scholarly journals The Image of an Architect and Masonic Symbols in Works by Milorad Pavić

Author(s):  
Zoriana Huk

The paper analyzes works by the Serbian postmodernist writer Milorad Pavić. It attempts to prove that he possesses knowledge of royal art and uses masonic symbols in his writing related to geometry and architecture, including the radiant delta, compass, masonic gloves, and clepsydra. It is assumed that under the influence of these particular ideas, the writer creates the leading image of an architect and the motif of construction as freemasons believe in the Great Architect of the Universe. In the short novel Damascene, according to speculative masonry’s beliefs, the building of the church projects the building of a temple in a human soul. M. Pavić, as an architect, creates a structure of every novel, which he identifies with the golden section. This paper finds special symbols of the divine proportion in his prose, including snail’s shells, pyramids, and violins. A dynamic structure as an embodiment of the open work concept and a broad spectrum of themes provide artistic communication with a creative recipient. A reader has an opportunity to choose their own style of reading and solving textual puzzles because Pavić’s prose represents a wide variety of themes, symbols, images, and allusions that embody the secrets of Freemasonry, allowing for various interpretations.

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gyan Bahadur Thapa ◽  
Rena Thapa

The Golden Ratio, mathematics and aesthetics are intricately related among each other. In this paper, we exhibit the presence of mathematics in aesthetic impression that appears in nature, classic art, architecture, logo design and much more. The divine proportion can be found in music, poetry and other forms of art, however our focus here is only in the visual ones. The Golden ratio is considered sacred due to its relationship to nature and even the construction of the universe and the human body. It has been used for centuries in the construction of architectural masterpieces by the great artists, who, being able to see its beauty used it in their designs and compositions. We explain how the applications of the Golden ratio in architectures, paintings and geometrical shapes create the mystery of beauty. Further we present the existence of the divine proportion in human body and natural flora and fauna. There are a diverse number of directions, paths and tangents to which the study of this beautiful concept could take us. Besides mathematicians and artists, we expect that this paper will be interesting for general readers as well.  Journal of the Institute of Engineering, 2018, 14(1): 188-199


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 76
Author(s):  
Maria Fernanda García Marino

The aim of this contribution is to demonstrate through the study of the concrete example of the Charterhouse di San Lorenzo in Padula (Province of Salerno, Italy) how and to what extent, the utopian value of the spirituality of the Carthusian monks - inspired by the model of the Desert Fathers and the Church of primitive Christianity, devoted to the practices of strict enclosure, of rigorous abstinence, of meditation, of contemplation and of prayer - has affected the definition and development of a specific iconography; both for what concerns the figurative arts, which have as a milestone the theme of martyrdom and angels (the creatures closest to God), present within the monasteries of the order, both for what interests the architectural structure of buildings. Always the same as themselves, especially for the design, distribution and function of the spaces, which as a whole and in particular, they reflect, strictly and everywhere, the immutability of the Carthusian Rule, never changed since the foundation of the order in 1084. Following the model of the first monastery, built on the Chartreuse massif, in Grenoble (France), made by St. Bruno of Cologne, new settlements were erected and spread throughout Europe, with an exponential growth that does not suffer interruptions until the end of eighteenth century and that, left a deep and unequivocal cultural mark in the territory on which they extended. The Charterhouse model, a kind of Earthly Jerusalem like an imitation of the Celestial Jerusalem, can be well included in the universe of utopian architecture, but of the possible ones, where spirituality became tangible reality and where the sacredness of space conceived and built by the monks puts us in touch today the man with sensitive and perceptible experience, the so-called hierophany.


Author(s):  
Alessandro Scafi

Examining the criticism of the Islamic idea of heaven in medieval Christianity sheds light on the development during this period of the Christian understanding of human marriage as a sacrament of God’s love. For Christians it was marriage that gave full meaning and dignity to sex, and it was precisely the bridal imagery that distinguished their use of sexual imagery from the simplistic sensual renderings of heaven found in Islamic writings. The resemblance between the sacrament of marriage and the divine exemplar was more than a mere analogy: the physical union of a man and a woman within marriage was an actual embodiment of the sacred union between Christ and the Church, Mary and Christ, God and the human soul.


