scholarly journals The murals in the church of the virgin Eleousa in Vljusa and Byzantine painting of the second half of the eleventh century

Zograf ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 37-57
Author(s):  
Anna Zakharova

The author gives an analysis of the style of the murals in the Church of the Virgin Eleousa in Veljusa (1080-1093), pointing out the distinctive manner of the outstanding artist, similar in many ways to works produced by the previous generation, such as the frescoes in Saint Sophia in Ohrid. At the same time parallels are drawn between the Veljusa frescoes and works by Constantinopolitan artists of the last third of the eleventh century, including miniatures in manuscripts and the Daphni mosaics. A few additions to the interpretation of the church?s iconographic programme are also proposed.

Author(s):  
Olivier Guyotjeannin

This chapter examines administrative documents of the Middle Ages and the major scholarly studies of them. It surveys the number of preserved documents and the problems surrounding the lack of documents in different periods and places. The author discusses the role and influence of the Church in the increased production and preservation of documents beginning in the eleventh century, leading to an enormous increase in the production of documents during the last three centuries of the Middle Ages.


Author(s):  
Jón Viðar Sigurðsson

This chapter looks at relations of friendship among clerics. Friendship was as important for religious leaders as it was for their secular counterparts. They needed faithful supporters to enact their plans. Yet, in contrast to what have been seen in secular circles, friendship continued to play an important role among the clergy for the whole of the period from the middle of the eleventh century until the end of the thirteenth. The bishops, as the key element in the church hierarchy, were very powerful political players, not least attributable to their position within the Church hierarchy, their network of friends and connections, the wealth they controlled, and the position they held in society. Therefore, it was important for the secular leaders to control the election of bishops so that their friends and kinsmen were chosen.


1997 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 145-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence R. Hoey

Rib vaults appear in English architecture at the end of the eleventh century and by the early part of the next had spread throughout most parts of the country and across the Channel into Normandy. Rib construction was pioneered by the builders of great churches, first apparently at Durham, and was then developed and elaborated at sites such as Winchester, Gloucester, Peterborough, Lessay, Saint-Etienne in Caen, and many others. Although it is impossible to pinpoint the precise moment, by the second quarter of the twelfth century ribs were also being constructed in smaller churches in many areas of England and Normandy. Anglo-Norman parish church masons might construct ribs under towers or in porches, but the majority of survivals are in chancels, where the presence of ribs was clearly the result of a desire to distinguish and embellish the functionally most important and most sacred part of the church.


Zograf ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 11-23
Author(s):  
Anna Zakharova ◽  
Sofia Sverdlova

The article deals with a little known ensemble of wall paintings at the Church of the Saviour in Chvabiani, Upper Svaneti, Georgia. The initial decoration of the church dated to 978- 1001 has survived mainly in the apse. The badly preserved Theophany in the conch attracted the attention of scholars who analyzed its iconography. The Apostles in the lower zone, however, were considered to be repainted at a later date. Our examination of these wall paintings revealed no traces of later additions. Through the analysis of technique and style we aim to prove that the both compositions belong to the turn of the tenth to eleventh century. These wall paintings show unusually high quality and close affinities with Byzantine art of this period. In our view, they could be a work of a visiting artist, probably a Georgian trained at some major Byzantine artistic center. He may well have been among the artists working on wall paintings at the cathedrals built and decorated by order of kings and church hierarchs during the late tenth to early eleventh centuries, in Tao-Klarjeti or other lands of the Georgian kingdom still under formation.


Traditio ◽  
1948 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 328-340
Author(s):  
Anselm Strittmatter

In his excellent description and analysis of Walters MS 11, Dr. Leo F. Miller gives little or no attention to what is at times the most vexing problem a liturgical manuscript can present, viz., for what church was the codex written? He determines the predominantly Ravennate character of the ‘martyrologium’ prefixed to the sacramentary-missal which constitutes the body of the book, but in general hesitates to assign the manuscript to Ravenna itself, because ‘it contains none of the liturgical uses proper to that city's ancient liturgy, to which the people clung so tenaciously until they were abolished by Archbishop Julius della Rovere,’ and adds: ‘would a Ravenna calendar lack such great names as Peter Chrysologus and Iohannes Angeloptes?’ It will not be amiss, therefore, to look about for other clues which may help us solve the problem. An initial clue may, indeed, be said to stand out in the calendar itself: March 21. Natale S. Patris nostri Benedicti. This formulation, which is found normally only in Benedictine calendars, taken together with the proper mass for the feast of the saint on fo1.37, leaves little room for doubt concerning the character of the church for which the book was intended, even as the blessing of the weekly reader, inserted after the Canon of the Mass (fol.12r), clearly indicates that the book at one time served a monastic church. Our problem, therefore, is to identify the abbey or priory, if possible, and here again there exists an important clue. In the ‘Missa pro Congregatione In honore (sic) sanctae Mariae,’ St. Ambrose is mentioned in both collect and postcommunion, as he is also in the ‘Nobis quoque peccatoribus’ and in the embolism after the Pater noster. There can be no question that the saint mentioned in the two prayers—Defende, quaesumus and Copiosa—is normally the patron of the monastery, and that this particular mass-formulary has in this book been adapted for use in a church dedicated to the famous bishop of Milan. It would be interesting, therefore, to find in the province of Ravenna a monastery dedicated to St. Ambrose, so remote, too, perhaps from the metropolitan city as not to be obliged or inclined to keep all its local observances. Such a monastery did, indeed, exist—Sancti A mbrosii de Rancla (Ranclo; the modern Ranchio), situated about seven kilometers north-northwest of Sarsina, the episcopal city of the diocese to which it belonged, a suffragan see of Ravenna—and although no chronicle or annals, recounting the inner and outer history of the abbey would seem to be extant, the archives of the diocese, meagerly published, to be sure, do give us for the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries an occasional glimpse of its fortunes, at times perhaps even more.


