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.

Via MetaFilter, the
St Gall Monastery Plan Project page. Two dimensional renderings and Quicktime panoramas are on the Reconstructions page, and high resolution, zoomable images on The Plan page.

(Not to be confused with the Codex Sangallensis 878, which is a Gospel harmony.)

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].

Last year's post is here, and it has iamges of Spanish postage stamps commemorating Our Lady of Ransom, the feastday, the two great Saints of the Mercedarians, and the coat of arms of the Military and Religious Order of Our Lady of Ransom.

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.

On physorg.com, Dig uncovers 200-year-old rectory in Mo., in the area around St Ferdinand De Florissant Parish. Fr Peter J. De Smet, SJ, was ordained at St. Ferdinand in 1827. The first motherhouse in the United States of the Society of the Sacred Heart was established on the parish grounds by St. Rose Philippine Duchesne shortly after her arrival in St. Louis.

The St Louis Post-Dispatch has more, at Dig uncovering the world of an 18th century rectory:

The remains of an 18th century building found below a half-foot of dirt at a Florissant park are credited by archaeologists as being part of one of the oldest Catholic rectories discovered in the Midwest. ...

The discovery comes from a three-year excavation project of the area surrounding the former St. Ferdinand Catholic Church. The 18th century church's remains were found at Spanish Land Grant Park at Rue St. Denis and St. Ferdinand Street.

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.

Andrew Cusack's post A Picture of Domestic Bliss mentions in an aside, the English Catholic Heritage mp3 files by Joanna Bogle. When you click on the link, if you are asked how to connect, select 'anonymous'.

Last year's post is here.

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

Today, September 20th, is marialectrix Bloggiversary!. She lists the most downloaded podcasts, only one of which is mentioned here, in the seven posts plugging her efforts.

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.

Because of rioting and insurrection, Bl Pope Pius IX had to flee Rome in November, 1848. He escaped in disguise as a simple priest, south, to the coastal town of Gaeta, then in the loyal Kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies. Chapter IX, 'Flight and exile', of The life of Pius IX provides an account. His Holiness had intended to seek refuge on the Spanish island of Majorca. While in Gaeta, in February, 1849, 'he declared by an encyclical letter his intention to define the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and instructed the bishops to inform him of the feelings and opinions of the whole people with respect to it.' (p. 107) Finally, he returned on April 12, 1850, and Fr Nicholas Schofield, archivist of the Archdiocese of Westminster, has an image of a model of the carriage in which he entered the city, at Pius IX's Sedan Carriage.

Some women may see 100 million colors, thanks to their genes. Did they expect it to be a product of upbringing?

Hat tip to the eponymous post on Mirabilis.ca.

Via Museum launches CC-licensed classical music podcast/archive (CC here is the Creative Commons Music Sharing License): a twice-a-month podcast called The Concert, from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

So far, they have works by Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart and Schubert.

Not only is he a lefty, but he steps in the bucket, also known as bailing out.

Last year's post is here, with images of a fresco by the early Italian Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca, also a geometer. More on the frescoes in the Church of San Francesco, Arezzo is here, on Wikipedia, and this guided tour, from the Web Gallery of Art.

Rome has three churches dedicated to the Holy Cross, the best known being Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Florence has the Cathedral Santa Croce, with tombs and monuments to Dante, Machiavelli, Michealangelo, Galileo and Rossini. Its distinctive facade was not decorated until 1857-63, while the Roman church's Baroque facade dates from the previous century.


Cathedral Santa Croce, Florence


Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome
view in the 18th century


Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, interior
Right mouse click and 'view image' to see full size

Via An exhibition on Bibles before the Year 1000, I see that the Smithsonian Institution will present In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000. The Washington Post had an article this past Sunday: Papyrus, Parchment & Posterity. It seems as if the exhibition traces the typology, structure, materials and techniques of production of manuscript Bibles.

Some good resources on the 'net for these topics include

• A brief history of scriptoria and the evolution of the book,
• Medieval Manuscript Manual,
• Europe and the Invention of Modern Bookmaking, Manuscript Books,
• Books and Universities, Medieval and Renaissance Book Production, and
• The Fitzwilliam Museum's 'Making Art: Medieval Manuscripts' Interactive, which uses Flash to look at unfinished manuscripts to show how medieval man made them.
• Medieval Manuscripts and Tinfigures, Courtly Scenes Based on Original Illuminations has commentary on the creation of manuscripts and different styles.

Pope St Gregory the Great in his scriptorium


Jean Mielot in his scriptorium

Matthew at this entry on the Shrine of the Holy Whapping has Jerzy Eleuter Szymonowicz-Siemiginowski's painting of Jan III Sobieski, the Polish king, at the siege of Vienna. The king broke the siege on this date in 1683, and on October 7-9 of that year in the Battles of Parkany, defeated the Ottoman army.

