Archives and visit to St. Michael’s Church - 9 September 2013

Thinking about the visit today the first thing that comes to mind is the separation of the pews in St. Michael’s Church and the differences yet similarities the portraits on the ceiling and the figures on the alter represent.  The idea about gender, the need to segregate and the positioning of men as more important than women is a human perspective and through a different angle these roles could be reversed or not perceived at all.  The characters illustrated on the ceiling each have their own story and their own importance to the history of Christianity - each having a counterpart of the opposite gender also shows their comparable value to this culture.  This almost offers a balance for the space (even if the two alters structurally took a different command over their respective sections).  Something else to note about the visit today was the integration of the virtue of charity in the church - perhaps coming from the building’s original purpose.  The faceless charity of the grain to the hungry in the house of God offers a similar feeling as the tradition of the misericordia.

Earlier in the period while looking at the archives I noticed the computer that was sitting on the table at the front of the room to the right.  This was an Apple computer that I immediately recognized as out of date.  This is the way that we hold and keep records today - everything is digital.  The books and documents that we were looking at were written on the skin of sheep nearly 1000 years ago and they are still legible.  The computer at the front of the room is going to (or may already has) become no longer usable.  As programs are updated and new softwares are developed this item is no longer going to be able to keep an accurate up to date record nor will the information on it be accessible unless the documents are converted.  It was fascinating to see how wonderful the documents were preserved and the history that they hold and I am wondering if 1000 years from now if the books and the documents that we create are going to be as accessible and useful as the ones we saw today.