A Byzantine Carol in Honour of St. Basil

1946 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 43-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. Dawkins
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
The People ◽  
Folklore Studies ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Full Discussion ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

In Chapter II of his Folklore Studies, ancient and modern, Sir William Halliday gave a translation of a Byzantine carol in honour of St. Basil the Great, and with this a full discussion of the legend celebrated in the carol. This is a story of a contact between the emperor Julian the Apostate in his last campaign against Persia and St. Basil, and how Julian's death was brought about by the agency of St. Mercurius, a soldier who was martyred in the Decian persecutions. The legend is recorded in the life of St. Basil attributed to St. Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, and in this life it appears we may see the start of the whole story. The supposed author was a contemporary of St. Basil, but the document is rejected as apocryphal, and appears to be of the eighth or ninth century, a date which allows plenty of time for the accumulation of legend about a name so well known in Asia Minor as that of the great bishop of Caesarea. Sir William Halliday has translated the relevant passages: for convenience I here give a very brief summary of the parts of the story which most closely touch the carol.The emperor Julian on his way to his campaign in Persia met Basil somewhere in the neighbourhood of Caesarea. Basil offered the emperor three loaves; angry at the smallness of the gift, the emperor sent him some hay in return; further angered by the fact that this gift gave the saint the right of pasturage on a certain meadow, he threatened on his return to destroy the city. Basil gathered his flock together, and they went to pray in the church of the Virgin on ‘Mount Didymus.’ The Virgin appeared, and called for the warrior Mercurius, who should go to Persia and slay Julian. Basil then went to the shrine of St. Mercurius, and found that the body was not there. This he announced to the people, and in seven days came the news of the death of Julian. Such very briefly is the legend as recorded in the Amphilochian life.

scholarly journals Żyć mocą Ducha Bożego w Kościele

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 56-86
Author(s):  
Jacek Neumann ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Human World ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

Our life as the Christen in the community ecclesial is the announcement about God, which gives the people the gifts of love, freedom, friendship and truth. Through the forgiveness and the activity of the salvation of God, love and friendship in man’s life makes the human world more divine. This Jesus accents in His proclamation about the kingdom divine, specially in the parables, where He presents the model of the world based on love, hope, faith and freedom as the world of deeds based on God. Therefore, with the power of God’s Spirit, man has to make his life based on the norm of divine, because only in God, with God and through God exists for man the possibility to life now on earth, and afterwards in the future in heaven. In this situation, the answer of the man of faith has to be the motivation to take up the “deed” of the renovation of self-life and the imitation of God. This constitutes as the Christian thought that the central point of the theological interpretation of the value of salvation is realized – hic et nun – as the historical and existential value of the human life in the right of the kingdom divine. The proclamation of Jesus about the “new life”, presents to man the values of the divine existence in the spiritual of the Church. On one hand, it is the gift of freedom and the liberation from sin, where the love of God is absolutely necessary. On the other hand, the “new life” opens for man the space of liberty of life, where God forgives the human offences and the sins, both past and present. Well now the resume of the call to imitate God is the acceptance of the divine gift, which changes the man himself, and all the people, who seek the help and good councils to live the norm divine. These witnesses in the human mentality the consciousness of the existence based on the divine laws, which have in themselves the dimension eschatological.

scholarly journals Detestabile scelus Perastinorum - the psychological and social background of the murder of Pompejus de Pasqualibus, the abbot of the St George Abbey near Perast

2015 ◽  
pp. 19-33
Author(s):  
Katarina Mitrovic
Keyword(s):  
Social Background ◽  
The Body ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Parish Priest ◽  
The People ◽  
Church Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

