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Isaiah’s Vision of the Lord
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
--Isaiah 6:1-3
I remembered them, they were high around me, six-winged seraphim, one above each of the six windows in the perpendicular, light-filled dome.
I sat in the hushed silence of the sanctuary, not yet filled with tourists or the faithful, waiting for the geometric complexity of Borromini’s masterful baroque composition of undulating forms to surround and enfold me in the ancient wisdom of this place: the chapel of Palazzo della Sapienza, House of Knowledge, Rome’s oldest university dating to the 14th century.
The church is named for Sant’Ivo, patron saint of jurists, lawyers and abandoned children.
The plan is comprised of two overlapping triangles, simultaneously centralized and axial, creating a Star of David, also recognized as the Star of Solomon, symbolizing Wisdom. Sapienza. Knowledge.
The walls breathe out and pull in, shaping a space that is spiritually uplifting and gracefully resolves itself in the shimmering heavens, in an ethereal peaked dome, guarded gloriously by those six-winged seraphim, holding me in their gentle embrace as a deep and divine calm pervades the church, and my heart.
The space thrums with silence, reverberates with centuries of hopeful prayer.
I wait in reverence, and profound, grateful quiet.
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
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