PONTIFEX EMERITUS: ARMCHAIRS and TIARAS

Pope Benedict XVI retires tomorrow and already the protocol of the Vatican has gone into overdrive to cater for that retirement. He will be addressed as Your Holiness; officially will be referred to as Benedict XVI, Pontifex Emeritus; will continue to wear the white cassock but with brown cobblers shoes; and will live in the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in the Vatican Gardens so that he can be continue to be guarded by the Pontifica Cohors Helvetic (Swiss Guards). 

It appears that the Bishop of Rome (and Kilfenora in Ireland), theological faculties fully intact, does not intend to go quietly into the umbraculum of the night judging by his unscripted farewell audience with the priests of the diocese of Rome on the difficulties he has had with the developments in the Church as a consequence of Vatican II. According to his own recollection, his involvement was pivotal and he knows the truth of what was intended. He informed his priests that in his opinion we (and they!) have all been living in a ‘virtual’ rendition of faith since Vatican II; the consequence of a alpha-omega war of the worlds between the verisimilar ‘council of the Fathers’ and a virtual ‘council of journalists’ in a hermeneutic battle of interpretation. But thankfully, according to the Holy Father, in echoes of Nicaea and Ephesus, these journalists, these purveyors of ‘calamities’, are now ‘breaking down’ and the ‘true’ interpretation is emerging. 

Sede vacant he is not, or likely to be, and Pope Benedict has ensured his successor’s dung chair will be a hot one. Also there is likely to be a rush on every morning between the German and his successor to throw the towels of faith over the deckchairs by the ornamental pool. 

Deckchairs brings me to armchairs or arms to be more exact. 

Pope Benedict XVI will retain his papal coat-of-arms but there will have to be some modification to indicate his emeritus or retired status. I suggest placing a hammer and broken seal within the tiara (the gold ring bearing the papal seal of Pope Benedict will be formally smashed) and changing the colours of the papal keys from the gold and silver of spiritual and temporal power to the rusty brown of an old passageway door. The Tiara would also lose its three crowns, indicative of the powers of the Supreme Pontiff: Sacred Orders, Jurisdiction and Magisterium.

Rihla (Journey 34): Palermo, Sicily: A BRIDGE TO NO PLACE (UTOPIA) AND ANYPLACE

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355 CE) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian, Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years. 

This rihla is about Palermo, Sicily. 

Views of Palermo (Braun and Hogenberg c.1600)

For all travellers, the journal, the rihla, is a rational account of what is and the occasional wistful thought of what might have been. And yet there are the occasions in those journeys when at the back of one’s mind, both in dreaming and in wakening, there surfaces a faint hope of discovery of what could be; a Shangri-la, an earthly garden of paradise, an Eden: a utopia. 

Palermo c.1680

As I disembarked from the train I had taken from Cefalu all expectations of Eden evaporated. Modern Palermo, one of the fifteen Italian cities vying for the European Capital of Culture in 2019, is as one writer stated an ‘urban paradox’, notable for daily water rationing, endless traffic congestion, magnificent mosaics, apocalyptic slums, dark looks, radiant smiles; a place that is nowhere and everywhere. 

World Map of al-Idrisi (Book of Roger), Palermo c.1150

Palermo has at times been Phonencian, Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Berber, Arab, Norman, German, French, Spanish, Austrian, American even and Italian but at all times it has been Sicilian. But all hopes were not lost as I turned left on the Corso Tukory to approach the Norman Palace of Palermo from the cloistered gardens of the red-domed San Giovanni degli Eremeti. As I stood in the luxurious garden looking up at the palace walls I thought of Plato’s 5th century BCE work the Republic, thought to have been set in Sicily, and of the words of another traveller, Ibn Jubayr (Abu’l-Husayn Muhammad B. Ahmad B. Jubayr al-Kinani 540AH/1145CE – 614/1217) from Valencia in al-andulus Spain who arrived in Palermo in 1185 on his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca. He described Palermo as, 

“the metropolis of these islands, combining the benefits of wealth and splendor, and having all that you could wish of beauty, real or apparent, and all the need of subsistence, mature and fresh. It is an ancient and elegant city, magnificent and gracious, and seductive to look upon. Proudly set between its open spaces and plains filled with gardens, with broad roads and avenues, it dazzles the eyes with its perfection.” 

