EVERYDAY FEARS OF THE ORTHODOX POPULATION ON UKRAINIAN LANDS AS A REFLECTION OF DAILY ROUTINE IN EARLY MODERN TIMES

The article highlights a little-studied problem of role of fears in the everyday life of Orthodox believers in the Ukrainian lands of the second half of the 16th – 17th centuries. It is noted that in the early modern period, the society suffered from an outbreak of violence, and this influenced the formation of the atmosphere of fear among the population. The types of fears from which the society suffered the most are analyzed on an example of most typical cases: fear of war and violence, illness, mutilation, premature death, fear of armed people, foreign invaders and representatives of other denominations. In addition to these objective fears, Orthodox society felt irrational ones, the greatest of which was to sin. To a large extent, everyday life of the Orthodox was characterized by fear of the Last Judgment and Hell, Evil Spirits. Fears inherent in a modern man, manifested in everyday life of an orthodox man of the 16th - 17th centuries much stronger due to much more dangerous living conditions. Fear was a characteristic feature of everyday life in the early modern Orthodox society.

Jan van Eyck’s New York Diptych: A New Reading on the Skeleton of the Great Chasm

The Crucifixion and Last Judgment, or the so-called New York Diptych, is one of the most controversial paintings attributed to Jan van Eyck (ca. 1390–1441) and his workshop. For well over a century, art historians have vigorously discussed its attribution, composition, functional intent, and even its dating. In light of prior scholarship addressing these remarkable panels, this paper focuses on the skeleton represented in the Last Judgment to reveal its iconographical meanings. Specifically, I highlight the inscriptions written on the skeleton’s wings, suggesting that the texts were cited from an All Saints’ Day sermon delivered by the Burgundian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) who discussed a temporal location for blessed or sinful souls.

El rigor y la gloria: el Juicio Final y su repercusión en la modernidad

This work presents a historical journey on the doctrine of the Last Judgment, starting from its antecedents in ancient Judaism, its rise in the millennial ideology of the Middle Ages, until reaching certain perspectives of its repercussion in Modernity. The Final Judgment forms a doctrine that combines the image of God as a rigorous judge who executes the Law, applying the punishments or prizes related to the works carried out in life, with the vision of a glorious king who will manifest his messianic kingdom in which the human beings will be saved by grace of divine intervention.

Spiritual Alchemy

This book reclaims the problematic term “spiritual alchemy” as a precisely definable category for historical research and documents for the first time that there was a continuous tradition of spiritual alchemy from around 1600 to 1910. At the turn of the seventeenth century, the confluence of two important currents—German mysticism and alchemical Paracelsianism—led to a new spiritual alchemy of rebirth that entailed the formation of a subtle body within born-again believers that provided the basis for their subsequent resurrection at the Last Judgment. Embryonic forms of spiritual alchemy in pseudepigraphic writings attributed to Valentin Weigel inspired Jacob Boehme’s description of rebirth. Although he initially knew little about alchemy, Boehme developed his own spiritual alchemy in a number of works written between 1619 and 1622. According to Boehme’s understanding, laboratory alchemy was but a lesser, grossly material reflection of spiritual alchemy. All of the later key figures—Abraham von Franckenberg, Georg Lorenz Seidenbecher, Friedrich Breckling, Dionysius Andreas Freher, Mary Anne Atwood (née South)—drew on Boehme’s spiritual alchemy and communicated it to their contemporaries. Drawing extensively on the manuscript record, this book shows that Boehme’s spiritual alchemy came to shape Mrs. Atwood’s Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery and thus had a decisive impact on modern conceptions, such as those of C. G. Jung and Mircea Eliade. Ultimately, spiritual alchemy gave rise to a bewildering variety of spiritual interpretations of alchemy.

The Justification Clause of Philippians 3.12: Past and Current Appraisals of a Striking Variant Reading

A minority of witnesses to the text of Phil. 3.12 (e.g., P46, GA 06, 010, 012, Irenaeus [Latin Translation], Ambrosiaster) attest to a reading in which Paul claims he has not yet been justified (or made/found righteous [δικαιόω]). Scholars have labeled the reading ‘intriguing’, ‘very interesting’, ‘striking’, and ‘astounding’. Yet, in spite of such lofty descriptors, little extensive attention has been devoted to this textual issue. All but a handful of scholars who have addressed the reading have denied it a place in the initial text. However, its attestation in P46, the high potential for parablepsis, the difficulty of explaining the reading as a later insertion, and its coherence with Pauline references to final justification at the last judgment have resulted in reassessments of the issue in more recent scholarship. This article provides an overview of past and current scholarly appraisals of the reading and offers some suggestions for future research.

