11 tips for visiting Venice*

*there were meant to be ten, but I miscounted

During my recent trip to Italy, I made the extremely spontaneous decision of, in the 11 hours between the end of my business and my train back, to make a quick dash for Venice. I spent a full 7 h there, so here are my insider tips for visiting this place -  which is definitely worth it, no matter how short the time.

The Canale Grande. Great to see when you did not expect to until some few hours before you actually do.

1. Everything is expensive in Venice. This includes luggage deposit at the station. It is 5 € for the first 5 hours, plus 70 cent per hour after that.It is also very much worth it.

Venice, it is said, has some 400 bridges. I am not sure whether this can be right, because while I definitely visited only a small part of the main island, and did not retrace my steps to any large extent, I feel rather certain that I have covered close to that number of bridges during my stay. Keeping in mind that most of the roads are close to the water level, while bridges have to ensure that the gondolier can pass under them standing; this means: stairs. So, no fun with trolley suitcases.

2. Everything is expensive in Venice. This includes toilets. Public toilets are 1,50 € (!) in both station and city. The better option is to go to some non-too touristy cafe and have a cafè (or even a cappuccino, you wimp, even if it is already in the afternoon, because even there they will know that tourists will have cappuccino in the afternoon (the barbarians!), and anyway, the coffee or cappuccino will be excellent, and no more than 3.50 €, probably, and given you can use the toilet for free (and refill your water bottle; do not underestimate the price of actually buying drinking water [is the running water there drinking water ?, my Inner German asks, only to be silenced quickly with no adverse after effects])) this is a great bargain. And, at least if you are female, you might try offering 50 cents for using the toilet without bying anything (in the less touristy areas, at least), and the good-looking barkeeper will give you access for free. Chivalry apparently survives in Italy.

3. Probably many friends will have told you how Venice is just not worth visiting, being stinky, decaying, and flooded with tourists. To which I have to say: Visiting in winter or spring may be a good idea, stink- (and probably tourist-) wise, compared to summer. Also: Yes, as soon as you leave the Piazza San Marco and its surroundings, much of the beauty of Venice is a decaying beauty. But then, it is decaying rather charmingly. Thirdly, you have to take the hordes of tourists as a sight in themselves. Of course the narrow alleys of Venice (some not much more than  1 m wide) were not made to channel 30 Mio. of tourists per year. Enjoy the incongruity. Enjoy also the groups of street traders, and if so inclined, make a sociological study of them. When I was there, there was a group of Indian-looking ones, selling rubber spherical objects in the shape of pigs, eggs, strawberries, and other things, which, being thrown down forcefully, dissolved into a puddle, just to re-solidify with a ‘pop’ again. This group changed, after dark, to the sale of propellor-powered, LCD-lighted objects that rise with great velocity to glide gently down. There was also a group of African-looking street traders selling handbags, apparently fake trademark ones, and the same models through the whole of Venice.

Would have loved to make a better photograph of the pig-puddle, but did not dare to show any obvious interest, obviously.

Well, you could not expect me to make a photograph when it was really crowded.

4. Somewhat connected to that: Decide, as you set your foot on Venice soil (or whatever it is you set your foot on there in this amphibious place), that you will not buy anything. I repeat this again for all female readers. There is an awful load of trash sold there (one word: masks), and an awful load of overpriced designer stuff, but in between, there is some rather fine and beautiful Murano glass jewelery, glassware, and the like. However, if you try to find these amongst hoax and trash, you will go mad. Believe me and ignore them, other than as a pleasant visual stimulus in the shop windows.

This is what I mean.

5. Venice is stunning. Walk into any random church, and you will  find, casually displayed,  the relics of some spectacular saint (like St. Roq), and/or frescoes or oil paintings by really famous painters, such as Tintoretto or Bellini. There are some few churches charging as much a 10 € for entry (ptui!), but then, as you will wish to go to Mass anyway, just note down Mass times and go there then. In drastic contrast to my previous experience with Italy, nearly every church has a list of Mass times at their main doors.

Did not go to that church (San Giorgio Maggiore, or so, I think), but probably has impressive relics/paintings/frescoes as well.

