Cortona and Assisi

Monday we left at 5 am to catch the early train to Cortona, a town in Tuscany where we stayed for 3 nights. The metro was running late, which meant we were literally running to catch the train. Walking muscles are not the same as running muscles. We did catch the train, but not without some excitement. I’d forgotten how much I love European trains. You have all this great quiet time to look out the window and think about life while you whiz along. A few hours later we arrived in Cortona. Cortona sits up on a mountainside overlooking a tapestry of Tuscan countryside. We came here to pursue our Medieval history, but we also found Roman and Etruscan goodies to learn about. We put up in an old convent up on the hill, a rare treat for students. Usually the convent doesn’t like students, but they know Fr. We spent the beginning of our day at the Diocesan museum and poking our heads into some great Romanesque churches. At the museum we saw a Fra Angelico annunciation, one of four in existence. In the corner Adam and Eve flee the garden before an angel with a sword, showing the fall of man through Eva. In the foreground Gabriel says Ave – marking Mary as the antithesis to Eva, the woman who obeyed and helped save mankind. We soaked up the museum and then trekked up the hill to check out a few more churches. Halfway up the steep, narrow cobbled street Fr. Maher turned to his huffing and puffing students and told us “This is an Italian hillside town. *insert trademark grin*” This Jesuit keeps us laughing. We found some chickens near the top of the hill; I don’t know if there’s any more homey sound than chickens softly clucking to themselves and occasionally giving a war cry for a new egg. In the evening we took a hike along the old Roman road to Assisi that Francis used. Poppies and other flora covered the path and pieces of the Roman wall and we could see the whole valley laid out to the side as we plunged down into little dips and walked across Roman drains for the little streams pouring down the hill. We began to understand why Francis loved nature so much as a way to see God. We arrived at our destination, a different kind of beauty: a villa belonging to some Gonzaga Alums who also happen to be friends with Fr. Maher. We wandered across the lush lawns and got to peer into the little brick rooms that looked like they came out of an architecture magazine. The garden bloomed, the swimming pool gurgled; some of the boys took the chilly plunge. Our hosts arrived after us, and graciously showed us around and told us stories about life in Italy and their time at Gonzaga. Cheryl and Rob Turping truly are gems of people. Cheryl gave us some homemade olive oil on bread to try – it tastes nothing like the stuff in the store, it’s almost spicy and it tastes like plant. It was quite good. We spent the evening looking out on the countryside and soaking up the beauty of the restored medieval home. Back in town Fr. took us out for pizza. I had an arugula pizza – fantastic, and hunger is the best sauce. We learned about Italian appetizers as well. Bruchetta, cheese, olives and onions – oh boy. We got Fr. to talking about Gonzaga politics, something he avoids religiously (no pun intended) and got an earful. A grand night overall. As Fr. predicted, we slept “like little numkins.” He also says “snackies,” "tickies,"and “discomboobulated.” (yes, I know that's not a real word.) His vocabulary keeps us on our toes and smiling. Fr. Maher, mother hen. Tuesday we spent in Assisi. In the morning it rained, and we trembled lest we should spend the day tramping through puddles and shivering. Fr. took us into a couple little cafes to get coffee and pastries, a true Italian breakfast. Americans used to eggs and bacon have a hard time adjusting. Luckily, in Assisi it was actually a sunny day. We started in the more modern town, checking out the little chapel where Francis died. A huge basilica, St. Mary of the Angels, was built around it. It certainly was a bit bizarre to see a tiny little chapel sitting in the center of a marble basilica. We saw the famous rose garden where Francis threw himself to avoid temptation against chastity, and we saw his statue that holds a bird nest, the home of his own birds’ descendants. We also wandered through their bookshop and I wrote down a few good titles. I feel like I need to read a lot of Saints’ biographies to catch up with this trip. A bus ride took us up into old Assisi, where we began exploring the many many churches of the town. We saw the Basilica of St. Clare and her tomb, we saw her clothing and St. Francis’ clothing, we saw San Rafino Cathedral where Francis (and Clare and Frederick II) was baptized. We also saw the Basilica of St. Francis, the most impressive of the churches in the town, I think. Br. Elias was so upset with this contradiction of Francis’ poverty he went and built a church in Cortona. The crypt of Francis was ‘found’ in the 1700’s and verified; he’s really in there. The upper church is covered in frescoes by Giotto and some of the lower church has frescoes by Cimabue. Even Fr. Maher was firmly hushed by guards; the Franciscans have put a stop to the hoax guides who lead groups into places like St. Peter’s and then start preaching fundamentalist insults against the Pope. He did talk to us a bit out in the courtyard over the impluvium (sloped court used to collect rainwater). After we exited the church Fr. struck up a conversation with a Franciscan father from