Monthly Archives: December 2020

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

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Today is a public holiday in Italy. What holiday is being celebrated? It is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Whose Immaculate Conception? Certainly not Jesus’ Virgin birth, as some still mistakenly think. It is the Immaculate Conception of Mary, mother of Jesus. It means that, unlike the rest of us, Mary was born without the original sin imparted to all mankind through Eve’s unfortunate temptation by the snake in the Garden of Eden, to eat of the forbidden fruit.

Mary was born in the normal way. Her parents were Anne and Joachim. Yet, as programmed by God to bear the son of man, she was not shamed by that shadow of original sin with which we are all born with – that is, according to Catholic theology – until we are baptised. Anne, as will be remembered if one reads the apocryphal Gospel of Saint James, was beyond child-bearing age so, in a sense, Mary’s was a symbolic virgin birth.

The idea of Mary’s unique status in mankind was first observed in fifth century Syria – that same country which is still being martyred by a war fought by fanatics of another monotheistic religion which, too, also holds Mary in the highest respect. Indeed, Mary is the only woman mentioned by name in the Holy Qur’an, in Sura nineteen.

I quote:

The Angel said: I am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a faultless son. She said: How can I have a son when no mortal hath touched me, neither have I been unchaste? He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord saith: It is easy for Me. And (it will be) that We may make of him a revelation for mankind and a mercy from Us, and it is a thing ordained. And she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a far place.

That is clearly another take on the Annunciation, which is celebrated here on March 25th.  Nine months, after the appropriate length of time, later Jesus is born.

December the 8th was when Mary was conceived, not when she was born, which took place, again appropriately, nine months later and is celebrated on September 8th.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, Mother of God, was officially promulgated by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and is held in the greatest respect by all practising Roman Catholics. Indeed, among Anglo-Catholics – an offshoot of the Oxford movement in Victorian Anglicanism – it is, too, a day of reverence.

In many countries the day is a national holiday and in Italy it serves as the start of serious Christmas festivities. No Christmas shopping two days after August bank holiday here – it all begins now: the full bonanza of gift wrapping, Christmas lights, trees and the rest of that strange mixture of bonhomie, excess feasting, tinsel, carol singing, living cribs, family love, religious outpouring, commercialism and the warmest of fires which the season brings to us.

(Our crib during Advent -awaiting for the birth of the Redeemer)

The Christmas tree, although only imported into Italy at the beginning of the last century has become an ever more important symbol of Christmas. Its triangular shape symbolizes the Holy Trinity and its nature as a perennial plant stands for the Eternity of God himself.

Here is part of our tree:

Surely our Mother Earth needs the same respect and adoration in her time of need, which is, more than ever, now…

MADONNA

Ineffable, your interstellar gaze

and cosmic garments’ flow unspeeches me

as unknown master’s brush paints God’s decree

and angel choir resounds from rainbow blaze.

Illumined chance, in summer’s sunset haze

had stopped my way, world’s restless refugee,

and opened aimless heart and made it free

when you accepted my unkempt bouquets.

 

Your face, I’ve seen before, in books and dreams:

till now unnoticed in its loveliness;

recondite smile that kisses all mankind,

unfathomed eyes that heal, touch that redeems,

marine star, sole reply in storm’s distress,

in your compassioned breast all hope’s enshrined.

 

(My poem written in 2008)

 

The Year 1631

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A few years ago I wrote a prose poem in Italian chronicling the main events of 1631. This poem was read to inaugurate an evening of poetry readings at our little church. I thought, for reasons that will become obvious towards the end of the poem, of translating it into English and editing it for this post.

SHORT CHRONICLE FOR THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1631

The first day of the year 1631 was a Wednesday.

At the beginning of that year, could be heard the desperate screams of more than twenty thousand inhabitants, men, women and children,  who were massacred by the sword in the German city of Magdeburg, which had already been sacked by an imperial army.

It was the year when, in Massachusetts in the New World, John Winthrop was elected the first governor, when “La Gazzette”, the first French newspaper, was founded, when the Treaty of Cherasco ended the war of the Mantuan succession, and when Algerian pirates sacked the port of Cork in Ireland.

It was the year when the city of Wurzburg was captured by the king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, but not before about nine hundred people were burned at the stake for the crime of witchcraft.

Woe to those who play with the forces of darkness! The witches meet each night on the Prato Fiorito, where they reside in a deep ditch near the ruins of an ancient monastery. Hear their gloomy moans during stormy twilights, do not enter the fantastic castles they build on mountain tops, be afraid and keep away from the forces of necromancy and the flattery of the Devil!

It was another year in the most merciless war of all time – the Thirty Years’ War. The elector of Saxony – until now neutral – sided with the king of Sweden to drive the imperial army out of Saxony. The Spanish fleet was intercepted and almost entirely destroyed by a Dutch fleet in the Battle of the Slaak. Blood dripped endlessly, and in the autumn of the same year, at the battle of Breitenfeld, the imperial army was defeated by the king of Sweden, marking the first victory for the Protestants in the infamous war.

