We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
Serbian Orthodox Church in Ecka is one of the oldest preserved cultural monuments in Banat. It is considered that it was built in 1711 by Serbs, after a great migration and exodus from Serbia in 1690. The church is dedicated to the Saint Nicholas, and the church’s slava is on May 9th according to the old or on May 22nd according to the new calendar. Only the two basin roof of wooden pieces are preserved from the original building. The roof of the belfry is also covered by wooden tiles, and it is done in Baroque style. Therefore it presents a rarity, because it is not common in the church architecture to cover new shapes with old materials. There is a part of the old iconostasis from 1744, the work of Nedeljko Popović Šerban, whose works mark the epoch of painting creation on the territory of Tamiš’s Banat. The iconostasis is well preserved and a part of it is in the Museum of Zrenjanin. The iconostasis in Baroque engraving is also kept in the church, and it was painted by Theodor Popović in 1786. The church’s gifts originate from different periods, and a few old books are of great importance. Regarding its great cultural and historical significance, the church is under protection of the state according to the Decision of the authorities in 1948, and it is declared as the national estate.
More...
Since its beginning, Alexandria was always a meeting point of different cultures and religions: the cultural tradition of Alexandria had many components – Hellenistic, Jewish, Egyptian, Gnostic and Christian. In this article prof. Stromsa comments on the cultural tendencies in Alexandria before the time of Origen.
More...
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) was a dominant figure of the Roman Church, passionate believer, with no doubt his views and beliefs were right. He never ran from discussions with those who did not agree with him. He fought battles with a scientist and theologian Abelard, abbot and statesman Sugerius. With the strength of his personality, St. Bernard gave new life to monasticism, supported reform of secular clergy and fight against heresies, ended the papal schism, preached II Crusade and the real description of his life would have been a history of the first half of the 12th century.
More...
The sacred heritage of Southern Banat represents the artistic creativity in the field of architecture, painting and applied art which are subjected to Christian cult. The author reviews the history, development and western influences in church art and architecture of this region.
More...
In the Orthodox Church, the Wisdom of God was never understood as an abstract energy – it was identified with Christ, the Incarnated Logos, which has its echo in the church art. The author briefly reviews the historical testimonies of such understanding, starting from New Testament writings, through the Byzantine era to the late Middle Ages in Russia.
More...
The paper deals with the issue of the relationship between Serbian rulers and local princes of the Nemanjić dynasty and Roman Catholic clergy, both inside and outside of medieval Serbia. This includes the relations of the Nemanjić dynasty to the local Roman Catholic Church, primarily towards the episcopate of the Archdiocese of Bar (Antivari), and the Archdiocese of Dubrovnik, as well as the relationship to Roman Curia.
More...
The aim of this paper is to point out the specifics of introducing a religious education in Serbia between the two world wars. The period is divided into three sections in which challenges and efforts of the country are seen in terms of unification. Besides, there are great church efforts to introduce and keep as well the Orthodox church religious education at all educational levels. In the first section we are focused on the position of religious education in the Kingdom of Serbia before the unification. Furthermore, we discuss how the church changed its position in the new formed country. The second section explains how conflicts between the “liberal” and “clerical” forces increased in the society, in the case of regulation of education. The third part is focused on the period between 1929 and the final unification of educational policy in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
More...
The article is intended to examine the group of superintendents of the GDL evangelical Reformed clergy in the 17th–18th centuries. The development of the formation of this spiritual position, the theological substantiation, and the conditions and circumstances of persons becoming superintendents, are presented. A group composition of which 93 people were part until the end of the 18th century was reconstructed. The management functions of superintendents as church leaders and administrators at the unit and individual districts level are analysed: activities in collegial church institutions (general, provincial and particular synods); the most dynamic means of church supervision – visits, clergy (priests, catechists, lecturers) ordinances and practices (Sluck, Vilnius, Biržai, Kėdainiai gymnasiums, local church schools) and foreign alumni studies supervision; responsibility for preserving and revising church archives; financial management in solving treasury policy issues; taking care of execution of wills for churches; alternatives to using church manors; organising general and tolls; communicating with the Radvilas of Biržai- Dubingiai (until 1695), Nesvyžius-Olyka (until 1795) branches and smaller church patrons for the implementation of foundations and proper material provision of the church.
More...
From the 4th AD, some Christian clergymen started to come to Göreme, Güzelyurt and Belisırma in Aksaray and Cappadocia regions and made these places a religiously important area. They needed a place where they could realized their religious ceremonies in the Ihlara Valley, share the bread and wine symbolizing the flesh and blood of Christ and be baptized, and they continued their lives in these places by building churches for this purpose. Dictionary meaning of the word church is the place of worship. Church architecture has developed in different forms and plan types. Churches, which are generally built with domes and cross plans, have appeared in different plan types since the early periods when Christianity started to develop. They made frescos mostly containing religious scenes on the walls of churches. Fresco is a wall painting technique using water-soluble paint pigments on wet plaster. It is a painting technique made directly on the rock with red ocher. With this technique, bedrock is used as a background. One of the churches where wall paintings are made is the Serpentine Church located in the Ihlara valley. In the wall paintings in the church. There are ascension to Sky, Child Jesus with Mariam and Bishop Chrysostomos, the Roman Emperor Constantine and his mother Helene, the death of Mary, be buried of the Egyptian Mariam, Daniel is Between the Arslans, The Last Dinner, and the Crucifixion, Jesus who seat cross-legged between Cebrail and Mikhail, the last judgment scenes and four women who have been attacked by snakes.
