Revived Conversation: The Colosseum

[00:00:00] Wir sind Teresa und Nemo und deshalb sind wir zu Shopify gewechselt.

[00:00:04] Die Plattform, die wir vor Shopify verwendet haben, hat regelmäßig Updates gebraucht,

[00:00:08] die teilweise dazu geführt haben, dass der Shop nicht funktioniert hat.

[00:00:11] Endlich macht unser Nemo Boards Shop dadurch auch auf den Mobilgeräten eine gute Figur

[00:00:15] und die Illustrationen auf den Boards kommen jetzt viel, viel klarer rüber, was uns ja auch wichtig ist und was unsere Marke auch ausmacht.

[00:00:22] Starte deinen Test nur heute für 1 Euro pro Monat auf shopify.de slash radio.

[00:00:29] Wünschst du dir jemanden, der dich versteht wie kein anderer?

[00:00:33] Jemand, der deine Wünsche wahr werden lässt und mit dir das schönste Abenteuer deines Lebens erleben möchte?

[00:00:40] Die Commerce-Plattform Shopify revolutioniert Millionen von Unternehmen weltweit.

[00:00:45] Mit Shopify richtest du im Nu deinen Online-Shop ein, ganz ohne Programmier- oder Designkenntnisse.

[00:00:51] Dank der effizienten Einrichtung und intuitiven Social-Media- und Online-Marketplace-Integration

[00:00:57] kannst du über Instagram, eBay und Co. werben und verkaufen.

[00:01:01] Neue Zielgruppen zu erreichen war noch nie so einfach.

[00:01:05] Shopify bietet auf einer einzigen sicheren Plattform alle Tools, um dein Online-Business aufzubauen.

[00:01:11] Kostenlos testen und dein Business der Welt präsentieren.

[00:01:14] Shopify.de-try besuchen

[00:01:17] Einfach shopify.de-try eingeben und loslegen

[00:01:21] Made for Germany

[00:01:23] Powered by Shopify

[00:01:26] Revived Thoughts

[00:01:27] Revived Thoughts is a production of Revive Studios

[00:01:31] This is Joel and this is Revived Thoughts.

[00:01:36] The Colosseum in ancient Rome.

[00:01:38] What was the arc of that structure?

[00:01:41] What was the life of that structure?

[00:01:42] And when was it built?

[00:01:43] How did it affect society?

[00:01:44] How did it shape the early days of the church?

[00:01:47] And would Christianity be the same today if it wasn't for that building, for that structure?

[00:01:53] Troy is very busy this week and so I'm running the show.

[00:01:56] I'm doing like a little mini historical deep vibe.

[00:02:00] Just a little short kind of summary on what I want to talk about

[00:02:02] because Troy's not here so I can talk about whatever I want to talk about.

[00:02:05] And so I was thinking if he needs to talk about the Colosseum.

[00:02:08] This stuff fascinates me.

[00:02:10] I love, um, I don't know, it's kind of weird.

[00:02:13] This idea of like the journey of an inanimate object,

[00:02:17] especially in a historical context,

[00:02:19] especially in historical contexts that span great, uh, spans of time.

[00:02:24] You know, how does an inanimate object intersect with the human story

[00:02:29] and what does that tell us about humanity?

[00:02:32] The Colosseum is just a pile of stones, you know, like at its core,

[00:02:38] it's just a building, but we can kind of use it as a lens to examine the human condition.

[00:02:44] And in this case, you know, kind of the, the, the Christian movement within that space.

[00:02:48] And I don't know, maybe a little bit of a, like a supernatural, uh, overlap.

[00:02:55] You know, there's the, what else would you call these,

[00:02:57] these martyrs that are filled with the spirit and dying nobly?

[00:03:00] Or even, I don't know, there's some, some other topics that I'll get into here

[00:03:04] where there's accounts of, uh, seances, like, you know, like, like summonsing the spirit world

[00:03:11] that happened in the Colosseum, weird stuff, weird stuff.

