OREvery time I’m in Rome, if I can, I stop by Piazza della Rotonda. Even just to admire at a glance, from the outside if the queue is long, one of my favorite works: the Pantheon. Built in the 1st century BC by Agrippa, destroyed by fire a century later, rebuilt by Hadrian in the 2nd century AD, it is irresistible to me.
The Romans, masters of civilization and then masters of the world, had produced not only an architectural but also a philosophical masterpiece: the Pantheon was dedicated to all gods, past, present and future. Even those whose names they didn’t know, those linked to other cultures, or who could have arrived later. Then fate would have it that in 609 the temple was transformed into a church and consecrated to a single cult: that of Santa Maria ai Martiri.
Evolution was his fortune: it was thus saved from the fate of the other temples, stripped of all the marbles, columns and friezes to make them churches. For two thousand years its great dome and the marvelous oculus open at the top make it one of the best preserved works of antiquity. If the sun is shining, the light enters from the large central hole, moving at different times of the day, like a supreme eye that keeps mobile watch over us. The representations of the divinities are inside, but up there there is something else, there is light, there is life and there is mystery.
Danda Santini, director of “iO Donna” (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
I thought it was a noble but also pragmatic solution of the Romans to not get trapped in religious disputes in every corner of the empire. An intuition unfortunately left without follow-up: history has instead seen the fragmentation of the great religions into sects and schisms, missions and crusades to convert to one’s own beliefs, wars against the infidels.
But looking east, at India, cradle of ancient religions and philosophies of life that do not fight each other, but coexist by mixing, Hindus and Muslims, Buddhists and Christians, on my last trip with I Woman and a group of readers I was impressed by the Bahá’í House of Worship. Inspired by the lotus flower, in India a symbol of purity, white and rigorous, it stands like an upside-down corolla, in concrete and Greek marble, in the middle of a very clean and well-kept English garden, even silent in the chaos of the city. Around the flower, nine large pools of fresh water. Nine is the number that indicates globality, uniqueness and unity. Of what? Of man’s beliefs and religions.
The dome of the Pantheon in Rome in an illustration by Cinzia Zenocchini
Faith Bahá’ífounded in Iran in the mid-19th century, professes a single divine thought that reveals itself over time and a single indistinct human raceof a noble and spiritual nature, which advances towards its collective maturity. There are no rites and there is no clergy. In the house the sacred scriptures of all religions are read and agnostics, secularists, atheists, the curious meditate, waiting for a Messenger to usher in an era of peace and justice. A mystical place, which regenerates and leads to clear and positive thoughts.
“One should not boast of loving one’s own country, but rather of loving the whole world. The earth is one country and humanity its citizens,” preached the founder Bahá’u’lláh. Once again: a supreme being, a divinity however we want to call it, a principle of good that finally brings peace and justice. It seems that men, alone, just can’t do it.