Baedeker, Palermo c.1900

The Norman Palace (Palazzo Reale) from the outside is like a foreshore rock, with the red lobster-like San Giovanni scavenging nearby, and with limestone barnacle-like encrustations of Byzantine, Arab and Norman structural architectural features. And circling round it like eddies are the tides of human and automotive movement, waxing and waning with the hours. But once inside those walls you are in wonderment. 

For here in Norman Palermo was the Omphalos, here was where in the mid-11th century CE of our time, instead of Rome, or Constantinople, or Jerusalem, or Damascus, the world had its navel… where nowhere and everywhere merged. 

Roger II, King of Sicily. La Martorana Church, Palermo, c.1140

For here on this tidal rock of time existed Roger II, King of Sicily (1095 –1154CE); multi-lingual in Latin-Italian, Norman-French, Greek and Arabic; founder and participant of the Academy of Geographers where al-Idrisi compiled his great geographical work the Nuzhatul Mushtaq (The Book of Roger); here was where Roger II formulated the first medieval secular (Ius commune) codification of law, that was to be issued as the Assizes of Ariano, the foundation-stone of European Law today; here was where Roger II introduced the mandatory registration of physicians and of their training; here was where all members of the society Muslim, Jew and Christian were encouraged to participate; here where the administration of the realm was conducted in trilingual Arabic, Greek and Latin: here where upon his coronation Roger II commissioned what must be the most glorious small chapel in the world, the most thought-provoking vision of utopia, the Palatine Chapel. 

Palatine Chapel, Norman Palace, Palermo, c.1140

You walk along the first floor balcony overlooking a courtyard and almost in semi-darkness you exit the light of day into the almost perpetual light that suffuses the three-aisled small Byzantine shaped chapel. Ahead of you is the Royal dias above which the Christ Pantocrator dwells in brilliant mosaic. It is thought that the artisans who created these mosaics had been first brought to Sicily by Roger II’s Emir of Emirs (Ammeriglio, Chief Chancellor) George of Antioch to decorate his own church of the La Martorona further down the Via Vittoria Emanuele. 

Roger II was no saint, and George of Antioch was his chief architect of both chaos and order. 

It is the ceiling of the chapel however that captures the imagination most. Influenced by Seljuq design it is composed of 24 small and 20 large cuppolas carved from panels of Abies Alba and Nebrodondis (Silver and Sicilian Fir) and Cedar, the low resin content of which has prevented over the centuries too much cracking and also allowed the original painting of the panels. 

Palatine Chapel Carved Ceiling, Norman Palace, Palermo, c.1140

Leaving the Norman Palace you walk northwards towards the sea to Palermo Cathedral where Roger II is entombed in the purple porphyry of emperors. The Via Victoria Emmanuele is the cardo maximus of Roman Palermo and you have to remind yourself that this was once a walled city in which there were nine gates. 

The recently discovered 11th century Arabic manuscript entitled the Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes describes Palermo before the Normans captured it, 

“As to al-Qạr (‘the Citadel’), which is inseparable from the Old City, and its gates: the most famous is the Bāb al-Bạr (‘the Sea Gate’), because of its proximity to the sea. Close to it lies the Bāb Aḥ mad ibn Abī al-̣asan Ạmad ibn Abī al-̣usayn. Next is the Bāb Shantaghathāt (‘the Gate of St Agatha’ ), which is an ancient gate . [Then comes] a gate which was created by Aḥ mad ibn [Abī ] al-̣usayn, where there is an excellent spring [which powers] many mills. [Then come:] the gate called Bāb Ibn Qurhub; the Bāb al-Abnā’(‘Gate of the Buildings’), which is the oldest of [the city’s] gates; the Bāb al-Sūdān (‘the Gate of the Blacks’) opposite the blacksmiths; the Bāb al-̣adīd (‘the Iron Gate’ or ‘the Gate of Iron’ ), from which is the exit to the Ḥ ārat al -Yahūd (‘the Jewish Quarter’); and another gate near to it which was renewed by Abū al-̣usayn. The total number of gates is nine. This city was originally a long rectangle, with a market from its east to its west, but it was subsequently built up and became circular.”  

The anonymous writer goes onto say that because of being ruled by the Zodiac constellation of Leo that the city is difficult to govern, 

“The astrologers claim that [when] the House of Leo rises obliquely, it exercises, despite its reputation for beneficence, malign influence so that in every land in which it is influential, it is difficult for the ruler to govern. And it [Leo] rules over Samarqand, Ardabīl, Mecca, Damascus [and Palermo]. These cities do not suit their rulers and their rulers do not suit them.” 

Not much has changed in 1000 years!

