Columbus Day Redux

Yesterday I listened to an interesting interview with the author of this book on 88.3 FM from Murphysboro :

Providence, R.I., Oct 9, 2017 / 10:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The controversies surrounding Christopher Columbus are sometimes misplaced and should not overshadow Columbus’ Christian motives in his voyages, a scholar of religious studies and anthropology has said.
“In recent times, Christopher Columbus has become the symbol for everything that went wrong in the New World, so much so that it has become difficult to celebrate the holiday commemorating his discovery of the New World,” Carol Delaney, a visiting scholar of religious studies at Brown University, told CNA.
“I have been dismayed by the lack of knowledge about the man by those who are rushing in judgment against him and changing the day that commemorates his extraordinary achievement.”
“While we may not agree with the scenario that motivated Columbus, it is important to understand him in the context of his time,” she added.
Delaney, who holds a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, is author of the 2011 book “Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem,” which examines Columbus’ religious motivations for his voyages.
Her book warns against misjudging Columbus’ motivations and accomplishments “from a contemporary perspective rather than from the values and practices of his own time.” 

National Review has even more.

Looks Like the Dog Ate It

Last January, Geoffrey Smith, a scholar of early Christianity at the University of Texas, noticed something startling: an eBay listing for an ancient Greek papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John — with an opening bid of only $99.

“I thought, This can’t be allowed to sell on eBay,” Dr. Smith said. “It will just disappear into a private collection.”

Dr. Smith contacted the seller and urged him to halt the online auction — apparently the first on eBay for a Greek New Testament papyrus, he and other scholars said — and let him study the fragment. The seller agreed, and now, on Saturday, Mr. Smith will present his research at the annual conference of the Society of Biblical Scholars in Atlanta.

There's a market for this? 

Many scholars refuse to study manuscripts that may have left their country of origin illegally, and some refuse to study material in private collections, on the grounds it helps drive the market.

That market is certainly robust. A third-century fragment of Romans on vellum, Dr. Jones noted, sold last year at Sotheby’s for nearly $500,000. The seller of the John papyrus, meanwhile, was “harassed by collectors offering him absurd amounts of money,” Dr. Smith said, declining to cite a specific figure.

PSST...Wanna buy some papyrus?

Willy Won't Go....No, He Went

 From a website called CRUX:

Willy Herteleer was a homeless man who lived in the Borgo — the network of narrow streets north of St. Peter’s Square. He went to Mass every day at the Pontifical Church of St. Anne just inside the Vatican walls. The Catholic News Agency quotes his views about Mass: “My medicine is Communion.”
Willy Herteleer was also known as a street evangelist. As he roamed the streets with his belongings in a pull cart and a cross around his neck, he would stop and ask passersby, “When did you last go to confession? Are you going to Communion? Do you go to Mass?”
On Dec. 12, Willy died in a hospital near the Vatican and a few of his friends began to look for a burial place for him. German journalist Paul Badde, author of “The Face of God” — a book about the Holy Veil of Manopello — had just become a brother in the Confraternity of the Campo Santo of the Teutons. The Campo Santo Teutonico, or Teutonic Cemetery, is a small piece of land within the Vatican walls donated by Charlemagne as a burial plot for pilgrims of German or Flemish descent who died on pilgrimage to Rome.

Because Willy Herteleer was Flemish, Badde suggested that he be buried in the historic Vatican cemetery. Angela Ambrogetti, writing for the Catholic News Agency, recalled how “Willy’s friends organized everything, obtaining the necessary permission from the Vatican, Italy, and Belgium, where Willy began his life. They made contact with his family — his four children whom he had not seen for decades.”

And so it was...WAIT A SECOND! This Charlemagne?

Ghent Altarpiece

  From The Guardian:

"Just about everything bad that could happen to a painting has happened to Hubert and Jan van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (also known as the Ghent Altarpiece). It's almost been destroyed in a fire, was nearly burned by rioting Calvinists, it's been forged, pillaged, dismembered, censored, stolen by Napoleon, hunted in the first world war, sold by a renegade cleric, then stolen repeatedly during the second world war, before being rescued by The Monuments Men, miners and a team of commando double-agents. The fact that it was the artwork the Nazis were most desperate to steal – Göring wanted it for his private collection, Hitler as the centrepiece of his citywide super-museum – has only increased its renown."

And now, thanks to the Getty Foundation, you can see it up close and in INCREDIBLE detail. ONE HUNDRED BILLION PIXELS WORTH! Go HERE.

Three Things I Learned Today About Ma'loula

1) I it one of only three locations where Western Aramaic is spoken - it's not the language of Christ, but pretty similar.

2) There are two ancient monasteries there. One of them is a Greek Catholic monastery called Mar Sarkis, the other is Greek Orthodox and is called Mar Taqla. Mar Sarkis dates back to around the 5th Century.

3) The Al-Nusra Front, a jihadist Syrian rebel group designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, United States, and other nations, has attacked the historic Christian village of Ma’loula, the Associated Press reported. 


A nun said that “there were reports that the militants threatened villagers with death if they did not convert” to Islam, according to AP.

