If you missed the live 58 minute webcast (see X-rays reveal Archimedes secrets: reading lost manuscripts, live webcast August 4 [Updated]), it is archived on Ancient Writings Revealed!, a page at the site of the excellent Exploratorium museum in San Francisco, California.

More on the webcast, the techniques used to reveal the hidden text, and the text itself, at Revealed! Archimedes' hidden text.

The BBC Radio Four program 'In Our Time' returns today after its summer break, with a show on the Prussian scientist and explorer Alexander Von Humboldt.

Previous posts on 'In Our Time':

• In Our Time tomorrow, Thursday, March 30: The Carolingian Renaissance,
• The Field of the Cloth of Gold, on the BBC's 'In Our Time', available for download [updated].

The Royal Academy of Arts Rodin exhibition opens today and closes January 1, 2007.

Thanks to the Art Magick blog post, for linking to the Guardian's page on the show (requires Flash, and automatically opens the audio file). The mp3 file is located here. Right click on this link and 'Save link as' to download the mp3 file.

Bill White is using books.google.com to locate old Catholic books.

• An Old English Martyrology.
• St John's Manual, an 1856 prayer book and missal.

He has other finds, using some specific search terms, and hopes to post them soon.

Last year's post is here, with depictions of the apostle, evangelist and martyr by Terbrugg and Caravaggio.

digg's post 100 years of phone books online links to the Reuters story: BT puts old phone books online:

[BT] hopes to tap into the nation's huge interest in genealogy by allowing users to trawl through millions of names, addresses and phone numbers covering the period 1880 to 1984. ...

At one stage, BT allowed brief job descriptions. The author of Dracula, Bram Stoker, of Victoria 1436, was listed as a barrister, while Houdini could be found under "handcuff king".

BT has linked up with Ancestry.co.uk to host the phone books.

They have started with Greater London, which contains 72 million names and covers the areas Surrey, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent and Middlesex.

They hope to complete all 250 million names by the end of next year.

Family history enthusiasts will be able to search by name, year and county, helping them fill in any gaps in their ancestor and house histories.

No searching by address, yet.

Today Tomás de Torquemada is remembered and Tuesday, the 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day

[N]ow a forthcoming book hopes to change that image by focusing on Ladino-speaking Jews whose piracy grew out of the Inquisition. "The Jewish pirates were Sephardic. Once they were kicked out of Spain [in 1492], the more adventurous Jews went to the New World," said Ed Kritzler, whose yet-untitled book on Jewish pirates will be published by Doubleday in spring 2007.

Jewish piracy has been around since well before the Barbary pirates first preyed on ships during the Crusades. In the time of the Second Temple, Jewish historian Flavius Josephus records that Hyrcanus accussed [sic] Aristobulus of "acts of piracy at sea."

Source: Ahoy, mateys ! Thar be Jewish pirates. Hat tip to Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean.

Previous post: Ninth century psalter found in Irish bog.

Jim Davila's post here on PaleoJudaica.com links to Martin McNamara's article at the Society of Biblical Literature site: A Recently Discovered Irish Book of Psalms in its Setting. Much of McNamara's article reviews the psalter's finding, the site, and the use of the Psalms in early Christian Ireland, and ends with a report on a conference at which two scholars spoke of the status of restoration of the Bog Psalter.

The original photograph of the Psalter that went round the world had been taken by a mobile phone camera but the National Museum photographer Valerie Dowling has since taken a full portfolio of photographs, some of which will be published in a special supplement to the magazine Archaeology Ireland this autumn. The Fadden Book, which has over one hundred pages and at least three pages of decoration, will be carefully studied and restored by a European team over the next two years. The BBC will also produce a documentary on the restoration. Dr. Meehan said that in recent days they had been able to catch a glimpse of one of the decorated pages and this provided a tantalizing image of a bird — an eagle, peacock, or dove — perched on top on of the illuminated capitals. If the initial presumption that this was a "Beatus" ('Blessed is he...') proves to be true, they might also expect to have illuminated introductions for Psalms 1, 51, and 101. If this proves correct, the Psalter was divided into the typically Irish "Three Fifties," with special decoration at the beginning of each fifty.

The ARLT blog has a post on The Guardian's article on the Cambridge Schools Classics Project's effort to teach Latin in the UK using a live video link: The Guardian reports on the Cambridge Latin by video link.

A previous post, on this blog: No one to teach: Latin classes may disappear in the UK.

