Buildings

Italy is peppered with tiny mountain villages, and Dezzo di Scalve is one of the smallest. The picturesque River Dezzo runs right through the middle of this small village. On each side of the village is a row of attached houses, as is common in the area. However, the row on the eastern side stands out, as one of the houses is built on top of a massive boulder. The boulder projects out of the ground and the two houses on the left and right of the boulder are actually built around its contour.

The oldest record of Dezzo di Scalve consists of a report compiled by a land surveyor in 1586 and it includes a drawing of the village. A prominent feature of the drawing is the same boulder, surrounded by a cluster of houses. This means that the boulder has been an integral part of this village for more than 400 years.

The large Gleno Dam was built above the village in 1923, but the project was immediately cursed by poor materials and poor workmanship. Sure enough on December 1, 1923, the tragedy happened. The central section collapsed, causing a mass of over 1.1 billion gallons of water to flood into the valley below.

Historical pictures of the town in the aftermath of the disaster show massive damage to roads, bridges, and the village itself that was almost completely washed away with 356 lives lost. However, among the few houses left standing are those that were constructed in and around the rock.

In the early hours of June 24, 2021, part of a slab from a high-rise condo building in Surfside, Florida dropped into the parking garage below. Within minutes, the east wing of the 13-story tower collapsed, killing 98 people in a disaster without modern precedent in the US.

Designed in the late 1970s, the 136-unit Champlain Towers South was completed in 1981 and marketed as luxury living. Officials are still investigating why the tower fell. Engineers point to some key decisions during construction, that while legal at the time, compromised the buildings foundation and integrity.

For instance, a Wall Street Journal report concluded:

[The original builders] skipped waterproofing in areas where saltwater could seep into concrete, the available evidence indicates. They put the building’s structural slabs on thin columns without the support of beams in some places. They installed too few of the special heavy walls that help keep buildings from toppling, engineers say, features that could have limited the extent of the collapse. And they appeared to have put too little concrete over rebar in some places and not enough rebar in others, design plans and photos of the rubble indicate.

Tragically, the construction flaws could have been repaired. The report continued:

Engineers say some issues would have been fixable, had the property’s condo board done more extensive repairs sooner. By 1996, the slab started showing cracks, and pieces of concrete had fallen off the garage ceiling, unusual so soon after construction. Workers patched cracks and waterproofed the pool deck, but that too eventually failed.

But the condo board failed to act. Roof work began weeks before the collapse, but repairs to the steel-reinforced concrete hadn’t yet started.

While Ben Watson was considering retirement, a new opportunity appeared. Staying true to his aggressive playing style, he jumped on it. As a former tight end for the New Orleans Saints, Watson was disturbed about what appeared to be an intentional burning of three different historical black churches in and around Louisiana. So the NFL veteran used his sizable social media following to spread the news and to help assist in the fundraising to rebuild.

He also tweeted the following: "It is imperative that we show this community and the entire country that these types of acts do not represent who we are. And most importantly as the body of Christ, we suffer alongside our brothers and sisters whenever tragedy, persecution, or loss happens.”

St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre, Greater Union Baptist Church in Opelousas, and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas were all burned in a ten-day span. Police have since arrested Holden Matthews, 21, in connection with the fires.

Watson spoke on the phone with pastors from all three Louisiana churches and he marveled at their demeanor:

In speaking with these pastors, I am in awe and inspired by their faith and courage, comforting their congregations and family members. Through sadness and shock they spoke of forgiveness for the arsonist and grace for tomorrow. Most importantly, they spoke of being overwhelmed by support from people of goodwill and all religions from around the country. And they were humbled by what God has already done through this series of events.

Potential Preaching Angles: If a problem offends you deeply on a heart and soul level, that might be part of God’s invitation to for you to participate in its solution. Persecution also gives the Christian community opportunity to model forgiveness to the offender and support for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

If the church were to lose its hierarchy, its clergy, its vast collection of buildings, its stores of learning amassed over the centuries, even the text of its sacred books, and had to face the world with nothing but the living presence of the Risen Jesus and its mission to proclaim the Good News to all nations and people, it would be no less a church than the church of Peter and Paul was. Perhaps it might be more of a church than it is now.