[00:03:14] We're going to get into it.

[00:03:16] And the interesting thing about the Colosseum is that like, I find a lot of the most interesting things

[00:03:21] that I think about that building happened long after the Roman Empire is long gone and extinct.

[00:03:27] That's the thing about really old structures like this is that they had their heyday,

[00:03:32] but they're also still here today.

[00:03:34] And they've been here at every point in between what was going on in the Colosseum

[00:03:39] in the medieval age, you know, like that, I, I, that's fascinating stuff to me.

[00:03:44] For those of you who might not, uh, know, I don't want to assume anything,

[00:03:48] but the Colosseum is this large stadium-like structure in Rome.

[00:03:52] Uh, big building, 76 entrances, 45,000 seats, uh, had this massive labyrinth of underground infrastructure,

[00:04:02] corridors, hallways, elevators, a very technically advanced building for its day.

[00:04:07] And this was all kind of coming to fruition and, and being designed and built throughout the second half of the first century.

[00:04:15] So, um, it's interesting, uh, topic for us because it's also, you know, over overlaps with, uh,

[00:04:23] the generation of a lot of these people in the New Testament that we're reading.

[00:04:27] We read about Peter, we read about Paul, you know, they would have no doubt probably been aware later in their life about, uh, the construction of this massive, uh, structure going on in Rome.

[00:04:41] And there were other stadium-like structures throughout Rome.

[00:04:45] They had chariot racing stadiums, they had naval battle stadiums, but nothing of this scale, nothing of this magnitude.

[00:04:51] And it was, uh, an emperor of Rome, Nero, that it was kind of his brainchild to want a big stadium like that has never been made before.

[00:05:02] And, uh, it would be his kind of initiative and then, uh, the next emperor of, of note rather, but, uh, Vespasian that would actually see its completion.

[00:05:13] Cause it took a couple decades to actually build Nero at the emperor of Rome at the time.

[00:05:20] Uh, not a great person, as I'm sure many of us are aware, hated Christians.

[00:05:24] Didn't really understand what was going on in Jerusalem over there.

[00:05:28] There was this Jewish uprising that was happening.

[00:05:31] Um, we don't, we don't quite see it, uh, come to fruition in, in our New Testament passages as we're reading it.

[00:05:38] But shortly after the events of the New Testament, there's this Jewish uprising and Rome kicks in the door, sieges Jerusalem,

[00:05:46] takes over it, uh, burns it, guts it.

[00:05:50] And, uh, the, the, the, the country of Israel and, and the temple there falls and is gutted.

[00:05:57] Peter, you know, famously might be aware was, uh, murdered, martyred by Nero.

[00:06:03] Uh, you know, that we have those church history accounts of him being crucified upside down.

[00:06:07] And that didn't happen in the Colosseum.

[00:06:09] The Colosseum probably wouldn't have been, well, it wouldn't have been finished by that point.

[00:06:12] It happened in a different chariot racing stadium that was nearby in Rome there.

[00:06:18] And that site, cause Peter was killed there and he would have been buried outside there and in a series of, of tombs.

[00:06:26] And nowadays that site is what they built the Vatican on.

[00:06:29] There's like that St. Peter's Cathedral is built on an old chariot racing stadium is my understanding of, of that, you know, that historical arc there.

[00:06:41] I also think it's a little important to kind of contextually understand the Jewish movement in the first century.

[00:06:50] There, there wasn't the distinction between Christ followers and Judaism that, that we might have today.

[00:06:56] You know, we, we would look at that Christ following and the Jew, the Jewish people being a very different, uh, uh, religion, belief structure.

[00:07:04] You know, you've your old Testament Jews, and then you have your current day Gentiles that acknowledge Jesus.

[00:07:08] And, uh, that's how we kind of think of it today, but these things were in their infancy in the first century.

[00:07:14] They were just being developed.

[00:07:15] And we can, we see this contention throughout the new Testament to where, I mean, Christianity, Christ followers, it was Judaism back then.

