Bryce & Damon in Europe
by Pertinax Carrus
Chapter 23: Rome Again, Part I
Ditching the Car, the Spanish Steps
Bryce and Damon stopped for lunch along the way back to Rome, and arrived in the early afternoon at the Hotel Cicerone, where they found their stashed goods, and recovered the room they had before departing for Naples.
‘Are we ready to ditch the car?” Damon asked.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that. We need to go by the UPS place first, so we can send our larger acquisitions back home, then we can check the car in and walk to most of everything else in Rome that’s on my list of things to do,” Bryce considered.
“Okay. You’re the guide,” Damon cheerfully agreed.
However, when Bryce spoke with the concierge at the hotel, he was informed that a service called Pelican Express was available. They would pick up parcels, and ship them by UPS back to the United States. This seemed a lot easier than trying to find the Roman office of UPS, which seemed to be way out of town near the airport. Consequently, Bryce and Damon spent some time packing the items they had acquired on their trip thus far, with the help of the hotel staff.
Then, they had to find the location of the car rental service, which turned out to be out by the airport, so they could have saved a few Euros and taken their items to UPS themselves. Bryce explained, “On my other trips, my father took care of things like this. I don’t think I’ve ever been to either the UPS office or the car rental office before.”
Damon quietly enjoyed his boyfriend’s frustration. Usually, Bryce was so very organized and had everything planned out to the last degree. It was nice to see him thrown into a tizzy by this unexpected complication. Besides, Damon was not ready for another visit to an historical or religious site at this time. So, he just kept quiet and allowed Bryce to stew for several hours.
By the time the excess baggage and the car were disposed of, it was after five in the afternoon. Bryce began to call a taxi to take them back into town, but Damon interrupted him. He walked over to the counter and asked the man there how to get back to town, and was told that the best way was by the Terravision. This is a shuttle which runs from the airport to the main train station, or Termini, every thirty minutes, and takes about an hour to cover the route. It costs only five Euros. So Damon took the lead, with an exhausted and frustrated Bryce falling in behind, as they made their way to the airport counter for the Terravision and purchased tickets. Not long after, they boarded the bus, and road into town much cheaper than a taxi would have cost. Damon enjoyed being in the driver’s seat for a change. His experiences growing up in Chicago prepared him in some ways to deal with any large city.
At the train station, Damon nixed visiting other churches, even if they were close by, and instead checked the map of the Roman subway. He found that only three stops took them to the Spanish Steps. He did not know what that was, but it was at least something he had heard of, and so he directed Bryce towards the Metro. The next thing they knew, they were in the Piazza di Spagna.
There was a huge series of steps leading from the piazza up the slope of the Pincian hill to another church, called Santa Trinità dei Monti. People of all sorts seemed to be hanging about, some going up, some coming down, and quite a few just hanging. Damon and Bryce climbed the 138 steps to the top, and then back down again, just for the fun of it. Then, as it was by now near seven in the evening, they chose a place on a side street off the piazza for their dinner. They shared a table with several other young people, two Italians and a guy from Spain. It was the Spaniard who informed his fellow diners that the steps were so called because, in the eighteenth century when they were constructed, the Spanish ambassador lived nearby.
One of the Italians, called Sofia, related that the fountain in the piazza was designed by Piero Bernini, father of the much more famous Gian-Lorenzo Bernini who designed St. Peter’s Square across the Tiber. It was called il Barcaccia, or the old boat, which it resembled, because of a legend that an old ship ended up here during a flood of the river. Whether that was true or not did not seem to disturb anyone. In fact, the fountain was designed to meet an engineering problem having to do with water pressure, the other Italian insisted. He, Carlo, was an engineering student, and knew about such things.
Carlo and Sofia were clearly a couple, as the interaction between them during the meal indicated. They were anxious that the visitors to their city enjoy themselves, and at the same time recognize the outstanding features of the city. Bryce could not help but think of the fellow they had encountered at the Trevi Fountain on their first day in Rome. All the Romans seemed anxious to tell visitors about their city They were friendly, but also assumed an air of superior knowledge encased in the saying, heard more than once, non me lo dice, perche io sono Romano – “don’t tell me that, I’m a Roman.”