Removal of a Past Varnish Treatment from a 19th-Century Belgian Wall Painting by Means of a Solvent-Loaded Double Network Hydrogel

Polymeric materials have been used by painting conservator-restorers as consolidants and/or varnishes for wall paintings. The application of these materials is carried out when confronting loose paint layers or as a protective coating. However, these materials deteriorate and cause physiochemical alterations to the treated surface. In the past, the monumental neo-gothic wall painting ‘The Last Judgment’ in the chapel of Sint-Jan Berchmanscollege in Antwerp, Belgium was treated with a synthetic polymeric material. This varnish deteriorated significantly and turned brown, obscuring the paint layers. Given also that the varnish was applied to some parts of the wall painting and did not cover the entire surface, it was necessary to remove it in order to restore the original appearance of the wall painting. Previous attempts carried out by conservator-restorers made use of traditional cleaning methods, which led to damage of the fragile paint layers. Therefore, gel cleaning was proposed as a less invasive and more controllable method for gently softening and removing the varnish. The work started by identifying the paint stratigraphy and the deteriorated varnish via optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. A polyvinyl alcohol–borax/agarose (PVA–B/AG) hydrogel loaded with a number of solvents/solvent mixtures was employed in a series of tests to select the most suitable hydrogel composite. By means of the hydrogel composite loaded with 10% propylene carbonate, it was possible to safely remove the brown varnish layer. The results were verified by visual examinations (under visible light ‘VIS’ and ultraviolet light ‘UV’) as well as OM and FTIR spectroscopy.

The Last Judgment before the Last

Throughout the nineteenth century, most historians preferred not to ask philosophical questions. In their writings, however, they indirectly engaged with problems about the character of the world-historical process, thus confronting what might be called penultimate questions. This article analyzes both the notions and the practices of historical work in Leopold Ranke's writings to consider how his spontaneous philosophy of history came to shape an entire discipline. It argues that Ranke crafted what I call historical figures from archival materials and that these served as equivalents to concepts in G. W. F. Hegel's philosophical world history. The writing of history has not yet escaped the logic of these narrative figures of historical argumentation.

The Myth of Creation in William Blake's The Four Zoas

Northrop Frye knows the cyclic version of creation myth in his reading of The Four Zoas according to which the human lives in heaven unified with God, unfallen state; he then falls and loses the harmony had with God, fallen state; and he should restore the previous unfallen state in Apocalypse or Last Judgment. Unlike Fry, while thinking of Maurice Blanchot I argue that Blake has created a new myth of creation different from the cyclic one by focusing on what Blake calls Beulah as the stage intermediate between spiritual and physical existence. In the non-original state, Beulah is the state of perpetual creation beyond dialectic and dualism known in Eternity and the life on the earth, a sort of becoming. For Blake, this proves that entities are not created to be manifested in the state of independent selfhood, but they are in relation with the others. This makes both selfhood and indefiniteness simultaneously possible to exist. It is Beulah itself which is all and the only space of existence opening itself from within itself. All entities including God are in interrelationship while being in the process of interruption (acquiring selfhood) within continuation (interrelationship) simultaneously. This demonstrates Blake's new myth of creation avoiding the primal crisis of the cyclic myth of creation. He has also introduced a new idea of relationship.

The Mysticism of History and the Transcendent Vision of the Great Patriotic War

This article examines the evolution of “mystical discourse” in the literature on the Great Patriotic War from 1941 to 2008. It analyses the content of ideas about the participation of supernatural principles in people’s relations and in the fate of peoples in different historical conditions. The author reveals the gnoseological potential and socio-cultural mission of irrational knowledge that claims to be the universal truth. The “transcendent vision” formula integrates a variety of manifestations – from intuitions to metaphysical concepts. The analysis is done with reference to poetry by K. Simonov, A. Akhmatova, A. Tvardovsky, N. Glazkov, Yu. Kuznetsov, the poem Leningrad Apocalypse by D. Andreev, Mother’s Dreams by V. Shukshin, God and the Soldier by V. Pietsukh, Live and Remember by V. Rasputin, Psalm by F. Gorenstein, Cursed and Killed by V. Astafyev, and Tankman or ‘White Tiger’ by I. Boyashov. The author’s reflections on the transcendent is realised in three modes: discovery, mystical propensities, and philosophising. The discovery of the presence of the mystical principle as a real and beneficial force is characteristic of wartime lyrics. Vital intuition actualises the archetypal resource of national culture: ancestral memory, the voice of the Earth, nature, the patronage of ancestors, and the sacred power of the Russian word. Awareness of the special protective mission of love is based on the deep ethics of folk tradition and corresponds to the ideas of religious philosophy about the participation of the Wisdom of God in human relations. The effectiveness of both is confirmed by prophetic dreams and actions of the heroines in the works by V. Shukshin and V. Rasputin. Theodicy became the central problem in the post-war feeling of a disastrous social experience. A visionary poem by D. Andreev and ballads by Yu. Kuznetsov are versions of poetic gnosis: they interpret the war as an episode of the eternal conflict of darkness and light, the confrontation of demons with great power, in which an ordinary person is assigned the role of a victim and the poet – the mission of the “messenger”, the painter of these forces. The reasoner-toned concepts of F. Gorenstein and V. Astafyev regard war as a last judgment on peoples, the payment for the fall from God’s grace. I. Boyashov’s novel reveals the Manichaean idea of the dual role of evil: the power of darkness can only be crushed by hatred. Experiencing the ontological power of transcendent knowledge and its suggestions, the artist feels involved in the mystical origin.