The Extinction of Paganism and the Church Historian

1984 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Bonner
Keyword(s):  
Virgin Mary ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Great Mother ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Miracles Of The Virgin ◽  
The Church ◽  
What Matters

Any period of history which later ages deem to have been significant is apt to gather to itself a mythology. To the medieval Church the first three Christian centuries appeared as a period of continuous slaughter, in which legions of martyrs preferred to perish rather than deny their faith in Christ. With such an assumption it was inevitable that the extinction of paganism during the years which followed the conversion of Constantine should be seen as a pious work undertaken in conformity with God's will – gesta Dei per Christianos – and when Julian the Apostate attempted to turn back the tide, he was duly slain by two warrior saints sent for the purpose from heaven – a legend which had sufficient vitality eventually to find its way into the Ethiopic Miracles of the Virgin Mary, with Julian transformed into a gigantic artisan named Gôlyâd, who threatens to destroy a monastery and is slain by a martyred knight raised by Our Lady to that end. On the pagan side we have the well-known story of how Serena, wife of Stilicho and favourite niece of Theodosius the Great, took a necklace from the image of the Great Mother for her own adornment and mocked and humiliated an aged vestal virgin who denounced her. At a later date, when Alaric the Goth threatened Rome, Serena was suspected of treachery and strangled. To the pagan historian Zosimus her fate was the reward of her impiety, and it seemed fitting that the neck which had usurped the goddess's ornament would at the last be encircled by the executioner's rope. The factual truth of these stories is not, for our purposes, important. What matters is the witness that they provide to the mythological – or, if you prefer it, the theological – interpretations which were early given to the victory of Christianity.

Iconostasis of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Nakonechne village - the most complete iconostasis ensemble of the XVI century

2019 ◽  
pp. 73-88
Author(s):  
Mariia Helytovych
Keyword(s):  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Xvii Century ◽  
Blessed Virgin Mary ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Church

The article contains an analysis of the iconostasis of the Assumption of Mary Church located in the vil. Nakonechne (Yavoriv district, Lviv region), which represents the most fully preserved iconostasis ensemble of the XVI century. For the first time, its reconstruction was completed taking into account all saved icons. The article deals with stylistic, iconographic and artistic features of this ensemble, as well as its connection with other iconostases of that time. More precisely, the dating of the monument is argued. In the article, the author suggests to consider an ensemble from Nakonechne as a phenomenon in the history of Ukrainian icon painting, which reflected the most characteristic tendencies that took place in the painting of the second half of the XVI century. The author traces his influence on the iconography of the end of the XVI – the beginning of the XVII century

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Mason
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Communal Experience ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Church ◽  
Francis Of Assisi

This chapter locates Rossetti in the context of the book’s ecotheological argument, which traces an ecological love command in her writing through her engagement with Tractarianism, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Church Fathers, and Francis of Assisi. It establishes her Anglo-Catholic imagining of the cosmos as a fabric of participation and communal experience embodied in Christ. The first section reads Rossetti in the context of current Victorian ecocriticism, which underplays the role of Christianity in the development of nineteenth-century environmentalism. The next sections question critical readings of Rossetti as a reclusive thinker and argue instead for an educated and politicized Christian for whom indifference to the spiritual is complicit with an environmental crisis in which the weak and vulnerable suffer most. This introduction also refers to the wider field of Rossetti studies and introduces her reading of grace and apocalypse as a major contribution to the intradiscipline of Christianity and ecology.