Before they broke up, Carlo mentioned that “the English poet” had lived at a house on the piazza, which was now a museum. Laughing at her boyfriend, Sofia clarified that the poet in question was John Keats, who died there in 1821. Unfortunately, it was too late to tour the museum, which contained memorabilia not only of Keats, but other poets as well.
Having completed their dinner, and having enjoyed their exchanges with other young people, Bryce and Damon walked back across the Ponte Cavour to the Hotel Cicerone on the other side of the Tiber, and fell into an exhausted sleep.
The Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel
The next day, Friday, July 16, was when they had tickets to the Vatican Museum, including the famed Sistine Chapel, named for Pope Sixtus IV. After Bryce’s visit to the fitness center and breakfast, the guys walked down the Via Cola di Rienzi to the Piazza Risorgimento, which abutted the walls of the Vatican. There was already a long line of people seeking to buy tickets. Well over four and a half million visitors came to the Vatican museum each year, and those not fortunate or wise enough to have bought their tickets beforehand had to stand in long lines which stretched for blocks around the walls. Bryce and Damon, however, had their tickets, and so could bypass the lines and enter directly through the main entrance to the museum, located on the opposite side of the Vatican complex from St. Peter’s. All they had to do, in addition to presenting the tickets obtained for them by Father Long, was to show a photo ID and their student ID cards. They had student tickets, which were cheaper than general admission.
The Vatican Museum is open every day except Sundays and certain holy days from nine in the morning to six in the evening. The guys opted not to take a guided tour, but to wander at their own pace, spending time with things that interested them, and skipping others.
“This doesn’t look like an ancient building,” Damon observed.
“No. You’re right. I don’t recall when the building went up, but I kind of think it was in the nineteenth century,” Bryce agreed. “Of course, the collection is older. Like the Louvre in Paris and the Uffizi in Florence, the Vatican collection began as the personal property of the ruler. The popes for centuries were rulers, just like the kings of France or the Medici in Florence, and they followed, or in some cases led, the trends for what rulers were expected to do. One result is the collection here. Another is the Swiss Guards. Like we found out in Lucerne, all kinds of rulers once had Swiss Guards, it’s just that the popes are the last to have them. I guess, in some ways, the pope is still the ruler of a territory, the Vatican here,” Bryce said.
“Just how big is the Vatican? I can’t tell where the Vatican begins and Rome ends,” Damon asked.
“A hundred and eight acres,” Bryce replied.
“That doesn’t seem like much,” Damon responded.
“No, it’s not much in terms of territory, about the size of a decent farm, but there’s a lot here. A lot of the so-called wealth of the papacy is contained in this collection. If all this disappeared, the world would be a poorer place, even apart from any religious consideration. Importance is not measured by size. David killed Goliath. At the Yalta Conference near the end of World War II, either Churchill or Roosevelt, I can’t remember which, suggested inviting the pope to take part in the peace negotiations. Stalin replied, ‘How many legions does he have?’ The secularist always counts size. How many legions? How many acres? How many dollars? You know, practically speaking, there was no peace ending World War II until everyone involved was dead,” Bryce concluded.
From the impressive entrance lobby, the two adventurers began their explorations. There was a very modern spiral staircase leading from level to level, which somehow seemed to blend into the older structure, and the treasures which it housed. It certainly fit better than that pyramid in front of the Louvre. They caught a brief glimpse of the Vatican Library, which houses some of the most important documents in the history of the West, but moved on. There were rooms and rooms of paintings, sculptures, artifacts, gems – the list seemed endless.
Coming upon a familiar work in a niche, Damon exclaimed, “That was in my history book!”
“I don’t think it would fit,” Bryce joked.
Damon bopped him, but then looked around to see whether a guard was present.
Bryce laughed at his boyfriend’s antics.
