Adventures of a Housesitter: Island-Hopping, Continued
It turns out I was mistaken about the total absence of cats in Venice. This noon when strolling I spotted not only one but two: a black and white and an absolutely beautiful and large red. Clearly the later's name must be Tiziano.
Yesterday I took the one and only daily boat to San Lazzaro degli Armeni. Which used to be leper's colony and a Benedictine hospital, and then it was given to an Armenian order instead in the 18th century. Whereupon it turned into one of the central sources of Armenian culture world wide. This was where books in Armenian were printed at a time they were forbidden under the Turks in the Ottoman empire. They have the third largest collection of Armenian manuscripts and the first in terms of quality anywhere, including a fifth century one, written only twenty years or so after the Armenian alphabet was invented. There are some non-Armenian manuscripts there as well, such as a thirteenth century Qu'ran or a letter by the Russian Czar Peter the Great, but mainly it's an Armenian treasure hoard. It's also still a monastery, albeit like in most places in the world a shrinking one - sixteen monks and four novices, and like I said, there is only one boat from Venice per day, and you're only allowed to enter the monastery as part of a guided tour.
It's a big red building rising from the sea, and there is a small sailing boat in the mini harbor where the vaporetto parks, called, inevitably, Armenia. The interior is restrained baroque, with a beautiful general library, where they keep the printed books, an extra modern room where they keep the ancient hand written manuscripts, two small rooms with items relating to Armenian culture such as the sword of the last Armenian king, the death mask of the founder of the order, paintings by the brother of one of the order who went on to become a Romantic painter in Russia, etc., and one beautiful study room in is named after Byron (as in Lord Byron, the poet), who used to come here for eight months on a daily basis for a crash course in Armenian. He also helped the monks composing the first Armenian-English dictionary during the years he lived in Venice (Just in case you were wondering whether Byron was interested in things other than sex, drugs and rock'n roll poetry.) Byron's room boasts of the most unusual item in the monastery's collection, which wasn't there yet when he was: a mummy. Said mummy came to the monks via the Armenian Boghos Bey, who was Mehmed Ali's secretary of foreign affairs and trade. (Mehmed Ali being the ruler of Egypt at the time.) Boghos Bey, in turn, got it from one of the earliest archaeologists, Giovanni Belzoni; Belzoni and his wife Sarah lived for a while in Boghos Bey's house when they first came to Cairo, and this was Belzoni's way of saying thank you. Which is how the body of an Egyptian priest ended up in an Armenian monastery on an island near Venice. They have put the casket in an extra glass container, so you do see the actual body, which is wrapped in an undestroyed net made of glass pearls, basic colour blue and patterns with the obvious suspects as symbols - the scarabeus, most prominently. Bear in mind that in 1825, nobody could decypher hieroglyphs yet; this was still to come. Nobody had any idea who he was, this long ago dead man, when he came to San Lazzaro. The mumified body is black, a bit smaller than your avarage person today, and one has to wonder, doesn't one, who will look at our own dead bodies in three thousand years. If anyone.
You can see the Venetian skyline from San Lazzaro, but if Byron really at one point swam the whole way back to the Canale Grande, as local legend has it, this was quite a feat. (Byron was majorly into swimming, not least because that was one sport where his lame foot was inconsequential.) Much closer is the next island, San Servolo, where there used to the hospital for the victims of the plague, and then for the insane. These days there is still a museum for mental illness there, but mostly it's part of the university.
Speaking of things university, while the International Festival of Literature is over, there are still lectures going on, including one tonight by Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson of Shakespeare scholarship fame, in which they promise to demolish the Oxfordian heresy. While they're preaching to the choir with me, I'm looking forward to hearing them!
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/888698.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Yesterday I took the one and only daily boat to San Lazzaro degli Armeni. Which used to be leper's colony and a Benedictine hospital, and then it was given to an Armenian order instead in the 18th century. Whereupon it turned into one of the central sources of Armenian culture world wide. This was where books in Armenian were printed at a time they were forbidden under the Turks in the Ottoman empire. They have the third largest collection of Armenian manuscripts and the first in terms of quality anywhere, including a fifth century one, written only twenty years or so after the Armenian alphabet was invented. There are some non-Armenian manuscripts there as well, such as a thirteenth century Qu'ran or a letter by the Russian Czar Peter the Great, but mainly it's an Armenian treasure hoard. It's also still a monastery, albeit like in most places in the world a shrinking one - sixteen monks and four novices, and like I said, there is only one boat from Venice per day, and you're only allowed to enter the monastery as part of a guided tour.
It's a big red building rising from the sea, and there is a small sailing boat in the mini harbor where the vaporetto parks, called, inevitably, Armenia. The interior is restrained baroque, with a beautiful general library, where they keep the printed books, an extra modern room where they keep the ancient hand written manuscripts, two small rooms with items relating to Armenian culture such as the sword of the last Armenian king, the death mask of the founder of the order, paintings by the brother of one of the order who went on to become a Romantic painter in Russia, etc., and one beautiful study room in is named after Byron (as in Lord Byron, the poet), who used to come here for eight months on a daily basis for a crash course in Armenian. He also helped the monks composing the first Armenian-English dictionary during the years he lived in Venice (Just in case you were wondering whether Byron was interested in things other than sex, drugs and rock'n roll poetry.) Byron's room boasts of the most unusual item in the monastery's collection, which wasn't there yet when he was: a mummy. Said mummy came to the monks via the Armenian Boghos Bey, who was Mehmed Ali's secretary of foreign affairs and trade. (Mehmed Ali being the ruler of Egypt at the time.) Boghos Bey, in turn, got it from one of the earliest archaeologists, Giovanni Belzoni; Belzoni and his wife Sarah lived for a while in Boghos Bey's house when they first came to Cairo, and this was Belzoni's way of saying thank you. Which is how the body of an Egyptian priest ended up in an Armenian monastery on an island near Venice. They have put the casket in an extra glass container, so you do see the actual body, which is wrapped in an undestroyed net made of glass pearls, basic colour blue and patterns with the obvious suspects as symbols - the scarabeus, most prominently. Bear in mind that in 1825, nobody could decypher hieroglyphs yet; this was still to come. Nobody had any idea who he was, this long ago dead man, when he came to San Lazzaro. The mumified body is black, a bit smaller than your avarage person today, and one has to wonder, doesn't one, who will look at our own dead bodies in three thousand years. If anyone.
You can see the Venetian skyline from San Lazzaro, but if Byron really at one point swam the whole way back to the Canale Grande, as local legend has it, this was quite a feat. (Byron was majorly into swimming, not least because that was one sport where his lame foot was inconsequential.) Much closer is the next island, San Servolo, where there used to the hospital for the victims of the plague, and then for the insane. These days there is still a museum for mental illness there, but mostly it's part of the university.
Speaking of things university, while the International Festival of Literature is over, there are still lectures going on, including one tonight by Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson of Shakespeare scholarship fame, in which they promise to demolish the Oxfordian heresy. While they're preaching to the choir with me, I'm looking forward to hearing them!
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/888698.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.