Last Entry

Finally I’ve come to the end.  I’ve welcomed the blogging routine and enjoyed the subject matter, so it’s disconcerting to stop.  I’ve had the blog in my thoughts every day and looked forward to writing it every day.  Perhaps you should do a blog about a trip, a subject, or something you’re doing or are interested in?  Blogs can be simply done or with the frills.  They encourage you to think and to do research.  You become a better writer.  They can be for to your friends or open to anyone.  I’m not on Facebook, but a blog is different.  It demands more work and thought, and less time, from what I’ve seen.

My interest has been contemporary religious communities and the ties they have to the past.  I loved seeing Florence and the Cinque Terre, but, more, I loved studying the Benedictine Rule at Durham and Celtic traditions on Lindisfarne.  I am fascinated by the ways people find spiritual life and nourish it today and how they did in the past.  I want that in my life too, and, while I’ve grown in the past ten years, I want more.  A prayer life, a meditative life, a mindful life—they get me excited.  Of course, I’m an academic, a teacher, a family member, etc., and these right now are even greater priorities (contra Benedict’s Rule).  But all the parts of one’s life overlap, intersect, and influence one another.  That’s something wonderful thing about living and the Mystery of it.

In my first blog (2007) cathedrals, architecture, and liturgy, and their influence on theater in the Middle Ages was the focus, but my reading and the trips have added to that the Medieval monastic life and expressions of the phenomena in contemporary religious, residential retreats.  I might have been an historian if we look back to my college days.  But I went to literature in the end because the elements of the indefinable and mysterious seemed so inevitable and true.

Knowing the history of religious expression gives us options we wouldn’t have otherwise; it also suggests safeguards–we can see now what mistakes people made before.  Savaranola, a monk in 14^th c. Florence, fought bravely against the corruption of church and city leaders and for the poor and then he burned books and imposed a narrow view.  Yet St. Benedict wrote a sound “Rule” in the 6^th c. that is still widely used, quietly, daily, and with benefit.

In this recent trip, staying at half a dozen monasteries/retreat houses, no one tried to convert me or prove my beliefs wrong.  In fact, no one asked me to believe or do anything, really, except think, observe, or be mindful or silent.  We sometimes get hung up on labels—Christian, Muslim, believer, non-believer—and we can therefore reject experiences that are valuable and maybe surprising.

Neither have my Muslim and Hindu friends tried to convert me or show me I’m wrong.  Of course, you can get into arguments with anyone if you want.  But most people are content to share with you what they believe and who they are—more than content, really; most people want you to really know them. I want people to know and accept who I am a lot more than I want people to be like me or believe like me.

Next to the people I met and learned from, there’s the natural and built environments I experienced joyfully and even settled into a bit.  I watched the sea from Holy Island and found a big earthworm on the road after the rain. (Click to enlarge, but maybe the earthworm is big enough)

I was awe-struck in the Romanesque San Miniato Abbey, and I admired Michelangelo’s perfect David and the statues of Renaissance Italy.

 

Small churches in England and Italy warmed me no matter how cold the building’s temperature.  And 12^th c. Durham Cathedral, from the window in my room, says “power” and “might” more than any building I know of.

I was the lucky one to have blue skies and white clouds almost every day.  So, for you who read this, here’s a good Irish blessing:

May the rains sweep gentle across your fields,

May the sun warm the land,

May every good seed you have planted bear fruit,

And late summer find you standing in fields of plenty.

The Cinque Terre

(Pictures are better if you click on them to enlarge–otherwise you could miss the tiny villages entirely in some of the pictures)

By the time we reach the Cinque Terre (“5 lands or villages”) it is late October, so we see more locals than tourists.  We don’t have to plan ahead so much, so it’s just the day before when we book our day-tour, the cheapest we find online.  The itinerary and two leaders are just fine—couldn’t be better.  I am not particularly interested in the Cinque Terra but I’m outvoted 3 to 1 and decide I will enjoy it.  We meet the tour bus in Florence at 8:00 a.m.  We drive past Spezia on the way into the hills and toward the sea.

Above Spezia on the way

The 5 villages are ranged along the Mediterranean coast of northern Italy, less than 2 hours from Florence.  Originally these villages depended on grape cultivation, fishing and olive growing.  Today tourism, olive oil, and wine, are the big money-makers.  Until the last century people travelled from village to village by foot along donkey paths wending their way carefully along sheer, rocky cliffs that drop to the sea at the Mediterranean, or they go by boat, and today there is a train.  There is no flat ground to be seen anywhere.

Two years ago, floods damaged the villages heavily, flooding lower floors of shops and restaurants and doing millions of Euros worth of damage.

The destruction in the villages a year ago

Today the villages are beautifully kept again, but some in the restaurants tell of the horrors of the flood and of deaths.  Rick Steves publicized the tragedy then, and has promoted the Cinque Terre heavily since.  He is responsible for quite a bit of their popularity today.  The Cinque Terre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an Italian national park.

We walk to the first village, an energetic hike of more than an hour with our guide, beginning at the road where the bus lets us off. (The roads for autos between villages are inconvenient and slow.) This narrow path through olive groves above the Mediterranean, rocky and in places barely clinging to the hillside, leads us to Corniglia.

Olive trees on terraces–each is this steep

If you fell, you’d roll all the way to the Sea if there weren’t stubby olive trees to stop you.  We reach the second and fourth villages by a train that takes us from village center to village center; the third and fifth we reach by boat—and what views of the villages, the steep hills, the Sea!

