Saturday, October 28, 2017
BasilICAN’T Believe All This Irony!
This week we discussed some of the churches and cathedrals built in the Romanesque and Gothic fashions. Someone then mentioned a basilica, and a thought occurred to me. The word “basilica” (definition: a building similar to a Roman basilica, used as a Christian church; or the name given to certain churches granted special privileges by the Pope) is derived from the Ancient Greek work “basileus” meaning king. (So a basilica is a “royal house.”) Yet we saw that Pope Urban II (in Unam Sanctam) argued that spiritual authority took precedence over temporal authority—in other words, the Pope’s authority was higher than a king’s or emperor’s. I just find it slightly ironic that the word for a church “granted special privileges by the Pope” takes its meaning from the word for “king.” And although I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation, I still can’t help but find this idea ironic.
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The papacy really was full of it. Doesn't help that the Ancient Greeks...kinda sorta indirectly instigated this egotistic mindset with this meaning? Something like that. So if basilicas exist, does this mean the papacy held themselves higher than even God? The King and Emperor, of course. But I feel that, subconsciously, the papacy considered the position to be one of great divine power...maybe striving to get on God's level. Which you can't do for obvious reasons.
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