The Holy Land in Old Russian Culture

2000 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 250-262
Author(s):  
Richard M. Price
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
The West ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Old Russian ◽  
The Church

After the Muslim conquest of Palestine there was a comparative lull in Holy Land pilgrimage until a revival in the more settled conditions of the tenth century. The first half of the eleventh century saw a marked increase in the number of pilgrims, most notably but not exclusively from the West, as well as the restoration of the Church of the Anastasis by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX. This context explains the enthusiasm with which in the same century the Christians of Russia, within decades of their adoption of the faith, took up Holy Land pilgrimage with all the enthusiasm of recent converts.

The Date of H. Theodoroi at Athens

1933 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 163-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Megaw
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
The West ◽  
Additional Note ◽  
Byzantine Era ◽  
Greek Scholar ◽  
The Church ◽  
Contrary Evidence

In my study on the chronology of Middle-Byzantine churches after considering the contrary evidence I accepted the dated inscription in the west front of H. Theodoroi at Athens as a record of the erection of the present building. In an additional note reference was made to an article by Xyngopoulos, published after my own had gone to press. To support his dating of the church in the twelfth century he introduces new arguments which I suggested demanded a re-examination of the evidence. More recently Laurent has dealt conclusively with some of the points in connection with the inscriptions raised by the Greek scholar. But, while his verdict on their content may be accepted with confidence, for the archaeologist the question is not yet closed. Laurent's main theses are that in the first place the date on the smaller stone should be reckoned by the Byzantine era and interpreted as 1049, and, secondly, that the metrical inscription should be attributed to the eleventh century, if not earlier, in preference to the twelfth. However, of the relation of the two stones to one another and to the church into which they are built he speaks with less conviction. He favours the prima facie view that the present building was erected by Kalomalos in 1049, but, if the church is shewn on stylistic grounds to be of later date, he is prepared to dissociate both the dated and the metrical inscription from the foundation and to place the latter in the tenth century or even earlier (p. 82).

St Bernard of Clairvaux, The Low Countries and the Lisbon Letter of the Second Crusade

1997 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
The West ◽  
Latin East ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The City

On 24 December 1144 'Imad ad-Din Zengi, the Muslim ruler of Aleppo and Mosul, captured the Christian city of Edessa. This was the most serious setback suffered by the Frankish settlers in the Levant since their arrival in the region at the end of the eleventh century. In reaction the rulers of Antioch and Jerusalem dispatched envoys to the west appealing for help. The initial efforts of Pope Eugenius in and King Louis VII of France met with little response, but at Easter 1146, at Vézelay, Bernard of Clairvaux led a renewed call to save the Holy Land and the Second Crusade began to gather momentum. As the crusade developed, its aims grew beyond an expedition to the Latin East and it evolved into a wider movement of Christian expansion encom-passing further campaigns against the pagan Wends in the Baltic and the Muslims of the Iberian peninsula. One particular group of men participated in two elements of the crusade; namely, the northern Europeans who sailed via the Iberian peninsula to the Holy Land. In thecourse of this journey they achieved the major success of the Second Crusade when they captured the city of Lisbon in October 1147. This article will consider how this aspect of the expedition fitted into the conception of the crusade as a whole and will try to establish when Lisbon became the principal target for the crusaders. St Bernard's preaching tour of the Low Countries emerges as an important, yet hitherto neglected, event.

‘God Wills It’: Signs of Divine Approval in the Crusade Movement

2005 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 88-98
Author(s):  
Bernard Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Western Society ◽  
The West ◽  
First Crusade ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
To Come ◽  
Papal States ◽  
The Church

Robert the Monk, who was present at the Council of Clermont in 1095 and heard Urban II preach the crusade sermon, reports that when he had finished speaking all who were there shouted: ‘God wills it. God wills it’. The pope, Robert tells us, saw in this unanimity a sign of divine inspiration: ‘I tell you that God has drawn this response from you to express the feeling which he has inspired in your hearts’. Yet although Urban’s arguments and eloquence convinced his audience at Clermont, reactions to the crusade were more ambivalent among some people in the West, even among some of those who took the cross. This was a legacy of the ambiguous attitude of Western churchmen towards violence and warfare. Western society in the early medieval centuries was very violent, and, as Guy Halsall has rightly pointed out, the Church helped to determine the norms of violence which Christian society found acceptable. No doubt churchmen viewed their intervention primarily as a limitation exercise. From the later ninth century onwards, as the Carolingian Empire declined, the popes intermittently called on the warriors of the West to come to their aid. Indeed, in some ways the campaign of the Garigliano, conducted by a league of Byzantine and Lombard forces organized by Pope John X, who himself took part in the fighting, and which achieved its objective of ridding the Papal States of bands of Muslim raiders who had settled there, was like a rehearsal for the First Crusade. The Church further tried to influence the behaviour of Christian fighting men by encouraging the Truce and Peace of God movements in the early eleventh century, and in some areas the liturgical blessing of swords was introduced. Consequently, by 1095 the fighting men in Western Europe were accustomed to the Church hierarchy’s calling on them for help.

