Search Results for 'Ancient Rome'

Back in 1997, when the Internet was beginning to change our lives in ways we never could have guessed, the media-savvy John Paul II decided this new invention needed a patron saint. For the honour, he chose Saint Isidore of Seville (560-636), a Doctor of the Church, and the last of those formidable scholars who salvaged what they could of the culture of the dying Roman Empire.

It was reading Owen Barfield’s History in English Words many years ago that first made me realise words are like the artefacts – the shards of shattered pottery, the unearthed house foundations, or the elaborate tombs filled with grave goods - the archaeologist uses to reconstruct the past. Or, as Barfield put it:

“VESTIS VIRUM reddit” - clothes make the man - as Roman rhetorician Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, once famously said, and CPs will put his maxim into practice tonight.