Caffeine, Cafes, Crypts, Cappuccini, and Cervidae...

Most people probably don't group coffee and mortality into the same blog post but I like to include coffee in all things.

Glossary of today's blog:

Capuchin - An order of Franciscan Friars

Cappuccini - Italian spelling of Capuchins

Cappuccino - Espresso coffee with a dollop of milk and foam

Cappuccini - A plurality of Espresso coffees with a dollop of milk and foam.

Cervidae - Latin name for deer family

The Crypt of the Capuchin Monks is something that I have wanted to see for a long time. It is under the church of Santa Maria della Concezione on Via Veneto. When last in Rome, Jess, Landon and I tried to go. Though incredibly disappointed that we couldn’t go back in 2007, I have never forgotten that the Crypt is closed on Thursdays.

In Europe, there is a different attitude toward the dead and reliquary. I have always supposed that had something to do with the crypts. Americans seem to be afraid of bones. When I think of skeletons, I don't think of something jumping out 'to get me' which seems to be the only contemporary association with corpses and skeletons. I am not a fan of horror films and I don't particularly enjoy the macabre but I am not unduly anxious about seeing bones or confronting the idea of death. Probably because I've confronted this idea before.

One of the few things that Jessie and I actually had on our agenda was a visit to the Cappuccin Crypt. The other things were the Aventine and cappuccini at S. Eustaccio. It was then that we discovered that cappuccini are so named for the color of the robes of the Cappuccin monks. Every morning (late morning, afternoon, and later afternoon) when I drink a cappuccino, I look into my cup as I gently swirl the coffee. It is the same gently swirling brown of the robes of the Cappuccini as they walk through Piazza Barberini.

The Cappuccins themselves took their name from their robes. The hood of the tunic, which they are allowed for bad weather though they are not allowed socks, is called a capuce.

The last time the Capuchins moved churches, in the 1500s, they also moved the bones of their bretheren from the cemetery. This is where the idea of organizing the bones developed (I think). Over 4000 monks are represented in five of the six chambers under S. Maria della Concezione. The first room is an allusion to the Christian concept of Resurrection with a capital R. I think it’s worth mentioning because it presents the idea of the crypt and why it isn’t considered macabre. One is confronted by bones completely out of typical context. Radii and ulnae appear vulnerable and spindly as they create wall medallions. Light fixtures are carefully wired vertebral columns with ribs protruding and a skull above. A painting of Jesus commanding Lazarus to rise from the dead tells the viewer, surrounded by the earthly fragments of the departed, that death is inescapable but another life is attainable through salvation.

The next room is devoid of bones as it is a chapel and mass was, though no longer, actually held here. It is lined with marble plaques with Latin inscriptions. I was quite puzzled because I couldn’t read the plaques. Then I realized that this was Medieval Latin and I read Archaic...it was all Greek to me. Jessie noticed a peculiarity in the corner of the room. It is the heart of Maria Felice Peretti in a marble box. She was the grand-neice of Sixtus V (which I believe to be the best name ever) and her heart is with the Cappuccini at her request. The marble inscriptions that pave the floor are worn down to pure white. The inscriptions are no longer legible. I recalled the slate markers of the old cemeteries in Boston that had so impressed me of the corruption of earthly remnants. Exposed to the weather, the gravestones preserve for the living the reminder that attempts to venerate the dead expire and fall into anonymity.

The next room is literally filled with skulls. It is skull upon skull and they shape an homage to Classical Greek temple architecture with a columnar/pedimental facade. Jessie is a counter...stairs are her specialty. She got to work on the skulls and stopped because the number was staggering. Honestly, I don’t think I want to know how many human skulls can fit in one room. That made me wonder if I am more susceptible to our cultural rejection of seeing bones. I think skulls are harder for us to see. When Mark Twain visited the Capuchin Crypt, he told the following story:

“Then [the good natured monk who accompanied us] took a skull and held it in his hand, and looked reflectively upon it, after the manner of the grave-digger when he discourses of Yorick [Hamlet].

‘This,’ he said, ‘was Brother Thomas. He was a young prince, the scion of a proud house that traced its lineage back to the grand old days of Rome well night two thousand years ago. He loved beneath his estate. His family persecuted him; persecuted the girl, as well. They drove her from Rome; he followed; he sought her far and wide; he found no trace of her. He came back and offered his broken heart at our altar and his weary life to the service of God. But look you. Shortly his father died, and likewise his mother. The girl returned, rejoicing. She sought every where for him whose eyes had used to look tenderly into hers out of this poor skull, but she could not find him. At last, in this coarse garb we wear, she recognized him in the street. He knew her. It was too late. He fell where he stood. They took him up and brought him here. He never spoke afterward. Within the week he died. You can see the color of his hair –faded, somewhat – by this thin shred that clings still to the temple. This,’ [taking up a thigh bone,] ‘was his. The veins of this leaf in the decorations over your head, were his finger-joints, a hundred and fifty years ago.”