The villages range in population from 400 to 1,700 and are only a couple of miles distant from each other.  Each is similar, yet to see them one after another, what you notice are the little differences:  one is higher up on the hillside, one is built mostly around a bay, in one a church stands out, one has a real beach.

A village church

Essentially, though, they are beautiful little villages, with colorfully painted buildings and red tile roofs, all in the same architectural style, and all on hillsides that dip quickly and finally to the sea.  The villages are picturesque, and it is almost impossible to take a bad photo of them.

The villages are ancient, known for their wine even in Roman times.  There are ancient houses and shops with apartments above, and ancient, small, churches and ancient castle ruins.  Some churches are beautifully decorated but without the wealth of a Florence to make them magnificent.   All the buildings are old, many are restored, and nothing looks new.

Can you see the village tucked into the hillside?

We see all 5 villages on foot, by train, or by boat from harbor to harbor; it’s a busy day.  We have a nice lunch with large, fresh, unsalted—and delicious—anchovies. We chat and laugh with others in our tour group, including the friendly Quebecois with her red hair who barely speaks English.

Local Ladies

I catch some ladies in a city park, chatting and watching the passersby, as we do, waiting for the bus.  We tip our tour guide and are home by 9 pm—with tired feet and legs.

You know, Mr. Bean, if he’d happened upon these villages, would have burst into “La Mer,” and the villagers would have joined in, I think, as they had when he finally reached the French Riviera on HIS vacation.   (<Click on this link)

A few more views of the Cinque Terre:

on the boat between villages

If you can’t see the swimmers, click on the picture

A new friend, from Quebec, gives me a lesson about my camera

Shangri-la? No, our very own ferry boat

Siena and Good Government

Do you remember the crayon color “burnt siena”?  It comes from the color of the clay in Siena used for many of the buildings.  (Enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.)

Palazzo Pubblico

In the 13^th and early 14^th c. Siena was the rival of the other great Medieval Italian cities—Rome, Florence, Pisa, and Genoa.  In the later Renaissance, it was eclipsed by Florence militarily, financially, and culturally, but it was once Florence’s equal in every area, and the cathedral they began would have been the largest in the Christian world.  Like Florence, Siena (an hour away) has a Renaissance skyline with architecture, art, and museums, a car free center (the first in Italy), and lively restaurants and shops—though not nearly as many of these.  Unlike Florence, Siena is today small and architecturally almost frozen in time, the mid-14^th c.; so it has a somewhat Gothic texture rather than a purely Renaissance one.

The central plaza (Campo), pictured above, is larger than Florence’s and is the city’s true center, unlike the several competing, smaller piazzas of Florence.   Siena is a city of 60,000; Florence half a million and much more in the metro area.  Siena is like a very large village in a way.  People sit on the rise of Siena’s piazza or in cafes around the edge.

Narrow Streets Lead to the Palazzo

The major building is the city hall (Palazzo Pubblico) with its tall, slender campanile, higher probably than any in Italy.  I would never dream of climbing the narrow steps of that tower even for the excellence of the view, not because I’m unfit but because claustrophobia and acrophobia would make me (and I think most people) uneasy. The cathedral is around the corner, with its baptistery tucked in the back to hold it up it.  The city is hilly, and large buildings were not easy to construct.  Everything was and still is in easy walking distance.  The cathedral was to have been even larger.  Some of the walls and windows of the unfinished nave stand today, and you can see the outline of the original plan.

The Nave

What is there now, without the unfinished nave, is basically the transepts which then became the cathedral, but one would not think it “unfinished” or even small.  Work stopped—the bubonic plague in 1348 hit the city hard, killing half the population.  Some at the time said the new cathedral was a prideful affront to God.  But there were construction problems too.  Later, war with Florence ended any hope of independence, power or great wealth.  The unfinished nave is there to see, mostly as a parking lot now, and from the top of it—what would have been the top of the nave–and not a scary climb are great views of the city.  (For pictures of this church, and others across Europe, a great website is Paradoxplace.)

I’m standing on the top of the unfinished part of the cathedral to take this picture

This cathedral façade is more impressive to me than that of any in Florence; it’s more lavish and fascinating.    In the cathedral, as well as the baptistery, the cathedral’s own Museo dell’Opera, and city hall are works by Donatello, Michelangelo, Ghiberti, Duccio, Pisano—the greats of the Renaissance.  Each building of significance in Siena seems smaller than counterparts in Florence but each also seem more packed with art, except for the Uffizi Gallery in Florence

Cathedral West Front Facade

The cathedral library has beautiful Medieval illuminated manuscripts.  The frescoes on the walls and ceiling, stunningly beautiful, are said to be the plan, though not the execution, of Raphael.  A statue (“The Three Graces,” a Roman copy of a Greek original) stands in the center of the room, but, as with other Italian rooms it’s the lavish art on the walls and ceilings that ultimately command your attention.  You do need to click on this one.

The Library, designed by Raphael

Manuscripts–most are notated chants

In the city hall, in the room where the merchant governors met, are Lorenzetti’s three huge frescoes, collectively called the “Allegory and Effects of Good and Bad Government.” The frescoes depict the difference between good and bad government in the city, in the country, and among all levels of society.  Illustrating the effects of good government are a thriving, colorful Tuscan city with trading in the market place, the construction of new buildings, and happy peasants, artisans, merchants, and aristocrats going about their lives.  A few people dance to the sound of a tambourine.  Outside the city walls, land is cultivated and farmers and animals work.  At the top, and above the good ruler, are figures of faith, hope, and charity and others representing Justice and Concord.  The fresco illustrating the effects of bad government has been badly damaged over time; here, though, there’s a crumbling city, crime in the streets and robbery in the countryside, and general poverty.  Figures of avarice, vanity and greed surmount the evil ruler at the top of this fresco.