Zambia, Fr. Joseph. Fr. Joseph’s group that he was supposed to show around had canceled, so he took us through the Franciscan complex instead. He showed us their dining hall, and a couple kids exclaimed “Hogwarts!” Well, we know where Rowling got it. The hall had portraits of all the popes, and the Frs. took a photo shaking hands under Clement 14th, the Franciscan pope who got bullied into suppressing the Jesuit order. They bantered back and forth about the current Jesuit pope, poor Clement, attending ‘the Greg’ (the Gregorian College) and Rome while Fr. Joseph showed us the incredible panorama from the Franciscans’ colonnade along the hillside. We recognized the colonnade as the structure we saw as we rode up on the bus. The view was breathtaking. He also showed us the Chapel of Peace, a small little chapel cut out of the rock where the brothers pray. It was so simple and well, peaceful. After we bade adieus, we had several hours to explore. I ended up wandering up the hill along some less touristy paths and found a parking area full of wildflowers and overlooking the valley. I happily plopped down and spent some time thinking and praying and writing. I could hear all kinds of things from my perch even though I couldn’t see any of them: peacocks, bees, birds, a donkey, heavy machinery, people talking, children crying, dogs. Fantastic afternoon. Fr. had treated us to an enormous lunch in Assisi – 3 courses of Italian splendor – so dinner was a small affair. At lunch I learned that Italian tablecloths are for the bread, and the little ‘bread plates’ are actually for appetizers. Bread should also be saved to fully enjoy the pasta sauce left over from the first course. I also learned that Americans pronounce ‘Italian’ eye-talian, while more aware English speakers should say it-alian. I’d been doing it ‘wrong’ all this time. We tried out an Italian McDonalds’ near the train station for dinner. It wasn’t as good as the French McDonalds’, but it sufficed. Wednesday we spent the morning in Cortona’s main museum, doing our best to flee “school children from hell.” We saw everything from mammoth tusks and Etruscan tombs to Fascist paintings throughout the medieval castle. One of the coolest things was the medieval library, a smallish room full of books. Fr. said it represents about 30% of the works in print at the time, and much of the library was made up of different translations of the same works. It’s pretty incredible to compare that amount of written knowledge with what we have today. We also saw the windows designed for women to perch on and modestly look out at the world. Fr told us about nuns throwing bricks at Martin Luther to make him go away and resist losing their power as unmarried women under their own power. Nuns took their own name instead of their father’s or husband’s, could go out in public, and didn’t have to die in childbirth or be beaten by husbands – they were just fine staying in the convent. We had the afternoon to ourselves, so after getting sandwiches 6 of us decided to walk to Le Celle, a Franciscan compound where Francis used to have a cell. We got a little lost by taking the more scenic route, but we did get a nice 45 minute nature walk out of it. We eventually found the right road and trekked uphill and down to see the stone complex tucked into the side of the hill. It was incredible, like something out of the Hobbit. A little stream runs down the stone gorge through the complex, and beautiful bridges cross it. We saw the cell where Francis lived – really a cell, and sat in the chapels the brothers use. They have gardens with vegetables in them and flowers bloomed against the stone. Gorgeous. That night the Turpings generously took our entire group out to dinner along with two other couples that knew or wanted to know Fr. Maher. We enjoyed bruchetta, lamb ragout, and a delicious chocolate cake without flour or sugar and many other things that I don’t know the name of. I ended up at Fr. Maher’s table with the two ladies from the other couples. We got to listen to stories about Fr’s mother, who he seems to take after. She’s 92 and still runs a genealogical library in Milwaukee, besides being a character. I would love to meet her. She’s visited Italy with him a few times and the Turpings showed us photos of them all. The other ladies at the table were also fascinating. Catherine McLaughlin told us about working for British airlines and how she met her husband and talked to us about our passions and deep life questions. She also told us about her (and Fr’s) good friend, Frances Mayes, who also happens to be the author of Under the Tuscan Sun, a popular novel and now movie that has put Cortona on the map. The book and reality differ a bit, but apparently it’s a good read so I’ll have to get my hands on it. We had a lovely supper and we returned to the convent warm and full, and a bit reluctant to leave Cortona. But – back to Rome we went. PS: The Turping’s home is for sale if you have 2.5 million sitting around. PPS: Also, Fr. told us on the train back that he has an article published on Galadriel in a character anthology of Lord of the Rings. He was doing some bedtime reading and noticed that the 27 appellations referring to Mary in Litany of Loretto were all present in the descriptions of Galadriel. As Tolkein was a good Catholic, and this prayer was almost more common than an Our Father, it’s surely not an accident. But no one else had ever noticed, so he wrote a paper. Coolest professor ever.

