HOW SCARED ARE WE? A short time ago we returned from a wonderful trip into the Julian Alps of Slovenia. But first, we started with a few days overlooking the water at the head of the Adriatic Sea at Trieste. To break up the return to Ascoli Piceno, we also spent a few days in Padua. Padua is another of those places in Italy where the contemporary world is interwoven with a very long imprint of human history. Amid contemporary buildings are Roman ruins and a number of churches dating from the Renaissance.   It is also the seat of one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Europe. Galileo lectured there. A highlight of the visit to Padua was to see the Scrovegni Chapel to experience first hand the frescoes of Giotto di Bondone. The entire interior of the structure became Giotto’s canvas. Giotto is recognized in the history of western art as marking the transition into a more naturalistic style of depiction breaking with the long dominance of the Byzantine tradition. Giotto executed these incredible frescoes between 1303 and 1305. Reflecting an age of relatively low literacy, Giotto’s Scrovegni frescoes pictorially tell the biblical story from the Fall of Adam and Eve to the terror of the Last Judgment. Reflecting on Giotto’s Last Judgment, and the interpretations on that theme of later artists, brings inevitable comparisons such as the 1534 – 1541 work of Michelangelo Buonarroti in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. The art of Giotto reflects the prevailing view of an afterlife in the dogma of the western Catholic Church. Reinforcing this doctrinal concept of judgment, damnation and punishment further is the monumental literary work of Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, begun in 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death. This work not only forged the foundation for the Italian national language it added further weight to a belief in an afterlife and impending judgment. As the Christian faith transitioned from a persecuted sect to assuming a role underwriting the power of the State after 313, an issue for believers became inevitable, ‘if we are no longer under persecution and we are in God’s special favor, why do we still suffer from wars, pestilence,...