This quintessence of dust

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how

infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and

admirable . . . . and yet,to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Male Domination Art, Part 3: The Prurient Church

In the 13th Century, the Black Death took the lives of some 30 - 60% of  Europeans.  Germs were unknown and unknowable; who would  be struck down in horrible agony was arbitrary; humans do not like arbitrary control over their lives; fantastic theories were developed to explain the deaths, though not more fantastic than the religions, political, and economic theories used to explain the millions of arbitrary deaths by bombs and bullets that the 20th Century featured.


One saint in particular was though to be able to persuade God to spare you if you were devout enough.  Sebastian was venerated because, though he was shot through with arrows, his faith was so strong that he survived.

Here are paintings of Sebastian, painted by some of the finest painters who ever lived.   The paintings were commissioned by the Church to lure back folks who had fallen away because of the Black Death or because the Evil Reformation was underway in the North of Europe.  See if you might have been lured back, if there were no internet pictures to peer at.



St. Sebastian, Peter Paul Rubens (1614)
Staatliche Museen, Berlin






St. Sebastian, Guido Remi





St. Sebastian, El Greco




Chapel of St. Sebastian 
painting by Domination, 1628-31
mosaic by  , 1730-36






Saint Sebastian,El Greco, 16th Century

Cathedral of San Antolin, Palencia





St. Sebastian, Pierre et Gilles, 1987








St. Sebastien, Agholo Bronzino, 1525 





Saint Sebastian Bound for Martyrdom, Sir Anthony van Dyke,1520





Friday Cottage, Columbia, South Carolina 1840
 (and it had better be of St. Sebastian, though no arrow is visible.)





Did we really pierce Cassius Clay, then the most famous person in the world, wit arrows?
I guess we did.





St. Sebastian,  nude, André Durand 2007 
(violating an old Church belief that the only Penis 
Holy enough to be displayed in a painting
 was the Holy Penis of Jesus, 
pits of which lie in many  a 
Catholic Church, 
so it is devoutly
 believed.  
See my  post,   
And see An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town,
by r David Farley 



Men are cruel, but none so cruel as to lock some away in a little concrete box, indefinitely, sometimes for lie; none so cruel, that is, as Governor Pat Brown of California.






Prisoners in solitary confinement are allowed no human contact, ever.

Home



The Exercise Yard, into which one is allowed one hour out of every 24



The California prison at Pelican Bay disciplines prisoners with "indefinite detention" as a disciplinary measure, so the discipline is not forbidden by the Constitution, though the detention may least a lifetime, and it drives men mad.  Government-enforced solitary confinement that drives men mad is neither cruel nor unusual, so say a majority of our Supreme Court, for which my confidence wains daily. that drives you insane is not


I'd rather be in a prison in El Salvador









. . . . if I can't be right where I am.






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