Midweek Notes

The University of Pennsylvania Press's most recent podcast is an interview with Johan Elverskog, the author of Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road.

John Preston,"The Vatican Archive: the Pope's private library," Telegraph, 1 June, discusses the opening of 50 miles of shelves, heretofore inaccessible to the public.

Here you can find accounts of the trial of the Knights Templar held at Chinon in August 1308; a threatening note from 1246 in which Ghengis Khan's grandson demands that Pope Innocent IV travel to Asia to ‘pay service and homage[‘]; a letter from Lucretia Borgia to Pope Alexander VI; Papal Bulls excommunicating Martin Luther; correspondence between the Court of Henry VIII and Clement VII; and an exchange of letters between Michelangelo and Paul III.
There are also letters from Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, St Bernadette, Voltaire and Abraham Lincoln.

R. Douglas Fields,"Michelangelo's secret message in the Sistine Chapel: A juxtaposition of God and the human brain," Scientific American: Guest Blog, 27 May. Count me a skeptic.

Alexandra Schwartz,"Collected Lightening," The Book, 2 June, reviews Daisy Hays's Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry's Greatest Generation.

Richard Rayner reviews Selina Hastings' The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography for the LA Times, 30 May.