Graceful History

The Medici: The Family that Owned the Renaissance: “ But still the Usurer takes another way: He scorns nature and her follower, art, Because he puts his hope in something else.” - Dante, Canto XVII Catholic belief in Florence Italy during the Renaissance era was deeply grounded in fear of damnation and purgatory- masterfully illustrated in Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy . His work, divided into three parts, Inferno , Purgatorio , and Paradiso , explore the varying degrees of punishment that certain sins warrant and dictates how your actions on earth determine the way your soul is treated in the afterlife. Usury was defined as charging high interest on loans, something that both Christ and the Church condemned- a sin that (according to Dante) was punished more severely than murder. Originally published in 1321, The Divine Comedy and its ideals struck terror into the hearts of Catholics, many who turned to the Church in order to save their eternal souls. None had...

  The "Famine" of Ireland: Genocidal Intent:   It is March 1849 in the middle of the Great Starvation in Ireland. It is freezing cold, dark, and the landscape is barren. Six hundred people who are barely skin and bones trudge through the Irish countryside, clutching children who may or not be alive. The hunger has distorted their faces into twisted agony that will remain until their imminent death, and when it happens, they will be alone. Several collapse on the journey, too weak to continue. They are barely identifiable as human. The walk is 15 miles long. The ones who remain reach their destination, where their landlord and a small council of British officials eat lunch in a lodge. They tell the starving people, men, women, and children, to wait. Their meal can't be disturbed. Hours later when they are seen, they are sent away. Empty handed, no relief and no mercy shown. They turn back, and on that bleak, hopeless journey to their home, most of them die. People who fo...