Discovering Saint Rita

A day without opera is a day without …

I saw from Rod Dreher’s substack that he was in Prague yesterday—and yet he did not get in touch with me!

He really needs to subscribe to my substack, don’t you think? What a missed opportunity for him!

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These days have been blessed for me. What could be finer for a scholar, than getting together with gifted and accomplished scholars from around the world, in a beautiful setting, in an historic city, to discuss over three full days the Greek text of Aristotle’s Ethics?

That the setting was beautiful, let this picture establish, which shows the view from the seminar room where we met, on the second floor (=third floor) of the Faculty of Arts building of Charles University:

Yes, that’s St. Vitus Cathedral and the Castle grounds.

No one in the conference disagreed when someone exclaimed, “This is the most beautiful view I’ve ever seen from a seminar room in my whole life!”

I was once at a conference in Patras, Greece, where the conference room looked out over the Gulf of Patras, towards the spot where the great battle of Lepanto was fought. That was beautiful too, but, I agree, not quite as stunning as this view.

The participants hailed directly and indirectly from the United States, England, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Australia, and the Czech Republic. Their presentations were uniformly superb. The caliber of the discussion was very high. I was honored to be counted among that group.

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On the earlier days, the morning sessions had ended at 12:30pm. Yesterday was an anomaly, and we finished at 12 noon (for a break until 3p). This early break gave me the opportunity to go to the 12:15pm Mass across the river at St. Thomas Church on the road up to the castle.

It is a stunning baroque church:

Notice the high ceilings, of course. It must cost a fortune to heat that place in the cold Czech winters, right? Well, this church has found a method unlike any I’ve ever seen: electric powered heating plates at each place in a pew:

But can this method really be more efficient than gas or oil central heating? Electric heat tends to be very expensive.

I had not realized before getting there that it was St. Rita’s feast day. It turns out that this parish has a very strong devotion to St. Rita. The priest actually wore vestments which had an image of St. Rita sewn in. After the Mass, he led the congregation to a shrine dedicated to the saint. For a long time he knelt and said prayers there. Then he blessed the congregation with holy water.

He prayed in Czech, which I cannot understand. But see the papers on the kneeler? One of them has a prayer in English. After the ceremony I knelt in the same place and said that prayer to this great saint.

St. Rita, pray for us!

After Mass, I walked about half a mile up the castle hill to the beer garden of the Strahov Monastery, reputed to have the freshest and best beer in Prague. I sat outside at a rustic table:

All the meals here are “heavy,” as you can imagine. Look at one of the “starter” plates. This was enough for me. Sausage in beer sauce, served with bread. (Any red blooded man, at least any red-blooded Ukrainian or Pole, like myself, who sees this picture will want to come to Prague,)

But sadly there would be no music in the evening, because our little band of scholars went out to dinner together. We were joined by the participants in a concurrent conference also at Charles University, on ancient science.

But “what we do through friends we do ourselves.” I persuaded one of my colleagues, who is staying on a few days, to see Tosca and Dialogues next week. So I’ll count that as my seeing them.

That’s all for now—a simple post today. Many great things and true things, but nothing taxing of deep.

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Ciao!