THE BYZANTINE CHURCH OF THE NUTRITION IN NAZARETH REDISCOVERED

Abstract

Although Nazareth has usually been seen by scholars as a relatively minor Byzantine pilgrimage centre, it contained perhaps the most important ‘lost’ Byzantine church in the Holy Land, the Church of the Nutrition – according to De Locis Sanctis built over the house where it was believed that Jesus Christ had been a child. This article, part of a series of final interim reports of the PEF-funded ‘Nazareth Archaeological Project’, presents evidence that this church has been discovered at the present Sisters of Nazareth convent in central Nazareth. The scale of the church and its surrounding structures suggests that Nazareth was a much larger, and more important, centre for Byzantine-period pilgrimage than previously supposed. The church was used in the Crusader period, after a phase of desertion, prior to destruction by fire, probably in the 13th century.     

A Fifteenth-Century Painted Sermon at the Door of the Cathedral of Bressanone

Abstract

This article argues that a portion of the fifteenth-century frescos at the entrance door from the cloister to the cathedral of Bressanone can be seen as a painted sermon. The analysis draws on the frescos of two vaults and the interaction between words and images. In the first vault, just above the entrance of the church, the frescos present not only the contents of a sermon, but also its structure, namely an episode from the Gospel, a catechetical pattern, the quotation of auctoritates and a social goal to be achieved. The frescos of the second vault represent the contrast between virtues and vices using the pairs presented in Matthew 24. 40–41. This text was read by the medieval exegetical tradition as a scheme for the different status of Christian life, thus this vault could be seen as an elaborate catechetical pattern with a large system of biblical quotations. Moreover, the structure of the frescos of the second vault can be read as a sermo modernus based on the divisio of Matthew 24. 40–41. Finally, the comparison with a portion of a sermon by Bernardino da Siena on the theme of avarice confirms that the elements represented in Bressanone were really used both by preachers and painters.

In this way, the images of the cloister are a sermon, which continually preaches to anyone entering or leaving the church, thus organizing the public space as a 'theatre of memory' and offering a message readable at different levels.     

Historic Barrel Vaults Undergoing Differential Settlements

ABSTRACT

A principal reason of damage in historic masonry vaults consists in relative displacements of the vaults’ abutments. Excluding the case of seismic-induced damage, cracks are often produced by differential settlements generated by the lateral wall instability or soil degradation (e.g., due to stress concentrations, non-uniform soil stratigraphy, flooding phenomena etc.). When dealing with historic vaults, the effects of long-term deformation processes cannot often be linked directly to causes, which may also be unknown. In this article, the effects of differential settlements on historic masonry barrel vaults are investigated. An efficient 3D contact-based model was developed to reproduce experiments on a scaled pointed barrel vault (representative of a typology of late-medieval barrel vaults in Scotland) under non-uniform differential settlement. First, the numerical model is used to simulate the experimental campaign, achieving good agreement in terms of crack pattern (longitudinal shear) and transverse-longitudinal deformation profiles. Then, further analyses are carried out to gain insight on the effects of several plausible uniform and non-uniform settlement patterns on representative historic barrel vaults. Various settlement configurations were analysed and complex failure patterns observed. This study could help analysts in understanding the nature of on-going deformation process in historic masonry vaults and engineers in the design of strengthening strategies.     

Strategic Essentialism and Vatican Policy

Abstract

Just as women's NGOs around the world use essentialism strategically—calling upon their assigned roles as mothers to create change for their children that they might not feel empowered to create for themselves—the most recent Vatican policy holds on to the remnants of essentialism as a policy for protecting exclusive male access to ordination, and therefore power in the church. Previously, essentialism had protected male superiority in existence, social roles, the family, and the church, but one by one, all of these have been conceded except male superiority in the church. The paper further proposes that the traditional male role, of which the church has been a principal support, has in fact now become detrimental to males.     

