Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Virgin Mary Wedding ring »

The Corona Borealis or Northern Crown is a bright constellation that shines conspicuously in the early summer sky. Among the oldest recognized constellations visible in the northern hemisphere, its distinctive configuration is easily discernible. Once a group of nine stars, it was the only stellar ring visible to early Greek astronomers who named it Στεϕανοσ, the Wreath. It was later distinguished as πρωτοσ and Βορεοσ (first and northern) and ascribed a positive astrological influence. The constellation was associated with the myth of Bacchus and Ariadne as early as the third Century BCE. In this myth, the Crown was most often identified as Ariadne's wedding crown which Bacchus hurled into the sky at her death as a memorial of his undying love for her. Although there are variations in the telling of the myth in ancient texts, the constellation was firmly identified with the triumph of Ariadne, and her transformation into a goddess. The pictorial tradition was adapted in images of the Virgin Mary with a starry crown, as well as those representing her Coronation by Christ.

If we are to understand the Eucharist as the Body of Christ, it is necessary to explore how Mary’s own body participates in the Eucharistic mystery. Such a discussion was prominent during the Middle Ages, but today there is very little attention given to the relationship between Mary and the the Eucharist. This paper will explore this subject through the lens of a theology of the sacramental principle. By examining recent papal documents as well as John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, this paper will argue that Mary is the perfect fulfilment of the sacramental principle. The sacramental principle fulfilled is a principle that is nuptial, where the Eucharist expresses the wedding point between God and creation. It is Mary who unveils this mystery in her own person and body.

This study aims to determine the meaning and description of the accessories for the statue of the Virgin Mary in the Chapel of the Graha Annai Velangkanni. The sampling technique used in this research is total sampling, which is a whole sampling technique, so the samples in this study are 11 accessories worn on the statue of the Virgin Mary. The results of this study indicate that the accessories on the statue of the Virgin Mary still show the impression of mixing Indian culture with the Catholic Church. For the accessories of the statue of the Virgin Mary, the aesthetic value has aesthetic value, it can be seen in the form of the sculpture itself which has a good composition and a harmonious combination of colors according to the visual elements contained in the fine art. Types of accessories worn on the statue of the Virgin Mary has its own meaning, this can be seen in the use of accessories. There are 11 accessories worn on the statue of the Virgin Mary, namely: 12 Sea Stars (a sign of hope), the Golden Crown of Our Lady (a sign of the glory of a mother's heart), the Golden Crown of Jesus (a sign of prosperity), a Stola (a holy and clean symbol), the Pastor's Staff. (symbol of directing), Mangalsutra Necklace (symbol of love), Ring of Our Lady (symbol of dignity), Rosary (meditation instrument), Indian Flower Necklace (sign of respect), Saree (Indian traditional dress), and Crescent Moon (snake tread) .

Mary - a Model for Christians..... ? Grundtvig’s View of Virgin MaryBy Kirsten DitlevsenThe Protestant Church has always tended to keep warily aloof from the Virgin Mary, and still does. After the Reformation, Mary played a very insignificant role in the church, at least up to the time of Grundtvig. The fact is that Grundtvig begins to take an interest in Mary, inspired by the church father Irenaeus. Grundtvig compares Eve in the Garden of Eden with Mary in Nazareth. Both women were met with an angel’s talk. A false angel beguiled Eve into violating the word of God; while a true angel came to Mary to announce to her that she was to give birth to the Saviour of the world. Mary immediately accepted being part of God’s plan of salvation, thus excusing Eve, her mother. In the words of Irenaeus: Mary’s virgin obedience makes up for Eve’s virgin disobedience.Inspired by Irenaeus, Grundtvig sees Mary as a guarantee of the humanity of Jesus. Jesus had a true human being as his mother, and Grundtvig describes her as an entirely ordinary mother, definitely not infallible. She is conscious that she is a humble and poor woman, whom God had granted His grace. Mary had not imagined that she should be found worthy of meeting and conversing with an angel, as it happened at the Annunciation. But nothing is impossible to God.Grundtvig makes Mary into a model for Christians because she trusts Jesus fully and firmly at the wedding in Cana; in the same manner we should trust Him so that he will help us as He helped His mother.Grundtvig also makes Mary an image of the church. Grundtvig speaks about the spiritual Virgin Mary as the mother of all Christians, i.e., the congregation. A spiritual mother is as necessary for human life as a physical mother, says Grundtvig. In the same way as the Holy Ghost overshadows the Virgin Mary, so the Holy Ghost overshadows the spiritual Virgin Mary - the congregation of the Lord.In Mary we are faced clearly with the true Christian heart. Mary believed in God with all her heart, and thus her faith is a model for how we must take in the word of God.In many of his sermons Grundtvig gives a high priority to what he sees as characteristically .female., in particular in the sermons from the 1850s. Women think with their hearts, while men think with their reason; thus women have a deeper understanding of Our Lord and His Gospel.Grundtvig advocates the idea that women too should be able to preach the Gospel, for just as it was a woman who gave birth to the Son of God, so the great Gospel about the Crucified and Resurrected was also born by a woman’s lips. And Jesus himself had the most loving relationship to women, Grundtvig says, and treated them as equals to men, so the example of Jesus must be sufficient recommendation for his servants, the clergymen. Grundtvig gives a higher priority to women and women’s experience in his sermons; thus, since half of Christendom are after all women, there is certainly reason enough to study his sermons.

