And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
- And did those feet, William Blake

søndag 17. mars 2024

Utopia, technology, and the nebulous borderlands of truth

 

In the past few months, I have tried to keep up with the ongoing discourse concerning the phenomenon inaccurately labelled ‘Artificial Intelligence’, and its potential for warping our sense of reality and further obscuring the already-nebulous boundaries between reality and fantasy. Whenever I have come across an article or news report related to this issue, I have bookmarked it in a folder in my browser, hoping against historically attested practice that I will some day return to these texts and have some intelligent thoughts about them. The folder in which I put these bookmarks is labelled ‘Utopia’, and the folder was created as a way to collect materials related to my current teaching. I thought it fitting at the time, but did not take the time to articulate why I thought so, and so I continued to use this folder while the justification for using this particular folder continued to grow in the back of my mind. In this blogpost, I will try to formulate some of the ideas that have crystallized in the course of this week.            

The connection between Artificial Intelligence and utopian thinking seemed at first intuitive, obvious, and so I did not bother to formulate it properly. However, as I am now reading David Fausett’s 1993 monograph on utopian literature in the seventeenth century – Writing the New World: Imaginary Voyages and Utopians of the Great Southern Land – a few aspects have become much clearer to me. Fausett makes a compelling point about how utopian literature of the 1600s came to employ textual elements belonging to news reports, pamphlets and broadsides, causing readers to often confuse texts of prose fiction with texts claiming to present factual content. Naturally, the motif of authenticating elements has a long history in fiction, perhaps best illustrated by the topos of the found manuscript (as in Don Quijote), or the now-lost written report translated from another language (as in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain). What was new about this obfuscation of the boundaries between true reports and novels in the seventeenth century, was the changing media landscape. As knowledge of the wider world expanded through journeys of exploration and the growing networks of trade that brought European powers into contact with cultures across the globe, increased literacy and a broadening market for literature gave rise to a greater circulation of information about the distant regions of the world. Since there was an expectation of new encounters and new discoveries, audiences were better disposed to accept fantastical tales as either true or at least based on true events. The knowledge that there was new information to be had, conditioned readers and listeners to blunt their scepticism and become more receptive to the claims of authenticity utilized by authors of utopian fiction.  

 

The confusion about truth and fiction in seventeenth-century Europe is not unique to that time or that place, and it is not an indication of people being stupid or less critical in their thinking. The more I research historical matters, the more convinced I am that humanity has neither become more intelligent nor more stupid as time as passed, only that intelligence and stupidity have played out in different ways and through different means. What is crucial about the confusion described by David Fausett is that the confusion came about through developments in mass media. The confusion, I believe, was a consequence of rapid technological development that did not fit with the slow maturation and the incremental adaptation to novelty that humanity as a species requires in order to understand things. It is this contrast between humanity’s need for slowness and the rapidity of technological innovation that highlights the utopian aspect of the contemporary discourse on Artificial Intelligence.  

 

Those who champion the virtues of Artificial Intelligence and the use of AI in writing, journalism, research and so on, are themselves proponents of a utopian vision, one in which humanity has released themselves of the drudgery of knowing and thinking to the machines. Not all these champions view the future in this framework, but even the more restrained and reasonable among the AI enthusiasts still tend to demonstrate attitudes towards art, critical thinking and factual knowledge that lean very strongly in this direction.  This utopian attitude towards technology is nothing new. One of the hallmarks of utopian thinking is exactly the high levels of technology that are available in utopian societies. Perhaps the most famous example of this idea is Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626), which lists a long range of technological advances, including artificial meat and laboratories for all kinds of different research. The motif goes further back in the history of utopian thinking, however. In the Middle Ages – a period not widely accepted as one of utopian thinking, yet nonetheless rife with examples of it – the idea of technologically advanced societies in faraway places appear in several texts. In the Letter of Prester John, a hoax from the 1160s that purported to describe the realms of a Christian ruler in distant India, the technological marvels of this imaginary kingdom are expounded in great detail. Similarly, the Alexander tradition – a collection of texts claiming to narrate the life and deeds of Alexander the Great – contains several descriptions of technological marvels, such as Alexander’s submersible for exploring the depths of the ocean. Other medieval texts that were less fantastical and which had a stronger claim to truth, similarly spent much detail in recording the technological marvels of distant, exotic places. Liutprand of Cremona (d.972), in his chronicle Antapodosis, describes a mechanical throne in the court of the Byzantine emperor. William of Rubruck, who travelled to the court of the Mongol khan in Karakorum in the 1250s and wrote an account of his experiences, tells about a fountain of marvellous ingenuity, built by a French smith who had lived among the Mongols for some time. Similarly, Marco Polo’s famous account of Kubilai Khan’s empire contains a number of examples of advanced technology. There is, in other words, a long-standing expectation that utopian societies – whether they are ideal or just simply better than the point of comparison – are technologically advanced. The presumption is perhaps strengthened by changes in the media landscape, and the idea that technological improvement is the same as social improvement is easily accepted when one is condition to connect technology and utopian thinking, and also when one is living through a changing media landscape that one does not have the time to properly adjust to.    

