A church with a Roman inscription in Tairia, Monemvasia

2002 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 469-490
Author(s):  
Alexander G. Kalligas ◽  
Haris A. Kalligas ◽  
Ronald S. Stroud

In Tairia, at a distance of about 10 km from Monemvasia, is a small complex of two Byzantine churches, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin and Ag. Anna. Each has a simple one-aisled plan covered by a barrel vault with an intermediate arch. Wall paintings exist in both churches dating from the twelfth, the thirteenth century, and later. The church of the Assumption, or Theotokos, is older and could be dated to the tenth century and thus identified with the church mentioned in a contemporary source, the Life of St. Theodore of Kythira. Ag. Anna imitates the plan of the older church and seems to have occupied the place of earlier service buildings. Built in, on the top of the altar table in the church of the Assumption, is a marble slab with a completely preserved Greek inscription of the Roman period, consisting of five lines which cover the whole surface of the slab and commemorate the dedication to the deities of the Imperial cult (Θεοί Σεστοί) and to a πόλις, the name of which is not known, of a makellon by three Roman citizens out of their own funds. The most probable date for the inscription seems to be the second century AD, but, even though makella existed in few Peloponnesian cities, neither the polis where the establishment was erected is known, nor can the dedicators be safely identified.

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 153-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Aronberg Lavin

By the end of the thirteenth century, the Church of Rome defined human marriage as incomplete before consummation in virtuous carnal intercourse. This article focuses on Cimabue’s emotionally charged and sexually explicit fresco representation of the Assumption of the Virgin, and shows that its stylistic verisimilitude makes visible human love as proof of the spiritual miracle of the Mystic Marriage of Christ and Maria-Ecclesia.


1985 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 57-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Cutler

At least as early as the day, nearly eighty years ago, when Hans Rott gained access to “Doghalikilise” through an entrance reduced to a narrow cleft by heaps of rubble and alluvial soil, the monument has been recognized as the largest and most important in Göreme. Many of the wall-paintings of both the Old and the New Church at Tokalı were published by Jerphanion who correctly appreciated the relative chronology of these successive phases. This pioneering and still fundamental survey was supplemented by the excellent photographs of Jeannine Le Brun in Restle's corpus of 1967. In the same year, Cormack suggested on stylistic and iconographic grounds a probable date of ca. 913–920 for the decoration of the Old Church, a period little less than half a century before its relatively gigantic successor was cut transversely across its eastern end. Now, within a year or two, Tokalı Kilise will receive the ultimate accolade of monographic treatment by Ann Wharton Epstein in a book which treats the church as a cultural whole and finally recognizes the frescoes in the New Church as the supreme achievement of Byzantine wall-painting to survive from the tenth century.


2002 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-285
Author(s):  
DAVID COX

In the twelfth or thirteenth century the monks of Evesham Abbey, an ancient Benedictine foundation in Worcester diocese, seem to have altered their domestic chronicle so as to conceal the decisive role of Oswald, bishop of Worcester, in the tenth-century reform of their house; after c. 1100 the abbey was anxious to suppress evidence of Evesham's early dependence on the church of Worcester lest the post-Conquest bishops should use it in the papal courts to refute Evesham's current case for exemption. Privately, however, the monks continued to honour St Oswald and their relic of his arm; he had become a political embarrassment, but in heaven he remained their spiritual friend.


Zograf ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 91-105
Author(s):  
Maria Agrevi

The church of St Theodore (also known as "Sts Theodoroi") at Platanos, Kynouria, is a single-nave building of small dimensions. The interior surfaces of its walls preserve their Byzantine paintings, which are partially visible under the coat of plaster that covers most of them. The paintings exhibit affinity with wall-paintings of churches in the Peloponnese (neighbouring Laconia included), and can be dated to the last quarter of the thirteenth century.


1973 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 18-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Riley

The quantity of stratified coarse pottery from Sidi Khrebish has been considerable and preliminary study has of necessity been concentrated on important groups from sealed contexts which span the period from the second century B.C. to the seventh century A.D.The earliest group is from a cistern of second century B.C. date; the next is from excavation underneath Roman period concrete floors which produced mid-first century A.D. material, while the largest group is from the infill of Roman period cisterns and destruction levels and can be dated to the mid-third century A.D. Information is somewhat scanty for the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. but groups of pottery representing the Byzantine period were recovered in some quantity from the destruction levels of the church and its cistern. A good group of Islamic glazed fine ware and coarse ware was associated with late occupation within the church.Space does not permit more than a brief survey of the most common and distinctive coarse ware forms from the excavation.In general, throughout the period of Berenice, the locally made coarse ware form shapes seem to have been influenced from the Eastern Mediterranean, especially in the second and third centuries A.D.The commonest form of second century B.C. cooking pot is rounded, having a short neck with two vertical ‘strap’ handles from the shoulder merging with the rim (fig. 1). Another distinguishing feature of pottery from this period is a semicircular handle from the body with an indentation at the top where it has been pressed to the rim (fig. 2). Both types are of the distinctive local ‘fossil gritted ware’, the fabric of which ranges from orange brown to dark pink. The clay contains fairly large roughly circular flat flakes of bluish-grey grit, which, when split open, reveal segmented spiral fossil remains. This fabric is very common in all periods.


