More background details: http://projects.mcah.columbia.edu/raphael/htm/ra…athens_draw.htm
Where Is Epicurus In The "School of Athens"?
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Closeup of the first draft of the section Elli is pointing to:
http://projects.mcah.columbia.edu/raphael/htm/ra…athens_draw.htm
also: https://www.ambrosiana.it/en/partecipa/p…chool-of-athen/
Does it not appear that the twisted-head figure has some kind of headpiece on? I would think that undercuts the idea that he was originally a major figure, and I would see his being replaced as some evidence of special attention being paid to this character. He may have a beard, but the overall look doesn't impress me as being a philosopher, unlike the figure that replaced him.
I'm not sure why but in the past (and some of my comments probably reflect this) I was thinking that this fresco was in some part of Italy other than the Vatican. Since I now stand corrected and find that this is in the Vatican, in my own mind that adds near-certainty to Elli's conclusion. I personally have no doubt that the arch-enemies of Epicurus in the Vatican never lost track of what their primary enemy looked like, and one of them could and would have pointed out his bust to Raphael.
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I agree totally with your thoughts Cassius. I sum up with this picture and my comments below.
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No, he did not. However, I did not know the existence of these drawings too. You did a good catch Cassius!
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I agree with most of what you've written here Cassius, but when it comes to what the Vatican knew or didn't know...well, I still can't quite get there.
Consider first that neither the Vatican nor anyone else even knows what Jesus or ANY of his disciples looked like. We have an apocryphal description of St. Paul that emerged in the second century (nearly a hundred years after his death), and it may or may not be accurate–no one will ever know. And...that's it. There's no biblical figure for whom a contemporary image survives.
It would be another hundred years after the apocryphal story of St. Paul until we finally got the first portrait of a Roman Pontiff. The likenesses of the ten predecessors of Pope Anicetus (and those of many of his successors) will forever remain obscure to history.
But look much more recently than that! Almost everyone who reads English Literature with any kind of depth will be familiar with the Shakespeare authorship dispute. While I personally believe that centuries of scholarship has settled that question, there is another debate that's almost as astonishing–no one can say for certain whether the Chandos Portrait, the bard's most well-known likeness, is actually him or someone else. We can't say for certain that any of the surviving and alleged portraits were made in his own lifetime.
We don't know for certain what Chaucer looked like; we don't know what the crowned heads of medieval Europe looked like.
As for my opinion on surviving writings...that will have to wait until after dinner!
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I have to agree with Joshua while also saying clearly I appreciate the passion and the general sentiment of Cassius 's post.
Once Epicurus's school and legacy were pretty much wiped out by the Justinian closures of the schools in the 500s or Arabs in the 700s if the Epicureans had a presence in Alexandria, they weren't considered a threat. They were once! No question! But the Triumph of Christianity in the literal sense of a Roman triumph where you celebrate the crushing of your enemies was total.
his site has some interesting excerpts:
http://www.bede.org.uk/justinian.htm
I agree that there may have been stray pockets of Epicureans and Epicureanism scattered about, but I have doubts there was a bust of Epicurus secreted away in the Vatican for them to throw eggs at, so to speak. The"Secret Archive" has been open to researchers for a number of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_A…ive?wprov=sfla1 I don't think they have the mummified body of Jesus hidden somewhere either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_R…ion?wprov=sfla1 Once Epicurus and his school and its students were stamped out, viciously and with maximum efficiency, I don't think the Church would have worried you much. They wielded the literal power of life and death over swaths of the world by the 400s and consolidated power soon after. They may have kept around a bust of Socrates or Aristotle because they could incorporate Socratic, Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic ideas into Christianity. Anything of value from Epicurus they take, mold to their own, and completely erase it's provenance. They had nothing to fear (they thought) from a few stray letters or a copy or two of some obscure Latin poet. His Latin is elegant. What have we to fear.