 

That technological change requires adjustment on the part of the humans affected by that change is perhaps a fairly straightforward claim. Often, this adjustment has been a core aspect of the enthusiasm and the justification surrounding technological change. There is talk about transhumanism, of technology allowing humans to transcend their humanity, of technology ushering in a new era in the evolution of the human species. Technology is often seen as the key to unlock Utopia, and in our contemporary discourse that technology is Artificial Intelligence. Yet the utopian aspect of technological change is two-sided. On the one hand, it is absolutely indisputable that technological change has allowed a vast number of people opportunities for a better life than they would otherwise have. The best argument for our current level of technology is that it allows those who are handicapped in one way or the other to reduce that handicap, to open up new opportunities for living that would have been impossible without the technology in question. On the other hand, technology can be used to either oppress or numb the critical faculties of people, and when that technology is controlled by someone with authoritarian tendencies, the technology in question can easily be used to obscure the distinction between reality and fantasy, between truth and fiction, between veracity and lies. The potential for abusing technology is strengthened when technology means changing how we receive information. Changes in the media landscape means that we, humans, need to reflect on how we can use our faculties to convert the information given to us through this changing landscape into knowledge. We need to learn how to distinguish between claims and facts, between lies and truth. If we do not reflect on this challenge, if we forfeit this process of critical reflection, or if we outsource it to those who control the changing technology, we become less able to understand the basis of truth and the signs of duplicity.            

 

With the current proliferation of AI programmes that can create images and texts by stealing from existing works of art and existing texts, we are becoming less well-equipped to ascertain what is true and what is false. This blurring and warping of the already nebulous borderlands between truth and falsehood can be, and is already, weaponized by various individuals and groups with authoritarian motives. The utopian scenarios presented by these would-be dictators and hobby-authoritarians might seem appealing, but we do well to remember that several works of utopian fiction have already highlighted the inherent risk of abuse in utopian societies. One example is Gabriel de Foigny’s La Terre Austral Connue (The Southern Land, Known, translated by David Fausett), where the novel’s narrator lives thirty-five years among the Australians, a people of highly advanced technology. However, these technologically advanced people, who consider themselves and their society perfect, tolerate no other form of human life than that of their own. Since Foigny’s Australians are giant hermaphrodites, this intolerance means that they commit genocide on their non-giant, non-hermaphrodite neighbours, and use their advanced technology to obliterate the very ground on which their neighbours sought to establish a living. In the novel, the Australians have also employed their combination of technology and force in numbers to establish an ecosystem that is devoid of insects. Such a manoeuvre stems from an idea of gardens as locus of perfection, where insects are seen as noisy intruders, and fits perfectly well within a branch of utopian thinking that equates perfection with homogeneity. While the realistic consequences of this insect-less world are not touched upon by Foigny, our twenty-first century perspective – an era of mass-disappearance of bees and other insects, and where the consequences of extensive and often unbridled use of pesticide have made themselves clear – notifies us of the impending ramifications of technologically crafted homogeneity in Foigny’s Australia.  

 

Utopian thinking and utopian literature often rely on a blurring of the border between truth and fiction, between the possible and the impossible, in order to make rhetorical points, or in order to push an agenda or proffer suggestions for how to improve society. On other occasions, utopian thinking and utopian literature showcase how illusory the perfection of utopian society actually is. Thomas More’s Utopia is a slave society, relying on prisoners of war to do the most basic tasks of a functioning commonwealth. Tommaso Campanella’s city of the sun in distant Taprobane is a eugenicist society where the individuals are governed to such an extreme degree that the leaders decide which individuals should have children together. And Foigny’s narrator, the hermaphrodite Sadeur, returns from Australia completely disillusioned with a society that believes itself to be perfect, and allows that perfection to justify horrible acts.         

