From Reuters: Rival child lamas grow up and into political storm.

In the cobbled paths and ancient courtyards of Tibet's Tashilhunpo monastery, a little boy stares out of pictures wearing a yellow, cone-shaped hat that mark his sect of Buddhism.

Gyaltsen Norbu has been groomed since childhood to prepare for his role as the 11th Panchen Lama, the reincarnation of the 10th and the second-most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism.

But while he received politically vetted religious training under the close watch of China's leaders, another boy is believed to have grown up under house arrest, dubbed the world's youngest political prisoner.

The first boy was chosen by the Chinese government. The second, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, was anointed by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader and Beijing's nemesis since he fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. [continue]

Posted at 06:46 AM . Permalink

From National Geographic: Catacomb Find Boosts Early Christian-Jewish Ties, Study Says.

For millions of pilgrims and tourists, the ancient catacombs of Rome represent the rise of Christianity. Yet a new study suggests that these vast underground burial complexes may owe their origins to Jews - and that Judaism may have influenced Christianity for longer than previously thought.

Carved over several centuries from soft rock on the outskirts of the imperial capital, the catacombs are the resting places of hundreds of thousands of Christians.

But along with the 60 early-Christian complexes, two Jewish catacombs survive in Rome. They are distinguished by Judaic motifs, such as the seven-branched candelabras, or menorahs, that appear on many grave stones.

Dutch-based researchers now report that at least one of the Jewish catacombs, Villa Torlonia, predates its Christian counterparts. [continue]

I've been browsing through Paternoster Row, a site that's all about historical rosaries and paternosters. It's completely fascinating. Here's an excerpt from the site's home page:

From at least as early as A.D. 1000, rosaries, paternosters or similar strings of prayer beads have been a common accessory carried by men and women, old and young.

Indeed, the small round objects we know in English as "beads" were named from this practice; the root of the English word bead is the same as for the word bid, and originally meant "to pray or request." Chaucer speaks of a woman "bidding her bedes."

The practice of counting prayers using a string of beads is very old. There are legends of St. Anthony in the desert counting his prayers with pebbles in the third century, and a string of beads is preserved in Belgium that is said to have been buried with the saintly Abbess Gertrude (d. 659). Other religions use prayer beads as well, but we cannot be certain whether Christians, Muslims and Hindus invented the idea independently or borrowed it from each other. [continue]

Paternoster Row includes pages on looped rosaries, linear rosaries, and a few photos of replica rosaries.

The site's author, Chris Laning, has a blog, too: Paternosters. I signed up for the RSS feed, and hope for frequent updates. Perhaps there will be more entries as interesting as mystery hands and this one on Balthasar's acorns.

Related sites
Dictionary.com: beads
The Rosary - Catholic Encyclopedia
Use of Beads at Prayers - Catholic Encyclopedia
Rosary - History - EWTN.com

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Museum of Antique Rosaries

Related book
Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages - amazon.com
Stories of the Rose (publisher's page) - psupress.org

From iol.co.za: God's mail delivered to the Wailing Wall.

Jerusalem - Israel's postal service this week delivered 1 000 letters addressed to God, his prophets and the messiah, to their presumed address: the Wailing Wall in Old Jerusalem, the holiest Jewish relic in the world.

Mailed since the beginning of the year, the bundles of letters were delivered to the Wailing Wall by postal director Yossi Sheli, where a rabbi placed the envelopes between the crevices of the ancient stones. [continue]

From Reuters: Monks use hi-tech camera to read ancient texts.

The world's oldest monastery plans to use hi-tech cameras to shed new light on ancient Christian texts preserved for centuries within its fortress walls in the Sinai Desert.

Saint Catherine's Monastery hopes the technology will allow a fuller understanding of some of the world's earliest Christian texts, including pages from the Codex Sinaiticus -- the oldest surviving bible in the world.

The technique, known as hyperspectral imaging, will use a camera to photograph the parchments at different wavelengths of light, highlighting faded texts obscured by time and later overwritings.

It should allow scholars to understand corrections made to pages of the Greek Codex Sinaiticus, written between 330 and 350 and thought to be one of 50 copies of the scriptures commissioned by Roman Emperor Constantine.

"If you look at all the corrections made by each scribe then you can come out with a principle on which he was correcting the text," said monastery librarian Father Justin. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Digitising the Codex Sinaiticus
Britain may have to give up oldest known Bible
Ancient monastery opens library
At The Monastery of The Burning Bush
Ancient monastic manuscripts gain digital life
St Catherine Monastery Mosque
Climbing Mount Sinai

From the Catholic News Service: Vatican artisans work to restore tip of St. Peter's Basilica.

Scaffolding now covers the tip of St. Peter's Basilica as Vatican workers restore the highest point of the centuries-old church.

The basilica undergoes constant maintenance and repairs by the Vatican's team of "sanpietrini," the church's specialized artisans and workers. Now one of their latest projects is cleaning and mending the lantern -- an open, circular structure -- and a gold-coated, bronze sphere, both of which top the basilica's massive dome.

"It's a huge task, taking almost a month just to put up the scaffolding," said Archbishop Angelo Comastri, head of the Fabbrica di San Pietro, the Vatican office responsible for the basilica.

The difficulty lay in transporting and mounting the heavy scaffolding to heights of more than 400 feet, he told Catholic News Service June 15.

That task was delegated to the Fabbrica's team of "pontarolli" or "catwalkers," so called because of their expertise in climbing and working at dizzying heights. [continue]

From The Times Online: Phoney pilgrims haven't a prayer of seeing Pope.

Foreign tourists requesting visas to visit Germany for the Pope’s first pilgrimage abroad are being asked searching questions about their knowledge of Christianity.

The measure by Germany is designed to prevent a wave of illegal immigration, especially from the Balkans.

More than a million young believers are expected to attend the World Youth Conference in Cologne in August, when Pope Benedict XVI will make his first papal trip.

Germans are concerned that the religious festival will be exploited by people because of their country’s fast-lane visa regulations. (...)

German embassies abroad have therefore concocted a scored questionnaire to sort out the true pilgrims from the would-be criminals. [continue]

The test is printed at the end of the article. Go take a look, and see if you'd pass!

From the Boston Globe: From the convents: Music of the nuns.

It sounds like the plot of a children's story: Musicians in small towns are forbidden to play, banned from public view, and kept locked away from society. But they continue to write and perform. So the townspeople build halls around the musician's quarters, where they listen to this wondrous sound through holes in the thick stone walls.

But this is no made-up tale. This was life for nuns in 16th-century Italy when the Catholic Church shut down its open convents in an act known as clausura.

"In effect, they were jailed for life," said Amelia LeClair of Newton. Among the cloister rules issued from Rome was a prohibition of music, which prior to clausura had thrived in the convents. Most towns, however, took this edict with a wink.

"The towns in Italy that housed these convents were very proud of their nuns because they were composing beautiful music," LeClair said. "So they built churches around the cloisters so that the nuns could stay in the cloister, but the people could come and hear them in what they called the chiesa exteriore [the exterior church]. They built a whole building where the public could come and sit comfortably and listen through a hole in the wall to their singing and playing." [continue]

Related:
Capella Clausura

From The Scotsman: Oldest Altarpiece Restored to Former Glory.

Neglected for centuries, England’s oldest altarpiece has been restored to its former glory and today goes on display in the National Gallery.

The Westminster Retable, an ornately-decorated thirteenth century panel painting, has been painstakingly repaired in a twenty-year project.

The Retable is divided into five panels depicting biblical figures, including an image of Christ holding a miniature representation of the earth.

It is considered one of the most important northern European panel paintings of its time.

Henry III gave it to Westminster Abbey at the end of his reign after he had overseen the church’s reconstruction in the French Gothic style.

The piece would have been at the back of the altar facing away from the congregation so few but the priest officiating at mass would have seen it. [continue]

Related:
Westminster Retable: London's Oldest Altarpiece - National Gallery
Lost treasure finally comes out of the closet - Telegraph
Britain's Earliest Surviving Oil Painting on Show - MonstersAndCritics.com

From the Times Online: Anglicans invited to take a Catholic view of Mary.

Members of the Anglican church are being asked to accept that controversial Roman Catholic teachings regarding the Virgin Mary are "authentic expressions of Christian belief".

The proposals, which came under immediate attack from senior evangelicals, come in a document agreed by leading theologians and prelates of both churches and published in America tonight.

Mary: Hope and Grace in Christ was launched at a Roman Catholic Mass in Seattle by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (Arcic). It is to be published in the UK at Westminster Abbey on Thursday.

The long-awaited document, published after six years of discussion, effectively seeks to backtrack on centuries of Anglican dissent over the place of Mary in the Catholic Church by giving new credence to dogmas that helped inspire the Reformation.

It states that there is "no continuing theological reason for ecclesial division" over the role of the Virgin Mary. "We do not consider the practice of asking Mary and the saints to pray for us as communion dividing," it says. The document also describes private devotions inspired by apparitions of Mary as "acceptable". [continue]

Here's the full text of the statement at ecumenism.net.

From csmonitor.com: New evangelism: mini loans.

In a working-class neighborhood on the edge of Rwanda's capital, Anathasie Mukamana has built a small charcoal empire. A rattling bicycle taxi shuttles her along the Kabeza district's dusty main road between her two vending sites. On her rounds, she hurries an occasional smile to her customers, but more often wears the squinting eyes of a serious businesswoman.

Ms. Mukamana employs three people and brings in nearly $3,000 a year - that's in a country where 60 percent of the people live on less than a dollar a day. For her success, she thanks the congregation at her local Assembly of God - and not just for their prayers, but for a small loan.

These days, Christian and other religious organizations, both here and around the world, are lending more than just a hand. Microloans - of as little as $100 - have become as much a part of their ministries as preaching the gospel. While microlending for budding entrepreneurs has long been recognized among development experts as one of the best ways to fight global poverty - in fact, the United Nations has dubbed 2005 "The International Year of Microcredit" - religious organizations are increasingly adopting the Talmudic sentiment that the noblest form of charity is helping others to dispense with it. [continue]

Remember reading about the reality TV show that's set in a Benedictine monastery? Here's another article about it. From The Guardian: Get the abbey habit.

If you wanted to draw up a list of rules to improve reality TV, then banning the contestants from speaking, having sex or indulging their own egos would be a useful start. And these are the challenges facing the contestants in an extremely upmarket version of the genre.

In The Monastery - which most resembles The Apprentice reimagined as The Novice - a quintet of civilian men attempt to live by the rule of St Benedict at Worth Abbey in Sussex, checking their lip, will, ego and libido at the door. No prize is on offer, except presumably, as the full-time inmates of the house would say, the promise of eternal life.

The first rule of St Peter (Bazalgette, patron saint of Big Brother) is that reality TV depends on casting and, in this case, the principle has been religiously applied with both monks and men. The novices sent in by the BBC include an Irishman once jailed for paramilitary activities, a PHD student flirting with Buddhism and a recovering addict who works on the fringes of the sex industry.

But the star of the show is the man who, in the context of the genre, should probably be called Big Father. The abbot, Dom Christopher, combines an actorish voice and looks with a kind of brain that has recently been more or less banned from television. His explanation to his guests of why it's the people we most dislike who can teach us most is certainly the most intellectually challenging thing ever said on reality TV and perhaps within the medium as a whole. [continue]

From The Telegraph: Reality TV in monastery changes five lives forever.

Five men, ranging from an atheist in the pornography trade to a former Protestant paramilitary, have found their lives unexpectedly transformed in the latest incarnation of reality television - the monastery.

More Oh Brother! than Big Brother, the five underwent a spiritual makeover by spending 40 days and 40 nights living with Roman Catholic monks in Worth Abbey, West Sussex.

The experiment, which will be shown on BBC 2 this month, was designed to test whether the monastic tradition begun by St Benedict 1,500 years ago still has any relevance to the modern world.

Although participants were not required to vote each other out, they faced the challenge of living together in a community and following a disciplined regime of work and prayer. By the end, the atheist, Tony Burke, 29, became a believer and gave up his job producing trailers for a sex chat line after having what he described as a "religious experience". [continue]

Related:
Rule of St Benedict - osb.org
Worth Abbey -ukonline.co.uk

From The Independent: Revelation! 666 is not the number of the beast (it's a devilish 616).

A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it's actually the far less ominous 616.

The new fragment from the Book of Revelation, written in ancient Greek and dating from the late third century, is part of a hoard of previously unintelligible manuscripts discovered in historic dumps outside Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Now a team of expert classicists, using new photographic techniques, are finally deciphering the original writing.

Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, thinks that 616, although less memorable than 666, is the original. He said: "This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people's names. Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula." [continue]

From the Wall Street Journal: Is the Pope Catholic?

Ordinarily that question is a rhetorical device, intended to suggest that someone has said something foolish, ignoring the patently obvious. But as cardinals of the Catholic Church gathered in Rome this week, many commentators seemed to wonder whether the next pope would hold firmly to the age-old doctrines of the Catholic faith: Would the new leader of the world's one billion Roman Catholics be ready to compromise on matters such as abortion, homosexuality and the ordination of women?

The public speculation before the papal election suggested that anything was possible -- that the church might strike out in a radically new direction. But the 115 cardinals who entered the conclave thought differently. They elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in a remarkably quick conclave, because he was the obvious choice to inherit the legacy not only of John Paul II but also of 264 other Roman pontiffs in a line stretching back to St. Peter. There would be no break in that continuity, no shifts in fundamental dogma.

Yes, the pope is a Catholic. Yet that unsurprising result has clearly shaken many secular liberals -- and more than a few liberal Catholics --who feel that they have been somehow cheated of an opportunity. [continue]

From the Hindustan Times: ‘Next pope will be murdered in Italy’.

Vatican-watchers are like Kremlinologists of old, minutely analysing terse statements from the press office or picking apart the whispered, off-the-cuff remarks by a friend of a friend of a cardinal.

The world's bookies are doing a thriving business placing odds on who the next pope will be, while journalists are keeping themselves busy, and their readers confused, by reporting the latest speculation on who it will be.

But all these people need to do is sit down over a capuccino at a Roman cafe and survey the prophecies of a 12th-century archbishop, Saint Malachy.

He has it all sorted out. He has even named the new pope, sort of. Sadly, also, he has told us we haven't much longer to live. But more of that later. [continue]

I've never heard of St. Malachy before - have you? For more about him, see:
Saint Malachy - Wikipedia
Malachy O'More - Catholic-forum.com
St. Malachy - Catholic Encyclopedia

Thanks to Lorna for writing to tell me about this article.

It started soon after the pope died: the Gammarelli hits. See, I have a little program that tells me which search queries lead people to Mirabilis.ca. Usually the results are all over the map, but recently 300 or 400 people a day have come here looking for information on Gammarelli, the pope's ecclesiastical tailor. "You know," I told my husband, "I think we're in for another bunch of ‘Pope's tailor’ articles." Because who else would be googling for Gamarelli, other than journalists? The clergy already know where to find the place.

Anyway, the New York Times has just published Style Secrets of the Pope's Tailor, so here we go. An excerpt:

The three white cassocks on display in the window of Gammarelli Ecclesiastical Tailoring come in small, medium and large, because no one knows what size the next pope will be.

In the world of religious raiment, few distinctions are as great as counting the leader of the Roman Catholic Church as a client. So when 115 cardinals meet on Monday in the Sistine Chapel to begin a conclave that will select the next pope, the tailors of Gammarelli will be especially interested to see who will emerge wearing white.

Filippo Gammarelli, 63, whose family has been making papal clothes since 1798, including those for John Paul II, is hoping that the next pope, who will eventually step out onto the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica modeling a Gammarelli cassock for millions, will like the fit.

That has not always been the case.

For the plump John XXIII pins and tape had to be used for last-minute alterations, while in 1914 the diminutive Benedict XV swam in his white silk simar, the special cassock worn by popes only. [continue]

You'll need a password to read the rest of the NYT article.

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Gammarelli
The Pope's Tailor

Those monks I mentioned the other day are getting their satellite dish after all. From the BBC: Helicopter flies TV dish to monks.

The monks of Caldey Island have had a satellite dish delivered by helicopter after bad weather threw plans to watch the Pope's funeral on TV into doubt.

A boat had been due to deliver the equipment to allow the brothers, who generally do not watch TV, to follow the historic service in Rome.

But the trip was foiled by the rough seas on Thursday.

A helicopter made two journeys to carry the dish and an installer to the island, off the Pembrokeshire coast.

The near-silent order will return the device after watching Friday's service. [continue]

From Christianity Today: To Skellig Michael, Monastery in the Sky.

Skellig Michael is a 700-foot-high pinnacle of water-and-wind-worn rock that rises like Excalibur out of the Atlantic waves off the southwest coast of Ireland. If you have ever been there, you do not need it described; if you have not been, no description is adequate. The same is true of that part of reality called the sacred.

I make my reluctant pilgrimage to Skellig Michael in near total ignorance, based solely on three sentences in a guidebook. I expect the usual visitor center and gift shop. Instead, the voice of the fisherman's wife on the phone says, "Be at the Portmagee pier at 10:30 tomorrow morning. If the weather is good enough, my husband will be there in his boat to pick you up." The weather the next day is unusually fine, and down the inlet we watch him chug, my son Nate and I, his only passengers for the day.

We hop on board and start out toward the sea. [continue]

Related:
Skellig Michael - UNESCO World Heritage Centre - unesco.org
Skellig Michael - skelligexperience.com
Skellig Michael - wellsprings.org.uk

From Scotsman.com: Welsh Monks Bring in Satellite Dish for Pope's Funeral.

A community of monks living on a windswept island plan to bring in a satellite dish so they can watch the Pope’s funeral live on TV, it emerged today.

The monks of Caldey Island, in west Wales, own a single TV set, without an aerial, and a video player used for watching pre-recorded religious programmes.

Now they are praying that bad weather does not prevent a good Samaritan from setting up a temporary link to the modern world free of charge.

The Cistercian island community, based off the Pembrokeshire coast, follows a spartan self-sufficient regime where "idle chatter" is avoided. [continue]

From haaretz.com: Amar: Bnei Menashe are descendants of ancient Israelites.

Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar decided on Wednesday to recognize the members of India's Bnei Menashe community as descendants of the ancient Israelites.

Amar also decided to dispatch a team of rabbinical judges to India to convert the community members to Orthodox Jews. Such a conversion will enable their immigration to Israel under the Law of Return, without requiring the Interior Ministry's authorization. (...)

The Bnei Menashe community consists of close to 7,000 members of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo tribe, which lives in northeast India near the border of Myanmar (formally Burma). For generations they kept Jewish traditions, claiming to be descended from the tribe of Menashe, one of the ten lost Israeli tribes that were exiled by the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C.E. and have since disappeared. [continue]

Other than mourning, what happens at the Vatican when the Pope dies? From the Guardian: Ancient rituals to find a modern leader.

Two men will play the key roles for two to three weeks - a Spaniard close to the conservative Opus Dei fellowship, and a German who for more than 20 years has been the church's theological watchdog.

Cardinal Eduardo Martínez Somalo holds the title of Camerlengo, or chamberlain, of the Holy Roman church, and that only acquires substance the moment the Pope draws his last breath.

At that point, the Cardinal Camerlengo becomes a sort of interim administrator, though in no sense an "acting pope". His first duty will be to decide that the Pope really has died.

Traditionally, this has been done in the presence of the papal master of ceremonies and various other members of the pontifical household, by tapping the Pope on the forehead with a silver hammer and calling out his baptismal name three times to see whether there is any response.

Cardinal Martínez is more likely to rely on the judgment of the Pope's team of doctors. But his chamberlain's silver hammer will not be idle, for its other use is to break the Fisherman's Ring - the pontiff's individualised signet ring - to ensure that no instructions can be given out under his seal after his death. [continue]

Related:
Vatican protocol after a Pope's death - lifesite.net
New Pope's election to be shrouded in ritual, secrecy - National Geographic

From Live blogging the Lion's last breath at The Anchoress:

Here's a nice little bit of trivia: When JPII dies, according to tradition, the carmelengo will take a small silver hammer and lightly tap his head and say, "Karol Wotyja are you there?"

Then he will tap him again and say, "Lolek, are you there?"

"Lolek" is the nickname his mother had given him. When a man is named pope, one of the first things he is asked is by what nickname his mother called him. He is asked this because in old days, when it was not always possible to tell if one was dead or deeply comatose, it was believed that if one was called by the sweet name of one's babyhood, one might respond to it.

It is an old idea, of course, and it might be "silly" today - clearly, we will KNOW when the pope dies ... and yet, I think it is sweet and lovely, that at the moment of the man's death, he will be called by the name his loving mother gave him. This article says the pope will not be hammered according to the new, streamlined plans...but who knows...it's still kind of lovely.

From an Associated Press article at the South Bend Tribune: Nuns nurture spirituality online.

From inside the walls of a monastery that looks a little like a medieval fortress, a small group of cloistered Carmelite nuns is offering spiritual guidance to tens of thousands of people a day -- through the Internet.

The Carmel of the Resurrection Monastery in Indianapolis landed on the Net more than two years ago with the Web site www.praythenews.com, where the nuns reflect on recent headlines, offering lessons that can be taken from current events.

Now they've taken their cyberministry a step further, adding a "School of Prayer" to popularize the style of contemplative prayer honed by their patrons, the 16th-century Spanish mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.

"We're like a concentrated spirit of the saints, but now it's going out. Add water, and everyone's got it," said 73-year-old Sister Betty Meluch, a former prioress of the monastery.

Web surfers are getting it. (...) They find a new course of prayer each month, each in a convenient, printable form. (The idea, after all, is contemplation, which can be hard to achieve when distractions are just a mouse-click away.) February's topic invited people to leave "trails of goodness," like a comet leaves a trail of light. In March, the nuns looked at "facing life with faith, hope, love and a sense of humor." [continue]

From Reuters: U.S. Rabbi Rescues Sacred Scrolls Lost in Holocaust.

From a crowded bookstore in an bland strip mall in suburban Washington, D.C., Rabbi Menachem Youlus runs a worldwide effort to rescue sacred Torah scrolls from oblivion.

Over the past 13 years, Youlus has found and rescued 435 of the holy Jewish scrolls, which contain the Hebrew text of the first five books of the Bible.

Youlus has found Torahs hidden in old churches and basements in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He has found them in antique stores and hoarded in peoples' homes for the past 60 years -- the last remains of Jewish communities wiped out by the Holocaust.

Once in Ukraine, Youlus found two Torahs in a mass grave along with the remains of 263 men, women and children, some still wrapped in clothes bearing the Star of David, which the Nazis forced all Jews to wear.

"I have Torahs with boot marks on them, with bloodstains and cigarette burns, with bayonet rips. The Nazis made desecration of the Torah a central part of their humiliation of Jews," Youlus said.

Creating a Torah is a long, painstaking process. It is written by hand with a quill pen on carefully prepared parchment using ink made out of powdered gall nuts, copper sulfate crystals, gum arabic and water. Each of the 304,805 letters must be perfect. [continue]

From Scotsman.com: Canterbury hails return of medieval Easter texts.

An 11th century manuscript has been returned to Canterbury Cathedral after going missing for hundreds of years.

The manuscript is a double-page spread from a gospel lectionary, thought to have been written by a highly-skilled scribe from the Holy Roman Empire.

It was discovered in Germany by an academic researching medieval texts, who spotted that the pages matched those in the book of gospels in Canterbury Cathedral.

It is thought the scripts, on the subject of Easter, went missing from the cathedral, like many others, during the mid-16th century Reformation. [continue]

Perhaps you've guessed from previous postings that I'm fond of the Czech Republic, and fasacinated by Czech culture. Well. Today is Good Friday, and here's a bit about the Czech tradition for today and for this week: Czech Easter: Holy Week: Good Friday.

Good Friday was always regarded by the Roman Catholic Church as the day of greatest grief in the Church. It's the only day in the year when Mass is not held anywhere in the world. Also, organs are silent, all ornaments are cleared from the altar, and no lights are burned. The cross is shrouded in a black veil.

Great Friday (Velký pátek) is the popular name for the day in the Czech Republic. Velký pátek is a day of fasting for Roman Catholics who will not eat meat until Saturday evening after the church bells start ringing on their legendary return from Rome.

On Velký pátek, Czech and Moravian cooks prepare their holiday bread (coffee cake) which must not be cut or eaten until the priest says, "Christ is risen!" (Kristus vstal z mrtvých!) on Easter Sunday. It is a universal custom to mark a new loaf of bread with the sign of the cross before cutting it, in order to bless it and thank God for it. On special occasions, the cross is imprinted on the loaf before baking it. Bread baked on Velký pátek - if hardened in the oven - can be kept all year, and its presence protects the house from fire.

Good Friday has always inspired folk poetry and has been the subject of many romantic superstitions. Women carry out their quilts to air out, in order to chase illnesses out of the house. Some believe that water dipped before sunrise without a spoken word has healing power and will stay pure all year. People get up very early on this day and hurry down to the brook or river, where they wash themselves with cold water and then cross the brook or stream with bare legs because they believed that this ensured good health for the whole next year. They also take their daughters down to wash at the well, so they'll be pretty and well spoken for. It is also believed that water sprites come out onto dry land on this day. [continue]

From Tolkien's Elvish Prayers page:

It is a well-known fact that Tolkien was a devout Catholic. He translated 5 well-known Catholic prayers into his contrived Elvish language -- the Our Father, Hail Mary, and the Glory Be among them. (...) Below, you should find the last versions Tolkien wrote before his death. They are beautiful when one knows how to pronounce them. [continue]

Link found here at Siris.

From 24 Hour Museum: International partnership to digitise world's oldest known Bible.

An international project to create a digital copy of the oldest known Bible in the world was launched at the British Library on March 11 2005.

The Codex Sinaiticus, written in Greek by hand, dates back to the mid-fourth century and is considered to be the most important Biblical manuscript in existence.

Named after the Monastery of St Catherine's in Sinai, Egypt the manuscript was split up during the 19th century and parts of it are now held at the British Library, the University of Leipzig in Germany and the National Library of Russia, as well as St Catherine’s itself.

Experts from the four institutions have now joined together to reunite this ancient treasure in virtual form, using innovative technology to make it accessible to a global audience. [continue]

Related:
Codex Sinaiticus - Wikipedia
Codex Sinaiticus - Catholic Encyclopedia
World’s oldest Bible goes global: Historic international digitisation project announced - British Library

From the Guardian: I have to be there.

Who has the greatest access to the ailing Pope John Paul II? His faithful Polish personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz? The influential witchfinder-in-chief, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger? Cardinal Angelo Sodano, chief executive of Catholics Inc? Or an unknown, rather hangdog man in a dark suit and a black tie who is always there, Zelig-like, a few feet away from the iconic figure clad in white robes?

Last month, he was at the window of Rome's Gemelli hospital, where the Pope was confined for his emergency throat operation. He was there again on Sunday when the Pope left hospital. Camera in hand, snapping away, he captured the Holy Father from every conceivable angle, as he has for almost 50 years. Five Popes, photographed for 16 hours a day, 365 days a year: Arturo Mari, 65, must be the most focused photographer in the world. He estimates that he has taken more than 5 million images of the present pontiff - and that only covers the second half of Mari's remarkably single-minded career. [continue]

A most interesting article.

I've just got to fuss, though, about the characterization of Cardinal Ratzinger as "witchfinder-in-chief." Dear Stephen Moss and John Hooper: what were you drinking?

From Radio Praha we have this strange account: Old woman winter- you're not welcome anymore!

I am here at Toulcuv Dvur, it's still winter, there's snow everywhere, there is a cold breeze but the birds are singing. Today we are going to say good-bye to winter. I am spoke to Martina Chvatalova about this ancient tradition:

"We make a puppet called Morena or Marena- it depends on the part of Bohemia where the custom is being practiced. People carry the puppet and while carrying it, they sing a song that is something like, "winter you bad woman, now we are taking you to the river and winter will be over." [continue]

I just had to see if other sites mentioned this custom. My search led me to Czech Easter - Sundays of Lent. The Sundays are: Roast Sunday, Sneezing Sunday, Matchmaker Sunday, Passiontide and Passion Sunday, Death Sunday and the Death of Morena, and Flower (Palm) Sunday. Go read about them all; most interesting.

Related:
Taking out Morena in Orava
Marzanna or Morena - Wikipedia

From the BBC: Crowds flock to Jewish book party.

Orthodox Jews around the world have finished studying one of Judaism's holiest texts, more than seven years after reading the first page.

Thousands celebrated reaching the 2,711th and last page of the Talmud - and promptly started reading again.

Satellites linked rallies in Israel and the US to celebrations in Moscow, Buenos Aires, Canada and Israel.

Jews read one of the Talmud's 2,711 pages of rabbinical laws and commentary daily for seven years and five months.

Under a system called Daf Yomi, inaugurated in 1923 by a Polish rabbi who aimed to promote religious study, Talmudic students - usually men - study one double-sided page each day, every day until the cycle is complete. [continue]

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Bronze door often part of papal transition.

The inner workings of the Vatican are cloaked in mystery, and among its more arcane traditions is the Bronze Door - a storied portal that for centuries has informed the faithful of the death of a pope.

Its modern use is spotty. In 1978, when two popes died in rapid succession, the tradition was ignored. Now, in the information age of e-mail, Internet and cell phone text messages, it's doubtful the door will give the world its first word of Pope John Paul II's eventual passing.

But the tradition lives on at the Holy See, where officials over the centuries have closed the massive door under a portico off St. Peter's Square when a pope dies and have kept it shut until a new pontiff is elected. [continue]

Interesting article, especially the amusing part at the very end.

I expect we'll see more stuff like this in the next while, as members of the press wait for the Pope's death. I hope JPII will keep them waiting for a good long time.

Well, well. Look what I found in the paper edition of the National Post today: Quebec cardinal calls for personal confessions.

An edict from Marc Cardinal Ouellet, archbishop of Quebec, about the proper way for Catholics to confess their sins has made the front page in the city's Le Soleil newspaper for four days running, and yesterday the debate filled its letters page.

At issue is a Feb. 9 pastoral letter from Cardinal Ouellet declaring an end to the seven-year-old practice of general absolutions and a return to individual confessions. That means that instead of taking part in a service where the priest absolves worshippers collectively after they privately think of their sins, they must declare their sins to the priest in a confessional booth. (...)

In an interview yesterday, Cardinal Ouellet said he is surprised by the amount of attention his directive has received.

He noted that the Quebec diocese is following the lead of others, including Montreal and Sherbrooke, which in turn were acting on a 2002 apostolic letter from Pope John Paul.

Brilliant. I'd like to see every diocese take this approach.

(The National Post did put this article on their website, but it's available only to subscribers. Link for subscribers is here.)

If you'd like to read Cardinal Oulett's pastoral letter about the sacrament of penance, I hope your French is good; I haven't found an English copy. The French copy is here in .pdf format : Lettre Pastorale du Cardinal Marc Ouellet sur la pratique du sacrement de pénitence et de réconciliation.

Related links:
His Eminence Marc Cardinal Ouellet, Archbishop of Québec, Primate of Canada - DioceseQuebec.qc.ca
Église catholique de Quebéc - http://www.DioceseQuebec.qc.ca/
Marc Cardinal Ouellet, P.S.S. - Catholic-Hierarchy.org

From The Australian: Ancient croc holds clue to evolution of a killer.

A new species of crocodile that roamed Australia 40 million years ago has been uncovered by researchers in southeast Queensland.

The find has excited scientists, who hope the fossils will help shed light on the evolution of one of the world's most dangerous killers.

The remains - consisting of two nearly complete skulls, a lower jaw and pieces of legs, ribs and claws - were uncovered in the open pit of an oil shale mine 20km north of Gladstone late last year. [continue]

From fortwayne.com: Psychiatrist recounts performing exorcisms.

Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck has had a distinguished career as a best-selling author and lecturer. His first book, "The Road Less Traveled," sold more than 7 million copies. In his second book, "People of the Lie," he explored the pathology of evil.

Dr. Peck now says that he performed exorcisms in two of his psychiatry cases a quarter of a century ago. His latest book, "Glimpses of the Devil: A True Story of Evil, Possession, Exorcism and Redemption" (Free Press, $26), describes his journey from his doubt to his reckoning with what he encountered.

Now suffering from Parkinson's disease, Dr. Peck, 68, says he may have written his last book. He retired from psychiatry in 1984 and from the lecture circuit in 1995.

We recently talked by phone with Dr. Peck, who was at his home in Connecticut. Here are excerpts: [continue]

Related:
M. Scott Peck's website

From cathnews.com: Archeologists discover St Paul's tomb.

Vatican archeologists believe that they have identified the tomb in Rome's St Paul Outside the Walls basilica, following the discovery of a stone coffin during excavations carried out over the past three years.

Catholic World News reports that a sarcophagus - or stone coffin - which may contain the remains of St Paul has been identified in the basilica, according to Giorgio Filippi, a archeology specialist with the Vatican Museums.

"The tomb that we discovered is the one that the popes and the Emperor Theodosius (379- 395) saved and presented to the whole world as being the tomb of the apostle," Filippi reports. [continue]

From the BBC: Eco-Islam hits Zanzibar fishermen.

