Monthly Archives: July 2012

Grottaferrata and Santo Lucà (Part 3)

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A reply from Santo Lucà! Continue reading →

I finally received a reply to the e-mail that I sent to Professor Lucà on May 31. In it I posed two questions: 1) Did he think that the young Theophylact, the future Pope Benedict IX, might have been educated by the Basilian monks? This would have meant that he would have been one of the very few Romans who could speak and read Greek. 2) Did he believe the legend that Benedict and his brothers retired as monks in Grottaferrata?

His answer to the first question was this:

credo proprio di no; sono i monaci ‘basiliani’ che parlano il latino!

He says that he does not believe so. There are Basilian monks who speak Latin.

I have to wonder if he understood what I was getting at. Theophylact’s family was the most prominent in central Italy. Not only was the monastery near to the family’s home in Tusculum; Theophylact’s grandfather had actually donated the land on which it was constructed. If Theophylact was not educated by the Basilians, then he must have been instructed elsewhere. Surely his family must have tried to provide him what he needed for the career that they planned for him.

I have read that he was a student of Lawrence, but Lawrence was in Montecassino for much of Theophylact’s youth, and Montecassino is much further away. In addition he became Archbishop of Amalfi in 1029, three years before Theophylact assumed the throne. So, it does not seem unreasonable to speculate whether Theophylact’s family might have taken advantage of its relationship with the monks to help groom Theophylact for his imminent career as pontiff. And if the monks did perform this service, I find it hard to believe that they did not teach him the Greek language, which they used for all of their services.

There are a few other facts that support this hypothesis. The three Tusculan popes (Benedict IX and his two uncles) had much better relations with the Greek church than either their predecessors or their successors. In fact, the Great Schism occurred in 1054 in the very first stable pontificate after Benedict’s! Furthermore, it is fairly well documented that Benedict IX and St. Bartholomew, the hegumen of the abbey, had a pretty good relationship throughout his pontificates.

The answer to the second question was:

assolutamente no!

You do not need to be a native-born Italian to figure out what that one means. I think that the legend that Benedict repented, retired, and became a Basilian monk was perpetrated by Luke, the Basilian monk who wrote the biography of St. Bartholomew. Here is what Capitani wrote about the subject in his his entry in Enciclopedia dei Papi (2000):

Le ultime considerazioni fatte circa i documenti del 1055 e del 1056, nei quali il nome di Benedetto appare ancora – e non quello di Teofilatto, come ci si sarebbe dovuti attendere, in caso di pentimento del Tuscolano – escludono ogni verosimiglianza delle notizie contenute nelle agiografie di Bartolomeo di Grottaferrata, che avrebbe operato una sorta di conversione sul “terribile” pontefice, ritiratosi in penitenza nel monastero.

Basically this says that the erstwhile pope was still using the name Benedict in official documents in 1055 and 1056, the year of his death. So, it seems very unlikely that he would have repented as stated in the hagiographies of Bartholomew of Grottaferrata. If he did not abandon his claim to the papacy, he almost certainly did not become a monk either.

I sure would like to know what did happen to him in the decade or more after he lost the papacy.

There Oughta be a LAW

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I forgot the “Corrections” to the Law of Total Tricks. Continue reading →

The Law of Total Tricks (the LAW for short) has been around for a few decades. It says that if the honor cards in a bridge hand are distributed roughly equally between the two teams, then the total number of tricks achievable by the two teams is equal to the total number of trump. If North-South is bidding spades, and East-West is bidding hearts, then the total number of potential tricks available to the two prospective declarers should be roughly equal to the number of spades held by North-South plus the number of clubs held by East-West. If North-South has nine spades, and East-West has eight hearts, the LAW predicts that seventeen total tricks are available, but it does not predict how many either side would take. If North-South can take ten tricks if spades are trump, then the prediction is that East-West can take seven if hearts are trump. If North-South can take only eight, then East-West should be able to garner nine.

In Wednesday’s game my partner and I tried to be LAWful, but we came a-cropper on one hand. Two green cards were in view as I examined this hand with neither side vulnerable:

♠75 ♥QJT62 ♦AQ84 ♣Q5
This hand easily met my criteria for a third-seat opener, so I bid 1♥. RHO passed, and my partner bid 2♣ (three-piece Drury) with this aggregation:

♠9862 ♥AK4 ♦KJ6 ♣T63
His bid said that he had 10-12 points and three hearts. I also knew that he did not have a singleton or void. A different bid is used for that holding. Seeing no chance for game I bid 2♥. After two more passes RHO ventured 2♠. I could see no extras in my hand, so I left it up to my partner. He elected to pass as well. The result was not good. They took eight tricks in the black suits. If hearts had been trump, we would have taken nine tricks in the red suits. We scored -110; East-West pairs that bid 3♥ made +140 points.

When I thought about this hand, I realized that the LAW had been violated. They had seven spades, and we had eight hearts. Fifteen trumps should generate fifteen tricks. However, a total of seventeen tricks were apparently available. Knowing that the LAW is very accurate, I felt a little cheated.