Intriguing facts behind one of medieval Christendom's magnificent legacies:

The Cathedral

Cathedrals required massive amounts of building materials. To build just one tower of Ely Cathedral in England took more than 800,000 pounds of wood and lead. Every cathedral required thousands of trees, and in France, people complained about the great oak forests being leveled to supply lumber.

Building materials were often brought in from far away. Lumber, sometimes in pieces 60 feet long, might come from Scandinavia. The best limestone came from France. When Norwich Cathedral was built in England, the cost of shipping the stone from 300 miles away was twice as much as the cost of the stone itself.

The vault of a cathedral might often be more than 150 feet above the floor. To construct it, builders worked on a new invention, scaffolding. When the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore was built in Florence, temporary restaurants and wine shops were built in the dome so workers would not have to make the exhausting trip down and up again.

A cathedral under construction attracted hundreds or thousands of workers. So that masons could work all winter, a lodge was built near the site--the origin of today's "masonic lodges."

European cathedrals always face east. That way, the priest at the main altar can pray toward Jerusalem, the Holy Land.

Cathedral spires were tall, thin, and extremely heavy because they were covered with sheets of lead. As a result, it was not unusual for a spire or bell tower to collapse, as one did in 1239 during a service at Lincoln Cathedral in England. A prayer used at Lincoln thereafter went, "Deare Lord, support our roof this night, that it may in no wise fall upon us and styfle us. Amen."

Stained glass took countless hours to create. Workers melted sand, lime, and potash; blew the molten glass into a cylinder; cut open and flattened that; cut the glass by using a hot iron and cold water; shaped smaller pieces with a pointed rod called a grozing iron; spread paint on the glass and then heated the glass so the paint would melt into it.

Though a stained-glass window might be 60 feet high, no single piece in it would be larger than eight inches wide or high.

Elaborately carved gargoyles served a purpose: as rain spouts to carry water away from the walls. Although usually carved in the shape of demons or monsters, gargoyles were sometimes carved to look suspiciously like the local bishop.

Cathedral floors were decorated with patterned tiles. Often they included a giant maze for people to walk through. The maze at Chartres Cathedral in France is more than 50 feet across.

Cathedrals were enormously expensive. To pay for them, bishops asked royalty for gifts, held trade fairs, put saints' relics on display (which people paid to see), or sold indulgences. Rouen Cathedral's southwest tower is known as "Tower of Butter," because it was paid for by selling indulgences that allowed people to eat butter during Lent.

Cathedrals included numerous sculptures. Chartres Cathedral, for example, has more than 2,000.

Cathedrals often took more than a hundred years to build. People who began one knew they would never live to see it finished. Often, the cathedral's dedication was celebrated by their grandchildren.

Cathedrals dwarfed their surrounding cities or towns. A mid-sized medieval town might have 5,000 people and a cathedral like Chartres Cathedral in France could hold them all.

Because cathedrals took so long to build, many bishops spent their entire tenure holding church services in the middle of a huge construction site.

A cathedral is not simply a grand church building but a church of any size that holds the cathedra, the throne of the bishop.

Medieval architects sometimes built life-sized models for parts of a cathedral, making, for example, a huge wooden window frame and presenting it to masons to build it in stone.

Though built centuries ago, cathedrals are still among the largest buildings in the world. The spire of Strasbourg Cathedral in France reaches as high as a 45-story skyscraper; the cathedral stood as the tallest building in Europe until the Eiffel Tower was built last century.

To lift the heavy carved stones to the top of a cathedral, workers used winches, windlasses, and a "great wheel." The great wheel was a wooden wheel big enough for one or two men to stand inside; when they walked, the wheel turned an axle that wound up rope.

Despite the effort it took to build just one cathedral, in Europe in just 400 years, Christians built 500 cathedrals.