Frank Dobbins in memoriamIn 1976 Louise Litterick proposed that Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library MS 1760 was originally prepared for Louis XII and Anne of Brittany of France but was gifted to Henry VIII of England in 1509. That the manuscript actually was prepared as a wedding gift from Louis to his third wife Mary Tudor in 1514, however, is indicated by its decorative and textual imagery, which mirrors the decoration of a book of hours given by Louis to Mary and the textual imagery used in her four royal entries. Analysis of the manuscript’s tabula and texts suggests that MS 1760 was planned by Louis’s chapelmaster Hilaire Bernonneau (d. 1524) at the king’s behest. The new theory elucidates the content and significance of Gascongne’s twelve-voice canon Ista est speciosa, which appeared beneath an original portrait of Mary Tudor and was intended to mirror the perfection of the Blessed Virgin and her ‘godchild’ Mary.

The story of Theophilus is one of the oldest and most widespread Marian miracles in Christian literature. Theophilus is said to have been a sixth-century priest of Adana in Cilicia, removed from office by a new bishop. Eager to regain his position, Theophilus went to a Jew known for diabolical practices and through him made a written pact with the Devil, sealed with a ring. Theophilus received back his lost status but then began to repent and, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, finally won the document from the Devil. Three days later he died.

Funeral costumes are elements of funerary furnishings with very different characteristics. Their form has not only been influenced by local funeral customs but also by the property status of the families of the deceased and the fashion trends prevailing in a given region. The study of funerary clothing clearly translates into the general development of knowledge about the evolution of fashion, and thus the issue is no longer only the domain of costume specialists, but also archaeology. This is clearly discernible on the example of the results of archaeological research conducted in the crypts of the Church of St. Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary – over 100 burials turned out to be hiding the largest archaeological collection of modern funerary clothing from the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Against the background of these costumes, the clothes in which the woman placed in burial no. 8 (EA crypt) stands out. Her attire took an exceptionally impressive form, as evidenced by the fact that this tomb aroused the interest of the local population long before archaeologists arrived in Szczuczyn. According to the stories of the locals, she was buried in a wedding dress. As a result of the verification carried out both on the stand and as a result of laboratory analyses, it was determined whether this theory can be confirmed with the use of scientific methods. The analyses, apart from referring to the theory of stories told by local history enthusiasts, turned out to contribute a lot to the current state of knowledge on the development of 18th-century women’s fashion.

The paper discusses the subject of interaction between a roof truss, vaults and load-bearing walls in a masonry monumental structure. The static structural analysis of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Basilica in Bialystok, as an example of Polish neogothic architecture from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries has been carried out. The building consists of a three-aisled masonry walls system, which in cooperation with cross-ribbed vaults and a timber roof truss determine the spatial rigidity of the structure. Lack of concrete ring-beams and horizontal oriented ceiling slabs cause global stiffness reduction to the horizontal loads. In the past, it could have been one of the main reason for the appearance of cracks in the structure. The basic aspect having a real influence on building global behaviour is interaction of load-bearing structural parts. This structure was subjected to the static analysis with an investigation about the influence of interaction between the roof truss, vaults and walls. The values of horizontal displacements of walls were compared as a result of wind pressure acting on the structure. Numerical calculations were carried out using finite element method.