The Koran is not widely known as a source of guidance on environmental and conservation issues, but that has not stopped one development organisation in Tanzania from using it to help conserve an island marine park.

Religious leaders have been asked to promote conservation messages using the texts of the Koran - an approach which has proved a great deal more successful than government regulations. [continue]

From Scotsman.com: In search of St Valentine.

If ever there was a case of a man's sum being greater than his parts, it must be Saint Valentine; or is it more a case of the parts being all over the place? (...)

I’m standing in the atrium of the Blessed John Duns Scotus Church in Glasgow - self-styled "City of Love", for this week at least - and contemplating a wood and brass reliquary casket bearing the words Corpus St Valentini Martyris. The saint’s remains, or some of them, are interred here in the Gorbals, an area not widely associated with romance, having been transferred to the 1960s-built church in 1999, when the local Franciscan community moved from the older St Francis’s church round the corner. (...)

"He tends to be celebrated today through commercial interest rather than through any great devotion," observes Father Patrick Lonsdale, one of the handful of Franciscan friars based at Blessed John Duns Scotus. But which St Valentine are we talking about? For the lovers’ friend and postman’s bane remains a shadowy figure, as elusive as Harry Lime and, as any hagiography will tell you, there is more than one of him.

Father Patrick is affably vague about the relic or relics, and one gets the impression he regards the annual if fleeting celebrity status bestowed on the saint in the box as something of a distraction from his usual round of prayer, preaching and pastoral work. As we sift through documentation pertaining to the saint in his office, it emerges that nobody seems very clear as to which Valentine’s remains Glasgow can lay claim to, or indeed which particular bits of the man are housed in that reliquary.

Is he the same Valentine, for instance, whose mortal remains are also boasted by Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin, whose Carmelite community also lays claim to the saint, though not all of him? "I wouldn’t think so," replies Father Chris Crowley at Whitefriar Street when I ask him whether all of Valentine might be interred in the Dublin church. And there are, he tells me, further remains of the saint at Derrynane Abbey in Kerry, a place closely associated with the great battler for Irish Catholic emancipation, Daniel O’Connell. [continue]

From the BBC: Is there life after the liturgy?.

Where prayers and sermons once filled the air, music, debate and even sales patter may soon be heard.

The Churches Conservation Trust is asking communities to come forward with ideas to keep religious buildings at the centre of the community.

The trust looks after churches of special historical or architectural interest which are no longer needed for regular worship.

But rather than leave them as sterile museums or silent reliquaries, it is hoped residents can use them as venues for more secular activities.

The Churches Conservation Trust owns 334 Grade I and II listed churches across England and has an annual budget of about £3m.

Under its care are buildings dating from the 11th century through to the Victorian era, ranging from unassuming chapels with dazzling tombs to vast towers which dominate the landscape. [continue]

What a pity they aren't all still in use as churches.

It's Shrove Tuesday! From chiff.com, here's a good bit of background on the day:

Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the ritual of shriving, when the faithful confessed their sins to the local priest and recieved forgiveness before the Lenten season began.

As far back as 1000 AD, "to shrive" meant to hear confessions. (Trivia note: the term survives today in the expression "short shrift" or giving little attention to anyone's explanations or excuses). [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
About Shrove Tuesday - 2003

Elsewhere:
Shrovetide - Catholic Encyclopedia
Catholic Roots of Mardi Gras - americancatholic.org

A fascinating snippet from Baraita: In Which We Say Grace.

As a self-confessed liturgy geek, an enthusiastic amateur singer, and a fan of excellent food, I was probably predestined to fall in love with the Birkat Ha-Mazon -- the "Grace After Meals," as they called it back in Sunday School. In its full traditional form, it takes at least five minutes of steady singing or chanting, involves a heck of a lot of Hebrew (and a chunk of Aramaic) from assorted historical periods, features numerous opportunities for counter-harmonizing, includes loads of fiddly little additions and subtractions depending on the time of week/month/year and/or the number and status of guests present, and -- possibly best of all -- does not interrupt the actual serving and consumption of the meal.* Naturally, I rank the Birkat high among the Reasons Why My Religion Is Cooler Than Anyone Else's Religion. [continue]

I'd love to hear that!

I'm fond of grace, too, although we say a before-meals Latin grace here. If grace doesn't involve Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, or some other cool language, you're missing half the fun.

For more information on the Birkat Ha-Mazon, see this or this.

From the BBC: Pope honours lambs with blessing.

Most visitors granted an audience with Pope John Paul II maintain a respectful demeanour in the presence of the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Two small visitors to the Vatican on Friday just bleated.

Tucked in wicker baskets and adorned with flowers, two lambs were blessed by the Pope to mark the Feast of St Agnes.

Sheared wool from the white lambs, which bleated several times during the brief ceremony, will be used to make vestments for new archbishops. [continue]

I'd never heard of the blessing of the lambs until I came across this mention (and link) at Dappled Things this morning.

I started wondering just where those lambs will be raised, anyway. Is there some Vatican Department of Lambs? A Sacred Congregation for the Raising of Wool? Um, no. According to a 2003 article from the Independent Catholic News, "The lambs are raised by the Trappist Fathers of the Abbey of the Three Fountains and the palliums are made by the Sisters of St. Cecilia from the newly-shorn wool."

Here are more details from an article in The Catholic Weekly (Australia):

The pallium symbolises the unity of the local church with the universal church.

Some of the wool for the pallium comes from two lambs that are blessed each year in Rome on the feast of St Agnes (January 21) and then presented to the Pope.

The lambs are then delivered to the Benedictine Sisters of St Cecilia in Rome and shorn in the lead-up to Holy Week.

Traditionally, the pallia were made from scratch by the Sisters, who would hand-weave the wool into bands that they would then sew together and decorate.

Today, because their numbers are reduced, the Sisters of St Cecilia have commissioned a textile company to supply the unfinished wool strips.

Each pallium is then blessed by the Pope at St Peter’s Basilica, on the eve of the feast of Sts Peter and Paul, placed in a 350-year-old silver-gilt casket and left overnight in a cabinet under the Altar of the Confession, which is over the Tomb of St Peter.

The Mass on June 29 is the only occasion where the archbishops wear the pallia together.

Once bestowed, liturgical rules dictate the pallium only be worn in the bishop’s own diocese and then only on such solemn ceremonies as ordinations.

Related links:
St Agnes of Rome - Catholic Encyclopedia
Pallium - Catholic Encyclopedia
Abbazia delle tre fontane (Abbey of the three fountains. Page is in Italian.)

Here's an interesting tidbit from Dappled Things about the symbolism of the Pelican.

An impressive image that one still comes across occasionally is that of the pelican. Starting in late antiquity and reaching its climax in the bestiaries of the Middle Ages, the mother pelican was thought to nurture her young by piercing her breast with her beak and feeding them her own blood. This made for an obvious symbol of self-sacrifice, and thus became applied to Jesus Christ, Who redeems the world through the voluntary outpouring of His Blood. And since the pelican's blood is food for the little ones, the connection to the Eucharist is likewise easy to make: Christ feeding His faithful with His own Body and Blood. [continue]

Related links:
The Medieval Pelican - kwantlen.ca/~donna
The Symbolism of the Pelican - Catholic Herald
Birds (In Symbolism) - Catholic Encyclopedia
Portrait of Elizabeth I with a pelican emblem -National Maritime Museum (UK)

From sun-sentinal.com: Vatican to share holy medieval texts with Israel.

The Vatican will loan the work of Moses Maimonides, one of Judaism's most celebrated rabbis and sages, to Israel this year in a gesture meant to improve relations between Catholics and Jews.

Jewish community leaders said they are ecstatic to have the opportunity to study the Maimonides document, and at least three other medieval manuscripts.

Rabbi Benjamin Blech, a professor at Yeshiva University in New York, said the gesture by the Vatican "strengthens the bonds between Jews and Christians."

"We are asking a favor, they are showing us a kindness, to borrow these items," he said. (...)

The work by Maimonides was written by a scribe in the 1400s, 200 years after his death, and is cherished as a one-of-a-kind record that covers the rules of life, such as marriage and other codes of behavior. Opponents who considered Maimonides a heretic burned many of the original works. [continue]

Related:
Maimonides - Wikipedia
Maimonides Resource Page - Jonathan Baker's personal website
Moses Ben Maimon - Jewish Encyclopedia
Teaching of Moses Maimonides -Catholic Encyclopedia

From the Telegraph: Silence is golden for an ancient order that became a modern attraction.

They may live on a remote island and start their day at 3.15am with four hours of silence, but the monks of Caldey Island are not as unworldly as it might appear.

Over the years the Cistercian community, three miles off the south Wales coast, have had to display the guile of Brother Cadfael, the fictional medieval monastic sleuth, to stay in existence.

In the early 1980s, the community numbered just nine and there were fears that it would no longer be able to keep going. But a worldwide appeal for recruits boosted their numbers, though many of the applicants — from as far away as New Zealand — were gently turned away for not even being Roman Catholics. [continue]

Related:
Island monks broke silence to sack the cook - Telegraph
Caldey Island Monks - caldey-island.co.uk
Caldey Island, Pembrokeshire, Wales - caldey-island.co.uk
The monks of Caldey Island (A blogger reports on his visit to the island.) - samizdata.net
Monks go online to boost perfume sales - BBC Wales
Modem Monks - open2.net
Caldey Island - BBC Wales

From The Guardian: Attack on smoking gets papal blessing.

The Vatican has signalled that it is considering adding its global influence to the campaign against smoking, in an article likely to send tremors of apprehension through the multi-billion-pound tobacco industry.

The article in an authoritative Roman Catholic publication, prepared with the knowledge and endorsement of the Pope's most senior aides, declares that smokers cannot damage their own health and that of others "without moral responsibility".

The article stops short of branding smoking a sin. But its author says that lighting up is "not neutral either in social or indeed moral terms".

His groundbreaking views are published in the latest edition of the scholarly Jesuit review Civilta Cattolica. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
No smoking at the Vatican

Elsewhere:
Vatican closer to condemning smoking - Washington Times
La Civilta Cattolica - laciviltacattolica.it

Most of the Sydney Morning Herald's Pope goes online article consists of things that have been reported elsewhere for years. ("Is there a patron saint of the Internet?" and all that.) But there is this one new thing:

The heart of the Vatican's computer network is the server room, which is located inside the Apostolic Palace, four floors below the private quarters of the pope.

Here, technicians are at work installing 50 new servers — expanding the Vatican's current capacity more than tenfold — to deal with a new mega-project: a "virtual portal of the Catholic community" that will allow Catholics worldwide to chat and take part in news groups. [continue]

Well, now. That could be interesting.

(You'll need a password if you want to read the full article at smh.co.au. OR you could read a hassle-free copy of the article here or here instead.)

From Catholic World News: Cell-phone service to carry Vatican Christmas events.

Cell-phone users in several countries will be able to follow the Vatican Christmas concert and midnight Mass by phone, with the charges for that service going to the Vatican, to be used in building churches and in helping AIDS patients.

The "H3G" cellular network, which has 5.9 million customers, is offering to transmit the concert and the Christmas Mass; the charges for that cell-phone use will be sent to the Diocese of Rome and to the new Good Samaritan Foundation established by Pope John Paul II (bio - news) to provide medical care for AIDS victims. The Rome diocese will use the proceeds to build new churches in outlying areas around the city. The Good Samaritan Foundation will devote most of its resources to AIDS treatment in Africa. [continue]

Related:
Pope John Paul Hits the Little Screen - Reuters

From the BBC: Online church pulls in crowds.

The Welsh co-creator of an internet church experiment is celebrating pulling in the UK's biggest congregation.

Cardiff-born Simon Jenkins, who created the Church of Fools with friend Steve Goddard, is amazed at its success.

The site, which features 3D animated characters, has been attracting up to 8,000 visitors a day.(...)

Visitors can choose a cartoon persona for themselves, picking the clothes they want to wear and the kind of hairstyle and colour. [continue]

Well, it's not my idea of church, but whatever.

Related:
Church of Fools
Ship of Fools

This post about the amazing Saint John of the Cross is from Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog, Making Light:

Today is the feast day of Saint John of the Cross, who in my opinion ought to be a patron saint of writers, especially writers currently engaged in the act of composition. He was a Carmelite at a time when the order was split into pro-reform and anti-reform factions. He was pro-reform. After years of working for that cause, he was kidnapped by anti-reform Carmelites, who imprisoned him for nine months in the dark, tiny, airless, unheated, and hygienically vile closet latrine of a friary in Toledo. While he was there waiting to be rescued, he wrote some of his greatest works.

After that it occurred to him that nobody was going to rescue him, so he escaped on his own.

Related:
St John of the Cross - Catholic Encyclopedia
St John of the Cross - Catholic Online
John of the Cross -Catholic-Forum.com
General Introduction to the collected works of St. John of the Cross
Poetry of St John of the Cross - carmelite.com

What do Scandanavia, Croatia and parts of Italy have in common on December 13th?

Celebrations relating to Santa Lucia, that's what. Scandinavica.com outlines the nordic version of the Lucia Day celebration:

On December 13th one of the most traditional Scandinavian festivities is celebrated all over Sweden, Norway and on the Swedish speaking parts of Finland. It is Lucia's day, the festival of light, celebrated in memory of the Italian Santa Lucia.

In the early hours of the morning a young woman, dressed in white and wearing a crown of blazing candles, brings light into the dark winter at homes, hospitals, schools and offices, serving steaming coffee with ginger biscuits and saffronbread for everybody.

There are Lucia processions everywhere and every village elects its own Lucia. The ‘Lucia Queen’ leads the processions mostly consisting of a group of young girls and boys singing traditional carols. Lucia's day symbolically opens the Christmas celebrations in Scandinavia, bringing hope and light during the darkest months of the year. [continue]

This page at CatholicCulture.org includes information on traditions in Croatia, Italy, and Sweden. Here's part of the section about Italy:

Santa Lucia is celebrated all over Italy. Sicilians still commemorate Santa Lucia's intervention during a severe famine in 1582. Miraculously, ships filled with grain appeared in the harbor on December 13. The people were so hungry that they didn't take the time to grind the grain into flour but boiled the grains immediately. Sicilians refuse to eat anything made of wheat flour for this day, which means forgoing pasta and bread. Instead they eat a most popular dish called cuccia which is made with boiled whole wheat berries, ricotta and sugar.

In Lombardy and Veneto, goose is eaten on this day, and it is Santa Lucia who brings the presents to children, not Father Christmas or Befana. She travels on a donkey on the eve of December 13, and children leave bowls of milk and carrots and hay to attract the hungry donkey and make sure Santa Lucia stops at their house. [continue]

More about St Lucy:
Lucy of Syracuse - Catholic-Forum.com
St Lucy - Catholic Encyclopedia

Cuccia recipes:
Wheat Berries with Ricotta and Honey (Cuccia) - publicradio.org
St. Lucy's Day Cuccia (Sicilian Cuccia) - inmamaskitchen.com
St. Lucy's Day Cuccia (Sicilian Cuccia: a Dessert) -siciliianculture.com

Today the Globe and Mail has an article about Canada's new Catholic television channel, Salt+Light.

You wonder if there was a moment when someone shouted "Divine inspiration!" as the production staff sat around in the scrubbed little studios of Salt+Light Television watching the playback of the pilot segment of Cooking with Saints.

The set: a kitchen — with stained-glass windows.

The culinary celebrant: Roberto Martella of Toronto's Grano restaurant — a made-for-television natural, effusively lecturing on the risks posed by globalization to traditional food while preparing tagliatelle Frassati with Piemontese mushroom sauce from a recipe divined by the Blessed Giorgio Frassati himself. [continue]

We don't have a television, but maybe some of you TV-watching sorts will let me know what you think of the new station.

Related:
Salt and Light TV
Catholic TV Across Canada - BC Catholic

Did you have a bit much to drink last night? You might be interested to know that the patron saint for people suffering from hangovers is Saint Bibiana (or Viviana), and today is her feast day.

Bibiana was a virgin and martyr who died around 361. And how did she come to be associated with relief from hangovers? Here is one possible explanation:

Because the Spanish pronounce the letter "V" as the letter "B", Saint Viviana's name which means "full of life" (Latin vivo) was thought by them to mean "full of drink" (Latin bibo). Consequently, the Spanish invoked Saint Bibiana's name against hangovers.

And here's another possibility:

A church was built over her grave, in the garden of which grew an herb that cured headache and epilepsy. This and her time spent with the mentally ill led to her areas of patronage.

Bibiana's other areas of patronage include those who suffer from torture, epilepsy, headaches, insanity, or mental illness.

Related:
St Bibiana - Catholic Encyclopedia
St Bibiana - Magnificat.ca

What if you're an observant Jew, and your flight gets delayed when you're on your way to a Shabbat celebration? Here's Dina Yellin's story from Aish: Home for Shabbat. Lovely.

Whitby Abbey was founded in the seventh century on cliffs by the sea; its haunting remains can still be seen from the sea and are a testament to the Golden Age of Northumbria.

Although Whitby later became well-known as a sea port associated with Captain Cook and for the stairway to the parish church and monastery which inspired portions of Bram Stoker's Dracula, its legendary history began with the seventh-century abbey whose monks and nuns included such illustrious figures as Hild, Caedmon, and other of the most well-known churchmen of seventh-century Northumbria.

That's from Deborah Vess' Whitby Abbey website, which includes lots of historical information and plenty of photos.

The Catholic Encyclopedia's Abbey of Whitby page has more details:

(Formerly called Streoneshalh). A Benedictine monastery in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, was founded about 657, as a double monastery, by Oswy, King of Northumberland. The first abbess was St. Hilda, under whom the community seems to have reached a considerable size, the conventual buildings being large enough to accommodate the council, held in 664, to determine the controversy respecting the observance of Easter. On St. Hilda's death, about 680, Aelfleda, daughter of King Oswy, succeeded as abbess, and the Monastery continued to flourish until about 687, when it was entirely destroyed by [continue]

Whitby Abbey holds one of the top spots on my "to see in England" list. Hmmm. Maybe next spring....

Related:
3D Panorama of Whitby Abbey - e-sbc.co.uk
Images of Whitby and the Abbey - whitby-uk.com
Whitby Abbey - Wikipedia

From Wired: Patron Saint of the Nerds.

Here in the oldest church building in New Orleans, tucked into a dark corner by the door as far away from the main altar as possible, stands the statue of St. Expedite — the unofficial patron saint of hackers.

Unofficial because the Roman Catholic Church doesn't know what to do about St. Expedite. He's too pagan to be a proper saint, and too popular for his statues to be simply tossed out the door.

Statues of St. Expedite seem to appear at some churches, a puzzling phenomenon. Where do the statues come from? Who sends them? No one really seems to know who St. Expedite was in life or even if he ever existed.

But whatever St. Expedite may or may not be, geeks, hackers, repentant slackers, folks who run e-commerce sites and those who rely on brains and sheer luck to survive have all claimed the saint as their own. [continue]

Have you walked past the management section in the bookshop lately? Maybe you've noticed Winnie-the-Pooh on Management, or Shakespeare on Management. Whatever next?

St Benedict of Nursia on management, that's what. Forbes.com has an review of a book entitled The Benedictine Rule of Leadership: Classic Management Secrets You Can Use Today. Here's a bit from the Forbes article:

Benedict was born into a wealthy, noble family in the corrupt final years of the fading Roman Empire. He was exposed to the empire's greatest achievements, as well as its failures. He studied leaders, systems of organization and the writings of early monastic leaders, and was groomed for a job in the Roman bureaucracy. However, he eventually chose to leave his world of privilege for an ascetic life of spiritual contemplation. Persuaded to become abbot of a neighboring monastery, Benedict then founded a series of semi-autonomous collectives. In time, as he managed these groups, he developed his own system of leadership and organization. He called it the Rule of Benedict.

The authors have done an excellent job of examining the development of Benedict's system in light of personal and historical circumstances. They provided numerous examples of successful, enduring organizations that clearly demonstrate the system's value and continuing relevance.

I wonder what St Benedict would think of that book.

Anyway, you don't need the management book to get at St Bendict's rule. It's here on the Catholic Encyclopedia site, and here at osb.org.

Today the Jerusalem Post has a fascinating article about Father Yaakov Willebrands, a Dutch monk in Galilee who is "trying to recruit local Catholic Arabs into his contemplative order, while trying to merge Eastern Christian traditions into his European ways."

And so he began his life's project: to carve a monastery church from the limestone cavern. For three years, with a pick and shovel and a few volunteers, he worked daily to widen and shape the cavern into a house of prayer.

He was considered an anomaly by all. The Muslims were suspicious that he was a Zionist agent trying to steal land; the Jews thought he was a missionary; the Christians were perplexed as to why a European trained in the Latin tradition wanted to pray in Hebrew and Arabic, he says.

In the end, the Melkite Bishop George Hakim, who later would became patriarch, accepted the proposal to incorporate Hebrew into prayers. Yaakov says: "I told him I love all people equally and that Arabic is a beautiful language but, as a foreigner, Hebrew is the language of the country and of the Bible. I wanted to open local Christians for the presence of the Jewish people."

Eventually, everyone started coming around to visit. [continue]

You'll need a password to read the rest of the article. Here's one.

Related:
The cloistered among us

From the BBC: Cathedral revives beer tradition.

Canterbury Cathedral is reviving the ancient monastic tradition of making beer available within its precincts.

The Kent cathedral is selling a bottled bitter which is made by local brewer Shepherd Neame according to a 300-year-old Kentish recipe.

Canon Richard Marsh said beer was made on site by the monastic community in Canterbury between 1100 and 1538. [continue]

From The Independent: The Temple Of The Tigers.

The bass rattle beneath the monotony of the Buddhist chanting at the Luangta Bua temple is a deep feline purr. Pacing on all fours alongside the shaven-headed monks are the temple's tigers, their tawny fur mingling with the flowing saffron robes as the big cats are led through the grounds on a lead by their unlikely guardians.

A century ago, the high Buddhist lamas would meditate on tiger skins to symbolise their conquest of fear and desire. Now, Abbot Acharn Phusit Khantitharo has taken a more direct approach to conquering one of man's most primeval fears and, in doing so, has created a rare sanctuary for the endangered great cats. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Buddhist temple and wildlife sanctuary

From Haaretz: Unknown faces of Tibet.

After seeing the Dalai Lama moving with the clumsy grace of an elephant, his kindly, avuncular face bending toward the crowd with an expression of pure benevolence, and hearing his deep, mellifluous voice explain the purpose of Mahayana Buddhism — to bring all sentient beings to enlightenment and liberation — the monsters in the Tibetan Buddhist temples come as sort of a surprise. Ceramic faces frozen into expressions of horrible rage, fangs extending from wide-open mouths, rows of orange skulls strung like a garland across grotesque heads, huge, weapon-like sexual organs. These are the most frightening idols one can imagine. The paintings on the walls of the temples are no less gruesome. Monsters eat the entrails of a doomed, screaming man. A huge eagle flies away carrying a man's eyes in his beak. Only if you look carefully, amid all the horrors, can you see the image of a man meditating in a cave crusted with snow, an eye of calm at the center of a storm of cruelty.

"This is the protector of the monastery," explains an elderly monk in a dark room in the monastery that lies high above the village of Disket in the remote Nubra Valley region of Ladakh. He has opened the room just for us, and he is motioning toward a particularly frightening statue, whose giant white head has the face of a deranged clown. "A few hundred years ago, a Muslim army tried to conquer the region. The commander came up here to the monastery and immediately fell down dead. The monks threw the body into the river, but it kept mysteriously reappearing in the monastery. Finally, one of the monks cut off the commander's head and placed it in the arms of the idol. After that the body stopped returning." [continue]

From the Jerusalem Post: The cloistered among us.

Lying on the cold stone floor under a shroud, as fellow community members intoned the Prayer for the Dead around him, he wasn't frightened.

Though he knew it would be traumatic for his family, the celebration of his symbolic death brought him great inner peace. He lay there for one hour, enveloped in darkness and prayer, daydreaming of the fragrant incense and the spiritual tranquility he had always found inside his local monastery as a child in Egypt.

He loved his family and old friends, and he enjoyed his work as a public service attorney, but at age 28, after a dozen years of consideration, he was finally ready to withdraw from his attachments to a "higher calling." From that moment onwards, he would be known as Father Antonios. This ceremony marked his rebirth as a Coptic Orthodox monk, and marked the break, or "death," from his old life as an active member of family and community.

Today, strolling around St. Helena's Coptic Orthodox Monastery in Jerusalem's Old City, where he was sent by church elders, Father Antonios reflects fondly on his initiation ceremony in Cairo eight years ago.

[continue with print version or graphic version of this article]

(You may need a password to read the rest of the article.)

From the New York Times: Italian Woman's Veil Stirs More Than Fashion Feud.

The immediate issue is how one woman in one tiny town in northern Italy dresses, so it made a certain kind of sense for Giorgio Armani to weigh in. His opinion? A woman should wear what she likes, even if what she likes is a veil that hides her face completely.

"It's a question of respect for the convictions and culture of others," Mr. Armani, the fashion designer, said in a statement released late last month. "We need to live with these ideas."

He was speaking out in defense of Sabrina Varroni, a Muslim woman from this town near the Swiss border who has been fined 80 euros, about $100, for appearing twice in public wearing a veil that completely covered her face. Her punishment has won cheers from some Italians and has horrified others. [continue]

You'll need a password if you want to read the rest of the article on the NYT website.

Here are copies of the article for which you will not need a password:
Veils stir controversy in Italy, Europe - Newszine (iml.jou.ufl.edu)
A lone Italian uncovers rift on veils - International Herald Tribune

From the BBC: Monks seek homes for St Bernards.

Wanted: Home for 64kg-worth of shaggy, doe-eyed dog, used to long walks in the Swiss Alps, brandy keg optional.

Monks at the St Bernard's Hospice in the Swiss Alps are planning to sell the world-famous rescue dogs to devote more time to needy people.

The skills of the 18 dogs, renowned for saving avalanche victims from snowy graves, have long been overtaken by helicopters and heat-seeking equipment.

But the new owners must promise to bring the dogs back each year.

The hospice, run by Augustine monks, stands at 2,438 metres (8,000 ft) - the highest point of the pass where the Swiss Entremont and the Italian Buthier valleys meet.

The monastery was founded in 1050 by Saint Bernard of Montjou. The first record of dogs being used there dates back to 1703, with stories of dogs being involved in rescues from then on. [continue]

Related:
Dog days catch up with St Bernards - The Independent
St Bernards headed off at pass as monks now put people first - The Herald

St Bernard - Catholic Encyclopedia

Other than the Christmas carol, when do we ever hear of St Wenceslaus? Never, in my neck of the woods. He's important over here, though: St Wenceslaus is the patron saint of brewers, Bohemia, the Czech Republic, and Prague. September 28th is his feast day, and that's a national holiday in the Czech Republic.

Wenceslaus (or Wenceslas, if you prefer) was murdered in the year 929 by his brother. If you're curious about him, read more here, here, and here.

I've always wondered how Saint Vitus came to be associated with St Vitus' dance, which is a nasty thing called rheumatic chorea. Well. This page tells the story of St Vitus, and explains it all.

You're wondering what brought this to mind? We've been to visit St Vitus' Cathedral here in Prague, which is quite splendid. Here are 20 photos we took of the cathedral.

(Note for PDA users: the first photo page consists of thumbnail images, which should display properly on your PDA. The pages to which the thumbnails link contain images that are 375 x 500 pixels, or 500 x 375 pixels.)

From boston.com: Shrinking population threatens an ancient faith.

BOMBAY -- For centuries, this city has been the citadel where Zoroastrianism, one of the world's oldest religions, has persevered in the face of overwhelming odds.

Now demographers say Zoroastrians, who live mainly in India, where they are called Parsis, and Iran, where the religion originated, could face eventual extinction because of a falling birth rate and a tradition of barring those from other faiths from converting.

The perceived threat to its existence has locked the tiny community into an emotional debate over how to maintain the faith and identity while also adapting with the times. [continue]

Related:
Zoroastrianism - Wikipedia

From The Telegraph: Cloistered chic of the minimalist monastery.

At the invitation of a French Cistercian abbot, more than 2,000 people travelled to a rural corner of the Czech Republic to celebrate the formal dedication of a new monastery.

But the star guest was undoubtedly John Pawson, the British architect who can now put "design of a Cistercian monastery" on his CV - along with the design of Calvin Klein's flagship store in Manhattan as well as numerous houses for clients, such as Doris Lockhart Saatchi, in London.

Initially, a more unlikely pairing of client and designer would be hard to imagine, but the project seized Pawson's imagination and has produced a serenely beautiful range of buildings, sited around a quadrangle, that perch on a remote Bohemian hillside.

The Cistercians are a Roman Catholic monastic order, based on the fourth century rule of St Benedict, who embrace simplicity and poverty. [continue]

From the BBC: Cashing in on Tibet's religious traditions.

On an early afternoon at Sera monastery, just outside Lhasa, Tibetan monks debate theology in time-honoured tradition across a leafy sunlit courtyard.

The monks debate in pairs - one seated on the ground barking out questions, the other lunging forward, slapping his hands together in his rivals' face as he parries back answers.

It could be a scene from centuries past, were it not for the presence of a grinning tourist standing alongside a monk, mimicking his movements for a holiday snap.

Mainland Chinese tourists are beating a track to Tibet in ever-increasing numbers.

The monks in Sera monastery are now outnumbered by tourists, capturing their every move on camera, and turning serious theological practice into a circus.

Religious institutions in Tibet are increasingly finding their timetables driven by tourist schedules and visitor demands. Even senior monks act as glorified tour guides. [continue]

From the (Malasia) Star Online: Haven for man and beast.

The Buddhist temple in Kanchanaburi province, 322km north of Bangkok, is the perfect setting for the monks who live there, the serenity of the surrounding forests conducive for deep meditation. The peacefulness of the land there is almost palpable, the silence as thick as the trees. But once in a while, you will hear the crowing of a cockerel, the call of a gibbon — and even the piercing wail of newborn tiger cubs.

The Luangta Bua Yansampanno Forest Monastery in the Sai Yok district has over the years become a wildlife sanctuary, where the monks not only practise their daily rituals and routines, but also care for animals that have wandered into the monastery grounds or were brought by concerned villagers. Under the leadership of abbot Phra Achan Bhusit Chan Khantitharo, the monastery has adopted the objective of not only propagating Buddhism but also conserving wildlife.

And it all started with tigers. [continue]

From novinite.com: Bulgaria Unveils Ancient Church.

Bulgarian archaeologists unearthed the oldest church in the Bulgaria Rhodopes Mountain near the grandiose religious center Perperikon.

The ancient temple was built in 393-398 and is believed to be one of the oldest Christian centers in Europe. Archaeologists are positive that it was the center that launched the Christianizing of the Rhodopes. [continue]

There's lots of information about Perperikon at Perperikon.bg.

From csmonitor.com: When state rules, church dwindles.

ISTANBUL, TURKEY – On a recent Sunday at Aya Triada, the largest Eastern Orthodox church in Istanbul, a priest in a bejeweled white robe with gold trim leads the services in the incense-scented church. The walls of the 120-year-old sanctuary are lined with delicate icons, the ceiling painted with colorful frescoes depicting scenes from the Bible.

As the bearded priest chants in Greek, his voice echoes throughout the domed chamber. His chanting, though, goes mostly unheard. Sitting in the pews are barely more than a dozen gray-haired congregants, along with a tourist whose camera flash keeps going off during the service.

"Today we had a mass, but you see - there are not many people here. That is our situation," says the priest, a church leader known as Metropolitan Herman of Tranopolis, with a shrug of his shoulders.

It's not only the situation at Aya Triada, but citywide and in predominantly Muslim Turkey as a whole. Despite a 1,500-year history in Istanbul - and presiding over some 250 million believers worldwide, stretching from Russia and Romania to Greece and the United States - the Orthodox patriarchate tends a rapidly dwindling flock at home.

To make matters worse, Turkish law stipulates that the patriarch must be a Turkish citizen, which means the next leader will have to be picked from among this shrinking pool of people. If something doesn't change soon, the church's spiritual and historical headquarters risks sliding into irrelevance. [continue]

Today The Guardian has an article about writer Dame Muriel Spark. I didn't know she lives in Italy! Anyway, the article has lots of interesting tidbits, but I liked this part best:

Dame Muriel is a converted Catholic, famously. "The influence isn't quite as Graham Greene handled it, in that it became a dramatic part of his plots. But it is more that it gives me a feeling of steadiness, of security, and once you don't care too much any more and don't have anxieties about yourself, you are much more free to create as an artist than if you are riddled with doubts and all sorts of feelings of guilt. Freedom is what I experience in the Catholic faith."

There are nuns in Tuscany, it appears, who are clad in Dame Muriel's cast-off clothing. "Yes, there are some nuns near us.

