Tagged: Christian

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A Brief Account of Siena, Part II

In Tuscany, as in ancient Greece, neighborhoods and religious associations played a major part in the organization of everyday life.  In Tuscany the church Parishes and the neighborhoods that grew around them, whether known as quartieri (quarters),  sesti (sixths), or (in Rome and elsewhere)  rioni  were the locus of many activities, including the repair of roads and walls.

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Tuscan Histories II: The Etruscan Legacy

If Christianity is difficult to conceive without the Old Testament, then Christendom is an impossibility without the legacy of Greeks and Romans, and the Etruscans made no small contribution to the character and culture of Rome, though very little of the Etruscan legacy is obvious.  

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Ancient Vengeance

It is a main thrust of philosophical Liberalism (and of ancient Stoicism) that human beings have a duty to rise above not only animal but parochial and sectarian passions.  Any attempt to justify revenge must therefore represent a step back toward the jungle from which we escaped all too recently.

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Reason vs. Passion

Robert E. Lee, who in so many ways epitomized the highest ideas of Christian civility, summed up the common feeling in his famous statement that, “Duty is the most sublime word in our language,” adding the injunction: “Do your duty in all things.  You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less.”