What is it about golden rooms that scream inadequacy?

A beautiful garden, a lovely blue-skied day to soak up the welcome winter sun rays. The Palazzo Parisio is a treat. The building is grand but the gardens are beautiful. I remember when visiting Versailles I was spectacularly unimpressed by the over-the-top furnishings. I mean one can have too much of gold, embossing, mirrors and intricate coving. 

It reaches joke-like proportions and you cease to be awed but feel a growing revulsion instead.  Wondering around the Palace of Versailles I did not envy royalty their silly gilded home.  Then, I entered the gardens around the palace and felt an unpleasant envy of the bloody rich.

Here in Naxhar on Malta, the  Palazzo Parisio has also pleasant rooms but a bit Louis the XVI, if you get my drift.  What is it about golden rooms that scream inadequacy? 

The Palazzo’s gardens outside are a wonderfulI place to have coffee and I sit on white garden chairs soaking up the smell of flowers and the sound of birds. 

There is only one other table occupied and I hear that peculiar braying voice of the wealthy, declaring they started their business years ago and have made so much money! They're sitting on the table next to me. How they have moved from Florianna to Naxhar to be closer to smart bars and better parking. Their gloating satisfaction sets my teeth on edge. What is it about ‘the rich’, ‘the would-be rich’ or ‘the has been rich’ that their exaltation in their material successes (real or imaginary) hits such a sour note with me? I must admit to it being nauseous to my system. A similar reaction to encountering a vomit smelling toilet onboard a rough cross-channel ferry. Don't get me wrong an aspirational attitude is admirable in so many ways, but a gloating self-satisfaction is never attractive. 

All of us vaguely know the humility that is truly appropriate when you examine yourself closely. You get a whiff of your own hypocrisy, your shells of pretence, the lies you tell yourself to cover over the cracks. In those moments of truth, we all shift in our seats in discomfort at the truth bubbling up from within. Instead of cackling over the misfortune of others like this lot. They are now discussing, their friend Lola’s disastrous boutique dress shop with inappropriate glee. They knew in advance it would end badly! Now, they speculate on another friend who has withdrawn from Facebook. “She was always a bit odd into nature and stuff! Must be something disastrous happening in her life?” 

I am asking myself, what no meaningless selfies of random spectacular venues, no gloating achievements/homes/cars etc what a loss! I sit here judging others so harshly when I am so rarely as vicious on myself. Perhaps this pernicious self-gratification habit sneaks into all our lives without us even noticing. Instead of examining our internal landscape we begin enjoying speculation on the ruins of others.  Just as I do now on my neighbours in this garden.

I will cease this attack on the rich around me and just enjoy the coffee, the sun's rays, the flowers and beckoning gardens instead. It's probably why being in nature is such therapy for the soul. You look at beauty and find nothing to criticise and just soak up its wholesomeness. Sigh with appreciation that it, like the sun beams on all with uniform abundance, impervious to all our inadequacies and shortcomings.

"Busy not thyself with this world, for with fire We test the gold, and with gold We test Our servants."

Bahá’u’lláh

Malta's Inquisition - the good the bad and the ugly

Visited the palace of the Inquisitor in Birgu this week.  Getting there by bus is a bit of a hassle.  First I waited for half an hour to get a bus to Valetta from Sliema.  Four full buses passed the stop unable to let any more on board.  From Valetta I caught a bus to Birgu and it takes a remarkably long time to get a few kilometres from where I started.  I feel sure the bus system is designed to make Malta seem much bigger.  After an hour on a bus somewhere you find yourself scratching your head in disbelief, after all the whole island is only 27 kilometres long and 15 kilometres across.  It may be small but it is jam packed with delights and the Palace of the Inquisitor was my goal.  Birgu has a mighty fine entrance.

As I approach the main entrance of Birgu I keep reminding myself how impressive it is now but how much more so it must have seemed in the 16th century.

On the left as you enter there is a fascinating museum which leads down to the underground shelters built deep beneath ground during World War II.  Down narrow corridors and steps there are dormitories and even a birthing room.  Each stone has a tale to tell in this place.

Certainly these walls were designed to keep out invaders and there is a majesty about them.  Walled defences that have layers of protection.

