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Google Maps, Lasers Reveal Vatican Catacombs
Nerval's Lobster writes "The Vatican, while notoriously secretive about things buried in its vaults and archives, is being as public as the digital age allows it to be about the nearly completed restoration of catacombs early Christians used as secret churches as well as burial sites. Contractors, archaeologists and art experts spent the past five years restoring the Priscilla catacombs under the Vatican using lasers, among other techniques, to restore frescoes painted on the walls of the burial chambers. The Vatican unveiled the work Nov. 19 with a press conference in the Basilica of San Silvestro outside the burial tunnels, accompanied by a virtual tour of the Priscilla catacombs provided by Google Maps. The basilica is divided into an area for religious services and another that acts as a deposit for sculptures and artifacts dug up during excavations of the catacombs and other areas underneath the Vatican."
Tom Hanks needs the cash, Da Vinci Code Part 2, coming up!
That would be not only awesome but soo unexpected!
I wandered around via the virtual tour, but all the shelves were empty. .. I wonder what happened to the remains? It was curious to read the graffiti of names and dates, and the ancient signs on the wall but wasn't able to recognize all the writing, It looked like their was more than one language used for the official lettering. I saw dates like 1862, 1920, 1952, etc . Graffiti has been a part of human experience for a long time, and is one way historians can estimate how literate the average population was of an ancient civilization.. Did you know that we have access to the words and thoughts of the citizens of Pompeii and Herculaneum?
No, not the Keanu Reaves film, the Gift (or Donation) of Constantine is an acknowledged fraud that the church of Rome used as a pretense for claiming legitimacy of Vatican power:
http://en.wikipedhttp//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_of_constantineia.org/wiki/Gift_of_constantine
Believe in the Vatican all you want, but I cannot join you in that.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
The Sky Wizard must be real!
Copy and paste error, so here's the link again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_of_constantine
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I have a little problem with articles that get basics about Roman government wrong. Not that I have anything invested in any case.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
Please explain.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Sadly the child rapists still elude technology.
The writing you could not decipher was Greek
Such Vatican, Much Archeology. Wow
True, but it rather ceased to be relevant a few centuries ago. I know Slashdotters like to bear grudges but this is ridiculous. I also think it's cute that you think Slashdot of all places "believes in the Vatican".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Slashdot of all places
Angels are real. Including the mean ones that deal with your kind. They monitor Slashdot for unbelievers.
Until the vatican can admit that priests molested children, and that they were complicit in those behaviours, frankly I don't give a flying fuck about the catacombs or anything else related to Catholicism. The Pope and his mates can go and fry in hell as far as I'm concerned. Yes, mod me down - I don't give a fuck about that either.
also curious, I don't see anything blatant.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
Are the "lasers" attached to sharks?
Did it say "I for one welcome our roman overlords?"
How can you not believe in the Vatican?
It's like not believing in the pentagon.
Whether you believe it or not, it still exists.
The writing you could not decipher was Greek
It's all Greek to me.
: - )
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Graffiti should be of no surprise. Walk around the ruins in Rome. There's graffiti everywhere. And let me tell you, back then, you had to be dedicated to your graffiti. Carving it in stone is a hell of a lot harder than spraying it on with paint!
True, but it rather ceased to be relevant a few centuries ago. I know Slashdotters like to bear grudges but this is ridiculous. I also think it's cute that you think Slashdot of all places "believes in the Vatican".
Mouthbreathing Neanderthal scum. If it wasn't for the cataclysmic sacrifice of nearly all of my brave anaerobic ancestors during World War O your caustic remarks wouldn't even be possible.
Did you find the final boss room???
I got lost after a few turns!
St. Peter's square is the site of the old "Circus of Nero" chariot racing track. The roman's (emperor Nero) martyred St. Peter along the "spine" of the old chariot racing track in 67 as entertainment for the chariot race attendees and then buried the body in a little cemetery located next to the track (which was handily located to clear out the victim(s) from the night before to prepare for the new day's activity.) St. Peter was held in high esteem by the early Christians of that time and they secretly excavated near his burial site in order to construct a memorial shrine, to have a place for Christian worship, and to allow other Christians of the time to be buried near St. Peter as they were martyred. As the centuries passed, and Christians were no longer persecuted, churches were built over the site of St. Peter's burial, leading to the newest one, the present St. Peter's basilica which was constructed approximately 400 years ago. St. Peter's grave is located directly under what is now the altar.
Reminds me of Ultima Underworld (or Eye of the Beholder, or Dungeon Hack, or whatever).
The Priscllla Catacombs are off Via Salaria, near the big park that has Villa Ada in it. A good half hour walk, at least, from the Vatican. All of the catacombs are "outside the wall" in any case.
Perhaps they mean "under the control and supervision of the Vatican"?
The catacombs existed because you couldn't bury bodies within the walls of Rome. At some point, (300-400 CE, I think, presumably post Constantine), all the bodies were removed and reburied elsewhere.
It's very different from the charnel houses and catacombs of Paris in this way.