 

In our contemporary discourse, the utopian implications of Artificial Intelligence tends to dominate. Yet utopian societies can often be illusory, and more often than not they are deeply authoritarian. One way of perpetuating authoritarian government is to confuse people’s perception of reality, whether it is through mass delusion or through a blurring of fact and fiction. Nowadays, the media landscape is changing too rapidly for us to easily adjust to the new ways of ascertaining truth and discovering lies. In such a confusion, utopian solutions might appear more realistic than they actually are. Indeed, these utopian solutions are based on the perpetuation of a tool – Artificial Intelligence – that is programmed to create an alternate reality from stolen fragments from the real world. The question we need to ask at every juncture when AI is lauded as the key to the future is as follows: Whose utopia is being heralded by AI’s warping of reality? The answer is most likely going to be very unpleasant.  

        

tirsdag 12. mars 2024

Podcast appearance: Bishop Grimkell, and Anno 1024



Earlier this year, I was invited to participate in an episode of the podcast Anno 1024, a podcast dedicated to topics pertaining to the millennium anniversary of the so-called Moster thing, or Moster assembly, in Western Norway. The episode is available here (in Norwegian only).

The anniversary is based on the texts of two law collections which were written down sometime in the second half of the twelfth century. These collections are known as the Gulathing law code and the Frostathing law code. They are named after the two major law provinces of eleventh and twelfth century Norway. Gulathing - or the Gula assembly - covered most of the western seaboard of Southern Norway, from Sunnmøre to Agder, as well as various parts of the central valleys of the interior. Frostathing - or the Frosta assembly - covered the western seaboard from Romsdal and northwards, eventually also including Hålogaland, as well as parts of the hinterland of the Trondheim fjord. 

In the law codes, we read that the Christian law was introduced by King Olaf Haraldsson - the later Saint Olaf - and Bishop Grimkell at the Moster assembly, which has traditionally been dated to 1024. There is an ongoing debate about whether this claim is actually true, and whether there was an assembly at Moster, and also whether this was the starting point for introducing Christian legislation in Norway. It is clear that King Olaf did collaborate with ecclesiastics to strengthen royal control over the Norwegian juridical infrastructure of the time, and also to strengthen his legitimacy among the people. However, whether the introduction of Christian rules can be dated as precisely to one assembly, and whether there was an effort to reform the laws in the way described by the twelfth-century texts of the law codes, is highly uncertain. 

These are some of the questions that are discussed in the episode. While the host, Torgeir Landro, and I agree on the main issues, there are also other scholars who interpret the material differently.      



onsdag 28. februar 2024

The vanity of exploration - or, The discovery of Bouvet Island prefigured?


This spring, I am teaching a course on utopian thinking in the Middle Ages. The course is designed for MA students, and to prepare a good foundation for delving into details and focusing on specific themes within the vast umbrella of the course's main topic, my co-teacher and I have dedicated the first seminars to a chronological walkthrough of utopian material, ending with the Early Modern Period and stopping around 1750 for purely practical reasons. One important reason for bringing the early modern material into discussion with the medieval texts, was to highlight how increasing geographical knowledge affects the way utopian places are imagined, and where they are placed on the map.  

Thinking about the development of cartography and geographical knowledge, I was reminded of a detail I noticed in a painting I had the pleasure of seeing up close in January, namely Antonio de Pereda's allegory of vanity, exhibited in Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The painting is an exquisite example of the vanitas genre, one of my favourite types of paintings, as it combines the exuberant display of skill typical of the still life with the sombre and melancholic note of the memento mori artwork of the Late Middle Ages. The genre takes its name from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is an immensely beautiful and human reflection on the pointlessness of human endeavour: All is vanity, all is in vain. Since part of the point of a vanitas painting is the juxtaposition of numerous and often contrasting pursuits, the genre also offered artists an opportunity to show how skilled they were at drawing complicated things, while also adhering to the iconographical standards of the genre (such as a skull, an extinguished candle, and an hourglass with all the sand in the bottom).       