It was the year when, in the orient, in the city of Agra, part of the Mughal Empire, the architects Ustad Ahmad Lahauri, Indian, and Geronimo Veroneo, Italian, began to build the Taj Mahal, supreme sign of a man’s love for a woman, and one of the new Seven Wonders of the World.

(My photo of the Taj, taken a long time ago)

In this year, among many others who are either remembered or forgotten, were born:

  • The Welsh poet, Katherine Philips
  • The English poet, John Dryden
  • Salem Witchcraft Judge William Stoughton
  • The English philosopher, Lady Anne Finch Conway.

Those who died this year included:

  • Michelagnolo Galilei, composer and luthier, Galileo Galilei’s younger brother
  • The English poet and prelate, John Donne.
  • Mumtaz Mahal, the exquisite wife of Shah Jahan, creator of the Taj Mahal
  • Cesare Cremonini, Italian philosopher.
  • Guillén de Castro y Bellvis, the Spanish playwright
  • The Queen of Denmark, Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow,
  • Michael Drayton, the English poet, friend of Shakespeare

In the year 1631, as we read on the cornerstone, unknown architects and forgotten masons built, between the forest and the mule track that leads to the fortress tower, in the Controneria of the Lima valley, by the village of Longoio, our own little church or Chiesina ‘della Margine’ dedicated to the Madonna dei Sette Dolori (Madonna of the Seven Dolours*)

Our chiesina was built to honour the Virgin who saved the inhabitants of our village from the great Pandemic sweeping throughout Italy and beyond.

Here is our chiesina’s corner stone bearing the date 1631.

*The Seven Dolours, (or sorrows), of the Virgin are:

  1. The prophecy of Simeon that he would live to see the Redeemer of Mankind
  2. The flight of the Holy family into Egypt
  3. The loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem
  4. Mary’s meeting Jesus on the Via Dolorosa
  5. The Crucifixion of Jesuson Mount Calvary
  6. The Piercing of the Side of Jesus with a spear, and his descent from the Cross
  7. The burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea

PPS My most critical reader and the one who puts her first like on my post:

We are now in the White Zone?

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It was lovely to reminisce about our fabulous Sicilian journey in my last few posts. However, we have to hit the present reality at one time or another. Even in the Apennine village we live in one cannot forget the current covid situation. From the least dangerous yellow zone Tuscany moved to orange zone and now it is in the red zone with the highest strictures applied to social interaction. No doubt my friends in the local branch of the Reformed Italian Communist party may humorously quip on this point but we remain red until at least Christmas.

Better red than dead? Only essential shops are open (which include hairdressers, of course) and if one wants a cappuccino and a pezzo dolce (bun) one will be served it in a cardboard cup with the bun put in a paper bag and then leave from a newly named exit door and enjoy elevenses in the cold of winter Bagni di Lucca’s deserted market square. Not quite what one expected of Italy but then Italy is in a very unexpected situation as, indeed, is the rest of the world.

Actually, since yesterday morning we are now no longer into the red zone but rather in the white, as a scattering of snow has turned large chunks of our mountain landscape into a winter wonderland.

This was the scene looking out of my bedroom window yesterday morning.

These are some photographs from friends who live further north at Porretta. They got a more generous helping of the white stuff.

A beautiful set of photographs of Montefegatesi, our highest village, was taken by that master photographer David Bonaventuri. I’m sure he won’t mind if I include this one in my post. It’s so atmospheric!

One helpful thing which the pandemic has brought for us is the ability to look and act locally. This may mean anything from clearing out our kitchen cupboard in need of attention, or tidying up the garden or by-passing supermarkets like the plague (literally!) and using the excellent local shops we have here at Bagni di Lucca. Here is the front of Ragghianti’s shop, for example:

And Borghesi’s bar and restaurant do offer a good selection of take-aways:

 

Although the UK has perhaps prematurely rushed to grasp the saving rope of a vaccine Italy has to wait at least another month, I just hope that southern Italy and Calabria in particular, where hospitals coping with the pandemic are close to breaking-down point thanks to a combination of the local version of the mafia known as the ndrangheta and badly-cut health services, will not have to suffer for too long. It’s just not fair to a beautiful country and to such beautiful people as the Italians.

We two are towards the end of our employment history and consider ourselves lucky that we don’t have to suffer both the economic hardships of much of the population especially the self-employed like artists and musicians and also the psychological damage which younger people are bound to suffer as a result of social distancing. (How could we have been forbidden parties when I was at uni!) In this respect Italy is particularly hard-done-by. Different countries have different concepts of social space: the further north one goes the wider the distance of interaction between people. Italy is a particularly tactile country; hugs and kisses abound here, especially between generations. How sad that so many cannot express themselves in this way for the time being. Let us truly hope that a New Year will bring hope and that one day not too far away we will be able to shake hands and hug our friends and, most of all, appreciate anew how valuable real (and not virtual!) human contact is and how we must treasure life’s most valuable gifts: our loved ones and true friends.