Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « San Rufino (Church) »

This study discusses the origin, and liturgical function, of a popular accessory of the Christmas celebrations, that is, the Bethlehem nativity scene. The events of the life of Jesus attracted much attention in the early period of Christianity, as a result of which the Holy Land was visited by flocks of pilgrims. Descriptions of the sentiments aroused by a pilgrimage to Bethlehem may be found in sources as early as the letters of Saint Jerome. Fragments of the Bethlehem manger were kept in the Santa Maria Maggiore Cathedral in Rome, so it is here that one of the first nativity scenes, a sculptural group by Arnolfo di Cambio, can be found (late 13th century). The work of Arnolfo was commissioned by the same Pope Nicholas IV who also sponsored the ornamentation of the Cathedral of San Rufino. One screen of the Giotto Assisi fresco cycle depicts Saint Francis’ Miracle of Greccio, in which the Holy Mass is celebrated over the manger and the Child comes to life. The Bethlehem nativity scene was the subject of numerous paintings and sculptures during the Renaissance and the Baroque era. From the sacrificial procession of the faithful in the liturgy evolved the genre of sacral drama, from which in turn mystery plays were developed, leaving the premises of the church. Nativity scenes incorporating elements of mystery plays, such as the presence of the shepherds, were intended primarily to make the miracle of embodiment a palpable reality for the believers. The presence of the Holy Family, the three Magi and the shepherds made the nativity scene realistic, always with a touch of the day and age. A tabernacle cabinet carried by angels was erected in 1589 over the Chapel of the Nativity in the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica; commissioned, again, by a Franciscan Pope, Sixtus V. Caravaggio’s Adoration of the Shepherds altar paintings (the Museo Nazionale, Messina, and the San Lorenzo church, Palermo), represented a novel interpretation of the subject. In sculpture, Antonio Begarelli’s terracotta groups (1526-1527, Modena Cathedral), which resemble paintings, preceded baroque art. The nativity scene, as a genre in sculpture, started to flourish again in Hungary in the 17th century, a symbolic representative of which was the medieval Adoration of the Shepherds sculptural group found by Jesuits in the Town Hall of Lőcse (today Levoča, in Slovakia), a work executed by the master Pál Lőcsei (today in the Basilica of Saint James, Levoča). Three Magi altars are to be found in the churches of Saint Michael in both Sopron and Kolozsvár (today Cluj-Napoca, in Romania), which presumably must have had their medieval antecedents. While the Adoration of the Three Magi sculptural group is a work of an immigrant Bavarian sculptor, Georg Schweitzer, in Sopron, it was Franz Anton Maulbertsch who painted a Three Magi altar screen in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca). Maulbertsch also developed the theme of the Three Magi and the Adoration of the Shepherds in two separate fresco scenes in the parish church of Sümeg, deliberately associating with the great tradition leading to the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, via the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome.

Abstract It is the business of skillful physicians, they say, to provide some sort of medicine or potion when they see that cities or regions are threatened by epidemics, so that people may be protected by it from the death that threatens them. This is the sort of medical art which you have practiced, my reverend father Chromatius,* at this time when the Goths have burst through the harriers into Italy with Alaric at their head, and a lethal plague is spreading far and wide, to the ruin of fields, herds, and men: you have sought some remedy to protect from cruel death the people God has entrusted to you, a remedy by which ailing spirits may be diverted from the thought of impending evil and give their attention to something better. Thus you have charged me to translate into Latin the church history which that most learned man Eusebius of Caesarea composed in Greek, that the attention of those who hear it may be occupied and they may for a while come to forget present evils while their interest is directed to the affairs of the past. At first I wanted to beg off the work as being unequal to it and as having lost fluency in Latin after so many years, but then it occurred to me that *Bishop of Aquileia ca. 388-407 and Rufinus’s patron.

Abstract After Julian’s death a legitimate government was restored to us at last with Jovian; for he appeared at once as emperor, confessor, and averter of the error which had been introduced for evil. For with the army on alert and the barbarian pressing close, our leaders, after discussing the crisis, elected Jovian, who, as he was being seized and taken off to receive the tokens of command, is said to have announced to the army, profaned by Julian’s sacrilegious acts, that he could not command them because he was a Christian. They all with one voice are said to have answered, “We are Christians too.” Nor would he agree to accept the command before he had heard what they said, according to report. Then God’s mercy came to his assistance without delay, and beyond all hope, the enemy having closed them in on all sides with no chance of escape, they suddenly saw envoys approaching from the barbarians who sued for peace, who promised as well to sell food and other provisions to the army, which was prostrate from famine, and who with unbounded kindness corrected the rashness of our people.