George of Antioch dedicating his church to the Virgin Mary

La Martorana, Palermo c.1140

Close to its middle point to the east of the intersection with the Via Macqueda, the old Decumus Maximus, are the twin foundations of the two great Norman Emir of Emirs (Ammiraglio – from Amir al-reale – Commander of the Royal Galleys), the S.Maria dell Ammiraglio or La Martorona of George of Antioch (d.1152) with its wonderful mosacics (and where the Albanian Byzantine rite is still in use), and the smaller San Cataldo church of Maoio of Bari (d.1160). These two small but special buildings belie the importance of their founders to success of Norman Palermo. 

Ponte dell'Ammiraglio, Palermo c.1141

Continuing along the Via Maqueda takes you back towards the train station, but before leaving for Cefalu I skirted north-eastwards along the Corso dei Mille to a perfectly formed Norman-Arab bridge built by the same George of Antioch in 1140 to cross the river Oreto but now sitting high-and-dry in a park dedicated to Garibaldi. 

I sat there for a while and thought of George and Roger II and what they had achieved. 

It was Roger II’s grandson Frederick II (crowned King of Sicily at the age of 3 in 1197, and Holy Roman Emperor in 1220) who as another extraordinary precocious medieval intellectual was called Stupor Mundi or Wonder of the World by contemporaries. But he stood on the shoulders of his grandfather for whom that epithet should have been reserved. For all his achievements Roger II of Sicily was always considered by imperial northerners to be no more than a first generation robber-baron, a crusader against fellow Christians who had carved out a kingdom for himself by force of arms and manipulation of the papacy. This is true but in contrast to many other such men it was what he then did next with that Kingdom that made it almost a utopian ideal, the nowhere and everywhere of the world. 

The anniversary of Roger II’s death is on the 26 February.

Tomb of Roger II of Sicily, Palermo Cathedral

REVOLUTION AND FAILURE: THE MARTYRDOM OF EQUALITY

"Society is, indeed, a contract… Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures each in their appointed place."

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Vol III. John C. Nimmo, London 1887

Edmund Burke, the Irish-born statesman, political theorist and philosopher wrote these lines in a monograph entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France in November 1789 but which he delayed publishing until November 1790. The monograph decries the violence and conduct of the revolution in France, by advocating the necessity of a constitutional monarchy, but at its heart was an examination of the nature of revolution as a means to effect change in society. The pamphlet was to provoke responses by Mary Wollstonecraft with her Vindication of the Rights of Men in late November 1790 and Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man of March 1791 and Feb 1792.

One of the most fundamental acknowledged rights of mankind is, as detailed in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. 

Equality is seen as the cornerstone of all society.

Perversely all revolutions that have occurred in history to change what could be classed as Burke’s societal ‘contract’ for that particular society have stressed the absolute equality of all participants in that revolutionary process. And yet in the accomplishment of that revolution the very seeds of its failure are sown.

Almost immediately, and one does not have to look back in distant history to recognize this pattern but only to analyse the very recent revolutions in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, where a post-revolutionary hierarchy of participation is engendered all with an enormous sense of entitlement, and as a consequence a demand for a moral and legal tiering of that entitlement within the new society.

Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu d.1755); one of the lights of the Enlightenment whose work influenced both the French and American Revolutions, wrote in his 1734 study on the fall of Byzantium,  Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et leur décadence that,

"Revolutions created more revolutions, so that the effect became the cause."

I remember when travelling in Iran a number of years ago talking to disaffected Iranians who decried the preferential treatment given to the families of Martyrs of the Islamic Revolution for access to education and health services through the Bonyad Shahid va Omur-e Janbazan, or Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs which also incorporates the Bonyad Shahid va Isaar-Garaan (Foundation of Martyrs and Affairs of Self-Sacrificers). 

Martyrdom is a very important aspect of revolutionary change in Islamic society and it is propagated particularly in Iran. Within the Iranian Constitution Preamble a figure of 60,000 martyrs is enshrined as the Price The Nation Paid in the Constitution to achieve the revolution over the Shah yet the most up-to-date estimate of the actual numbers of those killed in pursuit of the revolutionary change to be about 3200. There were however up to 1,000,000 dead and wounded as a result of the disastrous Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 whose dependents are also catered by the Bonyad Shahid, including the families of the teenage Baseeji youths who walked onto minefields in order to clear them knowing they would be 'martyred' in the process. 