В статье рассматриваются аллюзии к пасхальному канону прп. Иоанна Дамаскина в «Степи» А.П. Чехова. Показано, что пасхальный канон служит одним из источников деления повести на главки. Выявлены сходства на уровне образности и композиции с библейскими песнями. Обнаруженные параллели, в основном, сводятся к следующим. Вишневый сад N-ского кладбища и степь, переход через которую рассматривается как таинство Крещения, сопоставимы с Красным морем из песни Моисея; вспомогательными образами крещения и воскресения служат купание в реке; пожар, в котором погибла семья Пантелея; гроза. Эпизоды купания и пожара содержат аллюзии к Книге пророка Даниила. Пророчица Анна представлена поющей женщиной, матерью Тита. Пришествие Бога, Которого ожидает пророк Аввакум, сравнимо с приездом графини Драницкой на постоялый двор, образ которой отсылает к притче о десяти девах. Спасенный Иона (и воскресший Христос) отображен в персонаже господина из церкви. Образ Настасьи Петровны Тоскуновой связан с Богородицей, речь о которой идет в девятой песне. Обнаружены структурные параллели с Книгой пророка Даниила, основанные на приеме обратного параллелизма, что позволяет соотнести основную тему повести с противостоянием Вавилона и Иерусалима. Концовка отражает событие Воскресения мертвых, брачный пир Пасхи. Проведено сравнение с пасхальным богослужением в целом; выявлены аллюзии к крестному ходу, открытию царских и дьяконских врат. Новизна работы заключается в том, что рассматриваемые параллели, насколько известно нам, пока не попадали в поле зрения исследователей. ____________________________ © Гончарова Н.Н., 2022 The paper deals with the allusions to St John Damascene’s Canon of Pascha in Anton Chekhov’s “The Steppe”. The Canon of Pascha is shown to be one of the sources of the novellaʼs division into chapters. A number of similarities in imagery and composition to the biblical canticles is revealed. The parallels are, mainly, as follows. The cherry orchard of N.ʼs cemetery and the steppe, the journey across which is regarded as the sacrament of baptism, are comparable to the Red Sea from the Song of Moses, the ancillary images of baptism and resurrection being bathing in a river; the fire, in which Panteleyʼs family died; the thunderstorm. The episodes of the bathing and of the fire contain allusions to the Book of Daniel. The prophetess Anna is represented by the singing woman, Titʼs mother. The Coming of the Lord, expected by St Habakkuk, corresponds to the Countess Dranitskayaʼs visit to the inn, this character referring to the parable of the ten virgins. Jonah, saved by God (and the risen Christ), is reflected by the gentleman in the church. Nastasya Petrovna Toskunova is connected with the Virgin Mary, who is focused on in Ode 9. Structural parallels with the Book of Daniel, based on reverse parallelism, are found, which allows to relate the main theme of the novella to the opposition between Babylon and Jerusalem. The ending reflects the resurrection of the dead, the wedding banquet of Easter. A comparison with the Paschal Service as a whole is made; allusions to the religious procession and the opening of the Holy and Deaconʼs Doors are brought to light. The novelty of the work lies in the fact that the parallels under examination do not appear to have сome into the view of scholars yet.