More...
Cistercian monasteries, located in the northern German region of Holstein (Rheinfeld), on the lower Rhine (Altenkamp), in the Weser Mountains (Amelungsborn) or on the fringes of the Harz Mountains (Michaelstein) were in possession of granges (monastic estates) in the 13th century. These granges were lived in and run by monks and lay-brothers of the Cistercian Order. The Cistercians engaged in a variety of ways in the transformation processes that shaped Mecklenburg in the medieval period. They organized forest-clearances and set up new villages. The lay-brothers jointly with those people living as dependents on the monastic estates participated actively in the cultivation of the land. The newly established monasteries were entitled to force the inhabitants of former villages to resettle if it was seen to be in the interest of the newly established granges. The economic success of two of those, Satow and Rosin, is reflected in the establishment of ‘urban farms’ in towns closest to them, in Rostock and Güstrow respectively, for the storage and marketing of their products.
More...
Referring to the topics of Christianization and building of churches in the Germania Slavica, there are a lot of prejudices and misjudgements, which need to be clarified. The so-called “barbarian” pagans between the rivers of Elbe and Oder possessed temples whose virtuosity was praised by the contemporary chroniclers. Not least inspired by the example of their Slavic neighbours in Bohemia, Poland and Russia, which had converted to Christianity at the turn to the second millennium, the Wend chieftains showed a willingness to assure the access to the West European cultural area by a process of acculturation. To the east of the Roman cultural border – defined by the Rhine and Danube rivers – cement jointed stone structures were unknown to Germans and Slavs alike before the introduction of Christianity. Therefore the earliest churches arose as timber structures. Even following widespread implementation of the technique of stone structures, the churches in newly founded villages were initially constructed in timber for reasons of cost. The building material of fieldstone was not available without difficulty, being found only in clay soil. In the old settlement areas, construction with fieldstone was known only sporadically, in coastal regions. For that reason the building of village churches exclusively in fieldstone developed primarily among the conditions of late medieval land consolidation (“hochmittelalterlicher Landesausbau”), as well as the implementation of brick buildings. In addition, it was not until the eastward development of settlements that a parish structure evolved and with it, the pretension of each village to have its own church. Nevertheless the building of stone churches was in no way self-evident. For example, in the region of Barnim one third of the villages during the Middle Ages only had churches of timber or of timber frame construction, because there is a significant, verifiable correlation between the revenues from crop yields (caused by the largeness of bounds and the quality of soil) and the costliness of village churches. The building of the typical steeples, cross oblong and broad as the nave, nearly doubled the costs of construction. The desire for these steeples was not only a question of prestigious symbolism of power or the glorification of God, but needed a sufficiently good economic basis, too. By that reason it normally took at least a generation before a surplus of corn production made the building of stone churches possible. Thus the creation of robust fieldstone churches was neither area-wide nor represented a governed program of military buildings (fortified churches to secure some kind of continuous advancing “Eastern front”). The involvement of Cistercians in the building of village churches is also overestimated.
More...
The authors deal with the issues of the beginnings of the parish system in the Czech lands, which formed the prerequisites for a deeper Christianisation of the rural milieu. Based on the distinctive transformations in burials observable in a large part of Bohemia and Moravia, they place the beginnings in the period around 1100 A. D. The evidence of the archaeological sources is confronted with the testimony of the written evidence and critically also with the conception of art historians, who do not suppose a boom of sacral architecture in the rural milieu until the second half of the 12th century and later. The shift of the beginnings of parish organisation further into the past opens a number of historical and methodological questions.
More...
On Christmas of the year 811, Emperor Michael I Rangabe solemnly crowned his elder son Theophylact in the church of Hagia Sophia. On this occasion, he offered numerous precious gifts to the cathedral, which included a set of four curtains embroidered with gold and purple. Sacred images were depicted on them. These textiles have not survived to our times, and are known to us only thanks to the short record in the Theophanes’ Chronicle. However, it is possible to reconstruct their form on the basis of their preserved contemporary examples. The practice of donating silks decorated with figural religious motifs to churches is confirmed by the Book of Pontiffs. The source mentions gifts given by popes Hadrian I (772–795), Leo III (795–816), Paschal I (817–824), Gregory IV (827–844) and Leo IV (847–855) to shrines in Rome and Ravenna. The textiles mentioned by that source include both those decorated with ornamental motifs (griffins, crosses), and those adorned with evangelical scenes (Annunciation, Nativity, Entry into Jerusalem, Passion, Ascension, Descent of the Holy Spirit), as well as images of Christ and saints. The word chrisoclabum (or chrisoclavum), repeated in written sources, seems to relate to compositions placed inside medallions, and perhaps also to exceptionally precious appliqués of gold and purple fastened to the textile background. As early as 75 years ago, Wolfgang F. Volbach sought to associate two pieces of silk samite with the Annunciation and Nativity scenes (kept at the Vatican Museo Sacro; initially dated to the 6th century.) with papal gifts from the turn of the 8th and the 9th century. His hypothesis, accepted by most scholars, has recently been disputed by Anna Muthesius, who suggests a later date for both silks (after 843). Due to this fact, it seems necessary to offer a new analysis and interpretation of both textiles that will rely on the current body of knowledge about the Byzantine art of the 8th and the 9th century.
