Sunday.Home.Work

A rainy, stormy Sunday in Viterbo.  The perfect day to get caught up on homework.  I could be the only one here actually DOING homework which shows you what a GEEK I am.  Anyway, I have an Italian exam on Tuesday and I have set a goal to improve massively.  Not that the last one was bad but I do think I can do better.  Also, spent some time reading Purgatorio and getting ready for the Dante class this week. 

I went to mass at San Lorenzo this morning.  It’s the church dedicated to Santa Maria Liberatrice, which you may remember from an earlier post.  It’s just so splendid and very old school Catholic. 

Later in the day I returned to do a little more homework for my drawing class.  The theme of my drawing notebook is Dante associations in Viterbo, of which there are quite a few.  For example, Pope John XXI is mentioned in Paradiso, as Dante placed him among the virtuous physicians.  He is called Pietro Spano in Dante’s Comedia because he was Portuguese.  In fact, I think he might be history’s only Portuguese Pope.  He was made Pope and set up residence in the Papal Palace at Viterbo.  He had a room built for himself; a sort of studio where he could work on his various projects.  The room collapsed and he was killed.  He was Pope for only a little time, poor guy.  Following his death there was chatter that he was actually an alchemist or a necromancer and up to devious craft and that is why God squashed him.  Not sure about that.  But here is his final resting place in San Lorenzo.

This is the way to do homework.  In a centuries old church, next to a Pope, the sunbeams shining in on a Marian shrine, and the organist practicing: