Volcanic Winter and Pandemic Pandemonium

The Empress Theodora with her entourage pictured in a mosaic at the Basilique San Vitale, Ravenna. Picture: Roger Culos/Wikimedia Commons

A terrible onslaught of bubonic plague in the sixth century abruptly ended Emperor Justinian’s dream of reunifying the Roman empire and caused massive geopolitical upheaval

Associate Professor Frederik Vervaet, University of Melbourne chronicles the ‘management’ of this historically significant plague by the Emperor Justinian.  Like many leaders today during our current coid-19 pandemic, he also received ‘mixed reviews’.

Read more here.

“The humanities may seem pointless, but that is the point”

“…The humanities should be studied for their own sake. One reads The Great Gatsby in order to enjoy the novel, to live within its imaginary world and to learn about our own world through its refracted image of the same. There is a sense in which the humanities are useless because they are not practical, at least not in a way that can be measured with statistics. They build up the human soul only indirectly and over the period of a lifetime (as any teacher who receives appreciative emails from students several years after their graduation could attest). This building up of the soul is often part of a spiritual birth or a political awakening…”

Santiago Ramos explores the notion of ‘utilitarian value’ and its precedence over the humanities and the need to refute this position.  Read more here

Published: November 04, 2019,  America: The Jesuit Review