Oh, babe, I hate to go...

[T]he tourist, despite all his claims to want to see the "real Florence," isn't interested in its urban sprawl; he is interested in what [art historian] Bernard Berenson called "conoscing," the object of which is the discovery of unsuspected marvels.... He wants to bring home, if not photographic evidence, then at least the interior knowledge that he has partaken of all the marvels that Florence has to offer - as if it were possible in the course of a single human life.

And what marvels there are! Astonishingly, Florence houses almost a fifth of the world's art treasures. A fifth! A thorough Florentine itinerary takes in architecture, sculpture and painting, major museums (The Bargello and the Uffizi), as well as small ones (the Stibbert and the Horne), public buildings, palaces and innumerable churches, Botticellis and Leonardos and Michelangelos and Giottos and Massaccios and Fra Angelicos and Gozzolis and Pontormos and Donatellos... And even if you see all of these things, even if you stay in Florence a year, or five years, there will be something that you've missed, some remote church known only to the cognoscenti..., about which you will be informed only the eve of your departure.

D. Leavitt, Florence, A Delicate Case (Bloomsbury 2002), pp. 22-23

It's all over but the shouting. I leave for Rome by car tomorrow at 5:00 a.m., and from Rome for New York 5 hours later. Am I ready? I'll be packed in another hour, tops, but I'm not ready. Oh, sure, I miss family and friends, but I will miss so much that i found here. You know, I went for a whole month without getting into a car or bus or train or an elevator or on an escalator on bike or skateboard or scooter or Segway. I walked everywhere. What's more, everywhere I walked was interesting. I'm going to miss that. (Which is not to say Manhattan's not interesting! It is, after all, the Center of the Universe. Still, it's not the same.)

I'm not going to go on and on about what I'll miss here. I could, but I won't. I'll wait until I actually miss it, then I'll let you know about it.

Before I sign off, I owe those of you who expected some kind of closure, a tying off of narrative threads or themes I introduced in earlier entries and left incomplete, with promises to tie them off eventually, an apology. I simply didn't have the time or talent to pull it all off in so short a time. I mean, I only started this blog a little more than seven weeks ago, and I've posted (with this one) 35 entries, several videos, and a number of photos. That's a post, plus extras, every 4 days or so! Not bad for a guy on sabbatical. Still, it's not what I promised, and for those of you who might be disappointed, again, I apologize. Of course, there's nothing to prevent me from trying to fulfill my promise in the few weeks remaining to me before I return to work. In fact, unless there are any strong objections out there, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to say what I have to say about Dante and the Council of Florence and the Medicis and the Church in Italy and Venice and the Patriarchate in Constantinople and what it all has to do with - yes! - Savonarola, for anyone who gives a darn out there. Tell you what: if you want me to continue, to bring this project to completion, give me no sign. If I don't hear from enough of you within, say, the next week, I'll assume your moral support. Alright then: you have one week not to stop me, starting... NOW.

The Naked Truth

No one can leave Florence without having encountered Michelangelo's "David," whether it be the original marble statue in the Accademia Gallery, or the exact marble replica outside the Palazzo Vecchio in the Piazza della Signoria, where the original stood from its unveiling in 1504 until it was transferred to the Accademia in 1873, or the bronze replica that has stood at the Piazza Michelangelo, across the Arno and down the hill from San Miniato, for the past century. And should you somehow manage to miss all three of these giants, if you have the gift of sight, you cannot escape his image, in whole or part, in plaster or bronze miniatures of various sizes, on postcards, calendars, posters, magnets, neckties, scarves, boxer shorts, bath towels, chef's aprons. The single most popular work of art in Florence, if not the whole of Italy, "David" is certainly among the most famous nudes in the history of sculpture, with the Venus de Milo, Discus Thrower, the Artemision Bronze of Poseidon (or Zeus), Hermes of Praxiteles, and Rodin's Thinker his only conceivable competition.