The St George Abbey was founded on an island near Perast by the Benedictine Monastic Order by the beginning of the 11th century. From the mid-13th century, the community of Kotor had the right of patronage over the abbey, which allowed the patriciate of Kotor to elect abbots as well as have a say in numerous monastery affairs, including propriety rights. Therefore, on November the 2nd 1530, Minor Council of Kotor named Pompejus de Pasqualibus, a nobleman from Kotor, the abbot of the St George Abbey. After the official consent from Rome and Venice, father Pompejus took over the abbey. Soon after, a gruesome crime took place on the island, a crime unseen in the history of the Kotor church. On the Feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross, May 3rd 1535, a group of Perast locals, armed with sticks and daggers, broke into the abbey and killed abbot Pasqualibus at the altar as he was saying Pater Noster. Nikola Krosic, the chaplain of the St George Abbey, and a few others tried to stop the murderers, but to no avail. The killers went on to humiliate the body of the deceased by throwing it out of the church and dumping it into a nearby pit, which added to the resentment, especially among the patriciates of Kotor. Three days later, on the Feast of the Ascension, the bishop of Kotor, Luka Bizanti, publicly excommunicated the killers and their men in the cathedral, while Pope Paul III forbade all service at the church where the crime had been committed. The interdict wasn?t recalled until 1546. In the decree of excommunication, Bishop Luka Bizanti emphasized the fact that father Pompejus hadn?t said or done anything to provoke the killers. What are the reasons of such an outpour of mass anger among dozens of Perast locals? Around that time, for several decades, Perast, a village founded on St George?s fief, started to improve its economy as a result of the expansion of ship-building and trading. More and more inhabitants of Perast started to sail and take part in the trade, especially on the rye and salt market. They had the support of the Venetian authorities, which caused envy among the inhabitants of Kotor, who considered Perast a part of their district. The tendency to achieve a full emancipation from the community of Kotor included church interests as well. After a gradual weakening of church life on the island, the St George church took on the role of a parish church under the patronage of Kotor. Perast locals were evidently dissatisfied with the idea of their parish priest being a noble Pasqualibus of Kotor, whose descent and position were representative of everything they despised and fought against. The motive of the murder was a trivial one - father Pompejus refused to hold service at the St Church on the Feast of the Holy Cross, which deeply insulted the people of Perast. The exceedingly long process of turning the Benedictine abbey into a parish church and a sepulchral chapel of Perast reached its peak on November the 17th1634 with the edict of the Venetian Senate taking the right of patronage away from the community of Kotor. From then on, ius patronatus belonged to the Venetian Senate, while the choice of the abbot, the parish priest of Perast in fact, was left to the locals.

scholarly journals Historical Memory and Orthodox Faith: Byzance Aprиs Byzance in Sofia Under Ottoman Rule

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 339-351
Author(s):  
Ivan Biliarsky ◽  
◽  
Mariyana Tsibranska-Kostova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Historical Memory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Milieu ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

In our article we propose a case study on the character of the veneration of neomartyrs of Sofia in the 16th century and a review of the related literature. We try to argue that the aims of their veneration were religious and political, and that these aims were attained through the exaltation of the Christian faith and the creation and maintaining of a historical memory. The direction of the intended results, however, is not anti-Ottoman, but anti-Islamic; the veneration urged to consolidate the Orthodox Christian congregation. It is to the people of the Orthodox confession, not to the national (in this period mostly “ethnical”) community, that the veneration of the neomartyrs was addressed. The strengthening of the congregation could be achieved excellently through the martyr’s bearing witness (having in mind that “martyros” means “witness” in Greek); the martyr adds holiness to the place and sacralizes the space of the city, and finally of the whole political milieu. The witness is not only the creator of sacredness, he is also a keeper of the memory of the past. The martyr is a champion because he / she vanquishes the foes of God through his / her martyrdom. As a champion, he is a reminder of the glorious past; as a victor, he is a Defensor fidei in the present. This is a clear confirmation of God’s power under different historical circumstances. These ideas directed at the restoration, but only spiritual, of the Christian Empire through the Body of the Church. This explains the absence of any overt opposition against Ottoman power. Therefore, we find here, in Sofia, a conception of Byzance après Byzance of the same type as we find in Constantinople after the fall of the Empire, when the Ecumenical Church adopted part of the Empire’s heritage.

scholarly journals Governing Nonconformity: Gender Presentation, Public Space, and the City in New Order Indonesia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Benjamin Hegarty
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Gender Nonconformity ◽  
The Body ◽  
New Order ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Femininity And Masculinity ◽  
Gender Presentation ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