The ARLT and Bookworm blogs note that there are sand sculptures in Great Yarmouth and Brighton, England this week, the former, Roman, the latter, Greek:

• Don't just sit on the beach. Sculpt a Greek god!, with links to RealPlayer videos,
• Classics at the Beach, with links to news photos and articles, and images on flickr.

The BBC have two articles, Sand sculpture festival, and Wonders of Rome depicted in sand.

This one is in the Pfarrkirche (parish church, yes, a parish, not a cathedral), Steingaden, Bavaria. Found via The Dizzying Grandeur of Rococo, by clicking on the link to 'Six Marvels in a Nutshell' on the left.


Quoting the web page, 'The rich confessional booths here are beautiful enough to make you want to confess!'

This site draws a distinction between Baroque and Rococo styles in art and archetecture, providing visual examples of each.

Here are two views of the Rococo pulpit in Rottenbuch:

Last year's post is here, with images from Durer, Del Sarto, Beccafumi, and Altdorfer.

Albrecht Altdorfer was born and died in Regensberg, where the Pope will be visiting shortly.

I'm skipping through On papal conclaves, by William Cornwallis Cartwright, published in 1868 and available here at the Internet Archive, and came across these interesting facts about certain cardinals.

• 'It has never been before known for a nomination not to be executed after the Pope has gone so far as formally to intimate by letter to an individual his intention to make him Cardinal at the next promotion. Yet this is what happened to the illustrious Rosmini, certainly the most distinguished man whom the Church has produced in Italy in this century. He received the Pope's formal intimation of his promulgation and was directed to make the preparations for his public reception, when the efforts of the Jesuits succeeded in defeating the nomination and in initiating a course of persecution, which ended in the inclusion of Rosmini's book, The Wounds of the Church, in the Index.'
• 'In a secret Consistory of the 13th February 1786, Pius VI. suspended and declared stripped of both active and passive voice in Papal elections, Cardinal Rohan, for having violated his duties by acknowledging the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Paris, a lay tribunal, unless within six months he exculpated himself before the Holy See for this dereliction of his obligations.' (footnote omitted)
• 'Far more sweeping and absolute was the condemnation pronounced by the same Pope, on the 26th September 1791, against Cardinal Lomenie de Brienne, for having sworn the civil constitution of the clergy that had becn voted in France. He was pronounced to be a schismatic, and as such perjured, degraded, and wholly stripped of all his dignities and privileges.'
• 'Cardinal Andrea, who is, or at all events was, Bishop of Sabina, after having vainly sought several times the Pope's consent to his going to his native city, Naples, on the ground that impaired health required this change of air, finally went thither, in June 1864, of his own authority. This step was branded in Rome as an act of illegal flight and desertion, and after minor preliminary proceedings, the Pope, in a Brief of 12th June 1866, suspended Cardinal Andrea, in his quality of Bishop, from his See, on the ground of insubordination and a violation of his official oaths. ... Pius IX., on the 29th September 1867, issued a Brief, which, served on Cardinal Andrea the 12th October, and publicly promulgated in Rome the 4th December, declared him to have forfeited all the privileges of his Cardinalatial dignity, with the explicit inclusion of his vote, unless he presented himself in person before the Pope within three months from date of the Brief; and furthermore imposed on the Sacred College the solemn obligation not to admit the said Cardinal into Conclave, if, after continuing contumaciously to disregard this citation, he were to venture on claiming a right of franchise.'

As to Cardinal Andrea (or d'Andrea), Salvador Miranda has this to say:

... When as prefect of the S.C. of the Index, he refused to condemn a book unfavorable to the temporal powers of the Holy See, and also some theological theses of the University of Louvain, he was forbidden by apostolic brief from exercising his jurisdiction over his suburbicarian see and the abbey of Subiaco, June 12, 1866. Also, suspended from the privileges and insignias of the cardinalate, September 29, 1867. Submitted his retraction to the pope, December 26, 1867. Restored to the cardinalate January 14, 1868.

D'ANDREA, Girolamo (1812-1868)

A 'book unfavorable to the temporal powers of the Holy See': this was the time of the violent loss of the Papal States and the unification of Italy, with Rome as the national capitol.

The Pope's brother, Georg, used to be Domkapellmeister in Regensburg, and the Pope will bless the new organ there, according to Vatican Outlines Pope Benedict XVI's Second Trip To Germany. The cathedral's high altar is quite a sight.


High altar, Regensburg's Alte Kapelle

You can view more images of the interior via babelfish translations beginning at Station I, Appointment History, then clicking on the icons within the church diagram on the left hand side of the page, or by clicking on the 'To the next station of the guidance' link at the bottom right.