Day 21: Orvieto

For starters, thank you Dr. Bednarz for wanting to not go to Orvieto alone and taking myself, Chris, and Michelle along for the day trip. It's amazing how timing works out sometimes


Short and sweet: Orvieto was my first experience in small town/countryside Italia. It really get me amped up for Assisi....a couple observations jumped out.


1. The obnoxiously beautiful Basilica di Orvieto. Michelle pointed out that it looked like a prison, but in our learnings of prisons, that would be an awfully incorrect statement. 

2. In Ostia Antica, Dr. Bednarz pointed out a "home" in the necropolis and references John 14: 2 ,"In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you." She referenced the "columbarium" as a place used to store urns filled with the ashes of the deceased. Those urns are placed in square niches in the columbarium, which were modeled in the same fashion as pigeon niches. The same style pigeon niches found in the "Underground Orvieto" tour. Those pigeons would be used as food...pretty much a never ending supply of food for the etruscans living in early Orvieto. The light in the upper right hand corner is where the pigeons would fly in and out of during the day. 

3. Death Spectacles and Medieval Crucifixion: 
Here are a couple photos (they're not that well snapped, because of a no photo policy). 


The "death spectacles" were common acts in antiquity. It involves humiliating a criminal in front of a large group of people. One example: a criminal being hung from the top of the coliseum and told to flap his arms like wings or else he will fall 200 feet to his death. However, the most humiliating in an honor-shame society would be mocked as a king. The kings would be seen as divine and sent by the gods, and one proclaiming to be a god who is not (in the eyes of his or her persecutors) would be the most humiliating of all because it eternally loses honor for someone. Here is Jesus' death spectacle; mockery as a king. 

Here is another Medieval crucifixion: So realistic (minus the fact that he is completely covered), so detailed with each popping vein.... quite gory with paint tones showing blood covering his body.