Author(s):  
David Braine

The Christian theory of ‘sacraments’ underlies ideas of a general ‘sacramentality’ in the universe whereby ordinary things have religious significance by their own nature or by virtue of some hidden power within them. The pre-Christian Latin word sacramentum meant a non-returnable gift marking the taking on of some binding obligation; more informally it meant an oath, and later a secret or mystery. Latin theology turned it to Christian use, initially in rough translation of the Greek mysterion, applied to the Church, to the Scriptures and to Old as well as New Testament rites. The word then became the predominant medieval and modern term specifically designating those rites in permanent use in the Church which human authority was conceived not to be free to abolish, add to or change in their essentials. Each such rite presupposes that the creaturely things used have some aptitude which allows or invites the particular ritual use concerned, that is, which presupposes some more general sacramental potential in natural things. The conceptual tools developed in Catholic theology – ‘effective sign’, ‘matter and form’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘authority’, ‘power’ and ‘institution’ – sharpen enquiry into the phenomenology of rituals within many different religious traditions.


Author(s):  
Shams C. Inati

The discussion of the human soul, its existence, nature, ultimate objective and eternity, occupies a highly important position in Islamic philosophy and forms its main focus. For the most part Muslim philosophers agreed, as did their Greek predecessors, that the soul consists of non-rational and rational parts. The non-rational part they divided into the plant and animal souls, the rational part into the practical and the theoretical intellects. All believed that the non-rational part is linked essentially to the body, but some considered the rational part as separate from the body by nature and others that all the parts of the soul are by nature material. The philosophers agreed that, while the soul is in the body, its non-rational part is to manage the body, its practical intellect is to manage worldly affairs, including those of the body, and its theoretical intellect is to know the eternal aspects of the universe. They thought that the ultimate end or happiness of the soul depends on its ability to separate itself from the demands of the body and to focus on grasping the eternal aspects of the universe. All believed that the non-rational soul comes into being and unavoidably perishes. Some, like al-Farabi, believed that the rational soul may or may not survive eternally; others, like Ibn Sina, believed that it has no beginning and no end; still others, such as Ibn Rushd, believed that the soul with all its individual parts comes into existence and is eventually destroyed.


Author(s):  
Turner Nevitt ◽  
Brian Davies

This chapter presents Thomas Aquinas’s Quodlibet XII, which dates from his second Parisian regency (the second time Aquinas functioned as a master in Paris). It contains Aquinas’s answers to questions about were about God, angels, and heaven. Specifically, the questions deal with: God’s existence; God’s power; God’s predestination; angels; the heavens; the human soul; human knowledge; consequences of human knowledge; the sacrament of baptism: the sacrament of penance; an effect of the sacraments; the identity of the Church; the intellectual virtue of truth; the moral virtues; restitution: the office of commentators on sacred scripture; the office of preachers; the office of confessors; the office of vicars; original sin; actual sins of thought; actual sins of action; and punishments.


Traditio ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 63-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland J. Teske

William of Auvergne became a master of theology in the University of Paris in 1223 and was appointed bishop of Paris by Gregory IX in 1228. William governed the church of Paris until his death in 1249, while continuing to write the works which constitute his immense Magisterium divinale et sapientiale. Despite the fact that he was the first of the thirteenth-century theologians to appreciate the value of the Aristotelian philosophy that poured into the Latin West during the last half of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, his writings have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Étienne Gilson has sketched well the impact of the influx of Greek and Arabian philosophical works into the Christian West: Up to the last years of the twelfth century, when the Christian world unexpectedly discovered the existence of non-Christian interpretations of the universe, Christian theology never had to concern itself with the fact that a non-Christian interpretation of the world as a whole, including man and his destiny, was still an open possibility.


Author(s):  
Cillian O'Hogan

Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Christian Latin poet who wrote in a variety of genres and metres. Born in northern Spain, in 348ce, he had a career in public administration before retiring to write poetry. His major works include the Liber Cathemerinon (poems keyed to the liturgy and religious calendar), Psychomachia (an allegorical epic on the battle between Virtues and Vices for the human soul), and the Liber Peristephanon (lyric poems in praise of the early martyrs of the church). Prudentius was particularly influenced by the works of Virgil and Horace, and aimed in his poetry to combine the form and language of classical Latin poetry with the message of Christianity. The most important Christian Latin poet of late antiquity, Prudentius was extremely influential throughout the Middle Ages.


1997 ◽  
Vol 53 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Botma ◽  
J. H. Koekemoer

The phenomenon of the unity-diversity of the church: A conversation with Calvin This article engages' in a critical dialogue with Calvin's conception of the unity-diversity of the church. Calvin, by understanding faith as the believer's personal relationship with God, stresses the dynamic character of the church. Concerning unity and diversity, Calvin held the view that there is only one Christ. Calvin distinguished between fundamental and secondary truths. In Calvin's view the redemption in Christ is reported monotonously in the New Testament. Contrary to Calvin the article shows that there are diverse interpretations of the Jesus-'Sache' in' the New Testament itself. However, in appreciation of Calvin, it is argued that he - because of the dynamic structure of the church - did not insist on one visible form of organisation for the church.


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