More...
In the years 2013–2018 a scientific project “Artisinal Handicraft in the Churches of Kraków Archdiocese,” financed by the National Humanities Development Programme (No. 11 H 120 11 681), was realized at the Institute of History of Art and Culture of The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow. In its course, over 11,100 works of art in more than 160 churches were catalogued and digitalized, and over 40,000 photos were taken. The documentation was rendered available in an academic database (ram.upjp2.edu.pl). This paper is an attempt to outline the most crucial issues associated with the performed tasks, present the most interesting discoveries, such as the baroque monstrance in the Wawrzeńczyce church.
More...
This article contains the edition of the newly found letter of indulgence that was granted by three Roman Cardinals: Francesco Lando, Antonio Pancera, and Francesco Zabarella, for the no-longer extant Franciscan friary in Ashmiany in present-day Belarus. It was issued on 16 January 1416 during the Council of Constance, sede vacante. The text of this indulgence has been preserved as a copy in the collection of documents of the above-mentioned friary that was compiled in the early seventeenth century (now kept at Vilnius University Library, Manuscript Department, F. 114–13). For the time being, this text represents one of the earliest known indulgences related to a specific religious house in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and thus makes part and parcel of the meagre fund of primary sources illuminating the first steps in the process of Christianization of post-conversion Lithuania. This indulgence may also serve as a clue allowing us to expand the circle of the known participants from Lithuania at the Council of Constance by including Friars Minor, whose scope of service for the Grand Dukes of Lithuania still awaits a more thorough investigation.
More...
Review of: Magdalena Żyła - Andrzej A. Napiórkowski, Kościół Ducha kontynuacją wcielenia Chrystusa, Tarnów: Biblos 2020, pp. 232.
More...
Wieluń was the only city of the Wieluń region, which became the seat of the collegiate chapter in the Middle Ages. At the collegiate church there were colleges of vicars and mansionaries, erected in the 15th century. The vicars replaced prelates and canons and priests in the choirs of Wieluń parish. Mansionaries honored the liturgy in the collegiate church with their singing and services. However, political, social and economic conditions that changed over the centuries led to the collapse of the Mansionaries foundation. In 1730, the College of Manners was merged with the College of Vicars. Since then on, the vicars of Wieluń combined the duties of the foundation and acted until the dissolution of the Wieluń chapter and collegiate church in 1819.
More...
One of the main directions of the renewal initiated by the Second Vatican Council was the adaptation (aptactio, accomodatio) of the liturgy to changing cultural conditions and cognitive abilities of the faithful (fidelium captus). The Council recognised that the established historical form of the liturgy ceased to correspond to the mentality of its times; hence, the demand for a more comprehensible liturgy and thus a more attractive one – so that it would draw more participants. This postulate is combined with the conviction that the liturgy should fulfil an evangelising function, which makes the didactic dimension dominant over the mystery proper to the liturgy. The paper criticises that postulate. A liturgy that has missionary or evangelising potential does not need to succumb to a didactic strategy. The most missionary liturgy may be a seemingly incomprehensible liturgy, but one that gives the opportunity to experience and live the ritual, i.e. initiation and mystagogical liturgy. This view stems from the assumption that a liturgy’s communicativeness goes beyond a narrowly understood intellectual intelligibility. Is this reserved solely – as some claim – to the liturgy celebrated in the extraordinary form of the rite, which is supported by the mystery of Latin and increasingly hermetic sign system? The author argues that also the so-called post-conciliar liturgy has mystagogical potential, and the focus on the didactic dimension leads to a deformation of the nature of the liturgy, as its fundamental dimension is performativity and not intelligibility.
More...
The Way of a Pilgrim was written by an unknown author originated from the second half of the 19th century. This work, which has been very popular in the Orthodox world, is an introduction to the Eastern Christian hesychastic spirituality. This book is a story about the pilgrimage of a Russian peasant to various sanctuaries and monasteries in the Russian Empire. The pilgrim, with the help of his elder – the spiritual father, explores the secret of the unceasing prayer. He draws God’s wisdom from the Holy Scriptures and the Philokalia. When the pilgrim meets various people on his way, he talks to them about prayer and shares with them his own experience of God’s prayer. The article carried out an analysis of the main issues of the Way of a Pilgrim, namely: the introduction into the Jesus prayer, the transforming power of the Word of God, the fight against passions, and the importance of spiritual guidance in the life of every Christian.
More...