The side streets are pretty and distinctively Maltese. The Inquisitor's palace is not far from the main gate and is one of very few that have survived in the world still open to the public.

Inside the ground floor is a pleasant garden, obviously a pleasant place to retreat to after a tiring day investigating and torturing victims.  The kitchen is large and spacious with an oven down one side.

The staircase is spectacular and grand, this was the way to impress guests and to state ones importance.

Looking back down the stairs gives another perspective.  Note the chair which would be used to carry the really important around the city from venue to venue.

Two of the Inquisitors here in Malta went on to become popes.  Fabia Chigi became Pope Alexander VII in 1655.   There is a photo of him on the wall.  

When inquisitor he would have worn this costume below, a rather terrifying outfit to be confronted with.  I think the outfit was designed with confession in mind.

Pope Alexander VII did not get good press by some.  Here is an account, by a contemporary that knew him, that starts out well but ends badly.

"In the first months of his elevation to the Popedom, he had so taken upon him the profession of an evangelical life that he was wont to season his meat with ashes, to sleep upon a hard couch, to hate riches, glory, and pomp, taking a great pleasure to give audience to ambassadors in a chamber full of dead men's sculls, and in the sight of his coffin, which stood there to put him in mind of his death. [His] extraordinary devotion and sanctity of life I found was so much esteemed that the noise of it spread far and near. But so soon as he had called his relations about him he changed his nature. Instead of humility succeeded vanity; his mortification vanished, his hard couch was turned into a soft featherbed, his dead men's sculls into jewels, and his thoughts of death into ambition — filling his empty coffin with money as if he would corrupt death, and purchase life with riches."

I suspect piety is a hard act to maintain, but some of the faces of the Inquisitors look like rather evil characters indeed.  I keep wondering is it just me or do some of them look seriously disturbed?

I am one to talk, I take a bad photo myself but seriously, these guys were painted so surely with artistic skill they could have made them look more human.

All I can say is I would not like to be questioned by these characters while implements of torture were lying around conveniently placed.  Being found in possession of books on their index of forbidden texts would have been enough to get you into serious trouble.  Kepler's scientific treaty on the movement of the planets etc would have certainly got you strapped to something painful. Galileo's championing of the planets moving around the sun resulted in him being tried and suffering house imprisonment for the rest of his life.  But there were a whole range of things that could get you into trouble.  (see below)

It's quite a list and the last one could include informing the inquisition of the sins of others.  By not doing so you could get into real trouble.  In Malta the major sins seem to centre around witchcraft/evil eye etc. Mostly it appeared the use of love potions was common.  This activity was hard to stamp out despite the intensity of their best endeavours.  Pope Alexander VII, when inquisitor ,so filled the cells with people to investigate they ran out of room to put their suspects.  The longest serving Inquisitor in Malta was Paolo Passionei  (1743-1754). Unfortunately, he had several nasty secrets of his own which caused some difficulties.

"He was guilty of 'Loose living' including fornication. Inquisitor Passionei secretly had a mistress, and he became the father of two females .... When in 1749 the Pope requested him to go to Switzerland as an Apostolic Nuntio he refused, being afraid that his scandalous life would become public! He left Malta on 1754 and was unfrocked. " 

It's a tricky business this judging of others, not perhaps a healthy spiritual exercise.  "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone..." applies surely?

The inquisitors lived in some comfort.

The room in which they interrogated suspects had a rather unpleasant feel to it.  The torture implements in the dungeon down below must have helped loosen tongues.

There is a special staircase to the prison cells below which meant they could be taken secretly to and fro without being seen by others.  The cells themselves had tiny low doors and small high windows.

The contrast between the prison cells with their cramped quarters down below to the luxury above is stark.

Strange to find in one building such marked differences only a staircase away.  Below all dark and tortured while above all light and comfort.

"A prisoner in the Inquisition is never allowed to see the face of his accuser, or of the witnesses against him, but every method is taken by threats and tortures, to oblige him to accuse himself, and by that means corroborate their evidence."

John Foxe

When you think about the inquisition it is hard to find positive things to say about this period.  Lessons have to be learnt from history and until we do it seems society will never progress.  I liked this piece by― Alfred Whitney Griswold in Essays on Education,

“Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.”