6. St. Mark’s Cathedral, can we praise it too much, does not charge you for entry. You are not allowed to take backpacks and luggage, but there is a nearby place, both advertised by placards at the queuing site, and yet extremely obscure in real life, and: for free (!!), that takes your luggage for one hour (I took a wee bit longer on account of meeting a North American group having a very correct though swift Mass in English there, and no-one said anything to me.) But: If you really want to get as close as possible to St. Mark, you have to pay (only 2 €, so no big deal). However, this is not for seeing the sarcophagus of St. Mark, but for seeing the Pala d’Oro. All right with me, in a way, but if not a good friend (Magdalena, who occasionally honours us with her comments here at Laodicea) had pointed this out for me, I would never have found St. Mark. His body is under the high altar (obviously, in a way, but then again so inconspicuously that one might very well miss him.) Now this is really impressive, isn’t it?

7. The Piazza San Marco, World Heritage Site. On first entering, I thought: Well, there it is. ‘s quite all right.
It took me a while to get my mind into the frame of looking at it as what it is, and not at the thing seen  innumerable times in photographs and films. Again, it was not made as a World Heritage Site. It was built, in the way it is now, in the 16th cent., and as far as the proclamation of ‘We have power, we have wealth, and we have good taste, too’ goes, it is probably the most impressive thing I have met yet. Yes, there are these Baroque and Rococco castles, but they seem to imply decadence as well as power and wealth. The Procuratie Vecchie, on the other hand, seems to imply ruthless efficiency. Looking at the Piazza and the pillars at the landing site, I still felt the slight terror of someone of a lesser power, or of lesser importance, landing in 16th cent. Venice and just hoping to get back again without any grievous damages.

8. Even today, the Italian Navy seems to be stationed in Venice. There were handsome young Italian Navy officers in dark blue coats leaving the area of the Venetian Arsenal. This was quite striking for a current reader of Hornblower (I feel a blog post on that coming up, for sure).

The Venice Arsenal. Really impressive when you think of the seapower once behind it. I did not get a good photograph of the good-looking young navy officers, though.

9.  Thanks to Magdalena, I had the information that a very short distance from the main tourist attractions might take you to another world. Now, my uninformed spontaneous ambition was to go to the Isola St Pietro. I promptly got lost after the Pizza San Marco (Look at Google Maps and decide if you wouldn’t have been so, too). And I found myself in places of even more charming decay, and washing drying on lines spanning the narrow lanes, and not seeing a living, breathing human being for minutes on end, just some 10 minutes from St. Mark’s. Now these places are extremely picturesque and romantic and they probably do not set out to rip of tourists as they do elsewhere (in fact here is where handsome young Italian barkeepers let you use toilets for free), but still everything is rather expensive here. And yet, curiously real, not at all Disneyfied, from the man going walkies with his dog [insert here peculiarities connected with walking your dog in an amphibious lagoon city], to what our British friends would call working class people going shopping with bags and little trolleys (no cars there, remember) in the more remote parts of Old Town Venice.

Decaying – but charmingly!

Papal Court – well…

A building site. No cars.

10.  Unless you are awfully acutely in love with someone (I wonder: would this be a sufficient excuse?) – do not go by gondola. Smile charitably at the gondoliere, and take a bus. Or whatever they call it there. I did not do it, but given that public transport is on the water, in cannot be ruinously expensive, and this would be what I’d do most certainly do the next time I was in Venice.

A ‘bus’ (or whatever) stop.

11. You might think, with your night train leaving at  10 pm, and your cunning (see points 2, 4, 9 and 10)  having you saved quite some money, you might have a beer before taking your train. Well, what do you think prices are for a beer (0.3 l) drunk at a table in the vicinity of ~10 min walk of the station? You say 8 €? Congratulation, you have won full points.

If you do not like this, you might wish to try an entirely new experience: drinking (non-too bad Dutch) beer from  a tin (only 3 €) on the stairs in front of the railway station. Although it being Venice St. Louis Railway Station, with a view on the Grand Canale, might rob it of some of its sordidity.

 

Christ the King

I received an email a few weeks ago asking that I lay out my views on the origin of social authority in the family as opposed to contract or consent. I am not sure if they are fully formed…. but here goes.