[00:07:23] It was a Jewish movement, uh, to follow Christ.

[00:07:26] And of course there was contention back then.

[00:07:29] There's still contention today, but back then it was a lot more on a smaller scale of the Jewish people trying to debate.

[00:07:35] It wasn't really till the end of the first century that there became more of a distinction between those two groups of, of Jews that followed Christ and Jews that did not acknowledge Christ.

[00:07:45] So it was, it was an odd and confusing time in that first century for an outsider, like people in Rome to understand what is going on in Jerusalem with these, uh, Jews, Jewish people that are Christ followers.

[00:07:59] Um, or not some, some of them aren't Christ followers, you know, but it largely was seen, uh, as a, just an evolution of Judaism during those early days.

[00:08:11] Now Jerusalem being controlled by Rome and, and taxed heavily by Rome, it had this, this Jewish uprising that happened in 70 AD and, and the Romans came in and they pillaged the, uh, the temple there.

[00:08:24] And it's actually, I think a pretty fascinating kind of journey of events to where the vast majority of the funding that came from building the Colosseum was from the spoils of the Jewish temple.

[00:08:37] We have all of this immaculate gold embroidered decorations and, and all of these things that are worth a lot of money.

[00:08:45] Those spoils were plundered and was the primary funding source of how they funded the building of this Colosseum.

[00:08:52] And to a, to a little bit of a sadder, uh, extent it's, it's, it's believed that, you know, there were lots of Jews that were captured, um, skilled Jews, unskilled Jews that would have been essentially saved slave labor that helped construct the Colosseum.

[00:09:10] Um, it's kind of a horrible, you know, the thing to think about it, the, the fact that your, your temple is plundered and the opulence are, are taken and you're forced to build a, an arena in which, you know, future generations of Christians are going to be brutally murdered there for purely entertainment purposes.

[00:09:35] Uh, what, what, what kind of a dark, uh, journey, uh, dark time for, yeah, believers in the second half of that first century, the persecution and hatred for Christians amongst the Roman people, uh, particularly again, the, the emperors that were in charge.

[00:09:53] Uh, it spanned across all of essentially the known world, you know, all throughout the Mediterranean.

[00:09:58] And so we see instances of these Christians being killed and martyred, uh, in the Colosseum mauled by animals.

[00:10:06] Usually, you know, it's part of the entertainment.

[00:10:08] This is, this is gladiator time, right?

[00:10:10] So these are, there's lots of gladiator battles that are happening there.

[00:10:14] A lot of bloodshed for the sake of entertainment, but this wasn't the only place this was happening.

[00:10:18] This was happening all over the place.

[00:10:21] And we actually have a lot better documentation, a lot better historical accounts of other theaters, uh, around Rome, uh, that have a much higher track record of martyring Christians, of, of Christians dying there.

[00:10:36] But we do see Christians that, uh, died there.

[00:10:40] Most probably famously was a man named Ignatius of Antioch who was fed to lions there in the year 107.

[00:10:47] Like all things, though, time races on and with time comes changes, comes different people.

[00:10:54] Um, you know, the Roman Empire changes a lot throughout that time.

[00:10:57] People change throughout that time.

[00:11:00] Uh, eventually you would have Constantine come along and, uh, an emperor that was in favor of Christian and, and, and wanted Christians.

[00:11:08] And so we see over the course of about three to 400 years or so, the sentiment towards Christianity has changed very, uh, very dramatically.

[00:11:18] And we, I don't know, it's hard to think about in today's day and age because 400 years is a long time in today's day and age.

[00:11:25] Uh, but it's just a blip on the timeline, you know, that we're looking at within the context of this.

[00:11:29] And you see this, this swap of, um, discriminating towards Christians to suddenly Christians having kind of the, the moral high ground in society and culture.

[00:11:41] Historian, uh, Garrett Ryan has this about the, the Colosseums.

[00:11:45] The last gladiator fights would happen sometime during the, the 400s AD.