Today in History...BLOODY MONDAY

I check out a blog called "Today I Found Out" and today I found out about Bloody Monday. The date was August 6 and the year was 1855 in Louisville,  Kentucky. It was an election day and there was a tight race for mayor between candidates from the Democrat Party candidate and the candidate from the Know-Nothing Party, or American Party  (an offshoot of the Whig Party, which broke apart due to the slavery issue). The Know Nothings were vehemently anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic. Most of the immigrants to Louisville were Irish and German, so hey! Two-fers!

From Wikipedia:

The Know-Nothings formed armed groups to guard the polls on election day, but the riots took place after the polls closed as the armed groups moved into Catholic neighborhoods. Germans (primarily Catholics) were also caught up. By the time it was over, more than 100 businesses, private homes and tenements had been vandalized, looted and/or burned, including a block long row of houses known as Quinn's Row. Historians estimate the death toll at 19-22^. while Catholics including Bishop Martin John Spalding of Louisville, said the death toll at well over 100 with entire families consumed in the fires.

 Only by Louisville Mayor John Barbee's intervention, despite being a Know-Nothing, were the bloodshed and the property destruction brought to an end, including his personal intervention that saved two Catholic churches: the new German parish of St. Martin of Tours and the Cathedral of the Assumption from destruction by the mob.

Cathedral of the Assumption

St. Martin of Tours

Holy Smoke!

I had no idea that we (the Allies) bombed Rome during WWII, but we did - on this day, 1943. The first bombing took placeon May 16, but this one was bigger - 521 bombers with three main targets: the San Lorenzo freight yard, the north side of Rome, and the Ciampino airport on south-east side of Rome

View of San Lorenzo

Some damage was done to the Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls, so Pope Pius XII and  Monsignor Montini (better known in a later incarnation as Pope Paul VI) showed up and handed out cash money to the neighbors. The remains of St. Lawrence and the Proto-martyr St Steven were not affected.

 

Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls

 

The Vatican was bombed twice, once by the British (one bomb) and Germans (6 bombs) but little was damaged.

Rome was liberated on June 4, 1944.

Martyrdom

Sister Mary Martha has an interesting post about martyrdom, in which she discusses Father Thomas Byles. He was a British priest who got invited to preside at his brother's wedding in the States. So he hopped on a big boat.

Unfortunately it was the Titanic, and as we all know know, the ship ran into Godzilla and sank.

According to Wikipedia:

He said Mass on the morning of the sinking, Low Sunday, 14 April 1912, for both second- and third-Class passengers in their respective lounges. The sermon was on the need for a spiritual lifeboat in the shape of prayer and the sacraments when in danger of spiritual shipwreck in times of temptation.^[1][2] Father Byles was walking on the upper deck praying his breviary when the Titanic struck the iceberg. As the ship was sinking, he assisted many third-class passengers up to the Boat Deck to the lifeboats. He reputedly twice refused a place on a lifeboat. Toward the very end, he recited the rosary and other prayers, heard confessions, and gave absolution to more than a hundred passengers who remained trapped on the stern of the ship after all of the lifeboats had been launched. His body, if recovered, was never identified.

Not a martyr (in case you were wondering ), but a good priest.

Joseph Pineau, Clerical

On August 31, 1896 the passenger ship La Bourgogne arrived at Ellis Island in New York City.  On board was a "clerical" named Joseph Pineau!

 The La Bourgogne sank following a collision off Newfoundland on the 4th of July, 1898.  549 people died. 

The Pope Who Quit

What a character! Let's let Sister Mary Martha tells us about it (she just finished reading the book):

"Peter Morrone, who became Celestine V had been a very charismatic and deeply holy monk who founded monasteries and oratorios and the Celestine order of monks and had many, many followers because he walked the walk.  He wore no shoes and a ragged robe. He lived in a cave by himself,up in the mountains. St. John the Baptist was his hero.
Back then there were only about 12 Cardinals around to elect a Pope.  They'd all go off to some really nice place and take their sweet time because the food and wine was terrific. That's why they finally got locked in a room that they couldn't leave until they elected someone, called a papal conclave.  
This time they dithered for two years,  and still couldn't come up with a good candidate.  How in the world did they come up with the idea of a man who lived far away in a cave? Peter Morrone had written them a letter about their foot dragging and said that their behavior would incur the wrath of God. It caused one of the Cardinals to exclaim that Peter was the best choice.
Then they all traveled over to the cave on the mountain where Peter lived. He refused the robes and the crown and the Vatican. He had his coronation procession on a donkey and lived in a castle of Charles II.  He was Pope for five months. During the five months he became more and more reclusive, eventually building a cell for himself in the basement where he signed anything anyone put in front of him. 
But ironically, two of his papal decrees are still with us. One is that the Pope will be elected by locking the cardinals in a room until they elect somebody. The other, that a Pope should be allowed to abdicate."

Noli Fumare, Suggestus II

There's a train station in England - in Wallsend, to be specific - in which the sings are in English and LATIN. Of course.

I didn't know why either until I read more about it. Wallsend. As in the end of the wall. Hadrian's Wall! Caesar Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus Buccellanus Augustus was the emperor of Rome from 117AD until 138AD. He built Hadrian's Wall across the northern end of England, running west to east for close to 80 miles as a defensive structure. Parts of it still exist today. Oh...and Hadrian HATED Catholics.