Artículos de revistas sobre el tema "Angels and saints"

Henricus Isaac's grand six-voice motet Angeli archangeli (Angels, archangels) sets a text from the liturgy of the Feast of All Saints (November 1), but its only preexistent musical material is a cantus firmus in the tenor voice, drawn from the tenor of the mid 15th-century chanson Comme femme desconfortéée (As a woman in distress), attributed to Binchois. Scholars have assumed that Angeli archangeli is a motet for All Saints but have been at a loss to explain why Isaac chose the cantus firmus he did. This study attempts to explain Isaac's puzzling juxtaposition of Latin text and secular cantus firmus by suggesting that Angeli archangeli is not a motet for All Saints, but rather for the Assumption of the Virgin. Liturgical analysis of the motet text reveals that its connection to the Feast of All Saints (November 1) is weaker than has previously been assumed. Additionally, examination of numerous other sacred works that incorporate the Comme femme desconfortéée tenor demonstrates that it was widely understood as a Marian cantus firmus ca. 1500. The Marian associations of the cantus firmus help to explain why one manuscript source (VatS 46) groups the work with other Marian motets, and why another (LeipU 1494) transmits it with a Marian contrafact text (O regina nobilissima). Finally, by relating the musical construction of Angeli archangeli to the Assumption of the Virgin as depicted in late medieval liturgy, iconography, and in Jacobus de Voragine's widely read Legenda aurea, it is suggested that the text of Angeli archangeli, though drawn from the All Saints liturgy, actually describes Mary's assumption into heaven. Sacred text and secular cantus firmus thus collaborate in communicating a complex but clear theological/devotional meaning.

The article begins from explaining two key terms for the theme: the holiness and the the concept of theosis. In the first and second paragraph author makes general remarks on what is the sanctity of God and sanctity of the Church. Only after that it is explained what was the meaning of the word “saint” used in the Old Testament and similarities and differences of the meaning of this term in the New Testament. The Church teaching of sanctity was précised in VII–VIII centuries only, when St. John Damascenes explained the differences between of worshiping God and venerating the saints. The author also explains differences between veneration of saints and the cult of pagan heroes, as well as between venerating saint and venerating angels. many observations are given from the Church Fathers as well as contemporary Orthodox theologians.In the third paragraph it was explained how the forming of the venerating saints of different categories was made i.e.: the martyrs, the apostles, the prophets, the ancestors (fathers, etc.), saint hierarchs of the Church, the venerable (the monastics), the right-believing, the witnesses, unmercenary physicians, the fool-for-Christ, the passion-bearers, the righteous (the just).The fourth paragraph gives short analysis of several main elements of the veneration of saints, as: the prayers to the saints, the intercession of the saints, the veneration of icons of the saints, the venerating of relics of the saints, the establishing of the feasts honoring the saints in the Church calendar, the liturgical feast for the memory of the saints, building of the churches honoring the saints, hymnography and hagiography to commemorate saints. The last paragraph of the article makes an explanation how the word “canonization” is understood on Orthodox Church and what is the procedure of canonizing saints in Orthodoxy is used.

“Modern investigators of miraculous history have solemnly admitted that a characteristic of the great saints is their power of ‘levitation.’ They might go further; a characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” —G. K. Chesterton1

The article reconstructs the doctrine of Byzantine Iconoclasts on the postmortem inactivity of saints, and finds its background in the early Antiochean and Syrian doctrine on the “sleep of souls,” which occurs in Isaac the Syrian among many other writers.

Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) drew on the Italian Renaissance tradition of the Man of Sorrows to advance the Christological message within the altarpiece context of his Pietà with Saints (1585). From its location at the high altar of the Capuchin church of St. Mary Magdalene in Parma, the work commemorates the life of Duke Alessandro Farnese (1586–1592), who is interred right in front of Annibale’s painted image. The narrative development of the Pietà with Saints transformed the late medieval Lamentation altarpiece focused on the dead Christ into a riveting manifestation of the beautiful and sleeping Christ worshipped by saints and angels in a nocturnal landscape. Thus eschewing historical context, the pictorial thrust of Annibale’s interpretation of the Man of Sorrows attached to the Pietà with Saints was to heighten Eucharistic meaning while allowing for sixteenth-century theological and poetic thought of Mary’s body as the tomb of Christ to cast discriminating devotional overtones on the resting place of the deceased Farnese Duke.

Abstract This article presents a first look at some of the key sources and hypotheses of ongoing research on a significant yet ill-studied figure in late antique Egyptian-Christian piety: The “Angel of the Altar,” or “of the Topos,” and later “of the Sacrifice” as he is still invoked in the Coptic liturgy today. Since the 4th century, church canons and literary works aiming to instill fear of the altar in monks and clerics warn of the angel guarding it, who can only be seen by monastic and clerical leaders in visions which become a common feature of post-Chalcedonian Coptic homiletics. This angel figure is identified with God’s destructive power defending the ark/altar/temple in the Old Testament. The “Angel of the Altar” also has the crucial liturgical function of lifting the Eucharistic offering to God. He is even considered the true dispenser or withholder of the Eucharist, overshadowing and potentially nullifying the actions of the priest. Originally an impersonal figure, he is sometimes identified with the specific archangel assigned to the church in question, such as Michael or Raphael. In a further step, it seems that some monastic communities who built their corporate identities on the fame of their respective patron saint began to identify the latter with the “Angel of the Altar,” appropriating the concept for the cult of saints. Documentary papyri show how monastic leaders invoked the Angel as superhuman punisher and blesser in the economic interest of the monastery. It is probably in this context that the variant “Angel of the Topos” emerged, amounting to what seems to be the only technical term for “patron saint of a place” in Coptic.

