Read about my recent adventures at St. Albans Cathedral!
On January 16th, Peter Kruschwitz, Professor of Classics at the University of Reading, visited us to lead a study day on the topic of the Latin inscriptions of St Albans Cathedral. Here is his report:
Wouldn’t it be exciting if a building as old and magnificent as the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban could share with us some of the people and events that it has encountered during its history of almost one thousand years?
If it could tell us something about its worshippers, its visitors, and the events that took place in it?
Would we be prepared to listen? What would we want to know? What would we want to hear from a building so full of memories?
There are many ways in which one can approach an organic, ever-changing place of human activity and worship such as St Albans, of course.
A particularly exciting way…
View original post 1,693 more words
The Petrified Muse 
The modern language of stones – urban graffitis – is a bit different, you can see it everywhere – whether you like it or not. Also their message is not always quite clear to everybody.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re quite right about that – and the same is true for graffiti from everywhere, really: a lot of texts from the ancient world that have come to us in the form of graffiti (I’m using the term graffito in the way it has been established by those who talk about ancient graffiti, typically meaning a text scratched into a surface (Italian ‘graffiare’ = ‘to scratch’)) make no or only very limited sense to us.
Incidentally, one of my favourite pages for procrastination these days is http://www.notesofberlin.com – a beautiful collection of random little messages that could be graffiti in the ancient sense, contentwise.
LikeLike
Danke für den Tipp mit ‘Notes of Berlin’, gucke ich mir am Wochenende mal an. Das mit den alten Graffiti ist mir bekannt, weil es gibt kaum eine archäologische Stätte, wo nicht irgendjemand sich so verewigen musste … ganz verzweifelte Graffiti gibt es auch in alten Opernhäusern von Ehemännern, die von Ihren Ehefrauen dahin gezwungen wurden.
LikeLiked by 1 person