[00:11:52] Um, people lost kind of their taste for it.

[00:11:54] It just wasn't as entertaining as it was, uh, back, back when it started.

[00:11:59] Uh, Garrett Ryan has some great insight into, uh, the Colosseum.

[00:12:05] Definitely worth checking out.

[00:12:06] He says, quote, the combats ended, referring to, uh, the gladiator fights,

[00:12:10] after a monk named Telemachus leapt down to the arena and tried to prevent a gladiator from killing his opponent.

[00:12:16] In reality, it was probably a combination of rising costs and the Christian disapproval that brought the combats to a close.

[00:12:24] And I find that interesting as well because now we have this, this monk that's jumping down into the arena

[00:12:30] and, uh, and calling for the, the stop of this bloodshed.

[00:12:35] And, uh, again, whether it was that, again, in probably in combination of it just being really expensive to operate

[00:12:42] and, and just the overall Christian disapproval of, of the games, of these gladiator fights

[00:12:49] were enough to stop an era, a tradition that lasted 400 years.

[00:12:56] I always get fascinated about that, the ebbs and flows of time.

[00:12:59] And you hear me talk about this from time and time again on, on Revive Thoughts.

[00:13:03] There's, there's, there's this kind of cyclical cycle, this pendulum that goes back and forth.

[00:13:08] And we've seen this ebbs and flow time and time again throughout history.

[00:13:12] There are times where it looks like Christianity is all but dead and, and abandoned.

[00:13:19] And that people are, are living the most secular lives they've ever lived.

[00:13:24] You know, when you look at it in historical context.

[00:13:26] All for it to kind of come back in a revival, you know,

[00:13:29] and we see these revivals happen every two to 400 years or so that, that people end up coming back, uh, to God.

[00:13:36] And I think it's because it's, it's unsustainable.

[00:13:40] Like, a secular, a purely secular mindset, uh, is one that is intolerable to try to structure society around.

[00:13:51] There is something that is genuine and pure and true about the truths that we find in the Bible and from God,

[00:14:00] you know, from, uh, the moral guidance that the scriptures give us that, uh, I think are instrumental towards humanity.

[00:14:09] And, you know, I hear people talk about all the time about how this is the worst generation and how we're doomed and how we're never coming back.

[00:14:17] And I, I, who knows?

[00:14:19] I don't, I don't know what the future holds, but, uh, I think society will come back.

[00:14:25] Hopefully in the near future.

[00:14:26] I don't know.

[00:14:27] And people say, oh, but it's different this time.

[00:14:29] We have the internet.

[00:14:30] We have, you know, all this community.

[00:14:31] We live in this communication age.

[00:14:33] There's so much science and we can prove all these things.

[00:14:35] And it's just different this time.

[00:14:38] Religion is a thing of the past.

[00:14:39] We don't need it anymore.

[00:14:41] Every, every single generation has had a, in the past that's, that's had, you know, this, this secular movement has had a similar argument, a similar thing.

[00:14:51] They all think that their generation has a more valid reason to move in a secular direction than, uh, than the ones before it.

[00:14:59] I don't think this is any different.

[00:15:01] I think, I think, and you can see it in the people around us.

[00:15:04] I don't think it's sustainable to live in such a secular environment.

[00:15:07] I think it'll, I think it'll, it'll break and we'll see some type of coming back to Christ.

[00:15:12] I don't know if it'll be in my lifetime.

[00:15:13] Probably not.

[00:15:14] Probably long after I'm dead.

[00:15:15] But historically, ebbs and flows.

[00:15:18] You know, we see this pendulum.

[00:15:19] People move away from the Lord and then they come back.

[00:15:22] And we have this moment, uh, here in this Colosseum's life span where, um, we've, we've come back to, um, one that is built on the morals of what we find throughout scriptures.

[00:15:38] And this Christian disapproval of these gladiator games are enough to, uh, get society to be such as to not find interest in it anymore and to not be able to fund it, I guess.