Antonio de Pereda (1611-78), Alegoria de la vanidad (1632-36)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Inventory no. GG 771


One detail that particularly fascinates, and pleases, me about Antonio de Pereda's rendition of the vanitas motif, is the way that he has rendered the globe, a detail I only properly realised when I was standing right in front of the painting. As seen below, the globe is placed on its side - its imagined side, rather - with north facing east and the west facing north. The hand of the genius representing the passing of time and the eventual pulverisation of all things mortal and temporal, is pointing towards the tip of the African continent, to a point between Africa and Antarctica. 

The detail is particularly interesting to me in light of the time when the painting was made, namely the 1630s. At this time, the Portuguese had spent generations mapping the coastlines of Africa and the Indian Ocean World, and there had been great strides in cartography. Madagascar - which was merely  a a rumour to medieval Europeans, if even that - is slowly receiving its actual shape, and the interior of Africa is mapped in the minds of European traders through stories encountered in the great Swahili trading cities such as Sofala and Mombasa. Indeed, if we look very closely on the globe in Pereda's painting, we see that the map of Africa represents two cartographic stages, with an earlier phase rendered in a strong green colour - reminiscent of the way Africa is depicted in early sixteenth-century maps - and a more modern, broader outline in weaker grey-green colour, which seems to represent the extent of Africa as known by modern cartography. Further south, moreover, is the great southern continent that was hypothesised by numerous cartographers throughout the medieval and early modern periods. This was a continent expected to exist to the south of Africa, based on the knowledge that the earth was round, and that the lower hemisphere should resemble the upper in climate, and perhaps also in having a large continent that would correspond with Eurasia. It is important to note, however, that by the time Antonio de Pereda painted this allegory, no European had been far enough south to ascertain the existence of this continent.   





In light of Antonio de Pereda's own times, and the increasing cartographic knowledge of the era, how are we to understand the way that the globe is included and rendered in the painting? While I do not know for certain, I suspect that in an age when voyages for trade, domination and conquest were still an important part of the geopolitical and even everyday life of Europe, the mapping of distant shores would be a natural part of the register of motifs that could emphasise the pointlessness of human endeavour. That the outline of Africa is rendered in two versions might be understood as a shorthand of the recent cartographic development of Pereda's times, which, ultimately, is as pointless as the game of cards or the possession of jewelry, since it does not ensure humans that eternal peace and afterlife which can only be attained through spiritual pursuits. Essentially, the painting seems to say: Yes, we know more about the world, but so what? 



 

One detail in the rendition of the globe is particularly amusing to me, as it is a pure coincidence. The finger of the genius is pointing to a location between the southern tip of Africa and the great southern land, the Terra Australis, that corresponds roughly to what we know now to be Antarctica. If we look at a modern map of this area, the finger is placed on, or at least very near, Bouvet Island, known as one of the most isolated places in the world. The first known sighting of Bouvet Island, currently under the jurisdiction of Norway, happened in 1739 during a voyage under Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier (1705-86), and the first known landfall happened in 1822 by American whalers. Consequently, Antonio de Pereda did not know about Bouvet Island, and the placing of the genius' finger is purely coincidental. But it pleases me to think about how human speculation and imagination very often does manage to envision the real world despite lack of certain knowledge.      


tirsdag 27. februar 2024

Lecture: Science, faith and superstition in Utopia

 

Last Tuesday, February 20, I had the honour of giving a lecture in the lecture series of the Science, Faith and Superstition seminar series, hosted by the University of Belgrade. My lecture highlighted various continuities in the way that medieval and early modern texts about ideal societies or exotic locations were imagined or formulated. The lecture was recorded, so I'm pleased to share it with all of you.  


Science, faith and superstition in Utopia






torsdag 22. februar 2024

Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Vienna


The past few months have been a blur of travels and museum visits, so I am still sorting through the photographic souvenirs to decide which wonders to share, and when. When working my way through a museum, my eye is often caught by the unfamiliar, unknown or unusual, and so I am more likely to capture an artefact of which I have not heard before. Part of this impulse appears to be either rooted in or otherwise related to my scepticism towards canon formation, and the typical focus on the big famous items that museums often tend to embrace when marketing their collections. 