I can't recall if you or Elli shared the link to Takis's paper but I accidently ran across it: https://www.epicuros.gr/pages/en/Panag…rusPortrait.pdf He seems to say it laid hidden until 1742.
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As for surviving writings in the Vatican Library, I'm skeptical about that as well.
The Roman Pontiffs have been a strikingly varied lot. Some were pious, and many others have been corrupt. Some popes have been scholars of the highest learning (as in the case of Sylvester II), while at least four of the "Vicars of Christ" on earth have been illiterate! (Innocent VI is notable for his mistrust of the high literary ambitions of Petrarch, or so I have read.)
Nor was the Church uniformly hostile to all criticism. Our own Lorenzo Valla (later in life a contemporary and rival of Poggio Bracciolini at the Roman Curia) had made a name for himself early on when he proved using philology that the so-called "Donation of Constantine" was a forgery. The Church had for centuries buttressed its own authority partially with this document. His scholarship put his life in danger–and yet when the mitre changed heads with the inauguration of Nicholas V, Valla was invited to a high position in the papal court.
It would strike me as odd if during all these centuries a major work from antiquity had been hidden away in the Vatican Library, with generations of humanists and scholars never revealing it. But it's even more unusual when I consider that in 1888 a small collection of maxims did emerge. I hardly see the point in letting those sayings out, and hiding the rest away; I don't suppose there can really be anything shocking or subversive in Epicurus beyond what we have record of elsewhere. Oddly enough, Lucretius was spared inclusion onto the infamous Index of Prohibited Books, supposedly by the intervention of one Cardinal Marcello Cervini.
So there's that. I certainly appreciate the work that Elli has done in developing her thesis. It would be great to see something new come to light in all of this.
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And there certainly have been "good" figures mixed in to the history of the catholic church (and the rest of organized religion), but I don't see that really changing its overall picture as machinery for manipulation and oppression of the "masses."
True, but what we would have to believe in this case is that for well over a thousand years–during many centuries of which humanist scholars (including men in holy orders) were rifling the libraries of Europe for pagan texts–a significant work by an important figure was hidden away in perfect secrecy. It's just that personally I find it more likely that the Church employed a more direct means of containment; by the classic expedient of feeding books to the fire.
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As for a likeness of Jesus and.or the disciples, I think the most likely answer to that is that he never really existed except as a composite figure of one of more various local rebellion-leaders.
I think a more likely scenario for likeness of Jesus of Nazareth and his followers is that for decades if not a century he was a minor figure. No one paid any attention to him until his followers (none of whom would have ever seen him) began to consolidate power. I have no problem accepting there was a person, an apocalyptic prophet, living in Judea in the early "common era", probably named Yeshua. There's also no doubt that later writers glommed into his stories from various Hebrew and pagan sources.
Epicurus on the other hand was a powerhouse, well known before and after his death whose memory and teachings needed to be stamped out hard, eradicated, and burned by the followers of Jesus Christos, Logos, Lord of the Universe.
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Wasn't the whole secret hidden manuscript the plot of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose?
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Wasn't the whole secret hidden manuscript the plot of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose?
You know a topic on the "Secrets of the Vatican" might make for an interesting thread itself. I've heard of that, but the only related them I am familiar with is that Tom Hanks movie -- what was that?
Does anyone have enough interest or material for a "Secrets of the Vatican" thread?
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Wasn't the whole secret hidden manuscript the plot of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose?
You know a topic on the "Secrets of the Vatican" might make for an interesting thread itself. I've heard of that, but the only related them I am familiar with is that Tom Hanks movie -- what was that?
Does anyone have enough interest or material for a "Secrets of the Vatican" thread?
That was the Da Vinci Code and all the other Dan Browne books. The Name of the Rose was made into a movie starring Sean Connery.
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it wasn't bad as I remember. Evil monk hiding manuscripts (Aristotle's Comedy was one I think I remember). Sean is the good guy monk trying bring them to light. Set in the Middle Ages.