The regulation of public space is generative of new approaches to gender nonconformity. In 1968 in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, a group of people who identified as wadam—a new term made by combining parts of Indonesian words denoting “femininity” and “masculinity”—made a claim to the city's governor that they had the right to appear in public space. This article illustrates the paradoxical achievement of obtaining recognition on terms constituted through public nuisance regulations governing access to and movement through space. The origins and diffuse effects of recognition achieved by those who identified as wadam and, a decade later, waria facilitated the partial recognition of a status that was legal but nonconforming. This possibility emerged out of city-level innovations and historical conceptualizations of the body in Indonesia. Attending to the way that gender nonconformity was folded into existing methods of codifying space at the scale of the city reflects a broader anxiety over who can enter public space and on what basis. Considering a concern for struggles to contend with nonconformity on spatial grounds at the level of the city encourages an alternative perspective on the emergence of gender and sexual morality as a definitive feature of national belonging in Indonesia and elsewhere.

The City, the Countryside and the Social Gospel in Late Victorian Nonconformity

1979 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 415-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Bebbington
Keyword(s):  
Church Attendance ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The People ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

The late nineteenth-century city posed problems for English nonconformists. The country was rapidly being urbanised. By 1881 over one third of the people lived in cities with a population of more than one hundred thousand. The most urbanised areas gave rise to the greatest worry of all the churches: large numbers there were failing to attend services. The religious census of 1851 had already shown that the largest towns were the places where there were the fewest worshippers, although nonconformists gained some crumbs of comfort from the knowledge that nonconformist attendances were greater than those of the church of England. Unofficial surveys in the 1880S revealed no improvement. Instead, although few were immediately conscious of it, in that decade the membership of all the main evangelical nonconformist denominations began to fall relative to population. And it was always the same social group that was most conspicuously unreached: the lower working classes, the bottom of the social pyramid. In poor neighbourhoods church attendance was lowest. In Bethnal Green at the turn of the twentieth century, for instance, only 6.8% of the adult population attended chapel, and only 13.3% went to any place of worship. Consequently nonconformists, like Anglicans, were troubled by the weakness of their appeal.

Manichaeism and Gnosticism in the Papyri

2011 ◽  
pp. 622-643
Author(s):  
Cornelia Römer
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

The church fathers were appalled in particular by the Gnostics' condemnation of creation. But the fact that much of their teaching was in many respects not so far from Christian dogma must have disturbed the advocates of the “real” Christian church. In some of these Gnostic systems, Christ was the main savior figure; in others, it was the forefathers of the Old Testament who guaranteed salvation; in Manichaeism, it was the new Messenger of Light, the apostle Mani, who, coming after Christ, would finally give the right revelation to the people and excel Christ in doing so. This article deals with religious groups such as these as they existed in Egypt in the Roman and late antique periods. Papyrology has played a decisive role in our understanding of the religious movements of the first centuries ce in Egypt and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

scholarly journals PERSPEKTIF RASUL PAULUS TENTANG BERBAHASA ROH BERDSARKAN 1 KORINTUS 14

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-21
Author(s):  
Sarwono Sarwono
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Speaking In Tongues ◽  
The Gift ◽  
The Church

The gift of speaking in tongues is a message to the body of Christ which is given in tongues and is not understood by the user. Therefore, it must be followed by an interpretation by the language understood by the congregation. The gift of tongues is usually news of a prophecy for the Lord's church and must be followed by an interpretation. If the gift of tongues is not followed by an interpretation, it cannot build up the church. Therefore, the author will discuss the apostle Paul's perspective on tongues based on 1 Corinthians 14.

scholarly journals XIV.—Ancient Gold Ornaments: described by John Yonge Akerman, Esq. Secretary

Archaeologia ◽  
1853 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-193
Author(s):  
John Yonge Akerman
Keyword(s):  
Light Chain ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Plate Viii ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Small Loop ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right ◽  
Of Greece

