Reflections on a patron saint

On Tuesday 24th June, Florence celebrated a public holiday for the ‘Feast of St John the Baptist’ (San Giovanni Battista). According to this link, John the Baptist has been the patron saint of Florence since sometime during the 6-8th centuries. Before Florence became ‘Christian’, they had upheld Mars, the Roman god of war, as the city’s protector.

I wondered about the point of a patron saint - spiritual guru? protector? model for living? [See also my post on saints from a few years ago.] Reflecting on the third possibility, it’s not hard to spot some marked contrasts between the life of John the Baptist (JtB) as presented in the gospel accounts and the character of modern Florence, Florentines, and the feast day celebrating their patron saint.

The San Giovanni Battista Baptistry in Piazza del Duomo, Florence

1) JtB hung around in the wilderness (Matthew 3:1, Mark 1:4, Luke 1:80) and wore clothes made of camel’s hair (Matthew 3:4, Mark 1:6). He was hardly the kind of urban, fashion-conscious guy that Florentines seem to value so highly. He did wear a leather belt around his waist, though...

2) JtB ate locusts and wild honey (Matthew 3:4, Mark 1:6) and was not allowed to drink alcohol (Luke 1:15). This would be anathema to Florentines, who love drinking their aperitivi in the piazzas on summer evenings (who could blame them?!), not to mention the excellent local chianti wines with lunch and dinner, and seem fairly committed to eating delicious Italian food. I don’t get the impression that they are very adventurous when it comes to eating other cuisines (if you could call locusts and wild honey ‘cuisine’!).

3) JtB was constantly on about repentance. He told people to ‘repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’ (Matthew 3:2) and ‘produce fruit in keeping with repentance’ (Matthew 3:8, Luke 3:8). He also urged people to be baptised (a service he provided himself, hence the name) as a sign that they repented of their sins, so that they could be forgiven (Mark 1:4, Luke 3:3).

In most places I’ve lived, repentance is far from people’s minds (what on earth would I have to repent from? I’m a good enough person, aren’t I?). In Florence, those of the older generations whose lives are still heavily influenced by the Catholic Church are probably more aware of the fact of sin and the way it separates us from God. But they have been told (contrary to the gospel) that they can do penance and achieve forgiveness that way. Among the younger generation, I think it’s more like the case in Australia, but perhaps with more acknowledgement of ‘a God out there somewhere'.

4) JtB was not at all interested in his own fame, but kept telling people someone greater and more powerful was coming after him (Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:7, Luke 3:16, John 1:27). (I think the impressive 35-minute fireworks display on Tuesday night in San Giovanni’s honour would have embarrassed this humble man.) The person coming after him was going to baptise people also, and not just with water but (eminently more impressive) with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:8). And he was going to somehow bring judgement also (Matthew 3:12, Luke 3:17).

But this was considered good news (Luke 3:18), probably because the one who did come after John was Jesus. When John saw him, he said ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’ (John 1:29), and later testified that Jesus was ‘God’s Chosen One’ (John 1:34).

May the people of Florence honour their patron saint by listening to his words and considering his call to repent and seek forgiveness, especially now that the one who can take (and now has taken) away sins - Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God - has come.

San Giovanni Battista fireworks over the Ponte Vecchio in Florence

The semiotics of street numbers

Around the world people have come up with different ways to organise the numbering of buildings. Growing up in Australia I assumed it was logical that you would use a numbering system where the numbering started at one end of the street and had even numbers on one side and odd numbers on the other side. That way, if you needed to find number 22, you would know which side of the street to walk along and which direction to walk in (once you could work out which end of the street you were at).

In Uganda, we didn't have the chance to test out very many neighbourhoods so I'm not sure what the system was. Generally they use ‘plot' numbers, but I'm not sure if these were arranged in numerical order or not. Google maps doesn't tend to show plot numbers and only some of the addresses Google shows for businesses on the map include the plot number.

When I went on exchange to Japan many years ago, the street address had something like 5-33-1 and then the area name, and I never worked out what the numbers meant. This Wikipedia page gives some explanation, but I'm still confused! Apparently most Japanese streets don't have names; rather, building numbers are worked out by blocks.

Here in Florence (and this may or may not be the same for Italy in general), I thought the system was the same as in Australia. There are building numbers shown clearly by means of a number tile attached to the wall of the building, and they increase in twos, with odd and even numbers on opposite sides of the street. But I sometimes saw in addresses something like '52R', and wondered what the 'R' meant. I learnt that it stands for rosso, meaning 'red'.

Someone explained to us that at some point in time, some of the larger buildings were divided up and different entrances were added as more apartments were created, or a large building that had a garage at street level sold the garage to someone so that it needed to become a separate address. The new entrances were then numbered with red number tiles arranged sequentially according to the red numbers in that street. (In Australia we would use the letters a, b, c, etc to indicate new subdivisions at the same street number.)

The original numbering system uses blue number tiles and is numbered in the same way as the Australian system. So now what you see is two different numbering systems side by side in the one street. Often the numbers appear out of order, as in the picture below (59, 65R, 61), but once you know the difference between the red and blue numbers, it makes sense.

Since learning this, the semiotics of the number tiles have become clearer. I had thought that the differences between number tiles was due to the style preferences of the building owner. In Australia, whoever owns or designs the building chooses how they want to indicate the number (or not). Now I could see that the blue number tiles are basically the same throughout the city (with some minor differences) - they are larger and have a glossy glaze. The red number tiles are usually smaller, with a matt finish and the number in recess (although occasionally they are red versions of the blue tiles, in the picture at the top). I also noticed that the tiles tend to be placed at a reasonably consistent level on the wall, with blue number tiles relatively higher and red number tiles relatively lower (unfortunately, neither of the pictures here shows this tendency!).

So there are different semiotic systems for identifying buildings - numbers, colour, letters, number placement - and perhaps none is particularly more or less logical than the others (although the Ugandan one is still a bit of a mystery!).