The study focuses on the concept of the ‘communio sanctorum’ (i.e. the communion of saints) and its liturgical use, addressing important eschatological and ecclesiological questions from an ecumenical perspective. Through comparisons of different Christian traditions, it considers both the subjective and the objective genitive sense of the key Latin term of the study, ‘communio sanctorum’, examining its patrological and conceptual-historical background in detail. The Roman Catholic, Evangelical, Reformed and Orthodox liturgical vocabularies and their common biblical basis, namely Hebrews and Revelation, are taken into account. In addition to the Second Vatican Council and other papal pronouncements (e.g. the papal sermon on the Ugandan martyrs), special attention is given to the statements and practices of the Protestant churches. The study concludes that the communio sanctorum, that is, the confessors of the Christian faith belonging to different denominations, are the common saints of the one Church. Consequently, our saints, who pray with the angels and with us, encourage us to work together in this world for the unity of the Church.

Celebrity relies on a gaze, a collective or public regard that, in gazing, confers value. Celebrity also demands a face to celebrate—faciality is a sine qua non of “celebrification.” The historian Peter Brown demonstrates in The Cult of the Saints that late antiquity introduced the overriding importance of saints' images, bodies, relics, or tomb sites in a Christian worship that emphasized the mediation of saints between heaven and earth and in place of angels; celebrity had its origins in the woodcut portraits and wayside shrines that proliferated as well as in the professionally wrought iconic images of the saints. Against David Hume's judgment of this phenomenon as “vulgar” and a remnant of pagan folk religion, he argues that the rise of the cult of the saints was as influenced by elites, including Augustine, as by supposedly lesser folk, and that the latter, especially women and the poor, were thus able to participate in a democratizing of culture profoundly indebted to graveside practices that promoted personal relationships, even friendships, with the dead saints and the circulation of their faces in imagery and their body parts as relics (17). Moreover, far from introducing vulgarity into Christian rituals, Brown shows how the cult was imbued with the culture of classical antiquity and with values associated with Athenian democracy and the philosophy of nous, a non-rational intelligence linking us to the divine (48). That we deploy the term celebrity icon for such figures as Oprah or Angelina Jolie only underscores the vestiges of public religious ritual that remain embedded in celebrity practices and the nimbus of the sacred that haloes even seemingly debased celebrity discourses.

This article is a revised version of papers prepared for the conferences in Cambridge and Oslo. It is focused on the way how to interpret coins occurring in the medieval graves of saints as well as in the graves of ordinary people defined by L. Travaini as ‘sinners’. In the case of the term ‘ritual’, the author is interested in its general religious use, public and private, having in mind that medieval people had an uninterrupted relationship with the other world. Angels, saints and demons were integrated into any ritual, even in that which can appear as ‘civic’ today, including blessing and presence of clerics. In that way, any contexts – once seen as ‘ritual’ – must be seen as ‘economic’ in present numismatic research, and the author shows it on concrete examples from Italy and other European countries. Some finds, once seen as signs of economic activities, can be seen as rituals today.

In the article, based on the material of the multi-genre Ukrainian monuments of the writing of different styles of the 14–18 centuries, included in the database of the sources “Mapping of the Historical Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language”, edited by Ye. Tymchenko was studied religious vocabulary in the diachronic aspect, in particular, the lexical-semantic group of words and derivatives from the formations expressing the concept of "God's people, saints, angels". The illustrative material of the dictionary represents various thematic groups of religious vocabulary: the names of performers and members of the liturgy; the names of liturgical objects, their varieties, and parts; the names of liturgies; the names of ceremonies; Christian rites, their varieties and parts; the names of the temple and its parts, etc. The studied vocabulary is captured by almost all genres of the Ukrainian language of the ХІV–ХVІІІ centuries, in particular, acts, judicial documents, wills, charters, сhronicles, works of confessional, polemic and fiction literature, liturgical literature, epistolary legacy, etc. The article focuses on the etymological analysis of religious names, which mainly consisted of determining their semantic etymon. It is established that genetically the words of the studied lexical-semantic group are not homogeneous, because it consists of lexemes of different origins, in particular borrowings from the Greek, Church Slavonic, Polish language, etc. Some Church Slavonic names emerged as semantic tracings to Greek words. It has been discovered that some of the lexemes under study often serve as the core components of various binomial or threefold stable and lexicalized word combinations. Polysemy, synonymy, and antonymy are typical for certain words indicating God's personality, saints, and angels. It has been established that mostly all the words considered have been preserved until today in the Ukrainian literary language and church-liturgical practice. Keywords historical dictionary, the monuments of writing, semantics, phrase, Church Slavonic language

The Igala religion believes in the supreme God (Ọjọ) as well as the ancestral spirits (Ibegwu). This belief system gives rise to the question of whether the Igala religion is monotheistic or polytheistic. Isaiah Negedu has recently argued that the Igala is a peculiar form of monotheism, namely inclusive monotheism. In contrast, this essay compares the Igala understanding of ancestral spirits with the Christian notions of angels and patron saints, and argues that the question of whether the Igala religion is monotheistic or not concerns how we define monotheism and is therefore merely verbal and will not promote our understanding of the Igala religion.

