V2nd - the ecclesiastical history read

[Michael Bailey]

and there's that name "Ercole" again....

As a postmodern tube-o-dule, my first thought is Steve Urkel,

Among the many Ercoles listed, there were 3 Ercole's d'Este in It'ly,
according to Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ercole_I_d%27Este,_Duke_of_Ferrara
(26 October 1431 – 15 June 1505) was Duke of Ferrara from 1471 until 1505
city planner, warrior and patron of the arts
one of his sons married Lucrezia Borgia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ercole_II_d%27Este,_Duke_of_Ferrara
5 April 1508 – 3 October 1559) was Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio
from 1534 to 1559.
-- flirted with the Protestants (Calvin himself spent some time at
Ercole II's court) but cleaved with the Pope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ercole_III_d%27Este,_Duke_of_Modena
(22 November 1727 – 14 October 1803) was Duke of Modena and Reggio
from 1780 to 1796.
Generally appreciated by his subjects (he sometimes spoke in Modenese
dialect with them), and continued the reform begun by his father. He
built the two bridges at Rubiera and St. Ambrogio at Modena on the Via
Emilia, and built new roads connecting to the neighbouring states. In
1785 he founded the Atesine Academy of Fine Arts: during his reign
arts and culture flourished, and among his protegées were Lazzaro
Spallanzani, Giambattista Venturi, Girolamo Tiraboschi, Lodovico Ricci
and others.
The French invasion forced him to flee to Venice on 7 May 1796,
carrying with him a conspicuous personal asset. Later French soldiers
captured him at Venice, robbing 200,000 zecchini from his house.

all 3 dukes were apparently too late to be models for Squamuglia or
Faggio, and too early for V.

...now if it'd been 200,000 zucchini that robbers had taken from Ercole III...



, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> My point is that Pynchon gets into the specifics of heresy. "The Courier's
> Tragedy" appears [to these eyes] to specifically point to Giordano Bruno,
> the renegade Dominican who famously had his tongue cut out while still
> alive, just before being burned at the stake.
>
>        The act itself closes with Domenico, to whom the naive Niccolo
>        started it off by spilling his secret, trying to get in to see Duke
>        Angelo and betray his dear friend. The Duke, of course, is in his
>        apartment busy knocking off a piece, and the best Domenico
>        can do is an administrative assistant who turns out to be the
>        same Ercole who once saved the life of young Niccolo and
>        aided his escape from Faggio. This he presently confesses to
>        Domenico, though only after having enticed that informer into
>        foolishly bending over and putting his head into a curious black
>        box, on the pretext of showing him a pornographic diorama. A
>        steel vise promptly clamps onto the faithless Domenico's head
>        and the box muffles his cries for help. Ercole binds his hands
>        and feet with scarlet silk cords, lets him know who it is he's run
>        afoul of, reaches into the box with a pair of pincers, tears out
>        Domenico's tongue, stabs him a couple times, pours into the
>        box a beaker of aqua regia, enumerates a list of other goodies,
>        including castration, that Domenico will undergo before he's
>        allowed to die, all amid screams, tongueless attempts to pray,
>        agonized struggles from the victim. With the tongue impaled on
>        his rapier Ercole runs to a burning torch set in the wall, sets the
>        tongue aflame and waving it around like a madman concludes
>        the act by screaming,
>
>        Thy pitiless unmanning is most meet,
>
>        Thinks Ercole the zany Paraclete.
>
>        Descended this malign, Unholy Ghost,
>
>        Let us begin thy frightful Pentecost.
>
> Now, not only is this a dramatic re-enactment of the means of Bruno's
> execution, but by virtue [absolutely the most perfectly wrong word in this
> context] of calling down an "unholy ghost" and waving around Dominico's
> flaming tongue as a 'frightful Pentecost', Ercole is essentially committing
> a parodistic form of black magic. There is an amplification and focus
> specifically on black magic in Gravity's Rainbow, no question that our boy
> is rather specifically obsessed with black magic, this goes far beyond the
> "Romantic Impulse" even of Goethe's Faust. There is something considerably
> darker going on here, a diorama of heretical impulses.
>
> On Sep 23, 2010, at 6:17 AM, David Morris wrote:
>
>> Of course, because all heros are rebels, breakers of ranks.  The
>> opposite of heresy is obedience/acceptance, and how boring is that?
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 5:56 PM, alice wellintown
>> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> The Romantic Aesthetic always includes, first the heretical impulse,
>>> and then the act of heresy.  The "the human heart", as Hawthorne
>>> describes it in his famous Preface to _The House of the Seven Gables_
>>> beats a steady rebellion. The Romantics, be they American Scholars
>>> following in what Whitman describes as the "parade" led by Emerson, or
>>> French novelists complicit in the "killing of the cathedrals" with
>>> books and the Gutenberg Press (Hugo's HND),  heresy is heresy is their
>>> religion.
>
>



-- 
"I have left my book,
I have left my room,
For I heard your voice
singing through the gloom" - James Joyce