I.vii. Irnerio

Without knowing it we stumbled upon this ancient university city called Bologna, which alone has gone through more old parchments, more tablets, more ink, more pulpits, more doctor’s bonnets than any other city in Italy. The noble place has hosted the Church, the Dissecting Room, the Academy, and the Museum! It reeks of blood, oil, formaldehyde, and incense.”
- Jules Janin

Professor Muzzarelli was even more vivacious today, though in a much clearer and steadier Italian. The topic of the class was barbarism, then and now. Who are the barbarians, she asked? The other, in our vocabulary. But the origin of the word is Greek, of course, meaning those who speak a different language, but how has that definition changed over the centuries? The Romans let their Barbarians in eventually; they all received imperial citizenship in 212. What about our empire, our Union, she asked? She ceased with the rhetorical for a moment and posed us a real question:
   “Which of you are from Bologna?” she asked, then corrected herself, “Never mind. You are all studying here. You are all Bolognese.” I smiled, and took note.
   It was the best kind of history, because it meant something. As the course was let out and the students spilled into the cortile, I asked my American classmate what she thought of today’s lesson. “Much better,” she said. I couldn’t have agreed more.

---

   I had noticed before class that there was to be a concert of musica sacra in the church adjoining the classroom buildings, so after Muzzarelli’s musings I waited around in front of San Giovanni in Monte, the Renaissance church that looks onto the square in front of the department of archaeology and medieval studies. At one point, two purple-robed men appeared at the door and beckoned me to enter. Inside the church there were thirty or so spectators, and a group of about sixty chorists, women and men mostly blonde, wearing the same dark robes with embroidered Tau crosses. This was either Opus Dei, or, worse, Protestants.
   It was protestants. Lutherans, in fact, a good sixty of them gathered in a Renaissance church filled with Papist images which I couldn’t keep my eyes off of (the pictures, not the Lutherans). It was a strange juxtaposition, the Christiansen Sacred Music choir from Norway singing English hymns in an Italian church. They had their talent though, and when they sung a rousing Vaughan Williams processional they gathered around the pews on which I and a few dozen or so others were gathered. This was definitely not Vatican II, but it had its merits.
   Still though, I found it difficult to concentrate solely on the music, as I often find. But unlike the concert I had been to the previous night in a stripped-down ex-baroque church (a few of Bach’s piano suites interspersed with Berio), there was much more to distract that afternoon in the Renaissance church. There were no four bare walls and a sermon to be found anywhere. My eyes began to wander towards little vignettes that were taking place; the organist, Scandinavian as well, with her son sitting next to her to turn the pages of her music; the two old women sitting in front of me, senile but not philistine, speaking too loudly and soliciting unnoticed dark looks from many nearby; the custodian in the side aisle carefully dusting the gold covered tomb of a cardinal, the sharp smell of the acetone drifting over even to where I was.
   And so, as the choir sang on, surrounded not only by the painted scenes of Francia, Costa, and so many other greats of the Bolognese school, but also by the domesticity that only humans can provide, I felt like it was all coming together. My courses were not entirely unintelligible, I had made at least a good start meeting people, and even my own cooking was improving. Perhaps best of all, that morning, having returned once more to the Segreteria for a final bout of paperwork, I had been granted the all-important Libretto, which was to record my marks come exam time. I had also been given a student card that rather amusingly displayed a photo not of me, but of Laurence Alma-Tadea’s Portrait of Irnerio, the legendary twelfth century jurist who was instrumental in establishing the renown of the University of Bologna. I wondered if he knew that nine hundred years after his death on an ugly street that bears his name a Canadian student would be saving money on groceries at Plenty Market.

---

   When the concert had finished the purple Priests of the People went out a side door, and began to re-emerge as regular folk, and I began to wander about the cavernous church. It was only then that I noticed, in the transept, there hung a familiar looking painting. It was, of course, a fair copy of Raphael’s Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia. A chancel screen prevented me from getting any closer, and I could tell she was angry. What was I doing looking at this pale copy, and listening to Lutherans, for that matter? Why hadn’t I gone to visit her yet at the Pinacoteca, like she had asked me to do on my first day? I rushed out of the church, scared.



My Libretto and Student Card


My home-cooked meals, progressing quite nicely


My stock of food, courtesy of Plenty Market


Alma-Tadea’s portrait of Irnerio


The Instruments at Saint Cecilia’s feet in the picture I saw