The historical research of the illustrated Nuremberg Chronicle [Schedelsche Weltchronik (English: Schedel’s World Chronicle)] of Hartmann Schedel com­prises the complex historical knowledge about numerous woodcuts which pre­sent views of various cities important in the world’s history, e.g. Jerusalem, Constantinople, or the European ones such as: Rome, some Italian, German or Polish cities e.g. Wrocław and Cracow; some Hungarian and some Czech Republic cities. Researchers have made a serious study to recognize certain constructions in the woodcuts; they indicated the conservative and contractual architecture, the existing places and the unrealistic (non-existent) places. The results show that there is a common detail in all the views – the defensive wall round each of the described cities. However, in reality, it may not have existed in some cities during the lifetime of the authors of the woodcuts. As for some further details: behind the walls we can see feudal castles on the hills shown as strongholds. Within the defensive walls there are numerous buildings with many towers typical for the Middle Ages and true-to-life in certain ways of building the cities. Schematically drawn buildings surrounded by the ring of defensive walls indicate that the author used certain patterns based on the previously created panoramic views. This article is an attempt of making analogical comparisons of the cities in medieval painting. The Author of the article presents Roman mosaics and the miniature painting e.g. the ones created in the scriptorium in Reichenau. Since the beginning of 14th century Italian painters such as: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Giotto di Bondone, Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted parts of the cities or the entire monumental panoramas in various compositions and with various meanings. One defining rule in this painting concerned the definitions of the cities given by Saint Isidore of Seville, based on the rules which he knew from the antique tradition. These are: urbs – the cities full of architecture and buildings but uninhabited or civita – the city, the living space of the human life, build-up space, engaged according to the law, kind of work and social hierarchy. The tra­dition of both ways of describing the city is rooted in Italy. This article indicates the particular meaning of Italian painting in distributing the image of the city – as the votive offering. The research conducted by Chiara Frugoni and others indica­ted the meaning of the city images in the painting of various forms of panegyrics created in high praise of cities, known as laude (Lat.). We can find the examples of them rooted in the Roman tradition of mosaics, e.g. in San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. They present both palatium and civitas. The medieval Italian painting, especially the panel painting, presents the city structure models which are uninha­bited and deprived of any signs of everyday life. The models of cities – urbs, are presented as votive offerings devoted to their patron saints, especially to Virgin Mary. The city shaped as oval or sinusoidal rings surrounded by the defensive walls resembled a container filled with buildings. Only few of them reflected the existing cities and could mainly be identified thanks to the inscriptions. The most characteristic examples were: the fresco of Taddeo di Bartolo in Palazzo Publico in Siena, which presented the Dominican Order friar Ambrogio Sansedoni holding the model of his city – Siena, with its most recognizable building - the Cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of Mary. The same painter, referred to as the master painter of the views of the cities as the votive offerings, painted the Saint Antilla with the model of Montepulciano in the painting from 1401 for the Cathedral devoted to the Assumption of Mary in Montepulciano. In the painting made by T. di Bartolo, the bishop of the city of Gimignano, Saint Gimignano, presents the city in the shape of a round lens surrounded by defence walls with numerous church towers and the feudal headquarters characteristic for the city. His dummer of the city is pyramidally-structured, the hills are mounted on the steep slopes reflecting the analogy to the topography of the city. We can also find the texts of songs, laude (Lat.) and panegyrics created in honour of the cities and their rulers, e.g. the texts in honour of Milan, Bonvesin for La Riva, known in Europe at that time. The city – Arcadia (utopia) in the modern style. Hartman Schedel, as a bibliophile and a scholar, knew the texts of medieval writers and Italian art but, as an ambitious humanist, he could not disregard the latest, contemporary trends of Renaissance which were coming from Nuremberg and from Italian ci­ties. The views of Arcadia – the utopian city, were rapidly developing, as they were of great importance for the rich recipient in the beginning of the modern era overwhelmed by the early capitalism. It was then when the two opposites were combined – the shepherd and the knight, the Greek Arcadia with the medie­val city. The reception of Virgil’s Arcadia in the medieval literature and art was being developed again in the elite circles at the end of 15th century. The cultural meaning of the historical loci, the Greek places of the ancient history and the memory of Christianity constituted the essence of historicism in the Renaissance at the courts of the Comnenos and of the Palaiologos dynasty, which inspired the Renaissance of the Latin culture circle. The pastoral idleness concept came from Venice where Virgil’s books were published in print in 1470, the books of Ovid: Fasti and Metamorphoses were published in 1497 and Sannazaro’s Arcadia was published in 1502, previously distributed in his handwriting since 1480. Literature topics presented the historical works as memoria, both ancient and Christian, composed into the images. The city maps drawn by Hartmann Schedel, the doctor and humanist from Nurnberg, refer to the medieval images of urbs, the woodcuts with the cities, known to the author from the Italian painting of the greatest masters of the Trecenta period. As a humanist he knew the literature of the Renaissance of Florence and Venice with the Arcadian themes of both the Greek and the Roman tradition. The view of Constantinople in the context of the contemporary political situation, is presented in a series of monuments of architecture, with columns and defensive walls, which reminded of the history of the city from its greatest time of Constantine the Great, Justinian I and the Comnenus dynasty. Schedel’s work of art is the sum of the knowledge written down or painted. It is also the result of the experiments of new technology. It is possible that Schedel was inspired by the hymns, laude, written by Psellos in honour of Constantinople in his elaborate ecphrases as the panegyrics for the rulers of the Greek dynasty – the Macedonians. Already in that time, the Greek ideal of beauty was reborn, both in literature and in fine arts. The illustrated History of the World presented in Schedel’s woodcuts is given to the recipients who are educated and to those who are anonymous, in the spirit of the new anthropology. It results from the nature of the woodcut reproduc­tion, that is from the way of copying the same images. The artist must have strived to gain the recipients for his works as the woodcuts were created both in Latin and in German. The collected views were supposed to transfer historical, biblical and mythological knowledge in the new way of communication.