The basic difference between Catholic and Modern views on the origin of political authority lies in the gulf between realism and nominalism. The rejection of the reality of universals necessarily entails the rejection of the social nature of man. Man’s social nature therefore cannot be the basis of civil authority. Nevertheless, there are Catholic authorities (albeit Jesuits) who hold that even though the authority of the state comes from nature and so from God it is mediated through the people because, in the event that the state were dissolved by some cataclysm, social authority would revert to a pure democracy. This pure democracy would then function as a constitutional convention bestowing legitimacy on the form of government its constituents elect to impose upon themselves and their descendants. What is the alternative to this account?

The family is the alternative. Man’s social nature is most obviously displayed in his dependant condition at birth, his need for sustenance, protection, socialisation and education, the frame of the male and female bodies and the need of the latter for protection and sustenance from the former while she provides their offspring with sustenance, protection, socialisation and education. The end of man in the-most-excellent-reciprocal-willing-of-the-good-of-the-best-possible-other demands the exemplary friendship of the child’s parents in the indissoluble bond of matrimony. The family and not the individual is the fundamental unit of civil society. Indeed, only two factors obstruct the simple identity of the family with civil society: a) the impossibility of marriage within the family b) the supernatural end of man. Because human beings cannot marry their kin without escalating disastrous consequences the family cannot perpetuate itself without forming a wider society that transcends itself. St Thomas points out in the De Regno that because the actual end of man in this order of providence is supernatural the true King can only be He Who unites man to the Divine Nature in Beatitude – Jesus Christ. Thus all the Kings of the Christian People must be subject to Christ’s Vicar, the Roman Pontiff, as to Himself.

How does this logic impact upon the question of the state of society at its actual beginning in time and in some hypothetical moment of destruction and re-constitution? Revelation has some very interesting light to shed upon these questions. It is clear from Genesis that the effects of the Fall have a progressive element. With each successive generation between the Fall and the Flood the life span of the antediluvian patriarchs diminished. According to Augustine’s interpretation our first parents possessed complete control of all their bodily functions. On this principle it ought to have been possible for them to beget pairs of children who, through a judicious distribution of chromosomes, were scarcely related to each other at all. If, as Genesis seems to imply, the loss of the praeternatural gifts was in some sense progressive then the key natural factor which prevents the family from being an unqualifiedly perfect society is removed. What of the supernatural factor? This too is resolved by revelation. For originally Adam would have transmitted sanctifying grace by generation to all of his descendants so this Adamic familial commonwealth would have truly fulfilled St Thomas’s requirements to qualify as a perfect community.

The Fall, of course, dramatically alters this but it does not abolish it altogether. Adam was still the recipient of revelation capable of conveying saving truth. The distinction between the family and the state was established by the Fall but (if we are right about the delayed removal of the praeternatural gifts) it was not yet applied. Likewise, the fact that the perfect exercise of the evangelical counsels is rendered by the Fall incompatible with property, marriage and  autonomy establishes the distinction between priesthood and kingship (because, in fallen man, the state of perfection required by priesthood is incompatible with the requirements of kingship) but the delayed effect of the Fall postpones the necessity of investing these offices in separate persons. Adam passes the plenipotentiary sovereignty of the human race to Seth, Seth to Noah, Noah to Shem (who I am assuming is Melchizedek), Melchizedek to Abraham, Abraham to Isaac, Isaac to Jacob and Jacob to the people of Israel as a whole. In the Exodus the full distinction between family and commonwealth, priesthood and magistracy is established. These successions pass down through the Levites and the scribes, the judges and the Davidic line until they converge once more in the Messiah Who reigns for ever and administers the Church militant through St Peter and the Apostles and their successors down to the end of time (ideally assisted by a suitably docile temporal power).