Our clothes are not suitable for them, but they wear them under their habits. They looked up the rule and it said ‘warm stuff’, so that's all right." [full article]

Related:
Muriel Spark - Wikipedia
Graham Greene - Wikipedia

What would attending Mass have been like in Roman North Africa, back in the third century? Pontifications offers this:

By all appearances, you are an ordinary resident of your town, a port in the empire’s North African provinces. Nothing in your dress, speech, dwelling, or everyday work would set you apart from your neighbours. You come from a family of craftsmen; your home is neither rich nor poor, but you find it comfortable.

It is Sunday, however, and so you rise unusually early. The house is dark, as is the street outside. Sunrise is still hours away. It is the Lord’s day, the day each week when you commemorate the resurrection of Jesus - and you recall your own entry into the Church of Christ, at the Easter Vigil some seven years ago. You pray the words of Psalm 118: "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it."

Quietly, then, you wake the other members of your family. Each rises, in turn, to dress in the dark. A lighted window, after all, could draw unwelcome attention from the deputies of the governor. From the dockworkers you have heard rumours of persecution abroad and wonder if your town might be next. Once dressed and washed, you and each member of your family take a small loaf of bread from the basket by the door, wrap it in a linen cloth, and then leave the house, one by one, and silently slip through the narrow streets. Though you all have a common destination, less than a mile away, you travel by different routes - again, so that you do not attract attention. Along the way, you have only one real fright - a sudden scuttling sound behind you. It turns out to be a rat racing from the sewer in the middle of the street. When you find yourself amid the town’s larger homes, you begin to feel the familiar sense of relief and expectation. [continue]

There's lots more, and it's well worth a read. It's from Mike Aquilina's book, The Mass of the Early Christians.

Thanks to the ever-fascinating Dappled Things for pointing this out.

A job like this would make for very interesting days, I think. From The Australian:

LOURDES: French doctor Patrick Theillier is not your run-of-the-mill physician — instead of diagnosing common colds and stomach ailments, he spends his days separating miracles from myth.

Theillier is in charge of the Catholic church's medical bureau in Lourdes, the "miracle" town in southwest France visited each year by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who pray for a cure from its blessed spring water.

This weekend, Pope John Paul II will make his second visit to Lourdes, where 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous saw apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1858 and then discovered the holy spring.

"My primary task is to differentiate between illusion and reality, to listen to the description of a physical, psychological or spiritual experience," the 60-year-old Theillier says.

"It's always a moving process worthy of respect, even if people sometimes make mistakes," he adds. [continue]

Related:
Bernadette Soubirous - Wikipedia

Today's BBC features an article about the Pope's ecclesiastical tailor, Gammarelli.

At first glance the store looks much like any other tailor.

A little old-fashioned perhaps, with rows of small wooden drawers stretching to the ceiling.

There is a long, broad counter on which bolts of dark cloth are slapped with a resounding thud, ready for cutting.

Immaculately suited men bustle about with tape measures. There is a smell in the air of expensive aftershave, mixed with the odour of mothballs.

But the Gammarelli establishment - just off the Piazza Minerva in central Rome - is no ordinary tailors.

There is a sign over the door: Sartoria Ecclesiastica, or clerical outfitters.

Then there is the window display. No suits or shirts here; rather they are peaked clerical hats and priestly robes.

And in one corner, resting on a silk cloth, a solitary "zucchetto" - the small, white skullcap worn by the Pope.

Gammarelli is, in fact, the Pope's tailor. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
The Pope's tailor - October, 2003
Gammarelli, again - April, 2005

From Wired: Cell Phone Users Are Finding God.

Once merely a useful tool for keeping in touch on the go, the mobile phone is fast finding a new niche as an instrument of spiritual enlightenment.

From Muslims who use their phones to point them toward Mecca, to Roman Catholics who collect text messages from the Vatican, religious observers across the globe are turning to their cell phones for aid and inspiration in practicing their faith.

In response, service providers and religious institutions are rolling out a host of services to attract the growing ranks of spiritually oriented phone users. [continue]

From the Jerusalem Post: John's baptism cave found near Jerusalem.

Archeologists said Monday they have found a cave where they believe John the Baptist baptized many of his disciples — a huge cistern with 28 steps leading to an underground pool of water.

During an exclusive tour of the cave, located on the property of Kibbutz Tzova near Jerusalem, archeologists presented ancient wall carvings they said tell the story of the fiery New Testament preacher, as well as a stone they believe was used for ceremonial foot washing.

They also pulled about 250,000 pottery shards from the cave, the apparent remnants of small water jugs used in baptismal ritual.

"John the Baptist, who was just a figure from the Gospels, now comes to life," said British archeologist Shimon Gibson, who supervised the dig outside Jerusalem. [continue]

Of course there is some disagreement about the find.

At Dappled Things today, I learned that the Perseid meteor shower has been "known for centuries as the burning Tears of St Lawrence". Fascinating!

I've always been impressed with the account of St Lawrence. He was roasted alive, you know. But before that, when commanded to turn over the treasures of the church to the Roman authorities, he presented the poor people of the parish. What a cool story. (More on St Lawrence here and here.)

Anyway, here's a bit from the Perseid History page at amsmeteors.org:

The earliest record of its activity appears in the Chinese annals, where it is said that in 36 AD "more than 100 meteors flew thither in the morning." Numerous references appear in Chinese, Japanese and Korean records throughout the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, but only sporadic references are found between the 12th and 19th centuries, inclusive. Nevertheless, August has long had a reputation for an abundance of meteors. The Perseids have been referred to as the "tears of St. Lawrence", since meteors seemed to be in abundance during the festival of that saint on August 10th, but credit for the discovery of the shower's annual appearance is given to Quételet (Brussels), who, in 1835, reported that there was a shower occurring in August that emanated from the constellation Perseus.

(Perseid History link spotted at Metafilter.)

From Northampton Today: 13th century silver cross found in field.

Historians at the British Museum have been studying a 13th century crucifix unearthed in a Northamptonshire field by treasure hunter Steve Kane.

The solid silver cross was found by Mr Kane while he was using a metal detector in the field at a farm near Grendon. (...) Beverley Nenk, the curator of the medieval collection at the British Museum, said: "It would have been used as an item of personal jewellery, and would have been bought by someone fairly affluent. It would have been used to ward off evil spirits and harm, and would have had the same symbolic significance as a modern-day crucifix."

The article includes a photo of the cross. It's similar to my silver Norwegian crucifix, which is apparently a replica of a medieval crucifix found in Norway.

Here's an interesting article about St Christopher over at the LA Times: In Spite of It All, St. Christopher Hangs In There.

Didn't the Roman Catholic Church strip Christopher of his sainthood a long time ago?

Haven't scholars concluded that he never really existed, except in the fertile minds of medieval monks who spun fatuous tales of his carrying the Christ child across a swiftly flowing river?

Well, not exactly.

To begin with, the church never de-sanctified Christopher, whose annual feast day was July 25. Rather, it busted him, in the military sense, relegating him to a lower rank on the liturgical calendar, in large part because of his wobbly historical status.

The church's "universal calendar" designates certain saints to be honored on certain days by Catholics around the world. In the 1960s, the reformist Vatican Council II undertook to tidy things up and make the overloaded calendar leaner and more relevant to the far-flung peoples in the modern church. Along with many other saints, Christopher was kicked off the universal calendar in 1969, although individual parishes or localities were still free to celebrate his feast day.

In removing him, church officials termed the stories of his life "legendary," but stopped short of asserting that he never existed or was never martyred in the early 4th century.

"I think a lot of people drew the incorrect conclusion that because someone was removed from the universal calendar, that they were declared nonpersons," said Msgr. William B. Smith, academic dean of St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., who has written about Christopher's status change.

In recent years, an Irish historian, after careful scrutiny of Roman Empire records and early church writings, has argued that the existence of St. Christopher "has a genuine historical core." David Woods, a professor of ancient classics at University College Cork, suggests that Christopher was really St. Menas, an early Egyptian martyr. [continue]

(You'll need a password to read the rest of the article.)

And by the way, David Woods has a website about St Christopher.

Related:
David Woods, Ancient Classics, University College, Cork
St Christopher - Wikipedia
St Christopher - Catholic-forum.com

From This is Lincolnshire: Ancient find unearths past religious battles.

A Roman font dating back more than 1,600 years has been unearthed in a Lincolnshire field.

The 4th century artefact is one of only 18 to be discovered in Britain and has been described by archaeologists as a "significant" find.

It is thought the find, which has been cut into pieces, reflects a period of religious tension in the country between Christianity and Paganism. [continue]

From WesternPeople.ie: Keeping up the ancient custom of the ‘night-time’ climb of the Reek.

By dusk, last Sunday night, up to 30,000 people climbed the holy mountain, Croagh Patrick. They came from all over the world to take part in a tradition that remains unaffected by church scandals and the waning of its influence. However, for one group of pilgrims from the Mayo and Galway gaeltachts, the pilgrimage started at dawn on Saturday as they set off on a 30 mile trek over fields and ditches, mountains and bogs before they climbed to the top of the 765m peak.

Climbing the Reek at night is no longer encouraged but for over 20 years,Dominic Joyce, from the tiny village of Cornamona, County Galway, has kept alive a tradition that was once widespread throughout Connacht. Up to 50 years ago fasting pilgrims would walk from all over the region and make the treacherous ascent barefooted. [continue]

The most fascinating thing I've come across today is this Aish article, Sparks of Holiness, Rekindled. It's about the descendants of those Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity by the Inquisition. Here goes:

One bright spring day, the Inquisitors of Mexico caught Diego in the marketplace, hiding three matzos under his hat. In their torture chambers, he denied he was Jewish, insisting that unleavened bread placed under one's hat was a known cure for chronic headaches. Meanwhile, the local spies of the Inquisition, like their counterparts in Spain and Portugal, continued combing the marketplace, looking for anyone displaying a particular interest in purchasing bitter herbs or celery (used by many Spanish Jews as karpas) that day.

Behind locked doors and in hushed tones, the so-called "New Christians" fearfully passed on the Torah's commandments to their children. Obviously, under these conditions, the Jewish law was not understood, so that gradually, errors, omissions, and distortions became part of the tradition that was passed from generation to generation. [continue]

From The Mercury News: Long journey into the Zohar.

Every weekday morning, Daniel Matt turns on his computer, stares at the tree-lined slopes outside the window of his Berkeley Hills home and waits for the words to describe the indescribable.

It is a routine he is pledged to maintain for the next 15 years or so. Matt resigned his professorship at Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union in 2002 to translate the insights of a medieval Jewish mystic who wrestled with a paradox that has troubled believers of many faiths: How can the limited human intellect possibly grasp the infinite nature of God? [continue]

From The Guardian: Bones reveal chubby monks aplenty.

The full truth about one of Britain's favourite historical fatties has been tracked down by a three-year study of overweight medieval monks.

Robin Hood's companion Friar Tuck had hundreds of real-life counterparts, according to a newly published analysis of skeletons in three monastic burial sites in London.

Suet, lard and butter were wolfed down in "startling quantities" by the closed communities, whose abbots often depended on arranging large and regular helpings to keep their flocks under control.

"The way to a man's heart is through his stomach and this seems specially to have been the case with monks," said Philippa Patrick, of the Institute of Archaeology, at University College, London. "They were taking in about 6,000 calories a day, and 4,500 even when they were fasting."

Arthritis in knees, hips and fingertips showed that the often under-employed monks were seriously obese.

Ms Patrick, whose findings were revealed to the International Medieval Congress, meeting in Leeds, said: "Their meals were full of saturated fats. They were five times more likely to suffer from obesity than their secular contemporaries, including wealthy merchants or courtiers." [continue]

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Famed Russian icon returns to its home.

TIKHVIN, Russia — Thousands of pilgrims gathered Thursday to greet one of the most significant Russian Orthodox icons as it returned to its home at the Tikhvin Assumption Monastery after six decades in the United States.

After arriving in a special train car from St. Petersburg, 135 miles away, the Virgin of Tikhvin icon was carried aloft by Orthodox priests in dark robes toward the monastery, where it will be placed in an ornate shrine and protected by guards. [continue]

Elsewhere today:
Russian joy as icon comes home - The Telegraph
Thousands Hail Tikhvin Virgin Return - St Petersburg Times
Shrine returns to monastery - NewsFromRussia.com

Related content on Mirabilis.ca:
Tikhvin icon
Tikhvin icon returning to Russia

From National Geographic: Rats Rule at Indian Temple.

The floors are a living tangle of undulating fur. Small, brown blurs scurry across marble floors. Thousands of rats dine with people and scamper over their feet.

It may sound like a nightmare from the New York City subway to some, but in India's small northwestern city of Deshnoke, this is a place of worship: Rajastan's famous Karni Mata Temple.

This ornate, isolated Hindu temple was constructed by Maharaja Ganga Singh in the early 1900s as a tribute to the rat goddess, Karni Mata. Intricate marble panels line the entrance and the floors, and silver and gold decorations are found throughout.

But by far the most intriguing aspect of the interior is the 20,000-odd rats that call this temple home. These holy animals are called kabbas, and many people travel great distances to pay their respects.

The legend goes that Karni Mata, a mystic matriarch from the 14th century, was an incarnation of Durga, the goddess of power and victory. At some point during her life, the child of one of her clansmen died. She attempted to bring the child back to life, only to be told by Yama, the god of death, that he had already been reincarnated.

Karni Mata cut a deal with Yama: From that point forward, all of her tribespeople would be reborn as rats until they could be born back into the clan. [continue]

Also see Thomas Tomczyk's Temple of Rats pages; there you'll find lots more information and amazing photos. If you'd rather see a Quicktime video taken at the temple, check out this page at vagabonding.com.

Related:
Rats! - Cairo Times article about the temple
Mark Moxon's visit to the Karni Mata Temple

From the BBC: St George found in Welsh church.

A medieval wall painting has been uncovered during renovation work at a south Wales church.

A life-size image of St George standing on a slain a dragon was uncovered at St Cadoc's church in Llangattock Lingoed, near Abergavenny.

Discovered during recent renovations at the centuries old church, experts have described the painting as a "special find".

The painting is thought to have been covered up during the Reformation. [continue]

Thanks to Marcel for pointing out this article.

Related:
Bats rise above turmoil - ThisIsGwent.co.uk
Reformation iconoclasm - Wikipedia

From the National Review: The Real Inquisition.

When the sins of the Catholic Church are recited (as they so often are) the Inquisition figures prominently. People with no interest in European history know full well that it was led by brutal and fanatical churchmen who tortured, maimed, and killed those who dared question the authority of the Church. The word "Inquisition" is part of our modern vocabulary, describing both an institution and a period of time. Having one of your hearings referred to as an "Inquisition" is not a compliment for most senators.

But in recent years the Inquisition has been subject to greater investigation. In preparation for the Jubilee in 2000, Pope John Paul II wanted to find out just what happened during the time of the Inquisition's (the institution's) existence. In 1998 the Vatican opened the archives of the Holy Office (the modern successor to the Inquisition) to a team of 30 scholars from around the world. Now at last the scholars have made their report, an 800-page tome that was unveiled at a press conference in Rome on Tuesday. Its most startling conclusion is that the Inquisition was not so bad after all. Torture was rare and only about 1 percent of those brought before the Spanish Inquisition were actually executed. As one headline read "Vatican Downsizes Inquisition."

The amazed gasps and cynical sneers that have greeted this report are just further evidence of the lamentable gulf that exists between professional historians and the general public. The truth is that, although this report makes use of previously unavailable material, it merely echoes what numerous scholars have previously learned from other European archives. Among the best recent books on the subject are Edward Peters's Inquisition (1988) and Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition (1997), but there are others. Simply put, historians have long known that the popular view of the Inquisition is a myth. So what is the truth? [continue]

Today is the feast of the nativity of St John the Baptist. If you were in Barangay Bibiclat, a town in the Philippines, this would be a very memorable day indeed. From abs-cbnnews.com: Feast of St. John draws ‘taong putik’ to Ecija town.

Barangay Bibiclat in Aliaga is transformed into a town of "mud people" every 24th of June when it celebrates the feast of St. John the Baptist.

Instead of the usual water-dousing common in celebrations honoring St. John the Baptist in other parts of the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines, Nueva Ecija’s devotees transform into taong putik (mud people), their bodies — from face to feet — daubed with mud, and wearing dried banana leaves and vegetable vines and twigs.

The celebration starts on the eve of June 24, and at dawn they would begin to march to the village chapel where a Mass is said.

Along the way they would ask for coins from house to house to buy candles to be erected on the altar of their patron saint. [continue]

Photos of the celebration? Yes, here and here.

From Leeds Today: How the monks made their dosh.

This ancient manuscript provides an insight into the business minds of monks living in Yorkshire in medieval times.

The Stock Book, which dates back to the 15th century, documents how Fountains Abbey became the richest Cistercian abbey in England.

It contains detailed accounts of how the monks built up vast wealth from the sale of livestock and dairy products.

Entries show how just one small part of a network of estates produced more than 53 stones of cheese and 26 stones of butter in one year.

At the same time it reared a 50-strong herd of cattle.

The book is the jewel in the crown of an extensive collection of archives that is to be conserved thanks to a £49,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Staff at the Yorkshire Archaeological Society will have the painstaking task of cleaning and repairing the pages from their base in Clarendon Road, Leeds.

The pages will be digitally scanned before being sewn into the new vellum covers specially made to protect the volume for the next 500 years. [continue]

Related:
Cistercians in Yorkshire - Mirabilis.ca
Fountains Abbey -FountainsAbbey.org.uk
Fountains Abbey - TheHeritageTrail.co.uk

From Haaretz: Jewish religious treasures unearthed near Auschwitz.

Priceless Jewish religious artifacts have been unearthed near the former Auschwitz death camp where more than a million European Jews were killed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.

Ceremonial and Hanukkah menorahs were among the items found during an excavation of the foundations of a synagogue in the southern Polish town of Oswiecim, the location of the former Auschwitz camp. [continue]

This weekend the Tikhvin icon, now in the care of Rev. Sergei Garklavs, is going home to Russia. From the Chicago Sun-Times:

According to tradition, the 34-by-43-inch icon, which is usually shrouded in a bejeweled, gold-plated covering, was painted by St. Luke the Evangelist. Historical records trace it to the 5th century, when it was taken from Jerusalem to Constantinople.

The next 1,600 years of the icon's history are riddled with stories of miracles, divine intervention and harrowing escapes. It survived the fall of Constantinople, the Russian Revolution, the Third Reich, several fires, bombings and innumerable moves. Hundreds of healings and other miracles have been attributed to the icon throughout the centuries.

Garklavs' adopted father, Archbishop John Garklavs, the late prelate of Chicago for the Orthodox Church in America, rescued the icon from the Nazis and brought it to the United States in 1949 and was its guardian until his death in 1982. The Rev. Sergei Garklavs tells his own miraculous story of divine protection when he and the icon left Latvia in 1944. [continue]

Related:
Tikhvin icon returning to Russia

Travelvideo.tv has news about the restoration of the Red Monastery in Egypt.

Muhammad Abdel Rehim, administrator of the ancient area in Sohag, said the Red Monastery represents the emergence of monasticism that began when the Byzantines persecuted Christians who escaped to the mountains. After this monastery was built, the first ever in the area of Sheikh Hamad, the people who escaped to the mountains built an expanded monastery using stones from Pharaonic temples. [continue]

Here's a TourEgypt.net page with information about the monastery, and photos, too.

While browsing through the Amsterdam Heritage site I came upon this page about Sint Nicolaaskerk — The Church of St. Nicholas.

In 1578 when the Protestants assumed power — the so-called ‘Alteratie’ — the Roman Catholics were officially forbidden from holding religious services in public. As a result they lost control over their churches. The first church of St. Nicholas, the oldest church in town, was taken over by the Protestants and renamed Oude Kerk (Old Church). The Catholics were forced into hiding and consequently they began to equip ordinary houses with the attributes needed to hold masses. One of these ‘hidden churches’ or conventicles was (Our Lord in the Attic), a large attic church which naturally had St. Nicholas for its patron saint (the second Church of St. Nicholas).

The year 1795 proved a turning point. After over 200 years of repression the Roman Catholics were allowed to build churches again, the beginning of a movement called the Catholic Emancipation. However, not everybody in the predominantly Protestant Dutch community was in favour of equal rights for Protestants and Catholics. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that the Catholics managed to overcome the opposition and started manifesting themselves as a social and political force to be reckoned with. The construction of the church of St. Nicholas on the Prins Hendrikkade is a supreme example of the new-found self-confidence. The church was consecrated on February 7, 1887 and on March 30 the Blessed Sacrament was taken across town from the conventicle to the new church in a splendid procession. [continue]

The page includes photos and more information.

Meanwhile, Catholic Online notes that Amsterdam is to see its first eucharistic procession Since 1578.

Related:
Amsterdam - Catholic Encyclopedia

From Journeys of Faith, Roads of Civilization.

Roped four abreast, the column of camels shuffled in the darkness across the rocky plain, each following the shadowy forms of the four in front. The drivers and passengers intermittently dozed in the saddle, then jerked awake, then dozed again. From a distance the sweeping train was marked by the swaying of lanterns and the faint accompaniment of tambourines.

In the east the sky lightened, marking the caravan's 40th morning, now in a landscape shaped by volcanic upheavals. As the sun rose, so did the temperature. Camels gurgled, brayed, balked and strode on, as tired as the pilgrims riding them and the hardy ones on foot, all stolidly going on at the insistent command of the caravan leaders.

It was a sharp-eyed camel boy at the head of the column who first spotted the tiny smudge on the horizon, appearing, then disappearing in the shimmering light. Pushing toward it, the caravan moved onto the floor of a small valley, then forced its way up a steep ridge and stopped. Everyone looked, their gazes awash with emotion born of a lifetime of faith and months, even years, of travel. In the valley of Abraham not far off, its whitewashed houses glistening in a little island of green, was the realization of the pilgrims' extraordinary exertions: Makkah, the City of God. [continue]

From the Jerusalem Post: Digging starts at synagogue site near Auschwitz.

Archeologists began excavations Monday at the site of a synagogue near the former Auschwitz death camp, looking for a Torah scroll and other objects missing since the Nazis burned down the building in 1939.

Malgorzata Grupa, the archaeologist leading the project, said the only clue guiding the excavation was the account of a Jewish survivor who saw members of his community burying the religious objects in hopes of saving them from destruction by the Nazis.

"We don't have any other information apart from the knowledge that the Torah scroll and the objects were buried in boxes in September 1939 and that an eyewitness is still alive," the PAP news agency quoted Grupa as saying. [continue]

From Newsday.com: Orthodox Jews worry that city's water may not be kosher.

A glassful of cold New York City tap water not kosher?

It may be true — and just in case, restaurants and bakeries operated under Orthodox Jewish law were advised Tuesday to use filters that can ensure water purity.

The problem: tiny harmless creatures called copepods. The little organisms are crustaceans and therefore not considered kosher. [continue]

From the (Lebanon) Daily Star: Keeper of The Word shares a few.

DAMASCUS: With the recent release of the film, "The Passion of The Christ," Aramaic has likely been heard by more people in the past months than in it's entire history. Once the vernacular, it is now reduced to subtitles, spoken daily by a few. The man in front of me has a less brutal way of keeping the language alive.

Patriarch Zakka sits in a gold encrusted chair in a fading cathedral in the Old Quarter of Damascus, but the power of this holy man is not contained in a chair. Or in his extensive title: His Holiness Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka I Iwas. The power of Pope Zakka rests in words.

Pope Zakka is the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East and the Supreme Head of the Universal Syriac Orthodox Church, the planet's second oldest church, founded by the Apostles.

As intriguing as the longevity of the institution, is its charge to keep alive Aramaic, the language in which Christ spoke. That is, the words in which The Word spoke.

Words have consequence, but few take words as seriously as Pope Zakka.

We all know one phrase in Aramaic: Abracadabra. Childish magical gibberish to the rest of us, loosely translated from Aramaic it has a vastly more serious meaning: "Create what I speak, or, May my words be brought to life." These are not men who dangle their participles.

The church has come within a breath of extinction at least twice in its long history, and its survival is a miracle. (...)

In the early 21st century, the church and the language so intimately linked to it again struggles to survive. This time it has found an oddly modern ally; the internet.

"The most important thing is that Aramaic was spoken by Our Lord Jesus Christ," the Patriarch says. "That's why we love it. It has been the liturgical language of our church from the beginning of Christianity and, of course, it was the ancient language of Syria before Islam. That's also why we love it. And we feel it is our duty and responsibility to keep it alive because we can't imagine that, one day, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ will be forgotten. It's something we can't imagine." [continue]

670-member remnant of ancient Samaritans clings to unique heritage among Arabs, Jews. From CatholicVoiceOakland.com:

MOUNT GERIZIM, West Bank — Dressed in flowing robes of the type their ancestors wore thousands of years ago, the 670 people in the world who call themselves Samaritans gathered on this lonely mountain one evening in early May and celebrated the holiday of Passover.

At sunset in the small mountaintop village they call Kiryat Luza, the male heads of the various clans prayed and then cut the throats of 30 lambs as part of the Pascal sacrifice in accordance with the Book of Exodus.

For the remainder of the week, while the world below their mountain carried on its own routine, Samaritan children stayed home from school and their parents from their jobs. They ate special foods, including home-made matzah, or unleavened bread.

Despite the Samaritans’ marking of Passover, the Sabbath and other rituals and observances similar to Judaism, Samaritans are not Jews but a distinct people. They are best known from the New Testament parable Jesus told of the Good Samaritan who came to the aid of a mugged and wounded traveler.

In contrast to Jews, who follow both the Written Law of the Torah as well as the Oral Law, the Samaritans adhere only to the Five Books of Moses. [continue]

Note: the article above is also available here.

Related:
Samaritan - Wikipedia
Amid conflict, Samaritans keep unique identity - CNN, October 2002
Samaritans, Smallest Minority in Holy Land, Straddle Religious Divide -WashingtonPost.com - April 2001

From Scotsman.com: Veterans Give Back Booty to Monastery.

New Zealand veterans today gave back battlefield booty looted from the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino during World War II, including a metal chalice and fragments of wooden sculptures.

The objects were returned during a ceremony attended by the abbot of Monte Cassino, Bernardo D’Onorio, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and some 60 New Zealand veterans.

Among the returned booty were a pair of plates, a copper engraving and a silk vestment once used in the abbey.

"It was beautiful to see tears in the eyes of the veterans," said Pietro Vittorelli, a monk at Monte Cassino, after the ceremony.

The service was part of a week-long commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the battle of Monte Cassino. In the battle, Allied troops bombarded Nazi forces holed up in the ruins of the ancient monastery, which is perched on top of a mountain about 100 miles south of Rome.

Vittorelli said that the return of the objects would help the abbey create an "uninterrupted line" with its past before the wartime destruction.

"These are the small gestures of reconciliation that can cancel the brutality of war," he said. [continue].

From news.com.au: Jews revive ancient synagogue.

A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews brought a Torah scroll to the mountain-top fortress of Masada today to rededicate one of the oldest synagogues in the world, which has been unused since the Romans destroyed it nearly 2000 years ago.

Almost 1000 religious Jews gathered at the foot of the fortress overnight before hiking up the steep path which leads to the top of the mountain that overlooks the Dead Sea.

The foreign-donated scroll was placed in a room of the partially renovated synagogue on the edge of the site which the Romans attacked from a sloping ramp in 73 AD

The Romans captured the fortress only after its 900 defenders committed mass suicide, and Masada is now a major site of pilgrimage for Jews around the world. [continue].

From Haaretz.com: A hair-raising fear of idols.

David Ben Ezra, a Bnei Brak shopkeeper who sells wigs made of real hair, cannot handle all the telephone calls he is receiving from worried customers wanting to know where the hair comes from. Another wig-seller, A., said that her customers are demanding proof of the hair's origins, and are refusing to accept her word. The customers have been in a panic ever since rumors began flying that hair from India - which is where most of the hair used in natural wigs comes from - was originally used in an idol-worshiping rite.

As a result, ultra-Orthodox women - who, according to Jewish law, must cover their own hair once they are married - are suddenly switching to synthetic wigs, or even to hats or kerchiefs (which, though preferred by the religious Zionist camp, are usually shunned by the Haredim). [continue]

Related:
Orthodox Jews face wig ban after Hindu hair inquiry.
Rabbis spark wig burning rumpus
Rabbis' Rules and Indian Wigs Stir Crisis in Orthodox Brooklyn - New York Times (password required)
Historical information about hair-covering - Jewish Heritage Online

Update:
Ruling on wigs from India causes uproar in Orthodox world - Canadian Jewish News

From today's Globe and Mail: Between heaven and Earth.

METEORA, GREECE -- Fifty-six, 57, 58 . . . I have to stop to catch my breath. With 58 stairs behind me, I have 137 more to go to reach my final target: The holy monastery of Varlaam, one of only six of the original 24 Meteora monasteries still in use. Perched on a perpendicular rock, it dominates an eerie landscape dotted with immense stalagmite-like pinnacles crowned by forbidding hermitages.

The legendary world of Meteora, in northwestern Greece about a four-hour journey from Athens, comprises 24 monasteries, suspended between heaven and Earth (meteora literally means just that). The settlements make up one of the richest spiritual and artistic storehouses of the Orthodox religion, containing historic heirlooms, gospel books, gold chalices and embroidered liturgical vestments. Each one is a living museum filled with priceless wall paintings and icons. [continue]

Meteora photos - trekearth.com
Clifftop monasteries of Meteora, Greece - great-adventures.com
Meteora - Hellenic Ministry of Culture
Meteora Photoseek.com
Rob Broek's photos of Greece - RobBroek.nl

From Reuters: Mini-airship hovers inside ancient cathedral.

Researchers have sent up a mini-airship inside one of Britain's most ancient cathedrals to inspect stained-glass windows and inaccessible stonework.

The metre-long radio-controlled craft carried digital cameras to allow staff to monitor the condition of the cathedral's 14th-century windows, all of which survived a 1984 fire that gutted the south transept.

"Compared to the cost of erecting scaffolding it is very cheap," said York Minster Collections Manager Louise Hampson on Tuesday.

"It's remarkably unobtrusive," she added. "Because it's almost silent, it's been possible to have services in the side chapel while it has been flying around." [continue]

Related:
Mini-airship's flight in Minster - BBC
York Minster Cathedral - yorkminster.org

From the National Museum of Ireland: The Tully Lough Cross.

The Tully Lough cross is an Irish altar cross of the eighth or ninth century. Constructed of metal sheets on a wooden core, it is a rare example of a metal-encased cross of this period and the only intact Irish example.

It was found by a diver on the bed of Tully Lough, Co. Roscommon close to the edge of a crannóg (artificial lake dwelling) in a number of fragments. It is uncertain whether the cross was lost accidentally or deposited deliberately. (...)

Plain sheets of tinned bronze are held in place with binding strips. A number of cast and gilt raised bosses and flat mounts are also attached to the front and back, those on the front are more ornate than those on the back. Three of these bear simple interlace patterns while two others depict a human figure between two animals - perhaps an image of Daniel in the Lions Den.

The existence of other similar crosses is demonstrated by the finding of related cross components in Ireland, England and in Viking graves in Norway. The most complete of these is the Antrim cross in the Hunt Museum, Limerick. The only intact cross of comparable form is the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon example preserved at Bischofshofen in Austria. [continue].

Related
Tully Lough Cross - IrishArtsReview.com. Includes photos!

Some very cool nuns have been profiled in this article from star-telegram.com: Songs of the ages.

At 5 p.m. in a pine-paneled church on a Connecticut hillside, a bell tolls, a door opens and a black-and-white flock of Benedictine nuns files silently behind the altar. They bow toward the altar and to the abbess, then take their places in the choir stalls.

One is a former Wall Street lawyer. Another gave Elvis Presley his first onscreen kiss. A third managed the careers of opera singers, and a fourth is one of the world's foremost experts on the fungi that can ripen or ruin cheese.

At this twilight vespers in the Abbey of Regina Laudis, they fuse themselves into a vibrant, silvery chorus intoning melodies more than a millennium old.

Gregorian chant — known to many as a vaguely lugubrious, mystical music sung in a dead language and enveloped in an echoey haze -- gives each day in this cloistered monastery its spine and shape. The nuns sing together seven times a day, celebrating the divine office on an ancient schedule that begins with lauds at dawn, stretches through compline after dinner and, for the hardiest women, continues with matins at 2 a.m. This is perhaps the only religious community in the United States that practices "the chant," as the nuns call it, in all its Latin glory and liturgical purity. From star-telegram.com [continue].

Anyone interested in learning Gregorian chant should order the nuns' Gregorian Chant Master Class textbook and CD. I bought a copy a few months ago, and it's been very helpful.

Women in Chant CDs from the Abbey of Regina Laudis:
Gregorian Chants for the Festal Celebrations of the Virgin Martyrs and Our Lady of Sorrow
Recordáre: Remembering the Mysteries in the Life of Jesus, Son of Mary

(Both CD pages include sound samples in .mp3 format.)

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
The Cheese Nun - January, 2004.

Researcher Hopes to Find "Secret of Life" with Monks’ Lifestyle

Variety is the spice of life, or so the saying goes, but now a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher believes the true secret of living a long, healthy and satisfying life might be at a nearby monastery.

