Assisi and Presepi

January 2009

Assisi was the home of St Francis, San Francesco, San Francisco – choose your language – who lived quite a long time ago now, over 800 years ago in fact, which is a long time by anybody’s calendar, but it was a time when, if you ended up as an ascetic and travelled widely and managed somehow to attract a following, your name could be remembered for ever. That’s exactly what happened to St Francis, and his following has been, I think it’s fair to say, legendary.

Assisi was his home town and it’s in a spectacular location, perched on a hillside overlooking the plain of Perugia. Subsequent to his death people have built a grand basilica and that is the focus of what folks come to see.

One could compare St Francis with Margaret Thatcher. Both had a vision of a world based upon frugal hard work and intense moral focus, and both have instead engendered a society that seems to embody everything that is crass and mindless – in Thatcher’s case it is shopping, and in St Francis’, tourism. In each case they will be turning in their grave (which is a bit unkind to Thatcher of course at the moment – her metaphorical grave).

Notice the mobile phone – they’re being shown St Francis’ basilica.

We all go shopping and we all visit places, or at least most people do, it’s not what you do, it’s the way how’s ya do it. We chose to visit Assisi at one of what must be the quietest times of the year, and yet still it was choc-a-block full of people wandering about looking for something, or at something, I’ve no idea what. Many were eating a slice of pizza or an ice cream but I can’t believe they came specifically for that. I suspect that many of them don’t know what they’re looking for any more than I know what they were looking for. I know what I was looking at, I was looking at them, but quite what they were looking at, well, who knows? One thing we can be sure of however, they weren’t there to pay any particular homage to St Francis, which to be fair neither was I, but then I was very clear to myself what I was there for; I was there to see what was there and to look at what the people who were there were doing; I’ve not heard of many people who find the audience more interesting than the show, though I always do, maybe I’m misjudging the majority, in which case that would be fun, everyone come to look at each other looking at each other, but I think I may be being too generous here.

And why, on a misty day in early January, do so many Italians find it necessary to wear dark glasses? I’m sure St Francis didn’t wear dark glasses. Possibly the reason is not to do with St Francis, rather they think they look chic, which is always a dodgy thing to think of yourself, as when you think you look chic it’s quite likely that others think that rather than chic, you look a tit. I ought to wear dark glasses, for that way I could observe people while believing to myself that they are unaware of my doing so, though I think more likely they would be as or more aware, and on top of that they’d think I looked ridiculous. So maybe I shouldn’t after all.

Assisi was altogether an experience that should not be missed, for you should always do everything once, but not to be repeated either. And we’re not even religious. If you were a devout follower of the life and works of St Francis then Assisi is definitely a place to be avoided.

We have noticed in Italy this year that the number of presepi appears to have mushroomed. A presepe is a nativity scene, and it seems that every town, district and often street corner has to have one. They range from cardboard cutouts, through to live donkeys, live babies, and walking wise men from the east (possibly Albania – though more likely not that far east I suspect).

Assisi, of course, had numerous presepi, including a trendy modern one, with plaster sheep, a bronze wolf, and plastic folks rendered in shiny colours who appeared to be standing around each carrying a briefcase. The mystical significance of this was lost on me I have to say, but then again so was any mystical significance of the entire place, so perhaps my cynicism over the shiny plastic men was of no particular consequence.

The Pope’s Christmas Message

Christmas Day 2008

We watched the Pope on telly on Christmas Day give his address to his followers worldwide, that he does from his balcony in St Peter’s in a number of languages. These followers must be located truly worldwide, as the number in the piazza actually watching the Pope was not that many – there seemed to be plenty of space to walk about. And the main motive of a large proportion who were there seems to be to wave their national flag – this particularly so if they are from a ‘developing’ nation – and to appear on the telly, for they can obviously see on monitors what we are seeing, and when they see themselves they beam and wave. Pope Ratzinger appears to take all this with evident amusement.

Three years ago Italian television showed the Pope speaking in each of the various languages, and it still does, but now they’ve seen fit to have a commentator talk over the top of all but the Italian, which is a pity. So we don’t know exactly what languages were chosen and how il Papa pronounces them, all we can detect is that he still has trouble with w and qu, still says kwesto and kwando for the Italian questo and quando, and this year has the additional difficulty of asking for prayers for the people of Zimbabve.

I’m Dreaming of . . . Something

Christmas 2008

On Christmas Eve at midnight mass we sung in the choir at the local Catholic church. This came about because Tiziana, who plays the organ in the church, decided it would be a nice thing if a couple of carols were sung in English, by the English-speaking community hereabouts. We did a practice run on the 22nd and that didn’t put them off, and so on the 24th, or really the very early hours of 25th, we formed a part of the choir, joining-in on some of the Italian songs and doing a couple of verses of Oh Crumble Ye Faithful (or at least it is when I sing it) and Silent Night. Hilary tells me that I did a kind of Max-Bygraves-in-a-pub act complete with the arm movements – well you want to make sure it doesn’t sound too turgid, it can often sound so turgid.