This resolves the question of a hypothetical moment of social destruction and re-constitution. The unqualifiedly perfect society in this world – the City of God – The Catholic Church – is indestructible and will endure until the end of time. The hypothesis of social destruction and re-constitution can never be realised. The question of the nature and prerogatives of the family in the abstract is best answered in the eloquent words of the Irish constitution, “The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.” The contingency upon the Divine Will of man’s actual end in any order of providence means that the sovereign authority in the perfect society can necessarily only be established by positive revelation – even were man’s end merely proportionate to his nature. As it is, God made us for Himself and the sovereignty is taken by the Divine King Jesus Christ Himself and wielded on earth through the power of the keys.

 

Your German correspondent from China

Forty-five hours ago I set foot, for the first time of my life, on Chinese soil (or, for that matter, on non-European soil at all).  I would have written a brilliant and detailed essays on my reflection, indeed, I had written a witty and thoughtful piece of some 2000 words – which was eaten by wordpress. I a steaming with vexation. Nevertheless, a helpless and impatient second attempt; just jutting down my thoughts as they come (and no guarantee for spelling / grammar / language given).

1. Forty-five hours. Already I miss bread. Never would I have thought that I am one of those people who within a day pine for simple, plain European food. Or in fact, for simple, plain rice. Rice and noodles seem to be so much the staple food here, that at a really good dinner, you are given enough more expensive stuff to gorge yourself so that it would be lowering the tone to offer something as simple as rice. Today’s dinner, as yesterday’s dinner and lunch, were eaten at big round tables with a revolving glass plate in the middle. At the beginning of the meal, this plate contains eight (or nine, I forget) starters. One by one, eight (or nine, whatever) main courses are added. You turn the plate (taking care no-one just has their chopsticks in anything to serve themselves) and choose what you like. This enables you to avoid chicken feed, accusingly-looking crabs, thousand-years-eggs, pig’s ears, turtle and other not easily identifiable stuff without too much offence. In general, anything I had was very well cooked, but still there were some – surprises – as to taste and texture that made me rather careful the second day. I would not have thought how demoralising the uncertainty into what culinary experience one’s next choice of dish will plunge one can become after a while. This morning, at any rate, I already made a straight bee-line towards a lowly side table, ignoring all the tables with (probably) mouth-watering Chinese dishes, right, to find some sourt of buns, butter, little cream cakes, coffee and milk. I am never too adventurous before coffee, I have to say. Give me your steamed taro, if you must, but not for breakfast.

2. So far, we have spent most of our time in the hotel. It is a curious mixture of probably being one of the grandest hotels I have stayed at, with seemingly at least twice the staff one would expect, and yet sporting, spread over the building, non-flushing / non-locking / raining (probably some water damage somewhere) toilets. The rooms are furnished very tastefully, even if the elegance is somewhat faded. I could give balls in mine (but the very high-up window looks out on some service roof).

3. Jet-lag must be a myth. What knocked me down yesterday was a night with only four hours of fitful and uncomfortable sleep. In the ensuing haze in which I spent the day, my body could not have cared less what time it ‘actually’ was and took darkness outside and the completion of the third square meal that day as sufficient indicators that it was now night, even though it might ‘really’ be only 4 pm. It likewise slept like a stone and was no more reluctant to get up in the morning at 7.30 pa than it would have been had it not ‘in fact’ been 1.30 am.  I guess having an utterly random night-and-day rhythm even when one is not joining the jet set sufficiently confuses one’s body clock after a while to send it off with a frustrated ‘whatever’ whenever anything irregular happens.

4. The spaciousness of my room feels all the more decadent as flats are probably none too large around here. There are many pretty newly built large houses, some of which, however already have a somewhat lived-in look. Nearly all have outside drying facilities for washing, be the place for these ever so improbable. For all that, what we have seen looks all pretty European. One is nearly glad (in a way) to get the occasional glimpse in a curvy, narrow side street, or into a tiny shop stuffed with a seemingly haphazard collection of goods and apparently the family’s dinner table behind the last shelf. In the ‘picturesquely Chinese’ category there were also bamboo building scaffolding, tiny little food stalls, and transport bicycles laden with ridiculously large piles of cartons.