These paintings are more medieval in execution than Renaissance, but the message is humanism.  The allegory works and the symbolism is clear:  on one level we are taught that good government and order results in the welfare of all people everywhere, while bad government anywhere results in the opposite.  It is surely a lesson worth making attractive.  The literal level is the depiction of a particular city that viewers would see as Siena itself.  The people are clearly drawn, so are the animals and the buildings look real buildings.  Things are happening; people are living their lives; and the commonwealth thrives.  The characters and setting are idealized and generic, but you feel you could actually go to this place and see these people doing these particular activities. (The last two pictures, below, are from the web and not copyrighted–they are strict about no photography in the library.)

Good Government in the City (detail)

The “Allegory and Effects of Good and Bad Government” must have affected all who saw it when it was installed and all who came afterwards to this central hall of government.  They would have been inspired to create and to maintain the welfare of all segments of society and to resist the evil that results from selfish lack of concern for others—all of which they saw in the frescoes.   The inspiration for the paintings may have come from Thomas Aquinas and from Aristotle before whose ideas were then translated by the Sienese into something visually interesting and powerful.   As straight-forward as these frescoes are, it takes time to admire them, and I realize my gazing at the sculpture, architecture, and paintings of Italy has been, of necessity, pretty superficial.  And I wonder what the effect of seeing the Lorenzetti frescoes would have been on those who came to the city hall of Siena regularly and over the years.  Would they have gathered something in, something ennobling?  Would they have become inured over time?

Two of the 3 panels, in situ

Duomo, Baptistery, & San Miniato

Most famous by far and largest of the churches in Florence is the “Duomo,” the Italian word used for a cathedral (Latin, domus:  house).  Next to the Duomo are the Baptistry, the Campanille (bell tower) and the Museo Dell‘Opera del Duomo (museum of the works of the cathedral)—all beautiful, full of beautiful objects.  The Baptistry is the oldest, the least crowded (there were maybe a dozen people when we visited), and the most atmospheric; it transports you to another age

in a way that the huge and crowded Duomo doesn’t.  It is not really dark, but the windows are high up and small, and the light in the one room of the building changes constantly.

Built between 1059 and 1128 the Baptistery is reminiscent of the Roman Pantheon.

It is octagonal and probably replaced much older churches built on the same spot, also octagonal, from the late 4^th c.  The huge mosaic ceiling, and all the decoration, is Byzantine.  Until the end of the 19^th c. all Florentines were baptized there.  It is in the plaza, just across from the entrance to the cathedral where baptisteries should be–at the “entrance” to the church.

But my favorite church is San Miniato al Monte, an Olivetan (originally Benedictine) abbey church on the Oltrano (“beyond the Arno”), a high part of the city on the other side of the Arno River. This quarter is still part of the old city with churches, the Pitti Palace, Boboli Gardens, and Michelangelo Piazzale where one of the “replica Davids” is.  There are great views of the Duomo from here.  San Minato was begun in its current form in 1013, making it older than most remaining churches in Florence.  It is large and ornate; there would have been nothing at all as impressive as this in most of Italy or any of northern Europe.

The church is connected to a large monastic range, a cemetery, a short campanile, and some defensive works designed by Michelangelo in the 16^th c.  The Olivetan monks have one service in the church in Latin daily—I wish I could have been there for that but we were too early.

Here’s what this interesting church looks like:  The nave is on one level and leads to the chancel of course, but there is a small chapel with a Romanesque arch at that point that gives a focus to the whole space.  On the right of this niche/chapel is a pulpit facing the nave where the laity would have heard sermons.  One either side, then, are stairs (maybe 20 steps) leading up to the chancel and choir which are, thus, probably 15 ft. higher than the nave.  This set up, at the chancel end, makes it look like there are 3 levels.

To the left of the center chapel in the nave is the chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal.  In the chancel the monks pray from beautiful, dark wood choir stalls.  The walls are white and a sort of faded green–all light though.

Choir

To the right of the choir is the sacristy, a fantastic room covered in mosaics of the life of St. Benedict.  Marble stones in the floor of the nave are carved with animals and signs of the  zodiac. The building is Romanesque so there are no expanses of windows but rather small ones high up which give the space downward light.  It is not in the least gloomy; the light changes from one area to another. The whole interior decoration is Byzantine, the work of many well-known artists of the 12^th – 15^thcenturies.  The organ was playing while I was there which added to my impression, so you’ll have to add some Bach to my description. (For the full effect see it yourself of course.)

From Chancel or Choir

So that’s San Miniato.  My pictures, I hope, show a little of its beauty and suggest the  feeling of awe I had there.

Mr. Bean & the City of Florence

Florence, like any European or American city, is a 21^st c. city.  The prices for food and lodging are comparable, the conveniences, the prices, the safety on the streets and in the food, the radio and T.V. news, are not much different.  Charles Dickens visited Italy in the middle of the 19^th. c (Pictures From Italy, a depressing but interesting travel book), and what he saw was much different, poorer, for instance, than his Victorian England, and, the Leaning Tower of Pisa wasn’t as tall as he expected it would be.  Where travelers today go, they so find differences but many things are the same.  I would have a different view were I to visit Mogadishu, of course.

