The Adventures of Enea, Part 9 of 13

Points Above and Below the Line (Enea Canonises Catherine of Siena) It's not a thing we go for any more, that hierarchy malarkey, but in fact the medieval mind set mega store by stairs and ladders. All things interact, and therefore can be neatly classified. (There's endless fun in drawing up these lists!) The lowest rung is "is", all pride aside: a rock is "est", because it just exists. Your jellyfish can breathe and reproduce, so up we go: it wins a badge named "vivit". An antelope can feel, get scared, hang loose, so "sentit" is the title we can give it. So living, then, is better than existing, and feeling better still. Take Esther Blodgett. She's capable of pouting, outing, twisting -- so humans come out tops again, with "cogit". So all these so's, I hear you say: so what? Well, what if humans almost reach "divine"? Suppose there's something Esther Blodgett's got that takes her over life's Dividing Line? "Sublunary" means "underneath the moon". "Diurnal" means "divided, night and day". (Now, please don't chafe: the point is coming soon.) Below the line means "subject to decay". The moon was key for medieval man, because it marked the mortal azimuth -- Above, eternal, there since time began: below, corrupt, unwholesome, marked for death. And now we come to Pius, making saints. There's Catherine of Siena, looking flirty: They must have used an awesome box of paints - The chick had been a corpse since thirteen-thirty. Above, the Pope, the Cardinals and Kate. Below, the groundlings watching it go down. Above, all spirit, high, inviolate: below, all bulging groin and earthy brown. If Kate was Sienese, that's nepotism? Why ain't he canonizing Capistrano? It's all to do with black and brown and schism. Dominicans are gold, the others guano. Franciscans are Heart, Dominicans are Brain. Franciscans use Love, Dominicans use Pain. Franciscans are Italy, Dominicans are Spain.