rome – wanderwarbler

June 8, 2018July 30, 2018

Rome: A Woman’s Place Is In The Kitchen

For over thousand years, from around 700 BC to 400AD, the Vestal Virgins tended to the eternal flame in the Forum Romanum. The Vestal Virgins were emancipated women, meaning, they did not belong to a man – a father or husband – like their female contemporaries, but were devoted to the Goddess of Hearth, Vesta, who unlike other deities of their time, was not represented by statues, but by fire.

remains of the Vestal temple at the Forum Romanum

The Vestal Virgins enjoyed most of the honors and privileges of Roman citizens, and were allowed to handle their own property. Yet – this came at a price: Chosen at a very young age from Patrician families, the girls had to take a vow of chastity for thirty years. They were to live like nuns in the house of Vestales, which was basically a kitchen with adjacent living quarters, next to the Vestal temple, where the fire was burning.

Besides tending to the fire, an important and responsible task in a densely populated city, their duties were most importantly the preparation of the mola salsa, the holy cakes used for state sacrifices, and the holding of the Vestalia Festival around the Summer solstice each year. During these festivities their home quarters were opened to other women for visits. As priestesses of Vesta, the Vestal Virgins were also considered guardians of luck and could intervene on behalf of those in trouble.

Everything in Rome, it seems, depended on the everlasting burning flame, and the Vestales’ virginity. Their purity promised to create a magic bond for the community. As long as their virginity remained intact – Rome would remain safe.

Punishment was brutal and merciless, should a Virgin fail in her duties. If the fire went out – which meant that the Vestal was impure and the health and safety of the Romans therefore under threat – the Virgin was whipped to death. If the virgin committed the worst of all crimes, lose her virginity, she was to be buried alive. She then was led to an underground chamber at the Campus Sceleratus, where a bed, food and even a lamp was provided. After she entered, the entrance was locked and covered with dirt. It was a clearly defined ritual. Control and administration of these punishments fell to the one man who had initially chosen them for the job: the Pontifex Maximus. If a Virgin finished the 30 years alive, she was free to do as she pleases. Only a few married.

The most famous Vestal to have broken the vow of chastity, was Rhea Silvia, mother of Romulus and Remus, the founders of the city of Rome. It is believed that Rhea Silvia was raped by an unknown man, but after discovering her unwanted pregnancy, she claimed immaculate conception and named Mars, the God of warfare, as the father. For fear of Mars’ wrath, Rhea Silvia was spared death, but the twin babies were to die – not by sword, but by the elements. Let fate decide! They were abandoned. The rest is history.

December 21, 2017December 21, 2017

Rome: The Best Of Days

The Forum Romanum. The Saturn Temple at the base of the Capitol Hill

When days were shortest and darkest, the Roman poet Catulla found them the best of days. For a week in the end of December, the law courts closed in Rome, and the schools. No business could be transacted and to commence a war was regarded impious. People offered little presents, mostly wax figurines, to the children and the poor, and decorated their homes with greeneries and lights.

The streets of Rome were governed by a general spirit of merriness. Public gambling was allowed, and foolish tricks were played. People dressed in loose, colorful gowns instead of their white togas, and wore cone shaped hats. All of them! Slaves, freedmen, citizens suddenly were indistinguishable. “Io, Saturnalia!” The crowds exclaimed.

From December 17 to 24, the Saturnalia, the festivities to honor the God Saturn, were held in ancient Rome. Saturn had reigned the worlds in the Golden Age, when humans still enjoyed the earth’s bounty without having to work for it. Therefore Saturn was considered the God of agriculture and the Saturnalia were celebrated as a kind of harvest-home; by December the hard work in the fields was completed and people brought evergreens and lights into their homes.

Citizens, freedmen, slaves were indistinguishable for the week of the Saturnalia.

That the Saturnalia were held at the time of the winter solstice was not a coincidence: Sol Invictus, the invincible sun, was returning to enlighten humankind again. The migratory aspect of the sun’s trajectory and the seasons was reflected in much older myths that had Saturn down as an immigrant from Greece. As can be learned from the writings of Ovid and Virgil, Saturn was dispelled by his own father, Jupiter, an expulsion that ended the Golden Age and left humans waiting for Saturn’s return.

Until then, the Saturnalia brought a short comic relief. Social roles were reversed. In fact, slaves were not only exempted from their chores and toils, but were served by their masters, granted freedom for a week.

The Colosseum in Rome, where gladiators fought for their lives – as a sacrifice to Saturn. Wealth, Ops, only followed Lua, destruction.

While the Romans considered Saturn a liberator who brought with him wealth and peace, they also recognized his ambiguity. He was two-faced. Saturn’s wife, Ops, incorporated abundance and resources – but he also had a first wife, Lua, the goddess of destruction. It was for her that in the beginning of times, human sacrifice was offered during the Saturnalia, in form of dead gladiators. It took a hero, a shining light, to come along and end this inhuman rite, it is told. This savior was, of course, Hercules.

Hercules, the savior, through the eyes of a Pope (bronze statue at Vatican Museum.)

October 28, 2017October 29, 2017

Rome On Ecstasy

This month 500 years ago, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther published his 95 theses and thereby started the Protestant Reformation. He called for purification of the church, who in the run of the centuries had turned into a self-serving system of greed, nepotism and decadence. Christians should have faith in God and the Bible alone, Luther declared, and not in the army of angels and Saints, nor “immaculate” Mother Mary and least of all the Pope.

