That's it. No more tweeking of the site for the time being ... well, not much. Some adjustments happen routinely. The Sunday liturgy links (La Chiesa, Maranatha and the Carmelite Lectio Divina) usually get updated every Sunday morning around 8am, GMT - more or less.

Very positive comments on the photographs dispalyed on the capdox homepage. Thankyou. The camera used for most of the pics is a little Olympus FE-20. Photo editing with PhotoImpact version 6. This programme has been in my service since 2000 and more than meets my needs.

Hopefully, capdox may have some new content soon. One or two projects are in the works.

Roller coaster

Visitors to the capdox site have had a roller-coaster ride with all the live changes happening to the site yesterday and today. Probably a bit annoying. Brighter and easier to navigate, CAPDOX looks better.

Apart from a slightly wider page and a better menu, capdox presents some quality images from a few Franciscan and Capuchin places. (Smart Flash Header by ProJoom manages and displays these images. This Joomla extension has a number of useful functions and settings. My only concern is the time needed to download the home page.)

Later, captions will identify the locations.

Huddled in a little valley below the town of Cupramontana is the former Camaldolese monastery of the Grottoes of Massaccio (left). With an previous, long history of eremitical life lived in various way, the site was taken up by Paolo Giustiniani. Seeking refuge, Ludovicio Fossombrone and his brother Raffaele came here briefly shortly at the beginning. Ludovico would have known about this monastic site from the days of his novitiate in the Franciscan friary are short distance away, outside Cupramontana itself.

In recent years the building has been beautifully restored by various owners.

A recent study

Bernardino Ochino, the general superior of the Capuchins at the time, left Italy for Switzerland in August 1542. News of the "flight" of the famous preacher spread rapidly throughout Italy and was a great scandal. The existence of the Capuchins, a new branch within the Francsican family, was still the matter of debate. The behaviour of its superior cast a shadow of doubt over the new congregation.

Shortly after his departure, within a few weeks, Pope III received a startling letter from his former friend Bernardino. The harsh contents of the letter startled and angered Paul III and that shadow lengthened over the future of the Capuchin Friars.

Another letter was published later, and circulated in manuscript form also. That letter was attributed explcily to Bernardino. As that letter had some circulation it was probably the one that the first Capuchin chroniclers knew about when, from 1565 onwards, they began to compose their accounts of the first years of the Capuchin reform. It is quite plausible to believe that this published letter shaped the image of Ochino transmitted in these Chronicles. In turn, that poor image was underlined by Capuchin apologia within the context of the Counter-Reformation.

After some indecision - and waiting for replies from possible publishers - I present the study on the capdox.com site for the first time today.

"Fixing a footnote" - as a title for this work- would adequately situate scale of the importance of the study. Nothing earth-shattering, yet one significant tile in the mosaic of Church and Capuchin history.

Capdox - another new face...

Earlier posts mention an sister site to capdox - the same content, different format. A tentative experiment. With the great PC crash of 13 December 2010 the time came to farewell the original capdox site.

Using a different content management system (CMS), the alternative site has been linked at "Capuchin Saints and Blessed" on the old home page. It came on line in early March 2009. The new CMS has a different structure (cascading style sheets). This 'old dog' has had to learn some new tricks. But the effort has been worthwhile. Now capdox looks very different.