I am reminded of a Mr. Bean movie.  In his holiday in France he ends up, in his bumbling way, having lost his automobile and every thing else, walking into what he thinks is some off-the-beaten-path pretty French village.  In the streets children are playing with old-fashioned hoops in the streets, a pig seems to have escaped her pen and wanders around, the out door cafes are full of well dressed young and middle aged-couples, a priest with a beret, and old codgers who look like peasants; and the barmaid is dressed how we think she should be—colorful kerchief, apron, and with a big pitcher of beer she smilingly pours into glasses for patrons.  It appears perfectly idyllic, and he is so amazed and happy that he joins in (his good-natured way of doing things) obviously relieved after his former misadventures.

Suddenly we hear planes flying low above, and the villagers begin to look worried.  Then there is a rumbling sound of tanks and gunfire in the background, and people in the streets rush to and fro and disappear into their houses.  Mr. Bean doesn’t know French and he is confused and concerned.  Then, he sees them, Nazi tanks and jeeps plowing into the town square, Nazi soldiers with guns pointed.  How can this be?  He tries to help the French townspeople get away and, even, to stop the Nazi’s.

But then a man appears with a megaphone and shouts “Cut!  Cut!” walking right up to Mr. Bean and saying, “You’ve ruined this take, what are you doing here?  Get out! Get out!”  We, and finally Mr. Bean, realize this is a movie set, not a real French village, the people are actors, and Mr. Bean has wandered into a fantasy world, a fantasy of a peaceful French village of 70 years ago, which he had mistaken for the real world.

I suppose there are people as gullible as Mr. Bean, but not me.  Florence is not going to be Florence of the 15^th c. today, and Lindisfarne is not going to be a 9^th c. outpost of Christianity, though we may wish they were.  There are cars and buses, television & radio news, and young people listening to the same music that young people listen to everywhere.  There are modern conveniences; restaurants are safe.

But Florence, unlike many modern cities, has kept much of its architecture and its urban life.

Shops on the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge

It is a beautiful place to walk, eat, shop, and see interesting sites.  I’ve attempted to keep this blog focused on contemporary religious retreats with some attention to monastic traditions, but I can’t do much of that here, nor am I expert on Renaissance art and culture.  But I spent 9 days in Florence, one of those days in its neighbor city Siena and one traveling through the Cinque Terra.  Any teacher of the humanities, of history, of poetry should know about Florence.

Santa Maria Novella Basilica, mentioned at the end of the last post, is a huge, architecturally important church with beautiful art sculpture and mosaics.

Nave, Pulpit on Left

It was founded by the Preaching Friars (later known as the Dominicans) as an abbey, so there was the traditional division between the laity and the monks:  a large screen separated the nave from the chancel.  In the chancel, the monks said their 8 daily offices, but they were not negligent of ordinary people.  The nave today still has the high pulpit from which sermons were delivered but the screen is gone.  It was here that Savaronola preached against the aristocracy, heresy and corruption.  Savaronola favored burning books (he was later burnt at the stake himself).  And here Galileo was first condemned.  “He’s a good preacher,” we hear occasionally of some contemporary minister.  I’ve heard excellent sermons, but sermons may overall have done harm rather than good.  “Discuss among yourselves,” as Mike Myers used to say on SNL.

A final note on Maria Novella:  This minor basilica housed Dominican monks.  In the 1860s at the unification of Italy most religious orders lost control of their church buildings, and Santa Maria Novella became the property of the state and later of the city of Florence.  The city, however, gave control of all religious objects in the church back to the Dominicans and granted them a small residential area within the precinct.  Today, Maria Novella’s beautiful refectory and other spaces—which have apparently been little disturbed over the years—are part of a police station.  Parish churches and religious orders directly involved in the “cure of souls” were not suppressed or dissolved, but most reformers thought that monks and nuns sat on entirely too much wealth with little thought of the needs of the people.  There are comparisons to be made with Henry VIII’s suppression of the monasteries in England and similar suppression of religious orders across Europe from the 16^th through the 20^th centuries.

Michelangelo’s “David,” has been in the Accademia Museum for 150 years (no photos allowed), but a replica stands where it stood for the previous 500 years, and there’s another exact replica on a hill above the city.

Replica David in original situ. Were there outdoor restaurants in Dickens’ day, in Michelangelo’s day?  There are LOTS today.

Replica David, Michelangelo Piazza

There is a difference between the replicas and the original, but don’t ask me to explain it.  The original is, of course, magnificent and the city fathers recognized that immediately.  Preparing for my trip to Florence, I looked at pictures of the art I would see.  The originals are different than those, much different.  Perhaps you already know this.  I suppose there are reproductions of great art that are so well done you can’t tell they aren’t the originals.  But the reproductions I saw, in my books and online, of Giotto, Lippo Lippi, Lorenzo, Michelangelo, as impressive as they were, are certainly less impressive, less spectacular, and less inspiring than the originals.  How much is it worth to see the originals?  (Discuss among yourselves.)

Florence is a tourist city and you can’t tell the rich tourists from those who aren’t.  The shops, all through the city, have luxuriant, appealing window displays—even to me.  We passed by this window several times.

5,000 Euros

If you could read the price tags on the top, skirt, and shoes of this ensemble, you’d see the total comes to   5,000.  Could you not buy something similar, some “reproduction,” for a few hundred somewhere else?  Could someone tell the difference?  I imagine so. One day Grady and Domenico, who live in Bologna half of every year, came down for a visit beginning with coffee in the morning.   We became tourists.  We tried to enchant the waitresses.