5. Though large roads have bicycle lanes that would put European cities to the blush – they are some four or five meters wide and entirely separate from the road, packed with both bicycles and motor cycles – roads in general are full of cars and mini busses. When we drove in one, I voluntarily fastened my seat belt. It is hard to perceive if ‘red’ means ‘go’ and ‘green’ ‘stop’, or the other way round. The people with whom I travel, being scientists, tried the empirical approach, but data were to conflicting to allow any conclusions. These colours nevertheless seem to have some significance, as next to each traffic light there is a countdown showing the seconds up to the next change of colours. Not many people seem to pay attention. Instead, blowing one’s horn appears to be the main way of negotiating; there are even ‘don’t hoot here’ signs.

6. Though Aelianus would say that, as a non-British, this is my natural state anywhere, I feel very much that I am a foreigner here. Never have I felt so obviously and so foreign a foreigner. It is not only the language – I have, at least, by myself, identified the signs for ‘fire’, ‘door’ and ‘China/Chinese’. I also fear with every step that I am doing something wrong. Come to that, I probably do. Ever heard that in some Asian countries exchanging cards is an important part of good manners in business settings? So did I, only I just remembered when I was offered one for the first time, and, for the first time in four years, was not in possession of any of my own (having just changed jobs, and waiting for my final certificate to put the ‘Dr.’ on them). That said, everyone is very kind and friendly, no-one made me feel the rude foreigner so far, but still.

7. Given the culinary, and other, stress, one is grateful not only for coffee, but even more for beer, even if it is some sort of Chinese Lager. However, even this has its pitfalls, since their seem to be rather elaborate toasting customs. Apparently, in a group of forty at three tables, in the course of the evening everyone gets up once, and speaks a toast not only at their own, but at the two other tables as well, and separately chinks glasses with everyone (moving around the table) before either everyone drinking a little, or everyone draining their glasses. During this ceremony, those not saying the toast either sit, or stand. This seems to be related to hierarchy, and I might have figured out eventually, had not the German  senior scientists sitting at my table, themselves clouless, apparently had confused even the Chinese sitting with us. Only two or three of the German delegation voluntarily made their round. A third one, as the youngest member of that delegation, was most politely invited by the Chinese host to do so. I guess I got through it quite creditably, though.

 

The Honours of Scotland

This was the last coin minted in Scotland before the Union of the Crowns. James VI took many of them south with him when he assumed the throne of England. For the first time since the death St Edward the Confessor the head of the Royal House of Wessex, the heir of St Margaret, sat upon the English throne. In this way the prophecy of St Cuthbert to Alfred the Great on the Isle of Athelney was finally fulfilled ”All Albion is given to you and your sons”. James VI was baptised into the one fold of the redeemer but abducted from his mother and raised apart from the Catholic Church. His son would be the only Stuart monarch never at any time to have been a Catholic. The sceptre and sword of Scotland depicted on the coin were the gifts of Popes Alexander VI and Julius II respectively (the former being the founder of the University of Aberdeen).  Together with the crown they symbolise the three aspects of human law: the Ius Civile, Ius Gentium and Ius Naturale. They are surrounded by the maxim upon which the supremacy of the Holy See over all earthly sovereigns is founded: The Salvation of the People is the Supreme Law. Once it is baptised a country, like an individual, can never cease to be Catholic it can only cease to be itself.

 

That other great thing I discovered …

The Missionaries of the Divine Mercy. I’m afraid I’ve not read everything and made a careful digest, so I myself have many questions. But somehow the idea … aj, I’m once more all dewy-eyed. I think I am at the moment possibly even more enamoured of them than I am of the Wonderful Petites Soeurs.

Our community was born of the meeting of two men, two pastors: Dominique Rey, bishop of the diocese of Frejus-Toulon, and abbé Fabrice Loiseau, then a priest of the FSSP. The bishop was looking for a community attached both to the old rite and to diocesan unity, the priest was seeking that same unity and the possibility of being profoundly missionary through the spirituality of the Divine Mercy.

After many meeting in the diocese, including evangelisation camps on the beaches of Var [region of France], the project of the community was born as a response to these aspirations. Frs Jean-Raphaël Dubrule and Eloi Gillet, then seminarians, joined the project and completed their formation at the diocesan seminary at La Castille. Other young men joined the community and became diocesan seminarians at La Castille, where they prayed the liturgy of Paul VI during the week and the traditional liturgy at the weekend in the parish, and during their apostolate.