"Through a systematic review of the scientific literature, we found that individuals who regularly participate in organized religious activities live longer and healthier lives on average," said Daniel Longo, MU professor of family and community medicine. "This effect may be more significant among those who have made a life-long commitment to a religious lifestyle in an organized religious community. For example, a Dutch study found that Trappist and Benedictine monks between 1900 and 1994 experienced a 12 percent lower mortality rate than the general population of Dutch men."

Based on that information, it is likely that monks who live by The Rule of St. Benedict, which includes both Benedictines and Trappist monks, might provide the key to a lifestyle that has numerous benefits to the public, Longo said. Because so many lay people are following The Rule, it’s likely the benefits could be far-reaching outside of the monastery. While in existence for more than 1,000 years, the religious movement of following the Rule of St. Benedict as an "oblate," or a layperson affiliated with a monastery, has grown tremendously during the past several decades. A recent study finds that lay oblates outnumber monks 3 to 1.

The Rule of St. Benedict encourages people to live a life of moderation, obedience, humility and respect for their fellow person. It is focused on a balanced life and provides individuals with guidelines for spirituality that also include behaviors and attitudes conducive to good health. Longo has analyzed The Rule and found more than 50 different references to health, health behaviors, hygiene and a balanced life. Longo presented his findings at the 50th Anniversary Symposium of the Monastic Institute in Rome. [continue]

Related links:
The Holy Rule of St. Benedict - Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Rule of St Benedict - Catholic Encyclopedia
Daniel R. Longo - Family and Community Medicine Faculty, University of Missouri

From arabicnews.com: St. Catherine Monastery Mosque.

St. Catherine Monastery in South Sinai is the only monastery in the world to embrace a church and a mosque.

The mosque, of Fatimid origin, drew the attention of the German traveler Febri who visited Sinai in 1483 and the Swiss traveler Borkhart in 1816.

The later discovered patterns in the mosque that indicate that the mosque was completed in 1106.

A text was also found revealing that Emir Anoshtakin had ordered the building of the mosque during the reign of Abu Ali AI Mansur, the tenth of the Fatimid caliphs, who gave the mosque a six-step wooden pulpit.

During the Ayubid and Memluk ages, only little was known about the mosque through travelers hat visited the monastery.

The mosque, however, remained in use up till the 14th century AD, although it was neglected for a long time during the Ottoman age when it became a store- house for grains and fruits.

According to the manuscript preserved at the library of St Catherine, monks of the monastery used to confer in the mosque round 1508 AD. However, King Fuad provided the mosque with carpets and decorated the pulpits with green flags. [continue]

More on the Monastery of St. Catherine from Mirabilis.ca:
Ancient monastery opens library
At The Monastery of The Burning Bush
Ancient monastic manuscripts gain digital life

From the BBC: Franciscan friars petition Gibson.

Franciscan friars have asked Passion of the Christ director Mel Gibson to make a movie biography of the founder of their order, St Francis of Assisi.

The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal have posted a letter to Gibson on their website, along with an online petition.

It praises the director for his "work of sacred art" and asks him "to produce a sequel about a man many acclaim to be the Church's greatest saint".

St Francis is the patron saint of animals and the environment.

In the letter to Gibson, the friars say they believe the film, if made, "would show the world what happens when a person totally and unequivocally responds to the Passion of the Christ."

It goes on to suggest Gibson could call the film Man of the Passion. [continue]

Related:
St Francis of Assisi - Catholic Encyclopedia
The petition - from the Community of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal and the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal
Franciscan Friars of the Renewal

Oh wow, there's a Museum of Antique Rosaries page! I love old rosaries, so this is fascinating. Where else can one see photos of a 17c wood and filigree rosary, a 17c rosary necklace or a 18c medallion rosary?

Thanks to Quiddity for pointing out this site. [Update: Quiddity seems to have vanished.]

From The Moscow Times: Biggest Bell Is Hoisted Up to a Belfry. [Update: article now available only to subscribers. Phooey.]

SERGIYEV POSAD, Moscow Region — A gargantuan church bell that will be the biggest ever to ring in Russia was blessed Friday and hoisted up to a belfry in Sergiyev Posad, one of the holiest sites of the country's dominant Russian Orthodox faith.

After a blessing ceremony led by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II, a huge crane raised the 72-ton Tsar Bell to a platform near the spot where it is to hang in the tower at the Trinity St. Sergius Monastery in the Moscow region.

The 4.55-meter-high bell was modeled after a slightly lighter bell that was made in 1748 and destroyed during Stalin's campaign against religion in the 1930s.

The Tsar Bell — decorated with icon-like depictions of religious figures in relief and an inscription saying it was created during President Vladimir Putin's rule — was cast at a shipyard in St. Petersburg and hauled slowly to Sergiyev Posad on a special truck. [continue]

Related:
Church blesses giant Tsar Bell - BBC
Huge Bell Lifted on Orthodox Belfry - mosnews.com

From abc.net.au: Rome church opens after 12 centuries under rubble.

After 12 centuries under rubble and 24 years of restoration, Rome has opened the doors to Santa Maria Antiqua, the oldest church in the Roman Forum's ancient ruins and its rare collection of early medieval art.

An earthquake buried the church and its numerous Byzantine and early Christian frescoes in 847 and it remained untouched until excavation and reconstruction began in 1900. [continue]

The Department of Archaeology of Rome's Project Santa Maria Antiqua site has information about the church, and photos, too.

Related:
Churches of Rome: Santa Maria Antiqua

Another article on Aramaic, this time from the Financial Times: The language of Christ awaits resurrection. First there's the usual sort of background:

Khaled Ahmad Alloush and Mohammed Qassem Tawil are anxiously waiting to hear whether there will be a special screening of Mel Gibson's controversial film, The Passion of the Christ, in their isolated village of Jab'edine, perched in the hills north of Damascus.

The two farmers are among the few thousand people who will not need subtitles to understand the language spoken throughout the movie, Aramaic.

A bit later we get to the more interesting stuff:

In this village the language of Christ blends with the call to prayers from the mosques and Jesus is referred to as the prophet Issa.

"Prophet Issa, may peace be upon him, is one of our prophets as Muslims. He spoke Aramaic and so do we. We are proud of our history," says Mr Tawil. "There was a time when we were actually Christians in this village, but some centuries ago, everybody here converted to Islam."

Bakh'aa is also a Muslim village while nearby Maaloula is predominantly Christian, with two monasteries.

"I don't know if you can say that [the people of Maaloula did not convert because] they had more faith, maybe. During the Ottoman Empire, a lot of Christians became Muslims because of social pressures and economic pressures," says Father Toufic at Maaloula's St Sergius monastery.

"But this is the language of all the people who lived in this region before and after Christ, so Aramaic is not something special to Christians."

It is unclear why Aramaic survived in this particular region but the most common explanation is the villages' isolation, which preserved them from the spread of Arabic.

For the Christians of Maaloula, Aramaic has an added significance. Ten years ago, villagers celebrated Good Friday mass in Aramaic for the first time in centuries. Everything from the sermon to the hymns was translated.

This was made possible by one man, George Rizkallah, Maaloula's Aramaic expert. He has been working hard to promote the language and develop it beyond simple, everyday, Aramaic. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
The Jesuit scholar who translated The Passion
Aramaic still spoken in Cyprus
Where the language of Christ lives
Aramaic: almost extinct, but still spoken in Maalula

From the Orlando Sentinal: Timeless ritual of timed prayers grows.

Last summer, Bob Bonomi's priest handed him a prayer book and told him, "I think you'd like this."

"I looked at the book and thought, oh, this is nice," Bonomi recalled. "But the results have been beyond my wildest dreams."

The prayer book contained the Liturgy of the Hours -- traditional Christian prayers recited at fixed hours up to eight times a day. Bonomi, a Catholic, set aside 15 minutes every morning and evening to say the prayers, and soon was hooked.

"It's like spiritual yoga," said the Plano, Texas, systems consultant. "I compare it to setting your mirrors and adjusting the radio in your car in the morning before you start driving.

"It puts you in a really good spiritual frame of mind for the rest of the day."

Bonomi is among a growing number of Christians who are discovering a practice that, for centuries, was largely relegated to Catholic monasteries. Now it's showing up in popular books, in Protestant evangelical churches and, of course, on the Internet.

The Hours consist of specific Scripture passages -- drawing heavily on the Psalms -- combined with hymns and traditional prayers for each time of day and each day of the year. (While there are eight specific times for prayer, most lay practitioners pray less often, maybe once or twice a day.)

The Hours predate Christianity, having evolved out of the Jewish practice described in Psalm 119:164: "Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws."

St. Benedict wrote a manual for monks in 525 A.D. that explained the practice of praying the Hours. When the Vatican wrote the first official breviary, or prayer book, in the 11th century, the Hours became popular among literate medieval Christians. [continue].

Related:

Liturgy of the Hours Apostolate - Liturgy of the Hours in Adobe Acrobat format. -liturgyhours.org
Universalis: The Liturgy of the Hours - universalis.com
Get the Liturgy of the Hours on your handheld computer - universalis.com
Liturgy of the Hours - liturgyny.catholic.org
Liturgy of the Hours - romanrite.com

Here's another "behind the scenes" kind of article about The Passion of The Christ movie. This one's about the priest who said Mass every day for the film's cast. From the International Herald Tribune:

With movie executives wondering whether Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" will do as well in Europe as it has in North America, at least one person hopes that the film's popularity signals renewed interest in the forgotten basics of Christianity. He is the priest who rose before dawn every day during the final weeks of filming to celebrate Mass for the cast in Rome, a Mass attended by Gibson every day.

"The film reminds you of the incarnation and the suffering of God," Father Jean-Marie Charles-Roux said, adding of the movie's high-gore factor: "Christianity can't be a bed of roses."

Its success in the United States, where the film grossed more than $260 million in its first three weeks, could be an indication, he said, that "people, who had gone rather vague, might be brought back to want a clear manifestation of the sacrifice."

The film opens around Europe this month and in early April.

Charles-Roux celebrated Mass for the cast in a makeshift chapel at Rome's Cinecittà Studios. It was not just any liturgy, but the Mass offered according to the Tridentine, the traditional Roman rite. [continue]

Related:
The Jesuit scholar who translated The Passion - Mirabilis.ca
Jim Caviezel: Shamelessly Catholic - catholicexchange.com
What is the Tridentine Latin Mass? - latinmass.org

Holy smoke music, the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music has some wonderful .mp3 files on its website. Try Introitus: Tibi dixit, Quis dabit, or any of the other excellent recordings you'll find on the site.

Thanks to Random Notes for the link.

From Reuters: Italian Police Break Into Church to Install Priest.

ROME - Police in a small Italian town had to break into a church to let a priest take up his new job, thwarting a six-month blockade by parishioners devoted to his predecessor.

The faithful in the mountain town of Trasacco had jammed the church doors shut in protest after the Church transferred their Capuchin monk and sent a non-Capuchin to replace him.

So attached were parishioners to the Capuchins, who had served them for the last 430 years, that they briefly bricked the last friar into the local monastery to try to stop him leaving their town about 60 miles east of Rome.

The newcomer, Father Duilio Testa, was appointed in September but only entered his church on Monday when police broke in through a window to let him in, deputy mayor Vincenzo Retico told Reuters by telephone. [continue].

Related:
Italian residents capture Capuchin - Mirabilis.ca
Priest installed by police raid - BBC

From Beliefnet: Ancient ‘Miracle’ Icon to Be Returned to Russia. [Update: article no longer available.]

An ancient Russian Orthodox icon purportedly painted by St. Luke will be returned to Russia after it was spirited to the United States for safekeeping during the communist era of the Soviet Union.

The so-called Tikhvin icon of the Mother of God will be shown for the last time at New York's St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral on Friday and Saturday. It will return to a monastery in Tikhvin, Russia, in July.

The icon was taken out of Russia during World War II by its guardian, Bishop John of Riga, who claimed it was a valueless reproduction. After stopovers in Latvia and Bavaria, it arrived in Chicago in 1949.

According to tradition, the jewel-encrusted golden icon featuring the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus was painted by St. Luke the Evangelist and taken from Jerusalem to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) in the fifth century.

In 1383, fishermen on Lake Ladoga in northern Russia witnessed the icon hovering above the waters and soon afterward it was discovered in several nearby towns. In 1560, Russian Czar Ivan the Terrible ordered a monastery built near Tikhvin to house the icon. [continue]

Here's an article about The 1,000-year-old abbey of S. Nilo in Grottaferrata, "unique in Italy for its Catholic monks who follow a Greek-Byzantine rite."

On a hill overlooking Rome in the Castelli Romani, 15 ageing monks are about to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of the foundation of an unusual abbey.

It is the abbey of S. Nilo, which dominates the tiny village of Grottaferrata, three km downhill from Frascati and 20 km from Rome. The main road swishes by it, which is perhaps why few people have heard of it.

The abbey, built atop a Roman villa which some scholars think may have belonged to Cicero, looks as though it could be straight out of Umberto Eco’s "The Name of the Rose". It is protected within a Renaissance castle with thick cannon-proof walls, corner bastions, a serious-looking defence tower and a dried-up moat. It is a sprawling place, with five inner cloisters, two monastery blocks, the church, a lofty refectory and two libraries housing 50,000 volumes, the fiercely out-of-bounds older one guarding 1,000 ancient manuscripts, some dating back to the seventh century.

However, it could never be the setting for Eco’s whodunit. For one thing, visitors roam around it daily, and there are popular guided tours at weekends. For another, its walls are plastered with inscriptions in Greek, and the monks chant in Greek. The abbey is unique in Italy: an Italian-Byzantine monastery following the Greek-Byzantine rite, yet its monks are Catholics.

"We are the only Byzantine monastery in Italy to have remained faithful to Rome after the east-west schism," explained the archimandrite or abbot. "In that consists our uniqueness," he said. The schism took place in 1054, tearing Christianity apart, splitting it up into opposing eastern (in Constantinople) and western (in Rome) camps. [continue]

Thanks to Archaeology in Europe for pointing out this site.

Related:
Abbazia di S. Nilo -from hurricane.it. In Italian.

From The Scotsman: ‘There is no running away in here’.

It is 4.30am. Under a grey-washed moon I make my way up towards Pluscarden Abbey. The wind threads through the sycamore trees and my torch lights up a stone carving of a Madonna, a row of wooden crosses in the graveyard, the first snowdrops edging the path. As I get closer, there’s a faint gleam behind the stained-glass windows of the 13th-century abbey. The morning is cold and inside the abbey it’s freezing, even though the central heating is on. And then it begins: medieval figures in white stream silently past the altar, passing under the enormous crucifix suspended from the ceiling, in a reverential, practised symphony of movement.

The men’s voices start up next, low and harmonious, the Gregorian chant reverberating around the stone walls, up into the darkness. Only one small candle is burning and the first of the day’s prayer services begin. It’s undeniably moving, and I think to myself: "If I could start every day like this, would life be different? Would I always be happy? Would I find God?"

Not everyone makes it their life’s work to find the answers. What is it that motivates someone to relinquish all that they have known - choice, chaos and sexuality - for a life of obedience, routine and celibacy? In the fourth century, Evagrius of Pontus wrote: "A monk is someone who is separated from all and united to all." It is this paradox underlying monastic life that holds such fascination. How can you be apart from the chaos of life yet fully involved in its mystery? Is a separation from what we regard as normal life a prerequisite for understanding why we are born, what our purpose is, and why we die? [continue]

Related content on Mirabilis.ca:
Pluscarden Abbey
Retreating to the abbey

Here's a bit of trivia from an article at Catholicnews.com:

In mid-March, Pope John Paul II's pontificate will become the third-longest in history, a milestone that attests to the drive and determination of the ailing pontiff.

The calculation of pontificate length is a somewhat tricky business, but on or about March 17 the pope will surpass Pope Leo XIII, who ruled for 25 years and five months a century ago.

In modern papacies, that will leave only the 31-year pontificate of Pope Pius IX ahead of Pope John Paul. By tradition, St. Peter's papacy is counted as the longest, though historians have no certain dates for his reign. [continue]

I keep coming across things about The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's movie. It seems that people who haven't seen the movie have all manner of strong opinions about it. Is there anybody who has seen the whole film - the final version - and then written about it? As of today, yes. From Zenit, here is Vittorio Messori's article: "‘The Passion’... for Its Author, Is a Mass".

Related:
Passion Movie - passion-movie.com

From the Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons site:

Sainte-Marie was the 17th century fortress and headquarters for the French Jesuit mission to the Huron nation and was Ontario's first European community. In 1639 the Jesuits, along with lay workers, began construction of this palisaded community that would include barracks, a church, workshops, residences, and a sheltered area for Native visitors. By 1648, Sainte-Marie was a wilderness home to 66 Frenchmen, representing one-fifth of the entire population of New France. Sainte-Marie's history culminated in 1649 when a dramatic turn of events forced the community to abandon and burn their home of 10 years.

After extensive archaeological and historical research, Sainte-Marie among the Hurons now stands recreated on the original site where its compelling story is brought to life once again.

Now that sounds interesting, doesn't it? Here's more about the history of Sainte-Marie.

Related:
Father Jean de Brébeuf's Instructions for missionaries, 1637.

Last fall we learned that the Russian Orthodox Church was sending a church and a priest to Antarctica. Well, what do you know? Both have arrived, and the church has now been consecrated. From Pravda: First Orthodox church in Antarctica.

Bishop Feognost of Sergiyev Posad, the head of the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra (one of the main Orthodox shrines in the Moscow region) consecrated in the name of the St. Trinity the first Orthodox church in Antarctica built at Russian polar station Bellinsgauzen.

Patriarch's representation (Podvorye) of the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra was established by the polar church, the Orthodox Encyclopedia research center of the Moscow Patriarchy told RIA Novosti on Monday.

The consecration ceremony of the unique church gathered a lot of Russian and foreign polar explorers and pilgrims, who were delivered to Bellinsgausen station by a special flight.

The church can seat up to 30 believers. It was built of cedar and larch, the most cold and wind-resistant wood, in the Altai territory (South Siberia). After that, the church was dismantled and transported to Antarctica. Here it was assembled again.

Palekh's painters created icons for the new church and bells were ordered by offsprings of well-known Russian Decembrist Muravyov-Apostol. [continue]

Related:
Orthodox Church on Its Way to Antarctica - St Petersburg Times
Russians to build first Antarctic Orthodox church - 70south.com
Orthodox begin work on their first church in Antarctica - beliefnet.com

Israel might use pig fat to ward off suicide attacks. From Ananova:

Israeli police are said to be considering putting bags of pig fat on buses and in shopping centres to try to deter Muslim suicide bombers.

The suggestion is based on the fact that strict Muslim tradition says any Muslim who comes in contact with a pig before dying will be denied access to paradise. (...)

Rabbi Eliezer Moshe Fisher, of the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court, said: "There is no ban on using bags of lard when saving lives is concerned. They may be used in any place that might be a target for suicide bombings, such as schools, shopping malls and railway stations."

The Maariv also quotes the rabbi saying if pig fat isn't used on buses, tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews will arm themselves with toy water pistols filled with liquid lard to be used against terrorists. [full article]

Oh my.

Father Jean de Brébeuf was an incredibly impressive guy. He was a Jesuit missionary to the Huron, and served in what is now Quebec (but was then New France).

Canada Info notes that "In 1637, Father Jean de Brébeuf drew up a list of instructions for Jesuit missionaries destined to work among the Huron." The list is very lovely, I think. Here it is:

• You must love these Hurons, ransomed by the blood of the Son of God, as brothers.


• You must never keep the Indians waiting at the time of embarking.


• Carry a tinder-box or a piece of burning-glass, or both, to make fire for them during the day for smoking, and in the evening when it is necessary to camp; these little services win their hearts.


• Try to eat the little food they offer you, and eat all you can, for you may not eat again for hours.


• Eat as soon as day breaks, for Indians when on the road, eat only at the rising and the setting of the sun.


• Be prompt in embarking and disembarking and do not carry any water or sand into the canoe.


• Be the least troublesome to the Indians.


• Do not ask many questions; silence is golden.


• Bear with their imperfections, and you must try always to appear cheerful.


• Carry with you a half-gross of awls, two or three dozen little folding knives (jambettes), and some plain and fancy beads with which to buy fish or other commodities from the nations you meet, in order to feast your Indian companions, and be sure to tell them from the outset that here is something with which to buy fish.


• Always carry something during the portages.


• Do not be ceremonious with the Indians.


• Do not begin to paddle unless you intend always to paddle.


• The Indians will keep later that opinion of you which they have formed during the trip.


• Always show any other Indians you meet on the way a cheerful face and show that you readily accept the fatigues of the journey.

In 1649 Fr Brébeuf was captured and tortured to death by the Iroquois. He was canonized in 1930, and is the patron saint of Canada.

Related:
Fr Jean de Brébeuf - Catholic Encyclopedia
Jean de Brébeuf - Wikipedia
The Huron Carol (Canada's first Christmas Carol, written by Jean de Brébeuf in 1643.) - Mirabilis.ca
Patron Saints Index: St Jean de Brébeuf - Catholic-forum.com
Short sketches of the Jesuit Martyr-Saints (Jean de Brébeuf was one of the 8 Canadian martyrs killed by the Iroquois.) - Jesuits.ca
Jean de Brébeuf - Canadian Encyclopedia
Canadian Martyrs - wikipedia.org
Canadian Martyrs And Huronia - athabascau.ca

From The Independent: The Orthodox Church warms the Russian.

All at once there was a surge for the door. The Russian Orthodox priests in their heavy, brocaded vestments of gold and ivory had passed ceremoniously through it, accompanied by altar servers carrying candles, crucifix and an array of icons fixed to flags of solid gold.

Now the packed congregation funnelled itself dangerously after them. The great wooden doors of the monastery church creaked menacingly as their hinges were forced back. A blast of sub-zero air rushed into the incense-heady atmosphere of the tall-vaulted nave. Undeterred, shrunken old ladies - fat little bundles of wool and fur with sharp babushka elbows - pushed their way to the front.

There was, to Western eyes, something medieval about the atmosphere as the huge procession left the monastery cathedral in its solemn stampede. But this is modern Russia, which has in recent years been seized by a spasm of religious revival.

Before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, there were some 54,000 churches on Russian soil. When Communism fell there remained barely 7,000 throughout the entire Soviet Union. But over the past decade there had been an extraordinary mushrooming of religious institutions. Churches are back up to 24,000 and monasteries, seminaries and theological institutes are springing up everywhere.

Raifa monastery in Kazan in the republic of Tartarstan is one of them. It was closed in 1928, and its monks executed before it was turned into a Soviet labour commune. Its cathedral, four other churches and tall, tiered bell tower fell derelict.

But then in 1991 a group of monks arrived and, using money from local people, began to rebuild it. Last week its 50 monks, who adhere to the old pre-Gregorian calendar, were celebrating Epiphany which in the Eastern church commemorates the baptism of the adult Christ. Which is why the huge congregation was making its way from the cathedral to a nearby lake. For Russia it was, at just minus 5C, considered warm. Even so, the lake was frozen solid and a large hole had been cut - as it has been every year for 400 years - to expose the dark, 30m deep waters beneath. Around had been built an open-air church of solid, clear ice walls, shrines, statues and a 15ft frozen crucifix, on whose transparent frame hung the figure of Christ carved in ice which was clouded and obscure.

As the priests and acolytes moved across the snowy surface a terrible deep thudding crack was heard. A dark fissure shot like lightening across the surface. The congregation, held on the bank by fur-hatted police, let out a collective gasp.

Heh. How's that for a cliff-hanger? You'll want to read the rest, of course.

Related:
Epiphany swim - Mirabilis.ca, January 2003.

Here's another article about Aramaic in Cyprus: Aramaic, language of Jesus, lives on in Cyprus.

KORMAKITI, CYPRUS – If the people of this remote village were to travel back to Jesus' time and hear him preach, they wouldn't need an interpreter to understand the Sermon on the Mount or the parable of the prodigal son.

Spoken in the Middle East during Jesus' time, Aramaic is still used in everyday life by most of the 130 elderly Maronite Catholics in Kormakiti, which overlooks the Mediterranean Sea.

This could be good news for Mel Gibson. If the megastar has trouble finding an audience for "Passion," his upcoming movie about the final hours of Jesus' life on Earth with dialogue mostly in Aramaic, due to be released next month, the folks here should have no trouble with the original biblical tongue.

Still, Kormakiti's unique diluted version of Aramaic, called Cypriot Maronite Arabic, is in danger of extinction. Once the thriving center of the island's Maronite community, Kormakiti now has the eerie atmosphere of a ghost town. [continue]

More about Aramaic:
Aramaic language - Wikipedia
Where the language of Christ lives - Mirabilis.ca, December 2003
Aramaic: almost extinct, but still spoken in Maalula - Mirabilis.ca, March 2003

The Passion of Christ movie:
The Passion of the Christ - thepassionofthechrist.com
Passion of Christ - passion-movie.com

From the International Herald Tribune: A master pursues the secrets of cheese.

PARIS — Mother Noella Marcellino likes cheese a lot, though what intrigues her most is not its middle but its rind. And on the rind her delight is the Geotrichum candidum fungus, Gc for short, that flourishes on the Bethlehem cheese made by her abbey, Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut.

Strains of Gc are also found in such cheeses as Reblochon and Brie, doing good work in enhancing flavor and repelling pathogens. They are so diverse that they even vary from one cheese cave to another in the Auvergne - Mother Noella found 14 different strains among seven St. Nectaire-cheese makers - and all in all they testify to the richness of creation, as Mother Noella summarized in her doctoral dissertation, "Biodiversity of Geotrichum candidum Strains Isolated from Traditional French Cheese." She is popularly known as The Cheese Nun.

Mother Noella doesn't much like the sobriquet, finding it, well, a bit cheesy, and wasn't terribly happy that it is the title of Pat Thompson's excellent TV documentary soon to be shown on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. It was the prioress of her convent who told her to go with The Cheese Nun because it is catchy and fungi alone are not immediately appealing. The prioress knows about such things because as Dolores Hart she was a Hollywood star famed for giving Elvis his first screen kiss. "I think it's great," Mother Dolores told her. "No one's going to watch a film about biodiversity." [continue].

Related:
Abbey of Regina Laudis
Nun has cheese down to a science
Nun's cheese expertise wins blessing of French

Pause for just a moment and look at this incredible 360 degree view of the interior of St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow. (Requires Quicktime.) Isn't that just amazing?

Here's a bit about the cathedral, from moscow-taxi.com:

The famous St. Basil's Cathedral was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible and built on the edge of Red Square between 1555 and 1561. Legend has it that on completion of the church the Tsar ordered the architect, Postnik Yakovlev, to be blinded to prevent him from ever creating anything to rival its beauty again. (He did in fact go on to build another cathedral in Vladimir despite his ocular impediment!) The cathedral was built to commemorate Ivan the Terrible's successful military campaign against the Tartar Mongols in 1552 in the besieged city of Kazan. Victory came on the feast day of the Intercession of the Virgin, so the Tsar chose to name his new church the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Moat, after the moat that ran beside the Kremlin. The church was given the nickname "St. Basil's" after the "holy fool" Basil the Blessed (1468-1552), who was hugely popular at that time with the Muscovites masses and even with Ivan the Terrible himself. St. Basil's was built on the site of the earlier Trinity Cathedral, which at one point gave its name to the neighboring square.

St. Basil's is a delightful array of swirling colors and redbrick towers. Its design comprises nine individual chapels, each topped with a unique onion dome and each commemorating a victorious assault on the city of Kazan. In 1588 the ninth chapel was erected to house the tomb of the church's namesake, Basil the Blessed. The church's design is based on deep religious symbolism and was meant to be an architectural representation of the New Jerusalem - the Heavenly Kingdom described in the Book of Revelation of St. John the Divine. The eight onion dome-topped towers are positioned around a central, ninth spire, forming an eight-point star. The number eight carries great religious significance; it denotes the day of Christ's Resurrection (the eighth day by the ancient Jewish calendar) and the promised Heavenly Kingdom - the kingdom of the eighth century, which will begin after the second coming of Christ. The eight-point star itself symbolizes the Christian Church as a guiding light to mankind, showing us the way to the Heavenly Jerusalem and it represents the Virgin Mary, depicted in Orthodox iconography with a veil decorated with three eight-pointed stars. The cathedral's star-like plan carries yet more meaning - the star consisting of two superimposed squares, which represent the stability of faith, the four corners of the earth, the four Evangelists and the four equal-sided walls of the Heavenly City. [continue]

Related:
St Basil's Cathedral - Wikipedia
Declan McCullagh's photos of St Basil's Cathedral

Sweden's Convicts Find Peace in Monastery. From Reuters:

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) - Red drapes billow from the ceiling, tea lights flicker in front of an altar and chants play softly -- it is easy to forget the setting is Sweden's top security prison and the men meditating are hardened convicts.

Kumla prison, 125 miles west of Stockholm, runs a unique project where inmates serving long sentences can apply for contemplative retreats in a prison wing turned into a monastery.

The project, initiated by the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, is based on the teachings of Saint Ignatius Loyola, who founded the Jesuit order in the 16th century. Loyola's spiritual exercises lay the foundation for programs used by groups like Alcoholics Anonymous.

"It is like a cleaning process which aims to make you aware of what you covet. Only then you can leave such things behind," said Father Truls Bernhold, in charge of the project. [continue]

From the Globe and Mail: God and the brain.

Mario Beauregard, a neuroscientist with the University of Montreal's psychology department, won a two-year $100,000 (U.S) grant from mutual-fund titan John Templeton to study spirituality. So far, six Carmelite nuns have agreed to undergo three different types of brain scans to uncover what happens in their brains when they feel the presence of God. After the analysis of all three experiments is completed, Dr. Beauregard hopes to have a clear, biological picture of an experience that mystifies even those who have lived it. Ultimately, he would like to know enough about how it works to be able to offer the same experience to anybody seeking spiritual growth. In other words, instant spiritual growth, without the necessary faith, life-long effort and the many painful failures in life that produce growth. [full article]

Hahahaha!

A bit of Googling turned up Hard-wired for God - another Globe and Mail article on this topic. It's much more comprehensive than the article quoted above.

If you're interested in the film Mel Gibson is producing, The Passion of Christ, you might want to peek at this over at Zenit:

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 8, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Several high-ranking Vatican officials who attended a private screening of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" this past weekend in Rome came away impressed.

Members from the Vatican Secretariat of State, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the group that oversees Catholic doctrinal questions, expressed unanimous appreciation and approval of the film.

The following is an exclusive ZENIT interview with one of the viewers, Dominican Father Augustine Di Noia, undersecretary of the doctrinal congregation. [continue]

Well, bless the Bibliothèque nationale de France - they've put the 15th century Breviary of Martin of Aragon on the web.

There's so much to see: David battling Goliath, the adoration of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the martyrdom of St Peter, - and oh, look, even St Christina Mirabilis! Tons of others, too, of course. Each small image is a thumbnail leading to a bigger version.

(Here's more about St Christina Mirabilis, just in case you were wondering about her.)

From Ekklesia: Monks party at Halloween.

The Dominican House of Studies in Washington DC will be making a special effort this year to celebrate Halloween, including organising a service and party, to point to the festival’s Christian roots as All Hallow's Eve.

Instead of trick-or-treating, hundreds will gather with the Dominican religious for the Vigil of the Saints - celebrated on the eve of All Saints' Day.

The vigil centres on readings from the writings and lives of the saints, followed by Gregorian and Russian chant by the Dominican Schola Cantorum. There is also a universal call to holiness, night prayer, and a candlelight procession to the cloister's reliquary while chanting the Litany of the Saints.

Afterward, the 60-some Dominican priests and brothers host a party for their guests.

"I particularly love the idea of giving saints a public ‘voice’ to speak to us today - and it's clearly meeting a need," Dominican Brother Nicholas Lombardo said to the Zenit news agency. "People of all ages, but a lot of young adults particularly, have been drawn to it in a way that has surprised even us." [continue]

Related:
All Saints' Day

Here's an article about a visit to Mount Athos, and the controversy about the "no women" rule there: A hard habit to break.

Arriving back on the Greek mainland from Mount Athos, I see women for the first time in two and a half weeks. They are sunbathing on a patch of beach in Ouranopolis, right next to where the boat from Athos comes in to deposit its mixed load of pilgrims, delivery lorries and the occasional errant monk. It's as close as the women can get, unless they pay to gaze at the peninsula from a boat or risk up to a year in prison by entering illegally.

I’m surprised to realise that during my time on Agion Oros (which means holy mountain), Athos’s proper title, I scarcely noticed their absence. The centre of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, a peninsula of 400 square kilometres that has been inhabited only by men for the past 1,000 years, is a self-governing, virtually self-financing community of 20 monasteries and their dependent settlements. It has been the recipient of some breathtaking masterpieces of devotional art, and visitors and monks come here from all over the world.

There are far more weird and wonderful things to consider here than just the absence of women, but it happens that, at the time of my visit, that’s how Athos has been making the news. [continue]

I love reading about life on Mt Athos, but the current fuss to change centuries of tradition so we can all have equal opportunity monastic visiting - oh, that annoys me. Grrrr.