Friends from Bologna Join Us

Three Monkeys

She, her father, and her son owned this nice restaurant

Florence and the St. James Townhouse

We flew to Florence for a nine-day stay, then back to London for one night before flying home to Atlanta.  Earlier in the summer, we had considered a Rick Steves’ 9-day tour:  3 nights in Florence, 3 in Venice, 3 in Rome.  These are reasons we didn’t do that:  1) Early breakfasts, on the go all day, late suppers, and with each day of his trips rated by walking difficulty, some seemed pretty difficult (for us).  2) Three nights in one of these cities would be a nice taste, but there’s lots to see in each city.

Most Cities Just Aren’t As Nice as Florence

Of the three I had more interest in Florence (and in Siena, nearby) for their Medieval and early Renaissance flavor.  I would have actually preferred Ravenna over Venice anyway.

On the positive side of such a tour is that 1) you most likely meet interesting, friendly people.  2) sites, restaurants, transportation, and tour guides themselves, are tested by experts, and you’d see things you wouldn’t on your own.  3) the all-inclusive cost plus the planning done for you means less hassle.   I don’t know anyone who’s done his tours, but I bet they are good.  I have absolutely no thought that I could have planned anything better than his organization could have.  Steve’s website, programs, and philosophy are appealing as are his politics (liberal, green) and religion (liberal, Lutheran).

What tipped the balance even more was that Pat Miller and John Bugge recommended the St. James Townhouse in Florence.

St. James Episcopal Church

An interest on this trip is modern religious communities and their relationship to the monastic movement of the early Middle Ages.  So it turns out that the St. James Townhouse is part of the American Episcopal Church in Florence, which is some sort of connection.  The pink building is the townhouse.  The apartment is half of the original rectory, rented out on a weekly or monthly basis.  That half includes 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, living room, dining room, full kitchen, hall/sitting room.  It’s just on the edge of the city centre which means you can walk everywhere, though for the far side of town we took convenient city buses.  Interior pictures of the townhouse are at the end.

Now this place was not cheap, as you can imagine, and we looked for people to join us.  It would be roomy for 3 couples, but 9 people can end up a group of indecisive, paralyzed people, or a lot of fun for everyone, or who knows what.  An extended family that has travelled together would be perfect I think.

St. James Townhouse

After advertising our stay, we ended up with friends Rick and Robby who joined us for the week, and that worked out well.  As I suspected, with just 4 people, we mostly all went off together every day.  We walked to museums and to restaurants for lunches and fixed suppers together most nights and went on our own on occasion.

Lora, a volunteer from the church, met us at the place with keys, instructions, and restaurant tips.  Next door to the townhouse is St. James Church with a garden area.  St. James was financed by Pierpont Morgan and built in 1911 in Gothic Revival style, very pretty On Sunday Terry and I went to the service.  The congregation is small and the rector was out of town this Sunday, so one of the vestry members read the sermon, prepared ahead of time by the rector.  That was something I’d not experienced before.  There was no choir that Sunday but the regulars I could tell where there. The church seats about 300 I’d guess.  The people were friendly at the reception afterwards on Sunday and we chatted for quite a while with them.

A lot of the income for this church nowadays comes from non-parishoners who rent the church for weddings, and I saw several wedding parties over the week. They have a “clothes closet” for people in need, concerts on occasion, AA meetings, and other activities.

St. James’ Ready for a Wedding

Worship is limited to Sunday mornings only, which was a disappointment, but many of the parishoners do not live nearby.  The contact person for the town house is Betty Nandalini, a very helpful woman.  She’s American and her husband Italian, and they directed us to the very best meal we had in Florence.

The church and townhouse are next door to a large convent and across the street from a Catholic school, so we saw habited nuns and uniformed children every day. Many of the younger nuns, on their way somewhere, seemed so full to life, happy, and playful, I wish I could’ve talked to some of them. but that couldn’t have happened I think, and I doubt they knew English.  Just down the street is a large house that (may have) once housed the “Platonic Academy,” where Machiavelli first presented his Discourses and in which informal club Plato’s Greek was first translated to English.

Plaque at Platonic Academy (click to enlarge)

The Platonic Academy

A 10-minute walk brings you to a large piazza and to the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, with its Romanesque (of the Italian type)  architecture, and associated abbey buildings.  The “scrolls” on the left and right of the high nave are something you see in a lot of early Renaissance architecture in Italy.  Santa Maria’s were the prototype.  The buildings in Florence show more

Santa Maria Novella

Right-hand Scroll, Maria Novella Facade

Greek/Roman classical traits than those in northern Europe.  The train and bus stations are a few blocks closer to us than the basilica.  A great location.

Here are some interior pictures of the townhouse (click on any picture to enlarge).

Living Room

Master Bedroom

Hall

Church and Garden from our Window

Our Clothes Drying

English Churches & a Poem

A day trip took us to Ware, a small town just north of London.  The parish church there is typical of the churches in towns and villages across the United Kingdom.  (I have a book called England’s Thousand Best Churches—I wonder if there’s a condensed version?  There are 16,000 Churches of England.)  At the back of the nave in the Ware church, there’s a space where donated used books, along with postcards and little souvenirs, are sold for a pound or two and a box where you put your money.

Ware, Parish Church

I glanced through the books and saw a couple I wouldn’t have minded having, but on a long trip that’s weight in my bag.  On the other side of the back nave is a small play area for children.  There’s probably no nursery, but I wonder how children are quiet during services.  Many churches have little areas like these.

