Lake District: Lazise, Lake Garda; Como, Lake Como; Ispra, Lake Maggiore

1. Lake District

a. Lazise, on Lake Garda - northwest from Verona

The name means "place on the lake", see ://www.lagodigardamagazine.com/index.asp?menu=59/.

Lake Garda, at Lazise, Italy

Little stairs walk you right down into the water, at spots along the promenade. The easier to get into a boat with, my dear, Pick a step, Set a spell.

 Lasize, Lake Garda, Italy. Harbor view

Lasize, and Lake Garda is close to Milan, and an easy drive from Verona. It is full of sunning people. See ://www.gardalake.it/

Lazise, Lake Garda, Italy. Promenade.

Lazise, Lake Garda, Italy. San Nicolo Church, harbor.

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 Little Saint Nicholas Church is on the water, at the docks. Find boats at the clock tower.

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 Lazise, Lake Garda, Italy. City Walls, 12th Century

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The old walls with crenellated tops for defense date from the 12th Century, but the earliest castle built on the site dates far earlier, in the 9th Century as defense against the Hungarians. The Scaligeri castle ruin, modified and expanded from the earlier structure, is there.

Lazise, Italy. Saint Nicholas Church, San Nicolo.

San Nicolo is patron saint of fishermen and of schools, and this church was built in the 1200's.  It evolved into secular uses, and then was reconsecrated.

Maria Lactans; Nursing Madonna; Lazise, Lake Garda, Itally. Fresco, Church of San Nicolo

We have seen a recurrent theme in Italian early frescoes - the Madonna openly nursing the child.  Mary as Mother used to be emphasized in a realistic way. See also this fair use thumbnail of the pregnant Mary, Madonna del Parto, at Monterchi, Tuscany; by Piero della Francesco, from http://www.

:://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_del_Parto">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_del_Parto

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Or this one of the pregnant Mary, by Taddeo Gaddi

see ://www.chiesadisanvito.it/page.php?44 /.  That site shows another pregnant Mary as well.

Back to San Nicolo in Lazise, the naturalism compared to our later concealments is striking. Here also, the breast being extended to the child. See Saint Anastasia in Verona for another. The theology here was apparently rejected, or diminished out of existence lest woman be elevated, is that so? - the dependence of the child upon the woman for survival. There were centuries of Mary central to worship, as mediator, as mother of God, often expanding on indigenous religious beliefs in a deity as female, in Europe. See discussion at Martin Luther's Stove, Vetting Roots, Centrality of Mary. Fresco Course Correction?

This church was built by a group following Origen, of The School of Alexandria, 2d and 3d Centuries we believe, in early Christianity. See ://www.lagodigardamagazine.com/index.asp?menu=59/

Research, as a start on Origenism, at Origen of Alexandria at ://www.iep.utm.edu/origen-of-alexandria/; and at ://www.copticchurch.net/topics/patrology/schoolofalex2/chapter05.html/  His ideas were later deemed to be heretic, see ://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/western/bldef_origenism.htm/  That's a little extreme. Just because one web is spun for the ease of some does not mean others cannot find sustenance outside it. And Origen precedes the web - is Pre-Web. PW in time, and closer to the Life (and farther from the politics) than the later dogma-developing ones were. Is that so? Is it time to look again at the rejected ones, seeking truths.

Harbor, Lazise, Lake Garda, Italy. Theology. Many the boats to get somewhere.

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Of particular interest to theology's political evolution: The church became more and more entrenched as masculine, is that so, and is that why this kind of depiction of Mary as necessary, on whom even the male God depended, was shunted aside?

b.  Como, Lake Como, Italy

Lake Como, Italy; tour cruise from shore

Lake Como, Italy; residence views




Lake Como from Como point, Italy

Get through the crowded town and market and go out as far as you can. The road narrows and narrows, but you will end up at a private club, venerable residences, and public access to enough to enjoy.
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c.  Lake Maggiore

Through Varese, past Lake Varese, to Ispra.

Lake Maggiore, Italy

View from lovely waterside restaurant, local, small town. Ispra. We followed a wedding party here, then the bride and groom took off in their own car, leaving the guests who had been following, in the parking lot - the guests whooped and hopped back in their cars for the chase and we enjoyed our clams and spaghetti.

On to Milan. Ready for the Autostrada. Cross country is impossible. Nearly. Stop stop stop.