What they were looking at was the statue of Laocoön, a work of Hellenistic art based on a story told by Homer in The Iliad. Or maybe it was some other account of the Trojan War. Anyway, Laocoön was a priest of Apollo, but Apollo favored the Greeks in the war. When Laocoön attempted to warn the Trojans against accepting the Greek “gift” of a hollow horse, Apollo punished him by sending snakes to destroy him and his two sons.
“The pagan gods had all the imperfections of us humans,” Bryce noted. “They took sides, and they got even.”
“That’s some snake!” Damon said admiringly. “Who was the artist?”
“As far as I know, no one knows. It’s Hellenistic, just like the Venus de Milo we saw in Paris, but I have no idea who sculpted it,” Bryce admitted. (Bryce later found that Pliny the Elder attributed the work to a collaboration by three sculptors from the island of Rhodes, Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydoros.) “One day in, I think, 1506, a farmer here in Italy came across it as he was plowing his fields. Someone reported it to the pope at the time, Julius II. He sent Michelangelo and someone else, I forget who, to evaluate it, and on their advice immediately bought it. It’s considered the first piece in the Vatican Museum, although there are a lot of things actually older. A couple of years ago, the Museum celebrated its five hundredth anniversary, counting from that purchase.”
“The snake is winning,” Damon observed.
“Oh, yes. In a way, this represents the classical world. Fate, or the gods, always win, and they can be arbitrary. I suspect that’s why, despite all the promising starts, there was really no science in the classical world. There was great engineering, like the Roman roads and aqueducts, and great philosophy, like Plato and Aristotle, and great mathematics, like Pythagoras and Euclid, but if the world is essentially arbitrary, then there can be no scientific laws. No predictability,” Bryce mused.
“Then, where did predictability come from?” Damon asked, although he knew what Bryce would say.
“From Christianity, of course. Our God is not arbitrary, he is rational. I told you that back at the Pazzi Chapel in Florence. This statue appealed to the generation which followed the Renaissance, the generation which created the style called Mannerism, which we encountered at the Medici Chapel in Florence, and will encounter again at the end of our tour today. It also seems to fit our own day. It speaks to people who feel caught in a world which they cannot understand, and which threatens to destroy them,” Bryce said.
“You do have a way of interpreting these things that is different from what I’ve come across elsewhere,” Damon noted.
“I’m right, of course,” Bryce joked.
“If what you say is so, how is it that Christianity seems to be in trouble today, but we have all the advances of science still going on?” Damon challenged him.
Becoming serious once again, Bryce replied, “It’s hard to get a grip on our own times, as we’re so involved in them. We have no perspective. But I have noticed a couple of things. Even though science keeps developing, and affecting the lives of more and more people, I really wonder how much it affects the way most people think. In the past, a relatively few people more or less set the tone for a culture, or a period of history. The Renaissance, for example, only affected the upper echelons of society – maybe ten percent, if that. Most folks just went on as they always had, plowing the fields and working in the shops. No one told them it was the Renaissance. But in the last century or so with the spread of democracy, a larger and larger percentage of the population becomes involved in setting the standards for society. Take the United States, which, obviously, I’ve had more chance to observe than any other. It seems to me that you have a greater growth of superstition and ignorance when it comes to dealing with the universe as time goes on.”
“Really? How do you figure that?” Damon asked, not having come across this side of his boyfriend’s thinking before.
“Fundamentalism in religion, for one thing,” Bryce said. “As more and more people abandon Catholicism and what is called mainstream Protestantism, it is the fundamentalist denominations which are growing. As I’ve said more than once, I think those people represent an extreme position, and I don’t like extremes. They essentially reject reason, and I believe that reason is a gift from God to help us understand the meaning of the universe. The other extreme, of course, are those who reject God altogether. But it’s not only that. Sometimes there’s an overlap, but more often it’s the people who have abandoned Christianity altogether who are pushing the new wave of superstitions. I’m thinking of the great popularity of astrology, for example. I remember reading that President Reagan would not make a major decision unless he consulted an astrologer first. The last time that was true with any major Western figure was the Age of Mannerism. Then, there’s the popularity of zombies and vampires in popular culture. And all the kooky new religions, like Scientology and the New Age stuff. People need a spiritual life, but this is a poor substitute for traditional Christianity. It’s twisted and irrational. It seems to me that a huge chunk of the American population have no meaningful interaction with science or reason, despite all the laboratories and hospitals and announcements of new breakthroughs. Democracy is not an unmixed blessing.”
