Catholicism

On a mountaintop in southeastern Arizona, at nearly eleven thousand feet above sea level, a group of Jesuit priests spend their nights pointing a telescope at the edge of the observable universe --- on behalf of the Pope. The Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical institutions in the world, born not from grand spiritual ambition but from the gloriously practical need to fix a calendar.

In 1666, a young Danish scientist held a shark's tooth in one hand and a ancient stone in the other --- and felt something shift. Nicolas Steno, physician to the Medici court, would go on to found modern geology and give humanity the radical idea that the Earth itself has a history, written in layers of rock and time. But Steno's story is about more than stratigraphy.

In 1559, the Archbishop of Toledo was arrested for a radical idea: that ordinary people should read Scripture in their own language. Bartolom Carranza spent seventeen years imprisoned, not in chains but in bureaucratic limbo, waiting for a trial that moved slower than justice. His crime was suggesting that sacred truth belongs to everyone. But he was living in the age of cheap paper---an infrastructure that would make his dream inevitable, even as he died before seeing it.

In 530 CE, as the Roman Empire crumbled into chaos, a monk named Benedict wrote a short guide for communal living that would change history. His simple principle---ora et labora, prayer and work---created 37,000 monasteries that preserved classical knowledge, pioneered agricultural and technological innovation, and built the educational infrastructure that became Western universities. While ancient texts traveled through Constantinople, Baghdad, and Moorish Spain, Benedictine monks kept literacy alive in the West, creating the civilization that could receive that knowledge when it returned.

Harmonia explores the life of Bartolom de las Casas, a Spanish priest who transformed from colonial beneficiary to fierce advocate for indigenous rights in the 16th century. His insistence on the full humanity of indigenous peoples challenged the foundations of empire and planted seeds for universal human rights. In a world becoming globally connected for the first time, Las Casas showed that recognizing shared humanity across difference is both a spiritual demand and a choice we make daily---a truth that resonates deeply in our interconnected world today.

Blaise Pascal was a brilliant scientist and inventor who turned away from certainty after a mystical encounter with the divine. In his final years, he wrote The Wager---an invitation to choose faith not through proof, but through hope. In this episode, Harmonia reflects on the meaning of belief in a world where religion may seem obsolete, but the longing for meaning remains.

In a world where knowledge was at risk of being lost, Isidore of Seville chose abundance over perfection, gathering everything he could so it might survive. His joyful trust in shared knowledge still echoes today-in encyclopedias, databases, and even Wikipedia.

In this Golden Thread episode, Harmonia steps into the quiet cell of Julian of Norwich-a medieval anchoress who lived through plague, famine, war, and fear, yet emerged with one of the most hopeful spiritual visions in history. Through scenes of candlelit illness, stark solitude, and the steady stream of townspeople seeking comfort at her window, Harmonia explores Julian's revelation that love, not despair, is the deepest layer of reality.

In this episode, Harmonia returns after Hillel the Elder to walk through the charged streets of Renaissance Florence, where Girolamo Savonarola rose as a fierce moral voice in an anxious city. Through scenes of bonfires, crowded piazzas, and the tremble of a society seeking certainty, Harmonia explores how fear can masquerade as virtue-and why it can never sustain compassion or justice. She traces Savonarola's sincerity, his severity, and the spiritual lessons his rise and fall still offer today.

In a convent in 17th-century Mexico, Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz wrote theology, poetry, and defiance by candlelight. Her mind was her devotion, and her silence-when it came-was not submission, but a kind of spiritual martyrdom. This episode explores how her quiet resistance continues to echo in every soul that seeks to think and believe in equal measure.