The Society of the Missionaries of the Divine Mercy was born in September 2005, as an association of diocesan right attached to the diocese of Frejus-Toulon.

Three pillars emerged naturally

- witness to Mercy, as Christ revealed it to sr Faustina

- a great eucharistic devotion, with a particular attachment to the celebration of the liturgy in the rite of St Pius V, in the spirit of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum

- a missionary zeal for the New Evangelisation, especially among the muslims.

Here’s (sorry, can’t get it to embed) a video featuring three different priests, one of which is the of the MDM (no, not that MDM). It’s in Frog, but there are nice pictures (custody of the eyes warning, lots of underdressed fit bodies of both sexes at the beginning – bit of a mission minefield, I’d have thought …)

If you read any French, their website looks interesting.

 

Yet Another Scots Catholic Blog, part lots

Priests on the Rails – the occasionally updated blog of the Scottish Clergy Railway Circle.

With esoteric patristic references in the comboxes.

 

Pilgrims’ Progress – Epilogue

In Munich, where we arrived at 6:30 am and had two hours time before our train home left, one last cultural highlight waited for me – breakfast “wie es der Münchner liebt“, as the menu put it. My companion complained to the waitress that this was wrong as he was sure there was no person from Munich who would even touch a of 0.3 litre-glass of wheat beer (half a litre is the smallest amount you drink there). I, on the other hand, for the first time of my life had beer before lunchtime and found that quite hard; but you cannot have Weißwurst and Bretzn and not have a Weißbier with it, apparently.

Without any further adventures we arrived at home. I felt it would have been quite nice to continue this pleasant way of living a little bit longer, but life is hard and full of sazatskas (please correct me, Berenike!), and the toil of everyday life has to be resumed. Resumed, hopefully, strengthened by the intercession of all the saints we visited, and by the thought of their example. Compared to the decision it meant to become a Christian in the first centuries, knowing what might await you if you wanted to remain true to Christ, how pathetic do so many of one’s everyday struggles look!

Re-reading some of these daily sketches I realise that they talk a lot about the mere physical “getting there”, about the strange customs of the foreign land, and also, I must admit, about wine and beer, as well as about churches and relics. In this, I think, they are in good company with many older accounts of pilgrimages – keeping up tradition, you see? (Though I must add, lest I scandalise our non-Catholic readers, that I have been on pilgrimages before that involved much less beer and far deeper spiritual experiences as well as very sobering progresses in self-knowledge - in fact, it was on a pilgrimage that I realised I had to become a Catholic.) The whole thing, so far from being penitential, was much more enjoyable and relaxing than many a “real” holiday I have had, and I cannot but think that this really has something to do with the many prayers that accompanied us. No accidents, no injuries, no rows, little rain, never a problem to find accomodation, always enough to eat with little trouble to get it, the possibility to go to Mass on most days, and so many little nice things on the way… So thanks again for all the prayers, and for your perseverance in reading this lenghty tale (if you did). Omnes viae Romam ducunt – I can only recommend to test it!

 

Pilgrims’ Progress Part XIV – In Which We Start To Leave

Friday 19^th September

Dripping wet in the Statione Termini, your intrepid correspondend uses every free minute to bring to an end her pilgrimage report. You think I have by now exhausted the topic of “Rome by bike” in a sufficient number of complaints? O no! “Rome by bike in pouring rain” offers quite some new aspects to moan about. If people are looking at you as if you were crazy cycling here on a fine, sunny day, how much more so in this weather (insofar as they are able to look at all from under their umbrellas and out of their ponchos). And right they are. Try breaking suddenly on flooded cobble stones (Don’t! If you do, the auther refuses to take any responsibility for broken limbs, etc.). Yet we arrived safely after this semi-aquatic adventure and are now merely waiting for our train to leave for Munich.

This morning we paid St Peter’s another visit (this time with only one pocket knive), and booked an audio guide. I was pleasantly surprised: the tour was very good and addressed, as it said in the beginning, both artistic and religious aspects. If you are terribly learned, you would not, perhaps, learn a lot of new things. For the averagely educated like me the historical and artistic part was very intersting, while the religious part (besides being edifying for me, too) filled me with a quiet satisfaction at the fact that so many unsuspecting tourists receive an unexpected and rather good catechistical lesson this way.