Liber Abbaci

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Mazur
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Number System ◽  
The West

This chapter discusses the role played by Leonardo Fibonacci's Liber abbaci in introducing modern arithmetic to the West. In the prologue of Liber abbaci, Fibonacci says he learned the nine Indian numbers used in trade when traveling with his father, meeting merchants in Egypt, Syria, Greece, and Provence. He implies that the Indian numbers were new to the merchants and wrote that the “Latin race” was lacking knowledge of the Indian method of arithmetic. The question of who introduced and influenced the practice of reckoning with Indian numerals to Europe has no simple answer, but there is no doubt that it took place from the late tenth century onward. By the end of the eleventh century, news of the Indian number system was all over Europe in the form of counters of the Gerbertian abacus marked with Indian numerals.

scholarly journals Il castello dei conti di Biandrate: indagini sulle strutture superstiti

X ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bianca Guiso ◽  
Maria Vittoria Tappari
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Po Plain ◽  
The Road ◽  
On The Road ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Village ◽  
Santa Maria ◽  
The Church

Castello dei Conti di Biandrate: surveys on the surviving structureBiandrate is a northern Italian village in the province of Novara that lies in the Po plain between the Sesia and Ticino rivers. Border area disputed between Vercelli and Novara, since the early Middle Ages it represented an important crossing point because there were the fords of the Sesia river nearby, on the road axis joining Novara and Ivrea. Its importance grew in the tenth century, when the Pieve was erected, today disappeared, dedicated to Santa Maria and, in 1029, the Counts of Pombia family settled in the Biandrate castrum. In 1168 the castrum was destroyed by the armies of Milan, allied with Novara and Vercelli, that in 1194 carved up the territory. In the second half of the thirteenth century the village of Biandrate was divided into the Borgo Vecchio, vercellese, to the west, and the Borgo Nuovo, novarese, to the east. They developed around the canonica of S. Colombano, the hospital and the ruins of the Count’s castrum. The castrum, almost totally destroyed, continued to represent an area with particular rights: in fact the Statues established that the Podestà could pronounce sentences only “in castro veteri Blanderati”. Nowadays the collegiata of S. Colombano stands on the Biandrate castrum ruins; the collegiata was mentioned for the first time in 1146, but was altered various times over the centuries. In particular, portions of the ancient wall are visible in the lower part of the west wall of the church of Santa Caterina, incorporated within the complex of the collegiate of S. Colombano. It is noticed that the ancient castrum had very thick walls made primarily with river pebbles, roughly cut stones in a herringbone pattern and binding mortar.

Kingship, Social Change, and the Church, 867–1066

2018 ◽  
pp. 187-223
Author(s):  
Thomas Pickles
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
Christian Society

Chapter 5 considers the relationship between kingship, social change, and the church during Scandinavian and West Saxon conquest, and incorporation into the English kingdom. It uses contemporary annals preserved in later contexts, tenth- and eleventh-century histories, coins, settlement and cemetery archaeology, and distributions of metalwork to reconstruct social and political frameworks and investigate religious patronage. It begins by establishing the outlines of Scandinavian conquest and rule 867–954. It proceeds to suggest that a Northumbrian people and kingdom continued to exist, and that political actors sought to rule the Northumbrians as a whole. It observes the instabilities faced by Scandinavian rulers thanks to their own followers, indigenous Christian society, migrants, and social change, arguing that this made alliance with the church an attractive prospect. It analyses the West Saxon conquest and the instabilities it produced for English kings and their representatives, prompting further alliance with the church.