Traditio ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 351-383
Author(s):  
Gerard J. Campbell

The Gregorian reform of the eleventh century mounted a massive attack on lay control over churches and church appointments, yet the degree to which this attack succeeded in attaining its objectives varied from country to country. Local conditions and personalities were important in determining the outcome of the struggle over investiture and other related questions, but neither side achieved a complete victory, because the final agreements between clerical and lay leaders were a compromise which produced the usual mixture of satisfaction and disappointment. The church gained the most substantial victory, for the smothering stranglehold of the laity over the church and churchmen was broken, nevermore to be restored in the Middle Ages. Increased spiritual freedom for the church in subsequent centuries resulted from the struggle of the mid-eleventh century. Nevertheless, the church had not broken completely from its close ties with the world of feudalism. If bishoprics, abbeys, and parish churches were not feudal possessions of kings and nobles, laymen still retained many rights reminiscent of the earlier days when laymen claimed a proprietary right over the churches in their areas. The purpose of this paper is to consider one of these remnants of earlier days: the right of regalia I will examine the right of regalia, temporal and spiritual, together with some related institutions during the reigns of St. Louis and Philip III of France.


Traditio ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 149-230
Author(s):  
Marvin L. Colker

Fundamental to Christianity is the belief in the redemptive death of Christ. But not always has there been complete agreement among theologians as to the precise reason or reasons for Christ's death. For centuries the soteriology of the Church may be said to have been in large part demonocentric. The devil had certain rights over fallen man, rights which could not be violated, still less taken away. If his dominion over man was to be destroyed, it must be done not by any arbitrary exercise of the divine Omnipotence, but in a manner reasonable and just. Some theologians even spoke of Christ's death as a ransom paid to the devil for man's release. With varying nuance such ideas as these were dominant from the days of St. Irenaeus of Lyons' until the very end of the eleventh century, when St. Anselm of Canterbury struck out upon entirely new lines of thought. In his Cur Deus Homo new concepts were introduced into the discussion of the problem. By sin man had offended the infinite majesty of God: God's rights had been violated. Satisfaction must be made, and that by man, for it was he who had sinned. But since the infinite offence which we call sin could not really be atoned for by a finite creature, the necessary satisfaction called for a God-man.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-286
Author(s):  
Roman Dodonov ◽  
◽  
Vira Dodonova ◽  
Oleksandr Konotopenko ◽  
◽  
...  

A stereoscopic view on a particular historical event, in which contemporary assessments are combined with mental stereotypes of a medieval man, allows a slightly different assessment of the chronicle plot about the posthumous “baptism of bones” of Oleg and Yaropolk, Princes of Kyivan Rus, in 1044. While from theological positions it is perceived as an absurdity and a direct violation of the rules of the church, in the Middle Ages this act did not contradict the mass religious beliefs. From an ethical point of view, the action of Yaroslav the Wise was regarded as concern for the souls of the ancestors who died pagans and therefore did not claim for the salvation. The soteriological optimism that prevailed in the eleventh century in countries of the late Christianization, including Kyivan Rus, gave hope that living people were able to influence the fate of the souls of the dead. From a political point of view, the baptism of the ashes of the ancestors and their reburial in the family tomb of the Princes of Kyiv in the Church of the Tithes was aimed at expanding the circle of heavenly patrons and protectors of the princely dynasty, expanding the period of the Christian history of Kyivan Rus, and, as a result, legitimizing the power of Yaroslav the Wise.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-262
Author(s):  
Paroma Chatterjee

This article looks closely at the report of a miracle that occurred in eleventh-century Constantinople in which the veil covering an icon of the Theotokos (Virgin) at the Blachernae church lifted itself miraculously. The report, scripted by the Byzantine polymath Michael Psellos, focuses in intriguing ways on the actions and nonactions of the veil when the icon presided over a judicial trial. The article contends that Psellos insists on the theme of timing (with regard to the lifting and otherwise of the veil) and the Blachernae icon's role in determining a critical, decisive moment in the arbitration of human affairs. This emphasis, in turn, bespeaks a broader concern over the timing of sacred icons during significant moments in Byzantine history as understood by contemporary chroniclers: namely, their failure to act in appropriate ways at critical moments when the empire itself was at stake.


Author(s):  
Dirk Heirbaut

Historians of a previous generation saw feudalism as a creation of the Carolingians, which was to be found mainly in the heartland of their empire. However, in 1994 Susan Reynolds demolished this view: feudalism is not medieval, but the product of the early modern era, albeit with roots in the medieval Libri Feudorum. Reynolds and others were right in attacking the old views but, on the other hand, recent research also shows that in at least four pioneering regions feudalism already appears in the eleventh century, before the Libri Feudorum. However, the latter helped to spread feudalism to other parts of Europe. The upshot was not one model of feudalism that was slavishly followed all over Europe and remained constant until the demise of feudalism. There were only regional feudalisms that were very different from the model of the traditional handbooks.


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