The final point was another visit to the Vatican Grottos – again, far more people prayed at the grave of  John Paul II than at St Peter’s, where I was mostly all alone (apart from tourists walking past quickly), trying to make up for this unequality a bit. A last look at the Vatican souvenir shops did not lead me to any prayer cards of or novenas to St Paul, alas, but instead to some Swarowsky rosaries for a really quite affordable 140 €. (But I bought myself a silver rosary Armband for a small fraction of that (Soo nice! I am quite enchanted even while I agree that this falls fully into the things strongly criticised by St John of the Cross, I think, under spiritual gluttony (or some other failings of beginners), plus the New Vulgate Psalms and Canticles (thanks to the recommendation of Berenike and in spite of the decisive denial of the lady in the Vatican bookshop that such a book even existed).)

 

 

Pilgrims’ Progress Part XIII – In Which We See Many Edifying Things And Notburga Gets Linguistically Confused

Thursday 18^th September

For a change, I cycled through Roman traffic on my own this morning, my fellow pilgim having gone to Nettuno for a short visit to Maria Goretti *. It is true that Roman car drivers drive somewhat more attentively than car drivers elsewhere, as they are used to motorbikes being everywhere and turning up from the most unexpected directions at a most reckless speed; still I was glad when I had made my way from our lodgings close to the Vatican over to the Lateran and the confessional therein safely. I had some doubts to what extent the Polish Franciscan hearing confessions in German actually understood what I said, but I must suppose that he did.

After confession and Mass I went to Santa Croce in Gerusalemme and was very much moved – both by the relics of the cross themselves as by the replica of the Turin Shroud and by the crucifix made according to the insights gained from the Shroud by Giulio Ricci. Another very impressive visit was that to the Mamertine Prison, where St Peter and St Paul were held captive before their execution. It used to be connected directly to the Cloaca Maxima and even today has an unwholesome smell and such a damp, stifling air that it took me some deep breaths outside to get rid of the oppressive feeling. If you imagine it lit only by the tiny hole in the ceiling, leading to another cellar room above, through which captives were lowered down or taken up, you can start to consider what those early Christians went through even before being tortured to death.

Similarly for Trefontane, the monastary founded where St Paul was beheaded and where the cell in which he was kept before can still be seen (see picture below). We went there thanks to an African priest working at the moment in an Italian parish, who knowsmy fellow pilgrim and took us there in his car. With him, we also went to the Quo Vadis Church built on the place where St Peter, leaving Rome before the first persecution, is said to have met our Lord. His question “Quo vadis, Domine?” was answered by Jesus saying that He went to Rome to be crucified anew. At this, St Peter turned around and went back to Rome himself to meet his death there. I have always been very much moved by this legend, as I was, too, when I read the book of the same name at the age of fourteen, so I was very glad that I could visit the place. (It is, by the way, firmly in the hand of the Polish faithful, it seems, with a Divine Merci picture in Polish on the wall, a bust of Sienkiewicz and everything printed being bilingual Polish-Italian.)

The conversation with that hospitable priest, a very friendly, communicative, enthusiastic and pious man, was of great interest to me, as I know little about the state of the Church and about life in general in his home country, which my fellow pilgrim had visited with a group from his own parish just some weeks ago. By “conversation” I mean that going on betwee the priest and my fellow pilgrim: as it was all in French, blood was dripping out of my ears from the mere effort of listening, and talking was limited severly. (Writing postcards and this little account in English, talking German to my companion, having Italian all around me, plusthe occasional Latin or Spanish at Mass or at the general audience have absolutely confused my linguistical abilities. In the hotel (when I just had finished thinking what to write on an English postcard and started thinking whot to say to a French-speaking priest) I was asked something in Italian – and answered “Yes. – no, ‘oui’!, ehm…, ‘si!’”, before storming downstairs, blushing.

 

* When he came back at lunch time and I urged him to eat something more he only said that after all, it wasn’t as if he had made a very long tour. “Thank you”, I answered, after short reflection, as the one-way distance is 60 kilometres. Without luggage and, more importantly, without me, he had managed to do this in less then five hours.

P.S.: The ancient Romans were surprisingly modern – even mobile phones were in existence. You doubt that? Look below?

 

Pilgrim’s Progress Part XII – In Which We Cause A Congestion

Wednesday 17^th September

In vain will you look in any Rome guide’s “How to get around” section for the heading “By bike”. Don’t! I nearly managed to have the first serious row with my fellow pilgrim, shouting at him that I was fed up with him driving like crazy, after I had followed him crossing the 100 metres wide (!) crossing in front of the Lateran without any attention for traffic lights and the like, to find myself in the middle of two four-lane streams of cars and the preceding flood of motorbikes who had received green light just when I left the pavement.

This morning, we were welcomed by the Holy Father. In spite of the bright sunshine the general audience was held in the audience hall. In the homily, the Pope spoke about his recent visit to France. Although many visiting groups were called by name, we were not, even though we had ordered our cards under the name of our prayer group. The most enthusiastic response to being mentioned came of course from the South American and the Polish groups. A US-American choir in full ornate robes sang “God bless America”. A group from Traunstein was especially welcomed by the Pope and slothfully failed to even cheer when they received this honour. Through the whole course, I neither screamed or fainted, although I would soooo love to kiss the Holy Father’s hand (as my fellow pilgrim had done at his last visit to Rome half a year ago, when he accompanied his seriously ill cousin to the audience).

If up to now cycling and amusements dominated this account, we at least behaved like real pilgrims in Rome: Lighting candles, ordering masses, and seeing as many relics as possible. Yesterday already I had been to St Agnes in Agony, today, after the audience, we cycled to St  Paul Outside the Walls. Art lovers will henceforth know that I have no architectural sense of taste, for, after St Peter’s, I like this church best of all the churches we have seen in Rome. It is large, with no pews, has a golden mosaic, and above all: the tomb of St Paul. Think – St Paul! (Me liking him so much must be a rare thing for a German female, apparently, as it was especially stressed by my fellow pilgrim to the African priest with whom we met later on. Come on, ladies! Even if you choose to be offended at what he writes about women (and I think it is not a wise strategy to be offended at the word of God) he has written some of the most beautiful and edifying books of the whole Bible (in my opinion, if one is allowed to think like that)). Anyway, as promised, here and at St Peter’s tomb I also prayed for all of you, according to our agreement.

We next cycled to the Lateran Basilica (of which I also very much approve), and it was very moving to actually set one’s feet into „Omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput“. Being in Rome really is a strange feeling – as if 2000 years of Church History had solidified in that city, with all its dark eras, yes, but also all its glory, and I feel thoroughly grateful for being, through God’s grace, a member of that large and centuries-spanning family.

We also saw the Circus Maximus, the Palatine palaces, the Forum and the Colusseum, as well as, at my express wish, the remains of the Roman tenement nex to the monument of Victor Emanuel. If you consider how much fuss is made elsewhere about some obscure remains of some Roman walls or roads, it is quite mind-boggling to see so many tall buildings from that time still pretty much intact.

No illegal knives, no trespassing today. And yet, we still did some mischief, quite innocently. When we had visited the Lateran Basilica we of course also went to the Santa Scala. Having devised a cunning method of spreading the prayers of the Rosary over the 28 steps, we knelt down at the left side of the stairs. There were also some sisters just in front of us and next to us who seemed to have thought of something similar. Deep in prayer, we only dimly perceived some loud shouting from somewhere down at some point; and even if I had listened, I would not have understood, as it was Italian. Only when we had finished the Rosary and reached the top of the stairs did we see, on turning around, what we had done: Between us, the sisters and we had created a major traffic jam. The lower half of the stairs was basically empty, while people crowded on the upper third, some of them apparently rather less happy of having been forced to do rather more penance than they had planned. Although the two of us still burst out in laughter at the recollection of this, I must add, on a less flippant note, that of course it is rather a breathtaking experience, when you think about it properly, to actually be using those stairs Our Lord was sent up and down so many times on the day of His crucifixion.