This veneration has perpetuated the ‘mill-stone’ of subsequent unequal entitlement that has occurred and the enormous emotive and economic power delegated to the Bonyad of Martyrs (the Foundation controls nearly 100 commercial companies) is creating the seeds of discontent, which will surely result in yet another revolution; it is only a matter of time, the effect will become the cause.

But the commemoration of revolutionary 'martyrdom' is not just an Islamic tradition. Ireland remembers the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising (Revolution) who were 'martyred' for the cause and indeed every year I receive my family's invitation to the commemoration ceremony on account of the fact that my grandfather was a member of the General Post Office volunteers and also was involved in the landing of the guns from the Asgard. This attachment to remembering revolutionary sacrifice does not however come with economic or health benefits nor do I ever sense a personal advancement because of that association. America is no different. They remember their Revolution with the Founding Fathers, and the still extant organisations such as the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution. Even the very terminology implies an almost patriarchal hierarchy of social stratification following the revolutionary change.

In revolution and also in democratic change, Edmund Burke’s contention that there is an “inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures each in their appointed place” anticipates that in any societal contract true equality can never be achieved, and as a society we either should stop looking for it, or accept it purely as aspirational. 

This is a bitter truth. As an individual member of society, acceptance of the status-quo, either the old or the new, grates, and you do what you can to perpetuate equality and on that basis all our ‘rights’. When frustration with inequality moves beyond self, beyond family, beyond clan and is cloaked in a communal desire reaction then revolution occurs. And yet like magma cooling, the force is spent and a base human desire for acknowledgement of sacrifices made overwhelm, and recompense demanded, even if that means denial to someone else who has not achieved the same ‘notional’ level of sacrifice in the service of the revolution.

To exist is not to be equal, revolution is not realignment, and the only true equality in existence is its end.

Carving from Persepolis, Iran (c.480 BCE)

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013

Christmas Day Swim 2012

Blackrock, Salthill, Galway

As always the New Year is a step into the unknown even if the landscape 

seems unchanged, seems familiar. 

Is not that the frisson of existence?

Have a happy New Year and an fulfilling 2013. 

AFTER THE STORM - FROTH ON A FOREST STREAM

Rihla (Journey 33): ADARE MANOR, LIMERICK, IRELAND: MISTLETOE, MARISCO AND MAGIC

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355 CE) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian, Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This rihla is about ADARE, Co. Limerick, Ireland.

Adare village in Co. Limerick, Ireland, is a vibrant, surviving urban phenomenon of an otherwise Famine-blighted, fogbound, stone-rot landscape of Ireland of the 1840s with its wide boulevards, well built houses, pointed walls, cared-for thatch, generous public spaces, muted providence, an august trinity of friaries, and the brash haughtiness of a true manorial town that once serviced the needs of Adare Manor (commissioned in 1832 by Windham Henry Quin, the 2nd Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl with the spirited encouragement of his wife Caroline and finished by his son Edwin Wyndham-Quin, the 3^rd Earl in 1862 in the midst of a social and economic disaster that existed elsewhere) but is now almost smug in its continuing exuberance that has seen it regularly voted as Ireland’s most beautiful town.

The Quins of Adare were the hereditary chiefs of the Hy Ifearnan (Heffernan) clan, of the Cineal Fearmaic sept of the Dál gCais kingdom of Munster (c.1000CE), and were originally from Muintir Ifernain in central County Clare (the later barony of Inchiquin). Windham Quin’s father Valentine, one of the last titular Gaelic tribal chiefs elevated to a peerage, was made an Earl in February 1822.

But Adare is much older a place than the Quin’s manor and its original Irish name was Áth Dara meaning the Ford of the Oak and this brings me to the connection to mistletoe. In the small, walled orchard garden of Adare Manor that now serves as the practice putting green for the championship golf course there are 5 or 6 apple trees that produce a really succulent fruit. But it is in December, when the apple fruit and foliage has withered away that the trees are at their most majestic. For it is then that they are covered in most wonderful green and white berry medley (like hollies only the female mistletoe has berries) that is the mystical and magical mistletoe. There are few, if any, places in Ireland that you can see, never mind touch, the plant in all its glory.