From the Globe and Mail: The Pope's new socks.

ROME — When Quebec Archbishop Marc Ouellet got the word from the Vatican three weeks ago that he is among 31 new cardinals the pope will soon appoint, one of the first things he did was call his tailor.

The call went to Gammarelli, a historic Roman shop just around the corner from the Pantheon that has been providing vestments to popes and cardinals for more than 200 years.

Gammarelli furnishes everything from mitres to chasubles, from rochets to red silk socks for the top officials of the Catholic Church.

"It's kind of a monopoly," whispers Archbishop Ouellet, who used Gammarelli when he ordered new vestments in 2001 after being appointed Archbishop of Quebec City. That made his current order easier to fill -- they already had his measurements.

The last three weeks have been both heaven and hell at Gammarelli. Heaven because the shop has clinched at least half of the orders to outfit the new cardinals (it shares the business with four or five other clerical tailors). And hell because there's never been such a short interlude between the announcement of the new cardinals and Tuesday's consistory, where they will wear their crimson robes to be inducted into their office by the pope.

Entering Gammarelli is like entering another age. Bolts of brightly coloured silks and fine wools line wooden shelving on both sides of the room. In the centre is a high table where customers can choose their fabric. On the walls there are photos of the shop's best customers, popes going back the past two centuries, and framed certificates of appointment from the Vatican. The finished garments are nowhere to be seen. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Gammarelli - August, 2004
Gammarelli, again - April, 2005

From the BBC: Flat pack church for Russian workers.

The Russian Orthodox church is so concerned about the spiritual well-being of workers in Antarctica that it is sending them a flat pack church and a priest.

A group of Siberian architects won a national competition to design the church.

They built it out of Altay cedar wood, which is considered a precious material, and incorporated 30 types of timber into it - a feature of old Russian churches.

The church was then dismantled and its different parts numbered and transported to the Kaliningrad port.

It took five cars nine days to reach the port, and the parts are now being loaded onto a ship bound for the Antarctic.

It will be more than two months before it reaches its final destination, the Bellingshausen research station on King George Island.

The church's architects will then fly there to help put it back together. [continue]

The Reading Abbey pages might be my favourite section of the Reading Museum website. From the intro page:

Reading Abbey was founded in 1121 by Henry I. As one of the wealthiest abbeys in medieval England it changed the shape of Reading, making it the most important town in the Thames valley. After the Dissolution, in 1539, the buildings were used as a stone quarry and most of them rapidly disappeared. Today you can see the remaining romantic ruins in the Forbury Gardens. Use the pages below to learn about the daily life and fascinating history of this once-splendid Abbey.

And they've got some interesting links to check out, including a page about the monks' diet, and another about their daily routine. Of course it all came to a sad end with the dissolution of the monastery:

The calm of the cloister was brutally ended in 1539 when the last Abbot, Hugh Faringdon, and two of his monks were executed for treason in front of the Abbey Gate after a mock trial whose verdict was never in doubt. Henry VIII collected the wealth of the Abbey at Reading, as from so many other Abbeys in the kingdom also dissolved at this time, for his royal use. The Abbey buildings were mainly pulled down and the reusable building materials sold off within a few years. [continue]

Henry VIII was such a supreme pain.

Here's one for your list of strange and unusual churches. From CNN: Tourists have a taste for salt cathedral.

The Zipaquira Salt Cathedral is built into the walls of a salt mine nearly 600 feet into a mountain in this central Colombian town of 120,000 people.

Winding tunnels descend into the Roman Catholic temple, passing 14 small chapels representing the stations of the cross, which illustrate the events of Jesus' last journey. Soft lights outline the chapels, carved with simple yet powerful strokes.

Benches at each station appear to be marble but are really salt. Tourists and the devout kneel on the benches, breathing in a soft smell of sulfur as they pray.

Moist bits of salt flutter like snowflakes in the distance of the tunnels, while stalactites of the mineral poke out of the white and gray walls. [continue]

Related links:
Salt Cathedral photos

What follows is an exerpt from an article at Aish.com. Aish has a PDA friendly version, so it's one of the sites I read on my Palm Pilot while waiting in line-ups and so forth.

How and when did Jews get to Ethiopia in the fist place?

During the First Temple period, around 700 BCE, the Jewish kingdom in Israel split into two, threatening the spiritual life of the nation. Some Jews from the tribe of Dan decided to escape the resulting corruption and fled to Africa, where they would spend the next 2,000 years in virtual isolation from the rest of world Jewry. Calling themselves Beta Israel, the House of Israel, Ethiopian Jewry would eventually reach half a million strong.

In Ethiopia, the Jews spoke Tigri, an Ethiopian dialect. They studied a holy text called Orit, consisting of the Five Books of Moses and the prophets. But they knew nothing of the later rabbinic injunctions codified in the Talmud; they were unaware of the holidays of Chanukah and Purim; they never heard of Maimonides, and never saw a copy of the Code of Jewish Law. (Today in Israel, they have adopted these laws and practices.)

The separation was so complete that Beta Israel thought they were the only remaining Jews in the world.

In the meantime, they developed a unique set of customs, like the wintertime Siged festival, signifying the receiving of the Torah on Mount Sinai and including prayers for the return to Jerusalem. (It is still celebrated today, with the Ethiopian community gathering in Jerusalem.)

The separation was so complete that Beta Israel thought they were the only remaining Jews in the world. [continue]

Isn't that fascinating? I had no idea.

Related sites:
Ethiopian Jewry - Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews
Ethiopian Jews or Beit Israel - Africana.com

Monastery Mourns Loss of Bells. From the Harvard Crimson:

MOSCOW — At the top of the bell tower of Danilov Monastery, fruit flies buzz around the dark metal bells and a cool breeze sweeps off the nearby Moscow river.

The 11 bells hang in heavy silence, far above the hustle and bustle that can be seen all around the walled-off grounds of Moscow's oldest monastery.

The bells, too, seem like a part of the city's ancient history.

But they are merely a substitution for the originals which now hang in the Lowell House bell tower.

Charles Crane, an American businessman, bought the bells from the Soviets in the 1920s, saving them from ruin. He gave them to then University President A. Lawrence Lowell in 1930.

For almost 70 years, while Lowell House residents rang the Russian bells every Sunday, the Danilov monastery was silent. [continue]

And now the Danilov monastary would really like to have its bells back.

Related site:
Danilov Monastery - transsib.com
Danilov Monastery -moscow-taxi.com

I never know just what I'll find at Pravda. Today there's this: Russian Orthodox Church marks holiday devoted to the Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir.

On Monday, the Russian Orthodox Church marks a holiday devoted to the Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir.

The icon is believed to have been painted by St Luke the Gospel Writer back in the 1st century. In the 12th century, the icon was presented to Prince Yury Dolgoruky, the founder of Moscow. It has ever since been revered as Russia's greatest shrine.

The icon has been known as the Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir since it was brought to the city of Vladimir in 1160. Numerous legends tell how the Holy Virgin helped the Russian people through this icon.

In 1395, the icon was brought back to Moscow from Vladimir to defend the city from Tamerlane's nomadic hordes. September 8 has ever since been marked as the religious feast of the Purification of Our Lady. [continue]

From Itar-Tass: Greek govt speaks up in defense of Holy Mount Athos monasteries.

ATHENS, September 6 (Itar-Tass) - Greek government on Friday voiced its support to the status of the Holy Mount Athos, a de facto monastic republic in Northeast Greece, from attacks by the European Parliament, which is seeking an abolition of a millennium-old ban on women's trips to the Mount Athos territory.

The status of the area is linked to a thousand years of tradition, the Eastern Orthodox Creed, and monastic lifestyle, and a stereotyped application of the principles of equal opportunities for access, free trade and competition confronts the fundamental concept of Mount Athos, said Tassos Giannitsis, First Deputy Foreign Minister.

Georgios Katiforis, head of the PASOK ruling party's delegation to the European Parliament recalled in a letter to the parliament presidium that the special status of Mount Athos had been confirmed when Greece joined the European Union.

The European MPs cannot go back on that decision, Katiforis recalled. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca entries:
Monks keep part of Napoleon's tent
Mount Athos
Esfigmenou monks won't leave
Gifts from the monastery

A 67-year-old Capuchin monk was taken hostage by his parishioners, but he's not angry at them. "I consider myself a prisoner of love," said Father Emilio Cucciella after he was bricked up inside his monastery. When locals in a small Italian town learned that there were plans to shut down the monastery because of a priest shortage, they fought back by barricading and bricking up the structure. The church, the Madonna of Perpetual Succor, is one of two parishes looking after the town of 6,000. "We Capuchins have been here since at least 1570. St Francis himself passed through here in the early 13th century. I have to obey orders but I can understand why they are upset," said the priest. Luckily, Cucciella has enough food to keep him going, although he did say he's prepared to go on a hunger strike in solidarity with the town residents. Meanwhile, some bricks were taken down Thursday morning, although locals were still on guard. As for the irreverent reverend, he's being good-natured about the whole thing. "Luckily, I don't suffer from claustrophobia," he said.

That's from Toronto's Pulse 24.

The Norwich Bulletin reports that three Orthodox priests blessed the Thames River yesterday. (No, not the Thames in England. There's another one.)

NORWICH -- The occasional raindrop wasn't the only thing to ripple the surface of the Thames River Monday morning.

Shortly before noon, the Rev. Charles Simones of the St. Sophia Hellenic Orthodox Community in New London walked up and down the pier at Chelsea Landing, ceremonially blessing the river. A family of approaching swans looked on as droplets of holy water splashed into the Thames.

In Howard T. Brown Memorial Park next to Norwich Harbor, two Norwich priests -- the Rev. Dennis Rhodes, pastor of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, and the Rev. Paul Pantelis of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church -- led 10 people in a chorus of prayers for the protection of the environment.

Over the past four years, the river blessing ceremony has become a Sept. 1 tradition for the three Orthodox churches, which consider the day to be the first of the ecclesiastical year. The practice date backs to the Roman and Byzantine Empires when Sept. 1 was also the beginning of the civil year.

Rhodes said the two themes have been combined since 1989 when Dimitrios, the late patriarch of Constantinople, declared Sept. 1 the Annual Day of the Protection of the Environment. (...)

During his sermon, Rhodes explained to petitioners why the protection of the environment is so important. He described the Earth as "God's sacred creation" and likened it to the Garden of Eden.

"It's still God's garden," Rhodes said. "It's not ours to use up or to do whatever we want with. We are here simply to tend it and take care of it." [continue]

Is it just my imagination, or is the Orthodox church doing a lot more environmentally-related stuff than it used to?

Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Patriarch Bartholomew I, still fighting for the environment
Bartholomew, on the environment

From the Telegraph: The monasteries mean business.

The Abbey of Our Lady of Bellefontaine, hidden among orchards and farmland 30 miles south of the medieval city of Angers, has little in common with other corporate headquarters in Europe.

The Cistercian monastery's staff canteen is a soaring refectory where meals are taken in silence. There are no gyms or vending machines or conference rooms - unless you count the chapel. And the chief executive is not some fist-pumping sales whizz but Brother Gérard, a 54-year-old monk in a cream cassock, black hood and sandals.

For the past six years, Brother Gérard has been president of Monastic, an association set up in 1991 to protect and develop the cottage industries run in monasteries throughout France, Belgium and parts of Germany.

Annual turnover has now reached more than £3 million, with the shop at Our Lady of Bellefontaine accounting for one tenth of that. Monastic now has 227 monasteries and convents as members and is spreading into Africa and the rest of Europe. [continue]

Related:
Gifts from the Monastery

A Dutch church has come up with an unusual fundraising method. From the Globe and Mail: Worshipping at the altar of cheese.

EDAM, THE NETHERLANDS -- In an effort to raise funds for the renovation of the epic 42-metre tower of their landmark 15th-century Grote Kerk (Great Church), the Dutch town of Edam has constructed a cathedral out of thousands of un-holey orbs of its most famous export: cheese.

Until Sept. 13, visitors to Amsterdam can take the scenic 13-kilometre detour to the hallowed halls of Edam's Great Church, also known as St. Nicolaas Church, to view a 1:10 scale model inside. The model is built out of about 10,000 spheres of Edam cheese, each one individually sponsored. (St. Nicolaas is the longest hall church in Europe. It is also the reputed final resting place of Rembrandt's mistress, Grietje Dircks.)

In addition to attracting an estimated 10,000 visitors and generating much-needed funds, the mildly odorous edifice will undoubtedly find itself a spot in the Guinness Book of Records alongside that of Canada's greatest cheese achievement: the 26-tonne cheddar wonder produced in 1995 by Loblaws Supermarkets and Agropurv Dairies in Granby, Que. [continue]

Related:
Kerk van Kaas - this is the Cheese Church website. Quite fun, but in Dutch, of course. (Requires Flash)

From the Telegraph: Ancient monastic island turns back pleasure-seekers.

One of France's oldest monastic communities, on an island less than a mile off Cannes on the Côte d'Azur, has barricaded its land against a tide of tourists.

The 27 Cistercian monks who inhabit a fortified 11th century monastery on the Ile Saint-Honorat are an oddity in a region otherwise devoted to pleasure-seeking.

Jet-skiers and yachts churn the waters around the mile-long island and in the distance the monks can see the domes of the Carlton Hotel, modelled on the breasts of the early 20th century dancer, La Belle Otero.

The monks, who cultivate 17 acres, producing 50,000 bottles of wine a year, hold tenaciously to their ancient ways in a region of rapid change. Their community's founder, St Honorat, settled there in the fourth century. [continue]

Related:
Abbaye de Lérins (in French)
Association for the protection of the exceptional conservation area of the Island Saint Honorat

How sad. From Christianity Today: Row Seethes in Bethlehem Over Keys to the Birthplace of Jesus.

The Greek Orthodox Church in Bethlehem has angered the Roman Catholic and Armenian churches in the Holy Land by asserting sole control over the "locks and keys" to the Church of the Nativity, revered by many as marking the birthplace of Jesus.

"We claim we are the possessors of the keys, we are the guardians of the door [at the Church of the Nativity]," Archbishop Aristarchos, of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem told Ecumenical News International.

He acknowledged that the Greek Orthodox monks at the site had changed the locks and refused to share the keys, evoking the outrage of the Catholics and Armenians.

A set of rules known as the "Status Quo" set down by the Ottoman rulers of the Holy Land in 1852, who were Muslims, prescribes the spaces that Greek Orthodox, Catholic, and Armenian Orthodox Christians can use for worship in the Church of the Nativity. [continue]

Related article:
Clash over keys to Christ's birthplace - from the Telegraph

From Aish.com, Harry's Magic: A true story about what one Jewish kid learned from the teenage wizard.

My son sat in silence for a few minutes, lost in thought, and then turned to me with his own insight that was worth every day off from school. "So it's like... I'm a wizard kid... being raised by a wizard family. And I'm thinking of going to a muggle school?"

Another silent moment.

"I think I'm ready for a Jewish education." [full story]

What kind of things do people give the pope, and what happens to those gifts? This Catholic News Service article has the details. Gifts from the heart for the pope: Humble items that speak volumes.

From Bruce Feiler's At The Monastery of The Burning Bush. (Update: page no longer available.)

Sinai Desert, Egypt — I bolted upright the first time I heard the bells, a sound so loud it yanked me from sleep. I held my ears when I realized the clamor was just outside my door. It was a carillon 15 centuries old; a wake-up call older than clocks.

I looked at my watch: 4:25 a.m. The room was whitewashed, with a bed, a desk, and a chair. A reproduction of an eighth-century crucifix hung on the wall, alongside a small painting of St. Catherine, the Egyptian martyr and namesake of the monastery at which I was staying. Before I came to the mountains, people had warned of the cold, meager facilities. But the room was quite accommodating, with plenty of bedding, a portable heater, hot water, a toilet, and even a bidet. This was the Ritz for pilgrims, a hermitage with a view.

I slid into my boots and splashed water on my face. The morning service would start in five minutes. Outside, the courtyard was still dark. A rosefinch hopped quietly on the banister; even the birds didn't speak at this hour. [continue]

Related book:
Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses - by Bruce Feiler.

More from Mirabilis.ca about St. Catherine's Monastery:
Ancient monastery opens library - January 31, 2003

This one's a couple of days old. Did everyone but me already see this? From iol.co.za: Temple to Zeus unearthed at Mount Olympus.

Athens - Diggers accidentally discovered a temple to Zeus at the foot of Mount Olympus in an indicating that ancient Greeks switched away from polytheism to the faith of a single God even before Christianity appeared in Greece, archaeologists said on Friday.

The sanctuary was found during works to broaden the bed of the Vaphyras river running through the Dion temple complex at the foot of Mount Olympus, northern Greece - the seat of Greek mythology's twelve Gods.

The findings include the sanctuary's foundations, 14 marble blocks with marble eagles engraved on them - Zeus's symbol - and a slightly smaller-than-life-size, headless marble statue of Zeus, said archaeologist Dimitris Pantermalis who supervises the Dion site.

The sanctuary dates to the centuries preceding Christ's birth. Insignia found on it refer to Zeus as "the highest".

"It is a special version of Zeus as a single God residing in heaven... we know that 'Zeus the Highest' played an important role in the transition to monotheism," Pantermalis said. [continue]

From the Scotsman: Church's mystery skeletons may have been priests.

The six skeletons found last week beneath the floorboards of a Church of Scotland parish church could be the bones of Roman Catholic priests.

This is the opinion of Canon Bernard Canning, a Catholic historian and parish priest of St Thomas's, in Neilston, Renfrewshire.

The find was made by workers on the major refurbishment programme at the parish church in Neilston, which has been a place of prayer or a site of a church for the past 1,000 years.

Canon Canning explained: "It is possible that they are the remains of former parish priests. Until 1927, it was customary in many countries to inter the remains of parish priests within churches.

"After 1927, Rome issued a decree stating that only the remains of residential bishops were to be interred within a church or cathedral."

When the grim discovery was made, the police were alerted and they immediately sealed off the building as a possible crime site.

But members of Glasgow University's Department of Archaeology who were also working on the site soon confirmed that the skeletons could be 400 years old. [continue]

(Born 1150. Died 1224.)

Today is the feast day of St Christina Mirabilis - "Christina the Astonishing" as she's called in English. Considering the name of this blog, how could I resist mentioning her? The account of Christina's life is most incredible. Here's Thomas de Cantimpré's description of what happened at Christina's funeral:

Her lifeless body was laid out in the midst of her friends and her sisters wept copiously over it. The next day when it was borne to the church and while her Requiem Mass was being said, suddenly the body stirred in the coffin and rose up and, like a bird, immediately ascended to the rafters of the church. All those present fled and only her sister remained behind fearfully and stayed there immovably until Mass was finished, when she who had been kept in check by the Sacrament of the Church was forced to descend by the priest. Some say that the sensitivity of her spirit was revolted by the smell of human bodies. She soon returned home with her sisters and was reinvigorated by food.

After that:

Then Christina began to do those things for which she had been sent back [to the world] by the Lord. She crept into fiery ovens where bread was baking and was tormented by fires &mdash just like any of us mortals — so that her howls were terrible to hear. Nevertheless when she emerged, no mutilation of any sort appeared in her body.

Some of Christina's contemporaries thought she was a holy woman; others thought she was raving mad...that's probably why she came to be a patron saint for the mentally ill. I suppose I'll have to claim her as patron saint of Mirabilis.ca, too, although I like to believe that I'm quite sane!

Related links:

De S. Christina Mirabili Virgine Vita - in Latin. Thomas de Cantimpré's biography of Christina Mirabilis.
The  Life of Christina the Astonishing, by Thomas de Cantimpré This little book is an English translation of De S. Christina Mirabili Virgine Vita.

Painting of St Christina Mirabilis - from cynthialarge.com
St. Christina the Astonishing - essay - from cynthialarge.com
Christina Mirabilis - from mundoblaineo.com
Spirituality and Self-Representation in The Life of Christina Mirabilis -from Essays in Medieval Studies
Christina the Astonishing - lyrics to the song by Nick Cave
St Christina the Astonishing - from CatholicExchange.com
Christina of Liege - from Ed LoPresti's Saints' Lives

Note:
The excerpts from Thomas de Cantimpré's writing above come from Margot King's translation: The Life of Christina the Astonishing. I got my copy from Peregrina Publishing, but I see that one can also order The Life of Christina the Astonishing at Amazon.

The BBC notes that the 12th century St Albans Psalter is now online.

A 12th century manuscript featuring the tale of a liaison between one of Britain's early feminists and a monk has been reproduced on the internet. The rarely-viewed St Albans Psalter partly recounts the story of Christina of Markyate and her admirer, Abbot Geoffrey, in medieval times.

The online reproduction is the result of a £72,000 project by the University of Aberdeen's History of Art, Modern Languages and Historic Collections departments.

The psalter, made in the 1130s, features the Chanson of St Alexis, the earliest piece of French literature, and contains coded pictorial references relating to the events of Christina's life. [continue]

I've enjoyed browsing through the psalter, and learning things about the psalter. I particularly liked reading about the scripts used by the six scribes who worked on the book.

Want a quick peek at a couple of pages? Here's Psalm 13, here's Psalm 30, and here's a table to demonstrate the Easter limits.

Visit the psalter project's home page, or just flip through the book page by page, starting at the beginning. 418 pages in all!

Well! Look who's doing stuff with webcams now:

Webrothers -
www.studentscapuchins.tvheaven.com
A community of Capuchin Franciscan students living in an ancient friary in Malta has a website allowing visitors to glimpse their daily lives in a manner that has at least some parallels with the Big Brother reality TV phenomenon. Br Hayden explains that they're putting the simplicity of their lives on show strictly for evangelical purposes. Webcams are sited in the brothers' living room and chapel. A Webrother remains on call during adoration, and SMS prayer requests are welcome.

From Catholic News.

I've already blogged about some of the ways religious communities support themselves these days: the monks who train dogs, the nuns who offer massage, and those religious who make fruitcake, candles, icons, and other stuff. Here's another one for that list, from Wired.com: Monks Praise the Inkjet Deal.

Tucked away in the hills of Wisconsin is a group of monks who have decided that jumping on the imaging and printing bandwagon would be a financially rewarding way to support their monastery, the Cistercian Abbey.

Good-bye illuminated manuscripts, hello inkjets.

The business, which operates LaserMonks, offers up to 75 percent discounts for businesses and individuals on printing and imaging supplies, including toner cartridges, inkjet cartridges, refill kits, copier toner, even cash register ribbons. (...)

"A Canon or Epson inkjet that they're selling for $20 or $25, we've got it for like $3 or $4," Bernard McCoy, one of the monks who is leading the project, said, adding that the quality of remanufactured cartridges has improved markedly over the last two years.

"We're just a small, simple monastery in many ways, but I'd love to take on the big boys," McCoy said, referring to national retail chains OfficeMax and Office Depot. "David and Goliath is perhaps an apropos way of saying what we're trying to do."

McCoy said his hope for the business is to be able to support the Abbey's operating expenses and charitable giving, which together run about $120,000 annually. If things really take off, any additional profits will be given to charity. [continue]

From the Guardian: Shroud of germs.

The image of a tall, bearded man bearing the marks of crucifixion that adorn the Turin shroud has never been adequately explained. Those who have attempted to answer the vexed question of the shroud's origins have often found themselves accused of poor science, even vested interests. So it is a brave man who enters the fray with a new and ultimately unprovable theory. But a respected American microbiologist has done just that, and is so convinced he is right, he has lathered himself in germs and put his professional reputation on the line to persuade the rest of us.

Stephen Mattingly of the University of Texas Health Science Centre in San Antonio believes the image on the Turin shroud was created not by human hands or any mystical power, as has been suggested, but by bacteria. The humble microbes, he says, multiplied in the wounds of a person who died very slowly, and whose corpse was then washed and wrapped in a linen sheet in readiness for burial. Washing the body made the wounds sticky, so the cloth stuck fast and became impregnated with bacteria. Finally, says Mattingly, the bacteria died, shedding proteins that gradually oxidised, causing a stain in the cloth that turned yel low and darkened, like a slow developing photograph.

The theory may be simple, but persuading people he is right will not be easy. In 1989, three separate scientific teams published a study of the shroud in the journal Nature. Using radiocarbon dating, they claimed the shroud must have come into being some time between 1260 and 1390 -suggesting that it was a medieval hoax rather than the genuine article. Their paper spawned much speculation as to who might have created the image, including one theory that it was the handiwork of Leonardo da Vinci. Mattingly thinks the three teams got it wrong. Modern bacteria on the linen could have messed up the dating technique, producing a date that was far too recent. He doesn't claim that the individual wrapped in the linen shroud was necessarily Jesus, but he does think microbes, not Leonardo, were the real artists behind the image.

If he is right, his theory could clear up some long-standing mysteries about the image: its striking three-dimensional quality, which he accounts for by varying densities of bacteria accumulating in the nooks and crannies of the dying man's body; the fact that it only appears on one side of the cloth; and, perhaps most damning of all for the artist hypothesis, the complete absence of brushstrokes. "Bacteria do not need a paintbrush," he says. [continue]

Oh bless him, Patriarch Bartholomew I is at it again. From an Associated Press article:

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - He has cast flower wreaths onto the oil-fouled Danube River. He's warned that the Black Sea is teetering on ecological collapse.

After touring pollution hotspots along the Adriatic coast, he has joined Pope John Paul II in proclaiming a "moral and spiritual" duty to protect the environment.

And Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's 200 million Orthodox Christians, has gone even further. Years ago, he declared that harming the environment is a sin, and he has been pushing religious leaders and believers to make conservation an integral part of faith ever since.

The so-called "green patriarch" is bringing his message next to the Baltic Sea, with its shores that touch eco-sensitive Scandinavia and toxin-spewing factories in the former East Bloc.

Bartholomew's journey, which begins Saturday in Poland, is his fifth mission since 1995 aimed at uniting clerics, scholars, activists and politicians under the banner of ecological interests.

His efforts and those of other religious leaders could be potentially pivotal in shaping doctrine and ethics surrounding the environment, theologians and others say. [continue]

Related links:
Christian Leaders Discuss Environment While Sailing the Baltic - from zenit.org

Related Mirabilis.ca entries:
Bartholomew, on the environment - June 11th, 2002
Patriarch wins Sophie prize - June 13th, 2002
Bartholomew, the Green Patriarch - June 17th, 2002

Baghdad's Baptizers: Revering John the Baptist, these Iraqis sustain an ancient religion.

Under the unblinking eye of the searing Iraqi sun, several hundred people gather on the banks of the historic Tigris River, clad in rustic white tunics secured by simple rope. One by one, they lower themselves up to their chests in the murky water. A sheik with a long, white beard chants quietly, slowly immersing worshipers until their heads are almost completely submerged. He scoops some river water into each person's mouth before uttering a final blessing. After everyone has been rebaptized, the full-day cleansing ritual is capped off by a ceremonial feast.

This is the annual Golden Day of Baptism for the little-known sect of Sabaean Mandeans, an ancient religion based in Iraq. Save for the sight of the power station belching thick, black smoke on the opposite riverbank, the ritual is essentially the same one that Mandeans have practiced for centuries. [continue]

From csmonitor.com: In Iraq, reverence for ancient tomb of a Jewish prophet.

The bearded worshiper moved slowly round the shrine in his bare feet, uttering Muslim prayers and pausing every few steps to bend his head and kiss the golden cloth that covered the holy tomb.

The dome above him, though, bore the painted floral traces of a very un-Islamic past. And the script running around the walls also bore no relation to the flowing Arabic calligraphy that decorates most mosques in the Middle East.

It was in Hebrew. The body lying in the tomb that this devout Muslim was venerating is that of the prophet Ezekiel. And until just 50 years ago, the building sheltering it - first recorded by a 12th century Jewish pilgrim - was a synagogue. [continue]

The Pope's still busy trying to improve the Vatican's relationship with the Orthodox church. Today the Associated Press reports that the Vatican is turning over a church to the Bulgarian Orthodox.

The Vatican is turning over a church in Rome to Bulgarian Orthodox believers in an elaborate ceremony Saturday, part of efforts by Pope John Paul II to improve relations between Catholics and Orthodox Christians.

During a visit to Bulgaria a year ago, the pope announced he had offered the Bulgarian Orthodox community in Rome the use of a church near the Trevi Fountain.

The Vatican said the church will be officially turned over Saturday in the presence of an Orthodox delegation from Bulgaria and Prime Minister Simeon Saxcoburggotski, Bulgaria's former king. Vatican officials and diplomats accredited to the Vatican have also been invited.

The pope has visited several predominantly Orthodox countries in eastern Europe, but efforts to arrange a visit to Russia have been blocked by resentment over what the Russian Orthodox Church sees as Catholic expansion into traditionally Orthodox lands.

Here's an article about the Lindisfarne gospels from the BBC: Gospels' truth uncovered.

Researchers have found a possible link between the Lindisfarne gospels and another celebrated early British text, proving they may have been written at the same time in the same region.

The gospels are now thought to have been written at the same time as Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English people, according to the British Library.

The complex and lavishly decorated gospels are widely recognised as the pinnacle of Anglo Saxon cultural achievement.

They were thought to have been written by Eadfrith, the bishop of Lindisfarne, in 698 AD, as a tribute to St Cuthbert.

But the date has now been revised to around the year 720 AD.

It would put the book's completion at the same time the Venerable Bede was compiling his work on the British people.

The rest of the article includes information on the techniques used in creating the Lindisfarne gospels.

Related links:
Lindisfarne Gospels page from BBC Tyne. (Includes details on the making of the gospels,
historical information, information about the preservation of the gospels.)
Lindisfarne Gospels page at the British Library

For those Catholics who like the old Latin Mass (Tridentine rite) this sounds too good to be true. But apparently it is true, so I am a very happy camper! From Inside the Vatican: The Return of the Latin Mass?

VATICAN CITY, May 13, 2003 — Forty years after the Second Vatican Council, after four decades of liturgical "experimentation" which has troubled many of the faithful, Rome is about to issue a major disciplinary document, ending years of a generally "laissez faire" attitude toward liturgical experimentation and "do-it-youself" Masses.

The document is now in draft form and is expected to be published between October and Christmas this year.

In a bombshell passage, the document will also encourage far wider use of the "old Mass", the Tridentine rite Mass, in Latin, throughout the Roman Catholic Church.

The new, stricter guidelines for celebrating the liturgy, and the mandate to celebrate the old Latin Mass more widely, even on a weekly basis, in every parish in the world, will be contained in a document to be published by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, headed by Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze.

"We expect the document to be published before Christmas," Arinze told "Inside the Vatican" in an exclusive interview. "We want to respond to the spiritual hunger and sorrow so many of the faithful have expressed to us because of liturgical celebrations that seemed irreverent and unworthy of true adoration of God. You might sum up our document with words that echo the final words of the Mass: ‘The do-it-yourself Mass is ended. Go in peace.’"

Related links:
Latin mass - text of the Tridentine rite in Latin and in English
Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri - the FSSP trains priests for the Tridentine rite
Una Voce
A fad for young fogeys, or the authentic spirit of Catholicism? - Times Online

From the Sydney Morning Herald: Spies in the Vatican.

More spied against than spying is a conclusion which can be drawn about the Vatican from David Alvarez's survey of espionage concerning the Holy See from Napoleon to the end of World War II.

Alvarez, a professor of politics at a Californian Catholic college, claims the Holy See gathered political information well when it controlled the central Italian territories known as the Papal States, but lost its skills after Italy was united in 1870 and the Holy See was confined to Vatican City.

Subsequently the Vatican devoted its main energies to fending off efforts to infiltrate it. It engaged in covert intelligence operations in the shameful spy ring established early in the last century to gag Catholic scholars of the modernist movement trying to establish dialogue with contemporary culture. Eventually the main culprit, a Monsignor Umberto Benigni, was shifted sideways from his important post in the Vatican Secretariat of State and sank into paranoia.

The other notable episode of Vatican undercover operations recounted by Alvarez was the bizarre and sometimes heroic attempt in the 1930s to smuggle priests into the godless Soviet Union.

For the rest, it is a story of attempts by nations such as Italy, Germany, Russia, and the United States to discover Vatican secrets. In World War I, Pope Benedict XV's private chamberlain and confidant proved to be a German agent. In World War II, Alvarez recounts, Pius XII acted as a go-between linking the German opposition to Hitler to British authorities and then slipped dangerously into transmitting military information to the British. [continue]

Related book:
Spies in the Vatican: Espionage & Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust

From Ananova: Astronomers ‘pinpoint time and date of crucifixion and resurrection’.

Two Romanian astronomers say their research shows Christ died at 3pm on a Friday, and rose again at 4am on a Sunday.

Liviu Mircea and Tiberiu Oproiu claim to have pinpointed the exact time and date of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.

The pair, from the Astronomic Observatory Institute in Cluj, Romania, say Jesus died at 3pm on Friday, April 3, 33 AD, and rose again at 4am on Sunday, April 5.

They used a computer programme to check biblical references against historical astronomical data.