Some churches are only open now on special occasions where perhaps former members return for saints’ days or weddings.  Some only just sit there locked or are opened for the occasional visitor by someone who lives nearby.  These are called “redundant” churches, and there’s a national organization and a fund for them.  Quite a few in the larger towns and cities have new purposes—a senior center, a coffee house, a crafts shop, a flea market.  Some have divided spaces—an aisle or chapel for worship, the rest of the building for something else.  Medieval churches were the largest and best buildings in a town and often had community uses too—trade, court hearings, meetings—as well as worship.  I’ve posted pictures of re-purposed churches before, some at the end of this post.

Some years ago when I was at an NEH seminar in York, England, I visited some village churches that had significant Anglo-Saxon elements (8^th through 10^th c).  The churches were small and not much changed over the centuries.  Outside one mostly 9^thc. church was a stone column decorated with Christian symbols.

9th century

Rain and time had muted the carvings but you could make them out.  Unfortunately the church folks had placed a metal piece on the top to direct the rain away.  I say unfortunately because the well-intentioned action causes the deflected rain to hit the column in more concentrated rivulets of water.  The column was now degenerating faster where the rain hit the column and some parts are now darker than other parts.  Many small churches do not have the money or the expertise to maintain their buildings.  At the NEH seminar a professor from York explained the column’s deterioration with tears in her eyes.

An approach the Church of England takes is to serve several churches—as many as 6, 8, or more—with a team of several clergy.  Not the best approach, perhaps, but most parishoners in small churches, I’m told, want to keep their churches functioning for them as long as they can.  Their villages are like some of our small towns in true rural areas—the only thing left in their community is the church.  Everything else has closed or moved away, and there aren’t enough people living in the area to patronize a coffee or crafts shop, so that’s rarely an option.  However, In England, 869 redundant churches have been converted to other uses in the past 30 years.

(In the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reports that nearly 200 religious facilities have been foreclosed on by banks since 2008, compared to virtually none in the previous decade.  The article says that more foreclosures are on the way.)

There are still weddings and funerals in churches, but usually it’s only a few, older people, mostly women, who do the flowers, the receptions at weekly or bi-weekly services, the small repairs, to keep the operations going a little longer.  Perhaps it’s like a family whose children grow up and leave, to return only rarely, as the parents get older and older and continue to stay in their houses as long as they can.

Older people are mostly the ones I see in the pews of the churches I attend here.  I wonder if the older people in church now were at one time the younger people who did not attend church?  When the old people die off, will they will be replaced by new old people?

Here’s a poem by Philip Larkin, an important British poet of the 20^th c. usually described as an atheist.  “Church Going” is a truthful, insightful poem.  A bit long for a blog, but if you are interested in the topic you’ll like it.  A word or two can be worth a thousand pictures.

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-

Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.

Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce

“Here endeth” much more loudly than I’d meant.

The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,

Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this,

Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,

When churches fall completely out of use

What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

A few cathedrals chronically on show,

Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,

And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come

To make their children touch a particular stone;

Pick simples for a cancer; or on some

Advised night see walking a dead one?

Power of some sort or other will go on

In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;

But superstition, like belief, must die,

And what remains when disbelief has gone?

Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

Will be the last, the very last, to seek

This place for what it was; one of the crew

That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,

Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff

Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt

Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground

Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

So long and equably what since is found

Only in separation — marriage, and birth,

And death, and thoughts of these — for whom was built

This special shell?

For, though I’ve no idea

What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round.

I like the first line:  “nothing going on” describes many churches today.  The last nine lines use the word “serious” (“requiring much thought or work; of or relating to a matter of importance”) three times.

A few re-purposed churches

A community-run flea market; inside a coffee house

The church’s interior, with a friend from NEH

Once a Church, now for the “over 60s” a Senior Center in York

Spurriergate Church–shop, cafe, child friendly

A York Church, now an Anthropology Museum

London Outings

One day we decided to go to the Imperial War Museum, a ten-minute walk from our place.  The Museum is housed in a grand building, built during World War I—a positive attitude they must have had to begin it duringthe war!

Imperial War Museum

The first floor has old tanks and military transport; the London bus, if you can read the destinations, shows that it transported soldiers around France.

One reason we came to the museum was the exhibit of Cecil Beaton’s World War II photos.  Beaton became the favored photographer of the Royal Family and of the hoi polloi; and during the war, the government was smart enough to ask him to document campaigns and the local situations in Italy, Africa, India, and China.

Victim of the London Blitz

His photos turned up on the covers of Life and other magazines and his war photography (about 7,000 photos total) is moving and beautiful; some of it you’d recognize.

Before we left, we discovered an ongoing exhibit on the Holocaust at the museum—a thorough, well-mounted exhibit of what happened to Jews in Europe from the early 30s through the end of the war; Photos, movies, interviews, charts, a huge model of Auschwitz were arranged in winding, sometimes narrow and dark, pathways.  Odd in a way that the exhibit was housed in something called “The Imperial War Museum,” but there it was for all the military buffs and tourists to walk through, though you had to be 14 to see it.

Sailor repairing a flag

The several hours we took there was worth it—fascinating, sobering, depressing, thought-provoking.  One of the (I’m sure predictable) responses to this exhibit is to think, “how lucky I’ve been to live in the time and place I do.”  Another is to ask, “What are the important essential things in my life?”  “What could I do without and what do I really need to have a meaningful life?”  So much in my life can be distractingly time consuming.  So much is missed if you do not stop to think and to feel.  This museum encouraged you to do that.  I am glad I went.

The huge Victoria and Albert Museum is always interesting; it’s London’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.  We had lunch in the rooms designed by William Morris and Jones-Burne.  We saw original Renaissance Florentine statuary and Murano glass in preparation for our trip to Florence.  We also went, rather quickly, through the Museum of London, a good museum but we’d seen most of it on an earlier trip.

