Friday Links
March 8, 2024
St John of God
by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
The New Criterion: The Critic’s Notebook
An Exquisite Charity by Denise Trull
Josey Parker: The Cult of Cicero: Have Latinists Been Brainwashed?
Stone, Clay & Wood from Ewan Craig
Art & Truth: Exploring the Responsibility of the Artist
The New Criterion: The Critic’s Notebook
A. M. Juster’s “new Gerytades is part quotation, part interpolation, but mostly pastiche—and all great fun.” With an Introduction from Aaron Poochigian, this looks like a must have book (and look at that cover)!
An Exquisite Charity by Denise Trull
Surely we celebrate liturgy to honor God -- to show Him that we love and adore Him with all the best that is in us: art, music, movement. But our God is a God who will not be outdone in generosity. He wants us to know that the Mass is not only our gift to Him, but His gift to us. He breathes this love back to us through priests, choir directors, servers, artists, candlemakers, those who practice the fine art of embroidery. For isn’t beautiful liturgy a gift of love? Isn’t it the most exquisite charity a priest can bestow upon his flock? To give us the best of himself and his priestly heart. To bestow upon us all this beauty that we may praise aright and be consoled and comforted in this vale of tears? A worthy, beautiful liturgy, then is an act of the most exquisite charity each and every day. It delights us. It makes us focus on Heaven. It embraces us. It helps us to understand our worth as citizens of Heaven
Josey Parker: The Cult of Cicero: Have Latinists Been Brainwashed?
Although few Classicists today take such a strong stance in support of Cicero, vestiges of the Ciceronian movement persist in many modern secondary schools and universities. At the University of Cambridge, for example, a whole section of the Latin prose composition exam is devoted to the imitation of Ciceronian prose.
Perhaps even more pervasive is the idea that Ciceronian syntax and morphology are standard for Latin prose. After having it hammered into their heads in school that Latin sentences involve long periods with the verb at the end, students often struggle with how to approach authors such as Seneca and Tacitus, who wrote in a completely different style.
Stone, Clay & Wood from Ewan Craig
One of my favorite Substack newsletters is Stone, Clay & Wood from artist Ewan Craig, a Bath-based artist. Craig recently started illustrating Paul Kingsnorth’s Wild Saints Series (a regular feature over at his The Abbey of Misrule ). In Stone, Clay & Wood, Craig lets us peek into his process to see how he creates his gorgeous illustrations.
Art & Truth: Exploring the Responsibility of the Artist
If you’re in the Philadelphia area, please join our friends at Collegium on Monday, March 11 from 5-6:30pm for a conversation with Kendall Cox, Director of Academic Affairs for the Templeton Honors College, Professor, and artist, and painter Caleb Kortokrax.
