I’m reading a book about the Papal States (gripping! page-turner! Um…actually…sort of.) and Pavia, a place I’d never heard of before, kept coming up last night. It was the center of Lombard rule, the Lombards being the people who put Rome and environs under constant threat in the 7th and 8th centuries (hence….Lombardy), and folks kept going back and forth from Pavia in the chapter I was reading last night.

And then this morning, I open up PRF and…in 2007, it will reportedly be Benedict heading to Pavia to pray at St. Augustine’s tomb  – just a couple of weeks ago, on the feast of St. Augustine, Fr. Z had a post on how St. Augustine’s bones got to Pavia.

As for me, I was just as interested in the enormous Carthusian foundation – look at this photo –

(Source)

Those little rooftops are of Carthusian hermitages – 24 of them (not in use any more, of course) at the Certosa di Pavia , maintained as a monument since the 19th century.

So anyway…the Pope’s going to Pavia in 2007.