On the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral a protest was on-going for several days.  Can you read the signs?  The protestors are liberal-to-left wing, if you can’t tell (as were the pro-tax reform protestors I saw in Durham).

Protest at St. Paul’s

Bus Public Service Announcement

Many city buses had public service signs, like this one.  Of course there’s violence and disorder at times in the U.K., but mostly what you see everywhere is organization and people being polite.

We saw Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and Southwerk Cathedral.  At Westminster (Roman Catholic) Cathedral a week-day mass was underway—lots of priests, incense, some Latin chanting, and many people in the nave—not the Catholic Church you see much of in most places.

Westminster Cathedral Interior

The weather in London turns cooler, and it rains a little though not enough to be a bother.  I don’t think, in all the places I stayed has there been gas forced-air heat—it is all hot water radiators.  That is perfectly fine (We have hot water heat in our house) though they can be a little hard to adjust.  Some of the smaller, little used churches aren’t heated much at all.

Next time:  Redundant Churches in England

London Theater

I rarely buy tickets in advance for New York or London; there are always many plays I’d enjoy seeing and I know I can always find good ones.  Of course when I arrive in London or NYC, I find that a wonderful play has just closed or won’t open til the day after I leave, or that some play I’d like to see is sold out.  But there are always many options.  Here’s what we saw:

1. Our Mutual Friend, based on Dickens’ novel, adapted and directed by Connie Stephens, at Baron’s Court Theatre with a young cast, part of “Myriad Productions.”  A woman I met later said, “Oh, yes, the Baron Court—isn’t that a theater that used to be an underground toilet?”  The theater seats 30-40 people in a low-ceilinged tiny space under a café bar–which now has upstairs restrooms.  Six actors played 30 characters in a clearly told, exciting story of love, murder, intrigue, and, being a Dickens story, class difference.  It reminded me of the Nicholas Nicklebyof years ago in London and on Broadway but with a budget for set/props/costumes of probably about $100.
   

   Baron’s Court stage

2.  Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti, directed by Indhu Rubasingham  at The Tricycle Theatre.  A new play based on the story of Ira Aldridge, an African American actor who moved to London for better opportunities in the 1830s.  We know the fact that Edmund Kean, the famous British actor, got sick in the middle of a run of Othello at that time and that he was replaced by Aldridge as Othello.  We also know that the critics had problems with his performance—after all a black man playing Othello was unheard of at the time.  Although audiences were appreciative, Aldridge himself was soon replaced, and from then on he had to rely on touring Shakespeare plays across Europe as a career.  A fascinating story and one that the thought-provoking play treated with humor and compassion.

3. Call Me Madam, music/lyrics by Irving Berlin, directed by Michael Strassen at the Union Theatre.  Songs from the show you might know:  “I hear singing and there’s no one there,”  “You’re Just in Love.”  A talented cast of 16 in a theater that sits maybe 50—how do they keep such plays going financially? Call Me Madam showed how a talented ensemble can do a full-fledged musical, including dancing, with only a piano and a stage half the size of Oxford College’s.

4.  The Last Session, music/lyrics by Steve Schalchlin and Jim Brochu, directed by Guy Retallack, at the Tristan Bates Theatre.  A revival of a 1997 American musical about AIDS.  Sort of a mixture of a Sam Shepard play and Nine to Five (Parton, Tomlin, & Fonda)!  I can be criticized for finding plays “unrealistic,” but in this play the story line is predictable and the characters one dimensional while, on the other hand, the dialogue and some of the character development interesting.  Plays about contemporary specific ills in society often do well with the pathos and humor, but often also end up lacking intellectual depth or staying power.  I think Book of Mormon and The Last Session are both in that category.

5.  Scenes from an Execution by Howard Barker, a prolific playwright popular in the United Kingdom, staring Fiona Shaw (apparently she’s in all the Harry Potter movies—I haven’t seen them), at the Littleton, National Theatre.  This new play, I think, will be produced here before long–it’s good.  Like Red Velvet, it explores an interesting historical context with an intentionally contemporary ethos.  Here Barker addresses the status of women artists in the 18^th c. and the 18^th c. predilection for grand, triumphal battles on canvas.  So Scenes was like Red Velvet; both use history and “what might have been” said or done at the time to provoke thought about the present day.  You can probably think of other examples of this genre.  Such an approach connects us to our pasts and discovers universal themes.  It can humble us in our arrogance for having been born in a so-called enlightened time and, simultaneously, inspire us to see the bigger picture of human history and, we hope, act accordingly.

6.  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, based on the contemporary novel by Mark Haddon, directed by Marianne Elliott, at the Colttesloe, National Theatre.  Another premiere, this play closes in November and is sold out every night.  So, I find out that we might get a “returned” ticket, and at 5:30 get in line outside the back of the Cottesloe—we are the 10^th and 11^th in line.  At 6:30 our group of 20 or 30 are let in to sit down—still in a perceptible line—in the lobby.  At 7:20 our names are called, we get tickets, pretty good ones, and at 7:30 the show begins.  This is Terry’s favorite play of the week and one of mine.  Sounds and lights, theater-in-the-round, interesting characters–also a running toy train and brief appearance by a real puppy–the play is going to appeal, right?  But without all that the play is good.  A teenager with a learning disability, probably asperger’s though they wisely never say, is a mathematical genius who solves a mystery through objectivity and logic.  But he can only barely deal with people like his teachers and parents.  Various incident’s from the boy’s life centering on the mystery of a dead dog are funny, moving, and ultimately uplifting.