Have you ever wondered why Michelangelo carved this Old Testament figure as a nude? I used to think it was simply a matter of returning to ancient GrecoRoman artistic standards and ideals, which was, after all, what the Renaissance was for the most part about. Since coming to Florence, however, I find there may be more to David's nudity than meets the eye. It's just possible that the artist is trying to communicate a truth about God and faith.

It's worth mentioning here that Michelangelo wasn't the first artist of his time to carve David in the all-together. That distinction goes to Donatello, who, my careful readers will recall, was responsible for several of the great sculptures adorning the Church of Orsanmichele: St Mark, St George, St Louis of Toulouse (now in the Basilica of Santa Croce). In fact, Donatello made two sculptures of David. In the earlier version, Donatello depicted the young shepherd, who he carved out of marble, wearing in a kind of leather armor and wrapped around with a cloak of animal skin; he looks not unlike the even-earlier St George, except that David's stance is less confrontational than the soldier saint, more relaxed, graceful. The contest, after all, is behind him; Goliath's severed head lies at his feet. It was Donatello's second David, however, produced 35 years after his first, that made art history, as both the first free-standing bronze sculpture and the first monumental nude in more than a millenium. This second David is not as tall or as mature as his previous marble incarnation, and would be dwarfed sixty years later by Michelangelo's 17-foot version. He's a little more than five feet tall, dark where the other two are light, and, well, very effeminate. His long hair (today as dark as his body, but originally distinguished from it by, as it were, a gold leaf dye job) falls over his shoulders and down his back, and his chest and hips could be those of a girl on the verge of adolescence. His smile and stance are coquettish, and an enormous wing from the dead giant Goliath's helmet climbs up his inner leg - something one couldn't help but notice in the original, as it, too, was highlighted in gold - in a frankly indecent manner. Those goldie locks and that titillating feather are more noticeable now than they have been for centuries. The Bargello Museum, where many of Donatello's greatest works are on display, only last week unveiled a newly renovated David, the result of a year of cleaning and polishing by the most modern techniques, including laser. It was during the restoration that experts confirmed the evidence of gold flakes in the hair and on other parts of the composition, but rather than reapply the gold, the museum decided to make an exact replica of the original, and to present it as it would have looked in 1445, when Donatello delivered it to - who else? - Cosimo de' Medici, the first politically active member of the impossibly wealthy (and therefore powerful) family that was to dominate Florentine and eventually European politics for the next three centuries. The replica stands a few feet behind the original, and on a slightly higher pedestal. The Bargello doesn't allow cameras, and although we know that hasn't stopped me before, because the unveiling took place just a few days ago, security is a little tighter than it was at San Marco's for the Fra Angelico fresco, so I decided not to risk it. There are, however, plenty of images on the net. Just google "Donatello David" and see for yourself. It's not just me, right? It's kind of creepy.

Back to the theological. What is it about a naked David that communicates a theological truth? To understand that, let's look at the Old Testament passage that describes David's preparation to confront the outsized enemy of his people. In I Samuel 17, after King Saul learns that the young shepherd David has accepted the Phillistine champion's challenge to one-on-one combat:

Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you.” Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them. “I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine (1 Samuel 17:37-40, NIV translation).

Scripture tells us that David divested himself of armor; we aren't told that he put on any other clothes, therefore, we are meant to understand (a literalist would argue) that David went to meet the heavily-armored giant with nothing but the items described: his shepherd's bag, staff, sling, and five stones. He needed no other armor: the Lord was his shield and buckler; the Lord was his defense at his right hand. The fact that Donatello's victorious David (Goliath's helmeted head is on the ground at his feet) doesn't boast a he-man's physique serves to underline the fact that his victory is God's. With God on his side, even a naked sissy is a force to be reckoned with.

Michelangelo's David tells a slightly different story. Like Donatello's St George, this David is bracing himself for confrontation. His brow is furrowed as he looks to his left for his foe. (The Lord is his defense at his right hand.) His perfectly fit body is tense. His battle has yet to be fought. This David is even more exposed to danger than Donatello's, who is wearing a hat and what look like metal shin guards. This David has clearly decided to meet his enemy clothed only in his faith in a God who delivers who He loves. But David is bringing his best to the encounter. He knows in his heart that God will fight with him, but he knows as well that that does not absolve him from the responsibility of engaging in the conflict with all his mind and all his strength. His expression communicates to us that he has no illusions about the strength of his opponent; his nudity communicates to us, or ought to, anyway, his confidence in the victory. If God with him, who can be against him?