Sand and Mad Dashes

At the beach it turned out that the wind strongly surpassed the sun on our weather radars. Fr. said he only sees the beach like this in December – big waves, strong wind, and mostly deserted. We sat out on the black sand and soaked up the heat like lizards. Part of the group began a very skewed game of volleyball (the wind played too) while a few others went for coffee or a walk. On our way home we stopped for gelato and met one of Fr. Maher’s friend. To tell the truth, we spent more time interacting with his friend’s baby than the Italian-speaking friend, but we enjoyed it all the same. Sunday we set out early to see Europe’s largest flea market at Porto Portese (sp?). Everything from old typewriters to trendy leather jackets lined what seemed endless and maze-like streets. Fr. says he gets all his Christmas presents here. I picked up a tang top for cheap, I’ll probably go back soon since I lost a blazer on the train. It was fun to look around, but the crowd made movement rather slow and we gathered together a bit late. Thus we arrived back at the Vatican just as the Pope’s Sunday benediction began. We sprinted from the bus stop to get into the piazza to see Francis. The place was packed- Fr said he’s only seen numbers like that for Easter. We almost couldn’t get far enough in to see the Pope. His speeches and benedictions are unscripted – making everyone under him very jumpy. He called for prayer for the conversion of the Mafia and came down hard on them, as the Church just beatified a priest martyred by them. He spoke all in Italian, and I picked up a bit, but Fr. Maher gave us the gist and told us it was very spicy. Fr. also told us that Francis refuses to speak anything but Spanish and Italian, and won’t sing. This first Jesuit Pope and his definite character have become incredibly popular thus far. Sunday night I went with Richard and Katherine, two other students, for mass in St. Peter’s. The line, during tourist times, took an hour and 5 minutes to get through. 7 am is definitely the time to go. Mass in Italian was beautiful even if I couldn’t understand most of it. The acoustics aren’t so good from a technical point of view, but I kinda like the echoes. Fr. said that the piazza used to be so bad that you could never understand anything the Pope said because of the echo; they’ve delayed some of the audio so the sound has time to travel to the other side of the enormous square and avoid the delay now. Richard gleefully secured permission to play the organ sometime.

Better Than the Capitoline

Yesterday we bought umbrellas, since it started raining as soon as we set out. Fr. Maher showed us this big, indoor farmer’s market for the task, and it was fun to walk around the crates of fresh veggies, octopus, fish, and miscellaneous clothing before we caught the metro. Our first stop was the Diocletian baths, now Mary of the Angels and Martyrs Church. The baths extend out of the church and encompass the square outside the building as well that’s now become the street and other buildings. The massive granite pillars are still intact, as are the ceilings and cornices, and the calendar built into the floor also works. Sun comes in through a specific hole in the ceiling to hit precisely oh the date and time of year on a long diagonal diagram across the floor. Pretty neat. The size, again, was so impressive. Romans didn’t skimp on monumentality. We toured one of Rome’s oft-forgotten gems: the National Museum, or Massimo’s Palazzo. The museum is quiet, clean, air conditioned, and filled with nice bathrooms and lots of cushy chairs besides an incredible collection of Roman art. I definitely liked it better than the Capitoline. We walked through halls of marble busts of emperors, saw where the Pugilist ought to be (he’s on tour, so maybe I’ll go back later to see him), saw diskobolus, and strolled through literal rooms of Roman frescoes and mosaics showing just how much wealth the wealthy Romans had. There was also a sort of mausoleum for the poor that had incredibly detailed frescoes of birds decorating it. There were sarcophagi, statues, and even an exhibit on Roman coins in the basement. On the way home Fr. Maher turned us loose on our own to ride the bus without him. Call it our first pop quiz; we passed. After lunch I went with a few others to a little religious store a few blocks away. I don’t understand Catholic imagery entirely, but I’m working on it, and I think I’d like to learn to pray a rosary, so I picked up a few things. I also learned a lesson about the Italian value of coinage. At this large store I tried to pay for 5.20 worth of merchandise with a 20 (Fr. told us they would break bills here) and the lady wouldn’t sell to me unless I gave her 20 cents with the 20. They guard their coins jealously here. Fr. tells us that it’s very rude to try to pay with anything under 5 euro with a 10, etc. Fun fact. After cooking dinner in groups (much better than trying to cram 6+ people in one tiny kitchen) we went out for gelato to celebrate Mark’s birthday. We found out that today there is a strike on the buses and other transport, so our plan to visit a little town a ways out fell through. Luckily Fr. Maher knows his syllabus backwards and forwards, so today we still have plenty to do and we can go to Ostia next week. Instead…we’ll be walking a lot. My calves are going to look like Marcus Aurelius’ by the end of this!

