Giovanni Battista Bugatti - what a name, eh? It sounds like the kind of bloke you’d expect to sell you a fine bottle of chianti or offer unsolicited advice about your olive oil. But no - our man Bugatti wasn’t swirling wine or chasing goats in the hills. He was the official executioner for the … Continue reading Mastro Titta: Pope’s Little Helper with a Big Sword
Tag: death
In Absentia: A Theology of Objects
I've touched on a similar theme in an earlier post, but as per my obsession with objects, I thought there's be no harm indulging again. There’s a sentence in Julian Barnes’ Metroland that hits with the sort of quiet, subcutaneous sting I’ve come to associate with him: Objects contain absent people. On the face of it, it's a throwaway … Continue reading In Absentia: A Theology of Objects
Suffering, Song, and the Sorrows of the Mother of God
The Stabat Mater is not a hymn so much as it’s a wound set to music - a gash in the human heart where grief spills out in metre and Latin vowels. It’s Mary beneath the cross, yes, but it’s also every parent who has ever outlived their child; every person who has stood by … Continue reading Suffering, Song, and the Sorrows of the Mother of God
Bread Upon the Waters
Ecclesiastes 11:1, the art of giving, and the peculiar futility of being alive “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” — Ecclesiastes 11:1 There’s something heartbreakingly hopeful about that line, isn’t there? Something that makes you want to nod sagely, as if you understand it, even though - … Continue reading Bread Upon the Waters
A Referendum on Death
Foreword: A Note on Silence There are some things you are not supposed to say. That killing people, however nicely, is still killing people. That terminal illness does not grant others the right to pre-empt God. That what Parliament calls dignity might look suspiciously like abandonment in disguise. But here I am. And here, I … Continue reading A Referendum on Death
Wording 