Alas, when we look on David today, we're not predisposed to see in his nakedness anything other than an absence. Unless, however, we can see him as he sees himself, clothed in God's might, he becomes, for all his beauty, slightly ridiculous: a man caught for eternity with his pants down.

Reviewing "A Room with a View"

I'll be spending a good bit of tomorrow writing up my experiences of the last two days here in Constantinople - the ordination of Deacon Nyphon (ne Nikolaos) Tsimalis on Saturday and the Patriarchal Divine Liturgy for the Feast of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-called on Sunday - before turning my attention back to Florence as I conclude my two months there. Today, however, is a travel day. I leave in a few minutes for the Istanbul airport, where I'll get an early afternoon flight to Rome, from where I'll catch a train to Florence. I should be back in my apartment on the Via delle Terme in 8 or 9 hours.

A friend who reads this blog was kind enough to send my this link to an article that appeared in yesterday's New York Times. Those of you who know the wonderful Merchant-Ivory film, "A Room with a View," and the even more wonderful E.M. Forster novel from which it was adapted will, I'm sure, enjoy this:http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/travel/30Florence.html

Until tomorrow!

In The City (there's a thousand things I want to say to you)

It's gone by many names over the course of its 2600-year existence: Byzantion, for its mythical founder, Byzas; New Rome, for the role it was to play in the restructured Empire; then Constantinople, after the Emperor who willed that new role and restructuring; and most recently Stamboul, then Istanbul, from the Greek "eis tin Poli," "(in) The City," as that was how the conquering Turks heard its inhabitants refer to it. Even today, for Greeks the world over, it is simply The City.

Wherever I look here, I can't help wondering what I would be seeing if I were standing on the same spot at another moment in The City's history: a hundred years ago, before the fall of the Sultanate and the birth on the secular Turkish state, when more than a third of its one million inhabitants were Greeks and Armenians (today, there are 1500 Greeks, and far fewer Armenians, in a population of 15 million); 560 years ago, before its conquest by the Ottoman Turks; 810 years ago, before its sacking by the armies of the 4th Crusade; 1480 years ago, before the fires of the Nika Riots burned to the ground an earlier version of the Church of Haghia Sophia; 1680 years ago, as Constantine the Great was creating from the raw material of an ancient Greek city a New Rome, even grander than the Old; 2500 years ago, when the hill on which Haghia Sophia now stands was the site of a temple dedicated to a pagan goddess. I wish there was a way of pealing back the layers, like transparencies in an anatomy textbook, lifting away first the skin of the present, then the various systems of the past, and so on until the bones.

In fact, there is a website that makes it possible to envision The City as it may have looked at its most glorious, from an Orthodox Christian or Byzantinist perspective: www.byzantium1200.com. The purpose of the site is to provide as best as possible, based on physical remains, historic descriptions, and artists' renderings, reconstructions of buildings as they might have appeared in Constantinople on the eve of its sacking by the Crusaders in 1204. Those of you who checked out the wikipedia article on the Milion mentioned in one of my previous entries will have seen that nothing remains of that great monument but a broken and scarred marble pillar. Go to www.byzantium1200.com, read the "Important Notice," click on "contents" from the column on the left, and then click on item no. 40, "Milion." See what I mean? The site is especially helpful for the Hippodrome, of which only three monuments remain; the Great Palace, on the site of which the Blue Mosque now stands; and the Blachernae Palace complex, of which there is only a single wall today.

