The Baroque Century

Wrongly the seventeenth century is generally perceived by common people as an epoch of low instances and scarce achievements. As matter of fact, in the history of humanity  it lies mashed between the sparkling sixteenth century of Renaissance and the eighteenth age of Enlightenment.

But if we seriously focus only some of   the great thinkers who lived in the sixteenth century then it will be easy for us to realize the big mistake which is to misevaluate the baroque century.

In this very century, I set the first part of my novel “Ten days which never happened”, where fourteen main writers and their friends of the Academia of Celati (Academy of Hidden Writers) in Lamole - Tuscany, are compelled to hide away from Holy Inquisition because they have decided to translate in to vulgar language the Sacred Scripture against the 1596 Pope Clemente VII’s Decree, who wanted the Holy Bible still to be published only in Latin ancient language (incomprehensible to most  people).

Still remains a great question: up to where can manhood  push his thirst of knowledge? Is it right to go beyond anyway? Is it correct to restraint the longing of manhood to break all the frontiers of knowledge? And who is titled to check scientist, poets and all the men who feel free to research the truth anyway and anywhere? Such questions are still of topical actuality and is not in the intentions of our magazine to dare to give any answers to them. I can personally only say that when I was much younger than today, my answer would be simply aimed to deny any chance of control or censorship.

But now I’m not so sure anymore.

Between the  Most Influential People of the 17th Century we must number Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and  Isaac Newton (1643-1727). Without them  we would still be one hundred years behind where we are now.

Angelo Ruggeri shows in his analysis of Milton’s masterpiece “The lost Paradise” how the English author (another great mind of the seventeenth century) has been influenced by Galilei’s theory that earth is not the center of the universe but in fact it revolves around the sun. Copernicus had laid out this theory almost a century before Galileo came around, but Galileo was the man who was able to prove this using his telescope and observations of the planetary movements.

He also shows in a selection of works, how Milton, Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, Torquato Tasso and other great minds of this century, have handle and dealt with such a sensitive subject and  why the established power counteracted their thoughts.

He finally gives evidence of how Giordano Bruno, Torquato Tasso  and Galileo Galilei influenced Milton’s masterpiece “The lost Paradise”.

Galileo was even convicted by the Church because he thought  we did not need a higher authority to provide us with knowledge, but in fact, we could seek knowledge for ourselves.

And what about  Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) and Rene Descartes (1596-1650)? Kepler was one of the most important scientists of his age. Kepler was able to describe how planets moved around specific orbits. His ideas were  fundamental in putting together the puzzle of what our universe actually is while Descartes was a mover and shaker on two fronts, one being his great advancements in mathematics and  in Philosophy too.

Also  John Locke (1632-1704)  and Francis Bacon (1561-1626) belong to this great gallery of geniuses; and I don’t need, I’m sure, to talk you about  William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) and William Harvey (1578-1657) two  of the most great minds of any time, one in the field  of   Literature, the second in Medicine subject.

And we could follow numbering Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) Hugo Grotius (1583 -1645) Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679 Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) and many others I don’t have the time and the space to remember here now.

by Ignazio Salvatore Basile

The ten days which never happened

The ten days which never happened

by ignazio salvatore basile

Foreword

This is the reconstruction of the biography of a man called Jesus, sent to earth by God for the salvation of humanity, made in ten days by four poets at the end of the seventeenth century, perhaps from October 5 to October 14, 1690 and is based on the canonical sources of new Testament (and not only ) to tell the story of the earthly Son of God, by His Origins until his Resurrection.

 Wanting to write and disseminate their work in the Italian language, the original authors, although their intentions were honest and pious, because of the absolute prohibition of vulgarization of the Bible that the Roman Catholic Church  introduced by Pope Clement VIII in 1596 (who had commissioned the Holy Office to crack down harshly any related violation ), they decided not only to remain anonymous, but also to change the dates of their meetings and replace them with those that go from 5 October to 14 October 1582.

They had in fact studied the issue from a legal point of view and had come to the conclusion that if they were discovered, the charge against them would have to fall before the infamous Inquisition Tribunal ( the armed wing of the Holy Office ) for the fact that following the decree by Pope Gregory XIII,  which had reformed the Julian calendar,  from October 4, 1582 all the events in the Catholic States had to  pass directly to 15 October 1582. So that no public office of the Papal States, much less his Court, could convict someone of a crime committed in a period never existed.

The authors furthermore thought  to hide themselves behind the names of the four canonical evangelists, attributing to their occasional guests and employees the fictitious identity of the closest disciples of Jesus  to detect their true identity only after the printing of the book.