Today's overlooked jewel comes from the medieval collection of Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, an institution most famous for its late-medieval paintings - what some call "Renaissance" - but where one can also find some absolute treasures that once adorned various churches and chapels. One such treasure was a wooden bust of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, attributed to Michel Erhard (active c.1469-1522), holding a fragment of wheel intended for her torture (but broken by an angel before the torture could commence). 

The sculpture can be called a minor treasure in that it is not in any way highlighted in the museum's collection - at least not that I could see - and because it was just one item out of many in the unjustly downplayed medieval section of the museum. Yet this relative obscurity is deceptive, because Michel Erhard is one of the most famous Gothic sculptors active in the late-medieval German-speaking area, and we should imagine that the bust was originally a revered work of art, enjoyed not just because of its obvious beauty and craft, but also because of its association with a feted artist. 

The bust of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Kunsthistoriches Museum is a good reminder of how beauty might very well be objective to some degree, yet that objectivity pales in the absence of a subjective marker of quality, such as fame. So when the fame once attached to the item has faded, so the artwork - despite its artistic qualities - fades into a relative obscurity.   


Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, KK 9938

 





tirsdag 20. februar 2024

Saint Olaf in Frogner Church - medievalism as a form of protest?

 

This weekend, I attended a service at Frogner Church in Oslo. It is a beautiful structure, consecrated in 1907, and built in a neo-Romanesque style that was very common in Scandinavia around the turn of the century. The fondness for this style should probably be understood in light of the wider cultural framework of medievalism at the time, a framework in which the medieval past was used as a pool from which to draw resources for building a national identity, and thereby positioning Norway in a wider historical and geographical setting. The medievalism of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth century Norway was expressed in many different ways. Various such expressions were often relying on a lot of the same motifs or figures, but the medieval elements seen as uniquely Norwegian could often be blended with medieval elements from elsewhere. In the case of Frogner Church, we see how some various aspects of the Norwegian medieval past has been melded into one. 

The first of these aspects that came to my attention was a wooden figure on a plinth on the southern side of the nave, just beneath one of the two galleries of the church. The figure, as seen below, shows Saint Olaf with one foot on a vanquished person, while his hands are resting on the sword whose point is placed just atop the person underneath the saint. The identity of the saint-king is made clear from an inscription in gold on the foot of the statue. This motif - of Olaf standing on a figure, a so-called underlier - is widely common in Scandinavian medieval art, and one of the most recognizable iconographical features in the entire medieval Nordic sphere. As far as I know, the earliest surviving example of this motif dates from the early thirteenth century.

The statue in Frogner Church is clearly meant to tie into the medieval motif, but it also shows itself as a product of a different time, a time that had its own ideas about the medieval past. The statue is, in other words, not so much a continuation of a medieval motif, but an adaptation of it. There are two elements that point us in this direction. First of all, the saint-king carries a sword, which he uses to subdue to defeated opponent. To my knowledge, this combination of iconographical features does not appear in medieval art. Olaf is typically seen holding an axe, which became is primary attribute at a very early stage, possibly already in the mid-eleventh century. The sword is very rarely associated with Olaf, and, as far as I know, never in the motif of trampling an enemy underfoot. 
     




The second modern feature of the statue is the shape of the underlier. In medieval art, this figure is typically a human of uncertain identification (especially in the thirteenth century), or a dragon with a human head (mainly fourteenth century onwards). The figure in Frogner Church, however, is holding a hammer, which suggests that this is the Norse god Thor. The statue is, in other words, intended to summarize Christianity's conquest of Paganism in Norway, exemplified by Saint Olaf forcefully replacing the god of thunder. While medieval Norwegians did indeed emphasize Olaf's violent expulsion of Pagan elements during the Christianization period - an idea possibly invented in the twelfth century, as part of the Norwegian Church's efforts of identity-construction - this expulsion is not, from what I know, expressed as a battle between a saint and a god. Consequently, the scene in Frogner Church looks very much as an ecclesiastical response to the ongoing enthusiasm for the Norse Paganism that was part of the medievalism of the era, where the pre-Christian elements were made to represent Norway and confer antiquity and glory on a nation eagerly expending time and resources to construct an identity.  