7.  Desire Under the Elms, Eugene O’Neill, directed by Sean Holmes, at the New Lyric, Hammersmith.  One of my favorite O’Neill plays but rarely produced anywhere.  It’s storyline is a pretty hard sell–a direct descendent of Hippolytus and Phaedre with a little Oedipus Rex, but the setting now a New England farm c. 1900.  It’s a mythic story and the characters larger than life, so the over-the-top actions and emotions fit as does the language, O’Neill’s own choric vocabulary.  I can see why many don’t like the play.  But, the end, nevertheless, is powerful tragedy and, to me anyway, memorable and disturbing.  The scene when the locals come for a dance at the Cabot’s home was a bit outlandish in this production.  The dancers’ steps and their costumes evoked Eastern European peasantry, rather than 19^th c. American farmers.  The young male protagonist is probably almost impossible to act and this actor did just an O.K. job.

Earlier, in York at the Theatre Royal, I had seen The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, reported in the York post, which puts the U.K. theater season for me at 8 shows.

These London plays were either at small—or tiny—theaters or at the National Theatre, a government-funded complex of 3 theaters, sort of a Lincoln Center.  None were West End productions although the New Lyric is a large, old vaudeville-type theater. Some of the productions are of the kind I might do at Oxford, and all but “Call Me Madam” were fairly serious or thought-provoking dramas.   They’ve given me good ideas for my productions.

London: St. Edward the Confessor, Where We Stayed, & Zombies

In London, after a fast and comfortable train ride from Durham, I met Terry and we checked in to our Airbnb room for the week.   If you are traveling you might consider Airbnb.com.  It is a service that allows individuals, not companies, to rent a room, usually in their own houses, to travelers at a low rate.  We’ve used it twice, once in Santa Fe and twice in London, and the experiences were good—and cheaper than an ordinary B&B.

Our small room was in a little townhouse in a sort of cloister across the Thames but within a few minutes subway ride from Westminster.  Our nice host was Mark Finn, a young bank attorney—we felt kind of like guests and pretty much shared the house with him. Here’re some pictures.

One evening we celebrated St. Edward The Confessor’s Feast Day with maybe 400 other people at Westminster Abbey.  St. Edward was the pious English king who founded Westminster Abbey (1042 AD) and patron saint of England from about 1150 until his replacement by St. George (popular with the military types) in 1350.  His relics (still there) attracted many pilgrims in the Middle Ages and led to the Abbey becoming the official “coronation” church and the burial place of many kings, queens, poets, and famous people.  The saints’ day Eucharist with 8 priests and 24 professional choristers was elaborate and beautiful, the organ music filling the space.  At the end we were allowed in orderly lines behind the main altar to Edwards’s tomb where, under the tomb, were six niches where six people could kneel and pray, surrounded in front, above, and on two sides by the cut out marble base of the tomb.  If there are holy emanations from his tomb, we got them.  Of course, the norm in the Abbey is thousands of people filing by the tomb and through the Abbey, all gawking briefly at the building and its wonders before being rushed on—and at an entrance fee of $24.

The Abbey

The service we attended is part of an annual week-long celebration of St. Edward.  After the service the whole crowd and clergy stayed for a reception and wine.  I had several glasses myself—full glasses reappearing on the tables as empty ones were returned.  We talked to one of the choir members, to the Chaplain for Scotland Yard and several other priests, and to the Dean of the Cathedral who promptly introduced me to a Methodist minister from Atlanta.  For one of the most touristy buildings in the country, the place after this service was lively and the people friendly.

Patrick Buckingham, the one who told us not to miss the service, met us there.  I had met Patrick at the St. Chad’s “Benedictine Spirituality” program in Durham, and we were keeping in touch.  Patrick, an attorney like Mark Finn, (in the picture with Terry) is a much-involved layman in the Church of England who answered our questions about the Abbey, and it turned out that he lives less than a 5-minute walk from our place in London.  So we saw him again at his home church, Southwerk Cathedral, on Sunday, and Terry, Patrick, and I had lunch after the service.

Southwerk

Southwerk is one of the smallest cathedrals and one of the oldest, though not originally of cathedral status. It has the feel of a large parish church more than of a cathedral.  The choir was splendid, the liturgy on the high-church end, and the service suggested an involved, community-spirited congregation.

Patrick was the third member of the St. Chad’s group I met again later in my trip in other circumstances. This serendipity seems a bit unusual to me, but the St. Chad’s program had attracted people from different parts of the U.K. and the world—Ireland, Scotland, Brazil, and two of us from the U.S.—and the group was larger than my other groups, the duration of the program longer too.   These continuing relationships, if you find that notion attractive, recommend a kind of travel, staying at retreat houses, monasteries, etc., that makes it easy to get to know people around a topic of common interest.

By early October, the weather was getting cooler.  From mid September when one could sit outside without a jacket to early October with nippier nights but pleasant, clear days, the weather was gradually changing.  Even in mid October, begonias, roses, and other plants were blooming away and there was little sign of leaf color other than summer’s green. . . and only a few brief showers interrupted the clear days.  Once, walking along the Southbank, we encountered “World Zombie Day” in progress—hundreds of people in costume, all going somewhere I did not know.  They seemed to like having their pictures taken.  The slide show below runs automatically.  (note:  Big Ben is incorrectly captioned as Westminster Abbey)

ZOMBIE DAY

This slideshow requires JavaScript.