The sacristy of the monastic Church of St. Francis (Sveti Frane) in Zadar, held by the Franciscan Province of Saint Jerome, holds a painting by Lazzaro Bastiani, a Venetian painter of the early Renaissance. The painting is venerated as a depiction of the Virgin of Mercy (Ara Coeli). The upper section of the painting features the Blessed Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. The Virgin is shown sitting in a mandorla made of angels with a crescent beneath her feet. God the Father is placing a crown on her head. Two angels are holding the ends of her outspread cloak, in front of which are saints: the men on the right and the women on the left. A church is depicted against the backdrop of a hilly landscape. It is positioned on a mound, with a railing ending in a staircase leading to it. The lower section of the painting features three groups, all genuflecting: men to the left, children in the middle, and women to the right. The group of men is dominated by the figure of Pope Sixtus IV (1471‒1484). Even after 175 years of research, the following questions remain contested: • the dating of the painting and the date of its arrival in Zadar • the identification of the patrons and the interpretation of the painting’s symbolism • the identification of the shrines depicted in the painting, and, finally • the identification of the historical figures featured. The aim of the authors is to try to elucidate, at least in part, the theological and historical context of the painting’s production, and to identify the historical figures and the shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary depicted therein.

This article was prompted by the newest reedition of O. A. Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaia’s well-known book about the cult of Michael the Archangel in the Latin Middle Ages. Based on this exemplary book and medieval Russian literary texts, the author of this article raises the question of the dialectic between the typical and the peculiar in the veneration of Michael the Archangel in the Russian Orthodox tradition. The typical features, i. e. the ones that resemble the features that Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaia found in the European material, prove to be by far more numerous than the peculiar features. As in other religious traditions, the image of Archangel Michael in Rus’ seems to have been the most abstract one when compared with the images of all the saints. This phenomenon contributed to the fact that in different parts of the Christian world, an identical set of functions was ascribed to this archangel. In principle, from the Christian point of view, Michael is undoubtedly the chief of the angels. But the natural desire of a medieval person to create a more specific image of this object of his pious thoughts and feelings by separating the chief angel from the entire army of angels did not achieve any significant results. It is indicative that Archangel Michael is not referred to by his name in texts that describe situations when he interferes in the lives of people. Taking the text of the Bible as a model, the writers preferred to use just the generic designation — “an angel.” In contrast, in the cases when Michael the Archangel is clearly individualized, he is invariably portrayed as severe and often even as cruel. In this respect, the tradition of medieval Rus’ contains exact parallels to O. A. Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaia’s findings regarding the confessional history of Western Europe.

AbstractThe starting point of the paper is the historical fact that people who have special forms of religious experience such as seeing saints, angels, gods or goddesses can always say whom they saw. They never met anyone totally unknown to them. The question is why. The answer that the paper proposes and invites to discuss is that having experience means to identify what is happening with what is known as pattern of interpretation. The knowledge of those patterns is due either to socialisation or to further studies in favour of, or against, those patterns, yet, it is unlikely that something totally new will ever be discovered through those forms of religious experience.

This research reports the imagery representation of the Moon in the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception with Saints and Angels (1611) by Domenico Cresti (Passignano). Our goal is to defend this image as a telescopic representation of the Galilean Moon, that is, a cratered Moon as presented by Galileo Galilei in his work Sidereus nuncius (1610). Passignano was a friend of the artist Lodovico Cardi (Cigoli) who corresponded with Galileo and exchanged information on telescopic observations. This relationship between the artists and Galileo reinforces the possibility that the two painters had represented cratered the moons. The research consists of bibliographical and imaginary research and, at the end, the Moon of Passignano as the first representation of a Galilean Moon inside a Church.

AbstractSocrates remains one of the most prominent paternal figures of Western dialogism and phonocentric paradigm; the man who stirred up the dialectic imaginations of his days. In Plato’s Socratic dialogues, his inner voice (daimonion) sounds as a last-instance statement to cast the light on the final solution of the conversation. In the context of antiquity and following cultural tradition, Socrates was the only hearer of warning signals from inside. The rest of the voices were urging (voices of the imaginable cursed souls, saints, angels, etc.). There was no need for a “personal” dictating voice when a divine dictation was already present. According to Charles Peirce’s classification, a “voice without evident source” or a voice from the head is a dicent indexical legisign.

AbstractThis article examines literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence for the Christian reidentification of statuary and reliefs as biblical scenes and protagonists, saints and angels. It argues that Christian identifications were promulgated, amongst others by local bishops, to make sense of imagery of which the original identity had been lost and/or was no longer meaningful. Three conditions for a new identification are discussed: the absence of an epigraphic label, geographical and/or chronological distance separating the statue from its original context of display, and the presence of a specific attribute or characteristic that could become the prompt for reidentification. In their manipulation and modernization of older statuary, Christians showed a much greater appreciation of the statuary medium than generally assumed.

AbstractTo a greater extent than other saints' lives, Guthlac A is a poem about a land dispute. Through contextualizing the central ‘battle for the beorg’ within Anglo-Saxon practices of land tenure, this article shows that Guthlac A represents the spiritual conflict between Guthlac and the devils as a land dispute between unworthy tenants who have been given temporary tenure of the land and a warrior of God who is granted permanent tenure as his reward for faithful service. By portraying the devils' loss of the beorg and Guthlac's acquisition of it through the framework of Anglo-Saxon customs of land-holding, the poem dramatizes replacement doctrine, the teaching that the number of the saved would equal the number of fallen angels and replace them in the heavenly kingdom.