Reinforcement of the 18th Century Buttresses of Maniace Castle: Design and Execution

ABSTRACT

Maniace Castle, built on Ortygia island in Siracusa (Italy) in the first half of the 13th century and hosting a magnificent hypostyle hall (the Salone), a square area covered by 25 cross vaults supported by columns, was severely damaged by the 1693 earthquake and the explosion of the ammunition dump in 1704. The buttresses, built immediately afterward to counteract the thrust of the 10 surviving vaults, did not guarantee adequate seismic safety so that a metal scaffolding was installed in 2001 to prevent an overturning mechanism. This article discusses the design and execution of an external pre-stressing steel system to increase existing buttress strength and the seismic capacity of the Salone, starting with historical and constructional analyses and dealing with both analytical and technical aspects. The monitoring system installed to detect structural response during and after the working execution is shown, along with some of the data acquired so far.     

The Architectural Background of the Ely Octagon

Abstract

Ely octagon is usually regarded as an original invention of the architect Alan of Walsingham. However, the ground plan of the Norman church, with both eastern and western transepts and two axial towers, has affinities with the plans of some Romanesque churches in the Rhineland which also possess octagonal central towers. The presence of an octagonal Norman tower at nearby Swaffham Prior, a church which has belonged to Ely since before the Norman Conquest, suggests that the Norman church at Ely may also have had an octagonal central tower.     

Whose Heritage? The Problem of Shobdon Arches

Abstract

The parish church of St John the Evangelist at Shobdon (Herefordshire) was built by Oliver de Merlimond around 1130, and represents the earliest appearance of the Herefordshire School of sculpture; one of the most important and dramatic schools of sculpture in 12th-century England. In 1752 the Romanesque building was pulled down and replaced with a new church in the fashionable Gothick style associated with Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill, and the richly carved doorways and chancel arch of the old church were salvaged and incorporated into a striking folly on a nearby hill. Over the last 250 years the actions of weather and vandals have taken their toll on the folly, so that some sculpture is lost and much of it is practically unreadable. As a romantic ruin, however, it grows ever more attractive. In this paper I will introduce some of the issues involved in conserving this conflicted structure.     

Glastonbury Abbey: Archaeological Investigations 1904–79

Abstract

Netley Abbey began to attract visitors in the 18th century, of whom John Milner was amongst the first to leave an account of the ruins. Certain carvings he saw in the south transept led him to suppose that Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester (1501–28), had been a benefactor to the abbey church. Subsequent historians then followed Milner's supposition. This paper refutes Fox's patronage and reveals the true identity of the patron of Netley. It discusses the nature of the patron's gift to the abbey church and how his friendship with William Paulet, who was granted Netley after the Dissolution, preserved it. The article concludes by presenting details of some of the carved imagery from Netley that survives and other remains recorded in the 19th century which may have formed part of the final phase of building and ornamentation of the abbey church prior to its dissolution.     

The Effects of Time,Restoration and Conservation Approaches on Twelfth-Century Cosmati Pavements

Abstract

This paper compares the current condition and appearance of Cosmati floors in six churches in Rome. Based on the assumption that all of the floors had a similar appearance when constructed, it is possible to see how the floors now reflect the original design and materials, the church environment, management decisions, restoration and conservation approaches. This illustrates the importance of considering all the significant features and possible outcomes of both a series of small interventions and major interventions. Many findings will also be applicable to other floors and mosaics.     

On Carvings in Morse Ivory

Abstract

Recent excavations at Beverley Minster contribute significant new information relating to the development of the minster from the later pre-conquest period until the 12th century, as well as some technical detail relating to the 14th-century nave. This paper provides a brief overview of later 19th- to 20th-century considerations of the minster’s origins and development. Thereafter, the results of recent excavations are presented and the impact of these in re-shaping the history of the minster’s development is then considered within the wider context of the minster as a whole. More specifically, evidence is presented for the existence of an early pre-conquest cemetery, perhaps focused on a church of an alignment slightly different from that of the present. The implication of further burials pre-dating a 12th-century nave is also examined. Evidence relating to a large 12th-century aisled nave is also presented and discussion given to the impact this nave had on the rebuilding of the eastern parts of the church after 1188 as well as to the origin of the eastern elements that preceded these.     

A Hybrid Masonry and Steel Mirror-Type Vault with Lunettes: Survey and Structural Analysis

ABSTRACT

The structural analysis of a mirror-type vault, consisting of a single- or double-curvature perimeter and a nearly flat part, is carried out. The vault is similar to a number of hybrid iron (or steel) and masonry vaults built between the late 19th century and the early 20th century to span large halls. The numerical analyses were preceded by an accurate geometrical survey and mechanical tests aimed at evaluating the properties of the materials. Thermography allowed the complex brick pattern of the vault to be detected. The influence of rib-walls (frenelli) and the material anisotropy on the stress and deformation of the vault is discussed. Eventually, attention is focused on one of the segmental vaults in the central part of the structure: it is found that the stress can be safely estimated by assuming its boundary to be fixed.     