The Innocence Abroad, Chapter XXVIII

I am less struck by the love story (I am about as unromantic as humanly possible) as I am by the stories that are represented by the bones of all the men in these chambers. Visiting a cemetery where granite markers are laid in an orderly fashion is no match for being inundated by bones in every direction, laid prettily but overwhelmingly in cherubic ensemble and floral motif. Twain seems to be more struck by the idea that the bones were identifiable to the guide (which may or may not be so). In any case, the bones are ‘chicken-wired’ in place these days. The chambers are open and without guides and no one picks up the skulls anymore.

There is also a room of pelvises and it was quite interesting to see them fanned out. I remember that Catherine di Medici’s pelvic bones were practically worn flat from having 13 children. Obviously, these pelvises were quite well formed.

The fifth room was remarkable for two things: the allusion to Greek Architecture with column and pediment and the Franciscan coat-of-arms. Either I’ve never seen the Franciscan coat-of-arms before or I’ve never seen it made with actual arms. It’s like a skull and crossbones except one of the crossbones is the arm of Christ and the other is the arm of St. Francis but it is still in its sleeve. Also, there is no skull but there are some rather nice jawbones in this room.

The only thing that I found to be disturbing was located in the last chamber. There were several tiny skeletons, obviously of children, but I cannot find why they are there. One of them hangs from the ceiling with a bone scythe in one filangilar cluster and a set of bone scales in the other, indicating that death is coming and then judgment. If you are up on your Italian (not Latin), you’ll easily be able to read the sign that sums up the crypt: 

Quello che voi siete noi eravamo, quello che noi siamo voi sarete. 

 What you are now, we were; what we are now, you will be.

Mark Twain wasn’t the only famous writer to visit the Capuchin Crypt. The Marquis de Sade wrote about it as well. I think he said that he never saw something that struck him so. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about it in The Marble Faun but I don’t really know what he said. I usually think of Little Edie from Grey Gardens when I think about The Marble Faun because she says that the boy Jerry looks ‘terribly like The Marble Faun’ and I wonder if she ever really saw the faun of Praxiteles. I haven’t but I suppose I will make it up to the Capitoline (where I think it is held) at some point.

Speaking of fauns and Cappuccini, I’ve both heard and read about the exceptionally amazing coffee at the eponymous cafe of S. Eustaccio. I am always looking for a new coffee joint since I don’t like to go to the same place more than once a day and I drink about four or five on a week day.

I start at home with a Bialetti stove-top espresso maker and a Bodum milk frother. I read the news and look over my homework around 6:00.   I run off to Italian class where I start to nod off around 10:30. I  trickle downstairs to get a quick cappuccino from Sergio at Glub (yes, it is called Glub).  Sergio asks me out dancing and I accept since I know he has no intention of actually taking me dancing and since I have no intention of actually going.  He prefers to Rumba and I prefer to Tango.  I suppose we could Salsa as a sort of common ground but I don’t think that either of us is fond of compromise.  Next is my Urban History class.   After that, I eat a sandwich as I cross Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II to get a not-so-great cappucino out of a self-serve machine.  I only do this because it comes in a to-go cup (portar via) and I have to get back in a hurry for Latin at 14:00.  After Latin is Travel Writing in Italy from the 18th Century.  The only reason why I don’t fall asleep in that class is because it is very participatory. Or at least it is for me.  No one else ever seems to volunteer information.   I don’t like to be the one talking in class all the time but I’ve read a lot of travel writing on Italy and you all know that I am never short on opinions.   I get out of school at 18:30 and then I’m able to leave the area of Piazza dell’Orologio and find a more leisurely cappuccino with a book or a companion.

This famous coffee of S. Eustaccio was a bit of an annoyance. I had read about it in a dozen different places. It was touted as the best caffe in Rome, better than Tazza d’Oro. As it turns out, there are three cafes in Piazza S. Eustaccio and each have well-known patrons who swear that one of the three is the best in all of Rome. I have now tried each and think that none are as good as Sergio’s cappuccini downstairs at Glub. Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh. But I am far from a coffee connoisseur. I just know that the cappuccino from the dispenser isn’t great. Once I get to great coffee though, I can’t really say which is greater. Latin has taught me more about comparative and superlative adjective forms than I’d like to know. Technically speaking, I could use rather great instead of greater whereas very great would mean greatest. But then I would just sound like an ass.  

If you don't know the story of Sant Eustachio, you can read it here.  There is a whole district in Rome that is named after the church here and the emblem featuring the Cervidae stag with the vision of Christ between his horns is found on the plaques of the district but more importantly, on the yellow mugs of Bar Sant Eustachio.  Thought I love the egg-shaped man who shuffled over to my table with a tumbler of cappuccino at the cafe across the street, I believe that Bar Sant Eustachio is THE place that most people rave about.  It is worth stopping by...since it is near the Pantheon and all.