Word and Image. Polish Medieval and Renaissance Religious Writings in the European Context

The article presents the Polish religious writing of the Middle Ages and Renaissance as an expression of correspondence between the word and image. It also demonstrates the impact of European graphics, including Albrecht Dürer’s woodcuts, upon Polish religious works of the period (such as the works by Pseudo-Bonaventura in his rendering of Baltazar Opec’s Żywot Pana Jezu Krysta and Jan Sandecki’s Historie biblijne or Rozmyślania dominikańskie. The article also emphasizes that it was Dürer who paved the way for the book illustration, thus turning woodcuts into an art form in their own right. The fifteenth century was a watershed in book culture. As new illustration techniques at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries encouraged the growth of illustrated printed books, the codex became obsolete.

The Bible and Daoist Writings

The Bible has taken various journeys all over the world and has come into engagement with religious writings outside of Christianity. In the process of translation of the Bible into other languages, religious notions from indigenous writings have been employed to express biblical conceptions, giving rise to cultural fertilization and religious enrichment on the Bible and the target languages into which the Bible has not only taken on a new form, but also some sort of transformation. This essay explores first the historical encounters of Christianity with Chinese culture in the tradition of Jingjiao (mistakenly labelled as Chinese Nestorianism). Second, an attempt is made to analyze the Daoist terminology of hundun in Daodejing and Zhuangzi adopted for the articulation of the “void” (“Chaos”) in the creation narrative of Genesis. Finally, the Daoist quest for immortality is read cross-textually with the Wisdom book of Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes).

The Mauryan Empire

The unique feature of the Mauryan Empire is the religious writings or dhamma-lipi inscribed by King Aśoka on rocks and sandstone pillars across the Indian subcontinent. Many of the edicts are repeated in different parts of the country and present a unified vision for the region. These records have been a primary source for understanding the administrative structure of the Mauryan Empire. It is significant that the edicts have not been replicated by subsequent rulers. Though the nature of Aśoka’s dhamma has been debated by historians, there is no denying the fact that it is in Buddhist writings that Aśoka figures prominently as a righteous ruler whose model rule was followed by later rulers to the present.

Secularization, Countersecularization, and the Fate of the Flesh in Donne

The chapter begins by examining the thought of Edward Herbert. In his de Veritate Herbert articulates a reasonable, rationalized version of Christianity that is founded on dualist assumptions and that is compatible with science and rational inquiry. Donne oscillates between between Herbert’s secularization project and a counter-secularization built on embracing the “rump” elements of Christianity, including monist-materialism. In his sermons and other religious writings Donne foregrounds the body as a material life that is alien to any conventionally socialized sense of agency or identity. This use of the body also energizes Donne’s formally experimental erotic verse. Donne’s erotic poems suggest an understanding of sexuality in which interruption, deferral, and blockage are valued as a way of intensifying and increasing the experience of being a body with a life of its own separate from the conscious and reasoning life of a supposed soul. The formal experimentalism generated by Donne’s commitment to resurrection is precisely what T.S.Eliot later recognizes as modernism avant la lettre so that this chapter argues that Donne’s writings should be termed not “metaphysical” but “avant-garde.”

Słowo i obraz – teksty i związane z nimi motywy ikoniczne na nagrobkach kobiet na cmentarzach żydowskich na historycznych obszarach Rzeczypospolitej

Word and Image: Texts and Related Iconic Motifs on Women’s Gravestones in Jewish Cemeteries in the Historical Areas of The Republic of Poland The research material in the article covers the period from the earliest gravestones from the fourteenth century to contemporary ones of the twenty-first century. Among iconic motifs taken into account are those which are specific for women’s gravestones, and from texts in inscriptions—those corresponding to artistic motifs. The aims of this study are the following: to distinguish thematic groups, determine the range of iconic motifs used and the chronology and frequency of their occurrence, as well as to juxtapose them with normative content from religious writings of Judaism and with rites and customs. The following conclusions emerge from the research: In the early period (until the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century), there was no differentiation on tombstones between separate motifs ascribed to men (except for the Kohanim and Levites) and separate motifs ascribed to women. Among the common motifs, the bird motif dominated on women’s gravestones, while the crown motif acquired its specific character. In the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, the motif of a candlestick appeared on women’s gravestones; it spread very quickly and became a visual identification feature. In the nineteenth century, with the introduction of vanitas motifs on gravestones, they began to be used on women’s gravestones. The connection of motifs with the names of the deceased is also noticeable (e.g. Feigl–bird, Rachel–fairy, Royza–rose, or scenes related to biblical namesakes). The contents of women’s epitaphs presented as praise or description of virtues largely concern traditional female duties toward the home, husband, and children. Women’s gravestones contain no attributes or references to the study of Torah and scholarship, or else to activities in the public sphere—to professions, both religious and later secular—which obviously results from the position and role of women in the patriarchal community. Such information does not appear until the interwar period on the tombstones of women from families assimilated into the surrounding culture which is also evidenced by non-traditional tombstone forms and inscriptions in non-Jewish languages.