When I take students to Vienna, we always begin our visit with a quick walking tour of the city, partly to orient ourselves, and partly to keep everyone awake on that first afternoon. Among the sights we see is the Plague Column , pictured above in a 1742 engraving by Georg Christoph Kriegl. This remarkable piece of Baroque sculpture, which employs trinitarian motifs to unite political and religious imagery, was erected after one of the last great waves of the plague swept through Vienna in 1679. Emperor Leopold I commissioned it to remember the epidemic and give thanks for the city's salvation. This seemed like an appropriate image for the first post of this new blog, which I am starting for my students at Houghton College as they have all left to go home in the wake of our own current epidemic. I hope that you students will find this a helpful way to maintain a sense of connection to me and to Houghton during the weeks ahead, when our relationship will be ...
Plague Time
Random Musings on Culture, Morality, and Politics, from a college emptied of its students