Thunder on the Third Day

Our first day in Rome was not for the weak hearted, but it was worth it. We left at 8:30 to walk to the Capitoline hill and learn about Rome’s layout en route. Our first stop was St. Ignatius Church, which is the star of Jesuit History Class, to start off our learning on a holy note. The ceiling is basically a baroque expression of the Ignatian worldview, with America, Asia, Europe, and Africa all moving up into heaven with the help of Ignatius. Past this fresco is a huge dome – well, that’s what it looks like, anyway. It’s really completely flat; the Jesuits wanted a nice big dome, but the Dominicans sued because they thought it would cast a shadow on their neighboring courtyard. It was the first suit over air rights in the history of the world. The Jesuits won, but by that time they had lost the money for the dome. So they ended up with an incredible optical illusion instead. We went specifically to say hello to Luigi Gonzaga, more formally known as St. Aloysius Gonzaga, the namesake of GU and St. Al’s church in Spokane. We all mugged for the camera in front of his lapis lazuli casket before continuing on. We practically needed blinders to get us through all the streets without gawking along the way, but we made it to the Capitoline museum and began our morning in earnest. We saw so many sculptures and works that I’d studied in Art History and Western Civ and everything else – dying Gaul, The Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius, busts with wild hairstyles, and more. All my academic notes are elsewhere and will be organized and put up at the end of this trip, so I won’t go into detail. More importantly, we enjoyed Fr. Maherisms and learned to navigate. We were awash in Italian school children doing end of the year trips. According to Fr. Maher, the only kind of terrorism in Italy is Italian schoolchildren in museums. He does not take kindly to rowdiness in the presence of great history and art, and even told one group to go home if they wouldn’t behave. The teacher took them home. Go, Fr. Maher! At home, Fr. Maher dropped by an Italian peer to help us d o some cooking. We made tortellini with tomato sauce, nothing fancy, but it was good. On the food front, I also discovered that Italians love their coffee so much they have coffee flavored yogurt. Pretty good stuff. Today, Day 2, feels more like day 5 or so, we’ve learned so much. I think my body has finally accepted Europe’s time zones so I felt pretty perky. We took the subway to the Colosseum first thing to beat the crowds. The weather was unusually brisk, with a chilly wind blowing. Fr. Maher was astounded, but true to form it heated up for our walk up Palatine hill and the tour of the Forum. On Palatine hill we stopped to get something to drink/eat and I ordered my first cappuccino. I was afraid I would get a caffeine buzz too much for my poor system, but I didn’t, and the coffee---we shouldn’t even call the American stuff coffee. It was frothy and mellow and full of cream and beautiful. It was also rather filling, which explains why Italians see it as a breakfast only kind of beverage. Fr. Maher said to order coffee after a meal would be like asking for a bowl of cereal after dinner. I think coffee will have to happen more often. Up on the hill, since we were close, we popped into the church that houses Michelangelo’s Moses, St. Peter’s chains, and Nicholas of Cusa’s tomb. Once again, so cool to see things that I have learned about in the past. The Forum was really pretty, with wildflowers in bloom and grass coming up through the ruins. We were mobbed by school children again, but we strolled through the piercingly hot sunshine taking pictures and learning from our wise guide. We walked next back towards home, via a quick stop at the Pantheon. (Fr. Maher wanted us to see both Constantine’s Basilica and the Pantheon in one day, since they were the basis for St. Peter’s). While we were cut loose to look around, thunder started rolling over the city, and soon masses of people dashed under the massive columns to avoid the downpour. The rain plummeted through the oculus, while the thunder reverberated around the dome and tourist cameras flashed on the walls like lightning. It made me think that the pagan gods had woken up, or that God was proving the point that the oculus really was dedicated to Him, the nameless over-god. This was probably my favorite moment so far in Rome. We waited out the rain, bought sandwiches, and made it home around 3:30. At 5:30 5 of us and the venerable father headed out for the feast of St. Rita, celebrated at the church of St. Rita. You buy roses with a donation, then take them to the priest to have them touched to the relics of Rita. People packed the beautiful little church, and the air smelled sweet with smoke, roses, and incense. My Catholic peers faces absolutely lit up. On the way home we helped some lost Chinese find a Spaghetti restaurant. Fr. Maher is so considerate; he will go to any lengths to help someone with little things. For instance, I wanted to buy a hair straightener, and instead of just telling me where to go he insisted on showing me where and helping me buy it. Then he wanted to stop and get his daily coffee, and I came along to watch the process. The bartender thought I wanted one too, and Fr. Maher insisted on paying. He explained to me what a macchiato was (macchi is the same root as immaculate, that is, macchi is a stain. So a macchiato is an espresso with a stain of cream) as well as the marble countertop and how the coffee bar used to be a dairy. The point is, he has my loyalty forever. Anyway, the thunder and pelting rain started up again on the way home so we took shelter under an arch and worked our way to a spacious porch to wait most of it out. Fr. said he’d buy us some cheap umbrellas. Bless him.