July 24th Comments (20) / RSS Post Filed under The Da Vinci Code

I didn’t comment immediately on Saturday’s feast day, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, because a brushfire on the outskirts of Rome, provoked by the heat and lack of rain here, burned some electrical cables and cut off my internet connection. Such is life… As I celebrated the Mass dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, it occurred [...]

July 17th Comments (55) / RSS Post Filed under The Da Vinci Code

Since people seem interested, I’m putting up two more Holbein paintings. If Dan Brown was really interested in paintings that shake conventional Christian faith and contain mysterious “secrets,” these should have been at the top of the list. The first is the requested “Dead Christ” by Hans Holbein. The painting, thought to be from the [...]

July 7th Comments (90) / RSS Post Filed under The Da Vinci Code

A friend here in Rome, a professor of patristics, has just sent me the Latin texts of the hymns from the old liturgical office of the 15th-century Polish saint, John Cantius (d. 1473). The hymn for Laudes begins with these words: Corpus domas jejuniis, Caedis cruento verbere, Ut castra poenitentium Miles sequaris innocens. (In order [...]

July 6th Comments (14) / RSS Post Filed under The Da Vinci Code

Here are the other paintings from Holbein’s English years referred to in the comments on the last post. This painting of Thomas Cromwell is from around 1533, and it is in the Frick collection in New York City. Like More and others (wives included), Cromwell was eventually executed by Henry VIII. It was probably carried [...]

July 4th Comments (37) / RSS Post Filed under The Da Vinci Code

I can’t resist. After all the talk about Hans Holbein and St. Thomas More, I have to put up a few paintings. As I said… on of my favorite painters. The first is a painting, completed around the year 1524, of that forgotten-and-suppressed saint, Mary Magdalen, meeting Jesus after the Resurrection. The second is the [...]