Ringing Bells of Beauty & Freedom
20 04 2012-
The bells of beauty and freedom are ringing, surely it’s time God’s bungalow was put in order. How many more patrician denials and intellectually mediocre defences can the Catholic hierarchy put up before Father Bob and his army of vernacular theologians storm the gates of St Pats to demand the Pope donate his ruby-red Stefanelli slippers to a worthwhile cause?
The warp in the sexual life of seminaries, the occlusion and obfuscation in the dioceses that has followed, is all on the Cardinal’s patch. But is he humble in the eyes of the Lord? If his recent appearance on Q&A is anything to go by definitely not. On that particular occasion Cardinal Pell was decidedly adversarial, full of a smug animosity, thereby ensuring that both sides of the debate were disappointing.
They mightn’t have the best real estate in town but once upon a time the Atheists had the best sense of humour. It seems however that with the arch control freak Richard Dawkins as their mouthpiece that’s no longer the case. Dawkins has undoubtedly a steeltrap materialist’s mind but his temperament and persona are as rigid as Pell’s. And what a shame that is. With all the anguish that the 4th Century celibacy law has caused in the western church surely we could all do with a bit of a laugh.
The other big casualty in all this of course is the decidedly marvellous lineage of Christian wisdom, philosophy, art and literature, which has been to some extent stigmatised (sorry about that) by the backlash. The better intellectual and spiritual traditions inspired by the original Aramaic teachings of the hirsute Nazarene have very little if anything to do with the tragedies the innocent victims of the church have experienced at the hands of a repressed and disturbed clergy. It was the Holy Chippy himself (though without the multiple investment properties) who warned us to beware of bishops on high altars and it is those remote and essentially political personages who in our era have riven the church from the common good, and in so doing further obscured two millennia of beautiful and illuminating cultural production.
Here at BB we remain a pretty secular bunch of beauty-lovers and free thinkers, and we do like to steer clear of lynch mobs and steering committees. As a consequence we thought it might be timely to recalibrate the divine zeitgeist somewhat, by offering up (with heads unbowed) a list of just some of the wonderful books in the Western Christian tradition we currently have in stock:
FRA ANGELICO by John Pope-Hennessy (Scala 1981) - $15
This paperback monograph on the innovative and enigmatic 15thcentury Dominican painter provides a fascinating and thorough overview of Fra Angelico’s work. Thoughtfully edited and covering the early triptychs in the Museo di San Marco right through to the Last Judgement in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, John Pope-Hennessy’s prose is erudite and accessible. The book is also loaded with full colour prints of the paintings.
THE ROAD TO ASSISSI: The Essential Biography of St Francis by Paul Sabatier
(Paraclete Press) - $12
A neat hardback reprint of Sabatier’s classic biography of St Francis, with an introduction and annotations by Jon M. Sweeney, contextualising it for the 21stcentury, particularly with regard to Francis’ ideas of a divine ecology.
SALVATORE ZOFREA: Images From The Psalms by Ted Snell (Craftsman House) - $40
After aserious illness in 1976 Italo-Australian artist Salvatore Zofrea was introduced to the Book of Psalms. Their central message that each individual must pass through the trials of life before achieving redemption sustained him during the crisis of his own life and led to his promise to paint all 151 Psalms as a thanks for grace received. Zofrea’s renditions are imbued with a metaphysics of the everyday and 50 are included here in full page colour reproductions, with pithy commentaries from Snell.
LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST PAUL Volumes I and II by Conybeare & Howson (Longman’s, Green and Co. 1868) - $120
No one in the history of the church has had as much conflicted press as the one whose head was turned on the Damascus Road. Paul remains both an interesting wordsmith and a fascinating character, insightful, curious, dogmatic and at times irascible. These classic small leather bound volumes of the ‘People’s Edition’ of the Life and Epistles Of St Paul, published in 1868, constitute a prolonged and accessible commentary by Conybeare & Howson on Paul’s life and work. The books themselves are in superb condition, complete with marbled boards, endpapers, numerous black and white illustrations and maps. This is both a classic religious text as well as an valuable item in the history of travel literature.
PLAIN AND PURL by Alistair Stewart (MW&SCo.) - $25
A handsome and just released volume of Australian poetry by the acclaimed author of the verse documentary, Frankston 281. Published with a foreword by Gig Ryan, Plain and Purl is a beautiful and groundbreaking rendition of grief and renewal, exploring numinous ingredients of the everyday in an intense and precise style, and also the unforeseen ways in which the tribal inheritance of Christianity comes to bear fruit in difficult times.
THE ASCENT OF MOUNT CARMEL by St John Of The Cross (Thomas Baker 1st ed. 1906) - $60
The 16th century Carmelite monk St John Of The Cross is considered one of the great Spanish poets and a major voice in the wider mystical tradition. The Ascent Of Mount Carmel is one of his epic works, a prose exploration of the ascetical endeavour of a soul looking for perfect union in God and the mystical events that happen along the way. St John was a major influence on T.S. Eliot and remains ever present in contemporary literature and theology through the work of writers such as Thomas Merton.
BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE NEW HEBRIDES by Rev. John Inglis, D.D. (Thomas Nelson and Sons 1890) - $45
This is a rare volume for those interested in Pacific cultures: an account of the life and practice of the Scottish Presbyterian Rev Inglis on the 19th century New Hebridean mission at Aneityum. On 1 July 1852 Inglis and his wife Jessie, with a frame for a house, furniture, boat, livestock and other supplies set up home on Aneityum, a small tropical island of 25 square miles with mountains up to nearly 3,000 feet high, some 200 kilometres south east of Vanuatu. Inglis had studied medicine for six months in Glasgow and so as well as preaching and teaching, the native people came to him when illness struck. Inglis and his wife learnt the Aneityumese language and upon their return to the UK in the 1860s worked on a translation of the Bible into the South Pacific language.
RESTLESS BONES: The Story Of Relics by James Bentley (Constable 1985) - $15
To the medieval mind a relic could heal the sick, repel enemies and defend cities, cure cattle, ensure a good harvest, promote justice, bring evil ones to heel, force men to keep their oaths, and confer prestige on their owners. Small wonder that they multiplied and travelled. James Bentley’s history of relics is an entertaining account of a decidedly weird, but nevertheless persistent, facet of human religious life.
DESIRE OF THE EVERLASTING HILLS: The World Before and After Jesus
(Doubleday 1999) - $12
Thomas Cahill has written a number of excellent books on the spiritual traditions of the west, often coming at things from unusual but enlightening angles. Desire Of The Everlasting Hills is a very inclusive look at the cultural context in which Jesus came to prominence. Cahill blends historiography, theology, and even pop culture (Nick Cave gets a mention here) to provide an exceptionally tangible account of where Jesus was coming from, the landscape he walked within, and why his teachings and philosophies remain interesting to this day.
LES GRANDES HEURES DE JEAN DUC DE BERRY: From the collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale Paris - (Thames & Hudson 1971) - $90
In the year 1409, the 'ouvriers' employed by the Duke of Berry presented to their patron, with justifiable pride, the collective masterpiece which had taken them between two and three years to create. Never before had so many scribes, illuminators, artists, and artisans devoted such a totality of efforts to the realization of only one manuscript. This remarkable large format reproduction of the manuscript has reproduced all manuscript pages to their exact size. A remarkable book.