With the exception of Figs. 1, 2, 3, the Gold Ornaments engraved in Plate VIII. have no reference whatever to each other. The first three were obtained by Viscount Strangford, Director of the Society, from a Greek priest at Milo, in the year 1820. Figs. 1 and 3 appear to have formed the ends of a light chain, and the other (fig. 2) to have been pendent by a small loop on the top of the head. The figure has unfortunately lost the feet and the left hand, but the other parts are perfect. The right hand is raised in an admonitory attitude. The forehead appears as if encircled with a wreath, while the body is crossed by what would seem to be intended for the tendril of a vine. The necklace was formerly in the collection of the late Mr. H. P. Borrell, of Smyrna, but I am informed by his brother, Mr. Maximilian Borrell, who now possesses it, that no record exists of its discovery, and that he cannot learn the name of the individual from whom it was purchased. It was well known that Mr. H. P. Borrell was in the habit of purchasing ancient coins, which were sent to him from all parts of Greece and Asia-Minor, and that many rare and unique specimens fell into his hands, of which he contributed descriptions in various volumes of the Numismatic Chronicle. The necklace may, therefore, have been included in one of these numerous consignments, and we can scarcely indulge the hope that the place of its discovery will ever be made known. As an example of ancient art, it may vie with the most elaborate and beautiful specimens of goldsmiths' work of any age or period. The details are wonderfully minute and delicate, even the backs of the button-like objects at the ends of the pendent cords being elaborately finished.

The Virgin Mary and the People of Liguria: Image and Cult

2004 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 280-297
Author(s):  
Jane Garnett ◽  
Gervase Rosser
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Local Church ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
The People ◽  
The Face ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

We begin with an image, and a story. Explanation will emerge from what follows. Figure 1 depicts a huge wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, once the figurehead on the prow of a ship, but now on the high altar of the church of Saints Vittore and Carlo in Genoa, and venerated as Nostra Signora della Fortuna. On the night of 16-17 January 1636 a violent storm struck the port of Genoa. Many ships were wrecked. Among them was one called the Madonna della Pieta, which had the Virgin as its figurehead. A group of Genoese sailors bought this image as part of the salvage washed up from the sea. First setting it up under a votive painting of the Virgin in the harbour, they repaired it, had it repainted, and on the eve of Corpus Christi brought it to the church of San Vittore, close by the port. A famous blind song-writer was commissioned to write a song in honour of the image. Sailors and groups of young girls went through the streets of the city singing and collecting gifts. The statue became at once the focus of an extraordinary popular cult, thousands of people arriving day and night with candles, silver crowns, necklaces, and crosses in gratitude for the graces which had immediately begun to be granted. Volleys of mortars were let off in celebration. The affair was managed by the sailors who, in the face of mounting criticism and anxiety from local church leaders, directed devotions and even conducted exorcisms before the image. To stem the gathering tide of visitors and claims of miracles, and to try to establish control, the higher clergy first questioned the identity of the statue (some held it to represent, not the Virgin, but the Queen of England); then the statue was walled up; finally the church was closed altogether. Still, devotees climbed into the church, and large-scale demonstrations of protest were held. The archbishop instituted a process of investigation, in the course of which many eye-witnesses and people who claimed to have experienced miracles were interviewed (giving, in the surviving manuscript, rich detail of their responses to the image). Eventually the prohibition was lifted, and from 1637 until well into the twentieth century devotion to Nostra Signora della Fortuna remained strong, with frequent miracles or graces being recorded. So here we have a cult focused on an image of secular origin, transformed by the promotion of the sailors into a devotional object which roused the enthusiasm of thousands of lay people. It was a cult which, significantly, sprang up at a time of unrest in the city of Genoa, and which thus focused pressing issues of authority. The late 163os witnessed growing tension between factions of ‘old’ and ‘new’ nobility, the latter being marked by their hostility to the traditional Genoese Spanish alliance. Hostilities were played out both within the Senate and in clashes in the streets of the city. The cult of Nostra Signora della Fortuna grew up in this context, but survived and developed in subsequent centuries, attracting devotion from all over Italy.

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