“Wow, that’s some way of looking at things,” Damon responded. “I’ll have to think about that for a while. That’s one of the things I like about you, Boyfriend. You’re always giving me interesting things to think about.”
“I guess part of it is the historian in me. I tend to take a long view, and try to see trends. But,” he admitted, “I could be entirely wrong.”
“No!” Damon pretended shock.
Bryce grinned and punched him.
They moved on, coming to another major work, this time of Renaissance art. In a series of reception rooms (the Stanze) in the Vatican Palace, the artist Raphael (Rafaello Santi) created a series of frescoes, among which is one called ‘The School of Athens.’ The setting is impressive architecture, based on the new St. Peter’s which was going up as he painted. In the center of the work, under a classical arch, stand Plato and Aristotle, the two high points of ancient thought. The older man, Plato, on the left as one views the painting, stands with his right hand pointing heavenward, indicating his more theoretical or idealistic approach to reality, while on the right is Aristotle, his right arm level, indicating his more practical, down to earth, approach to reality. On the side of Plato are representations of all the more theoretical or abstract thinkers of the classical world, including the mathematicians, in one half of an arc, while on the side of Aristotle those involved in the everyday world, like the medical authorities Galen and Hippocrates, are represented. Bryce pointed out the figure in the foreground on Plato’s side, dressed in brown and leaning on a block of stone. “That,” he said, “represents Pythagoras, but is a portrait of Michelangelo by his contemporary.”
“I see why you like this work,” Damon said. “I see a definite theme emerging here. Balance between theory and practice maybe?”
“Now, wherever would you get that idea?” Bryce teased. “But look over here, on the facing wall. This fresco is called ‘La Disputa.’ In medieval universities great questions were debated in public forums called disputa, which today have dwindled to the oral exams of graduate students. See how heaven and earth unite to debate the Church’s understanding of the Eucharist, which is at the center of the painting. Below, popes, bishops, and theologians give their input, including this figure,” Bryce pointed, “behind that pope. That’s Dante, who is one of the best lay theologians in the entire Western tradition in my opinion.”
“And your opinion is the correct one, of course,” Damon teased him.
Bryce grinned. “Of course. But look. Above is the heavenly tribunal, with prophets and saints. In the center is the risen Christ, with God the Father above, and the Holy Spirit in the traditional guise of a dove below, directly over the Eucharist in the monstrance on the altar.”
“That seems familiar,” Damon said.
“It should. Remember the Cathedra Petri in St. Peter’s. The Holy Spirit is guiding the throne of Peter there. Here she is guiding the entire Church as we attempt to understand the revelation God has given us. It is this which represents my vision of the Church, along with the ‘School of Athens’ on the other wall representing my hope for the intellectual life.” Bryce said with a long sigh, “That guidance by the Holy Spirit is essential.”
“Okay, Boyfriend. I can tell you want to tell me something. Let’s get it out,” Damon said, leading Bryce to a bench from which they could view the frescoes.
“I’ve told you a lot of this before,” Bryce said. “But I guess there’s a side of this that I haven’t said much about. It gets embarrassing from time to time.”
“Oh, come on! You! Embarrassed by something dealing with your Church?” Damon clowned. He knew that this kind of response spurred Bryce on, but also pleased him.