Certainly the greatest monument The City has ever produced is the Great Church of Haghia Sophia. It is referred to as the Great Church rather than as the Cathedral, because that title belongs to the nearby church of Haghia Eirene. (Neither of these churches, by the way, is dedicated to a woman saint. Haghia Sophia is the Holy Wisdom of Christ, and Haghia Eirene is His Holy Peace. Both of these attributes, Wisdom and Peace, are in the Greek language feminine, and are also used as names for women; hence the confusion.) It was, famously, the overwhelming beauty of the building and of the worship that took place within it that won the Russian people for Orthodoxy. The Tsar's emissaries, upon experiencing the Divine Liturgy as celebrated within the Great Church, reported back to him that they didn't know whether they were in heaven or on earth, so powerfully were they moved by the symphony of sights and sounds being conducted in its massive yet miraculously open space. The building itself is the third church of the same name on the same site; the previous two were largely wooden structures which were brought down by fires set by rioters. The present structure was built in the unbelievably short period of 5 years, between 532 and 537, during the reign of Justinian the Great. For over 900 years, it was the most magnificent Christian temple in the world. For nearly 500 years after the capture of The City by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, it was one of the world's most important mosques. For the past 70 years, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the modern Turkish state, it has been a museum, though still decorated as if it were a mosque. Once again, wikipedia offers an excellent survey of the Church and its long history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia), and there is an impressive virtual tour available on line as well, at http://www.kultur.gov.tr/tr/ayasofya/ayasofya.htm. (If you've never done a virtual tour, the trick is to point your cursor in the direction you want to go, then click.)

If I had arrived in The City on November 24, 1437, exactly 571 years to the day before I actually arrived this past Monday, I would have been just in time to witness a singularly spectacular sight: The Holy Roman Emperor John VIII Paleologus and His All-Holiness Patriarch Joseph II of Constantinople boarding separate ships, with an entourage of hundreds of hierarchs, clergymen, lay theologians, noblemen and courtiers from throughout the Orthodox Christian East. They would have been preparing to set sail for Italy, to attend a Council summoned by Pope Eugenius IV for the purpose of healing a schism between the Churches of East and West that had been in effect, technically speaking, since Sunday, July 16, 1054, when three papal legates disrupted the Divine Liturgy in Haghia Sophia by depositing a Bull of Excommunication on the Holy Altar before storming out of the building. And I will be returning to the sad story of what happened in that Council when I myself return to Italy early next week!

The Constantinopolitan Connection

The following is from NPR's website. I was frankly quite surprised to learn that Constantinople had a part to play in this most American of holidays!

Why A Turkey Is Called A Turkey
by Robert Krulwich

Morning Edition, November 27, 2008 ·
Here's the puzzle:
The bird we eat on Thanksgiving is an exclusively North American animal. It is found in the wild on no other continent but ours. It evolved here. So why is this American bird named for a Eurasian country?
To find out, I went back to an interview I did almost 30 years ago on NPR's Morning Edition with Mario Pei, a Columbia University professor of Romance languages, who died shortly after our conversation.
I return to his answer because it is still the best one available.
Professor Pei had two theories.
First, in the 1500s when the American bird first arrived in Great Britain, it was shipped in by merchants in the East, mostly from Constantinople (who'd brought the bird over from America).
Since it wholesaled out of Turkey, the British referred to it as a "Turkey coq." In fact, the British weren't particularly precise about products arriving from the East. Persian carpets were called "Turkey rugs." Indian flour was called "Turkey flour." Hungarian carpet bags were called "Turkey bags."
If a product came to London from the far side of the Danube, Londoners labeled it "Turkey" and that's what happened to the American bird. Thus, an American bird got the name Turkey-coq, which was then shortened to "Turkey."
Or…Theory No. 2 (and maybe both theories are correct): Long before Christopher Columbus went to America, Europeans already had a wild fowl they liked to eat. It came from Guinea, in Western Africa. It was a guinea fowl, imported to Europe by, yes, Turkish merchants. It was eaten in London. So it got the nickname Turkey coq, because it came from Constantinople.
When British settlers got off the Mayflower in Massachusetts Bay Colony and saw their first American woodland fowl, even though it is larger than the African Guinea fowl, they decided to call it by the name they already used for the African bird. Wild forest birds like that were called "turkeys" at home.
Why not use the same name in Plymouth? And Boston? And Rhode Island? So a name attached to an African bird got reattached to an American one.
The point is for 500 years now, this proud (if not exactly brilliant) American animal has never had a truly American name.
And just to keep this ball rolling…all over the world, people now can eat American Turkeys, but they don't call them Turkeys.
Across Arabia, they call our bird "diiq Hindi," or the "Indian rooster."
In Russia, it's "Indjushka," bird of India.
In Poland, "Inyczka"— again "bird from India."
And what, we wondered, do the Turks call our turkey?
Well, they call it "Hindi," again, short for India.
So in 1492, because Columbus wanted to be in the "Indies," our North American bird got robbed of its American-ness, which is why tonight, when you look down at your turkey, don't call it "sahib."
Call it "dude."