Further Notes in Reference to the Discoveries at Ickleton and Chesterford

Abstract

Although it is generally well-known that a number of cathedrals and major abbeys in medieval England especially had detached bell towers, the towers themselves have never been considered as a group. Nor has a ‘complete’ listing been attempted. Their existence is difficult to explain because the majority of these buildings also had central towers and some had western towers. No doubt because so many of the detached towers have been destroyed, they are less well-known than the examples on the Continent, especially in Italy. Surprisingly, towers seem to have been rare in Romanesque and Gothic France and Germany. The Insular ones appear to have been less ‘standardized’ in their design and more variable in their location vis-à-vis the church building than those of Italy. The history of detached towers in England (and Scotland) is here traced from their earliest appearance, in wood in the 12th century and in stone c. 1200, to the end of the Middle Ages.     

Going the extra mile: the impact of theological orientation and other congregational factors on the drive times of growing and declining church attendees

ABSTRACT

This study is part of a larger research project that collected and analysed data from 22 Mainline Protestant churches in Canada, 13 declining and 9 growing. Nearly 30 clergy and over 2000 church attendees were surveyed. Survey questions from the previous research explored the demographic and religious characteristics of these churches. In this paper, we analyse and compare the travel distance of the declining church and growing church attendees and then explore which characteristics of the attendees, clergy, and the church correlate with longer attendee drive times to worship. Through regression analysis, we conclude that theological conservatism of attendees, contemporary worship style, and greater emphasis on youth programming are predictors of longer drive times for attendees; while greater age of attendees is associated with a shorter commute to church.     

The Common Good,Pluralism and the Small Church

Abstract

This paper discusses the understanding of “Common Good” that has been used by the Church of England, especially over the last five years. It suggests that its implicit universalism and identification of Christian morality with the ethical norms for the nation is premised on an understanding of the role of the Church which is no longer realistic. After a brief discussion of the latest statistics for church attendance and a comparison with other national churches in Northern Europe, I suggest that the Church of England is a “small church” and even that Christians constitute a religious minority. This means that the pursuit of the “Common Good” as defined by the church may simply be a piece of nostalgic longing for the time of the “big church.” The recent exclusions for the churches on same-sex marriage legislation indicate that the gap between most of the churches and the wider society. Rather than defining the common good, I suggest that in a pluralist society the churches which recognize their limited role will need to build alliances and common causes with other groups, both religious and secular.     

Church,Community and Democracy

Abstract

The doctrine of church shapes Christian practice around community, producing a Christian worldview that privileges communal life. Authoritarian and/or sectarian conceptions of church will by definition undermine the practice and sustainability of democracy. Democratic practices are needed to avoid authoritarianism within the church and to promote dialogue between the church and the larger community. Resulting, qualified understandings of community may allow for helpful reformation of the doctrine of church and create space for a communitarian corrective to the overly secular and individualistic conceptions of democracy that are currently dominant.     

Reactions of the Governments of Nigeria and Biafra to the Role of the Catholic Church in the Nigeria–Biafra War

Abstract

The high incidence of conflict in the world today, and the overwhelming influence of religion on man and his society, have resulted in an increasing engagement of religion in conflict management. However, in spite of its high profile in managing conflict, religion can sometimes form a barrier to conflict resolution. The Nigeria–Biafra war was one of those wars in which religion, as an instrument of conflict management, played a double-edged sword. This paper examines the reaction of the parties to this conflict to the role of the Catholic Church in managing the conflict.

