{"id":652,"date":"2011-07-12T16:21:25","date_gmt":"2011-07-12T16:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/?p=652"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:04:41","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:04:41","slug":"malta-nantucket-with-flying-skulls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2011\/07\/malta-nantucket-with-flying-skulls\/","title":{"rendered":"Malta: Nantucket with Flying Skulls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cIf you\u2019ve spent any time thinking about a chivalric order lately\u2026\u201d With these words do Happy Menocal and John Swansburg open their Slate<\/i> piece on Malta and its guardian knights.<\/strong><\/a> Surely it wasn\u2019t meant to, but the phrasing makes me think of an ad for a private school. All too easily, I can imagine the parents of my old neighborhood telling each other, \u201cDustin\u2019s a shoo-in for the Order of the Bath, but we\u2019ve gotten him on the waiting list for the Order of the Garter\u201d or \u201cThe admissions director for the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle was all over Meghan, but we think those dueling scars are a little on the vulgar side.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article\u2019s worth a read, though. It begins with a recounting of the 1566 siege, during which 500 knights and a few thousand auxiliaries held the island against a force of 22,000 Turks:<\/p>\n

The ensuing siege was bitter, even by 16th-century standards. The Turks decapitated and crucified captured knights; the knights retaliated by decapitating Turks and firing their skulls from their cannons. But thanks to the savvy leadership of the septuagenarian knight Jean Parisot de la Vallette\u2014and thanks to some very good luck\u2014the knights managed to keep the Turks from scoring a decisive victory. With the rough seas of winter bearing down on them, the Turkish fleet returned to Istanbul empty-handed. Christendom had been saved, and the Turkish advance into the Western Mediterranean turned back. (For a terrific account of the siege, read Roger Crowley\u2019s Empires of the Sea.) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From there, it moves into a description of Malta\u2019s current-day tourist attractions, including the \u201cfantastically baroque\u201d Co-Cathedral of St. John:<\/p>\n

As we walked through the cathedral, our eyes were drawn upward, toward the barrel-shaped ceiling, which is decorated with an elaborate cycle of oil paintings by the Calabrian knight Mattia Preti, who depicted the life and death of John the Baptist, the order\u2019s patron saint. The church\u2019s most impressive achievement, however, is right below your feet. The spectacular floor is made up of 350 polychrome intarsia marble tombstones, which pay homage to the generations of knights buried below. Each tombstone tells the story of an individual knight, with vivid, often macabre imagery and complicated heraldic symbols. (Several of the tombstones would have made excellent Grateful Dead album covers.) Latin inscriptions enumerate the good deeds of the knights and occasionally offer pointed reminders to those still walking the Earth. \u201cFlecte lumina, quisquis es, mortalitatem agnosce,\u201d reads one. \u201cBend down with your lighted candles, whoever you are, and acknowledge your mortality.\u201d On the tombstone belonging to Fra\u2019 Gaspar de Figuera, a smiling skeleton sits atop a clock, bearing this message: \u201cVenit hora eius. Veniet hora tua\u201d\u2014\u201dHis hour came. Yours will, too.\u201d Nothing like a reminder of your inevitable demise to make you appreciate your holiday. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t know about you all, but they had me at the macabre grave markers. In Greyfriars\u2019 Kirkyard, in Edinburgh, every other monument features reliefs of winged hourglasses, or skeletons dancing in burial-sheets, or some other motif that has the effect of reminding visitors: \u201cBooga, booga! You\u2019re gonna DIE!\u201d The same is true of headstones in America\u2019s colonial-era cemeteries: at the peak of the stone is a winged skull. Funny thing about death\u2019s heads: they look cool and eerie carved into 300-year-old marble, but ridiculous carved into my 39-year-old bicep.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you\u2019ve spent any time thinking about a chivalric order lately\u2026\u201d With these words do Happy Menocal and John Swansburg open their Slate piece on Malta and its guardian knights. Surely it wasn\u2019t meant to, but the phrasing makes me think of an ad for a private school. All too easily, I can imagine the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[232],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-travel"],"yoast_head":"\nMalta: Nantucket with Flying Skulls<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""If you've spent any time thinking about a chivalric order lately..." 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