“Remember, I am an historian. There are people out there who complain about what they call the crimes or the scandals of the Church. They talk about the children of Alexander VI, or the imagined crimes of Pius XII. Most of them are lousy historians, or they would know they don’t even touch on the really embarrassing sides of church history. If you want to get some real dirt, try the period from, oh, say about 880 to 1045. Just about everything which could go wrong, did. Everyone seems to admire Pope John XXIII, but try John XII. He was made pope by his powerful family when he was a teenager, and disgraced his office in just about every possible way, including rape and simony, until he was deposed by the Emperor Otto the Great. Then, there was the Avignese Papacy in the fourteenth century. Seven popes, all Frenchmen, all canon lawyers. Lawyers make up impossible rules about the way things are supposed to work, and then get mad when reality does not correspond to their rules. Oops, sorry Damon. I know you want to be a lawyer, so I’ll make an exception for you. Anyway, in 1348 the Black Death comes along. We’ve run across that a few times in our travels. Wipes out a third of Europe in a couple of years. So what do these lawyers on the papal throne do? Oh, fewer people? That means less income, so they invented a lot of new taxes and fees. One of the most heartless responses to natural disaster I can imagine. And along with it, they invented, or at least greatly expanded, the papal bureaucracy, which I believe is responsible for the stubborn refusal of the leaders of the Church today to take seriously the condition of people like me, gay Catholics. Then, in the nineteenth century, there was Pius IX, whose tomb we saw out at St. Lawrence before we left for Naples. Arrogant bastard! Basically, he told Catholics to stick our heads in the sand and ignore all of the modern world. The Catholic ghetto.
“Damon, it will come as no surprise to you when I say I love my Church. But when I think about these things, I am embarrassed. The sexual offenses of the Renaissance popes pale in comparison, in my opinion. But, at the same time, it is these low points which reinforce my belief in the Church.”
“How’s that?” Damon encouraged this new insight into his lover.
“If the Church were merely a human contrivance, she would have disappeared centuries ago. The low points, the downers, the embarrassing things convince me that the Holy Spirit is still there, just as at that crucial Council of Jerusalem when the Apostles decided we Christians were not required to follow the laws of Moses. That’s in the Bible, in the Acts of the Apostles. It says right there, ‘The Holy Spirit and we have decided this.’ Well, it’s these low points in the history of the Church that convince me that the Holy Spirit continues to guide the Church. Otherwise, she would have been swept away in a wave of barbarian ignorance, or the challenge of the Protestant Reformation, or the surge of nationalism in the nineteenth century. Despite all the mistakes and nonsense we poor humans perpetrate, God never abandons us. Just as in Raphael’s fresco there, the Holy Spirit, the entire Trinity in fact, continues to guide us, to keep alive the spark of truth in a doubting world.”
Bryce sank back, exhausted by his outburst. He was sweating, and not from the July heat. Damon looked with love on his partner. He saw that it had cost Bryce something to go through all those bad times, times he had not even known about, really. He leaned over and kissed Bryce lightly. “I love you.”
After a few moments to catch their breaths, they continued their tour. They spent nearly an hour in the Egyptian collection, always of interest to Damon. The collection was quite small compared to the Louvre, and had as its declared purpose a greater understanding of the role of Egypt in the history of the Jewish people and early Christianity. As such, it had more Coptic artifacts than some of the others they had visited. It was at times like this, like at the Louvre as well, that Damon had doubts about his decision to pursue a career in the law, and thought he might want to be an Egyptologist. That was dreaming, but it was a powerful dream.
Exiting the museum, they found themselves in a portion of the Vatican gardens lying between the museum and the palace, where there was some fresh air, needed at this time, even if it was hot out. In the gardens there was a modern sculpture of a globe with a side opened up, and inside were what looked like more globes and cogs and wheels, reminding one of a factory. Bryce said he had never liked it, but Damon said it reminded him of the statue of Laocoön.
“How so?” Bryce asked.
“Our world is cracked, like this globe, and inside are all the factories which turn people into cogs or robots, and they are caught up in an existence over which they have no control, like Laocoön in the coils of the snake. And it’s kind of arbitrary. It doesn’t have to be that way,” Damon replied.
Bryce grinned. “I resign. You can be the guide from now on. You made sense of this thing which I have only looked at with distaste at least three different times, with my family, and now with you.”