They said the New Testament stated that Jesus died the day after the first night with a full moon, after the vernal equinox.

Using data gathered on the stars between 26 and 35 AD they established that in those nine years, the first full moon after the vernal equinox was registered twice - on Friday, April 7, 30 AD, and on Friday, April 3, 33 AD.

They were convinced the date of the crucifixion was 33 AD, and not 30 AD, because records showed a solar eclipse, as depicted in the Bible at the time of Jesus' crucifixion, occurred in Jerusalem that year.

From UPI, St. Benedict's virtual scribes.

What do Trappist monks, fruitcakes, Cartier, Harley Davidson and a Quaker computer geek have in common? Would you believe it -- business interests?

This is the extraordinary tale of happy cohabitation between the Middle Ages and the eon of the Internet, between faith and finance. It's the 21st century success story of men and women robed in black and white, of whom many lived in near-total silence, except for one wordy day per year until not very long ago.

Trappists are the strictest order living by the rules of St. Benedict, which include that monks and nuns must live by the work of their hands -- be it in fields, gardens, bakeries or in a scriptorium, where they used to copy sacred texts to parchment. "Ora et labora," pray and work, Benedict charged his religious.

Well, the 25 inhabitants of Holy Cross Abbey in the Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia are such men. For decades, they looked after their 1,200 acres of farmland until they grew too old for that and leased it out to a private rancher.

They also bake fruitcake, a wonderfully moist delicacy made from cherries, pineapples, papaya, dates, honey, lemons, butter and assorted nuts, all soaked generously in brandy.

So good is this cake that orders come in from all over the world. But how can monks, getting creaky with age, handle all this business; how can they be expected to call in credit card numbers, one by one, and type mailing lists by hand?

Enter Edward M. Leonard, whose Quaker faith has this much in common with the Trappists -- both cherish stillness. Leonard was the head of computerization for the U.S. Court system in Washington. On the side, though, he rode a number of hobbyhorses one of which was land preservation. When he learned that the monks opposed a developer's plan to build a country club right next to their abbey, Leonard helped them to fight the intruder off. And thus began a fruitful partnership.

One of Holy Cross' monks is endowed with acute business acumen. He is Brother Benedict Simmonds, the son of an Anglican priest. Benedict worked at the New York Public Library and on a riverboat before entering the monastery in midlife.

When a benefactor donated an entire Novell network with workstations to Holy Cross, Benedict asked Leonard to automate the abbey's fruitcake mail order business. "I wrote the software for them," remembered Leonard Monday in an interview with United Press International. And with that, he set up an electronic scriptorium, where the monks no longer scribbled with plumes but merrily bashed their keyboards in between times set aside for prayer, study and meals.

It didn't take Leonard long to realize what a fantastic workforce these highly educated men with their passion for exactitude and detail were. And thus he placed the shoe on the other foot -- he founded Electronic Scriptorium Limited in Leesburg, Va., and hired the Trappists, each for $12 to $15 per hour. Soon business boomed.

Cartier Jewelry and Coca Cola, Harley Davidson, Walgreen's and CVS drugstores, General Motors, The New York Times, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Rockefeller Archives in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., were among the corporations and institutions that commissioned Electronic Scriptorium to have their databases set up by monks -- though not necessarily the ones at Holy Cross.

For thanks to electronics, these old religious -- their mean age is 70 -- were doing so well that after three years "we have had to stop working for Leonard," said Benedict. The sales of their handmade cakes had skyrocketed to over 30,000 every year. "This means that we have to produce between 450 and 500 each week between the end of January and September every year, and then of course they have to sit for six weeks before going out."

That's a lot of cakes to bake for 25 men, whose average age would be even higher, according to Benedict, had not a 26-year old postulant and a 29-year old novice joined their community, whose members rise at 3.30 a.m. for lauds and go to bed at 8 p.m., after compline. So now only mouse-pads sent out to anybody ordering more than two cakes remind clients of the Trappists' extraordinary venture into cyberspace.

In the meantime, though, Leonard, still their friend and soul mate, has long expanded his religious workforce. Six other Benedictine monasteries and nunneries, which do not have the fortune of producing world-famous fruitcake, are subcontractors to Electronic Scriptorium Limited.

And thus Edward M. Leonard is one of the world's few entrepreneurs with the good fortune, as he says, "to having my workforce praying for me."

Related:
Holy Cross Abbey

The Gardening with Mary article at Beliefnet notes that "hundreds of flowers were named after her during the Middle Ages--and many of those names survive today."

Excerpted from "Mary's Flowers: Gardens, Legends and Meditations" with permission of St. Anthony Messenger Press.

During the Middle Ages, the Catholic faithful saw reminders of Mary, the Mother of God, in the flowers and herbs growing around them. Violets were symbols of her humility, lilies her purity, and roses her glory. They called her "Flower of Flowers" and named plants after her. Marigolds were Mary's Gold, clematis was the Virgin's Bower, and lavender was Our Lady's Drying Plant. [continue]

There are more details at the Mary's Gardens website.One of the pages there has a list of a hundred plants one might use in a Mary garden. The plants' religious names are often much more interesting than their common names. I don't know about you, but I'd rather grow Our Lady's Praises than petunias, even if they are the same plant.

(Link to the Beliefnet article spotted over at It's a Mystery. Thanks, James!)

From the Guardian, an article about Pope Julian II and the portrait Raphael painted of him: 'Why a book? Show me with a sword':

The National Gallery is home to one of Raphael's great masterpieces: a painting that influenced Titian and Velazquez, that haunts the history of western art. But it is not the Madonna of the Pinks, the painting the gallery is campaigning to buy.

Raphael's portrait of Pope Julius II was a masterpiece acquired, as it were, by accident in 1970, when what was thought to be a copy was recognised as the original, and therefore as one of the most precious creations of the Renaissance. But to understand why it is so unique, you have to begin at a siege 500 years ago.

It was a scene that a few years later would make wonderful Reformation propaganda, something out of a German woodcut of the Apocalypse in which the anti-Pope rides over the land bringing death, pestilence, famine and war. The French and Italian defenders of the besieged fortress of Mirandola in the Duchy of Ferrara, which Julius was attacking as part of his campaign to drive France out of Italy, looked down from their battlements in 1511 and saw a vision out of a nightmare. A white-haired fury was riding up and down the attacking army, barking orders, abusing slackers, praising where praise was due, filling his army with heart and rage. Pope Julius II led from the front. His headquarters was so close to the walls of Mirandola that a cannon shot killed two staff in his kitchen. This just made him angrier. The defenders ended up putting their last efforts into trying to kill the Pope as he egged on his men. When they offered to surrender, he quibbled over the clause that he should spare their lives.

Giuliano della Rovere was born in 1443. There was amazement when he was elected Pope 60 years later, in 1503. The cardinal was a known troublemaker, "notoriously difficult by nature and formidable with everyone", in an age when no one expected Popes to be exactly holier than thou. The Papacy was a landowner, a political state, a diplomatic office - too important to be left to the clergy.

Giuliano della Rovere was a man dedicated to the Church. It was just that he believed in the Church militant rather than pious. He had less faith in the power of prayer than in power, pure and simple. Michelangelo once asked him if, in the bronze statue he commissioned the Florentine sculptor to make of him in Bologna, Julius would like to be shown with a book in his left hand, to signify scholarship. "Why a book?" he replied. "Show me with a sword." [continue]

Related links:
Pope Julius II - Catholic Encyclopedia
Julius II (Pope, 1503-1513) - Luminarium
Pope Julius II, Raphael (1511-12) - Guardian
National Gallery

Ad Altare Dei explains why the first Sunday after Easter is called Quasimodo Sunday, and also why the Hunchback of Notre Dame was named Quasimodo:

Yesterday. the first Sunday after Easter, is traditionally known, primarily in France and other parts of Europe, as "Quasimodo Sunday" because of the beginning words of the Introit which come from 1 Peter 2:2,3: Quasi modo geniti infantes, rationabile, sine dolo lac concupiscite ut in eo crescatis in salutem si gustastis quoniam dulcis Dominus, which in English is: As newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile, that thereby you may grow unto salvation: If so be you have tasted that the Lord is sweet. It is used in the context of this particular Sunday to refer to the newly baptized at Easter as well as applying generally to all of us. (...)

Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame

"Sixteen years previous to the epoch when this story takes place, one fine morning, on Quasimodo Sunday, a living creature had been deposited, after mass, in the church of Notre- Dame, on the wooden bed securely fixed in the vestibule on the left, opposite that great image of Saint Christopher, which the figure of Messire Antoine des Essarts, chevalier, carved in stone, had been gazing at on his knees since 1413, when they took it into their heads to overthrow the saint and the faithful follower. Upon this bed of wood it was customary to expose foundlings for public charity. Whoever cared to take them did so. In front of the wooden bed was a copper basin for alms. The sort of living being which lay upon that plank on the morning of Quasimodo, in the year of the Lord, 1467, appeared to excite to a high degree, the curiosity of the numerous group which had congregated about the wooden bed."
-4th Book, Chapter 1.

I first read Hunchback in the 10th grade, and it has always been one of my favorite books, and now that I understand the Easter connection better, I can understand the figure of the Hunchback, named after the Sunday on which he was found, much better than I did then. Victor Hugo's story is a tale of redemption in the face of corruption, the sublime versus the grotesque. While the world prided itself on being beautiful on the outside, yet was bitter and ugly on the inside, only Quasimodo, the disfigured hunchback in Hugo's story, understood the value, and the pain, of being inwardly transformed in the innocent loving of others.

(Link found at Dappled Things.)

Related links:
Low Sunday/Quasimodo Sunday - from the Catholic Encyclopedia

Related book:

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - online version from literaturepage.com

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - online version from Project Gutenberg (This plain text version is perfect if you want use something like Plucker or iSilo to put the book on your Palm Pilot)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - paperback, available at Amazon.com

From the Moscow Times, Ukrainian Monks Seize Monastery of the Caves.

KIEV -- Ukraine's Orthodox monks are resorting to sit-ins to regain church property seized by the Soviet government and still occupied by secular organizations.

For the past week, about a dozen monks have occupied the State Archaeological Institute's archives, housed in the gold-crested, onion-domed Monastery of the Caves, demanding the government return the building to the church. The holed-up monks refuse to allow entry to outsiders.

It was the second such occupation in a month.

On Friday, a thin bearded face appeared in the open window of the dilapidated building at the monastery, but the monk refused to speak to a reporter.

"They won't give up until they receive what's theirs," said a young novice who refused to give his name. He was bringing the group food, climbing in and out of a second-floor window reached by a ladder.

Ukrainian media quoted Metropolitan Volodymyr, leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to which the monastery belongs, as saying the institute had "desecrated" the premises. Volodymyr denied the monks were breaking the law, saying they were simply reclaiming their property.

The nearly 1,000-year-old Caves Monastery -- a UNESCO world heritage site -- spreads over two large hills in central Kiev overlooking the mighty Dnieper River. Kilometers of underground tunnels containing crypts and ecclesiastical objects attract thousands of visitors each year.

Originally, the dilapidated building the monks occupy was a church and inn for pilgrims.

In the 1920s, Soviet authorities declared the monastery a state reserve and drove out all the monks. [continue]

I've been meanining to say something about the etymology of cappuccino ever since I read this in Under the Tuscan Sun: "One of the Capuchin friars who lives there now trudges uphill barefoot toward town. He's wearing his scratchy brown robe and strange pointed white hat (hence cappuccino)..." Capuchin, cappuccino — did you ever connect those words? I didn't, but now that I have the drink seems even nicer.

Anyway, today's news: Pope moves cappuccino friar along sainthood path.

Pope John Paul has beatified a 17th-century friar credited with halting a Muslim invasion of Europe and in the process discovering the frothy coffee-drink cappuccino.

More than 300 years after his death, Marco d'Aviano cleared the last step before sainthood, as the pope recognised the friar's miraculous work including curing a nun who had been bedridden for 13 years.

History books also show that with a vast Ottoman Turk army beating a path to Vienna in 1683, d'Aviano was sent by the then-pope to unite the outnumbered Christian troops, spurring them to victory.

As the Turks fled, legend has it they left behind sacks of coffee, which the Christians found too bitter, so they sweetened it with honey and milk.

The drink, now supped by millions around the world, was called cappuccino after the Capuchin order of monks to which d'Aviano belonged.

Under a cloudy sky in St Peter's Square on Sunday, the pope paid tribute to d'Aviano and five other Italians whom he also beatified.

"They show us the path to follow, always confident in God's help," the pope told thousands of gathered faithful.

Related links:
Pope beatifies 'father of cappuccino' - BBC
Pope Beatifies 6 People, Including 4 Nuns - Times Daily
A politically incorrect monk - sspx.ca
History of coffee - telusplanet.net
What is espresso and cappuccino? - europa-co.com
Capuchin Friar FAQ - BeAFriar.com
Etymology and history of cappuccino - bartleby.com

Update:
Rumors brewing: Beatified monk really did not invent cappuccino - Catholic News Service, May 2nd, 2003.

Here's another article about St Matthew's monastery in Iraq:

The two elderly Assyrian Christians do not expect a big turnout at one of the world's oldest monasteries on Mount Maqloub, northeast of Mosul, for the most important Christian festival. The Orthodox church celebrates Easter a week later than Catholics and Protestants.

In fact, the black-cloaked clerics may well be celebrating Easter alone in the small chapel at St. Matthew monastery, just as they do on many other Sundays and feast days at one of Iraq's most important Christian sites dating back to 363 AD.

"We are looking forward to Easter when we can preach a message of peace all over Iraq," said the small, jovial Adda as he rubbed the gold and jewelled cross hanging on his chest. [continue]

Related Mirabilis.ca entry:
View from an Iraqi monastery

It's always interesting to see what religious orders do in order to provide financial support for their communities. Browse through Monastery Greetings and you'll find everything from fudge to icons to Christmas cards for sale. Then there are the Monks of New Skete, who'll teach you how to train your dog. And now there's news about some nuns who offer therapeutic massage:

Some members of the Franciscan Sisters in Illinois have gone into the massage business so they can minister to both body and spirit. Some see it as a natural extension of nursing. The nuns treat not only churchgoers and retreat participants, but the general public as well for the going rate of 50 to 65 dollars an hour. While other massage therapists offer little in the way of conversation, the nuns encourage discussion of everyday problems and religion.

Related link:
Sisters of St Francis of Mary Immaculate

From Canoe.ca, Christian worshippers thinned in Jerusalem.

A Christian flock greatly thinned as a result of the Palestinian conflict sang hymns and carried wooden crosses along the cobblestone alleys of Jerusalem's walled Old City on Good Friday in a procession retracing Jesus's steps toward his Crucifixion.

Only several hundred people participated in this year's ceremony. Thirty months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting have kept many foreign pilgrims away. And many Palestinian Christians were barred from reaching Jerusalem due to Israeli military travel restrictions.

"This is nothing like it used to be when thousands used to come from all over the world," said one Franciscan monk, who identified himself only as Father Simon. "But I am always happy to see people recognize the sacrifice of Christ and his pain." [continue]

From United Press International, an article on the sort of men who are training for the priesthood these days: Men of quality for the church.

The holiest and most somber week in the church year brings good news for the future of Christianity: Catholic leaders in Europe and America report unanimously an amazing increase in the quality and commitment of young men studying for the priesthood.

This is not to say that the actual numbers of seminarians are going up all that much, at least not in Europe, the heads of divinity schools and ranking officials of national bishops conferences cautioned in interviews with United Press International Monday.

"It's quality over quantity," said Hans Langendoerfer, a Jesuit priest and secretary of Germany's Catholic Bishops Conference. "Quality matters more than quantity," agreed John McCloskey, director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington.

"Today's divinity students are deeply convinced and cultured," Richard Mathes, rector of the German Seminary in Rome told Figaro Magazine, a French publication. "It better to have a few men of great quality, whose words inspire, heal and reassure, then a slew of men without aura and fire."

According to Mathes, Langendoerfer and McCloskey, members of the former type rather than the latter are now preparing for the priesthood. Theologians of some mainline Protestant churches report similar developments within their own denominations.

"In Catholicism, the key figure in this development is Pope John Paul II, who after a quarter century in the pontificate has left an enormous imprint on the Church," explained McCloskey.

"Anybody under 39 has never been consciously aware of any other Pope," added Langendoerfer. "As pastor of the World, John Paul II has defined generations." [continue]

From nature.com, Oldest evidence of Andean religion found.

Archaeologists have found the oldest image yet of an Andean religious icon.

The 4,000-year-old carving of the Staff god - a fanged creature with splayed feet, holding a snake and a staff - is on a bowl made from a seed pod. The artefact was probably a funeral offering, hinting that organized religion was established in South America one-and-a-half millennia earlier than suspected.

Until now, the oldest depiction of the Staff god dated to 1,000 BC. The image appears on textiles and pottery urns of the Wari and Tiwanaku cultures dating all the way through to 1000 AD. The deity is best known from the carved gateway at Tiwanaku, near Lake Titicaca, a city that thrived around 200 AD.

"The Staff god has been through many different incarnations," says Jonathan Haas of the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. Haas' team unearthed the softball-sized gourd at a burial ground in Peru's Patavilca River valley. It has been radiocarbon-dated to 2500 BC. "No one thought that Andean religion itself would date back that far," says Haas.

The icon's age hints that a complex Andean civilization with politics, ceremonies and religion radiated from a single location, the team argues.

"It's a great find," agrees Peruvian archaeologist Abelardo Sandoval of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. "My major concern would be about the date," says Sandoval. If other objects from the site show similar dates, the claim will be more reliable, he explains. [continue]

Related links:
Peruvian gourd reflects ancient Andean religion
Ancient Deity Drawing May Shed Light on Rise of Andean Religion

From Catholic News, Pope could meet with Russian Patriarch to return icon.

Pope John Paul II might hold a long-anticipated meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II in August, according to Vatican sources.

The sources revealed that the Holy Father could meet with the Russian prelate on the return leg of his planned visit to Mongolia. Italian press reports yesterday suggest the Pope might also return the famous icon of the Mother of God of Kazan to Patriarch Alexei during such a meeting.

Vatican sources have indicated that the Pope might stop in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, on his return trip from Mongolia. Although the papal trip to Mongolia has not yet been officially announced, preparations are underway for such an event late in August.

The icon of the Mother of God of Kazan, which is cherished within the Russian Orthodox Church, gained a reputation for miraculous powers in 1612, when it was brought to Moscow just before that city's liberation from Polish occupation. Early in the 20th century, however, take from its place in St. Petersburg and sold, passing from one owner to another until it was discovered in a small church in Fatima, Portugal. In 1991, when Pope John Paul visited Fatima, he took the con back to the Vatican. Orthodox officials have demanded the return of the icon, and the Pope has indicated that he is willing to make that gesture.

Vatican officials have confirmed that "the necessary contacts have been made" for the return of the icon. Observers suggest the return of the icon of Kazan could provide the Vatican with a strong inducement for the hitherto reluctant Patriarch Alexei to participate in a meeting with Pope John Paul.

Updates:
Vatican barters with Russia for papal visit - from the Guardian, April 16th, 2003.
Russian minister claims icon in Vatican is copy - from Catholic News, April 29th, 2003.

Now here's an interesting article about Ireland's mass rocks.

KILLYBEGS (Reuters) - Father Lorcan Sharkey rests his hands on a ledge about as wide and long as a man's forearm, carved by nature into a large rock.

The ledge serves as an altar in a rock which, like hundreds of others dotted around the Irish countryside, bears silent witness to times when Roman Catholics, their religion suppressed and churches confiscated by British Protestants, held secret services during the 17th and 18th centuries at "mass rocks" in the open air.

"The priest would have said mass with his back to the people," Sharkey said, explaining how a British soldier in disguise was able to shoot dead a priest at another mass rock in this town which calls itself Ireland's "premier fishing port".

The rock where Sharkey stood on a grey, drizzly day has its own bloody history. Another priest was shot in similar circumstances nearby, giving the site its Irish place name "Carraig a' t-Sagairt" -- "the Priest's Rock".

"The people had to be prepared to make great sacrifices" to practise their religion," Sharkey said. "There's probably not a parish in Ireland that doesn't have a mass rock. [continue]

Found through Jim Tucker's Dappled Things blog.

Related links:
The Cappabane Mass Rock - from scariff.com
Penal laws - from the Catholic Encyclopedia
Roman Catholic Relief Bill - from the Catholic Encyclopedia

From the Irish Examiner: Pray log online, says Franciscan Order.

Like manna from Heaven, the internet is proving a Godsend to the Franciscans in Ireland in its drive for new vocations.

One of Ireland's oldest religious orders has just signed up the country's largest online recruitment agency, not only to attract new members but also to raise the profile of the Franciscans nationwide.

The Order will advertise on the website of Irishjobs.ie as part of its programme to attract new recruits. It is the first religious organisation in the country to advertise for new members through a dedicated online recruitment website.

According to Fr Adrian Peelo, provincial director of vocations of the Franciscan Order in Ireland: "this is a new departure for us. We chose the internet and, in particular Irishjobs.ie, because it enables us to reach the widest range of jobseekers of any medium in the country. If we receive even a small number of those, we will be very happy."

The motto of the Franciscans is Pax et Bonum (peace and goodwill) and among the qualities sought of new recruits is a mild and kind temperament. St Francis exhorted his followers to "be meek, peaceful and unassuming, gentle and humble, speaking courteously to everyone."

New recruits must also promise to "observe the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ by living in obedience, without anything of their own, and in chastity." The Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans) has been in Ireland for more than 700 years. [continue]

Related link:
Franciscan Province of Ireland

From the New York Times, View From an Ancient Monastery as Yet Another War Intrudes.

ST. MATTHEW MONASTERY, Iraq, April 9 — He came to this 1,600-year-old monastery 18 years before Saddam Hussein took power and has lived through military coups, droughts, two wars and now an American invasion. So when strangers arrived today saying Baghdad had fallen, the placid face of Father Paulus, a blind 71-year-old monk, betrayed little emotion.

"I am happy if the peace will be settled," he said, showing the cageyness of an Iraqi who has survived decades of authoritarian rule. "God willing, the peace will happen."

Today, Iraqi fighters withdrew from strategic Maqlub Mountain here north of Mosul. A few hours later, Kurdish fighters and American Special Forces soldiers rolled through the front gate of the monastery and declared it liberated. The monastery is named for a fifth-century monk, who is said to have lived in a cave on this mountain, and what is believed to be his body is watched over by monks here.

"God is here, Muhammad is here," he said. "We are protected."

The frail, white-bearded Father Paul is a member of Iraq's Assyrian Christian minority, a group that makes up less than 4 percent of the country's population. [continue] (NYT requires free registration.)

Did you read that blog entry last December about monasterygreetings.com, the company that sells gifts from various monasteries? A cleveland.com reporter has gone off and inteviewed Will Keller, the fellow who runs that company. The resulting article is here: Mail-order treats carefully made by religious orders.

"People often have a skewed misunderstanding of religious communities," says Keller, whose own outward demeanor is placid and reflective. "Some of us see such places as dark and deprived, but there's a lot of joy in spiritual life, and a lot of these things reflect that. Those who produce them are honoring God and his gifts. These wonderful foods and fragrances are the beauty of creation."

Keller lifts a jar of Trappist Preserves from a shelf in his warehouse in the Shorebank Enterprise Center in Cleveland's Glenville area. "The Trappists honor God through their prayer and work. And they are only interested in selling enough preserves to support themselves - they don't want to set any sales records or build an empire."

Continued survival is crucial to the mission of such religious orders. Thus they follow the rules of St. Benedict, a monk who lived from about 480 to 543 and set forth guidelines for a pious life.

"Basically, it requires them to support themselves through their own work," Keller says of the Benedictine rules that address most aspects of the organization and management of a religious life.

Food became common currency, he explains, because while on one level it represents sheer physical survival, it ultimately holds such universal appeal as edible art.

"Monasteries were isolated and cloistered; they had to raise all of their own food. So they had farms and raised livestock, and practiced crafts so they didn't have to go to market," Keller says, describing monastic life as "something of a medieval biosphere." [continue]

From the BBC, New monastery goes online.

A new Benedictine monastery, the first in over 800 years, is to be established in County Down. The Benedictines first came to Ireland with John De Courcy and built a monastery near Downpatrick in 1138.

Building work at the new centre near Rostrevor has begun on donated land and a retreat centre has already been built.

Although traditionally drawn to a life of prayer and silence the monks are not above using modern technology to raise funds.

Through their website they have launched a ‘buy a brick’ campaign. So far they have raised about £800,000 with a target of £1.6m

The order, founded in the sixth century, is known for its simplistic life style.

The monks rise early, spending their day in prayer, work and bible study. They earn money making cards and candles.

Quiet is the norm with the monks even eating meals in silence.

They see their mission in Northern Ireland to encourage reconciliation between Protestants and Catholics. [continue]

From Ananova: Italian priest takes confession - and a bag of weapons.

An Italian man went to confession and handed the priest two guns, two hand grenades and some live ammunition.

Father Gregorio Vitale, rector of the Bozzola Sanctuary at Garlasco near Pavia, said he had just taken the man's confession when he handed him a bag.

The man said: "I'd like you to take these as well father." When the priest looked inside he saw two handguns, two hand grenades and 18 bullets.

Father Gregorio said: "I couldn't believe my eyes. I called the local police station and took them there immediately.

"Because of the rules of the sacrament of confession I cannot say what the man confessed to and even if I knew who he was I couldn't say.

"I am just happy that he wanted to change his life, return to the Church and that he came to us for help." [continue]

If you'd like to take a peek at some of the stunning churches in Rome, this is a very cool site: The Vatican Shoot. Click on a thumbnail, and you'll see an "all around" Quicktime view of the related site. Drag your mouse up to the top of the image to see the ceiling, down to the bottom for the floor, etc.

What's included: San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in Laterano, San Paolo Fuori le Mura, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in Laterano, and Piazza San Pietro.

You'll need Quicktime installed for this, and you might need to wait a bit for the page to download, especially if you have a slower connection. But it's worth it, really. This is a visual feast. You might like to start with San Giovanni in Laterano.

Wow. Most of those who can are running away, but the Papal Nuncio is going to stay put in Iraq. From Zenit: Papal Nuncio Aims to Stay Close to the Suffering in Iraq.

The papal nuncio in Baghdad reiterated his intention to stay in Iraq even if the bombing begins, in order to express his closeness to those who suffer.

Archbishop Fernando Filoni, who has been nuncio for less than a year, said: "We are here, and here we will stay, even if there is a war. We have no alternatives and, so long as we are permitted, we will remain."

The archbishop explained that he wishes to be "close to those who suffer to make them feel that they have not been abandoned" and to ensure "service to the local Church." [continue]

From the Spectator: Sin for your supper.

Before his death last year in a helicopter accident, France’s best-known baker, Lionel Poîlane, drafted a letter to the Pope in which he asked for a change to the French translation of the catechism. He wrote that the capital sin of gluttony was mistranslated. The catechism called it gourmandise, which Poîlane said meant an appreciation of good food and meals with friends — hardly sins. A more correct word would be gloutonnerie, the English gluttony, or goinfrerie, piggishness.

This being France and the subject being food, however, the matter did not stop there. A committee, De la Question Gourmande, has now been set up in Poîlane’s memory, whose sole task is to extract an admission from the Vatican that enjoying food is no sin in itself. Its headquarters is at number 56 rue Brillat-Savarin, named after France’s greatest food writer. Its patrons include chefs, intellectuals and the simply very rich, who want in on the malarkey.

In his letter, Poîlane wrote that the French gourmand has been traduced in the catechism. The true gourmand does not eat for eating’s sake. Rather, he values quality over quantity. He knows when to stop, and more often than not he regards the communal activity of eating with friends as an essential part of his gourmandise.

Other languages, Poîlane argued, have more specific translations. English has gluttony, though Poîlane cannot resist a passing dig at British cooking — ‘gourmandise is not translatable into English’. Italian has gola, Spanish gula and German lüsternheit, which translates as eating like an animal that does not know when to stop. All these terms refer to people who stuff their faces to no purpose. The gourmand, on the other hand, is engaged in a noble pursuit, the proper appreciation of God’s gifts. [continue]

(Note: I think the Spectator meant to put the circumflex accent in Poilâne above the a, where it belongs, not above the i. Oops.)

Related links:
Lionel Poilâne, 1945-2002
poilane.fr
A taste for sin?
Give Us This Day Our Global Bread
The meaty issue of gourmet v. gourmand
Poilâne bread direct from Paris

Mmm, I love reading about the history of food. Today the Beacon Journal offers a look at food and abstinence during Lent across the centuries.

In popular culinary parlance, people who exclude meat, eggs and dairy products from their diet are called vegans. But this form of vegetarianism is hardly new.

Nearly 1,400 years ago, Pope Gregory the Great mandated that all Christian faithful follow a strict dietary code as penance for their sins during Lent. "We abstain from flesh meat and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, butter and eggs," Gregory wrote.

For 40 days, fish became the mainstay of everyone's diet and, in places where fresh fish was not available, dried salted fish, especially cod and herring, was used.

As you can imagine, a constant diet of salted fish became boring after just a few weeks, but it was not the fish eaters who suffered most from the imposed diet. Butchers were the real victims. In fact, on Easter Sunday in Ireland, butchers and their apprentices organized boisterous herring funerals to celebrate the return of meat.

Preparing appetizing meals without the forbidden foods was a challenge, and every ethnic group developed its own Lenten meals. [continue]

It's Shrove Tuesday today. Are you going to have pancakes? Here's some background about this tradition from the BBC: Shrove Tuesday otherwise known as international pancake day.

Shrove Tuesday is the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. This year it takes place on March 4.

Shrove Tuesday is a day of penitence — to clean the soul before Lent and a day of celebration as the last chance to feast before Lent begins.

The English custom of eating pancakes was probably suggested by the need of using up the eggs and fat which were, originally at least, prohibited articles of diet during the forty days of Lent.

The church tradition of having pancake suppers and the secular tradition of just plain partying also derives from the practice of feasting before the fast. [continue]

There's more information at the BBC's Shrove Tuesday page.

Related links:
Archbishop takes part in pancake race
The Olney Pancake Race
'Pancake Day' Explained (recipes, too)
The history behind Shrove Tuesday
Shrovetide - from the Catholic Encyclopedia

Recipes:
Norwegian pancakes

From the Daily Star, Mar Musa keeps ancient traditions alive in the Syrian hills.

The bell for lunch rings at 3pm, and residents, boarders and day guests head to the table for the midday meal held every day at approximately the same time at Deir Mar Musa, a 6th century Ethiopian monastery 80 kilometers north of Damascus and a half hour drive from the nearest town.

Two families climb up the steep cliff toward the earth-colored monastery built into the rocky desert mountains. Brother Paolo, an Italian monk responsible for the monastery, greets them with cups of tea as they unwind after an exhausting 20-minute walk.

"That’s the way we are," says Paolo cheerfully, pointing out that Deir Mar Musa is a monastery open to people of all faiths. [continue]

Related:
Deir Mar Musa Monastery - deirmarmusa.org

Kathryn Carpenter wrote to the Mercury News to explain what she's giving up for Lent this year. She writes:

Lent is about to start, you know, that period of 40 days and 40 nights before Easter. It begins Wednesday and for many Catholics it is a time to give up something, in order to bring one closer to God. Traditionally people give up vices, such as ice cream, candy, gum, maybe even smoking. It is supposed to teach self-sacrifice and put one in solidarity with those less fortunate.

And so what's Kathryn giving up for Lent, you ask? Speeding.

It isn't easy. I have to practice a few days ahead of time. I can't just stop speeding overnight. And, I don't start speeding the day after Easter, only gradually going back to old habits.

From Reuters, Ancient Indian Jewish Community Faces Unclear Future.

The gentle chants from Friday Hebrew prayers rise from the synagogue into the afternoon heat, mingling with the call to prayer from a nearby mosque.

But in the small seaside village of Alibag, where Judaism literally crashed into India 2,000 years ago, there are fewer and fewer voices in the synagogue every year as the members of one of the world's oldest Jewish communities return to Israel.

India's Bene Israelis, or Children of Israel, have dwindled to barely 4,000 from a peak of about 80,000 a few decades ago as thousands moved to Israel for a better life.

"India is our motherland, but Israel is our fatherland," says Abraham Jacob Awaskar, treasurer of Alibag's whitewashed Magen Aboth synagogue, which is nearly a century old.

Extensive DNA testing has found the Bene Israelis, clustered in and around the western city of Bombay, are direct descendants of a hereditary Israelite priesthood that can be traced back 3,000 years to Moses' brother, Aaron. [continue]

From the Christian Science Monitor: Missionaries adjust to risks in Arab lands.

Brandon Bayne wants to win souls for Jesus Christ in the Arab world. That's why he steers clear of Muslim nations and instead trains Latinos from the Americas to be missionaries on the ground there.

"There has to be someone at some point who crosses a border," says Mr. Bayne, a third-year ministry student here at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. But in light of escalating anti-Americanism and resentment spawning violence against missionaries, he says, that missionary "doesn't have to be a Westerner."