Fiduciary Principles in the Canon Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 489-504
Author(s):  
Richard H. Helmholz
Keyword(s):  
Canon Law ◽  
Fiduciary Duty ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
English Court ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
Trust Law ◽  
The Church ◽  
Court Practice

This chapter discusses the scope of principles of fiduciary duty as they appear in the canon law. It first provides a historical background on canon law and its relation to fiduciary law, noting that the medieval church and principles of fiduciary duty were interconnected in direct and positive ways. In fact, the church was governed by many of the same principles of fiduciary law that are found in modern trust law, and these principles were fully and authoritatively stated in the Corpus iuris canonici during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The chapter proceeds by analyzing the Corpus iuris canonici and its two books: Gratian’s Concordia discordantium canonum, also known as the Decretum, and the books of Decretals. It also traces the development of fiduciary law inherent in some of the canonical texts and explains how fiduciary principles came to be enforced in the canon law, citing examples of the width of the scope of fiduciary principles found in English court practice, including a duty applied only to the clergy. Finally, it considers whether the modern law of trusts was shaped in any way by canonical influence.

scholarly journals The Metamorphosis of Written Devotion in the Age of Vatican II (c. 1948–c. 1998) in Hungary—Guestbooks in Hungarian Marian Shrines

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 235
Author(s):  
Krisztina Frauhammer
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Combined Effect ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The Public ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Personal Prayer ◽  
The Church

This article presents the Hungarian manifestations of a written devotional practice that emerged in the second half of the 20th century worldwide: the rite of writing prayers in guestbooks or visitors’ books and spontaneously leaving prayer slips in shrines. Guestbooks or visitors’ books, a practice well known in museums and exhibitions, have appeared in Hungarian shrines for pilgrims to record requests, prayers, and declarations of gratitude. This is an unusual use of guestbooks, as, unlike regular guestbook entries, they contain personal prayers, which are surprisingly honest and self-reflective. Another curiosity of the books and slips is that anybody can see and read them, because they are on display in the shrines, mostly close to the statue of Virgin Mary. They allow the researcher to observe a special communication situation, the written representation of an informal, non-formalised, personal prayer. Of course, this is not unknown in the practice of prayer; what is new here is that it takes place in the public realm of a shrine, in written form. This paper seeks answers to the question of what genre antecedents, what patterns of behaviour, and which religious practices have led to the development of this recent practice of devotion in the examined period in Hungarian Catholic shrines. In connection with this issue, this paper would like to draw attention to the combined effect of the following three factors: the continuity of traditions, the emergence of innovative elements and the role of the church as an institution. Their parallel interactions help us to understand the guestbooks of the shrines.

scholarly journals “‘But the Fountain Sprang Up and the Bird Sang Down’: Heidegger’s Gathering of the Fourfold and the Seven-Sacraments Font at Salle, Norfolk.”

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 464
Author(s):  
Marie Clausén
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Art History ◽  
Architectural Elements ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
As If

My paper analyses the 15th-century seven-sacraments font at the medieval church of St Peter and St Paul at Salle in Norfolk (England). The church guides and gazetteers that describe the font, and the church in which it is situated, owe both their style and content to Art History, focusing as they do on their material and aesthetic dimensions. The guides also tend towards isolating the various elements of the font, and these in turn from the rest of the architectural elements, fittings and furniture of the church, as if they could be meaningfully experienced or interpreted as discrete entities, in isolation from one another. While none of the font descriptions can be faulted for being inaccurate, they can, as a result of these tendencies, be held insufficient, and not quite to the purpose. My analysis of the font, by means of Heidegger’s concept of Dwelling, does not separate the font either from the rest of the church, nor from other fonts, but acknowledges that it comes to be, and be seen as, what it is only when considered as standing in ‘myriad referential relations’ to other things, as well as to ourselves. This perspective has enabled me to draw out what it is about the font at Salle that can be experienced as not merely beautiful or interesting, but also as meaningful to those—believers and non-believers alike—who encounter it. By reconsidering the proper mode of perceiving and engaging with the font, we may spare it from being commodified, from becoming a unit in the standing reserve of cultural heritage, and in so doing, we, too, may be momentarily freed from our false identities as units of production and agents of consumption. The medieval fonts and churches of Norfolk are, I argue, not valuable as a result of their putative antiquarian qualities, but invaluable in their extending to us a possibility of dwelling—as mortals—on the earth—under the sky—before the divinities.