Damon blushed.
Back inside, they made their way down a long corridor which was lined with painted maps of the different parts of Italy. Bryce said, “After you showing me up outside, I hesitate to say anything, but the fact is, I have never seen what was so special about these maps.”
“Don’t go getting shy on me. I won’t know how to handle that,” Damon admonished.
They passed through a doorway where a guard presided, and found themselves in the Sistine Chapel. In theory, the Sistine Chapel is the private chapel of the popes in the Vatican Palace, but it seemed anything but private as they entered. There were easily a hundred people in there, and probably more, with many of them snapping pictures despite the prohibitions in several languages posted in a couple of places.
Damon looked towards the altar, but Bryce grabbed him. “Not yet. You have to do these things in the right order. Look up.”
Above, there was the marvelous series of paintings by Michelangelo. As Bryce described it, the series of panels was a representation of the platonic idea called the Great Chain of Being. At the end over the altar is the depiction of God separating light from darkness. Pure spirit. In the center is the best known panel, God creating Adam. The physically perfect but languid figure of the first human lies on the earth from which he sprang, barely able to muster the strength to stretch out his hand. But he does have to make that effort. Salvation is a joint effort of God and man. God comes along, a figure of power and strength, the whole of creation in his wake. He, too, stretches out his hand, and their fingers almost touch. The spark of rational life is sent from one to the other, and mankind emerges as “the image and likeness of God.” Unfortunately, humanity does not possess divine wisdom or strength, so we then see Adam and Eve tempted, fall, and be expelled from Eden. The last panel, near the far entrance, shows Noah after the flood, drunk. The physical is supreme, the spirit missing almost entirely. We go from the most spiritual to the most physical: the Great Chain of Being.
“Look at Adam in the creation panel,” Bryce urged. “This is humanity as we could be. This is humanity like the statue of David, and by the same artist. But now, turn around. Now you can look at the work behind the altar. It’s called ‘The Last Judgment.’”
“Wow,” Damon exclaimed. “Just like the difference between David and those statues in the Medici Chapel. It’s hard to believe they’re by the same man. It’s so busy and crowded it’s hard to know what’s going on.”
“Look, at the center is Christ, but he’s an angry Christ. He looks like a Roman magistrate of the old Republic, sternly handing out justice. Mary, his mother, who represents mercy, is by his side, but looks helpless. By the time of the Last Judgment, it’s too late for mercy. When you come to think of it, none of us really wants justice. None of us really wants what we deserve. We want mercy. There, above are the symbols of the crucifixion. The cross and the scourging pillar. The sins of humanity are so great that only God himself could make up for them, so God had to die, had to be the sacrificial victim. Now, we have to pay the price. On Christ’s right are the saved, but there aren’t a lot of them. Many of them show the symbols of their martyrdom. Remember, in the Cathedral at Milan I mentioned that we’d see another version of St. Bartholomew with his skin, as according to tradition he was flayed alive. There he is among the saved. In the center, Christ raises his hand in judgment. ‘Depart from me ye wicked.’ And so on his left many sink down into the depths of everlasting torment.” Bryce pointed, “See this figure, being dragged down to Hell by a demon? As I remember it, the story is that while Michelangelo was working here, some cardinal kept bugging him about his designs. So, the face of this figure is that of the cardinal. Artists have ways of getting back at their critics.”
“All this is pretty depressing,” Damon said, “even if it is great art.”
“True. But don’t forget the ceiling. Don’t forget the David. The ceiling was completed in 1512. The ‘Last Judgment’ in 1542, thirty years later. In the meantime, a German army had sacked Rome, and a German monk had rejected the authority of the Church. The calm, balanced, and rational world of the Renaissance essentially had come to an end. It’s the same transition as that between the David and the Medici Chapel, but more stark, more dramatic, here in startling images in the same room.”
Damon stood studying the ‘Last Judgement’ for some time. He shook his head. “Are we really that bad?” Damon asked, more wondering than challenging.
‘Ask a holocaust survivor,” Bryce replied.