Orientation of Gothic-Mudéjar Churches in Southern Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
José M. Abril
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Southern Spain ◽  
Published Data ◽  
Anticlockwise Rotation ◽  
New Churches ◽  
Technical Capacity ◽  
Orientation Pattern ◽  
The Church ◽  
Local Horizon ◽  
Foundation Stone

Most of the earliest new churches built in Andalusia (southern Spain) following the thirteenth-century Christian Reconquista occupied the sites of former mosques. In some cases, these churches incorporated pre-existing architectonic elements – particularly minarets, which were converted into bell towers – or took some inspiration from Islamic architecture, creating a combination of Gothic style and elements from Muslim architecture known as Gothic-Mudéjar. This paper analyses the orientation pattern of a group of 68 Gothic-Mudéjar churches built in the cities of re-conquered Andalusia up to the early fifteenth century, and the normalised frequency distribution of azimuths is compared with published data for the qibla (the direction toward which Muslims turn to pray) observed at a group of 82 Andalusian mosques. Results confirm that a large number of churches were oriented via a 90° anticlockwise rotation from orientation to the qibla after placing the apse in the former eastern wall of the mosque. It is further argued, based on the histogram and a distinctive peak around 84°, that the architects aligned these churches to sunrise over the local horizon for 25th March according to the Julian calendar, the date of the canonical equinox. This practice reflects Church teaching and a medieval foundation-stone rite involving a dawn vigil, and the built structures reflect the limited technical capacity of the church builders. The method of orientation would also have created a precedent for the alignment of some later churches in southern Spain dedicated to the Virgin of the Assumption to sunrise on 15th August, the Feast of the Assumption.

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.

Seven Sacraments Compositions in English Medieval Art

1929 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. McN. Rushforth
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Great Tradition ◽  
Speculum Humanae Salvationis ◽  
Church Art ◽  
The Church

Émile Mâle says that medieval Christian art in its last period had lost touch with the great tradition of symbolism which had been so important in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and still largely dominated the art of the fourteenth. But there was one great symbolical idea which survived, and that was the harmony of the Old and New Testaments; and so we find among the most popular subjects of fifteenth-century Church art the concordance of the Apostles and Prophets in the Creed, and the series of parallels between the life of Jesus and episodes of Old Testament history, which were summed up and digested in the Biblia Pauperum and the Speculum Humanae Salvationis. The reason for the popularity of these subjects was, no doubt, their didactic value, and though Mâle does not develop this side of the subject, we may say that one, though not the only, characteristic of the religious art of the fifteenth century was that, instead of being symbolical, it became didactic. We find in this period a whole series of subjects which reduced the articles of Christian faith and practice to pictorial form, and seem to have been intended to illustrate the medieval catechism by which the teaching of the Church was imparted.

XIV.—On the Roof of the Church of St. Andrew, Mildenhall, Suffolk

Archaeologia ◽  
1895 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-266
Author(s):  
J. G. Waller
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
The Many ◽  
Early English ◽  
The Church ◽  
Grey Colour

The interior of the beautiful church of Mildenhall in Suffolk is remarkable for its spacious and noble proportions. Its roof of oak must take a chief place amongst the many fine examples in the eastern counties. The chancel is of Early English architecture, but the nave and aisles belong to the fifteenth century. It is to the roof of the latter to which I shall direct your attention. It has never been painted, as was so commonly the practice in the county, and therefore has that grey colour which ensues when no extraneous matter has been applied. The roof of the nave is divided by seven principal beams, supported by spandrels with tracery, with additions sustaining the rafters.

The Early Modern Cardinal

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles Pattenden
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Church

This chapter sets out the historical context to the cardinal as a subject of portraiture. It engages recent historiography to explain how the cardinal’s function and role in the Roman Curia, including his relationship to the pope, developed from the fifteenth century onwards, and how this was reflected in the range of men who occupied the cardinal’s office. The Sacred College changed substantially over these centuries, with its proud ‘princes of the Church’ giving way to an altogether humbler breed of Counter-Reformation cleric. Naturally, this affected both how cardinals depicted themselves and how they and others used their depictions.

I. The Minor Friars in China

1917 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
A. C. Moule
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
University Library ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church

The only complete manuscript of this Chronicle of the Bohemians which is known to exist is a folio paper volume written partly in the fourteenth and partly in the early fifteenth century. My efforts to see the MS. itself have so far been unsuccessful, and the following extracts are translated from the text printed by Gelasius Dobner in his Monumenta Historica, Boemiœ nusquam antehac edita, etc., 6 tom. 4to, Pragæ, 1764…85. The Chronicle is in tom, ii, 1768, pp. 79–282. It is entitled Chronicon Reverendissimi Joannis dicti de Marignolis de Florentia Ordinis Minorum Bysinianensis Episcopi …, and begins: Incipit Processus in Cronicum Boemorum, ending, on p. 282, Et sic est finis hujus Cronice Boemorum. The MS., it should be said, was formerly in thelibrary of the Church S. Crucis majoris at Prag, and is now in the University Library in that city.

The Bishops and the Brethren: Anglican Attitudes to the Moravians in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

1990 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 622-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. Podmore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Episcopal Church ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
New Churches ◽  
The Government ◽  
To Come ◽  
New Situation ◽  
The Church

Most Anglican crises, including recent ones, seem to boil down in the end to two linked questions — those of identity and authority. Is the Church of England pre-eminently a national or a catholic Church, a Protestant Church (and if so, of what kind?) or Anglican and sui generis? With which of these types of Church should it align itself? Where lies the famed via media, and which are the extremes to be avoided? And who has the authority to decide: as a national Church, parliament, the government, the monarch personally; as an episcopal Church, the bishops? Or should the clergy in convocations (or, latterly, the General Synod, including representatives of the pious laity) take decisions? Anglican crises have always raised these twin problems of identity and authority. In the mid-eighteenth century — from the end of the 1730s and particularly in the 1740s — the Church of England faced another crisis. The Anglican bishops had to come to terms with the movement known as the ‘evangelical revival’. Principles had to be applied to a new situation. The bishops had to decide how to categorise the new societies (or would they become new churches?) which were springing up all over England.

Petrus de Domarto's Missa Spiritus almus and the early history of the four-voice mass in the fifteenth century

1991 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 235-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob C. Wegman
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

In 1449, the records of the church of Our Lady at Antwerp mention a new singer, Petrus de Domaro (see Figure 1). He does not reappear in the accounts of 1450, and those of the subsequent years are all lost. Musical sources and treatises from the 1460s to 80s call him, with remarkable consistency, P[etrus] de Domarto, and reveal that he was an internationally famous composer in the third quarter of the fifteenth century.

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