AbstractThis article (in two parts) is devoted to the first step of an attempted reconstruction of the religion of the Qur’ānic mušrikūn on the basis of the Qur’ān and indisputably earlier evidence alone. The first part concludes that the mušrikūn believed in the same Biblical God as the messenger and that their lesser beings, indiscriminately called gods and angels, functioned much like (dead) saints in later Islam and Christianity. This is not exactly new since it is more or less what Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb concluded three hundred years ago. The second part examines the high God hypothesis and tries to relate the beliefs of the mušrikūn to those of other monotheists in late antiquity, with indeterminate results: in terms of their views on God and the lesser beings, the mušrikūn could equally well be pagan monotheists and Jews (or Judaisers).

The depiction of liturgical life played a crucial role in the Russian art of the 16th-17th century. There was a number of newly created scenes emerged at the time: Let All Human Flesh Be Silent, The Cherubikon, The Vision of St. Gregory the Theologian and Now the Powers of the Heaven. The rarity of the latter, provided by the only example kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery, caused a special interest for the study. The upper part of the composition is occupied by the image of Heaven, where the Savior sits in majesty in the center surrounded by the angels. In the lower part, the saint bishop celebrates the liturgy against the backdrop of the temple. The icon is inscribed with a quotation from a hymn sung at the Liturgy of the Presanctified gifts. We find a similar set of motifs in another scene known as A Saint Celebrates the Liturgy. The depictions of it carry other inscriptions: The Liturgy, A Saint Bishop Serves the Lord, etc., however, the composition itself seems precisely repeated. In the center of the composition, there is a saint bishop approached by the laypeople. In the upper part, the Savior within a mandorla is depicted surrounded by the Heavenly Powers. In other words, the core motif of a saint bishop in front of the altar which is considered a marker for liturgical scenes is supplemented here with the depiction of laypeople or saints coming and with the image of the Lord in Majesty. The use of the similar set of motifs indicates the parallel development of liturgical scenes in the Late Medieval Russian art. The semantics of the subjects A Saint Bishop Celebrates the Liturgy and Now the Powers of Heaven also coincide with other liturgical compositions. They express the idea of unity between believers and the Heavenly world and besides they clearly show the way to reach the Paradise through the liturgy.

AbstractRecent discussion regarding the beatific vision has concerned the object of the vision. Thomas Aquinas represents a robust account of the beatific vision according to which God will be seen in his essence by saints and angels in heaven. Others, however, have worried that such a view risks imperilling divine transcendence and incomprehensibility and favour instead an understanding of the beatific vision that is christologically oriented. This article offers a defence of the claim that we will see God's essence in heaven. First, it draws attention to various distinctions in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae concerning how we see the divine essence in heaven. Then, it demonstrates points of continuity between Thomas’ account and that of later Protestants, particularly Calvin and Turretin. Third, following Simon Gaine, it argues that Thomas’ account of the beatific vision is not christologically deficient. Finally, it argues that Thomas’ account has biblical support.

Abstract The author asserts that prophetic visionary experience is the primary and sole method of disclosure in the Apocalypse and has crucial relevance for New Testament studies. He argues that John’s visionary state was an altered state of consciousness with stream of consciousness affinities. This sheds invaluable light on Revelation in eight significant areas: 1) the fluid past/present/future shifting of tenses, 2) the fluid spatial dimension found in Revelation, 3) the ability to see into the invisible spirit realm, 4) an enhanced auditory or hearing component in the series of visions, 5) a greatly enhanced emotional intensity, 6) a distinct transport in the Spirit component, 7) pronounced interaction between John, the four Living Beings, the angels, the 24 Elders, the glorified saints in heaven, Jesus, and God the Father, and 8) an increased awareness of God’s glory and majesty in the context of the heavenly worship.

Upon first glance, nineteenth-century German Catholic and Protestant missionary periodicals seem to come from different milieus. Compare two mastheads: an October 1895 issue of the monthly periodical of the Catholic Society of the Divine Word (SVD) and the Protestant Berlin Missionary Society's monthly periodical of November 1895. An ornate woodcut print inhabits the masthead of the SVD periodical, the Kleiner-Herz Jesu-Bote. Jesus, with his sacred heart exposed, stands on clouds and is flanked by two angels, Raphael and Gabriel. In the top left-hand corner, the reader sees the Archangel Michael militantly guarding over the frontispiece with sword and shield, while in the top right-hand corner, the one mortal, St. Francis, smiles benevolently, offering the reader absolution. The periodical's title is presented in lettering akin to an illuminated manuscript. Pictures of saints, relics, and martyrs adorn the rest of the issue.

On New year's Eve 1992 a man suffering from schizophrenia climbed into a lions' cage at the London Zoo and was badly mauled. This event provoked a full-scale moral panic among the media and government, the tragedy seeming to violate many of the comfortable myths about progress in psychiatry, echoing the impact of the civil war in former Yugoslavia which had shattered the hope of an era of unbroken European peace following the end of the cold war. Whatever we may wish in reality the lion does not lie down with the lamb. Daniel the visionary, the interpreter of dreams, the one who asserted that his God, the God of angels and saints with power over man and beasts would eventually endure, while all earthly kings were found wanting, emerged from the lions’ den unscathed—but secular, psychiatric, suffering, decarcer-ated, visionless, late-twentieth-century man does not.