At the end of the service the priest asked that we all join him for a drink in the bar next door, but then someone discovered that, it being after one in the morning, the bar was closed. Some local people were all for getting the owner out of bed but we thought this unkind, and so in a somewhat haphazard and shambolic manner, we drifted away.

Tiziana had heard one of our group sing, a 26-year-old American girl, and had said that she had such a good voice it would be nice if she’d do a solo. OK, replied the American girl, what would you like me to sing? Can you do I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas? One or two of the Brits advised Tiziana against this, pointing out that Irving Berlin is not really considered, by them what know, to be a writer of Christian devotional songs, but Tiziana was not to be swayed, and so it was that the American girl did a solo on, yep, I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas, in the Catholic Church, as part of midnight mass.

But scoff ye not, for we woke up on Boxing Day to six inches of snow!

Silent Night with Legs

21 December 2008

Italian Television at its Most Excrutiating

We turn on the television and there are the women with high-heel shoes and long legs and high-sided minuscule pants and tiny bikini-tops with frillies on, dancing and prancing with the camera set low so it looks up at their crotch. Nothing unusual in that as such, for this is Italy. But what are they singing? They are singing a jazzed-up version of, would you believe, Silent Night (Stille Nacht) – in Italian or possibly Portuguese since they seemed to be dressed in the colours of the Brazilian football team.

In many other countries – in Britain and I’m sure in the USA, this would generate complaints for its profanity. But apparently not in Italy; the compere walks onto the stage area when the prancing leggy girls are done, in his dark lounge suit and clapping his hands and saying, “Bellissimo”. This is RAI1, the flagship state television channel.

The following evening there’s a piece on the news focusing on the Pope. There often is a piece featuring the Pope. And he’s saying that it is against God’s will for someone to change gender.

In this land that contains the centre of Catholicism, where the Church holds great sway – at least theoretically – over the political life of the country and where everyone has to profess to being a good Catholic, no one bats an eyelid at women singing Silent Night on television, while dressed in provocative next-to-nothing. It seems that provided you don’t want to change gender; provided you profess not to use contraceptives (though Italy is one of the countries where condoms are available from street slot machines in most towns of the north and centre &ndash the south being a different world altogether); and provided you rail against abortion; then that’s as far as you need go when it comes to morals.

Surely the Catholic Church is moribund isn’t it? All it seems to be interested in is sex, and even then not the exploitation of it. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

A Christmas in Italy

December 2005

Midnight Mass

On Christmas Eve, after a jolly time with some Italian neighbours eating Christmas cake and drinking sweet Bridisi fizzy wine, we drove out to the abbey for the midnight mass. As it was a Catholic mass it had its share of graven images, including a plaster Jesus on the cross with what was presumably supposed to be a crown of thorns upon his head but which looked considerably like an old battered hat, plus a rather sinister-looking plaster Jesus child, which had seen a few masses in its time, the result of which was that most of its fingers and toes had broken off.

L’Albergo è Stata Pieno

The priest spoke clearly and slowly, which was nice as it meant that I could understand just about all of what he said (the mass was in Italian, not Latin). It’s odd when you hear a familiar story in a different language that you understand, so for example we heard that Jesus was born in a manger because the hotel was fully booked, and that the angel came down to talk to three ‘pastorale’, which does mean shepherds, but with more of a hint of country bumpkin about it.

Feeling Suitable Remorse

The church was freezing cold so everyone sat huddled in their coats, except for the priest, who perhaps had three layers of Long Johns under his cassock and who’d had a hard day and did quite a bit of yawning.

At one point the priest asked us all to stand and pray for a moment for those of our friends and family less fortunate than ourselves, and try as I might, I could not think of anyone, friend or family or even foe, who was less fortunate than me at that moment, standing there as I was in the freezing cold at half past midnight, worrying that the telephone and the heating were going to cause me ongoing grief (for both had failed a couple of days earlier), and that I’d have to spend a fair bit of the forthcoming days doing the washing up (the telephone line and dishwasher in our house were both broken and proving hard work to get fixed). These selfish thoughts made me quite guilty, which just added to my sense of feeling sorry for myself. I don’t get religion at all.

The Pope on Telly

To add to our spiritual enlightenment, on the following day, Christmas Day, we watched the pope do his Christmas speech to the teeming millions from the window of the Vatican – we watched it on the telly, of course. The Pope shares with our previous-evening’s priest, and with Silvio Berlusconi, the ability to speak Italian slowly and clearly, which means that I can understand most of what he says, and I approve of that. I’m also amused by the way he pronounces words like quando and questo, with is with a German accent, kvando and kvesto. Fair enough I suppose, seeing as how he’s German, but it kind of sounds funny hearing the Pope speak with a comic accent.

The Pope and the PM

The Pope also shares with Berlusconi the attribute of heading a rather shaky edifice that is overdue for change, though I think that Italy’s need is probably more pressing the the Vatican’s and it’s just about ahead in the game too, though of course in Italy the Catholic Church exerts quite an influence on Italian society so the two issues are rather linked. Possibly things will change a bit after Berlusconi gets voted out in April and the government can spend time doing more than just try and keep its leader out of gaol.