Well, that was not quite right. We could have set the spade contract by forcing declarer to trump the third round of diamonds. In fact, however, the opponents could have actually scored nine tricks if they had found their fit in clubs. So, the LAW’s prediction of sixteen tricks was still two short of what was really available. How could it be so far off?

I revisited the orignal article in The Bridge World by Jean-Rene Vernes. I found in a section called “Corrections” a list of mitigating factors:
  1. The existence of a double fit, each side having eight cards or more in two suits. When this happens, the number of total tricks is frequently one trick greater than the general formula would indicate. This is the most important of the “extra factors.”
  2. The possession of trump honors. The number of total tricks is often greater than predicted when each side has all the honors in its own trump suit. Likewise, the number is often lower than predicted when these honors are owned by the opponents. (It is the middle honors–king, queen, jack–that are of greatest importance.) Still, the effect of this factor is considerably less than one might suppose. So it does not seem necessary to have a formal “correction,” but merely to bear it in mind in close cases.
  3. The distribution of the remaining (non-trump) suits. Up to now we have considered only how the cards are divided between the two sides, not how the cards of one suit are divided between two partners. This distribution has a very small, but not completely negligible, effect.

In this case the first correction probably adds at least one to the the prediction. Our second suit only had seven cards, but it was solid. The opponents had only seven trump, but their best side suit, clubs, consisted of eight cards. What made this hand unusual was the fact that the opponents had all of the black honors except the ♣Q, which was in a doubleton, and we had all of the red ones. So the first two factors combined to add two tricks to the total.

Is there any way that my partner or I could have divined this? I don’t think so, but I think that one of us should have bid 3♥ anyway. Here is why: Ordinarily, a bidder using the LAW knows that he is “protected” by the distribution if he bids up to the number of trump that his side holds. Our side held eight, so we were protected up to the two level. However, Vernes cited one exception in the last paragraph of his article: “This rule holds good at almost any level, up to a small slam (with only one exception: it will often pay to compete to the three level in a lower ranking suit when holding eight trumps).”

So, the factors in favor of bidding 3♥ were:
  • We certainly had eight trumps.
  • We had at least half of the honor values.
  • We were not vulnerable.

Unfortunately, neither I nor my partner knew whether the opponents had seven, eight, or nine spades. Since my honors were concentrated in two suits, I think that I should have just taken the bull by the horns and bid 3♥.

That brings up another question: would the opponents have bid 3♠? I doubt it. Neither of them knew about the club fit, and neither had anything extra.

The Elusive Franklin

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Me and my “other” cat. Continue reading →

Giacomo

The lovable one. Notice the paws.

I often tell people that Sue and I have 1½ cats. Two black cats regularly eat the Purina Cat Chow that I put out, so I guess that we own them. Although they both came from the same litter six years ago, they are quite easy to tell apart. One of them, Giacomo, is a good deal larger than his brother and has much longer hair. He is very affectionate, loves people, and cannot get enough petting. Giacomo also has huge double-paws on his front feet and a very shaggy tail that is nothing like his brother’s rat-like appendage. Franklin, on the other hand, is very wary of people. He sometimes lets Sue pet him, but he almost always gives me a wide berth.

Framklin

The other cat.

The exceptions to this pattern fascinate me. Franklin will sometimes tolerate me petting him if Giacomo is between us. This morning, for example, I was sitting on the glider outside petting Giacomo. Franklin came up to us and rubbed up against his brother. He would occasionally allow me to reach over Giacomo and rub his back. He did not run away until I got up.

The other exception almost defies credulity. The latest example occurred on Friday morning. I took some trash out to the rolling bin and, as usual, saw both cats sitting near the door. When I opened the door, they both scampered away. Nothing unusual there. However, when I went back in to shave I could hear Franklin’s unmistakable whine coming from the other side of the bathroom window. This was definitely unusual; beneath the window is the cat’s door, which leads to the basement.

A minute or two later I heard a much louder whining coming from the hallway. Evidently Franklin had come inside to eat his breakfast. Here is the thing: I knew precisely why he was announcing his presence in such a conspicuous manner. It had been exactly thirty days since Sue had administered his last dose of Frontline flea medicine to him. In fact, I expected and predicted that something like this would happen — and soon. The flea drops are only effective for thirty days.

I finished shaving and then crept into the room in which we feed the cats. I slipped in and trapped — but only by inches — Franklin inside by rapidly closing the door. Then I had to endure the usual ten-minute ritual in which he cried loudly as if I were torturing him as he searched for an exit from the room. Finally, he jumped up on the bed and let me pet him as if nothing had happened. I gave him his dose and let him go.

Some version of this theatrical exercise is repeated every month during flea season. Franklin stays away for twenty-nine days, and then he “accidentally” makes himself available for the treatment on the day that he needs it. He has never missed a treatment when he is due for it, and he is almost never within reach otherwise. I cannot explain it.

All cats are eccentric, but Franklin is just weird.