The greatest master of the “Gothic smile” was not one of the anonymous visual artists who made saints and angels beam in the mid-thirteenth century; rather, it was Dante. Smiling is the hallmark of the presumably “sage and serious” poet and a sign of his distinctive originality as a Christian theologian. While this is true as early as La vita nuova and the Convivio, the Commedia shows how Dante journeys toward the beatific vision of God through the smile (on the faces of Vergil, Beatrice, and others). Sorriso/sorridere and riso/ridere–as noun or verb, and apparently interchangeable in meaning–appear over seventy times in the poem, in a wide variety of contexts: twice in Inferno, on more than twenty occasions in Purgatory, and double that number in Paradiso. As he develops the poem, Dante uses the smile to express the unique individuality not only of the human being but also of the triune God. (PSH)

AbstractThe article examines dreaming and dream narratives in Legio Maria, sub-Saharan Africa's largest African instituted church with a Roman Catholic background. Most Legios valorize a Black Christ and Black Mary but do so while espousing anti-essentialist attitudes towards racialization of the sacred. The social, cultural and symbolic hybridity of the Joluo (Kenya Luo), who still form the majority of the membership in this multi-ethnic, multi-national church, has influenced Legios' religious outlook. Legios' views are contrasted with some white and black theologies that take more monochrome, particularistic positions on the color of the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, Satan, saints, angels and demons. I discuss how Legios' eclectic altar iconography and dreams interact and influence one another. The article demonstrates that Legio Maria's theology of color has resonances with the perspectives on postmodern humanism and postmodern blackness formulated by scholars like Michel Foucault, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Vincent Anderson and bell hooks.

The idea that divine beings, holy people and magical creatures leave behind permanent marks of their immortality on the surface of the earth is common to many cultures and spiritual systems. Throughout history curious hollows, cavities, and coloured stains on stone and rock have been explained as tangible evidence of the presence and intervention of deities, saints, prophets, angels and demons. The folk motif of the miraculous impression of a foot, hand or limb finds frequent expression within Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Footprint shrines and cults abound in the Middle East, India, south-east Asia and China, from the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and Qadam Sharif in Delhi to Phra Sat in Thailand. Variously revered as the footmark of Buddha, Siva, Adam and St Thomas the Aposde, Sri Pada in Sri Lanka is perhaps the most compelling emblem of the polyvalency of this intriguing phenomenon and its capacity to range across the full spectrum of religious traditions.

Sacred personae of the officially recognized religious systems often appear in charms in order to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of the ritual. Their appearance is particularly common in Greek narrative charms where they often assume the role of the auxiliary agent who expels the malevolent factor and provides a cure to the afflicted person. In this context, the appearance of Christ, the Virgin Mary, Angels, Archangels, the Apostles, as well as various saints, is also quite frequent. There is, however, a peculiarity in terms of the role that the figure of the Virgin Mary (Panagia, Theotokos) assumes. This holy figure can not only assume the role of an auxiliary sacred agent who provides a cure to the afflicted person, but also the role of the afflicted, seeking healing treatment by another holy figure. Worth mentioning in the last case is that this affliction could have as its source another sacred figure such as the Apostles or even the Angels. In which particular charm-types does the Virgin Mary appear as the afflicted person? Which are the factors leading to the onset of this affliction and which are the symptoms experienced by the holy figure? How is this affliction cured and by whom? How could we, finally, explain this ambiguity of the Virgin Mary (Panagia) who appears to be standing in a liminal and transitional space between the sacred and the secular, divine and human, healer and afflicted? These are some of the questions that this article seeks to examine and answer.

Abstract Vasilica Barbu, also known as Mother Veronica, a seer and then an abbess in mid-twentieth century Romania, had visions of Jesus, Mary, and a variety of angels and saints, beginning in 1937. Supported by her parish priest and other local believers, she published an account of her visions and founded a convent for adolescent girls. The Vladimireşti convent proved to be very successful, but the Securitate (secret police) decided to close it down on the grounds that it was harbouring fascist fugitives. A close reading of how Barbu navigated the challenges of poverty, patriarchy, and the rise of state socialism reveals not only a story of incredible tenacity in the face of adversity but also how fundamentally religious values changed following the Second World War. Whereas in the late 1930s Barbu’s visions enabled her to bring together a strong community of supporters and to attract the attention of the most powerful men in the country, in the early 1950s both Church leaders and the Securitate attacked “mysticism” as heterodox and socially deviant.

Lviv sculptor Francisk Olensky remains one of the most original figures of his time among the younger generation of Lviv Baroque of the second half of the 18th century, whose creative heritage is a significant contribution to the history of the development of art and culture in Ukraine. The article explores the stylistic features of the artistic sculptural works of F. Olensky of the late Baroque period in the decoration of sacral and residential buildings of Lviv. Based on the works of previous researchers of the creativity of Francisk Olensky and a natural survey of sculptural works, the artistic heritage of the sculptor has been thoroughly analyzed and the main features of the plastic solution of the artist’s works have been revealed. The peculiarity of the creative manner of performing sculptures by F. Olensky is the naturalistic character of the figures - a short torso, with a head with a neck drawn into the shoulders, thickened open arms and legs of angels and female figures, similar to male ones, and a special interpretation of the face with a slightly protruding forward nose and upper lip. The baby faces of the angels lose their softness and inner beauty, inherent in similar works of his teacher J.G. Pinzel. Olensky quite originally solves the complex problem for any master-carver of transmitting hair on the heads of saints, usually forming disheveled heads of elders. His sculptural works belong to the cultural heritage of Ukraine and have artistic value. In the process of research, the technical condition of the works of art was studied and conservation-restoration measures were proposed to protect against further destruction.

