Word: justinian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...alas and thank God, are never strictly practical. Until people are known by numbers alone, the great city will continue to exist. F. Scott Fitzgerald was speaking of Manhattan, but he might just as well have been talking of London or Paris-or Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon or Justinian's Constantinople. Looking at it from afar, he said, was always to see it "in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world...
Divorces have been difficult to obtain in Italy since ancient times. Ac cording to legend, Romulus authorized them for Roman men for only three wifely misdeeds: adultery, child poisoning, or changing the lock on the bed room door. The Emperor Justinian was seemingly easier. He allowed divorce by mutual consent, but there was a catch-22. The divorcees were expected to take a lifelong vow of chastity. Caesar dallied with Cleopatra on the Nile but could never marry her, presuming he had wanted to, because there was Calpurnia back at home, and she was above suspicion and therefore un-divorceable...
...sanctuary dates back to Mosaic law, which held that fugitives from the laws of man could take refuge at the altar of God, who, as the ultimate source of justice, would protect them if they were innocent. Christianity broadened the idea to include protection of the guilty. The Justinian Code of the Byzantine Empire, for example, denied church sanctuary primarily to criminals convicted of high treason or sacrilege. In medieval Europe, churches were allowed to protect convicted criminals-like Esmeralda, the condemned witch and murderess of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame-on condition that they forfeit...
...heavens ascending in series to the Heart of Light. Suddenly "transhumanized," the poet is swiftly borne upward through the heavens as "a falling rill that plunges from a mountain to the depths." Beatrice precedes him, and on the way they encounter the shining spirits of the saved-among them Justinian, Charles Martel, St. Thomas, Solomon, Charlemagne and St. Benedict. As Dante's spirit soars toward God, his lines soar into a region of mystical incandescence...
Technical Sin. The problem is almost as old as Rome itself. The city's founder, Romulus, did allow men to sue for divorce, and the Emperor Justinian permitted it in return for vows of future chastity from each partner, but Mussolini's 1929 Concordat with the Vatican banished divorce entirely. The church courts do permit annulments-at the rate of about 70 a year. Another 12,000 couples win legal separations each year, but the separated remain bound in marriage. Not surprisingly, 2,500,000 Italians have chosen concubinage. About 10% of the entire population is now technically...