In fact, according to Bayne and other mission theorists, Latinos have better success rates in winning Arab converts because their dark skin and modest economic backgrounds help build relationships with indigenous Muslims. Latinos, Filipinos, and other non-Western Christians are thus increasingly staffing the front lines of the world's most dangerous mission fields, where spreading Christianity can be punishable by death. [continue]

From today's Japan Times, Austere monks in a lavish monastery.

It seems at first that they are not of this world, these monks living out their lives of mountain seclusion. They glide purposefully -- as if on some devout mission from on high -- through the monastery corridors. At times, they flit by at great speed, their black tunics and dark blue robes swishing as they pass, pausing only briefly to bow reverently in the direction of the Buddha Hall. It comes as a surprise then, when for the first time you see them acting like normal people, laughing and joking among themselves after the morning service, rather than gazing off profoundly into some middle distance.

Since 1244, after its founding by the philosopher-monk Dogen Kigen (1200- 1253), there has stood deep in the mountains of Fukui Prefecture a Buddhist temple and monastery originally called Daibutsu-ji Temple, now known as Eihei-ji Temple. Located some 20 km east of the city of Fukui, Eihei-ji is the best reason (pretty much the only reason, some might say) for visiting that prefecture. As a place for living the contemplative life, Eihei-ji certainly has great physical beauty: The temple stands among boulders thick with bright green moss, cedars of great girth, and Japanese maples that, in autumn, are a riot of cinnabar red and spectacular gold. [continue]

This would be an interesting lawsuit:

Producers of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut may be sued for copyright abuse by the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Church officials are unhappy about a recorded fragment from a religious mass which was used in scenes with satanic connotations.

From Ananova's article, Romanian Orthodox Church unhappy about Kubrick soundtrack.

The Murthly Hours is one of Scotland's great medieval treasures. Written and illuminated in Paris in the 1280s, it also contains full-page miniatures by English artists of the same period, and was one of the most richly decorated manuscripts in medieval Scotland. Medieval additions include probably the second oldest example of Gaelic written in Scotland.

The Murthly Hours website has lots of information about the book, and --oh joy!-- over 200 folios. Here's a fine one from the beginning of the office for the hour of Vespers (larger image here) and here's a page from The Hours of the Holy Spirit.

When Baptist minister Dwight Moody visited an Orthodox church, he found himself

. . . in a cloud of incense, trying to figure out what the worshippers were chanting, why they rarely sat down and when the 9 a.m. service was going to end so that the 10 a.m. service could begin.

Everything was a mystery.

"When the main service ended they just kept going and had two more. ... I couldn't figure out what was going on," said Moody. "It was the most in-your-face, retrograde old stuff you could imagine. What fascinated me was that this was the total antithesis of everything that is happening in the contemporary church."

But he looked around and realized he wasn't the only visitor in the multi-ethnic crowd. Afterwards, a cluster of ex-Methodists helped him get oriented.

Moody had toured Orthodox churches in Jerusalem and elsewhere, but had never actually attended a service.

It was while he was driving home that he had a crazy idea.

During his Sunday adventures, Moody has seen his share of megachurches offering "seeker-friendly services" for media-soaked Americans.

These are the ones with shiny auditoriums that seat 5,000 or so people, complete with rock-concert quality sound and lights. Many have been shaped by the work of consulting firms that specialize in church design and marketing.

Moody thought to himself: How would a church-growth professional critique the smells, bells and sacraments he had just witnessed?

Before long, he had written a satirical "Survival Guide" for an imaginary "St. Pachomius Byzantine Orthodox Church."

Read the rest of this article at the Sacramento Bee website.

From the Moscow Times, Orthodox Church Takes On Rasputin.

A heated debate over Russia's first tsar, Ivan the Terrible, and the lecherous mystical healer Grigory Rasputin, who compromised the monarchy in its waning years, is threatening to create a split in the Russian Orthodox Church.

At issue is a campaign to canonize the two men that is rooted in a widely embraced belief that the monarchy fell victim to a plot masterminded by Jews and Freemasons.

Last week, a group of theologians, church historians and official Orthodox journalists de facto proclaimed what has long been discussed privately in church circles -- that the campaign is being carried out by a sect that is undermining the Russian Orthodox Church from within.

For a decade the Moscow Patriarchate has tolerated the canonization drive in order to avoid a schism at all costs. But the drive has now grown so strong that the Patriarchate is considering changing its policy. It is unclear, however, whether it would be able to muster enough strength and moral authority to overcome the canonization forces.

Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II has spoken out against the canonizations in unusually strong terms over the past year, stressing it would be impossible to canonize Ivan the Terrible, who ordered the deaths of several clergymen who were later sainted, and Rasputin, whose debauchery and dubious healing practices compromised the last imperial family of Tsar Nicholas II.

"This is madness!" the patriarch said in his first statement on the subject in December 2001. "What believer would want to stay in a church that equally venerates murderers and martyrs, lechers and saints?" [continue]

Mount Athos is the centre of Eastern Orthodox Monasticism. Set in an area of outstanding natural beauty, it is a treasury which houses and guards many artefacts and monuments of religious, national and artistic value. It is also a ‘workshop’ where religious arts and crafts are still practised to this day, and where deep and genuine spirituality is allowed to flourish and bear fruit. As an institution Mount Athos is, and has been, the chief standard bearer of Orthodox Christianity.

That's from the Mount Athos site hosted by the National Technical University of Athens. The site includes a variety of information (sections on history, monasticism, etc) but the best part is the photos. Take a look at this vestibule (at Megisti Lavra), this lobby (at Xiropotamos), this church interior (at Iviron). Stunning.

Want to see more? The hyperlinked monastery names on this page lead to thumbnail image galleries. Perhaps you'd like to start with photos from the Holy Monastery of Megisti Lavra.

When you arrive at the door and see that the sanctuary knocker looks like this, you know that the rest of Durham Cathedral is bound to be interesting.

Durham's Cathedral Church of Christ and Blessed Mary the Virgin is the last resting place of: St Cuthbert - the greatest of the early English saints; St Bede - the finest scholar of his age; and the head of St Oswald - the warrior king and martyr. In addition, it was for centuries both home for a community of Benedictine monks and seat of the mighty Prince Bishops of Durham. (. . .) The cathedral building - a large part of which dates back some 900 years - is widely regarded as one of the most complete and perfect examples of Romanesque architecture still in existence.

That's from the introduction page of the Durham Cathedral and Castle website. The cathedral tour at that site is a treat: decently well organized and detailed. (There's even a glossary!)

Durham Cathedral contains the tombs of St Bede and St Cuthbert. There was a monastery at Durham for 450 years, until England's eternally annoying reformers forced the monastery's dissolution in 1540.

Related links:
Durham Cathedral (official website)
Durham Cathedral - great buildings online
photos of Durham Cathedral
Durham Cathedral History - from North East England History Pages
Interactive map of Durham Cathedral
The Venerable Bede - from the Catholic Encyclopedia
St Cuthbert - from the Catholic Encyclopedia

It turns out that Jesuits have been commemorated on postage stamps all around the world. The philatelic display of the Jesuit mission displays many of these stamps, neatly sorted into "what type of Jesuit?" categories:

Jesuit Mathematicians, Scientists and Astronomers,
Jesuit Artists and Jesuit Scholars,
Jesuit Founders and Schools, and
Jesuit Missionaries and Saints.

A very interesting browse.

From Reuters, Jamming Phones to Keep Worshiping Quiet.

Qatar has imported 1,000 frequency jammers to block mobile phone transmissions that disrupt prayers and sermons in the Gulf state's mosques, the daily newspaper The Peninsula said Thursday.

The Cellular Phone Hunter, a pocket-size device, should silence the modern-day nuisance of cellphones chirruping during prayers, the paper said.

"Imams and muezzins (prayer callers) have been instructed to switch on the devices a few minutes before the call for prayer and keep them on till five minutes after the prayers, five times a day," The Peninsula added.

From csmonitor.com, In ancient monastery, a stunning library.

Nestled at the foot of Mount Sinai, St. Catherine's Monastery has for centuries been almost inaccessible to the outside world. Only the most devout visited, undergoing a 10-day camel trek to reach it. So rare were deliveries of essential goods that the Greek monks there struggled daily to survive.

Built in 527 on the assumed site of the biblical burning bush, the fortress-like complex is the world's oldest continuously inhabited monastery: A Christian presence there can be traced back to the third century. Yet despite its isolated setting and the asceticism of its Orthodox monks, today the monastery is regarded as having one of the world's finest collections of manuscripts and icons.

The ancient library - containing 5,000 early printed books, 3,500 manuscripts, and 2,000 scrolls - is of an age and diversity that only the Vatican can equal. The monastery also owns some 2,000 icons, religious artifacts, and other curios, including a silver and enamel chalice from King Charles VI of France. This item was given to the monastery in 1411 and is so unusual that the Louvre Museum in Paris recently asked to borrow it for an exhibit.

The quality of the collection owes much to the arid mountain climate. The monastery's first printed editions of Plato and Homer, for example, look as if they have just come off the press; biblical fragments from the 4th century on seem untouched by passing centuries.

Today, this unique collection of religious and cultural works is being slowly opened to the public. Under the watchful eye of the monastery's Archbishop Damianos, St. Catherine's is participating in three projects that will make the collection more accessible. [continue]

Tour Egypt's St Catherine's Monastery site has more information about the monastery, and photos, too. Don't miss the icons and diptych, or this illuminated manuscript.

St Catherine Monastery - from geographica.com

From CNN, Bishops seek saint for Internet.

Fed up with hackers, a flood of spam and lousy connections, Italian Roman Catholics have launched a search for a patron saint of the Internet. And they hope their online poll will yield a holy Web protector by Easter.

Will it be Archangel Gabriel, whom the Bible credits with bringing Mary the news that she'd give birth to Jesus? Or Saint Isadore of Seville, who wrote the world's first encyclopedia? Or perhaps Saint Clare of Assisi, a nun believed to have seen visions on a wall?

So far, about 5,000 visitors are casting their votes daily on www.santiebeati.it, something that delights Monsignor James P. Moroney, an expert on prayer and worship for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"Everyone needs patrons in the Kingdom of Heaven, and perhaps the Internet as a very young child needs the interventions of a saint all the more," he said.

Once the votes are collected, the top six choices, along with all of the names of those nominated, will be delivered to the Vatican's Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the site's creator Francesco Diani said.

So far, however, the Vatican is keeping mum on whether it will indeed take up the idea of assigning a saint to the Internet.

But the site is following hundreds of years of tradition during which Catholics have chosen saintly protectors for their towns, churches and even themselves. Along the way, popes have taken over the process of naming saints and assigning them official patronages. But public opinion has always remained an important influence, which is why the Web poll is so appropriate, said Diani, an Internet expert for Italy's Conference of Bishops. The bishops have joined with several other Catholic groups to run the Internet saint campaign, Diani said.

"This kind of vote allows us the possibility of collecting a very large number of preferences," he said. "It's a plebiscite." [continue]

Related articles:
Search engines seek Net saint - from the Herald Sun newspaper.
Patronising the Internet - from Hindustan Times.com.
Will Isidore Be Patron Saint of the Internet? Pope John Paul Will Decide. - from Christianity Today.
Searchin' for the Surfer's Saint - from Wired.com.
Saints Vying for Net Patron - from Wired.com.

Background info on proposed saints, from the Catholic Encyclopedia:
St. Gabriel the Archangel
St. Isidore of Seville
St Claire of Assisi

From Zenit, Steps Being Taken to Overcome an Ancient Schism.

Representatives of the early Eastern Churches, separated both from Rome as well as from the Byzantine Orthodox Churches during the Council of Chalcedon, in 451, are in the Vatican through Wednesday, to relaunch a second phase of dialogue leading toward full unity.

Wow.

Related news articles:
Pope: Christians Should Unite for Peace - ABC News
In a Shift, Orthodox Join Week for Christian Unity - Zenit

Background information:
Council of Chalcedon - Catholic Encyclopedia
The Council of Chalcedon: Third Ecumenical Council, AD 451 - Proceedings & Texts

From Monasticism in Britain:

Benedict's Rule was brought to Britain in 597, by St. Augustine, who had been sent by Pope Gregory the Great (both of whom were Benedictines) to preach to and convert the Saxons, who had taken over control of the island, by this time. The Benedictine observance co-existed with other observances of Celtic origin for some 50 years, but, in the end, prevailed at the Synod of Whitby in AD 664, thanks to St. Wilfred of York, St. Benedict Biscop and others.

Over the next 900 or so years the Benedictines, and all other monastic orders, would go through various vicissitudes which came to an abrupt end, around 1540, with the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII.

Can you name the orders that had monasteries in England? This site does, and they include a bit of information about each, including the more obscure ones. (Tironensians, Premonstratensians, and Gilbertines: oh my!)

A while back I blogged about some monks on Mount Athos who are ignoring an eviction notice. Remember? Their patriarch told them to leave by the end of the month, but the monks of Esfigmenou Monastery say they're not going anywhere.(See the Monks resist eviction blog entry.) Now the Telegraph has an article about this disagreement, entitled Mountain monks prepare for war.

For the monks there is no question of giving into this new ultimatum. For them the monastery's resemblance more to a medieval castle than a place of worship is about to come into its own. A theological conflict is about to become a physical siege.

...

How the Patriarch intends to enforce his will remains unclear. The monks are willing to bolt the reinforced doors and bide their time. They have a well and stores.

"We will not fight with weapons," laughed Abbot Methodius. "We have only our rosaries. But one thing is for sure. The only way we will leave is if we are dead."

One link led to another and then I wound up reading about Jewish history in Spain: In Spain, Inquisitors Tracked Conversos by Their Foodways. The article outlines some of the horrible things the Inquisition did to the Jews, and mentions that the inquisition looked for Jewish food practices when determining whether a Jewish convert to Christianity had really abandoned the old faith or not. The article is fascinating, but what a sad, sad history.

"One Inquisition list of Jewish food practices, quoted by David Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson in "A Drizzle of Honey: The Lives and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews" (St. Martin's, 1999), reads in part:

cooking on the said Fridays such food as is required for the Saturdays and on the latter eating the meat thus cooked on Fridays as is the manner of the Jews;... cleansing or causing meat to be cleansed, cutting away from it all fat or grease and cutting away the nerve or sinew from the leg;... not eating pork, hare, rabbit, strangled birds, conger-eel, cuttle-fish, nor eels or other scaleless fish, as laid down in the Jewish law; and upon the death of parents... eating... such things as boiled eggs, olives, and other viands...

Inquisition prosecutors also paid special attention to those who fried meat in olive oil rather than lard, as was the common practice in Spain at the time. (Ironically, as Gitlitz and Davidson note, these lists helped to instruct later generations of conversos, who would otherwise have had difficulty finding information about Jewish practice.)

Amazon's description of the book mentioned, A Drizzle of Honey : The Lives and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews, has more information.

Update, February 7th, 2002:
A Cuisine Returns After Centuries of Exile: Sephardic Cooking Re-emerges in Spain, Altered But Tasty as Ever - third article in this series, from forward.com.

Fr. Jim Tucker of Dappled Things has found a good page about memento mori. He notes that the site describes:"...various Baroque memento mori pieces that can be found in the churches of Rome". The site includes photos; go look!

Definition of memento mori from dictionary.com

From the Barley in Islamic Literature page at islam-online.net:

Viewed as the only vegetation on earth that can become a sole source of nutrition from birth to old age, scholars of hadiths (prophetic sayings) have understood barley to be very nutritious, beneficial in coughs and inflammation of the stomach, and to have the ability to expel toxins from the body and act as a good diuretic. At least twenty-one hadiths recommend sattoo (powdered barley). Talbina is a meal made from satoo, formed by adding milk and honey to the dried barley powder. The Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) recommended talbina for the sick and grieving (Khan p.1). He is quoted as saying, "At-talbina gives rest to the heart of the patient and makes it active and relieves some of his sorrow and grief" (Bukhari 7:71#593).

According to ibn al-Qayyim, barley water using five times the amount of water as barley, should be boiled until the contents reduce to three-quarters. This milky mixture is a thirst quencher. According to Firdous Al-Hikmat, a suspension prepared from one part barley and 15 parts water until the volume is reduced to two-thirds after boiling is beneficial (Khan p.1-3). The Japanese drank the pure juice from young barley leaves in powdered form for a number of years (Hagiwara p.4). Science has proven the benefits of all of this and more. [continue]

The page has lots more information, a few photos, and a recipe for barley soup from Yemen.

From the Iona Abbey website:

One of Scotland's most historic and venerated sites, lona Abbey is a celebrated Christian centre and the burial place of early Scottish kings. The Abbey and Nunnery grounds house one of the most comprehensive collections of Christian carved stones in Scotland, ranging in age from 600AD to the 1600s.

Eight hundred years later the island's significance was reaffirmed when the Abbey buildings were restored and an active community again took up residence. Visitors can tour the Abbey, including Torr an Aba - the site of St Columba's writing cell - which provides a view over the Abbey; St Columba's Shrine; the Abbey church and cloisters. To the north-east of the Abbey is the Michael Chapel and the Infirmary Museum where a magnificent collection of carved stones is on view.

The site includes 360° views of the nunnery, the abbey cloisters, and the inside of the abbey.

Another interesting page is the Iona Abbey section of Undiscovered Scotland: The Ultimate Online Guide. There you'll find some photos, and a history of the island - everything from the Abbey's founding and Viking invasions to the recent restorations.

Related Links
Norsemen raid Abbey of Iona 795
Iona Abbey - 3 photos and short history
Isle of Iona - from Highlandtraveller.com
Andy's Iona photos
Iona photos by Michael Kennedy
Iona photos from the University of Edinburgh Chaplaincy
St Columba - from the Catholic Encyclopedia

From the Sydney Morning Herald: Prisoners bless nun who gave it all up. It's about a 76 year old nun who lives in a Mexican prison.

In between visits of succour and support to a seemingly endless number of prisoners and guards, the tiny 76-year-old erupts in peals of laughter from dawn till dark.

With a mischievous chuckle, she confirms that prisoners have tossed their guns away when she has marched into the middle of their deadly riots. They do not want the woman they call "Mama" to see them fighting.

Another chuckle accompanies her explanation of the way she trained for life in a cell surrounded by 4500 murderers, thieves and drug dealers: "I'm the mother of seven children," she said. "I'm prepared for everything." [continue]

From the Guardian, Monks Resist Greek Monastery Eviction.

Power and water have been cut, authorities have halted supplies of food and medicine, and a deadline for forcible eviction looms.

For now, though, more than 100 Greek Orthodox monks are resisting efforts to force them from their 1,000- year-old monastery on a remote peninsula in the Aegean Sea as punishment for their bitter opposition to reconciliation between orthodox Christians and the Roman Catholic church.

Holding up a knotted rope rosary, the monastery's abbot, who goes by the name Methodius, said the monks of the Esphigmenou Monastery would challenge the eviction order in Greece's highest administrative court. [continue]

Related article:
Remote Greek monks resist eviction

Thanks to the Guardian for this hilarious article, Mischievous saint gets to the bottom of parishioners' woes.

If another church had not grabbed the name, it might be called the Church of Moonies. For a small chapel at Murtosa, northern Portugal, is the only Roman Catholic church where it is acceptable to drop your trousers and show your bum.

The reason? The local saint, an allegedly mischievous chap called Goncalo, has a reputation for curing haemorrhoids. All you have to do is show him the affected region, say a prayer and, according to locals, bottom pain becomes a thing of the past.

The saint, a colourful 13th century priest, is also said to perform the miracle of casting out that most devilish of problems - teenage acne.

Villagers say people have been showing Saint Goncalo their bottoms for decades, often as a sign of thanks for having their prayers answered and their haemorrhoids eliminated. [continue]

Related link:
Saint has piles of followers

From sify.com we have news of the text messages the Vatican is sending out: Pope reaches out with daily SMS.

Pope John Paul II is to reach out to mobile phone users with SMS messages detailing his spiritual "thought for the day", Italy's biggest mobile phone operator and the Vatican said Tuesday.

Telecom Italia subsidiary TIM is cashing in on the craze in Italy for SMSs, or Short Messaging Service, on the ubiquitous "telefonino", as well as the Vatican's need to bring its spiritual message to young people.

"This shows once again that the mobile phone is part of our daily lives," said TIM's chief Marco De Benedetti. "In this case, it becomes a means of bringing to a wider public the messages of the sovereign pontiff."

Clients are asked to dial a service number to sign up for the daily 160 character message, costing 15 cents, or 4.50 euros(dollars) a month.

Suitable thoughts for the day will be selected by the Vatican's press section, distilled from John Paul II's prodigious output of encyclicals and homilies.

Catholics worldwide will have to wait for the service, which for the moment will be offered only in Italian.

Related links:
Pope spreads the word by SMS - ananova.com
SMS a day can keep the devil away - cnn.com
Pope spreads the Word by SMS - cathnews.com

Update - more still!
Honey, it's the Pope -smh.com.au

Wowza. Queen's University has 60 rare and unusual copies of the Bible on display at their Bibles Through the Ages exhibit. (Link slow to load due to Bible photos.) The exhibit includes a page from the Book of Kells, a Tyndale New Testament from 1534, a Walton Polyglot Bible from 1657, and a whole bunch of other stuff besides.

There are more details in the Kingston Whig Standard article, Bible studies: Rare Scriptures on view for first time in decades.

Related page:
1536 Tyndale New Testament Facsimile

Related .pdf file (you'll need the Acrobat Reader to see it):
Queens University On-line Gazette from December 16th, 2002. The article about the Bible exhibit is on page nine of that publication.

From a National Post article, Martha and the monks:

When people used to phone the monks at St. Benedict Monastery in Oxford, Mich., to ask if they had a mass that was open to the public, the monks were trained to reply, "Well, yes we do, but our mass is very early in the morning, and we're very hard to find. Have a blessed day." The monk who'd answered the call would then quickly put the phone down.

. . .

When the monks finally did overcome their introverted natures and started opening their doors to outsiders, the neighbouring public in Michigan was invited to partake in the kind of hospitality Benedictine monks have been practising for the last 15 centuries. It was a hospitality Lonni Collins Pratt says "just blew her away." It impressed her so much, the journalist and now good friend of Father Dan has spent the last year writing a book with him titled Radical Hospitality.

"The hospitality explored in this book is not the same kind you will learn about from Martha Stewart," Lonni and Father Dan write in Radical Hospitality. "Benedictine hospitality is not about sipping tea and making bland talk with people who live next door or work with you." It does not refer to hotels or cruise ships. It is not connected to entertaining friends and family in the warmth of candlelight with gleaming silver and ivory lace. Nor did it begin with Howard Johnson's and Good Housekeeping.

"Hospitality, as it has been practised from ancient days, protected people from the dangers of travelling alone. In St. Benedict's day there were no safe and cheap shelters for travellers. Along the way people could be brutalized, robbed, wounded, or lost. In those days monasteries saved lives when they opened their doors to strangers." And when the monks of ancient days opened up their monastery and made room for someone who was not one of them, they, too, took a risk. [continue]

Oh, and here's the book mentioned in the article: Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love.

Ananova will make you shiver today, with an article about an icy swim for Epiphany in Istanbul. (Great photo, by the way.)

Nearly a dozen people have competed in the freezing waters of Istanbul's Golden Horn to retrieve a wooden cross in a ceremony commemorating the baptism of Jesus.

Some 100 Greek Orthodox gathered on the shores of the Horn, to celebrate Epiphany with the ceremony of Blessing the Waters.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, led a two-hour liturgy at the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George.

Bartholomew, who is based in Istanbul, threw a gold-painted wooden cross into the water.

Giorgos Aristotelis Sakellariou, out-swam 10 competitors and was first to reach the cross. [continue]

Christians from several traditions start celebrating Christmas today, because they're using the old Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian one. If you're interested in the traditions associated with these celebrations, see the Guelph Mercury's Orthodox Christmas: Same idea at different time, Canada.com's Rich symbolism plays large role in Ukrainian Christmas, and the Guardian's Russians Mark Orthodox Christmas. Fascinating.

Here's an interesting article in today's Seattle Times, Ethiopian Christmas celebrations begin.

The congregation of St. Gebriel Church of the Ethiopians spills from the pews into the aisle. The men sit to one side. On the other, women sit wrapped in white shawls, the edges embroidered in yellow and green. Beneath a string of chandeliers, the crowd flows from the aisle into the foyer and trickles down the stairs.

Even those without a view of the altar stand and sing in Amharic, the language of Ethiopia. Among the swaying choir one man raps on a drum, letting out a deep boom. Female voices respond in a piercing chorus of ululations.

St. Gebriel's is in the middle of Seattle's Central Area, but, from the inside on a Sunday morning, it could easily pass for Ethiopia. Tomorrow night, Ethiopian Orthodox Christians will begin their Christmas celebrations, almost two weeks after many children left shredded wrapping paper piled around their Christmas trees. [continue]

From the Pluscarden Abbey website:

One of Northern Scotland's most unusual attractions and one which is unique in Britain, is Pluscarden Abbey, near Elgin. It is the only medieval monastery in Britain still inhabited by monks and being used for its original purpose. Founded in 1230 by Alexander II, its site in a sheltered, south-facing glen against a background of forested hillside, adds to its beauty.

The road to Pluscarden winds south-west across the wooded countryside around Elgin, Scotland. Six miles are all that separate the busy High Street of the county town from this peaceful valley, but those six miles take us back over six centuries of time. The atmosphere of quiet reflection and of work dedicated to the glory of God is the same today as it was in the thirteenth century when an organised community of monks first came to this part of Morayshire. Under the skilful hands of the present-day brethren, Pluscarden Abbey is a living entity that is returning again to something approaching its former splendour after so long a period of pillage and decay. If you are privileged to visit the Abbey today, you will enjoy not only the beauty of its architecture and its setting, but also something of the restful atmosphere of devotion that has so deeply permeated this little corner of Scotland.

The abbey's website includes a history page and information about Benedictine monasticism.

The Guardian's travel page suggests a few options for retreat holidays. They write about a spa, then this:

It's not yet light but I'm sitting in a chilly chapel for one hour 45 minutes of Gregorian Chant and prayer. Over the course of a day not designed for sufferers of chronic lumbago, I'll attend six more services, spending more than four hours on a hard pew listening to Latin worship.

It's not an endurance test. It's one of the most restful breaks of my life. The monks' mesmerising chant, washing over me like a tranquilliser, is as noisy as it gets at Pluscarden Abbey near Elgin in north-east Scotland. I'm on a four-day silent retreat that Father Giles, the Prior, refers to as 'solitude, soliloquy and straightening of the soul'.

Here's the rest of the article, although you'll have to scroll down a bit to get to the part about Pluscarden Abbey.

Although it has been gone for almost 2,000 years, the temple at Jerusalem still stands at the center of Jewish belief and imagination.

Much of the Bible and accompanying oral tradition allude to it. The tabernacle, a portable sanctuary in the wilderness, was its prototype. The priestly garb, the sacrificial system and the purity laws all grew out of temple worship.

Yet the ancient temple remains only as a collective memory and intellectual tradition rather than a tangible, visible reality.

First built by King Solomon, then rebuilt by Herod only to be destroyed by the Romans, the temple took on an idealized form whose rites and services are largely unfamiliar to most Jews, says Catriel Sugarman, a professional craftsman in Israel who has spent more than 20 years studying the texts about the ancient structure.

With his research, Sugarman hopes to fill in the visual gaps.

He has built a maple wood model, about 6 feet by 5 feet, which he believes to be the most accurate reconstruction in existence. It was funded by an anonymous philanthropist and is kept in a private residence in Israel.

That's from Craftsman to Show Detailed Model of Ancient Jewish Temple of Jerusalem in the Salt Lake Tribune.

There are several photos of the model at the home page for Catriel's Model of the Beit HaMikdash. (It's hosted on Geocities, so access may be slow.)

Midkash in Miniature: Catriel's Models

Ananova reports that Turkey is demanding the return of St Nick's bones.

The Turkish Santa Claus Foundation is demanding Italy to return the bones of the Christmas icon.

Chairman Muammer Karabulut says the remains of St Nicholas, from whom the myth of Santa Claus emerged, were stolen from Turkey by pirates in the 11th century.

St Nicholas was born and served as bishop of the Mediterranean town of Demre, in the 4th century AD. He was buried there, but his remains were later taken to the Italian town of Bari.

"We want them returned in 2003. We're starting a campaign this year for them to be given back," Mr Karabulut said.

"He belongs in Turkey," Mr Karabulut said. [continue]

Related links
CNN: Turkish group demands Santa's bones
St Nicholas day (Mirabilis.ca entry from Dec 6th, 2002)
History of St Nicholas

In case you've been wondering, the saint of the day for December 30th is St. Egwin.

You say you’re not familiar with today’s saint? Chances are you aren’t—unless you’re especially informed about Benedictine bishops who established monasteries in medieval England.

Born of royal blood in the 7th century, Egwin entered a monastery and was enthusiastically received by royalty, clergy and the people as the bishop of Worcester, England. As a bishop he was known as a protector of orphans and the widowed and a fair judge. Who could argue with that?

His popularity didn’t hold up among members of the clergy, however. They saw him as overly strict, while he felt he was simply trying to correct abuses and impose appropriate disciplines. Bitter resentments arose, and Egwin made his way to Rome to present his case to Pope Constantine. The case against Egwin was examined and annulled.

Upon his return to England, he founded Evesham Abbey, which became one of the great Benedictine houses of medieval England. It was dedicated to Mary, who had reportedly made it known to Egwin just where a church should be built in her honor.

He died at the abbey on December 30, in the year 717. Following his burial many miracles were attributed to him: The blind could see, the deaf could hear, the sick were healed.

This comes from the Saint of the Day website, which serves up the appropriate saintly details every day of the year. I've become rather fond of this site, which is why you'll find it in the handy navigation bar on the right. (Those who read the RSS/XML version or the PDA version of Mirabilis.ca just have to imagine that part.)

Related links:
Magnificat.ca calendar of the saints
Patron Saints Index at Catholic Forum
Saints of Dec 30th
CIN on St Egwin

"Prayer has been offered here for nearly one thousand years" says the York Minster website, which also points out that York Minster is the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe. On the website you can explore York Minster Cathedral from the nave right through to the chapter house, and read about the history of York and the cathedral.

Related links:
definition of minster
another tour of York Minster, this one from salvonet.com

From a GoNomad.com article, Welcome to Heaven: A 650-Year-Old Eritrean Monastery in the Clouds.

A 2,500-foot vertical ascent starts from the dusty town of Nefesit, halfway between Eritrea's capital city of Asmara and the Red Sea port of Massawa. I bear an introduction from the monastery's liaison in Asmara. As instructed, I also carry a bottle of Chianti, as well as corned beef, cheese, and bread. I am to ask for Brother Tefsamarian, the only monk allowed contact with visitors.

I am accompanied by Samuel Mehari, a bellboy in my hotel who wants to learn to guide in this tourism-friendly country. We huff our way through the switchbacks, looking in vain for shade. Here and there we stumble over shell casings from the 30-year Eritrean war of independence.

"Samuel," I ask, "what if we climb all the way just to be turned away at the top?"

"Don't worry," he says with a smile. "Monks like wine more than they dislike visitors."

Debre Bizen's library is famous for its over 1,000 illustrated manuscripts, which show how more than once in the monastery's long history, the monks have had to defend it with their lives, so they have reason to fear unknown visitors. [continue]

The Nefasit - Debre Bizen page has a few photos, including one of the monastery.

Ananova reports on a seriously devoted Muslim dog:

A stray dog in India responds to Muslim calls for prayers five times a day.

Socksy, a black mongrel, runs towards the Memon Mosque when the muezzin calls out the faithful for azaan, and begins to wail in tune.

The Mid-day newspaper reports that locals at Lonavala, near Bombay, say the dog has not missed a single prayer in the last nine years.

Alka Bhandurkar, a female resident, said: "She is extremely alert. She stops baying exactly at the same time the azaan stops."

That reminds me of the EWTN story about Preta, the dog in Spain who apparently walks 16 miles each Sunday, by herself, to go to Mass.

The Monks of New Skete support their community by raising German shepherds and by training dogs. They've been at it for thirty years, and their books and videos get rave reviews from dog owners.

Today Alertnet has an article about the monks, Rural New York monks train dogs with spiritual touch. [Update: article no longer available.] I love this part:

The spiritual side to the training program is palpable. The monks are quiet and calm. So, for the most part, are the dogs.

"We're monks first, and our life is pretty much dedicated to a search for God and that affects how we deal with the dogs and how we deal with the people who bring their dogs to us," Brother Christopher said.

So calm are the dogs at New Skete, in fact, that they used to attend church services at the monastery with the monks and townspeople from nearby Cambridge, a tiny rural crossroads less than two miles (3.2 km) from the Vermont state border.

But that practice had to come to an end, said Brother Marc, one of the monastery's founding monks.

"They snored," he said.