In the field of Russian portraiture in the second quarter of the 19th century, a new «type» of children’s portrait images emerged, which the author conventionally calls «exemplary children». According to him, young models were portrayed as educational models for both the portrayed themselves and their peers and potential descendants. This «type» was formed at the junction of romantic ideas about the virtue of childhood, Christian ideals and, at the same time, growing realistic trends in art. It became widespread among both metropolitan and provincial portrait painters, which testifies to its compliance with the tastes and needs of the public of that time. The article examines portraits of children from the Tomilov families by A. G. Varnek and Kapnist, made by E. F. Krendovsky. They were created at the beginning and end of the specified time period, respectively, which allows tracing the development of the «type» in dynamics. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the portraitists combined the images of real boys and girls, shown in the natural setting of home activities, with a complex spiritual and moral content. The latter was achieved through the use of the universal language of Christian symbolism, bold comparison of images of children with images of Christ, the Mother of God, angels and saints.

The article attempts to analyse the image of paradise in “The Sermon on the Annunciation of the Holy Virgin" from the collection "The Key of Understanding" (1659) by Ioanikii Galiatovskii. Paradise in his sermon is depicted as a hierarchical structure of the nine Angelic Choirs: the Angels, the Archangels, the Principality, the Authority, the Mastery, the Parish, the Throne, the Cherubim, and the Seraphim. Comparing the angelic choirs of Galiatovskii and the depiction of celestial choirs in «The Mirror of Theology» (1618) by Cyryl Trankvylion Stavrovetskyi, one can see some differences, including a change in the sequence of arrangement of angelic choirs and in the semantics of names, which Galiatovskii supplements with explanations of the saints' presence on all choirs. The theme of the Annunciation that becomes the beginning of the salvation of the human soul is brought closer to the understanding of paradise. If one compares the preaching on Gospel with a painting one can easily grasp substantial differences in the interpretation. Galiatovskii does not follow the biblical story of the Annunciation, which tells how did the Archangel Gabriel appear to the Holy Virgin and inform her of the birth of Christ. Instead, he interprets this event in anagogical (spiritual sense), describing paradise and the Blessed Virgin in a similar way. Visual art closely follows the biblical text when depicting the Annunciation – the Holy Virgin and the Archangel, who holds a white lily that means god news, are surrounded by several tiny angels that are holding a white lily flower (like in the painting by the French artist Philip de Champaign "Annunciation", 1644). Interestingly, the interpretation of the Annunciation in Ioanikii Galiatovskii’s writing is close to the theme of the Assumption. One might mention the painting "Assumption of the Virgin" (1475 - 1476) by the Italian artist Francesco Botticini, who depicted the Holy Virgin standing next to the hierarchical structure of the nine Angelic Choirs.

There is a reciprocal relationship between religion and culture. Religion is a social institution that creates societies with elements such as faith, morals and rituals along with their cultures. In the historical process, beliefs such as Buddhism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity have been adopted by various Turkish tribes for various social and political reasons. However, the influence of the belief of Sky God, which is the basis of Turkish mythology and culture, on the Turkish tribes living in Turkestan has always continued. One of the results of the Talas War, which took place in 751, was that the Turkish tribes living in Turkestan began to accept Islam en masse. In the process of almost thirteen centuries that have passed since the arrival of the Turks under the influence of Islam, Mesopotamian mythology, along with Islamic teachings, influenced Turkic culture and folklore. Desiring to know, interpret and comprehend the nature and environment in which they live, the Turks created various toponymic legends based on their beliefs and cultures. While supernatural powers were gods, goddesses, creatures and spirits in Turkiс mythology, with the evolution of this tradition in post-Islamic Kyrgyz society, the concept of God, religious-mystical personalities such as prophet saints, jinns and angels came to the fore. Our study is about legends compiled on the territory of Kyrgyzstan and presumably formed under the influence of the Islamic faith.

This article explores the linguistic worldview of a Ukrainian poet – postmodernist Yuriy Andrukhovytch – realized through the concept of “Christian sacred symbols” analyzed from the perspective of anthropological and cognitive aspects of lingual and cultural studies. It defines the essence and the ways of implementing the concept in the spatio-temporal continuum of poetry collection “India” as well as highlights the role of man in the poet’s imaginary world through the archetypes of the world culture and decodes symbolic meaning of cultural context of the author’s works. Contrary to a generally accepted view that the earth is round, spatial reality for the author turns out to be a planet which resembles a cake, a fl at surface, a desert, a kingdom and a bridge. The sky is seven crystal hemispheres, out lining the heavenly space with stars and planets fixed at each level. The space is represented by such geographical notions as East Asia, India, China, the river Nile. The author of the article supposes that India becomes for the writer the embodiment of our civilization at all times of mankind, another way to present man in the space of eternity, and a kind of life philosophy. The synthesis of pagan, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and Christian ideas about man’s place in the world and his moral peace, happiness and overall love is represented by such symbols as angels, harpes, gehennr hell hrifony, dragons, percale books, lilies, honey, pythons, fl ags, birds, reptiles, saints, timpani, newts, tulips, furies, devils, Yuri’s sword, Yasmin and others.

