Michelangelo's Pieta : Treasure of St. Peter's Basilica by Chris White

Pieta is a term for fulfilling your God-given familial duty.  In this sculpture we see a mother grieving over the death of her son.  It would be utterly unnatural for a mother not to do so and one would probably consider a mother who didn’t grieve to be fairly twisted in her soul.  That said, The Pieta, is its own art form as well.  It is believed to have originated in Germany and later became popular in France.  A Pieta always depicts Mary holding her son Jesus after he was brought down from the cross.  It may include other figures, but Mary and Jesus are the constants in this matter.

Michelangelo was commissioned to do this piece when still in his twenties.  As you can see from the complexity and detail of this piece, this was not the work of someone just starting out.  In fact, Michelangelo was a prodigy and was trained under the sponsorship and supervision of the renowned Medici family of Florence at age 14.  He was not only trained in sculpture but also in other visual arts and even philosophy.  He lived during the glory days of the Florentine Renaissance and was a humanist and renaissance man through and through.

Like other artists of the Renaissance, he was drawn from his hometown of Florence to Rome, where between the Catholic Church and wealthy patrons of the city, he would have enough contracts to make a living as an artist.  This commission came from a French cardinal who wanted this as his funeral monument.  In those days the leader of a church would be buried in the church building he had been connected to in life and so having beautiful monument with your grave would ensure that people would remember you in death.  

Eventually the church building where the Pieta stood and the cardinal was buried had to be torn down.  This sculpture was moved and placed in St. Peter’s basilica where it has been since the mid 1800’s.  If you have ever been or plan to visit the Vatican in Rome, this will be a part of your tour as it is such a famous work.   If you are going by yourself to St. Peters, just as you walk into the sanctuary and are facing the altar, turn immediately to your right and you will see either the Pieta in the first side chapel or you will see a horde of tourists, many of them occluding your view of the statue with their Ipads in camera mode.  It is among the most beautiful works of art in the basilica and worth lunging through a crowd to see or, if time permits, coming back in the early evening when things are less crowded and taking a long gaze at it.  Since the early 70’s, when a mentally deranged man attacked the statue with a rock hammer, it has been behind bullet-proof glass.  In a way this is a blessing as the oil from millions of human hands (which would touch this statue if there were access) discolors marble in a fairly grotesque way.

Background aside, what is this statue’s message to us the viewer?  First look at the face of Mary.  Mary is a young woman.  In fact, much too young to have a son in his thirties as Jesus would have been at his death.  Michelangelo was asked about this detail.  He said that it is because in the spiritual realm Mary is the daughter of her Son Jesus even though on earth she was the vessel God used in his incarnation.  This is very revealing about Michelangelo’s theology.  The Catholics had long thought of Mary as almost a fourth member of the Godhead.  But Michelangelo was known to have a theology that was more in line with Protestantism even though he would have never left the Roman Catholic church.  Another detail we are intended to see in the sculpture is that Mary and Jesus’ faces are not in agony as we would expect.  Instead there is a quiet serenity in both their faces.  This is to speak another spiritual truth:  because of the agony of Christ’s passion on the cross, there is now peace between God and man.

When Jesus entered into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday he told his critics that if the people didn’t worship, the very stones would cry out in praise.  As we look at this sculpture, it is easy to forget that it is just one piece of stone.  And as such, the stone speaks a truth to us—the Lord has come and all is well.

Istanbul is Constantinople by Chris White

Hagia Sophia Today

When Constantine became the emperor of the Roman Empire he made the momentous decision to move the capitol from Rome to the east where Europe and Asia Minor meet near the Black Sea in a small fishing village known as Byzantium.  Constantine quite modestly renamed the city after himself (Constantinople) and set about to utterly transform it into a grand, fortified city which he did within a few years.  Constantine was a military general and knew that the Roman empire’s greatest enemies lie in the east and so part of this decision was motivated by military strategy but the other part of this decision lay in Constantine’s spiritual commitments.

 Rome had been the physical and spiritual capitol of the Republic and later the Empire for 1000 years by then.  Constantine respected it for what it was, but he felt it was greatly contaminated by centuries of idolatry.  In his new city, only Christ would be honored and it would be free of pagan sacrifices.  Constantinople, flush with the wealth of government patronage became  a center of art, architecture, trade and commerce, but mostly for Christianity.  Constantine built a very famous church there called the Church of the Holy Apostles.  In this grand basilica he prepared tombs for the twelve apostles hoping to have their graves found and their bones brought there.  Unfortunately, he never got very far down the list.  The bones of Andrew, St. Luke, and Timothy were entombed there but that was about it.  Constantine was buried there as the 13^th apostle (sort’ve implied here) but the church was not to stand the test of time.  Later a descendant of Constantine, Justinian I built the Church of Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) and this became the grandest and greatest church in Christendom with the largest dome in the world.  It was the inspiration for the dome on St. Peter’s and the Washington D.C. capitol.  Despite centuries of earthquakes and wars and conquests, Hagia Sophia stands today in all her glory.  She is a museum today because Turkey is a Muslim country, but if the walls could talk they would give witness to some of the greatest preachers and beautiful church services in the world. 

A city awash in gold and opulence, Constantinople was very, very sophisticated compared to the west.  During the peak years of the Crusades, the armies of Europe would pass through and were stunned at the sight.  No one in Western Europe lived in this degree of sophistication.

Constantinople was also an impregnable fortress because of its location and incredible walls.  When it fell in 1453 to the Muslims, it was largely because they were exhausted militarily and were no longer a match technologically to the implements of war.  When the city was conquered, a flood of scholars and theologians made their way to Europe with ancient manuscripts of the Bible in Greek.  These were read and studied with great interest all over Europe.  With the renewal of interest in ancient Greco-Roman culture and Christianity the Renaissance and later the Protestant reformations were touched off within 50 years, and thus the effects of the fall of Constantinople, touch our lives today as Protestant Christians who study the Bible today.

           

  An interesting irony: Rome was founded by Romulus.  When it fell in 476 the emperor’s name was Augustus Romulus.  Constantinople was founded by Constantine the Great.  When it fell, it    was ruled by Constantine the XI.  The lesson for us in this is to never elect a president with a name like George Washington in his name.  That would be tempting fate.

Today Constantinople is called Istanbul.  There are a few theories for the origins of this name but the one that suits my fancy is that Istanbul was the best the Arabic speaking Muslims could do with the word Constantinople.  As one drives through the city today, you see a plethora of Mosques that all look like the Hagia Sophia; even in conquest, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.