‘Judith’: The Homily and the Poem

Traditio ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 83-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Pringle
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Direct Relevance ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Conspiracy Of Silence ◽  
Book Of Judith ◽  
The Church ◽  
Recent Interpretation

Recent interpretations of the Old English poem Judith have discussed it either in the light of the interpretations suggested by Ælfric, or in terms of widely known patristic treatments which antedate the poem. Thus Professor J. E. Cross refers to Ælfric's Letter to Sigeweard, and discusses the poem as an exhortation intended for ‘contemporary stiffening’ of resistance to the invading Danes. Professor B. F. Huppé, who cites both the Letter to Sigeweard and the peroration of Ælfric's homily on Judith, revives an interpretation originally proposed by T. G. Foster in 1892, and later supported by A. S. Cook in his 1904 edition of the poem: that the heroine Judith was meant to represent Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, in her victorious exploits against the Vikings of the eastern Danelaw, so that the poem is a celebration of English success in countering Danish attacks. This particular interpretation was discussed by Timmer in his introduction to the Methuen edition of Judith, and dismissed, primarily for the reason that there is no evidence that an Old English poem written about a religious figure could symbolize a secular hero. A perhaps more compelling reason for dismissing Huppé's interpretation is the West Saxon ‘conspiracy of silence’ about Æthelflæd: a southern poet of the tenth century would hardly have praised the Mercian leader when West Saxon policy was to cast ‘a blanket of official silence over all [her] achievements.’ In more general terms, however, Huppé agrees with Cross that the poem is a patriotic work, with ‘direct relevance’ to the situation in England, and he elaborates on the idea that the heroine is depicted as an example of ‘heroic virtue.’ In this, his interpretation relates to a third recent interpretation, that of Jackson J. Campbell. Like Huppé, Campbell considers the poem in the light of the exegetical commentaries on the Vulgate Book of Judith. There are not a great number of these, but they are all similar, or easy to relate to one another. The Fathers discuss Judith tropologically as an example of chaste widowhood, or simply as an example of chastity, ‘chaste purity’ (Aldhelm), the life of the dedicated contemplative, vowed to chastity (Jerome); in this case Holofernes represents the flesh, or carnal temptation, ‘the vice of the wicked flesh’ (Aldhelm). Secondly, they see her as a type of the Church, cutting off the head of the Old Serpent symbolized by Holofernes. Most Anglo-Saxons who knew the story of Judith would probably have known these stock interpretations; in particular Campbell shows how the poem suggests the interpretation that Judith is a type of Ecclesia.

The church in the West Highlands in the late middle ages

2003 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-46
Author(s):  
A. D. M. Barrell
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Church

Духовное влияние советского строя на иерархов и духовенство в 1960-е—1980-е годы (SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE OF THE SOVIET SYSTEM ON HIERARCHS AND CLERGY IN THE 1960-s – 1980-s)

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Олег Викторович (Oleg V.) Кириченко (Kirichenko)
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Study ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
The West ◽  
The Church

Статья посвящена малоизученному явлению – церковному инакомыслию, которое было порождено влиянием «советской духовности» не только на общество, но и на Церковь. Автор ставит проблему инакомыслия и диссидентства как явлений, выросших в недрах высшей советской номенклатуры и потом уже распространившихся на низшие слои, затронувшие и церковную среду. Апелляция к Западу, как к третейскому судье, была закономерным явлением советской действительности, что требует научной проработки и объяснения. The article is devoted to a little-studied phenomenon – church dissent, which was generated by the influence of "Soviet spirituality" not only on society, but also on the Church. The author poses the problem of dissent and dissidentism as phenomena that grew up in the the higher Soviet nomenclature and then spread to the lower layers, affecting the church environment. An appeal to the West as an arbitrator was a natural phenomenon of Soviet reality, which requires scientific study and explanation.

Rimsky-Korsakov and His World

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Great Influence ◽  
Igor Stravinsky ◽  
The West ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
Russian Composers ◽  
General Aspects

During his lifetime, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) was a composer whose work had great influence not only in his native Russia but also internationally. While he remains well-known in Russia—where many of his fifteen operas and various orchestral pieces are still in the standard repertoire—very little of his work is performed in the West today beyond Scheherezade and arrangements of The Flight of the Bumblebee. In Western writings, he appears mainly in the context of the Mighty Handful, a group of five Russian composers to which he belonged at the outset of his career. This book finally gives the composer center stage and due attention. In this book, Rimsky-Korsakov's major operas, The Snow Maiden, Mozart and Salieri, and The Golden Cockerel, receive multifaceted exploration and are carefully contextualized within the wider Russian culture of the era. The discussion of these operas is accompanied and enriched by the composer's letters to Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel, the distinguished soprano for whom he wrote several leading roles. Other chapters look at more general aspects of Rimsky-Korsakov's work and examine his far-reaching legacy as a professor of composition and orchestration, including his impact on his most famous pupil Igor Stravinsky.

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