[00:15:51] It's, it's, it's hitting it in the wallet.

[00:15:52] They can't afford to put on these games anymore because presumably not enough people are going to go watch them.

[00:15:58] Um, now the Colosseum was still used for entertaining purposes, uh, after that, you know, there were, um, various hunting shows where people would bring in exotic animals from far away places and show them off and then have, you know, this theater of hunt where they would, where they would kill them.

[00:16:15] Also, you know, arguably very gruesome.

[00:16:18] And this would go on for probably about another hundred years or so, uh, until we're getting into the 500s.

[00:16:24] 523 is when the last, uh, hunt was recorded as being, you know, kind of a show.

[00:16:30] And by this time, the Roman Empire had already fallen.

[00:16:33] It's gone.

[00:16:34] We're cruising through the timeline here.

[00:16:36] We're moving.

[00:16:36] We got a lot of ground to cover.

[00:16:37] As time goes on, you know, like most majestic wonders of the ancient world, they are subject to disasters, natural disasters, earthquakes, flooding.

[00:16:48] The Colosseum is no different.

[00:16:50] Um, it's a big structure.

[00:16:52] And so, uh, there's, there's various, you know, entryways that would, uh, collapse and cave in, uh, crumble under the ruins.

[00:17:01] Um, the subfloor, again, there was these elaborate tunnels that were built throughout the floor of this, uh, corridors and elevators and such.

[00:17:10] They, they would just flood all the time.

[00:17:12] They'd be too hard to, uh, keep from flooding.

[00:17:15] And so they were filled in around the 500s.

[00:17:18] And so, um, we don't see that anymore.

[00:17:20] It's also in the 500s where we see these, uh, series of wars, uh, battles throughout Italy.

[00:17:27] We refer to it as the Gothic Wars.

[00:17:30] And, uh, this was a bad time for, for Italy.

[00:17:34] Rome specifically.

[00:17:35] The population dwindled, weathered, uh, pretty dramatically here.

[00:17:40] Whether it was by death, you know, literally dying in these wars.

[00:17:44] Or, uh, disease or refugee displacement because there was no way to sustain food.

[00:17:50] Uh, Italy and Rome, they became a barren ghost town.

[00:17:56] No one, no, like, there's an odd portion where, like, nobody lived in Rome in kind of the late 500s.

[00:18:05] There had once been enough people in Rome to fill the Colosseum 20 times over in its heyday.

[00:18:11] And now, the entire population of the city could fit in the first few rows.

[00:18:16] And so, the, I mean, the Colosseum at this point is officially obsolete.

[00:18:20] Uh, it's, it's not being used.

[00:18:22] There's not population there to use it.

[00:18:25] And, and as time marches on, you know, we go into the, the 700s and 800s here.

[00:18:30] 700 and 800s are an interesting time in history to me because, like, there's just so little about them.

[00:18:37] It's almost like a black hole in, in our historical.

[00:18:41] We have a few things that kind of came out of that era that we can kind of look at.

[00:18:45] But, and we see that kind of reflected in the, the accounts of the cathedral at that time.

[00:18:51] People didn't know what it was.

[00:18:54] I mean, because, because people are kind of moving back into Italy, kind of repopulating it just as the natural migration of people go throughout the ebbs and flows of time.

[00:19:05] I almost imagine it like, you know, like, imagine if, this is a pretty silly illustration, but imagine we, like, humanity in the future, we have space travel and we go to an alien planet.

[00:19:16] And we land on this alien planet and we find these ruins, these massive structures to something that inhabitants in there, inhabitants there built a long ago.

[00:19:25] But we don't know what it is.

[00:19:27] We don't know what it does.

[00:19:29] A lot of people assumed it was some type of temple that was built.

[00:19:33] And they imagined it having, like, a, like, giant dome and this massive statue in the middle of it that have long been, you know, excavated and forgotten about.

[00:19:43] You know, other people thought it was an amphitheater.

