Reprezentarea sfintelor femei în bisericile pictate în timpul lui Ștefan cel Mare în Moldova. Două exemple

The aim of this paper is to present some results of my research regarding the representation of holy women in the Moldavian churches during the reign of Stephen the Great. Most frequently, these images are found in the narthex of the church, a space of lesser spiritual intensity. A general explanation for the depiction of holy women in the narthex is related to the actual presence of women in this space during the mass and to their role in the funerary ritual and the commemoration of the dead which take place here. My study focuses on the cases of Saints Mary of Egypt and Marina the Great Martyr, the two most depicted saints in the Moldavian churches. Firstly, they have a specific way of representation, in a narrative scene. Saint Mary of Egypt is depicted as an ascetic figure together with Saint Zosimas from whom she receives the Holy Eucharist, while Saint Marina wears a red maphorion and is depicted hammering a demon. Secondly, they both have a well-defined place on the church walls, as a result of the hagiography, playing a symbolic role in the economy of space and in the iconographic program. Saint Mary of Egypt has a place in the passageway areas, in interaction with the architecture. Her representation offers an example of repentance for the believers, reassuring them of the mercifulness of God. Saint Marina is placed close to the entrances of the church, may they be doors or windows, for her role in protecting the sacred places.

The Idea of an ‘Icon in Sound’ in the Works of John Tavener

The aim of this article is to present an innovative concept of the ‘icon in sound’ created by the English composer John Tavener. The first part of the article presents the intermedial and intertextual features of Tavener's work, the second shows the genesis of the concept of ‘icon in sound’, to which three factors have contributed: 1) the composer’s interest in religious topics in his pieces, 2) the composer’s conversion to Orthodoxy, 3) collaboration with Mother Tekla, the author of the texts of many Tavener’s works. The last, third part of the article describes issues related to the formal structure and musical symbolism present in Tavener’s musical icons. The composer refers to painted icons by composing works characterised by static form and the expression of spirituality, mysticism and inner peace. These features result from the juxtaposing of melismatic structures, inspired by Byzantine music, with repetitive technique and dynamics often characterised by a low intensity. One characteristic of Tavener’s sound icons is a ‘luminous’ sound, achieved through the use of high registers of voices and instruments, which are combined with contemplative and lyrical expression. An important feature of John Tavener’s musical icons was the introduction of archaic elements, resulting primarily from the inspiration that the composer drew from the musical culture of the Orthodox Church (eg the use of Byzantine scales in Mary of Egypt, the introduction of instruments such as simantron in Mary of Egypt).

The Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt and London, British Library, Cotton Julius E.vii: A Textual Study

This article highlights the textual distinctiveness of the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt in its manuscript context in British Library, Cotton Julius E.vii. The Cotton Julius version of the Life is distinctive in the sheer number of scribal errors it contains but also in the purposeful changes to the original translation evident in it. Consideration of scribal performance across the manuscript and comparison with texts of Saint Mary of Egypt extant elsewhere lead to the conclusion that the purposeful changes in the Cotton Julius witness have probably been inherited from an exemplar, while the number of errors is likely due to the pressure under which the scribe was working in adding this text at a late stage of the manuscript’s composition. Despite its distinctive features, there is no evidence to contradict the recently argued contention that this version of Saint Mary of Egypt, along with the second half of the immediately preceding item in the manuscript, the Legend of the Seven Sleepers, was copied by the main scribe of Cotton Julius rather than being delegated to a colleague: although Seven Sleepers also seems to have been copied under pressure, Saint Mary of Egypt stands apart from it in broadly the same ways as it does from the rest of the manuscript.

Clothing and Female Reclusion in The Life of Mary of Egypt and The Life of Christina of Markyate

Over the past two decades, medieval feminist scholarship has increasingly turned to the literary representation of textiles as a means of exploring the oftensilenced experiences of women in the Middle Ages. This article uses fabric as a lens through which to consider the world of the female recluse, exploring the ways in which clothing operates as a tether to patriarchal, secular values in Paul the Deacon’s eighthcentury Life of Mary of Egypt and the twelfth-century Life of Christina of Markyate. In rejecting worldly garb as recluses, these holy women seek out and achieve lives of spiritual autonomy and independence.