The defeat of the great Arab Islamic siege of Constantinople in the late 660s and the formal closure of the debate over the nature of willing in the person of Christ, at the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 680–1, were landmark events in the geopolitical and religious history of the Byzantine Empire.

John Geometres (ca. 935/40–1000) flourished in Constantinople during the second half of the tenth century, counting among his contemporaries Symeon Metaphrastes (d. ca. 1000), Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022), Athanasios of Athos (ca. 925/30–ca. 1001), and Leo the Deacon (ca. 950–1000).

The feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple (Ta Eisodia tes Theotokou), celebrated according to the Byzantine liturgical calendar on 21 November, constitutes one of the twelve great feasts of the church year.

The Angelic Doctor

Even when he is measured by the yardstick for Christian saints, St. Thomas Aquinas stands tall. What other doctor of the Church disparaged his writings as nothing more than straw? Whom else has the Roman Catholic Church canonized as a saint just fifty years after suggesting that he was a heretic? How many other saints drove off, with a burning torch, a prostitute deliberately sent to seduce them? Many of Aquinas's con-freres recognized his saintly genius in his time, and the whole of the Church acknowledges it in our time. To come to understand his particular expression of the holy life, it is essential to begin with the fact that for most of his life Aquinas dedicated himself to teaching, writing, and engaging in controversies over religious and philosophical issues. Even though many of his most memorable moments in life took place at the University of Paris, he lived much of his life in Italy, notably in Rome as a resident of the Dominican Order's magnificent Basilica of Santa Sabina. Despite his early canonization, Aquinas's thought has received an uneven reception from his death through to today. One crucial reason for his enduring importance to theologians and philosophers, however, is his solution to the problem of faith and reason. For this and other of his many remarkable insights he is called the “Angelic Doctor,” an honorific title that today is reflected in the unofficial name of one of Rome's eleven pontifical universities, the Angelicum (Pontificia Università S. Tommaso D’Aquino).

Naples, Paris, Cologne: The Young Aquinas

Aquinas was born in 1225 into a family of minor nobility in Roccasecca, a town south of Rome. At the age of five he was sent to the nearby Abbey of Monte Cassino for his primary education. Ten years later he began higher studies at the newly founded University of Naples. During his five years there from 1239 to 1244, he studied the liberal arts and natural philosophy, especially the newly translated writings of Aristotle. These studies provided the grounding he needed in later years for his thinking on ethics, natural philosophy, rational psychology, metaphysics, and theology. Moreover, at the University of Naples he became acquainted with and inspired by the friars of Dominic Guzman's (1170–1221) newly founded Order of Preachers, usually referred to as the Dominicans.

I Due Santi: Rome's Most Prominent Saints

One would perhaps expect to find the name Petrus (Peter) emblazoned on the façade of the Basilica di S. Pietro, the edifice built to honour the sacred relics of the first pope and the appointed “rock” of the Church (Matt. 16:18). However, the prominent inscription running across the front of S. Pietro features Paulus (Paul) in a central position instead. It was the proud Borghese pope, Paul V (r. 1605–21), who elected to honour his famous namesake in this special way upon his completion of S. Pietro in 1612, and doubtless this decision to use the apostle Paul's name to promote his own papal name ruffled some ecclesiastical feathers. Peter, after all, was a companion of Jesus and universally regarded as the “prince of the apostles,” whereas Paul was not among the first disciples, and violently persecuted the first Christians. Both history and tradition thus weighed against the pope's decision. Yet Paul V boldly put his own name on the façade of S. Pietro anyway, counting on his great power and influence to win over skeptics. History was not positioned entirely against this pope's plans either. Indeed, the presence of Paulus on Petrus's territory nicely symbolized the connection between the two greatest apostles of the early Church. In later centuries, the bond between Peter and Paul came to be further emphasized at the corners of the steps leading up to S. Pietro. Holding vigil over the Piazza San Pietro and guarding the entrance to the basilica are two grand statues, placed there in 1847. To the right is Paul, looking out toward the piazza and bearing a sword, a scroll, and a scowl; to the left stands Peter, clutching the keys representing the temporal and spiritual power of the bishop of Rome.

The origins of the Christian Church in Rome are bound up with the lives and glorious martyrdoms of these two men. In recognition of that fact, visitors have come to Rome for centuries to commemorate them and walk in their footsteps, and in doing so they have encountered many traces of their memory.

What are the commonalities of information gathering and processing in all living creatures? This is the implicit question that underpins Terry Bossomaier's ambitious book The Senses. His is a Herculean task and one to be greatly applauded.

Bossomaier addresses the senses using the tools of contemporary information science, in an attempt to provide a unifying perspective, one that allows for quantitative comparison of senses between the species.

This fascinates me. It is now nearly 35 years since Simon Laughlin, Doekele Stavenga and I introduced information theory to understand the design of eyes, both compound eyes of insects as well as the simple eyes of humans. We recognised that the fundamental limitations to resolving the power of eyes are the wave (diffraction) and particle (photon noise) nature of light. By appreciating their interrelation we derived insight into the design and limitations of eyes, especially between the optical image quality and the visual photoreceptor mosaic. The capacity of the eye to perceive its spatial environment was quantified by determining the number of different pictures that can be reconstructed by its array of visual cells. We were then able to decide on the best compromise between an animal's capacity for fine detail and contrast sensitivity. In a series of papers, including those with Bossomaier and A. Hughes, we went on to use the tools of information theory to study various aspects of eye design. It was a rewarding and rich endeavour, but one at that time limited to vision.