An angel fighting off vice – or killing a Protestant. Interior Chiesa San Luigi Dei Francesi, Rome

The Catholic Church stroke back: in arms (the bloodthirsty Thirty Year War broke loose) and arts. In a meticulously planned propaganda campaign (conspired at the Council of Trent 1543-63) they called for artists to flock to the eternal city and create buildings, paintings and sculptures that were so formidable and awe-inspiring they’d resurrect faith in Angels and Saints and Mother Mary, and most of all the Pope. But above all, they should instill fear of hell and punishment into an illiterate people. And so Baroque was born. Mesmerizing to this day.

Ceiling Fresco inside Villa Borghese, built around 1600 for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, an admirer, collector and protector of Caravaggio

The world’s biggest church was built, St. Peter’s Basilica, in honor of the first Pope. Michelango was bullied into adorning the ceiling with formidable depictions of God’s grandezza. Michelangelo grumbled – he was a sculptor, not a painter, after all – but gave in.

Caravaggio self portrait as decapitated Goliath. ( David and Goliath Vienna KHM)

By the end of the 16th century, the Church found another Michelangelo, whose realistic and detailed depictions of beheadings and other pains very much satisfied their need for intimidation. On the downside, the guy was unpredictable and prone to outbursts of violence. Worse, he was a murderer. His name was Michelangelo Merisi, but he went by the name of Caravaggio.

St. John the Baptist hugs a ram. Caravaggio 1602, at Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome

Caravaggio first rose to fame through extremely realistic depictions of delicious fruit baskets and boys. The Cardinals, whose predilection for youth was well known and documented (The insider account Il puttanismo Romano was published anonymously) went crazy for both the painter and his canvases. Caravaggio himself, however, was also leaning towards women. While he complied with the church’s demand to glorify Mother Mary, he did so by using full-busted, sensual courtesans as models, and not thin pale nuns. It was a problem with him – women in the Catholic Church of course had to be chaste. Raped, if anything, but not lascivious. Finally, they had him paint old men as dying Saints, paintings they could display in their chapels. The martyrs of St. Mathew and St. Peter were immediate block busters: The contrasts of light and dark, the depth of field, the intensity, the drama were breathtaking, and still are, 400 years later.

A busted Mother Mary steps on a snake – the model was a well known courtesan, the painting, despite commissioned by the Vatican, was finally not accepted.

The council of Trent had outlawed any worldly pleasure. Dances and carnivals were forbidden, books banned and priests were asked to spy on their parishioners. (Easy, they had to confess anyway.)

Art became a surrogate for bodily desires and should channel them into spirituality. Saints and martyrs were shown in the moment of rapture, in the throngs of ecstasy. Ex Stasis meant the experience of being taken outside of oneself, to where one catches a preview of heaven, the moment when one is united with the beloved, with God. A little Death, as it was later called. Or: orgasm.

The church enlisted architects to turn the city into the shape of a star and sculptors Gianlorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini and Pietro da Cortona to beautify it with sculptures, fountains and staricases.

Pope Innocent X commissioned Bernini, whose sculptures were ummatched in expression and elegance, to design the famous Fountain of the four Rivers at Piazza Navona. The four rivers represented Rome also a colonial world power. Innocent X himself went down in history for his greediness – and for his even greedier sister-in-law and lover Pimpaccia. Pimpaccia was said to pull the strings behind Innocent. Their residence, Palazzo Doria Pamhilj, by coincidence at the Piazza Navona, is a vestige of their insatiable greed.

Detail of Fountain 4 Fiumini at Piazza Navona, Rome

The fountain was of course constructed on public expense – during the great famine of 1646-48 – and not surprisingly it was not met with much enthusiasm by the starving people. Riots lay in the air. Under cover of the night, protesters stuck posters on the stone blocks, so called Pasquinades:
“We do not want obelisks and fountains. It is bread that we want. Bread, Bread, Bread!”
In a spirit of Christian compassion, Pope Innocent X had the protesters spied out and arrested.
The fountain was built, but Pope Innocent X met a terrible end. While he lay on his death bed in Palazzo Dori Pamphilj, Pimpaccia robbed all his money and fled the city. His agony lasted three days, three days of ecstasy for Innocent X, 200 years for Rome. Then, the era of Baroque was over.

Splendor and Passion: Bernini’s sculptures attract tourists from around the world. At Galleria Borghese

October 10, 2017

Rome: Watching the Sky

In ancient Rome, augury was the major kind of divination. This included watching the sky, thunder and lightning, but most importantly the auspices, watching the birds. Eagles and vultures were Jupiter’s most important messengers.

Nothing was decided without consulting an augur, a priest who could interpret the flight, the song and dance of birds. Most notoriously, Romulus and Remus settled their dispute on where to found the city of Rome by an augury. Romulus, of course, had the better auspices. He spotted more vultures than his brother Remus, which also granted the former the right to fratricide.

The she-wolf that raised Remus and Romulus against a purple, thunderous Roman sky on the Capitoline Hill, where Romulus founded Rome.

The auspices was restricted to certain species, which are hard to come across in the busy city nowadays. Like in any other coastal city, giant gulls and pigeons seem to outnumber the rest of Rome’s avian population.

A giant gull over-looking his city from the Palletino, the power center of ancient Rome.

Since the Roman Empire extended over a vast part of Northern Africa, tropical birds were imported as sought-after pets. Emperor Nero famously owned an African Gray parrot, Pontius Pilatus’ wife, Claudia, kept lovebirds in a cage, who looked not unlike the Monaco Parakeet.

A Parrocco Monaco sneaking from behind a tree in the beautiful Borghese gardens.

Today’s most flamboyant Roman bird, the gregarious Monaco Parakeet, only arrived in Rome in the early 1970ies. The striking, green parrots have since seamlessly integrated into Italian lifestyle, not causing any harm to local Wildlife, according to the Italian Wildlife Fund. These bright flying jewels color the ancient buildings, which, when built, where not as marble-white, but painted in manifold colors.