The reconstruction work was carried out on fragments of the original writings that have allowed,  with obvious difficulty , this publication . The original idea was therefore to tell the story of Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man on the earth, in the vernacular, converging into a single literary context, all of the events narrated by eyewitnesses. For their greater protection, at any rate, as mentioned above, the authors concealed their identities behind the pseudonyms of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, attributing  to their friends and associates, willing to make a personal contribution to the history of Jesus, the identity of Peter, Andrew, James the Greater, James the Younger, Jude Thaddeus, Nathanael, Bartholomew, Simon the Zealot, Philip, Thomas and Judas Iscariot.

Even the place where the four got together and hosted their occasional collaborators remained a secret, though it is believed that they were housed in an isolated house in Lamole, now under the administration of the Tuscan territories but at the time  subject to the sovereignty of the Pope.

 In the drafting of their literary work the authors seem to have favored the terza rima classical form, although there are adaptations of Petrarch's Lyric, Ballad of the Great, and many quatrains of Sonnet septenaries interspersed with octosyllabic .

First Day - October the 5th, 1582

morning

[Luke , Matthew and John , waiting for Mark, who will join them in the afternoon with two much unexpected  guests, laying the foundations of their history , presenting their character both in its divine origin ( In the beginning was the Word ), and in the earthly ( Ancestors of Jesus) , continuing with the Annunciation, the conception and Birth of Jesus ]

Luke : - Well, friends , do we agree ?

John - Yes, I do! It seems to me the wisest thing . You, Matthew, what do you think ?

Matthew : - It might be all right for me ! Although we'll miss a good increasing  reputation   ‘You know?.... Think about whether this book , which in practice will be the first gospel in the vernacular, were spread all around! After all, today , with the press , it could also happen .....

Luke : - Well, but our opus is a story , a novel, as they say today , not a theological Bible ....

Matthew : - Though we vowed to be faithful in bringing the authentic words and the real events of the life of Jesus! And then, just the characters of originality are correct reason for the attribution of authorship that I claim, even if , on the other hand , I'd be afraid of the consequences. The glory and fame would attract the attention of the Inquisition .....

Luke : - If you put it on this way I agree with you, but I have an idea that can save the wine and the barrel .....

Matthew : - An idea ? What an idea ?

Luke : - Listen, we could fill a testamentary paper , claiming authorship of the work with it but we can  instruct the notary  not to publish our paper before the last of us has left this vale of tears .....

Matthew - I think it’s a nice idea , is not it John ?

John - Yes, of course ! But  will Mark agree ?

Luke : - Just ask him  the afternoon , when he arrives ! But I bet that he will agree !

John: - On the other hand it would be prudent to fill out the card at the end of the story .......

Matthew : - Yeah! You never know what a spy of the Inquisition ...... If they  discover that we are translating excerpts of the New Testament in the vernacular, poor of us .......

Luke - Better safe than sorry , even if here in Lamole, the judges of the Papal States are certainly not close!

Matthew : - Well, never mind then: how does our story begin ! ?

Luke : - From the beginning , of course!

John: - In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God .....

Matthew : - Beautiful ! How does it sound good! So this will be first  page of our book ?

Luke. - I think so ! But this will be up to the printer to be decided! Do not forget that you are using prefix the title and then the preface ... We try to number our scrolls according to the established order .

Matthew : - It 's true ! You're right! I'm sorry , but I tremble with emotion : this should be my first book to be printed !

Luke : - Even for me. But it does not appear with our name ! Funny is not it?

Matthew : Yeah! The name will appear after our deaths !

Luke : We do not think. Come on John, read us your first whole song !

- "In the beginning was the Word

And the Word was with God,

Who held  in His mind

To redeem the sin

and the corruption of humanity

By sending His Son

Who descended  from pure lily

It is His revelation

In one with the Spirit

But you can list three !

How the Law to Moses

Was given , the grace Christ

Brought for us and the Truth.

Nevertheless Manhood

Didn’t recognize Him

And He was treated with cowardice .

But to those who have recognized Him

He has made them brothers

Giving them the most beautiful gifts

Without receiving so much in exchange.

The Word became flesh and history

Coming to live here !

We saw His glory

On the only begotten Truth!

There was a man sent

By God , on behalf of John ;

was in the same years ,

he testified the Light !

He was not the Light,

but he was  a witness ,

the True Lord came afterward   !

All things were made by Him,

but  nothing is created !

He was not accepted ,

Star shining among dark skies !

No one has never seen God

But He has revealed Himself  in Christ !

...to be continued...