The Harp of the Holy Spirit In the course of trying to remember a quote from Saint Ephrem (or Ephraim or Ephraem) that I read twenty years ago I surfed a lot of sites about Saint Ephrem. Top quote about him? "the greatest poet of the patristic age ... perhaps, the only theologian-poet to rank [...]
Eyeglasses and Dante
I think I wasn't clear enough in my Tuesday post. Jean Gimpel, author of The Medieval Machine, discussed eyeglasses on page 149 in that book. He quoted from a sermon given in Florence, in 1306, praising the invention of eyeglasses some twenty years earlier. (He obtained this reference from another author listed in his notes.) [...]
After Christmas reading
I've been reading The Medieval Machine (The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages) by Jean Gimpel published by Penguin in 1975. I found it on my bookshelves during Christmas cleaning, a leftover from my Catholic scientists project. Dante lived in the middle of the period that Gimpel is describing, maybe 1100 to 1400. Gimpel basically [...]
Dante and the Annunciation again
Here is Saint Bernard encouraging Dante to look at Mary, the Queen of Heaven. Look now into the face that unto Christ Hath most resemblance; for its brightness only Is able to prepare thee to see Christ.” On her did I behold so great a gladness Rain down, borne onward in the holy minds Created through that altitude to [...]
Dante and the Annunciation
I think that the Annunciation appears more often than anything else in the Divine Comedy. Here are just two examples... Purgatory Canto 10 The angel who came down to earth with tidings of the peace so many years wept for in vain, that op'd the heavenly gates from their long interdict, before us seem'd, in [...]
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