In preparation to our first visit to Italy I started
watching a couple of documentaries and historical novels such as HBO’s “Rome”
and Showtime’s “The Borgias”. Rome
follows the lives of some fictionalized characters that would normally not be
heard from in history and intermingled their lives with some of the Roman
Empire’s nobility and better known players.
If you think life on planet Earth is bad now, go back about 2000 years
to see how cheap a life was.
Decapitations, hangings and crucifixions were the order of the day. And without a printing press or photography
of any kind to report on it, if one of any two involved in a quarrel got killed
at the end, the report of the one living would be all that mattered. I’m sure
every fighter would go all out to make sure his or her account was the one that
survived because the alternative sucked.
The Borgias jumped me about 1500 years of history when the civilized
world had traded religions from many “pagan” gods to the one-god and his one
intermediary, the Pope of Rome.
By the time the Borgias and the Medicis come around (1400 -
1600 AC), the Roman Catholic papacy has taken a life of its own and now with
the keys to heaven and hell, they truly ruled the civilized world. How much power can a person have? Not only they can rule me in this life, but
they have the power to determine whether I’ll be happy or miserable for the
rest of eternity. That’s some
power! No wonder even Martin Luther was concerned
about his after-life when he began fighting the papacy during the Reformation,
I would have been very afraid too.
In Italy, like in a lot of the Western world, religion,
especially the Roman Catholic religion, continues to be very important in
people’s lives. However I noticed that
religion was more like part of the culture and their history and less of an
everyday type of relationship. The few
Italians we interacted with were more concerned about their jobs, relationships
and their survival and less about what the Pope said or whether the Church
prohibits this or that. Sure, they still
go to church once or twice a year to please their elderly parents, but other
than that religion is not that important to them. I found this to be very different than in
the East, there a lot of the younger generations I found to be very devouted to
their Buddha and have religion very present in their daily lives. In Thailand many of the young workers that
came and went to the offices in buildings next to our home, had their religion very
upfront and personal pretty much every moment of their day. Not a day went when the “spirit houses” on
the property of the office buildings, did not have a fresh soda drink and a lid
few candles put there by some of the office workers. I have a feeling that it
may have to do with how superstitious that culture is but I’m not going to
speculate on that here.
Regardless I think the visit to Italy was quite enhanced by my
newly acquired familiarity with their history and their historical
figures. Seeing the busts of Caesar,
Augustus and Machiavelli made a lot more sense after watching Rome. Made me wish I had stayed in class for the
Ancient History lectures which I found so boring 35 years ago. With The Borgias background I was able to
better appreciate all the art and wealth in the Vatican Museum and wondered why
they don’t volunteer how all that power and wealth was acquired. But even in spite of all that knowledge, the
country is indeed beautiful and the Italians have managed to preserve a lot of its
beauty for us to enjoy and hopefully will be there for future generations to
come.
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