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Lots of writing and linking around here the past couple of weeks, including Mary Magdalene material and reflecting on the week-old motu proprio. Just click back for all of that. There probably won’t be much more today since we’re heading over to the ATL for a trip to Ikea to furnish someone’s new apartment – I mean, it’s furnished, but things like kitchen supplies and area rugs and so on are on us, so off we go before the Georgia Tech rush floods the place in a couple of weeks.
(The Atlanta Ikea is right next to the Georgia Tech campus)
Let’s start off with a link to more links – Friday links at Dappled Things, including to a piece about a nun who discovered Dante manuscripts:
Holloway discovered the set of potential Dante manuscripts while locating manuscripts written by Latino’s students, and identified the set as Dante’s work due to the distinctive “cancellaresca” script, which Dante was likely taught by his father, and cheap parchment, as Dante was poorer than his fellow students. Two of the manuscripts feature a design of a square imposed on a circle, a concept later used by Dante to describe his vision of God in the Divine Comedy.
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Go check out Daniel Mitsui’s July newsletter, with a fascinating drawing of the rider on a white horse from Revelation 19:
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Matthew Walther had tweeted these thoughts – I’m glad to see he pulled them together in column form. On teaching history.
Instead of an inexhaustible source of wonder that at once renders the past familiar and defamiliarizes the present, history has become, under the two competing theories, either the locus of an interminable quasi-Marxist “critique” of race relations or a kind of substitute for Holy Writ, the record of a chosen people.
The approach I am suggesting instead is valuable for its own sake. It does not require justification on the grounds that it is conducive to the fortunes of a political movement any more than does the teaching of botany or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Nevertheless, it does seem to me likely that “conservatives,” however broadly defined, who wish to reach children in public school settings would do better to focus their efforts on the kind of education I have in mind, if only because the ostensible truths which they wish to impart—rejection of the unlimited potential of man to remake himself in the image of whatever idols he has constructed, a sense of the transcendent glimpsed in those small moments when he stands utterly outside himself and whatever digitally augmented conception of “politics” is meant to subsume his attention—will only be available to children for whom these things have not been precluded by the impression that history itself is reducible to a series of well-meaning didactic clichés.
Which is why Catholic schools used to find it so important to have their own textbooks, especially for the humanities. A project reinvigorated by the Catholic Textbook Project.
Of course, that has its own perils, limitations and blind spots as well, doesn’t it?
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Today’s saint? Bridget of Sweden. Here’s B16 on her:
In Rome, in the company of her daughter Karin, Bridget dedicated herself to a life of intense apostolate and prayer. And from Rome she went on pilgrimage to various Italian Shrines, in particular to Assisi, the homeland of St Francis for whom Bridget had always had great devotion.
Finally, in 1371, her deepest desire was crowned: to travel to the Holy Land, to which she went accompanied by her spiritual children, a group that Bridget called “the friends of God”.
In those years the Pontiffs lived at Avignon, a long way from Rome: Bridget addressed a heartfelt plea to them to return to the See of Peter, in the Eternal City. She died in 1373, before Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome definitively. She was buried temporarily in the Church of San Lorenzo in Panisperna in Rome but in 1374 her children, Birger and Karin, took her body back to her homeland, to the Monastery of Vadstena, the headquarters of the Religious Order St Bridget had founded. The order immediately experienced a considerable expansion. In 1391 Pope Boniface IX solemnly canonized her. Bridget’s holiness, characterized by the multiplicity of her gifts and the experiences that I have wished to recall in this brief biographical and spiritual outline, makes her an eminent figure in European history.
In coming from Scandinavia, St Bridget bears witness to the way Christianity had deeply permeated the life of all the peoples of this Continent. In declaring her Co-Patroness of Europe, Pope John Paul II hoped that St Bridget — who lived in the 14th century when Western Christianity had not yet been wounded by division — may intercede effectively with God to obtain the grace of full Christian unity so deeply longed for. Let us pray, dear brothers and sisters, for this same intention, which we have very much at heart, and that Europe may always be nourished by its Christian roots, invoking the powerful intercession of St Bridget of Sweden, a faithful disciple of God and Co-Patroness of Europe. Thank you for your attention.
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Bells in Nebraska, from Atlas Obscura:
IN THE FRONT YARD OF a home in the picturesque town of Elgin, Nebraska is a treasury of more than 150 bells bought, collected, and curated over the course of decades. These bells ring out the story of the Great Plains, as they were formerly on church steeples and one-room schoolhouses just east of the Sand Hills of Nebraska. They rang out special occasions, emergencies, the start of church services and school days, and are firmly a part of rural life.
Jim Mies rescued many of the bells in his collection from being cast into the rubble of the abandoned or torn-down churches and schools. The bells are made of various types of metal, including brass, aluminum, and other materials, and some are engraved with numbers that indicated how far away (in miles) the bells could be heard from; other numbers indicate how much the bells weigh, in pounds or tons.
The bells are thoughtfully laid out in a manner that allows visitors to get up close to see the details on each instrument. Most of the bells are in good shape and good working order, but please don’t touch them out of respect for their antiquity. Also displayed on the grounds are other antique items of interest, including a 100-year-old gas pump, parking meters, and other objects.
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I know I’ve highlighted this account before, but just in case you’ve forgotten – one of the odd, not-my-specialty Twitter accounts I follow (for some reason) is Wrath of Gnon, dedicated to traditional urbanism and architecture – basically showing over and over how people knew what they were doing before mass, disposable construction. They knew how to build sustainable, livable structures and communities.
So for example, this thread on Japanese cherry trees and flooding.
I can never embed tweets correctly, so I’ll just quote, and you can go see for yourself.
Flooding is one of the worst scourges for towns and cities throughout history, and all cultures have developed their own defenses. Flanking Japan’s rivers you will often see man made levees topped with cherry blossom trees. Those trees weren’t planted there just to be pretty…
…Cherry blossom trees have a famously deep taproot which makes it the ideal species for binding the soil of the levee together, making it grow stronger with time. But these handsome trees were also picked to draw a crowd! Before heavy machinery levees were tamped by hand…
..and maintenance was expensive. But the cherry blossom only flowers during a brief time in spring during which it draws vast crowds come to see it, and whose feet efficiently compacted the soil right before the rainy season when it was at its most vulnerable. For free!
Since Ordinary Time started back up, we’ve been hearing some salvation history from Genesis, and these days, Exodus, in our daily Mass readings. Today’s the giving of the Decalogue to Moses. Here’s a relevant entry from the Loyola Kids Book of Catholic Signs and Symbols. Get one! For your local Catholic parish or school!
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Charlotte was Both 