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I'm just working on lesson plans for my parish "Saints and Pivotal Players" class --- next week we're doing Michelangelo, His Life and Times. Which if course spans almost the entire era of the Renaissance Papacy.

One of the questions I'm asking in my Discussion Starters: is this one:

Oh, wait. What the heck. I'll give you the whole thing. I wonder what my class will say? Maybe some FReepers will comment.

1. Popes, Cardinals, and Bishops were among the major patrons of the arts in the Renaissance. Is this a glorious thing? An embarrassing thing? Comment.

2. All Renaissance artists developed styles and themes derived from pagan Greek/ Roman antiquity, but Michelangelo integrated pagan themes even into his formal religious works. His Sistine Chapel includes five sibyls, or female prophets found in classical myths. His “Last Judgment” shows Charon ferrying souls across the River Styx, a pagan motif which Dante included in his Divine Comedy, but had never been used in Christian iconography. His nudes were not only in the private statuary gardens of the Italian merchant class --- they thronged in the Church! Holy Beefcake! Good? Bad? Comment.

3. Michelangelo was a believing, practicing Catholic all his life; yet as he grew older, he became both more tormented by guilt, and more devout. He feared that his early efforts served to glorify, not God, but vain men, the rich, the proud, the sensual, and even himself. Can even a pessimistic turn of mind be a blessing?

4. Popes urgently spurred, gloriously rewarded, and painfully frustrated Michelangelo’s artistic productivity. Their excesses --- e.g. selling indulgences to fund the building of St. Peter’s --- spurred the splitting and wrecking of Christendom: the Reformation. Did Renaissance popes sometimes? ever? --- despite themselves?--- serve as God’s instruments for good?

5. Michelangelo, even from his early teens, had plenty of opportunity to see Catholic religious figures both at their most austere (the penance-preaching Dominicans) as well as at their most self-glorifying (the Renaissance popes). Savonarola vs. the Medicis: how did both tendencies show up in Michelangelo?

5. Tommaso Dei Cavalieri (1509–1587) was the object of the greatest written expressions of Michelangelo's love. When they met, Cavalieri was 23 years old, Michelangelo 57. He matched the artist’s vision of masculine beauty; their friendship began with the ideals of art; Michelangelo may have seen Cavalieri as a son. However, even in his own time, there was accusatory “talk” about the two which Michelangelo rejected as "the evil, foolish and envious mob, accusing others of their own vile tastes." Yet it’s clear that he struggled with frank desire:

Only I remain burning in the dusk
After the sun has stripped the world of its rays:
Whereas other men take their pleasure, I do but mourn,
Prostrate on the ground, lamenting and weeping.
I had always thought I could come to terms with love,
Now I suffer, and you see how I burn.

The “Gay Movement”, of course, would claim Michelangelo as one of its own, even if he were religiously chaste his whole life long. How does this affect our view of his spirituality?

6. Michelangelo had another kindred spirit: the noblewoman Vittoria Colonna, a well-educated widow --- one of the most popular poets in 16th century Italy --- devoted to Catholic piety, charity, and intellectual pursuits. She, Michelangelo and Cavalieri often met to discuss religious matters, like the controversies of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. She and Michelangelo exchanged many letters and poems: most of his sonnets were written for her. When she died, he was “a long time in despair and as if out of his mind”: he said he regretted that he had never kissed her face as he had kissed her hands. Deep attachment and deep emotional suffering played a role in shaping Michelangelo’s soul as well as his art. Discuss.

7. Michelangelo can seem too, too much in every way: too exuberant, too suffering; too angry, too tender; too sumptuous, too austere; too drawn to the carnal, too driven by the spirit. Is he a kindred spirit with the “balanced” St. Benedict? the obstinately poor St. Francis? Is he a penitent, a converted man, a saint, a kindred spirit with Christ?