Last week, I visited Pisa on the occasion of our Second Linked Data in Linguistics Workshop (LDL-2012). Lovely place, actually, and much less touristy than anticipated. One particular building catched my eye, and in a way, it summarizes the major stages of the religious and ideological history of Italy from antiquity to the 21st century.
Walking along the street, I stumbled across two antique pillars, the first showing the principal gods of the Roman Republic: Jupiter and Minerva (and Juno and Mercury, not shown here):
The second pillar has the gods of the late empire: Harpocrates (the Egyptian Horus in his form as a child), Isis (mother of Horus and a kind of antecedessor of the Christian iconography of Mary), and (not on the picture) Serapis (the Egyptian Osiris, father of Horus, identified with the holy bull Apis, in his Graecized form), and Ceres (Roman goddess of agriculture). Except for Ceres, which is indeed an old Italic goddess, the other figures blend Egyptian motives with Hellenistic art, clear traits of the syncretism that arose from a religiously (relatively) tolerant, propsperous and multi-cultural age. Both pillars come from the 3rd c. AD, and the distribution of deities roughly corresponds to the opposition between Olympian gods that officially dominate the pantheon, and gods more concerned with practical demands of worshippers such as fertility of men and soil and resurrection in the afterlife.
During the middle ages, all of this was swept away by Christianity, or at least, covered under a Christian umbrella, both pillars were incorporated in a church, dedicated to the Saints Felice and Regolo. San Regolo was a 6th c. bishop and martyr active in Volterra, Tuscany. San Felice is harder to identify, as there were several saints and martyrs of that name. From a Christian perspective, the pagan gods at the entry were not problematic: Although incompatible with Christianity, they might serve a similar role as the grotesque demons commonplace at the exterior of medieval church buildings (think of gargoyles). But of course, there are historical trajectories connecting Jupiter/Zeus with the Jewish-Christian high god (2 MAC 6:2), the resurrection of Osiris with that of Christ, the kourotroph aspects of Isis and Mary, and Horus' victory over Seth with the Harrowing of Hell, and people might still have been aware of these parallels in the early middle ages.
Catholicism dominated Italy for centuries, and some may assume it still does so, today. Possibly, but recently, other forces arose, and in the age of capitalism, this church was turned into a bank. An interesting metaphor, isn't it?
Walking along the street, I stumbled across two antique pillars, the first showing the principal gods of the Roman Republic: Jupiter and Minerva (and Juno and Mercury, not shown here):
The second pillar has the gods of the late empire: Harpocrates (the Egyptian Horus in his form as a child), Isis (mother of Horus and a kind of antecedessor of the Christian iconography of Mary), and (not on the picture) Serapis (the Egyptian Osiris, father of Horus, identified with the holy bull Apis, in his Graecized form), and Ceres (Roman goddess of agriculture). Except for Ceres, which is indeed an old Italic goddess, the other figures blend Egyptian motives with Hellenistic art, clear traits of the syncretism that arose from a religiously (relatively) tolerant, propsperous and multi-cultural age. Both pillars come from the 3rd c. AD, and the distribution of deities roughly corresponds to the opposition between Olympian gods that officially dominate the pantheon, and gods more concerned with practical demands of worshippers such as fertility of men and soil and resurrection in the afterlife.
During the middle ages, all of this was swept away by Christianity, or at least, covered under a Christian umbrella, both pillars were incorporated in a church, dedicated to the Saints Felice and Regolo. San Regolo was a 6th c. bishop and martyr active in Volterra, Tuscany. San Felice is harder to identify, as there were several saints and martyrs of that name. From a Christian perspective, the pagan gods at the entry were not problematic: Although incompatible with Christianity, they might serve a similar role as the grotesque demons commonplace at the exterior of medieval church buildings (think of gargoyles). But of course, there are historical trajectories connecting Jupiter/Zeus with the Jewish-Christian high god (2 MAC 6:2), the resurrection of Osiris with that of Christ, the kourotroph aspects of Isis and Mary, and Horus' victory over Seth with the Harrowing of Hell, and people might still have been aware of these parallels in the early middle ages.
Catholicism dominated Italy for centuries, and some may assume it still does so, today. Possibly, but recently, other forces arose, and in the age of capitalism, this church was turned into a bank. An interesting metaphor, isn't it?
