Comment by jpgvm
1 day ago
Seeing a digital version of it in such detail only further reinforces how important it is to experience it in person.
Few sights of man-made things have instilled as much awe in me as La Basilica Di San Pietro and most of them are also in Rome (namely the Pantheon and Moses @ Basilica di San Pietro in Vincoli).
You can't understand the scale of it until you experience it in person. The way I thought of it was that it is a cathedral made for giants.
Totally agree.
I was there two weeks ago. The tour guide took us through a route that bypassed the longer lines and through some underground areas—culminating in an entrance that completely blew my mind. I never realized how huge the interior was until I stepped in and saw it firsthand. There are few things in my life that completely took my breath away, this ranks in the top 5 for sure.
It's also a symbol of all the money and gold, the real values and the secrets of the church...
If God exists, you think he would want you to sacrifice and spend it all on gold and salaries of locals ?
Clearly yes if we go by the Bible. Then we should be happy to get away with just gold and labor and not our children like Isaac.
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Exactly. And it was a great marketing tool for catholicism, imagine simpler (even if rich) folks came to visit the pope and experienced this marvel of medieval construction. You feel utterly insignificant on purpose, feeling weak and in presence of something much larger is an easy way to more faith, a truth valid for all humans across all time.
But to me, despite all of this, there was a lot of sadness in that experience - because you know how desperately poor common folks were, how instead of building such status mega symbol they could have done some proper good. But not for church of that era, it was busy fighting for power and money of that world and trying to show how above everybody else they were.
You can see miniature scale of this in literally every (also non-) older European village or town - religious buildings have received by far the most funding and care, sometimes overshadowing kings castles themselves. Cathedrals were always built to impress masses, and this one is just on top of the game, by huge margin for good reasons I believe.
> But to me, despite all of this, there was a lot of sadness in that experience - because you know how desperately poor common folks were, how instead of building such status mega symbol they could have done some proper good.
Have you considered the idea that these could be considered jobs programs? It took a lot of masons, carpenters, ox/horse handlers, rope makers, quarrymen, etc, to run the supply chain for building this over the course of many, many decades. Just moving the obelisk to its current location took hundreds of men:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_obelisk#History
Further, now, even centuries later, all of this architecture and art is helping the local with a fairly vibrant tourism industry.
Beauty, in addition to being a good in itself:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentals
also has practical benefits.
> But not for church of that era, it was busy fighting for power and money of that world and trying to show how above everybody else they were.
The other option was to be rolled over by secular powers (princes, kings, emperors). If you think politics is nasty now, it was a (often literal) blood sport back in the day.
You have it all wrong. These buildings were built a) to glorify God, and b) because humans love to have beautiful things. And we are all much, much better off for it. These old, beautiful buildings are one of the great treasures that our ancestors left us. We should be thanking them, not criticizing them.
> But not for church of that era, it was busy fighting for power and money of that world and trying to show how above everybody else they were.
Kind of like the church in America today.
> you know how desperately poor common folks were, how instead of building such status mega symbol they could have done some proper good. But not for church of that era, it was busy fighting for power and money of that world and trying to show how above everybody else they were.
This is a tired caricature. We live in comfortable times. Materially, in many way, we are much more comfortable today than kings were back then. The world was different then, and it is irresponsible to project anachronistic categories onto a period of history that operated differently. And that somehow there exists a conflict between building magnificent churches and dealing with poverty is simply nonsense (indeed, poverty was dealt with through tithing and donations and by convents and monasteries with that charism; the first hospitals, for example, were founded by nuns, hence why in many languages the word for nurse is still "sister"). You can do both, hence the corporal works of mercy and spiritual works of mercy. Magnificent churches were not somehow the private property of some caricaturish class of clerical villains (who had no heirs, legitimate ones, anyway). They were the common patrimony of the Church. They were often constructed over long periods of time by the people in the community. They gave everyone, especially the poor, the possibility of witnessing and experiencing beautiful art and architecture that might otherwise only be accessible to the very richest of the magnates (and I challenge you to find a magnate who owned anything as spectacular as St. Peter's).
(Even today, you hear people ask the silly question "why doesn't the Church sell all its artwork and give the money to the poor?". If you allow that question to sink in for a moment, it becomes clear how preposterously silly it is to ask it. So you sell it. Then what? Now, these artworks are the property of private collectors or state institutions. Is that what you want? And the money: you think that will somehow "end poverty"? After food is digested, one's hunger returns. Far greater sums have been expended on the poor. The poor will always be with us. It is something we must continuously deal with. Robbing them of access to beautiful artwork, and depriving the Catholic faithful of their patrimony, is a pretty shitty solution, if it can even be called that.)
Frankly, what I find shameful is that we are richer than we're ever been, and yet we can't seem to produce anything that approaches the beauty of these old cathedrals. We have monks in Wyoming who are using CNC stone carving to build a gothic monastery[0], for crying out loud! We've never been in a better position to build beautiful things and cheaply at scale. And that's kind of the message of these buildings. It's not the material wealth per se, but the magnanimity of spirit that made this beauty possible and the spiritual awe it continues to inspire to this day. It's a condemnation of our vulgarity, of our consumerism. Even the churches we build today usually look like shit. If that's not cultural decadence, I don't know what is.
[0] https://carmelitegothic.com/cnc-stone-carving/
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Interesting that people may experience it differently, but to me it was a bit of a letdown, somehow it felt larger than the human scale, so maybe impressive as a technical feat, but also somewhat boring, more intimidating than moving -- I was more touched by some of the others in Rome that you mention. But to me the ultimate awe-inspiring church was the Basilica of Assisi that felt just perfect in proportion and design.
Yes. Impressive tech but the website is ultimately not a great experience. You don't get the detail, the texture, the light, the human scale etc. Instead you get bits of wire frame, stuttering, odd flying movements, anti-aliasing issues etc. And a forced narrative along the side.
Agreed. St. Pete’s is so huge and perfectly proportioned that it feels not of this world. To think they fumbled around for generations until Michelangelo took over tells you that he was an every thousand years kind of dude.
And oh my, the Pantheon. My wife saved it for a surprise as the family walked through Rome. We approached it from the back. To me it was just another dirty old building from that angle. She hustled me through the entrance while I was keeping track of the kids so I had no clue. I… I may have wept.
I have a picture of the light streaming down through the Pantheon onto one of the sculptures. It's the best photo I have ever taken and every time I look at it I remember that feeling I had looking up at the dome. Really a special thing to experience.