Feast on this

Among the myriad gifts I'm grateful for, today and every day, is the gift of artistry, our God-given ability to share in creating the world, not out of nothing, but out of those things which He created from the beginning to be good, to be put to good use by us, created to reflect His glory by participating in His creative life. The art of storytelling, in its various forms, including the cinematic, is a way of reordering creation, of giving inarticulate creation a voice, of discovering in creation God's word for us. The art of cooking is another gift, and can be a way of transforming our awareness of and appreciation for the world around us, of turning it into a means of communion with God and His creation and each other, and a cause for giving thanks to God for His creation and each other. These forms of artistic expression, the narrative and the culinary, come together most perfectly in the 1987 Danish film, "Babette's Feast." It is itself cause for celebration and thanksgiving because, through the collaborative story-telling genius of author Karen ("Isak Dinesen") Blitzen and director Gabriel Axel, we see for ourselves, with the eyes of the heart, the sacred at the heart of a meal, prepared with self-emptying love, received in loving gratitude.

If you haven't seen "Babette's Feast," you are hereby directed to correct that failing at your earliest convenience, and certainly no later than Christmas. It's for your own good. It will make your celebration of Christmas a richer one. In fact, I'm so certain you will thank me for it, you're already welcome!

Unconvinced? Go to the link below and watch New York Time's film critic A.O. Scott offer his appreciation of the film. Consider it an appetizer.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/11/24/movies/1194833387303/critics-picks-babettes-feast.html?ei=5070&emc=eta1

A blessed Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Alleluia!

A Milion to one

No, I spelled it correctly. I'm not referring to the number, but to a historic monument and what remains of it. The Milion was a building in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), at the northern corner of the Great Church of Haghia Sophia, a few meters from the entry to the Basilica Cistern and few more from the site of the ancient Hippodrome, at the very beginning of the Mese Odos (Constantinople's Central Avenue/Broadway). Built by Constantine the Great in imitation of a similar structure in Rome when he recreated Byzantium as New Rome, it was the point from which the distance to all other cities of the Empire was measured. Over the centuries, it developed into quite a complicated monument, described in detail at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milion. It was destroyed in the early 16th century by the conquering Ottomans, to accommodate other building projects in the immediate vicinity. All that remains of it today is a single pillar; hence the title of today's entry. Why am I writing about it at all? Because the hotel where I'm staying for the week is about 200 yards away from it. Sure, I could've said 200 yards from Haghia Sophia, but I wanted to respect the ancient practice of measuring distances from that particular, even though no longer extant, monument.

Yes, I'm in Constantinople, a day earlier than I'd planned to be. Alitalia Airlines announced late last week that there'd be a work stoppage on Tuesday, and as I had to be at the Patriarchate on Wednesday morning, I had to reschedule for a Monday departure. I'd planned to be here through Thursday, then go back to Florence on Friday. That won't be happening, for a couple of good reasons. The first: His All Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew has designated Saturday, November 29 to be the day of the ordination to the Holy Diaconate of Nikolaos Tsimalis, a Greek-American who has been working as an intern at the Ecumenical Patriarchate since graduating from Holy Cross School of Theology last May. Niko is a very gifted young man who communicates with equal ease in Greek and English, chants beautifully, and most importantly loves the Church of Christ with his whole heart. He has been looking forward to this coming Saturday, he says with complete sincerity, for his whole life.

