Orthodox and heterodox Jesus penises

Friday, July 3 - Ravenna

If you're still hanging in there through this perpetual travelogue, you might be asking yourself, "Hey, didn't they go to Ravenna, too?" Indeed we did.

In the fourth century, the Arian Controversy tore Christianity in half over theological issues like the proper date of Easter and the personhood of the Holy Spirit and, most particularly, whether Jesus was made of the same stuff as God, and thus part of a coequal Trinity, or created by God, and thus subjugate. The former view won, becoming Catholicism, and Arianism was declared a heresy, but it was touch-and-go for a while — the emperors Constantius II and Valens were Arians, as were many important bishops and other powerful people. The controversy caused more faithquakes than anything until the Protestant Reformation. People were excommunicated and exiled left and right, and it strained relations between the Eastern and Western empires.

Theodoric the Goth, who ruled Italy after the fall of Rome, was an Arian, and since he made his capital in Ravenna Ravenna is dotted with Arian churches. The Arian Baptistry is a small octagonal building, splendid with mosaics on the inside, like the ceiling mosaic pictured above: naked-Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist and a dove, with the personified River Jordan looking on in a rather pagan way, surrounded by twelve apostles bearing crowns. A third of a mile away is the Catholic baptistry (the Baptistry of Neon), a small octagonal building that is entirely different:

As you can see, here we have naked-Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist and a dove, with the personified River Jordan looking on in a rather pagan way, surrounded by twelve apostles bearing crowns...but Jesus has a beard. Heretic, I cast thee out!

I admit I'm charmed by this affirmation of the everyday churchgoer's response to titanic struggles over heresy and orthodoxy: they live amongst each other, go to church less than half a mile away from each other, and decorate their separate baptistries in an almost identical way. adfamiliares has a lot to say about this sort of thing, professionally; I'm just happy to have a picture of coexistence (possibly placid, possibly fraught) to go along with my mental images of excommunicated bishops and burning books.

More pictures, as usual, under the cut. ( Cut for Jesus' penis! )

The whole set (72 photos) is on Flickr, including more mosaics — and we haven't even gotten to San Vitale yet!

The cannoli incident

Wednesday, July 1 - Florence

We ate a lot of big meals in Italy. On our first full day in Florence, we decided we would skip one — we'd had an excellent late lunch of fish kebabs and bruschetta at Zà Zà, and a huge amount of pizza and mozzarella the night before with Dan C. and family. A big dinner just did not appeal. adfamiliares had been craving cannoli ever since we touched down in Rome, and every time we'd gone looking for a pasticceria it was after dinner and they were closed. So we took a pass on dinner and went directly to dessert.

We found a pasticceria with cannoli on the menu and ordered two at the counter — they seemed a little pricy, but hey, when would we be in Florence again? The fellow told us he'd bring them out to us if we'd sit down, so we did, at a table on the little cobblestone street.

After a few minutes of people-watching, we began to wonder what was taking so long. It was a sweaty evening, and all we had to drink was the thick, piping hot cioccolato adfamiliares had ordered. "Well, they have to fill them to order, so they don't get soggy," we said, feeling knowledgeable. Five minutes after that, we began joking that maybe they had to milk the cow to make the ricotta to fill the cannoli.

So we were a little tetchy when the waiter finally emerged. With a flourish, he deposited before us two big, steaming plates of cheese-stuffed pasta, swimming in meat sauce. We started to protest, "No no no!" but then the bottoms dropped out of our stomachs as it hit us: we hadn't been saying "cannoli." We'd been saying "canneloni." The menu said "canneloni." The waiter had, quite properly, brought us due canneloni.

We'd prided ourselves on escaping the clueless tourist stereotype — made an effort to communicate in Italian, covered our shoulders and legs in the churches, didn't get huffy when restaurants charged for water. Just that morning we'd had a little laugh at the expense of the British woman at breakfast who ordered caffè americano and told us about the "hard little slices of bread with nuts in" she'd gotten at dinner the night before. (She meant biscotti.) And there we were, nine hours later, stammering over two hot plates of canneloni while the waiter tried to figure out why we were unhappy.

We explained as best we could, and told the reluctant waiter it was our mistake and we would of course pay for the meal, and unenthusiastically tucked in. We were saved by the graciousness of the waiter, who reemerged, before we'd had two bites, with takeaway boxes and plastic forks, telling us how nice the canneloni would be as a picnic tomorrow. (They did, in fact, make a perfect lunch in our hotel room the next day.) Abashed, we crept away, certain that we'd been outed as ugly Americans before every real Italian person in Florence.

The next day, we saw the graffito above. Either it was a coincidence, or the couple stifling their laughter at the next table had a can of spray paint in their bags.