The chapter deals with the role of the Virgin Mary in the nation- state building process in Serbia. The beginning of the process of religious revival in Serbia coincided with the beginning of the social, economic and political crisis in the former Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, which took place at the beginning of the 1990s. There was an urgent need to find new collective identity, since the earlier had been reduced to rubble. At the individual level, this process primarily implied increased participation in rites within the life cycle of an individual (baptism, wedding, and funeral), followed by popularisation of the practice of celebrating family's patron saint days and, only in the end and on the smallest scale, by an increase in the number of believers taking an active part in regular church services. On the collective level, the traditional closeness of the Serbian Orthodox Church and Serb people and the state was the basic paradigm of such restructuring. The attempt to establish continuity with the tradition of the medieval Serb state, which implied active participation of the Church in both social and political matters, as well as the grafting of this relationship in the secular state and civil society in Serbia at the end of the second millennium, turned out to be a multi-tiered issue (Jevtić 1997). At mass celebrations, as well as at revolutionary street protest rallies (which were plentiful in the capital during the last dozen years or so) and at celebrations of the town's patron saint days and various festivities, the image of the ‘Bogorodica’ [Gr. ‘Theotokos’, i.e. The Mother of God]; appears. Leading the processional walks of the towns, it emerges as a symbol which manages to mobilise the nation with its fullness and multi-layered meaning. The main thesis of the chapter is to explain the historical roots of her cult and her embeddedness in the national history and identity in Serbia. The cult of the ‘Bogorodica’ has always had greater importance on the macro than on the micro level. This is corroborated by the fact that a relatively small number of families celebrated some of the ‘Bogorodica’ holidays as their Patron St Day, while a large number of monasteries and churches, as well as village Patron St Days were dedicated to one of them (Grujić 1985: 436). On the other hand, some authors believe that, with the acceptance of Christianity, it was the cult of the ‘Bogorodica’ which was the most developed among the Serb population, because her main and most widely recognisable epithet Baba, connected to giving birth, was directly associated with the powerful female pagan divinities such as the Great Mother, Grandmother etc. (Petrović 2001: 55; Čajkanović 1994a: 339). In the folk perception, the ‘Presveta Bogorodica’ [The Most Holy Mother of God] is unambiguously connected to the phenomenon and process of birth-giving and, that is why, barren women most frequently addressed the ‘Bogorodica’ for assistance. The observance of the image of the ‘Bogorodica’ was specifically connected with the so-called miracle icons, that is, her paintings linked to some miraculous event, either locally or generally. This was most frequently related to the icons which were famous for discharging myrrh, as well as icons which would ‘cry’ in certain situations, as well as those that changed the place of residence in a miraculous manner. The use of icons in wars, either those of conquest or defensive, appears to be a widely spread practice in the Orthodox world. It was noted that Serb noblemen carried standards with images of various saints to wars, and that the cities were frequently placed under the protection of certain icons. The author shows how, travelling through towns and battlefields, throughout the decades and centuries, the ‘Bogorodica’ appeared through its holy image at the end of the second millennium as the protectress, advocate, Pointer of the Way and foster mother of those who were, possibly more than ever, in need of miracles and waymarks.