The involvement of the Catholic Church in the Nigeria–Biafra war has ever remained one of the highly controversial themes of this war. While the role played by the church appeared to be a welcome development on the part of the Biafran Government, the Federal Military Government of Nigeria (FMG) was against the church and its activities, particularly its relief programme in Biafra during the war. From the available evidence, the church’s relief services, just like those of the International Committee of the Red Cross, were carried out on both sides of the war. The difference was on the level of dependence on it, as well as the degree of its exploitation by the two parties. In addition to its high dependence on the Caritas airlift, the Biafran Government, in its war of propaganda hinged on religion, was out to exploit every available opportunity provided by the church’s relief programme in Biafra. It therefore made its overtures of ‘friendship’ to the church in Biafra and beyond as it assumed the status of a ‘maligned child’ of the mother church. To the FMG that was out to crush a rebellion, such manipulation of religion, using the platform of the church’s programme of relief in Biafra was more than a frustration of its war effort. Its anger was thus directed against the church both locally and internationally such that the latter, among other things, could achieve little or nothing in terms of conflict resolution, although the relief programme of the church in general saved the Biafran population from a war in which starvation was obviously an instrument.     

The Concepts of imitatio and translatio: Perceptions of a Viking‐Age Past

The author presents the results of excavations at Mare Church, North Tr?ndelag. Medieval sources indicate that Mære was the religious centre for Inner Tr?ndelag in pre‐Christian times. It was also the place where the first church (shire church) in Sparbyggjafylke was erected. At Mære if anywhere, therefore, it should be possible to test archaeologically the theory about cult continuity from pagan to Christian times.

Under the present church, which dates from the end of the twelfth century, the remains of an early wooden church surrounded by a churchyard were found, together with vestiges of at least two buildings from pre‐Christian times. On the evidence of loose finds, the oldest of these can be dated to the Migration Period (c. A.D. 500). A series of gold plaquettes were found associated with the later of the two buildings. This find is interpreted by the author as indicating that the building may have been a pagan cult building.     

The identification of the medieval church of St Sabas in Jerusalem in the light of new documentary evidence

ABSTRACT

For over a century the church that the Greek monks of Dayr Mar Saba are known to have possessed inside the walls of Jerusalem in the twelfth century has usually been associated with a chapel surviving inside the Disy family house opposite the police barracks south of the Citadel, while the Zāwiyyat al-Shaykh Ya?qūb (Ya?qūbiyya), on the east side of Christ Church, has been identified as having originally been built in the twelfth century, possibly by Monophysites, as a church dedicated to St James the Persian, or the ‘Cut-up’ (Intercisus). New documentary research, however, now makes it appear more likely that Mujīr al-Dīn was correct in attributing the building of the Ya?qūbiyya to the Greeks and that it was also the church referred to by pilgrims in the twelfth century as that of St Sabas. This means that the identity of the church in Dār Disy, if indeed it was a church, remains to be determined.     

From Empires to Nation-State: Remaking the Roman Catholic Church in an Independent Poland

ABSTRACT

Roman Catholicism is most often imagined as an element of continuity in Poland’s turbulent history: even when a Polish state was absent from the map of Europe from the late eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, a recognizably ‘Polish’ church has been presumed to provide a robust institutional anchor for the Polish nation. This article, however, argues that the creation of a ‘Polish’ Roman Catholic church was a belated and protracted process, one that was only getting started in the years following the achievement of Polish independence in 1918. The church’s ‘Polonization’ was only partially a matter of emancipation from imperial-era restrictions. It often also involved the defence and attempted extrapolation of laws, practices and institutions that had developed under the auspices of the German, Austrian or Russian states and that the Catholic hierarchy viewed as healthy and desirable building blocks for a future Polish church. These imperial precedents continued to provide crucial points of reference in ongoing debates about what ‘Polish’ Catholicism was and what it should become.     

Geometric Mosaic Pavements of Yasileh in Jordan

Abstract

The site of Yasileh in northern Jordan has two churches from the Byzantine period. In the church on the western bank of the Wadi Yasileh, dated to the middle of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century AD, we uncovered one of the most impressive and best preserved mosaic pavements with geometric patterns in the Near East. In this paper, the writers attempt to show that the Yasileh mosaicists were true masters of their profession. They combined motifs that enjoyed a long popularity from the early and through the middle Roman period, with new designs appearing here for the first time, as far as is known. An attempt is made to trace the history and survival of several geometric patterns from the mosaic in the Western Church at Yasileh by comparison with the same patterns found elsewhere in the Levant. The significance of the non-figurative character of this mosaic and those of other church floors in Lebanon and Syria of a similar date is also considered.