In every order or monastic congregation a group of ‘favourite’ saints can be selected. The reasons differ. Most often the foremost place goes to the congregation’s founder or founders. It should be emphasized that in a number of orders, monastic congregations, monasteries, or abbeys the cult is given to benefactors and founders not formally canonized by the Church. The other group of saints venerated with a particular cult in congregations are those recognised as patrons or protectors of their congregations and saints and beatified coming from the ranks of their order. In the history of the Congregation o f the Sisters o f Saint Felix o f Cantalice Third Order Regular o f Saint Francis o f Assisi we can clearly see the care of the cult of a number of saints and beatified who in a distinctive way affected the Congregation’s spirituality and activity. First the founders of the Congregation, Blessed Honorat Koźmiński (1826-1916) and Blessed Mother Angela Truszkowska (1825— 1899), should be mentioned. From the beginning of its existence the Congregation was deeply rooted in Franciscan spirituality. The Congregation was established after approval by sisters of the Tertiary Order of Saint Francis of Assisi. It should not come as a surprise that in monasteries of the Felician Sisters the cult of Saint Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) and also of Saint Clare (1194-1253) was cherished with great popularity. The Saint to whom the Felician Sisters owe their name is Saint Felix of Cantalice (1515-1587), while in a special way the Congregation was entrusted to the care of Saint Joseph and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The Franciscan Monastery of St Domnius at Kraj on the island of Pašman houses an incunable edition of Augustine’s The City of God (De Civitate Dei) which was printed in Venice by Nicolas Jenson in 1475. The incunable features beautiful Renaissance multi-coloured illuminations painted in tempera, sepia, ink and water colours while gold foils and gold dust were used on fol. 17 (the page number is not original but was subsequently added in pencil; this folio contains the beginning of Book 1) and a number of other folios. The illumination on fol. 17 consists of two phytomorphic initials, a decorative border and independent figural scenes while a number of other folios are decorated with phytomorphic initials of the littera notabilior type, the height of which corresponds to two lines, painted in red or blue. The top and left margin of the first page of Book 1 are filled with a decorative border terminating in trilobes on each end. The ornamental scheme of the border consists of a band made up of five thin lines which undulates in a spiral and thus forms circles. These are filled with flowers, leaves and berries painted in blue, green and cyclamen purple but also with gold stylized burdock flowers (Lat. Arctium lappa; some scholars call them gold dots, that is, bottoni dorati). The remaining fields are filled with bent scrolls. In the upper left corner of the frame is a goldfinch. The initial I, composed of phytomorphic motifs in blue, green and cyclamen purple and their shades, is painted against a gold background of the rectangular field situated at the beginning of the text column on the left-hand side. Inside the decorative border, placed at the height which corresponds to the centre of the initial, is a medallion with the bust of St Augustine depicted in the open sky with elongated white clouds and no other details. The illusion of the spatial depth was achieved through the use of tonal gradations: the shades of blue are darker at the top and lighter in the lower half of the sky. St Augustine is dressed in a white robe and a red cloak with a black hood. He is wearing a white mitre with a horizontal and perpendicular band highlighted with gold dust. The shadows and folds of his clothes were articulated with black and white lines. His right hand is pointing to the open book which was painted at the height of his chest. The fingers on his right hand are elongated and thin. St Augustine’s gold nimbus was painted as a full circle the left half of which was outlined in white and the right half in black. St Augustine is directing his gentle and sad gaze upwards. His head is slightly bent. His round and bony head is marked by the large round eyes with prominent sclera and dark circles underneath while the arched eyebrows are thinner at their ends. The nose is small and the mouth is turned downwards. The plasticity of the face and its complexion were articulated with white and pink shades. The trimmed dark beard is depicted with short lines in lighter and darker shades. The ornamental frame which fills the top margin corresponds to the one in the left margin but was decorated more modestly because the miniaturist placed the scroll bearing the printer’s name and the scroll identifying the text as belonging to Book 1 at the centre of the frame which left only the beginning and the end of the frame to be decorated. The scroll with the printer’s name is emphasized by a golden burdock flower at the top of the frame and a golden teasel flower (Lat. Dipsacus fullonum) at the bottom. The lower margin features two symmetrical angels, rendered in a somewhat imprecise drawing, who kneel on the ground painted in the shades of green and brown. The physiognomy of the angels is similar to that of St Augustine. Their round heads have small eyes and noses, shaded circles under the eyes and arched eyebrows. The mouths are depicted as thin lines with pronounced ends and are further accentuated by a dot beneath the lower lip. The plasticity of their faces was achieved through the tonal gradation of pink and white. The angels’ hair, ochre in colour and highlighted with gold dust, is thick and short and covers the tops of their heads like a helmet. The outspread wings were painted in dark and light shades of blue. Two wide red scrolls with white highlights emerge symmetrically from behind the angels at their waist height. Wavy tendrils and gold stylized teasel flowers extend from the red scroll. The angels hold a laurel wreath between them. The colour of the circular field inside the wreath is cyclamen purple. The wreath is formed by three rows of leaves which are bound by four regularly spaced ties. The leaves’ edges and tips were painted in light and dark shades of green. Inside the wreath is a Renaissance crest surrounded by thin white wiggly tendrils with sprouting leaves. The