[00:19:46] But the idea of a stadium for a gladiator fighting, you know, it wasn't on anyone's radar at that point.

[00:19:52] And then it became a place for people to live.

[00:19:56] Again, if we're keeping with that kind of alien world analogy, it would be us kind of building homes within the ruins of these structures that we found on this alien planet.

[00:20:08] Not quite knowing what they are, but they seem to make a pretty good shelter.

[00:20:12] And so this abandoned ruin of a stadium became almost like a little city where these squatters would take up.

[00:20:20] There was a full neighborhood there.

[00:20:22] There were storage lots and stables and a chapel was built into the vaults and busy roads would go through the arena.

[00:20:29] It was like this little, this little town, this little city here.

[00:20:33] The outer walls of the cathedral were made out of a fine limestone and the seats were made out of marble.

[00:20:40] Both these things were very valuable during this time.

[00:20:42] And so for the inhabitants of the Coliseum, recycling in air quotes, these materials became like their industry.

[00:20:54] You know, like there was enough resources in this building to fund their lifestyles and probably their children's, you know, generation of work.

[00:21:03] Just like, just like you would find a mine up in Alaska and that, you know, there'd be a mining town that would pop up around it.

[00:21:10] And for 80 years, they would mine that mine until that mine ran dry.

[00:21:15] Kind of similar to where there was a whole society around harvesting the limestone and marble out of the Coliseum because it was being used in other things.

[00:21:25] It was valuable.

[00:21:25] There's contemporary documents describing, you know, some of these houses and buildings that were built into the stands of the Coliseum.

[00:21:36] And it says that there's a quote structure of brick and wood with marble footsteps and a garden on one side and an apple orchard behind it.

[00:21:44] So you get this sense of like, it's kind of a nice, nice.

[00:21:49] I mean, imagine what that would be like to have the walls of the Coliseum as your neighborhood.

[00:21:58] Time marches on.

[00:22:00] The norms were at war now and they would come and end up sacking the Coliseum and converting it into a castle.

[00:22:08] And for a long time, the Coliseum acted as kind of this fortified stronghold.

[00:22:15] And there was actually kind of like a castle, I don't know, outcropping that was built onto the outer walls of it to kind of gauge patrols and house officials and such.

[00:22:26] That's something you probably never thought about.

[00:22:28] You know, imagine the Coliseum as kind of this military fort.

[00:22:32] And it was that way for a couple hundred years.

[00:22:35] It operated as a, as this castle.

[00:22:39] I mean, it started that, that sack of the Coliseum by the norms were, that was in 1084.

[00:22:46] And so it would be that way for a couple hundred years again until probably the early 1300s we're looking at here.

[00:22:54] Eventually, you know, it kind of became a band of bandits, like a stronghold of bandits.

[00:23:00] You know, that doesn't surprise me.

[00:23:02] You know, that sounds like, if you look at the Coliseum ruins, you could see a camp of bandits that were, that were setting up shop in there.

[00:23:08] That, that were trading goods and, and planning on different heists and robbings that they would do.

[00:23:14] I don't know.

[00:23:14] I don't know what bandits do.

[00:23:15] But there was a, a portion of its history that was like, the Coliseum is a shady place.

[00:23:21] Don't go, don't go near there.

[00:23:22] There's bandits living there nowadays.

[00:23:25] Moving throughout the 1300s though, we see something that I, I know a lot of our listeners are familiar with.

[00:23:32] And it's kind of like how the Catholic Church became a bigger deal.

[00:23:35] I don't know if that's, you know, I mean, just the medieval period in general.

[00:23:39] And the Pope is in the, the Vatican there in, in Rome at this time.

[00:23:43] So, and he's buying up land, you know, around and the Coliseum is a part of that.

[00:23:47] So that it's partially owned by the Pope and it becomes, it seems like they kind of mainly just wanted it as like a cool backdrop for these papal processions and parades.

[00:23:57] So they do these parades throughout Rome and spice up and, and clean up the exterior, you know, street facing wall of the Coliseum because it looked cool.

