Rethinking human relationship with the animal creation is not everyone’s cup of tea.
There are nymphs in the Vatican Gardens. You will find them painted – chastely attired, as they represent characters in sacred history – on the walls of the Renaissance pavilion that houses the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
I recall them as I recall Pope Benedict. His death has prompted so many reflections. My earliest memory of him dates from the time of my ill-starred lecture to the Academy, early in his pontificate. During my visit to that august body, I slept in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, between sheets rigid with starch, on a bracingly hard bed. The walls were undecorated except for a high-nailed crucifix. The room had gravity: heavy furnishings of chestnut and solid fittings of glowing brass. It proclaimed grandeur with austerity, cost without comfort.
It gleamed with purity. I have never been in such a spotless environment, and the only hint of how it got to be so clean was the occasional wisp of the hem of a nun’s habit, disappearing around a corner. In the public spaces of the Domus the same aesthetic prevailed: marbled, imposing, spotless, joyless. The austerity extended to the food. It is hard to eat badly in Rome; but, if you seek such a penance, contrive an invitation. The vegetables exuded damp stains. Strands of sticky, insipid pasta coagulated. I felt sure that the many priests who accompanied my meals must have been summoned for purposes of reproof.
To get to the Academy from the Domus, one winds along paths that curl through the gardens and create a sense of spaciousness inside the Vatican’s cramped walls. Abruptly, the track turns to reveal the elegant Casina Pio IV, the Academy’s home. Pius IV had the pavilion stuccoed and painted in the mid-16th century, at a time when popes could enjoy themselves unashamedly. In contrast to the monumentality and asperities of the Domus, everything seemed designed for delicacy and ease. In the elliptical cortile, the table groaned – when I visited – with the confections of Tuscan caterers. While the clergy endured austerity in the pope’s headquarters, the Academicians, most of whom are laymen, seemed to do rather well.
Pope Benedict, who was an inex-haustibly curious intellectual, wanted the Church to be informed about every discovery of science and scholarship that might have implications for doctrine. With the support of the John Templeton Foundation the Academy assembled, accordingly, a conference of researchers to throw light on one of the trickiest sources of problems: changes in our knowledge of the difference between humans and other creatures. Christianity has always posited a unique relationship between God and humankind, but almost every newly-disclosed fact about the continuum that links humans with other creatures challenges traditional understanding of the stewardship of creation. As I work for a university that seeks “to do the Church’s thinking”, and teach courses on the history of primatology, the project was intensely interesting to me. I still treasure a line from Pope Benedict, which hangs framed on the wall of my study. It conveys thanks, but I fear I deserved no praise.
I entered an angular little meeting-chamber bristling with reverberant microphones. The acoustic was echoingly hostile. I tried to broach what I thought was an exciting prospect: how the study of non-human cultures, of which there are many, with more being discovered all the time, can help us understand humankind.
Over my long career, I have had some dispiriting experiences in the lecture room. I have sent one Spanish Rector Magnificus and a Scottish Vice-Chancellor to sleep. I provoked a brawl in New Zealand – an achievement most locals deemed impossible, as they queued, like penitents at a shrine, to beg my pardon and assure me that no such thing had ever happened before. I have disappointed students and angered colleagues. I have aroused the indifferent and annoyed the woke. Yet never has a lecture of mine been received in such ominous silence as in the Vatican garden.
It was obvious that the Academicians found the subject disturbing. The first quest-ion from the audience was “What does Aqu-inas say about this?” I ventured to suggest that the circumstances of the last 700 years had altered the case. The next question was “What does Aristotle say about this?” I despaired. Unless we revise our notion of ourselves and locate humans where we belong, among other cultural animals, we shall have no hope of understanding our lives, how they change, how we change them, and how far the changes are the outcomes of processes beyond our control.
I returned to my room, disheartened. My illusions collapsed of modifying the way the Church formulates her doctrine on events in Eden. I had to content myself with the blessing of abasement. Then I thought of a further blessing, which turned my gloom to joy: I had avoided dinner in the Domus.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto is the William P Reynolds Chair for Mission in Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame.
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