Teaching Ourselves (original) (raw)

****FLORIN WEBSITE � JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY, AUREO ANELLO ASSOCIAZIONE1997-2024: MEDIEVAL:BRUNETTO LATINODANTE ALIGHIERISWEET NEW STYLE: BRUNETTO LATINODANTE ALIGHIERI& GEOFFREY CHAUCER || VICTORIAN : WHITE SILENCE: FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY || ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING || WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR || FRANCES TROLLOPE || || HIRAM POWERS || ABOLITION OF SLAVERY || FLORENCE IN SEPIA || CITY AND BOOK CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS I, IIIII IV V VI VII || MEDIATHECA 'FIORETTA MAZZEI' || EDITRICEAUREO ANELLO CATALOGUE || FLORIN WEBSITE || UMILTA WEBSITE || LINGUE/LANGUAGES:ITALIANO ENGLISH || VITA** New: Dante vivo || White Silence

See also cradle/library

TEACHING OURSELVES

St GallIdeal Monastery Cloister

Dame Julian of Norwich, Dom Jean Leclercq O.S.B. reminds us, likely earned her keep from teaching children their ABC. Such Dame-schools enabled these now literate children to enter choir schoolsas at Norwich Cathedral; then, if they became monks, they were part of its 'college' continuing the Benedictine 'School for Prayer'for all their lives, not in our world of time, but of God's eternity.

Then Archbishop Chancellor Arundel forbade women to teach. At which date the name and occupation of JulianAnchoress of Norwichbegins to appear in Willsperhaps so that she could continue to be funded for her writing of the Showing of Love. Like Julian, I live in a graveyard; like Julian I am retired from teaching. At first I thought to carry out this dream from my spacious and beautiful convent in Sussex . But that dream shattered. Then I fled to Italy and after years of poverty living in one room without heaton footonly my computer and books left the dream improbably came about. I was offered a whole square in Florence Piazzale Donatellofilled with tombscalled the 'English Cemetery', though owned by the Swiss Evangelical Church and its Gatehouse in which had been the studio of Shakespeare's last descendant. This is now the international and ecumenical Mediatheca Fioretta Mazzei. Its collections include books for studying the Hebrew and the Greek of the Bibleon the men and women mystics of the ChurchDante AlighieriElizabeth Barrett Browning, the Pre-Raphaelitesthe Oxford Movement and the Risorgimentoart history and paleography and codicology. These books are on shelves I built myself this past hot Augustusing hand-forged brackets shaped like lilied crosses I had made in Settignano copying those of the Bodleian Library.

Next to this library room is the work room. The great laying-out table is at its centreon it have laid the bodies of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walter Savage Landor, and many others. It is just the right height for work, for restoring tomb sculpture for binding booksfor marbling paper. Tools and supplies are on shelves around the room; covering these panels of green cloththis space also used for exhibitions.

Other rooms contain our computers printers and scanners. From this Florentine Cemetery Gatehouse we continue www.umilta.net From this Gatehouse we plan the International Congresses in Florence the City and the Bookfor May/June 2001September 20022003. From this Gatehouse also comes the other website www.florin.ms blending together the Italian and English languages and cultures.

We should like to open this Website's space for learning the contemplative wisdom of monasteries and anchorholds rather than through the competitive cramming of universities and seminaries. We should like to open this Website's space to all desiring itlay and clergywomen and menold and youngpoor and rich. One Julian Manuscript has a later reader give it a title, 'Of the Knowledge of Ourselves and God', echoing both Julian of Norwich's and Catherine of Siena's texts. Women, barred from universities, were self-taught. But some had access to libraries of books, among them Christine de Pizan and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, some were even illiterate, like Margery Kempe in her case these being read to her, 'Talking Books'!

We suggest that you draw up a covenant with us about what you wish to study, recalling that study is a third of monastic lifeeach of the three parts, work, study and prayer, aiding all the others. Covenant to carry out this study for the love of God and neighbour and your own soul. Covenant to carry out this study with joy even if part may be drudgerylike learning a language, which then unlocks doors to joy and comprehension. Balance it, too, with handworksuch as binding books, making marbled papers, for our Mediatheca Internazionale Fioretta Mazzei is also what Italians call a 'bottega' a workshop like those used by Giotto and Michelangelo, who knew how to paint and sculpt and build and frame paintings, bind books and design clothing.

Some of our hand-crafted marbled paper

We can begin by making some suggestions for such courses of study: Dante's Florence; Julian's Norwich; Paleography and Editing of Manuscripts. A particular project worthy of undertaking could be Augustine_, Confessions,_ Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova, Julian of Norwich_Showing of Love,_ Elizabeth Barrett Browning Casa Guidi Windows and_Aurora Leigh_ and/or Cardinal Newman Apologia pro vita sua, the telling of tales through time, blending together Christendom in Africa, Italy and England and in studying the relationships between Roman and Anglo-Catholicism between the Risorgimento and the Pre-Raphaelites. Currently we are teaching a Romanian Rom mother her alphabet. For we find this website is about flesh and blood men and women who in turn write books on parchment and paper with ink, that we are about human culture, the Internet being the present stage in the technology of the book as servant to learning and love. We can publish your papers, your books, your stories, on the web.

In these ways we can deepen our 'Textual Community', cultivate ever more our Vineyard of the Text centred on God's Word, and share it with the World and the Web. We also suggest that more valuable than courses of study with content, are skills, like languages, paleography, HTML, as these unlock and open codes of meaning from the past for the future. My Mother Foundress wrote into our Rule that every Sister should so study at a subject that she showed improvement from month to month excellent advice against aging and its ills.

We shall use the World Wide Web as well as books, combining the best of the old with the best of the new. For early Christianity, inventing codices, was likewise into far-flung communications technology. We can also advise with the designing and acquiring of websites, specially recommended for Oliveleaf sharers. Though ours are deliberately and monastically Quakerly plain without flags, not wanting boundaries, and without mechanized java script, instead using the memory technology of medieval texts of alternating colours for capitals and titles.

We suggest that you offer not only to learn but to teach here, for it is in teaching one most learns.

We suggest those studying in individual tutorials or group seminars buy the texts, for instance, Dante's Commedia, Julian's Showing. We shall be able to make further books available to you in a Lending Library through the post, as need arises.

We seek Friends and Users of this School and of this Library for the Web. Join us! Membership is through the simplicity of giving this Mediatheca 'Fioretta Mazzei' a book, any book - the book you particularly think needs to be found on its shelves for others to read.

Contact Julia Bolton Holloway Librarian

We have now formed the Academia Bessarion meeting monthly and internationally on Zoom. Join us! See https://www.florin.ms/Bessarione.html with mp4 files

****FLORIN WEBSITE � JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY, AUREO ANELLO ASSOCIAZIONE1997-2022: MEDIEVAL:BRUNETTO LATINODANTE ALIGHIERISWEET NEW STYLE: BRUNETTO LATINODANTE ALIGHIERI& GEOFFREY CHAUCER || VICTORIAN : WHITE SILENCE: FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY || ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING || WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR || FRANCES TROLLOPE || || HIRAM POWERS || ABOLITION OF SLAVERY || FLORENCE IN SEPIA || CITY AND BOOK CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS I, IIIII IV V VI VII || MEDIATHECA 'FIORETTA MAZZEI' || EDITRICEAUREO ANELLO CATALOGUE || FLORIN WEBSITE || UMILTA WEBSITE || LINGUE/LANGUAGES:ITALIANO ENGLISH || VITA** New: Dante vivo || White Silence