[00:24:06] That's the, that's the main reason.

[00:24:07] It looked like a cool backdrop and it kind of became like this, this icon, you know, like if you were to get a postcard, if you wanted to go visit the Pope and get a postcard.

[00:24:18] It would have probably a papal procession with the Coliseum behind it.

[00:24:22] Because it's like one of the just most iconic looking things that kind of sticks out.

[00:24:27] And so kind of ironically, unintentionally, maybe somewhat intentionally, it kind of became this symbol of Christianity throughout the world.

[00:24:35] Purely from a visual standpoint, became a popular thing.

[00:24:40] So this is pre-Reformation, remember.

[00:24:42] So this is, I mean, the Catholic Church is the church throughout the world.

[00:24:45] Well, this is, this is a heyday of the Holy Roman Empire.

[00:24:48] And at one point, the Pope ordered the construction of a big grand cathedral to be built inside the amphitheater.

[00:24:57] And while that never happened, they did end up erecting this massive cross in the middle of it where, where the cathedral would have taken place.

[00:25:06] Specifically, it has a, like a gathering place for believers to come and worship there.

[00:25:12] It became kind of like a tourist destination.

[00:25:15] You know, people would come, there would be passion plays there that were played seasonally.

[00:25:21] And there were stations of the cross, you know, as Catholics, they would go and visit.

[00:25:25] And it became a place of worship.

[00:25:28] There is this absolutely wild account that was chronicled and written down by a man named Bevanito Cellini.

[00:25:38] And I believe he was the blacksmith to the Pope.

[00:25:42] So kind of high up in the, in the rankings there.

[00:25:45] This is wild.

[00:25:46] You can, you can look, and in fact, I encourage you.

[00:25:48] Bevanito Cellini.

[00:25:49] You can look this up and like see his actual account because he has firsthand accounts, all this.

[00:25:54] He had a fascination with the afterlife.

[00:25:57] And there was a Sicilian priest that he became, I don't know, friends with, became acquainted with, who was a necromancer that would like, that would, I mean, this is straight out of like, I don't know, like you're almost like witchcraft.

[00:26:14] Like, like necromancy summonsing trances type of thing where this Sicilian priest, he would claim that he can speak to dead people, people, you know, that are, that are passed on.

[00:26:25] And Bevanito wanted to see this in action.

[00:26:28] And so for some reason, I'm not sure why they decided to do this at the Colosseum and they came to the Colosseum one night, perform this, what's like a seance almost, you know, like, I don't know what the technical terms are, but his account of this says that the, the Sicilian priest quote stood at the center of the arena and traced a circle on the earth.

[00:26:49] He read a Latin incarnation and cast perfume onto a blazing fire.

[00:26:55] Then the ruins were filled with countless demons who whirled around them in clouds.

[00:27:00] With some difficulty, the necromancer managed to dismiss all but two of the demons.

[00:27:06] End quote.

[00:27:08] I don't know.

[00:27:09] I don't know what's going on in that story.

[00:27:12] That's wild to me.

[00:27:13] And I also think it's funny.

[00:27:14] Well, not funny.

[00:27:15] That's so it's, he says all but two demons dismiss, which like implies that like those demons are just like out in the world now.

[00:27:23] Like they were let out of some spiritual realm and are now roaming the earth, I think is the implication.

[00:27:32] I, I don't know.

[00:27:33] I'm just glad we don't do that anymore.

[00:27:36] I'm glad we have better theology today than, than people were, were dabbling, dabbling with things they shouldn't be dabbling with back then it seems like.

[00:27:43] That's a bit of a tangent.

[00:27:44] That's a bit of a side story, but it happened at the Colosseum.

[00:27:47] So I thought, I thought I could find a place for it in the, in the story, in the journey.

[00:27:51] But I mean, long story short, it's, it's a little bit of a boring story between the 1500s to modern day, because essentially just the Pope preserved it to what it is today was no more, no more recycling its materials, no more harvesting its materials.