Niko is a native of Merrillville, Indiana and a life-long member of Sts Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral there. When I was growing up, it was not yet a cathedral, nor had the parish yet relocated from Gary, my hometown, to Merrillville, but in all other respects Niko and I are from the same community. My youngest sister Maria was one of his first Sunday School teachers (and remembers him as quite a handful back then), and he and my nephews Matthew and Aaron served as altar boys together. He will be ordained by His Eminence Metropolitan Nikitas of the Dardanelles, formerly of Hong Kong, and long before that, a priest of Sts Constantine and Helen Cathedral in Merrillville. The Metropolitan is here as a member of the Patriarchal Synod, which is in session this week. How could I not stay for such a blessed occasion? (I didn't know about it before coming here, as Niko was only informed about it himself by the Patriarch only a few days ago.) Because he will be ordained as a celibate, the Patriarch has indicated that he will be given a new name, of His All Holiness's choosing, which he is keeping to himself. My money's on "Paphnutios." Call it a hunch.

I mentioned two good reasons for extending my stay. The second is that Sunday is the Feast of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called, the Founder of the Church at Byzantium and Patron of the Ecumenical Throne. It was my great honor to serve on the occasion of that feast at the Patriarchal Cathedral of St George at the Phanar eight years ago, when I was still an archimandrite. I was one of two priests, two deacons, and thirteen Patriarchs and Metropolitans serving that day. I remember having only recently come over from the States and being severely jet-lagged that morning. Had it not been for the crush of people in the sanctuary (every hierarch had an assistant nearby at all times) I would probably have keeled over from exhaustion a couple of times. As it was, there was simply no room to fall. I'm pretty sure, though, that I slept through parts of the morning, on my feet. I look forward to experience the whole morning this time with my wits, such as they are, about me.

So that means I'll be here, unless the Lord has other plans for me, until Monday morning, and back in Florence later that day. And back in the States a week after that.

Before calling it a day, let me tell you about a conversation I had just before sitting down to update this blog. I'd stepped out of the hotel to walk around the neighborhood, maybe catch a bite - okay, to catch a bite - when I noticed I was being waved over to a little restaurant across the street by what I assumed was its proprietor. I turned out to be right about that. He was a charming and dignified gentleman named Osman, the name of the founder of the Ottoman Empire. "My American friend!" he called to me. "Come! You look hungry!" I'm not sure what about me said "American" or "hungry," but he such an amiable character I played along. There were only a couple of other people in the place, younger Turkish men, one in his early thirties in the other ten years younger. No sooner had I accepted a seat than Osman began presenting me with the typical range of Turkish mezedhes, and the older of the other two started questioning me politely about my background. Within minutes, Ramazan (that's his name) and I were talking more easily than I would have thought possible about topics which I thought were not discussed in Turkey. Ramazan is, by the way, a Kurd, and despite his end-of-a-long-day-at-the-garage look, is well educated and very articulate in English, which he claims to have taught himself. He wanted to discuss my faith, what I thought about his, whether I thought Turkey would ever be ready for EU membership (he expressed himself pessimistic - "there is no respect here for human rights!"), and the legacy of Attaturk. This last topic in particular surprised me, as I thought the Father of Modern Turkey was beyond criticism. Ramazan brushed that aside: "No man is God. Only God is God! He was a man who made many mistakes." I asked him if he spoke like this all the time, or was just putting on a show for an American. He assured me that the times, they are a-changing. He described himself as a conservative Muslim but not a radical when it came to violence. I waited for him to look the other way before I mopped my brow and sighed with relief. No, I'm just kidding. It wasn't an uncomfortable conversation. He struck me as a sincere person, trying to understand what other people think about him and his people and his country and his faith. Oh, and he offered me rock bottom prices on his cousin's carpets, which are in the shop next door. I told him I wasn't here to shop. He assured me I'd change my mind before leaving. I hope he's wrong. Who can afford a Turkish carpet these days?