Recently flowers of roses were given by the Pope

Back in Firenze, my mind drifts, and my thoughts are filled with The Dome, that of Santa Maria del Fiore, invisible from where the Empress and I are staying, but last year ever-present, sometimes inviting, sometimes forbidding, yet always breathtaking. I loved when a visitor, invited in, would talk and walk and suddenly be stopped dead at our breakfast table exclaiming what?! or, on occasion, holy Jesus fuck.

Consecrated on the 25th of March 1436 by Pope Eugenius IV, who presented (as popes do quite often - did you know?) a mystical and rare rose of gold, representing satiety, joy and love, and even I would think that one can never have enough joy or love, popes have different opinions, and they are known to concern themselves with all sorts of limitations, eschewing the modern dictum of do what thou willst being the whole of religious law. But that rose also represented the rod of Jesse falling on his foot and the fruit bearing forth and, along with the lion lying with the lamb, and the child leading them all.

So now, let's have another gelato, and while we do, let us listen to the work that accompanied the consecration of that Cathedral, titled by the act of the rose recently given, written by Dufay:

It's a incredibly well-structured piece, and thrilling to music theorists and historians and intuitionists alike. Historians as it sits at the inflection point between the isorhythmic style that preceded and the freer polyphony that followed; theorists as it is chock full of rhythmic devices, including the 6:4:2:3 integrally changing mensuration, not quite diminishing; intuitionists as the work is immensely satisfying as it accelerates to its pretty end. It's hard to imagine that, with such a powerful and affecting work, Mr. Dufay didn't find the pope, or at least one or two of the members of the choir, deigning to consecrate him, like the cathedral, by their sacred hands and holy liquors, this being the reason we composers do what we do.