Indeed! Monty Python - Life of Brian - Graffiti Lessons
The writing in the catacombs shown in the link you mean? It looks closer to the Byzantine script than Greek proper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_minuscule Notice that the script in the catacomb tour contains a letter that looks like a Latin "C" Greek (ancient and modern) doesn't have such a character. It was, however, present in the Byzantine script.
soylentnews.org
There's nothing particularly Byzantine about that letter that looks like a "C". It's called a lunate sigma and it's been around since the Hellenistic period. And the scripts written in the crypts are not miniscule; they're very decidedly majuscule. One is rather unlikely to find Greek written in miniscule in a 2nd-4th c. Roman catacomb, given that Greek miniscule would not be invented for another five centuries.
Now, if you happen to have a little Greek, you might have come to the conclusion that these scripts must be Byzantine since your Attic Greek textbook uses letters that look quite different. But the fact is that modern printed Greek, whether classical, koine, or Byzantine, uses a post-classical script. With the invention of printing, printers created a miniscule script similar to that found in the Byzantine manuscripts they were using. Unless you're working specifically on paleography, none of your textbooks or printed editions are going to use a classical script.
Or that Catholics do believe the papacy because of the Donation of Constantine. It was a Catholic priest who identified the forgery, and that over five centuries ago. Anyone who thinks this is a challenge to Catholic beliefs doesn't understand Catholicism.
There is even graffiti from the masons who built the Egyptian pyramids, and on many ancient monuments you can see the mark of the individual stone masons on different pieces of construction signing their portion of the work. In two of the cathedrals in Spain, Santiago and another one (Salamanca?), I saw the mark of the same mason (or perhaps family of masons) on multiple columns.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Did it say "People called Romanes they go the house"?
Ah, thanks for the clarification. :)
soylentnews.org
I think it "ceased to be relevant a few centuries ago" only to some Roman Catholics. Use words like "cute" all you like, but you'd be unfortunately implying that a major event in the history of the Roman Catholic church and indeed the western world was not worth considering when discussing today's Vatican.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
It was the Roman Catholic church that suppressed the knowledge of the fraud over and over again, yet individuals within and without the Church continued to explore the meaning of the Gift of Constantine since it is so central to the basis of belief in the Vatican.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Yep, when a newspaper says Putin phoned Washington you find yourself wondering which of millions of people in the State of Washington, Washington, DC, Washington University, etc. etc. he might have been having a nice chit-chat with.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I was hoping to read what you meant. If you're taking about the Wikipedia article I would say that you could engage in the Talk section regarding improving it, if you haven't done so already.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
It isn't even remotely central to the basis of belief in the Vatican. Hell, there isn't even any such thing as "belief in the Vatican". Catholics believe in the foundation of the Church that grew from foundations laid by St. Peter. The Vatican is a giant building that effectively is the administrative aspects of the Catholic Church; you don't "believe" in it, it just is.
But no one has taken the Gift of Constantine seriously for over 500 years. No one suppressed any knowledge of fraud, it was simply believed to be true until the Renaissance Era where betters scholarship practices were developed and determined it couldn't possibly be true, and it was the Catholic Church that was the first to admit it was a forgery.
But no one takes this seriously at all. However, Constantine IS revered for the Edict of Milan, which has a lot more to do with the growth and strength of Catholicism than any sort of "gift". I think you're trying to hard to dredge up some sort of grudge or conspiracy.
NP. I get info so often from folks on Slashdot (I'm only an amateur nerd, not a professional) that I'm always excited to share about things closer to my own specialty.
AC has this right. The basis for papal claims to religious authority are not founded on the Donation of Constantine, though the document was used many centuries ago to bolster claims to temporal authority. References to the document don't even appear in the sources until the eighth century, long after the bishop of Rome had begun to build more universal claims upon his succession from Peter. Indeed, apostolic succession--not any grant of authority from an emperor--has been the foundation of episcopal authority at least since the second (cf. Irenaeus of Lyons) and arguably since the first (cf. Clement of Rome) century.
No Catholic, therefore, will need to reference that spurious document to support his faith in the authority of the Roman bishop. The fact that the Donation was accepted at all was an effect rather than a cause of the broad acceptance of papal authority in the West.
In the case of those Cathedrals, I'd assume it's the mark of their guild. Wasn't the guild system popular around that time period for such work?
Different areas in the cathedral have different marks which, according to the staff at the Catederal de Santiago, signified the team that built that section of wall or column. The Stone Mason Guild would have been responsible for all the work crews, I'm not sure if there were a different guild responsible for the details and decorations in the stonework but I don't think so.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
And the obelisk in Saint Peter's Square was "acquired" in Egypt by the Romans to decorate the spina. Later some pope decided that it would suit very well his new square.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I suggest you use Google maps to see where the Vatican is... ...
as a hint the main eclesiastical title of the Pope is Bishop of
well it's actually not especially sane to disbelieve in the Vatican, it is an actual physical locale
No, it said "Romanes Eunt Domus"
This space for rent