Adare Manor Garden Orchard Mistletoe

Mistletoe, a hemi-parasite plant that is transferred as a sticky seed excrement by the Mistle Thrush from deciduous trees (oak, apple sometimes lime) to tree, is not a native Irish plant yet does have an ancient Irish name: drualas. This is a derivation of Druidh las, the Druid’s herb. Very little is written down concerning the Druids but Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historie (c79CE) states,

 "The Druids (so they call their Magi) hold nothing in such sacred respect as the mistletoe, and the tree upon which it grows, provided it be an oak. 'Omnia sanantem appellantes suo vocabulo.' (They call it by a word signifying in their own language All-Heal.) And having prepared sacrifices, and feast under the tree, they bring up two white bulls, whose horns are then first bound; the priest, in a white robe, ascends the tree, and cuts it off with a golden knife; it is received in a white sheet. Then, and not till then, they sacrifice the victims, praying that God would render His gift prosperous to those on whom He had bestowed it. When mistletoe is given as a potion, they are of opinion that it can remove animal barrenness, and that it is a remedy against all poisons."

Beyond the pale of the manor Adare’s medieval ecclesiastical history is still visible with the presence of three Abbeys: Augustinian, Trinitarian and Franciscan.

Mosaic from 1218 above door of Trinitarian Church of 

San Tommaso in Formis in Rome.

The Trinitarian establishment (now the Roman Catholic Parish church) for me holds the most fascination, as the Trinitarian Order of Friars, who dedicated their lives to raising ransom money to redeem Christian captives on the Barbary Coast (as well as running hospitals in the slave banos of Algiers and Tunis), featured strongly in my first novel, The Simurgh and the Nightingale about Barbary Pirates in the 1600s. The Trinitarian Order, founded by St. John de Matha, was approved of by a Bull of Pope Innocent III, Operante divine dispositionis clementia, issued on the 17^th December 1198. Other early Christian captive redemptionist orders were the Spanish Military Order of Santiago (1175), The Order of Montegaudio (1178), and the Order of the Merced (1218).  

The Adare abbey was the only Trinitarian establishment in Ireland and they had been invited there around 1229 by a second-wave archtypical Anglo-Norman robber-baron Geoffrey de Marisco. Geoffrey’s full name was Geoffroi de Montmorency de Marisco, Lord of Thorney and Huntspill in Somerset (Marisco being a derivation of Marsh). Geoffrey was well connected to Ireland as his sister had married Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald the founder of the House of Desmond. He became the Justicar or Lord Chief Justice of Ireland from 1226-28 and in addition to his connections also inherited extensive lands in Ireland from his uncle-in-law John Comyn, Archbishop of Dublin in 1192. He subsequently expanded his holdings by marrying as his second wife, Eve de Bermingham, the daughter and heir of Robert de Bermingham, Baron of Offaly.

In addition to the Trinitarian Abbey Geoffrey also invited the Knights Hospitaller to establish a commandery in 1215 in nearby Aney (now Hospital). The advantage of settling military and religious orders by the Norman barons on their properties was not entirely pious but guaranteed that associated (and tithe paying) lands would be held safe and their value increased. Geoffrey was to take part in many Norman attacks on the Irish in Connacht. This too was to leave a legacy as the Morris family, one of the famous Tribes of Galway, owe their descent to him.

It was not to end well for Geoffrey however. In 1238 an attempt was made to assassinate Henry III of England and suspicion fell on William (Geoffrey’s son– executed by being drawn, hung and quartered in 1242 for piracy and murder) and Geoffrey. Some time between then and 1242 he fled to Scotland where he was sheltered by a kinsman, Walter Comyn. In 1244 he was forced to leave Scotland, possibly as part of the agreement reached in that year between Henry III and Alexander II and he died in France in the following year.

Mathew Paris in Vol iii of his Chronica Majora of 1250 (with a side drawing of the execution of William) said unlovingly of Geoffrey that he was,

"a man who formerly been a noble and not least amongst the magnates of Ireland, who had incurred an indelible stain by the treacherous murder of Richard Earl Marshal, and who was now an exile, a wretched and hunted man, having been expelled from Scotland deported from England, and disinherited in Ireland, after the ignominious death of his son and the loss of all his friends, banished from public view, finally ended so many deaths with his own. (Obit Galfridus de Marisco, exul, pauper et profugus).”

Mathew Paris self-portrait

As you turn your back on Geoffrey’s Trinitarian edifice and walk back up the street and through the imposing gates of Adare Manor, you stare up at the oaks, and think of druids and ritual, pagans and sinners, slaves and free, normans and celts, exile and homecoming, and the perpetual timeline of change.

Adare Manor Mistletoe (7th December 2012)

And yet at the end of your journey, in a quiet walled-garden, you stand and wonder at the exuberance, the magic and mystery, and timelessness of mistletoe. That alone will always bring me back.

Druids cutting mistletoe with a golden sickle from an oak.