically, or perhaps appropriately – given both her embrace of virginity and her “mystic marriage” to Christ – young women in many Western European countries were once known to seek her intercession in finding their husbands.

Regrettably, the torture wheel to which she herself may have been subjected was subsequently nicknamed the “Catherine wheel” and used even among Christian kingdoms.

Today, St. Catherine of Alexandria is more appropriately known as the namesake of a monastery at Mount Sinai that claims to be the oldest in the world.

#Saint of the Day #St. Catherine of Alexandria

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