The medieval church of Montrose: a place ‘of much antiquity and abundantly populous’

2014 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catriona Anna Gray
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Date ◽  
Plausible Candidate ◽  
External Evidence ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Local Tradition ◽  
The Church

Montrose was one of Scotland's earliest royal burghs, but historians have largely overlooked its parish kirk. A number of fourteenth and fifteenth-century sources indicate that the church of Montrose was an important ecclesiastical centre from an early date. Dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, by the later middle ages it was a place of pilgrimage linked in local tradition with the cult of Saint Boniface of Rosemarkie. This connection with Boniface appears to have been of long standing, and it is argued that the church of Montrose is a plausible candidate for the lost Egglespether, the ‘church of Peter’, associated with the priory of Restenneth. External evidence from England and Iceland appears to identify Montrose as the seat of a bishop, raising the possibility that it may also have been an ultimately unsuccessful rival for Brechin as the episcopal centre for Angus and the Mearns.

Church Discipline in the Later Middle Ages: the Priors of Durham as Archdeacons

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
Margaret Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Church Discipline ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Church Courts ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

It is often forgotten that the medieval Church imposed public penance and reconciliation by law. The discipline was administered by the church courts, among which one of the most important, because it acted at local level, was that of the archdeacon. In the later Middle Ages and certainly by 1435, the priors of Durham were archdeacons in all the churches appropriated to the monastery. The priors had established their rights in Durham County by the early fourteenth century and in Northumberland slightly later. Although the origins of this peculiar jurisdiction were long ago unravelled by Barlow, there is no full account of how it worked in practice. Yet it is not difficult from the Durham archives to elicit a coherent account, with examples, of the way penance and ecclesiastical justice were administered from day to day in the Durham area in this period. The picture that emerges from these documents, though not in itself unusual, is nevertheless valuable and affords an extraordinary degree of detail which is missing from other places, where the evidence no longer exists. This study should complement the recent work by Larry Poos for Lincoln and Wisbech, drawing attention to an institution which would reward further research. It is only possible here to outline what the court did and how and why it was used.

The Situation of Catholic Instruction in Transylvania during the Communist Takeover

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
László Holló
Keyword(s):  
Religious Education ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
God's Will ◽  
School Network ◽  
One Year ◽  
The Moment ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Catholic Church

"In less than one year, the Catholic Church, just like the other denominations, lost its school network built along the centuries. This was the moment when the bishop wrote: “No one can resent if we shed tears over the loss of our schools and educational institutions”. Moreover, he stated that he would do everything to re-store the injustice since they could not resent if we used all the legal possibilities and instruments to retrieve our schools that we were illegally dispossessed of. Furthermore, he evaluated the situation realistically and warned the families to be more responsible. He emphasized the parents’ responsibility. First and foremost, the mother was the child’s first teacher of religion. She taught him the first prayers; he heard about God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the angels from his mother for the first time. He asked for the mothers’ and the parents’ support also in mastering the teachings of the faith. Earlier, he already instructed the priests to organize extramu-ral biblical classes for the children and youth. At this point, he asked the families to cooperate effectively, especially to lead an ardent, exemplary religious life, so that the children would grow up in a religious and moral life according to God’s will, learn-ing from the parents’ examples. And just as on many other occasions throughout history, the Catholic Church started building again. It did not build spectacular-looking churches and schools but rather modest catechism halls to bring communities together. These were the places where the priests of the dioceses led by the bishop’s example and assuming all the persecutions, incessantly educated the school children to the love of God and of their brethren, and the children even more zealously attended the catechism classes, ignoring their teachers’ prohibitions. Keywords: Márton Áron, Diocese of Transylvania, confessional religious education, communism, nationalization of catholic schools, Catholic Church in Romania in 1948."

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