shield, in the shape of a horse’s head, is divided horizontally into the dark blue upper half and the red lower half. It features a gold lion with his mouth wide open who is facing right and holding a tree with his front paws. The tree’s pyramidal top is decorated with small dots indicating leaves and fruit. The shield’s right half is outlined in white and the left one in black. The second text column on the first page of Book 1 is decorated with the painted initial letter G. It consists of phytomorphic motifs in blue, red, yellow and cyclamen purple and their shades. Two small leaves are attached to the initial on its left-hand side. As is the case with the crest, the initial was additionally decorated with elegant white tendrils sprouting leaves and highlighted with gold dust. The background is also gold while the rectangular field around the initial is outlined in a thin black line. Two wavy tendrils and two gold stylized teasel flowers emerge from the corners of the frame on the left-hand side while a green leaf appears at the centre. Apart from these illuminations and initials on fol. 17, the incunable contains other initials, one for the beginning of each of the remaining twenty one book, and all of them consist of blue, green and cyclamen pink phytomorphic motifs painted against a gold background inside a black rectangular frame. The plasticity of these initials was achieved through tonal gradation and the use of yellow while thin white undulating tendrils with variations in width and highlights in gold dust enriched the decoration. Some sentences in the text were emphasized by numerous initials in red or blue of the littera notabilior type the height of which corresponds to two lines of the text. The illuminations of this incunable edition of the De Civitate Dei belong to north Italian or Venetian Renaissance painting and they demonstrate numerous significant similarities with the works of the well-known Venetian miniaturist whom the scholarly literature identified as Maestro del Plinio di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Maestro del Plinio di Pico or, more commonly, Maestro di Pico). The attribution of the illuminations in this incunable to Maestro di Pico, who may have been helped by his workshop and assistants especially during the painting of the decorative frame and initials, is based on the figure of St Augustine and the angels who support the crest. Their features display the same typology which characterizes the works of Maestro di Pico. Identical angels appear in the bottom margin of Brunetto Latini’s Il Tesoro (Gerardus de Lisa, Treviso, 1474; Cambridge, Mass., Harvard, Houghton Library, Inc. 6459, c. 7). The figure of St Augustine shows pronounced similarities with the figure of a Dominican monk, set inside the initial O of the littera historiata type, in Nicolaus de Auximo’s Supplementum (Franciscus Renner et Nicolaus de Frankofordia, Venice, 1474; Biblioteca Marciana, Inc. Ven. 494, c.2). Identical angels and putti can be found in the bottom margins of Strabo’s Geographica (Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesotta Library, Ms. 1460/f St., c.1), and in two copies of Pliny’s Historia Naturalis (Venice, N. Jenson, 1472, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Vèlins 498 and Venice, N. Jenson, 1472, San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, n. 2289). A beautiful comparative example is the Biblia Latina (Franciscus Renner & Nicolaus de Frankfordia, 1475, Dallas, Texas, Southern Methodist University, Bridwell Library) and its first page which has a similar composition to that in the incunable from Kraj. The figure of St Jerome, depicted inside a littera historiata provides a plethora of specific Morellian details which are essential for the attribution of the illuminations in the incunable from Kraj to Maestro di Pico. Striking similarities in the depictions of saints, phytomorphic initials and decorative frames can also be found in two psalters (one in Venice, Biblioteca Querini Stampaglia, Inc. 6, the other in Siena, Biblioteca S. Bernardino del Convento dell’Osservanza) and in the first page of the Psalms in a breviary from Paris (Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève, OE XV 147 Rés). Similar saints and angels all of which belong to the same figural typology were used to decorate three copies from the Commissioni series made for Doge Agostino Barbarigo (Commissione del doge Agostino Barbarigo a Girolamo Capello, 1487, Venice, Bib. Del Museo Correr, MS Cl. III. 33 (fig. 15); Commissione del doge Agostino Barbarigo a Paolo di Canale, 1489, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 4729, c.2, and Commissione del doge Agostino Barbarigo a Tommaso Loredano, 1490, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 4730, c.1). Further parallels can be found in the illuminations of a breviary from Augsburg (c. 1480, Universitätsbibl., Cod. I.2.2o 35) the first page of which has a lettera istoriata with the figure of St Paul whose physiognomy closely resembles that of St Augustine in the incunabule from Kraj, while the bottom margin features centrally placed angels which are identical to those at Kraj. Equally important comparative material is found in three Paduan incunables (Biblioteca del Seminario Vescovile) which contain illuminations attributed to Maestro di Pico. The distinctive features of the angels, putti and saints as well as the type of decoration used in the margins of these incunables also demonstrate striking similarities with the illuminations from Kraj. Other examples include Lattanzi’s Opera (Giovanni da Colonia and Johannes Manthen, Venice, 1478; Forc. M. 3.2), Jacopo da Varagine’s Legenda aurea (Gabriele di Pietro, Venice, 1477, with a likely contribution of his workshop; Forc. M. 2.22) and Cipriano’s Opera (Vindelino da Spira, Venice, 1471; Forc. K. 2.12). On the basis of the comparative analyses outlined above and the similarities which have been noted, it can be concluded that the illuminations in the incunable of St Augustine’s De Civitate Dei (Nicolas Jenson, Venice, 1475), housed in the Monastery of St Domnius at Kraj, were painted by the well-known Venetian Renaissance miniaturist Maestro di Pico. Regardless of the possible input of his workshop and assistants during the painting process of the decorative frame and initials, these illuminations help expand the catalogue of Maestro di Pico’s works and represent valuable contribution to the painting in Renaissance Dalmatia.