While Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been variously portrayed—not wholly inaccurately—as a defiant rebel with a ribald sense of humor and as a consummate Enlightenment rationalist, Richard Bratby points out that he was also devoutly religious:

[T]he Mozarts also enjoyed a long and affectionate relationship with the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter’s. . . . Wolfgang wrote numerous works for the Abbey—beginning with his Mass K.66 at the age of thirteen, and culminating in the stupendous unfinished Mass in C minor, K.427 of 1783, a work that, if completed, would have matched Beethoven’s Missa solemnis and Bach’s B minor Mass in scale.

Bratby praises this particular setting of the Catholic liturgy for “the towering force and beauty with which it affirms the divine mysteries expressed in the text.” He also observes the religious sentiments found in the composer’s personal writings:

Whether he’s assuring his father that he would never settle in a Protestant country, or convincing the atheist Parisian philosophe Baron von Grimm to believe in miracles, religion is in the air Mozart breathes. He might not have signed his scores Laus Deo, as did his friend Joseph Haydn, but both [his father] Leopold and Wolfgang were convinced that his gift was God-given (“it would be impious to pretend otherwise,” commented Wolfgang).

And where did this idea of artistic talent as divinely inspired come from? According to Jacob Wisse, an early articulation can be found in the book of Exodus.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.