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Informationen zum Autor Robert J. Hutchinson studied philosophy as an undergraduate, moved to Israel to learn Hebrew, and earned a graduate degree in theology and New Testament studies. He has written six books of popular history and travel. He lives with his wife and children in a small seaside town on the west coast. Klappentext Lighthearted and altogether fascinating, When in Rome is a delightful backstairs tour of one of the world's most mysterious and eccentric cities. With his wife and three young sons, Robert Hutchinson moved to Rome shortly before his thirty-ninth birthday, intending to explore the Vatican in depth. He sought to capture "the personality of the place: the smells and the traffic, the rich delicacies of Roman food, the perils of the Italian language, the way Italian monsignori push their way to the front of the line, just like their lay countrymen." When in Rome is the extraordinary journal of his Roman sojourn. With playful good humor, Hutchinson introduces the varied and colorful individuals who live and work in the Vatican. In the process, he explores the mysterious orders of medieval knights, some dating back to the First Crusade, which still play a vital role in the Vatican; explains how bumbling Vatican archaeologists found, and then lost, the bones of St. Peter; probes the sex lives of the popes, from the "pornocracy" of Sergius III to the incestuous orgies of Rodrigo Borgia; experiences high fashion in the Holy See, including a visit to the pope's personal tailor; encounters the weird relics of Catholicism, such as the mummified body of St. Pius X and a museum made entirely out of human bones; recounts the true story behind the True Cross, now kept in a run-down church near the Colosseum; and much, much more. Humorous, irreverent, but ultimately respectful, When in Rome does for the Vatican what A Year in Provence did for the French countryside, in an unforgettable and unprecedented eyewitness account of one of the most fascinating places on Earth. A Legion of Decency Guide to the Vatican Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine There's always laughter and good red wine; At least I've always found it so Benedicamus Domino. --Hilaire Belloc One of the advantages of being a Catholic is that you get to see a lot of beautiful naked women. You may never have realized that before, but it's true. I never could understand why thick-headed, drooling Protestants would accuse us of being prudes when they gave the world the Puritans and the Moral Majority and we gave the world Rodin's The Kiss. From Michelangelo to Madonna, Donatello to Salvador Dali, Catholic artists have felt little compunction about letting it all hang out ad majorem Dei gloriam. The billboards outside our apartment in Rome, which each week featured a new topless model advertising perfume or a new brand of blue jeans, are merely carrying on an artistic tradition that goes back to Botticelli and Caravaggio, Titian and Bellini. Everywhere you go in the Vatican, you see nudity. The Sistine Chapel, of course--inside of whose echoing walls the cardinals elect the pope--is covered with naked men and women, all piled on top of one another in what looks for all the world like some sort of biblical orgy. In the Vatican Treasury there is a magnificent bronze tomb of Sixtus IV, the patron of the arts and founder of the Vatican Library, completely covered by a series of topless, buxom nymphs each representing one of the liberal arts (Arithmetic, Astrology, Music, Grammar, and so on). It's a testimony to the Catholic erotic sensibility, I think, that a pope's tomb is covered by a dozen bronze nudes. The papal apartments in Castel Sant'Angelo are likewise decorated in frescoes that would have made Hugh Hefner proud: tall, lithe young women all raising their pendulous breasts with cupped hands to what one can only imagine were adm...
