...... and the second two from Monopoli.
This photograph is of the door of the church and if you click it up to large size, you'll see how 'interesting' it is!
I've started posting the photos on Flickr.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Italy - Puglia - Polignano a Mare & Monopoli
Down by the sea today to visit Polignano a Mare in the first two photographs .........
...... and the second two from Monopoli.
This photograph is of the door of the church and if you click it up to large size, you'll see how 'interesting' it is!
I've started posting the photos on Flickr.
...... and the second two from Monopoli.
This photograph is of the door of the church and if you click it up to large size, you'll see how 'interesting' it is!I've started posting the photos on Flickr.
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6 comments:
Oh glory! I have two comments to make...(yeah, WHY don't Americans ever shut up, eh?) The first...when I saw those houses and buildings hanging off the (undercut) cliffs, I thought of my hubby. He is so nervous around anything that hangs out like that..I guess being in the wheelchair makes him feel more vulnerable. Anyway, he could never appreciate living there on the cliffs! Secondly, why would a church have skeletons on the elaborate door? That one really throws me. In Jesus, we have life, not death...those look to me like the doors I would imagine of the gates of hell! Do you find this strange at all, as well?
ugh a bit on the gruesome side, but very interesting!
The Latin inscription above the doors tells us that it is a sacred thought to pray for the dead - people were inclined to have a memento mori around to remind them that death was never far away. I don't know that it's any worse than our refusal to contemplate mortality, really. :-)
At first I thought "how odd" but then I remembered about how long ago they thought of death more than we do. Strange, but in a strange way kinda cool *shrug*
Aha! Chris, the key was in the Latin above the door! I wondered what was written, but since I only did a bit of Sprenchbrew, (Spanish,
French, Hebrew) I am totally ignorant of Latin. As an aside, I homeschool my two children, and in the homeschooling arena, there seems to be a renewed interest in Latin...
Thank you for the clarification! I knew there must be some sort of logical explanation!
Thanks for the erudition Chris - I didn't do Latin either - so it was all Greek to me!
It is also my understanding that Revelations 20:13 had a bit of a fascination for 'religious' artists in days of yore.
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