This morning was a rainy day in every sense of the word. We were supposed to go and have class in Il Foro Romano, but the wild tempest kept us in. Instead, we had a very informative Christian Origins/New Testament Lit class here in our collegio, in a bizarelly lit room that put everybody to sleep until the magical broken vending machine that dispenses both coffee and extra change made everything better! (But seriously. The existence of a coffee vending machine means 24/7 caffeine. The existence of a magical BROKEN coffee vending machine means more money for more caffeine.)
Anyway, the class heretofore referred to as Sister Terri's Biggest Loser Roma Challenge has been getting, like, totes ridic crazy interesting. First of all, who knew I'd ever know so much about sarcophagi, or that sarcophagi say so much? I will never forget my feeling of "I can't do this class" and my fervent prayers to Dear Lord Baby Jesus, Allah, Bishnu, Buddha, the FSM, and whoever else may be listening to help me out on our class under the Church of San Lorenzo when the older and wiser Classical Studies majors of our trip walked right up to a sarcophagus and said "Hey, Sister, check out this early 4th century sarcophagus." But I will definitely be able to do that before this month is out!
But second, and more important, things were really different two and three and more thousand years ago (seriously, who knew). For example, the earliest Jews weren't monotheistic. Yahweh, who eventually became the one true God, had a wife and a consort. Today, it is clear that someone tried very hard to suppress knowledge of his wife, Asherah, in particular, and I find this extremely fascinating, especially since she managed to survive anyway, through the transferrence of her stock image as Queen of Heaven into that of the Christian Mary. Also, we've obviously been talking a lot about, well, early Christian origins, and a lot of the stuff we learned at first wasn't exactly breaking news- the early Christians adapted a lot of pagan stock images into their religious art to assimilate the people (Hermes becoming Jesus or Endymion becoming Jonah), and a lot of symbols, rhetorical devices, themes, and ideas of the Bible and other religious writings are clear attempts to adapt pre-existing pagan culture and make metaphors to help followers understand (for instance, the parable of the midnight visitor in the Gospel of Luke, and the common way of explaining how Christ mediates between man and God, draw heavily on the Roman custom of patron/client relations). However, I didn't know how much interesting information is hiding in the New Testament, and the apocryphal gospels (speaking of which, I didn't know that the most clearly metaphor-heavy, "let's-have-storytime-but-I-might-be-making-cool-stuff-up-because-nobody-corroborates-me" gospel, the Gospel of John, almost didn't make it into the modern Bible). For instance, we've been going over in detail all the nuances and disagreements over accounts of some really important events like the death of Peter, conversion of Paul, and identity of Mary Magdalene. I would now say "Who knew that Christians could disagree with each other so much," but that's probably a bad joke.
Anyway, after class, some of us opted out of the Forum in the drizzle (remember that this is an hour's walk across the city) and instead explored the city and markets nearer the Collegio a little and caught up on our work a bit. I had a wonderful adventure when I returned my hipster self with my hipster sketchbook and my hipster Medieval poems to the hipster gardens above Piazza del Popolo (seriously, though, those gardens are gorgeous- all the more so because the plants and layout are native and natural). I kindled a brief yet deep and beautiful new friendship with a man named Alessandro, a friendship from which I gained two roses and a bracelet for good luck. The good luck seemed to work soon after I got it, as I really needed Alessandro to go away so I could finish my Medieval poetry.
After this lovely diversion, I returned to the Collegio and learned more about some good ol' Franciscan angst, self-loathing, prison, and how to condemn a Pope to Hell in the snarkiest way possible. The life skills I am stacking up on on this trip are becoming overwhelming.
After this, I had one of the most fun nights I've had on this entire trip. By fortuitous coincidence, a dear friend of mine and Kylee's, the illustrious Giuseppi Voss, who also goes to Loyola with us is in Europe with his family right now. He was in Roma tonight on his way to Paris, and will be back in Roma to paint the town with us from the 11th to 15th. Tonight I met up with him for the best dinner of my life at the most fantastic pizzeria in all of Roma. Maybe it's just because I was literally starving to death when we got there, but seriously. Next time you find yourself in Roma, faithful reader, go to Forno on Via Candia, sort of around the corner from Musei Vaticani, and thank me later. By buying me pizza and a fruit tart from Forno. Because who are we kidding, food really is the reason we come to Italia.
No comments:
Post a Comment