How we are remembered...
'He was one of those Professors of Church History whose meticulous devotion to unimportant details makes the subject generally repulsive to the popular mind.’
N J D White on his teacher, Richard Gibbings, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Trinity College, 1863-78.
Ab of Armagh Henry Ussher's life's work was his refutation of Cardinal Bellarmine. But never printed, as his wife 'snatched it away and burnt the many years’ labours fearing the unfairness of a contest between a man weighed down with children and domestic cares and one free from worldly concerns.'
Ah, that horticultural rarity, the blue tree!
(From John Jearrard's web site:
www.johnjearrard.co.uk/me.html)
Starving yourself to death for Christ
Every so often you come across something in an archive that takes your breath away.
This matter of fact account is from the Annals of the English Passionists, for 1852
Full marks to Diarmaid MacCulloch for getting the words 'crazy shit' published in a respectable historical journal:
Diarmaid MacCulloch, 'Foxes, Firebrands, and Forgery: Robert Ware's Pollution of Reformation History', Historical Journal, 54 (2011), pp. 344.
‘He evangelised in favour of wholemeal bread, believing that white flour was created by money-making Jews and freemasons, who characteristically sacrificed nutrition to profit; he also favoured yogurt.’
Magic!
Patrick Maume (DIB) on that bizarre right-wing Irish priest, Denis Fahey (1883–1954).
American Fottball Players' Names, no 703.
This one is from Notre Dame:
Wonderful Monds IV
Naturally, asked my close friend Claude about my flowering bamboo: lovely response -
'The silver lining:
You're witnessing something most gardeners never see in a lifetime. The seed you collect is precious — consider sharing with a local botanical garden or bamboo society!'
Any one like some seed?
My beloved back garden bamboo, Fargesia Nitida. is dying. More precisely it is flowering, then it will die.
And at around the same time all over the world all this species will die off. Happens every c 80 years.
Quite exciting as far as I am concerned, but not for pandas: their main food source.
My 70th Birthday today.
Happy to be here, sad at the passing of time…
and…
have found the perfect bottle of wine to celebrate with.