2006 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 66-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Bagshaw ◽  
Richard Bryant ◽  
Michael Hare

The church of St Mary at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire is well known for its Anglo-Saxon fabric and sculpture. In 1993 a painting of an Anglo-Saxon figure was discovered, and in 2002 it became possible for the authors to study the painting in detail.The painting is on one of a pair of triangular-headed stone panels set high in the internal east wall of the church. The discovery provides a significant addition to the tiny corpus of known Anglo-Saxon wall paintings. The identity of the standing, nimbed figure remains elusive, but the figure can be tentatively dated on art historical grounds to the middle to late tenth century.The authors also explore the structural context of the painting. It is suggested that in the first half of the ninth century the church had an upper floor over the central space (the present east end), and that this floor possibly extended over the whole church. At the east end, there were internal openings from this upper floor into a high-level space in the polygonal apse. At a later date two of these openings were blocked and covered by stone panels, one of which is the subject of this paper. It is possible that the panels flanked a high-level altar or an opening through which a shrine, set on a high-level floor in the apse, could be viewed.


Zograf ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 87-109
Author(s):  
Leonela Fundic

The paper deals with the wall paintings in the Church of St. Nicholas tes Rhodias near Arta. Many scenes and individual figures are identified for the first time, and the majority of inscriptions on the frescoes are deciphered. A significant part of the text consists of a detailed analysis of the iconographic program, with particular emphasis on the iconography and style of certain depictions, which are seldom encountered in Byzantine wall painting, or possess specific features. The findings suggest that the decoration should be dated in the second half of the thirteenth century.


Zograf ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 37-52
Author(s):  
Silvia Pasi

The fragmentarily preserved frescoes of the Church of Al-Adra in the monastery of Deir el-Baramus were fortunately discovered in 1986. They are located in the apse, on the southern wall of the altar area and along the walls of the nave. The condition of the frescoes makes it difficult to give a stylistic evaluation, and it is hard to determine the chronology of the frescoes because of the lack of literary sources and inscriptions. The style of the painting and the architectural data on the church lead one to dating all the preserved frescoes of Deir-el-Baramus to the same period. It probably involves the period after the repair of the central and lateral aisles, which probably took place after 1200. Apart from that, a comparison with other works from the same epoch indicates that the thirteenth century was most probably the time when the frescoes came into being.


1969 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Biddle

SummaryRoman, Saxon, and medieval levels were examined in 1968. At Castle Yard the north end of the Norman andlater castle was uncovered. At Lankhills fifty fourth-century graves were excavated. In Lower Brook Street open-area excavation was continued into mid thirteenth-century levels on four house-plots and on St. Mary's Church, where twelve phases can now be recognized between c. 1250 and c. 1470. St. Pancras Church was located. On the Cathedral site no Belgic occupation was found. A late second- to early third-century addition to the forum was excavated, and much of its painted wall-plaster recovered. The structure was abandoned c. A.D. 300. A laterally apsed tenth-century crossing was found in the Old Minster linking two earlier buildings. After his translation in gjl from outside the church, St. Swithun's shrine appears to have stood within this link-building. At Wolvesey Roman buildings were excavated, and additions were made to the plan of the Norman palace. A second halljchamber-block of c. 1129–35 has been planned. In an appendix D. M. Wilson considers an important decorated bronze strap-end of c. A.D. 1000 found on the Old Minster site.


Author(s):  
Michael Lapidge

The Roman Martyrs contains translations of forty Latin passiones of saints who were martyred in Rome or its near environs, during the period before the ‘peace of the Church’ (c. 312). Some of these Roman martyrs are universally known — SS. Agnes, Sebastian or Laurence, for example — but others are scarcely known outside the ecclesiastical landscape of Rome itself. Each of the translated passiones, which vary in length from a few paragraphs to over ninety, is accompanied by an individual introduction and commentary; the translations are preceded by an Introduction which describes the principal features of this little-known genre of Christian literature. The Roman passiones martyrum have never previously been collected together, and have never been translated into a modern language. They were mostly composed during the period 425 x 675, by anonymous authors who who were presumably clerics of the Roman churches or cemeteries which housed the martyrs’ remains. It is clear that they were composed in response to the huge explosion of pilgrim traffic to martyrial shrines from the late fourth century onwards, at a time when authentic records (protocols) of their trials and executions had long since vanished, and the authors of the passiones were obliged to imagine the circumstances in which martyrs were tried and executed. The passiones are works of pure fiction; and because they abound in ludicrous errors of chronology, they have been largely ignored by historians of the early Church. But although they cannot be used as evidence for the original martyrdoms, they nevertheless allow a fascinating glimpse of the concerns which animated Christians during the period in question: for example, the preservation of virginity, or the ever-present threat posed by pagan practices. And because certain aspects of Roman life will have changed little between (say) the second century and the fifth, the passiones throw valuable light on many aspects of Roman society, not least the nature of a trial before an urban prefect, and the horrendous tortures which were a central feature of such trials. Above all, perhaps, the passiones are an indispensable resource for understanding the topography of late antique Rome and its environs, since they characteristically contain detailed reference to the places where the martyrs were tried, executed, and buried. The book contains five Appendices containing translations of texts relevant to the study of Roman martyrs: the Depositio martyrum of A.D. 354 (Appendix I); the epigrammata of Pope Damasus d. 384) which pertain to Roman martyrs treated in the passiones (II); entries pertaining to Roman martyrs in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (III); entries in seventh-century pilgrim itineraries pertaining to shrines of Roman martyrs in suburban cemeteries (IV); and entries commemorating these martyrs in early Roman liturgical books (V).


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