Related links
New Skete Monks -NewSketeMonks.com
Raising Your Dog with The Monks of New Skete - DogsBestFriend.com
The monks and dogs of New Skete - TheWitness.org

The monks' dog training books at amazon.com:
How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend: The Classic Training Manual for Dog Owners
The Art of Raising a Puppy

Hmm! Here's a different sort of shopping website: Monastery Greetings only sells products from monasteries, religious communities and hermitages. They've got fruitcake and preserves made by Trappists, incense from Mt Athos, orthodox icons, and some other stuff as well.

Their deadline for Christmas orders was December 6th, but I figure that's only for people who view Christmas as a one-day thing, and must therefore have everything organized by December 25th. Here we do the full twelve days of Christmas, so not a problem.

Updates:

From zwire.com: Home of the Monastery Fruit Cake. (May 30, 2003)
From Fredricksburg.com: Monks support abbey with fruitcake business - (October 17th, 2003)

If you were a kid in Austria, you'd be expecting a visit from St Niklaus today. You might be a bit concerned about the Krampus, but St Niklaus is the star of the day, bringing treats and sweets. So who is St Nicholas, anyway, and why does he have three gold balls as a symbol? What's the deal with the Krumpus and the other creatures who travel with the saint? The St Nicholas Centre has tons of information about all of this. Check out the history of Santa Claus, St Nicholas traditions around the world, St Nicholas icons, and e-cards.

The tomb of St. Peter is part of an ancient Roman necropolis buried 40 feet deep under St. Peter’s Basilica. Beyond a pilgrimage to Christian origins, though, this ancient cemetery is also part of a riveting detective story. Are Peter’s bones buried in the place long known as Peter’s tomb? Despite Paul VI’s unequivocal yes in 1968, questions have long lingered. Perhaps they always will.

After two years of cleaning, lighting, and reconstruction, this ancient cemetery is more than ever like it was when small bands of Christians furtively scratched their testimonies on its walls. Visitors can soak in the spiritual energy, muse over whether the bones preserved under Plexiglas are really St. Peter’s – and ponder how to reconcile this humble legacy of a persecuted sect with the massive baroque splendor of the 16th-century basilica that rises above it.

From The Bones of St. Peter, in which the author describes his visit to Peter's tomb.

Related book:
The Bones of St. Peter: A 1st Full Account of the Search for the Apostle's Body.

Related websites:
In search of St. Peter's Tomb

Here's Artcyclopedia's Advent Calendar, which is the best online advent calendar I've seen.

Related links:
Advent info from Catholic.org
Advent and Christmas Reflections

The Cistercian Order was the most important of the new religious orders which developed in western Europe in the late eleventh century in response to movements for reform in the Church. Cistercians — also known as White Monks — dominated the spread of new monastic foundations in Europe and spread rapidly from Burgundy where the order began throughout France, Britain and Ireland. In Britain, their greatest impact was in the north, where Yorkshire became the nerve-centre of the monastic life.

From The Cistercian Order page of the Cistercians in Yorkshire website. Fascinating!

There's lots of information here. Read about the history of the order in Britain, details about numerous abbeys, notes on Cistercian life, the dissolution of the monasteries in Yorkshire and throughout Britain, and so forth.

On a side note, how many times have you seen an illustration of a mostly bald monk, with just a fringe of hair left? I always thought it was because the monastery attracted a certain number of bald guys, but there's more to it than that. The clothing page points out that monks were tonsured: " i.e. the crown of the head was shaved, leaving a band of hair below the ears, to symbolise the Crown of Thorns. This rite of passage was performed after the novice had made his profession in the chapter-house, and before he took his vows in the church. Subsequent shaving occurred in the cloister about nine times a year."

Well. That explains a lot.

The Cistercian Order was the most important of the new religious orders which developed in western Europe in the late eleventh century in response to movements for reform in the Church. Cistercians — also known as White Monks — dominated the spread of new monastic foundations in Europe and spread rapidly from Burgundy where the order began throughout France, Britain and Ireland. In Britain, their greatest impact was in the north, where Yorkshire became the nerve-centre of the monastic life.

From The Cistercian Order page of the Cistercians in Yorkshire website. Fascinating!

There's lots of information here. Read about the history of the order in Britain, details about numerous abbeys, notes on Cistercian life, the dissolution of the monasteries in Yorkshire and throughout Britain, and so forth.

On a side note, how many times have you seen an illustration of a mostly bald monk, with just a fringe of hair left? I always thought it was because the monastery attracted a certain number of bald guys, but there's more to it than that. The clothing page points out that monks were tonsured: " i.e. the crown of the head was shaved, leaving a band of hair below the ears, to symbolise the Crown of Thorns. This rite of passage was performed after the novice had made his profession in the chapter-house, and before he took his vows in the church. Subsequent shaving occurred in the cloister about nine times a year."

Well. That explains a lot.

In England last winter I discovered all sorts of misericords like this one. For some reason misericords popped into my head today, and I set off to find some on the web.

A misericord is a little carved ledge on the underside of a flip-up seat. Monks had to stand for a long time during services, but they could at least rest a bit on the misericords. Decorative carvings on misericords are the fascinating part - some of them are very playful, and not at all religious in nature.

Dr. Eric Webb's page, The Misericords of Wells Cathedral, has a more detailed explanation. The misericords page at reep.org is good fun, and perhaps I could tempt you to the attractive and informative Misericords Lecture. Oh, and then there's the Misericord Tour at the Virtual Museum of Educational Iconics, too.

Related Links:
definition and etymology of misericord
Oak Apple Designs offers reproductions of medieval wood carvings. Good photos here.

Books:
A Little Book of Misericords
A guide to church woodcarvings: misericords and bench-ends
Medieval woodwork in Exeter Cathedral

From a Smithsonian magazine article, Inscribing the Word:

At a small scriptorium near Monmouth, Wales, several calligraphers and artists are bent over drafting tables. They are working on the first Bible to be written and illustrated entirely by hand since the invention of movable type more than 500 years ago. Worktables hold the tools of the trade: small piles of gold leaf, brushes to apply it, blunt hematite burnishers to polish it, jars filled with quills, bottles of soot- black ink, small tins of brilliant hues.

The project is the St John's Bible, a collaboration between Saint John's Abbey in Minnesota and a scriptorium team in Wales. Saint John's is raising money and providing illustration ideas. Meanwhile, the scribes and artists in Wales are producing the Bible, working with traditional materials and a computer layout program.

If this sounds interesting, do visit the St John's Bible website. A person could spend hours browsing there! The see and hear pages offer photos of the text, illuminations, and marginalia... and there are even streaming video clips to watch. The why and how section has details on the layout and design process, and on the tools and materials.

Related Links:
St John's Bible Illuminates the New Millennium
An Ancient Art Recreated for Today
Copying the Bible like a medieval monk
Bible Scribe
New Bible
Exhibit marks progress in illuminated, calligraphic Bible.
The Word made Art
Saint John's Abbey
Hill Monastic Manuscript Library

Oh! Wired has an interesting article today, The Pope's Astrophysicist. Here's the first part:

We have come to meet the Pope. It's tourist season, and the Sistine Chapel is punishingly full. Visitors from around the world crowd together, ogling Michelangelo's ceiling. At the back of the chapel, our little group of scientists and theologians has gathered, a small knot trying to cohere against the jostling throng. Our audience with John Paul is the culmination of a weeklong conference on science and religion convened by the Vatican Observatory. Host and guide Father George Coyne glances nervously at his watch, then shepherds us through a hidden door and into a private chamber beyond — backstage at the Vatican.

For nearly a quarter century, Coyne has been the director and senior scientist at the Vatican Observatory, the Roman Catholic Church's beachhead on the shores of astronomical research. The Church's interest in the stars dates back to well before Galileo's time. Five hundred years ago, papal astronomers in charge of fixing Easter's date noticed that the Julian calendar was getting out of sync with the stars, and in 1582 they replaced it with the Gregorian. In 1891, long after the Church had accepted the heliocentric universe, Pope Leo XIII officially founded the Observatory so that "everyone might see clearly that the Church and her Pastors are not opposed to true and solid science."

Today, the Vatican Observatory Research Group boasts 13 professional astronomers and cosmologists, all of them Jesuits. The group specializes in fields like galaxy formation and, to quote from their latest annual report, "the dynamics of inflationary universes with positive spatial curvature."

En route to His Holiness, we're led through endless miles of corridors, every yard the work of Italian master craftsmen. Around one corner, an entire wall erupts with rococo excess as, in front of us, Christ rises into the heavens, his feet hovering yards above the ground. "They really knew what miracles were back then," quips the English cosmologist Paul Davies. We walk on, marveling at the might of the Catholic Church congealed into aesthetic overload. Cardinals swoosh by swathed in deep-red satin. Bishops shimmer in rose-colored silk. Swiss Guards stand watch in multicolored velvet pantaloons.

Here's the rest of the article.

Oh, look. The (US) National Catholic Register has an article on Catholicism in Canada: The World Youth Day Inspires Surge of Orthodoxy North of the Border.

Archbishop Gervais himself said on Sept. 20 that signs of renewal "are numerous enough to give me hope that things are going to get better."

Well, cool.

The Vatican is planning to make lots of material available in electronic form. Plans include a website for the Secret Archives, and some CDs that will contain archival materials related to prisoners of war during the WW2.

Here are some details from a Catholic news service article:

Scholars currently have access to Vatican archival material through the reign of Pope Benedict XV, who died in 1922. Cardinal Mejia noted that beginning next year the Vatican will make available documents regarding relations with Germany in 1922-39, the period of Pius XI's pontificate. In 2005, all documents from that period will be made available.

Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, head of the office that oversees the Vatican Web site, said the addition of sections dedicated to the library and archive demonstrated a shift in the Web site's focus from providing strictly documentary material to also offering "cultural projects."

He said the Vatican also was studying plans to launch a "great Catholic portal" to provide an "encounter with the Catholic Church" to Web surfers, but he provided no details. In the past, Vatican Internet officials have talked about creating a more interactive site to complement its current site, dedicated primarily to church texts.

Related Links:

Vatican Secret Archives - current site

The Vatican Library site has been updated at last, and now contains lots more information and many beautiful images. Check out the Treasures of the Library or maybe the Gospels of the Peoples section.

An ITworld.com article about the project, HP, Vatican bring Apostolic Library online, says:

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has been tapped by Pope John Paul II to provide public online access to the Vatican's Apostolic Library, which will include posting images of manuscripts that have only been accessible to professional scholars and professors, HP said in a joint statement with the Vatican Tuesday.

As part of its philanthropy program, HP of Palo Alto, California, has been providing its infrastructure technology to assist the Vatican with adding Apostolic Library access to its existing Web site, as well as building faster access to the Vatican Library site and facilitating navigation of the bibliographic database, according to the statement.

Related Link:

New web site of the Vatican Apostolic Library presented - from Vatican Information Service, through EWTN.

If I want to know what that pretty red woodpecker in the garden is, I can refer to some kind of bird guide book to find out. Those books contain descriptions of plumage and habits, so birds are easy to identify once one has a good field guide.

Has anyone produced a similar sort of guidebook to the habits worn by members of religious orders? When I see a nun on the streets of Rome, I'd like to know if she's a Carmelite, a Franciscan, a Dominican, or something else altogether. I need a spotters' guide. (I can't just ask; I don't know enough Italian.) If you have any resources to suggest, please write.

A newly discovered ancient limestone box with a flowing Aramaic inscription could include the earliest mention of Jesus outside the Bible — and may turn out to be the most-dazzling archaeological discovery in decades.

The rough-hewn object — about the size of a big toolbox — appears to be a "bone box" used in 1st century burial rituals in Jerusalem. Letters etched into its side read, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."

Whether it's truly from about A.D. 63 — and whether it really refers to three of history's most famous family members — is likely to be widely debated. But if so, it would be the first extraBiblical mention of Jesus or his relatives created shortly after their lifetimes.

If authentic, "it's high on the list — probably No. 1" of the most important Jesus related artifacts, says John Dominic Crossan, author of "Excavating Jesus." It is "the closest we come archeologically to Jesus."

This is from an article entitled Ancient 'bone box' may be earliest link to Jesus at csmonitor.com. The article has lots more information, and a photo of the lettering. Go take a look, and see why experts disagree about the ossuary's authenticity.

Related Links:
Scholar Touts Oldest Link to Jesus - article from newsday.com
Stunning New Evidence that Jesus Lived - article from Christianity Today
Possible Earliest Reference of Jesus Found - article from Washington Post
Oldest archaeological evidence of Jesus discovered: Expert - article from Times of India
Box may be evidence of Jesus -News Interactive article
Box may have first mention of Jesus - Guardian article
Burial box inscription could be oldest archaeological link to Jesus - article from Online Athens
Jesus Inscription Ripe for Debate - another article from the Guardian
Artifact found in Jerusalem could relate to Jesus - article from International Herald Tribune
'Jesus' Inscription on Stone May Be Earliest Ever Found - New York Times article (may require registration; it's free.)

Update:
Jesus' Brother's "Bone Box" Closer to Being Authenticated - National Geographic, April 19th, 2003.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux website has photos of this book of hours, and background information.

From the intro page:

This tiny illuminated manuscript was made between 1324 and 1328 for Jeanne d'Evreux, queen of France, who died in 1371. (You can see her on the left, reading, as she kneels in the archway.) It is almost certain that her husband, King Charles IV (1294–1328), commissioned the book from the artist Jean Pucelle. A Book of Hours such as this contains prayers to be recited eight times each day, mimicking the long- established practice of monks and nuns. This manuscript contains two different cycles of prayers, or offices; one set is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the other to Louis IX, the sainted king of France (1214–1270) and Jeanne d'Evreux's great-grandfather. The offices are composed around the Psalms of King David, and include hymns, standard prayers, and special lessons about the life of Saint Louis, with the Penitential Psalms at the end. In addition, a calendar is inserted at the beginning of the book.

Related Links:
The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux - CDROM
The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux - info about the book, and about the facsimile edition.
Exhibition Review: The Hours of Jeanne d' Evreux at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Is the shroud of Turin really the burial cloth of Christ? A United Press article published in the Washington Times, Cloth expert calls shroud of Turin authentic, [sorry, that article is no longer available] reports that:

A renowned textile historian has become the latest specialist to say that the Turin shroud bearing the features of a crucified man may well be the cloth that enveloped the body of Christ.

Disputing inconclusive carbon-dating tests suggesting the shroud hailed from medieval times, Swiss specialist Mechthild Flury-Lemberg said it could be almost 2,000 years old.

Perhaps even more important is what Mrs. Flury-Lemberg saw when she examined the back of the shroud, the first researcher ever to do so. While it bore bloodstains, there were no mysterious marks comparable to those on the front of the cloth.

These marks show an amazingly detailed picture of a bearded man who had been beaten about the body, crowned with thorns and pierced with nails through the wrists and the feet.

The Council for Study of the Shroud of Turin has more information about the shroud, including lots of photos.

Related Links:

Shroud of Turin Education Project
The Shroud of Turin Story - A Guide to the Facts
Turin Shroud Undergoes New Tests - discovery.com article
The Holy Shroud (of Turin) - from the Catholic Encyclopedia
Plants shed light on Turin Shroud - BBC article
Turin shroud 'probably was genuine' - Ananova article

I've been reading up on the development of Christian liturgy, and one of the most enjoyable sites on this topic has got to be Liturgica. It's attractive, has good information, and the background music includes things like Gregorian and Byzantine chant. There's lots to learn, and "sacred sample" .mp3s to download. The liturgics section includes pages on Jewish, Early Christian, Eastern Orthodox, Western Latin, and Protestant liturgy.

When I was a kid, sermons went on forever and ever and ever, and I was bored out of my tree. Kofuzi probably had it worse, but came up with a more interesting solution than I did. Kofuzi writes:

when my father preaches, it is in korean. i still don't understand most of what he says in his sermons, but when i was little, i would especially not understand anything. so, to keep myself from crying from boredom or falling asleep, i would make up translations for what my father was saying. it was much more interesting that way.

one year, he had 14 consecutive sermons about how cool it would be to have a family of chimpanzees live in your house with you. especially since you could dress them up like people and let them watch tv and eat pizza.

Get there two hours early, the priest from Santa Susanna advised. So at 8 am we arrived at the Vatican, and joined a chaotic sort of queue for the papal audience. There were 12 thousand people, all clutching red tickets, all being gently pushed by the crowd behind towards three security checkpoints. We were surrounded by clusters of priests, nuns, and pilgrimage groups from all over Europe, Mexico, and from the US.

Our first hour at the Vatican was spent in this crowd, waiting. It was pleasant enough... St Peter's is beautiful in the early morning sunshine, and everyone in the papal audience crowd is happy and excited.

Once inside the auditorium, we had another long wait before the Pope's scheduled arrival at 10:30. The visiting Polish brass band practiced, and so did another band from Germany, and some singers. Cardinals and monsignors began to fill the seats on stage. We had a good look 'round the auditorium, which has got to be the ugliest part of the Vatican. (It's one of those 1970s regretable things, with a hideous sculpture stretching all the way across the back of the stage.)

When the pope arrived, he was on a rolling podium, and was pushed over to his chair. There was much cheering and applause, and great big smiles. People from the back of the auditorium snuck down the middle aisle towards the front to get better photos. Security guys kept sending them back to their seats.

The pope spoke Czech, Slovak, Polish, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. It must have been quite an effort for him; his English was so slurred that I had to struggle to understand what he was saying. Every time we switched languages, a monsignor (those are the guys with purple sashes, right?) would speak in that language, welcoming pilgrimage groups by name. Most of the groups jumped up, cheered, and waved their flags in response, but the singing groups sang and the brass bands played when they were mentioned.

Here's Zenit's report on the Pope's September 11th address.

My favourite part was at the end, when we all prayed together in Latin:
Pater noster, qui es in caelis,
sanctificetur nomen tuum.
Adveniat regnum tuum.
Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.
Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie,
et dimitte nobis debita nostra,
sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem:
sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

If I were in serious trouble, I'd be thrilled to have Bishop Jorge Leonardo Gomez Serna on my side. A Catholic news article, Colombian bishop leads dramatic hostage rescue bid, explains what the bishop's been up to:

A Colombian bishop staged a bold mission to obtain the release of hostages held by rebel forces, leading 500 people from his diocese into a dramatic confrontation with the guerillas, a Bogota journal has reported.

Yay bishop! I wonder what the guerillas thought of this? Here's more from the article:

Eventually the convoy encountered ELN guerillas, and the bishop demanded a meeting with their leaders. After some negotiations, a local commander identified as "Samuel" appeared with several aides. The bishop then surprised the group by beginning to pray the Rosary, and in a second surprise the guerilla leaders joined in the prayer.

"Samuel" announced that he would release one hostage immediately, and others in coming days. But Fr de Roux rejected that offer. "If you are waiting for us to thank you, we will not," the priest said. "Freedom is a right that comes from God, and by releasing hostages you are only recognising that right-- not doing us any favour."

It's exciting enough that we're going to Rome, but cooler news yet: we have tickets to next Wednesday's Papal Audience! I don't know about your agenda, but nothing on my calendar out-ranks that.

Several reports have told of plans to search for St. Matthew's burial site at Issyk-Kul Lake, Kyrgyzstan. Last summer a news24.com article, Archaeologists to dig for apostle Matthew, [Update: sorry, that article is no longer available] explained that

Vladimir Ploskikh, a member of Kyrgyzstan's Academy of Sciences, said the expedition, inspired by old legends, will set out under his lead in the near future.

A manuscript of a long-ago archbishop known as Vladimir says the body "was kept in a monastery on the shore of the Issyk-Kul Lake and the whole Christian world knew about it," according to Ploskikh.

(Take a look at this map, apparently from the Bibliothèque National de France's collection. I'm guessing it's part of the manuscript mentioned in the article quoted above.)

Today a somewhat disjointed Pravda article reports that "IPV News USA Director Sergey Melnikoff is certain that he found the grave of one of the authors of the Gospel." Ah, but did he? The article also mentions that "Representatives of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences claimed that Sergey Melnikoff falsified his discoveries in his chase after a piece of sensation."

Meanwhile, others think that Matthew is buried at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Still others believe he's in Salerno, Italy or in Trier, Germany.

Related links:
About Kyrgyzstan - from the Kyrgyz Embassy in England.
Issyk Kul - Wikipedia
The Issyk Kul Lake - photo page - sangha.net
Issyk-Kul - the sunken cities, and treasures: facts and legends - elcat.kg
Lake Issyk-Kul - studyrussian.com (Text and photos)

You see a Greek Orthodox monk lighting candles. You hear the Armenian Orthodox choir singing their Liturgy. You pass by a small chapel where a Copt Orthodox priest devoutly says his prayer and nearby a Syrian Orthodox monk recites his. You continue on and meet a Franciscan friar preparing an altar for the celebration of the mass.

This is too much for your pious expectations. Where have you ended up? Is this the place that has played such an important role during the centuries? Is this what you had expected to see? But then, all of a sudden it dawns on you and it starts to sink in.

Here, at this site an important event took place. An event of light, a reality of life, the mystery of salvation. You walk towards the shabby aedicula over the empty tomb and upon stepping in you almost hear for yourself the echo of the voice "He has risen! He is not here!". You kneel down and without being disturbed by the decorations put up at this spot you realize you are in the tomb where the Lord of Life lay dead and from where the Lord of Love triumphed over the powers of evil, the power of death! "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

This is from a comprehensive website about the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The site includes historical information, lots and lots of details, and photos, many of which are available in medium or extra large formats, like the one here. Well worth a visit, this.

Here's a new Catholic blog I like: Meet Joe Convert. 'In Which Joe Wakes Up To Find He's ''Turned Catholic...''' The blog chronicles Joe's "ongoing experience as a evangelical protestant preparing to enter the Catholic Church."

The Vatican has published the Call of Creation, an overview of the church's teaching on the environment. According to an article at totalcatholic.com, the document concludes that "urgent action is needed to protect our planet from further destruction." The document apparently points out that "faith groups have the specific task of communicating to their governments the spiritual and moral foundations of sustainable living and development."

It seems to me that the church has the specific task of setting a good example of environmental stewardship for the rest of society. I hope that's mentioned in the document as well.

Related link:
Vatican publishes overview of church teaching on environment

Previous Mirabilis.ca posts on similar topics:
Bishops fear for future of planet
Catholic Earthcare Australia
Bartholomew, the Green Patriarch
Patriarch wins Sophie prize
Bartholomew, on the environment

Whatever happened to the Ark of the Covenant? Theories vary, but one of the most interesting claims is that the Ark is in Ethiopia. Graham Hancock's amazing The Sign and the Seal pages at One World magazine tell about his trip to Axum, Ethiopia, and to the chapel where Ethiopians say the Ark resides.

Related Links:
The Ark of the Covenant - Scriptural evidence points to Ethiopia
Keeper of the Ark - is the Ark of the Covenant in Axum, Ethiopia?
What happened to the Ark?
Sacred sites of Ethiopia
Does 'lost' Ark exist in Ethiopia?
The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant - Graham Hancock's book.

From the Catholicity newsletter:

YES, TRY THIS AT HOME. Tired of turning down requests to go to Catholic "meetings" from well-meaning members of prayer groups and lay movements? Then consider joining the ultra-elite, supremely-secret Catholic lay movement I founded (privately, of course, and with my wife, as always) years ago called Opus Christi: the Apostolate for Staying Home with Your Wife and Kids. The hyper-challenging "norms" of this apostolate are not for the faint-hearted; we take on such spiritual crosses as eating dinner as a family, praying the Rosary out loud every evening, Doing Not Much of Anything on Sundays, and my favorite, Falling asleep draped all over your spouse in the sanctuary of your own bedroom. Of course, I cannot, and absolutely will not, reveal any of the norms to you (since it's so secretive) and neither can you as you turn down requests to go to meetings, and some of our members are so immersed in this apostolate that they don't realize they are in it. So let's just keep this between you, me, and our seventy thousand Catholic friends reading this.

Another interesting thing found while looking for something else! This is from bulletin of Saint Pius X in London, Ontario.

Why did Jesus ask to be baptised?
Neither John nor Jesus invented baptism. It had been practiced for centuries among the Jews as a ritual equivalent of Confession. Until the fall of the Temple in 72 A.D. it was common for Jewish people to make a spiritual cleansing in a special pool called a MIKVEH--literally a "collection of water". This was said to remove spiritual impurity and sin. Men did this weekly on the eve of the Sabbath. Women did it monthly. Converts were also expected to do it before entering Judaism. Orthodox Jews still retain the rite. John preached that such a bath was a necessary preparation for the cataclysm that would be wrought by the coming Messiah. Jesus transformed this continual ritual into the one single, definitive act by which we begin our faith. In effect he fused his divine essence with the water and the ceremony.

Well, who knew? Everybody but me, probably.

Related Links
Entering the Mikveh article from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations website
London's only remaining medieval Mikveh discovered in City Dig

It's the feast day of St Lawrence today, and that Fra Angelico painting (Saint Lawrence Receiving the Treasures of the Church from Pope Sixtus II) is right here.

(The Catholic Encyclopedia has more on St. Lawrence.)

The Lord's prayer page at sacaredtexts.com starts off with the Pater Noster, the Latin version of the prayer. Then it has five English versions. There's a modern version, a version found in a 13th century manuscript in the library of Caius College, and a couple of versions in between. (14th century, 15th century, and, 1538.)

OK, before you go look, see if you can guess which century this belongs to: "come thi kyngdom: fulfild be thi wil in heuene as in erthe."

Having just had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, I was not expecting to be cheered by a mere website. Disputations, though, was a splendid tonic. I loved the three August 7th posts: Reeves and the Futile Spirit, Order your life however you like, and Top Ten Reasons to Join the Dominican Order. Hee!

Disputations has lots of serious and excellent content, in addition to the items that amused me so today.

All Saints Anglican in Erin, Ontario has come up with an unusual fundraiser/promotional activity. They've had some trading cards made - you know, like the sports cards kids trade at school. But these cards feature saints.

With a nod towards their church's name, they decided to use photographs of local residents, most of whom are parish members, to serve as models for trading cards featuring a variety of saints: Agatha, Amand, Anthony, Cosmas and Damian (two on one card), Elizabeth of Hungary, Florian, Francis, Jerome, Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea, Joseph of Cupertino, Matthew, Sebastian, Thomas More and the Archangel Michael.

The backs of the cards have a Bible verse or a quotation from each saint, and a short hagiography. Most saints are patrons of a particular occupation, so the models are selected for the work they do. For example, Erin's fire chief stands in for St. Florian, the patron saint of firemen. The local undertaker is on the card honouring St. Joseph of Arimathea, patron saint of undertakers, and so on.

(This excerpt is from an article about the cards on the the Report.ca website.)

The Burnet Psalter is a fifteenth century illuminated manuscript, and now photos of the whole thing are up on the web. Wow. Take a look at the office of the BVM pages, and just see if you can resist further exploration. The index of the manuscript links to the rest of the book.

I like the details in the writing of the manuscript section. Somehow just knowing that the script is littera miniscula gothica textualis quadrata libraria does my heart good.

OK, where'd it go? A while back some blogger posted a microbreviary. Now I can't remember where I saw it, and Google hasn't indexed the appropriate pages yet. A search for microbreviary on Google tells me there are no results for that term, and then it helpfully re-directs me to pages containing the term microbrewery. I like beer as much as anybody, but I did actually want the microbreviary this time. If you know where it is, please send me a note. I'll be at the microbrewery until I hear from somebody.

Update:
Found! (Thanks to Tom Kreitzberg, who sent me the URL.) Here's the Microbreviary. It's at Disputations.

While snooping around on the web for information about churches in Rome, I found the Santa Susanna website. How unusual: it's an English-speaking Catholic church, bang-smack in the middle of Rome. Cardinal Law of Boston is the church's titular Cardinal.

The website is beautiful, easy to navigate, and informative. And just imagine visiting a church that's completely covered in frescoes! Perhaps I'll stop in and have a look 'round when we go to Rome next month.

The National Post has published an article about modern Catholic church design. It explains that there have been changes since Vatican II, that new churches are less ornate, that the priest now faces the congregation, and so forth. Also mentioned are Sacrosanctum Concilium, and a Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops guide for the construction of new churches called Our Place of Worship.

The article doesn't say a thing about incredibly ugly Catholic church buildings, constructed recently, apparently with Our Place of Worship or some similar thing in mind.

People involved with church construction committees would do well to read through the Adoremus website, and maybe a copy of Ugly As Sin as well. Perhaps those would be good resources for people writing newspaper articles about church design, too.

Related Links:
Rome Hits the Brakes. ("Responding to a complaint by lay Catholics, the Vatican asks an American archbishop to suspend renovations of his cathedral.")
Ugly As Sin: Why They Changed Our Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces and How We Can Change Them Back Again by Michael S. Rose
Did Sacrosanctum Concilium Promote the Reform of Church Architecture?
The Renovation Manipulation: Church Counter Renovation Handbook
Whose Place of Worship? "Theologically thin" book adopted by Canadian bishops as church architecture guide

One might imagine a bit of impatience on the part of non-Catholic Torontonians. After all, their city has been invaded by World Youth Day pilgrims from all over the world. So how did members of other churches and other faiths respond?

The Anglican Archdiocese of Toronto provided volunteers and billets.

The Jewish community also offered housing for the pilgrims. EWTN quotes Bernie Faber, executive director for Ontario of the Canadian Jewish Congress. "It is an incredible opportunity for all. Together we can reflect on our future, on society, on good, and there is no better way to do so than through dialogue and meeting. John Paul II's visit pleases many, regardless of the faith they profess. It is an honor to receive him."

And Muslims? Muslim leader Amir Etemadi, quoted in the EWTN article, said "This Pope is one of the most important world symbols. I admire him for having been often at the center of events. We must not and cannot forget that war still exists in this planet. Many conflicts have their origin in the lack of dialogue between religious groups. To choose another way is the least we can do together."

Zenit (The EWTN article comes from the Zenit news service, but I couldn't find a copy of it on the Zenit site.)
Anglicans urged to host youth
Anglican Archbishop supports World Youth Day
Anglicans, Jews and Muslims cheer Pope in Toronto

For the last few years it looked like two well-loved Catholic schools in the Vancouver area would have to be sold in order to pay compensation to Mt Cashel victims. Now the CBC reports that Vancouver College and St. Thomas More Collegiate won't be liquidated after all - the Vancouver Archdiocese's offer of a $19 million payment was accepted by the liquidators who were planning to sell the schools.

Well, that's a relief. Now let's hope that today's bishops really are doing a better job of screening and supervising all those in their charge. We've got to put an end to these scandals which hurt so many people, and threaten good charities as well.

The Pope has arrived in Toronto for World Youth Day. In the past week, both of Canada's national newspapers (the National Post and the Globe and Mail) have published tons of articles about John Paul II, the Catholic Church, priests, pilgrims, and related topics. Considering the usual content balance in these papers, it's rather surprising to see page after page focus on the Pope and on this event, for days in a row. Today, for example, the National Post's front page features a large photo of the pietà in St Michael's Cathedral.)

If you're looking for news and information about the papal visit and World Youth Day, check out Canada.com's World Youth Day page and the CBC World Youth Day page. Both these sites seem quite comprehensive, and are updated regularly.

Additional links:
The Globe and Mail's World Youth Day info
World Youth Day 2002 website
Tu es Petrus

I've always wondered about the layers of clothing a priest wears at Mass. For example, what's that white part called? No, not the collar, the other white bit around his neck. And what's the lace thing? I've been meaning to look this stuff up, but you know how it goes. I've got too much curiosity and not enough time.

Yesterday I chanced upon the Dappled Things blog, and found that the writer, Fr Jim Tucker, has just started a Roman Vestment Series. "Many parishioners seem interested in knowing the meaning of the priest's Mass vestments," he writes, "so I thought I'd write a series of posts highlighting each one."

Fr Jim, you've just gained another reader. Thanks for the juicy details.

The scholars at All Too Flat have struck again. The Bible According to Cheese includes "events found in both the Hebrew Scriptures (Mold Testament) and the Christian Scriptures (Bleu Testament)." Stories feature Biblical favourites like David and Asiago-liath.

Link found on Mark Shea's blog.

If they'd said they were going to church every day to recharge their batteries, I'd have thought they were going for the good of their souls. Apparently not. A couple visiting a church in Milan were plugging their cell phone into an electricity socket behind a statue of the Madonna. Every day. For an hour. For a month. When he discovered this, the priest said they're still welcome. An Ananova article quotes Fr. Don Antonio Columba: "Letting them charge their mobile is a bit like giving them a glass of water."

Related link:
Couple Hooked on Madonna

No stuffy church hall required for these classes. The Catechism of the Catholic Church Internet Study Group will involve reading, reflection, discussion - all online. Starts August 19th.

We're going to Rome this fall, so I thought I'd better do some swotting up on the Eternal City before then. Over at Amazon I searched for books about Rome, and was thrilled to discover that the Cranky Professor has written a Things to read and watch before you go to Rome list. Excellent! I like the Cranky Professor, and often read his blog. (He's writing from Rome this month, by the way.)

One of the books the Cranky Professor lists is The Geometry of Love: Space, Time,