[00:28:06] We're going to try to go through restoration processes to keep it built up.

[00:28:12] And the Pope did this specifically as a way to create it as a monument.

[00:28:17] Like he wanted to honor it as a place to honor the original martyrs that died there.

[00:28:24] The church was aware of those early days of Christianity and, and the people that were persecuted and fed to wild beasts there.

[00:28:35] And the Pope wanted to honor that by creating this as a monument, the place that they died.

[00:28:39] He wanted to preserve it and, and to put on a pedestal as a symbol of faith, as a symbol of people that paid the ultimate price.

[00:28:49] In fact, there's a, a plaque there that, remember we were talking about this big cross that they put in the middle of it.

[00:28:56] And on that cross, there's a plaque that reads,

[00:29:12] So the Pope is saying they're validated.

[00:29:14] They're, they're, the work that they did, the sacrifice they made is recognized and validated here.

[00:29:20] And I just think, I just think that's an interesting arc for a structure.

[00:29:24] One that was funded by the spoils of the Jewish temple built by Jews.

[00:29:32] One that would kill hundreds of Jews and early believers in the church would eventually,

[00:29:38] at least for a time in history, become a symbol of what Christianity is.

[00:29:42] It's this symbol of sacrifice.

[00:29:45] It almost, almost kind of paralleling our symbology that we have in the cross today, you know?

[00:29:52] The fact that we carry around crosses, that we use crosses to represent our faith,

[00:29:57] is kind of odd when you think about it.

[00:29:59] It's, it's, it's an execution device.

[00:30:01] If Christ died in an electrocution chair or was hung by a noose, would we have those as symbols of our faith?

[00:30:08] Maybe.

[00:30:08] I think it identifies it with Christ's suffering.

[00:30:13] I think it's comforting for us to know that Christ has experienced pain in the same ways that we experience pain.

[00:30:19] Obviously, you know, we haven't experienced pain under death, but he was human.

[00:30:23] He suffered all things for us.

[00:30:26] And, and that's something that garners respect, you know?

[00:30:30] And I think in the same way that Colosseum becoming a symbol of Christianity throughout,

[00:30:36] you know, the late medieval era into the Renaissance is kind of in that same way of represented,

[00:30:42] representation of we respect the people that suffered because they're the real deal, right?

[00:30:48] I don't know if you guys find that as interesting as I do it.

[00:30:51] I, I, that's the, I eat that stuff up.

[00:30:53] I find that stuff so fascinating.

[00:30:55] Uh, and I love just being able to, again, kind of examine society over time, uh, through a fixed object or, or geographical feature or, or, uh, or building like this.

[00:31:07] It's pretty neat.

[00:31:08] Uh, let me know if you guys like this episode.

[00:31:10] Next week, we plan on having Troy, uh, and us back for another just normal episode of Revive Thoughts.

[00:31:15] But in the meantime, thank you so much for sticking with me today.

[00:31:19] ReviveThoughts at gmail.com.

[00:31:21] You can write in with any, uh, comments, questions.

[00:31:24] If you guys want us to talk about anything in the future, just let us know.

[00:31:27] But until next time, this is Joel and this is Revive Thoughts.

[00:31:42] Wir sind Teresa und Nemo.

[00:31:44] Und deshalb sind wir zu Shopify gewechselt.

[00:31:46] Die Plattform, die wir vor Shopify verwendet haben, hat regelmäßig Updates gebraucht,

[00:31:50] die teilweise dazu geführt haben, dass der Shop nicht funktioniert hat.

[00:31:53] Endlich macht unser Nemo Boards Shop dadurch auch auf den Mobilgeräten eine gute Figur.

[00:31:57] Und die Illustrationen auf den Boards kommen jetzt viel, viel klarer rüber,

[00:32:00] was uns ja auch wichtig ist und was unsere Marke auch ausmacht.

[00:32:04] Starte deinen Test nur heute für 1 Euro pro Monat auf Shopify.de slash radio.