Gallery of Jan III Sobieski on Wikipedia.


Monument to Jan III Sobieski, Warsaw
The Turks were controlled once and for all.


Sobieski at Vienna (Sobieski pod Wiedniem), Julius Kossak
(note winged Hussar)

The man who saved geometry.

Crying `Death to Triangles!' a generation of mathematicians tried to eliminate geometry in favor of algebra. Were it not for Donald Coxeter, they might have succeeded.

'Death to Triangles!' sounds like something out of Flatland. Wikipedia entry here.

Geometers:


God, the geometer
from a Bible Morallisee (moralized Bible)
also see Typology of Medieval Books
and God's compass and 'Vana Curiositas': scientific study in the Old French 'Bible Moralisee.'



William Blake's pen, ink and watercolor of Newton as a divine geometer


The title page to FlatlandHat tip to the entry on reddit.com.

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.

I'm reading The life of Pope Pius IX, by John R. G. Hassard, 1878, from the Internet Archive. In the chapter entitled 'The time of peace', it mentions some of the events which occurred after the Pope returned to Rome, and came upon this:

the restoration of the ancient church of St. Agnes in Via Nomentana, in remembrance of a providential escape from death at the convent of St. Agnes, in April, 1855, when the Pope and a large number of other persons were precipitated fifteen or twenty feet, amid rubbish and broken tiles, by the giving way of a floor

The only other mention of this event I've found is on the Basilica di S.Agnese fuori le Mura page:

A hall beside the entrance is decorated with the painting celebrating the collapse of the floor of the room above, which took place here during the visit of Pius IX on April 12, 1855, which didn't harm pope in anyway [sic].

Did the Pope fall through the floor, or the floor collapse upon him? Is there an image on the 'net of this painting?

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:

When the Pope signed the Lateran Treaty with Italy back in 1929, the Vatican began issuing postage stamps. There's a Danish site with images of a number of the stamps, VATIKANSTATENS FRIMÆRKER, but since my Danish is limited to 'tusend tak', 'god dag', and 'husker du', there's not much of it I can read. Be that as it may, Kirsten Petersen has some images of the 2005 stamps issues during the period the Holy See was vacant:



Imagining an angel with an umbrella has a certain charm.

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.

We've got a new bishop in these parts, and Vir Speluncae Catholicus The Great greeted him in Wilmington: Give 'Em Enough Rope....

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.

Roydosan's post Old Rite Masses in English Cathedrals mentions a Requiem Mass on Saturday, November 18, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

The blog post now has two more Masses in the Cathedral:

• Saturday, September 9, 2006 4:30 p.m., Low Mass in Side Chapel, and
• Saturday October 14, 2006 4:30 p.m., Low Mass in Side Chapel

This free download notice from the Internet Archive is a little old, but Θουκυδίδης wrote his History around 431 B.C. archive.org has the files for free download here, and the full, zipped file, of all the chapters, is over 600MB. Of course, individual chapters are available for separate downloading.

This is the war in which Σωκράτης fought and in which Aλκιβιάδης commanded the Athenians before defecting to the Spartans. Jon Moline, one of my professors at university in the late 1960s compared this to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs defecting first to the Soviets and then to the Red Chinese to command their forces.

More resources on the History and on the Peloponnesian War:

• Wikipedia article,
• about.com links,
• a brief article by Prof Richard Hooker

Google's News Archive Search will return articles free to view or pay to view. (Found via the BBC's Google opens up 200 years of news.) You can use the advanced search to only show free to view articles, articles published between specified dates, as well as other restrictions.

By way of example, here are the free to view articles mentioning Pope Pius X. They include Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val's silver jubilee of becoming a cardinal, another, published when Papa Sarto was declared Venerable, one published when he was beatified, but there don't seem to be any free to view articles on his canonization.

ResourceShelf has three posts with links to and descriptions of, twenty art museum's collection databases, at Archive for Art Museums. They promise more to come. So far, the posts include links to searching collections at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, the Getty Museum of Art, the Louvre Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, London, and others.

ResourceShelf's RSS feed is full text, not the annoying bits from the beginning of posts many blogs provide. The feed is here. According to the site, there are category-specific feeds, but I haven't found them.

'[A]fter 12 years, the traditional Vatican Christmas concert comes to an end', since Pope Benedict XVI has taste. He would rather hear Mozart or Bach performed than pop music, as TCR Musings posts, at Pope abolishes Christmas pop concert. Yes, twelve years, without being handed down, makes a tradition.