Another feature of Frogner Church that makes me suspect some sort of ecclesiastical reaction to the ongoing medievalism of the time, is the exterior. The neo-Romanesque features of the tower and the front are both strongly reminiscent of an actual medieval church in Oslo, namely that of Old Aker Church, which is heavily restored yet contains some surviving features from the twelfth century. The Romanesque style is a marker of European belonging, since it is an architectural vogue imported from abroad, and initially performed in Norway by foreign masons. The use of neo-Romanesque for the church exterior can be understood as a nod to Old Aker Church, by which the new church draws prestige from an earlier church, and provides a sense of continuity, which in itself is an important element of identity-construction. Furthermore, however, it might also be that the use of neo-Romanesque serves the same purpose as the statue of Saint Olaf in the nave, namely to signal a European belonging and to mark a certain distance to the enthusiasm towards the Pagan Norse heritage. 

If I am right in thinking about these features as a pushback against the Pagan aesthetic, it is nonetheless doubtful whether a lot of people would have the toolkit for decoding this protest message. Yet this does not in and of itself mean that the protest would not have been legible to a certain section of society, whether it would be academics, clerics, or others. 





tirsdag 30. januar 2024

The moon over Saint Rupert's Church


In the middle of January, I spent ten days in Vienna as part of a work-stay organized by the project where I am currently working as a postdoctoral researcher. The days in Vienna were quite intense, as there were a lot of different work-related tasks that needed my attention, and so there were only a few times I could really indulge in the many different sights of the city. With what time I had, however, I still managed to take in quite a lot of things big and small, and I hope to delve deeper into some of them in future blogposts. 

One of the highlights for me was the Church of Saint Rupert of Salzburg, das Ruprechtskirche, which is situated close by the Danube canal on the northern edge of the old city centre, the so-called Ring, where we were staying. The church is dedicated to the patron saint of Salzburg, the seventh-century bishop Rupert, who is also considered to be its founder. In the Later Middle Ages, he became the patron saint of salt miners and salt traders, and in art he is frequently depicted holding a salt cellar. Saint Rupert's Church in Vienna is believed to have been built close to where the salt traders had their stalls and headquarters during the medieval period. 

The Church of Saint Rupert became something of an obsession of mine during my days in Vienna. Partly, this obsession stems from my constant fascination with saints, and since I knew very little about Saint Rupert prior to my arrival in Austria, the tantalizing opportunity to learn more was impossible to resist. Another part of the obsession came from the fact that the church is believed to be the earliest church in Vienna - dated to the eighth century - and, more importantly, that part of the church retains some elements from the twelfth century, namely the tower and the northern wall. Despite these objectively good reasons for my fascination with the building, I think one aspect that was just as important was the rather ludicrous feeling of ownership that came from the chance act of stumbling across it as a friend and I were wending our way through the streets in search of a good place to eat. This happened on the first day, just shortly after the hotel check-in, and as I had not done much to prepare for my trip by reading up on Vienna's history, the sudden appearance of a church with unmistakably Romanesque elements - my favourite architectural style - was both arresting and exciting. 




Since the church is closed most days, except for Fridays and special occasions, I had to wait a full working week before being able to see the inside of the building. Although I was assured by another friend that the interior was much less interesting than the exterior, I could not help feeling a certain yearning to get inside, not because I expected the interior to be full of exciting details, but because I steadily built it up in my head as a unique chance to see something medieval in a city whose remaining architecture is mostly eighteenth-century and later. 

I did eventually get inside, and I managed to go twice. And while the church does not hold many exciting details, there turned out to be plenty of them to explore. For the present blogpost, however, the interior will have to wait, and I will instead provide you with some examples of the kind of pull that this building exerted on me, as I walked past it a few times during January afternoons under a waxing moon. In the combined light of the city and the moon, the Church of Saint Rupert acquired an aura of peace and stability, as of time having turned to stone, and it lay like a promise in the folds of city, in marked contrast to some of the more ostentatious buildings that have become famous hallmarks of Vienna. I have always preferred the Romanesque simplicity to the exorbitant Baroque, and although I also appreciate the latter in many of its forms, the different space offered by the Romanesque is always preferable to me - and I say this, knowing full well that Romanesque churches and cathedrals in their original state would have been both ostentatious and gaudy, and quite different from their current surviving forms. In short, the Church of Saint Rupert became something of a point of orientation for me during my days in Vienna, and I treasure the memories of its beauty and gravitas.