Faith · Museums · Ethnography
The Lar is a very old and most interesting household deity. The Romans held that he watched over the hearth, the house, the family, the clan and the community. The lares were applied to for help in every conceivable matter: from childbirth to the growth of one's income,
NB! · Architecture · Faith · Books · Museums
NB! · Archaeology · Faith · Art · Museums · Rome
In the month named after Mars, let us remember the god of war and the patron god of the Eternal City. The front face of the altar from the Ostian portico of AD 124, with its bas-relief of Mars, Venus and a goose, has survived rather badly, having probably
NB! · Faith · Museums · Heritage · People
The terrifying mask of the Scottish prophet lay hidden for hundreds of years, kept in secret by the Peden family as the most precious relic of their famous forebear, and was shown to the public only in 1840. It is now on display in the National Museum of Scotland
Faith · Museums · Observations · Humour
A unique artefact, of course, and the most astonishing thing is that for its own time this mask of an eminent preacher of the Covenanter movement was a far more ordinary phenomenon than it is for us. Alexander Peden wore this mask not as some manifesto but, as historians write,
Faith · Museums · Society · People
The mask of Alexander Peden, the seventeenth-century Scottish preacher, is made of human hair, animal skin and even human teeth! Today this wandering prophet would be called an oppositionist. He spoke out sharply against the Crown and every decision of Charles II, for which he was declared an outlaw
NB! · Archaeology · Faith · Art
The Stoibadeion, a phallus on a pedestal adorned with a relief of a cock with a penis for a head. One of two sculptures beside the sanctuary of Dionysus on the island of Delos. He was patron not only of parties but also of fertility, and was associated with phallic
NB! · Faith · Observations · Humour
In the Christmas bustle I always find myself, for some reason, remembering the undeservedly forgotten little Mithras. Though the bull really need not have been killed
Archive · Faith · Books · Observations
On St Nicholas's Day, a detail comes to mind. In the 1642 book "The Service and Life of Nicholas the Wonderworker" there is, in the margin of one page, a curious note dating from the eighteenth century: "If things go quite badly for you, pray
NB! · Architecture · Faith · Observations · Heritage · Rome
Do you see the empty niche in the upper part of the façade of Santa Maria in Aracoeli? It was here that the first public clock of Rome was installed, in 1412, 42 years after Paris. But in 1806 it was decided to move the clock to the tower of
Architecture · Faith · Observations · Rome
In the very heart of Rome stands a small church with a most unusual crucifix: from its roof a stag gazes down upon the city, a cross between its antlers. This is the heraldic emblem of Saint Eustace, a Roman general who converted to Christianity after meeting, while out hunting,
Faith · Art · Rome
Remember the Biblical story of the supper at Emmaus? On the third day after the Crucifixion, Christ appeared, unrecognised, to two grieving disciples, who invited him to share a meal. At supper the sacrament of the Eucharist took place, and the disciples knew Jesus. Caravaggio painted the scene several times.