The Sistine Secrets Quotes

“It is generally acknowledged that these very special floors were esteemed not only for their beauty and the richness of the colors and materials (including the priceless purple porphyry marble), but also for their esoteric spirituality. Much has been written about these mosaics by theologians, architects, and even mathematicians. In part, they give any sanctuary a feeling of space, rhythm, and flowing movement. Undoubtedly, they are also a meditational device, similar to the mazes and labyrinths popular in churches in the Middle Ages.”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

“The floor is a fifteenth-century revival of medieval Cosmatesque mosaic style. The Cosmati family developed their unmistakable technique in Rome in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This decorating style was a fantasy of geometric shapes and swirls in cut pieces of colored glass and marble (much of which was “recycled” from pagan Roman palaces and temples). Stunning examples of authentic Cosmati floors and decorations can be found in some of the oldest and most beautiful churches, basilicas, and cloisters in Rome and southern Italy.”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

“The original ceiling illustrated a simple theme shared by many synagogues: a night sky, filled with golden stars. This scene is reminiscent of Jacob’s dream while sleeping under the stars (Genesis 28:11–19) shortly after fleeing his father’s house. It was then that Jacob had a vision of “a ladder with angels ascending and descending,” and it was that spot that he named Beit-El, the House of God.”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

“Whoever’s idea it was, the new Palatine Chapel was designed to replace the ancient Jewish Temple as the New Holy Temple of the New World Order in the New Jerusalem, which would from this time forward be the city of Rome, the capital of Christendom.”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

“The Vatican preached that because the Jews had killed Jesus and rejected his teachings they were punished with the loss of their Holy Temple and the city of Jerusalem, as well as their homeland. In addition, they were damned to wander the earth forever as a divine warning to anyone who might refuse to obey the Church. (It is important to note that this teaching was categorically rejected and forbidden by the Second Vatican Council in 1962.) Baccio Pontelli, on the other hand, was not”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

“thought. Successionism means that one faith can replace a previous one that has ceased to function. In religious terms, it is comparable to what Darwin would later postulate in the theory of evolution: the dinosaurs were replaced by the Neanderthals who were in turn replaced by fully developed Homo sapiens.”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

“THE VATICAN The very name Vatican comes from a surprising source. It is neither Latin nor Greek, nor is it of biblical origin. In fact, the word we associate with the Church has a pagan origin. More than twenty-eight centuries ago, even before the legendary founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, there was a people called the Etruscans. Much of what we think of as Roman culture and civilization actually comes from the Etruscans. Even though we are still trying to master their very difficult language, we already know a great deal about them. We know that, like the Hebrews and the Romans, the Etruscans did not bury their dead inside the walls of their cities. For that reason, on a hillside slope outside the confines of their ancient city in the area that was destined to become Rome, the Etruscans established a very large cemetery. The name of the pagan Etruscan goddess who guarded this necropolis, or city of the dead, was Vatika.”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

“In a crypt beneath the ground-floor level of the church are the tombs of Saints James and Philip, two of the apostles going back to the life of Jesus. Deeper still, if we were allowed to dig beneath the crypt, we would soon come upon remains of ancient Imperial Rome, beneath that, Republican Rome, and finally, perhaps some of Bronze Age Rome. This makes the church a metaphor for the entire Eternal City: a place of layer upon layer of history, of accumulations of countless cultures, of confrontations between the sacred and the profane, the holy and the pagan—and of multiple hidden secrets. To understand Rome is to recognize that it is a city swarming with secrets—more than three millennia of mysteries. And nowhere in Rome are there more secrets than in the Vatican.”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

“There is so much about the history of the Sistine that seems predestined. According to the more reliable sources, work began on renovating the chapel in 1475. In the very same year, in the Tuscan town of Caprese, Michelangelo Buonarroti was born.”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

“Conoscersi è il miglior modo per capirsi— capirsi è il solo modo per amarsi (To know each other is the best way to understand each other–—to understand each other is the only way to love each other.)”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

“According to a mystical principle, God never presents us with a problem unless he has already created its solution within the problem itself. When Adam and Eve sin by eating the forbidden fruit, they are stricken with shame from their new awareness of their nudity. The Bible tells us that their immediate solution was to cover themselves with fig leaves. According to the Midrash, the Tree of Knowledge was a fig tree, since a compassionate God had provided a cure for the consequence of their sin within the self-same object that caused it.”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

“Ottomans invaded the Italian peninsula itself, seizing the city of Otranto on the southeastern coast, slaughtering the archbishop and many priests in the cathedral, forcibly converting the townspeople, beheading eight hundred who refused to convert, and sawing the bishop in half.”
― Benjamin Blech, The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican