Church Door Research Articles

“The Gates of Eternal Life”: Metamorphosis and Performativity in Middle to Late Byzantine Sculpted Church Doors (with a Case Study of a Wallachian Wooden Door)

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in analyzing the manufacturing techniques of Byzantine church doors in laboratory settings. However, the connection between the iconography and significance of the décor of church doors and their liturgical performativity, as well as their parallels with iconostases in Byzantium, remained a relatively underexplored area of study. This article seeks to delve deeper into these intersections. By focusing on the relationship between the iconography of church doors in Middle to Late Byzantium and their connection to the sacred space and liturgical practices, I aim to shed light on how these artworks played a crucial role in the sacred experience of the Byzantines. This exploration will not highlight only the aesthetic evolution of church door artwork but also emphasize the communal and embodied nature of the religious experience during the Byzantine era. Their intricate designs were not merely decorative elements but served as portals to the divine, enriching the salvation journey of worshippers as they crossed the threshold into the liturgical spaces. By conducting an examination of the development of door iconography and their symbolism throughout the empire’s history, the transformation of narrative depictions from the Middle Byzantine era to the Palaiologan period, culminating in a convergence of symbolic meanings within the sacred space of the church, is delineated. This transformation is further exemplified by a sculpted church door from the Principality of Wallachia. By bridging the gap between art history and religious studies, this article aims to rekindle interest in the profound symbolism and significance of Byzantine church doors and their relation to sacred liturgical space, offering a broader perspective on an important aspect of Byzantine heritage.

Church Attendance in the Post Covid-19 Era: The Case of Bulawayo East Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

The day the earth stood still! This was an expected event, which caught everyone by surprise. People were expected within a short space of time to come up with safe measures to implement as to save lives. Lives have been turned upside down for the entire human race. The Church found itself on the receiving end and had to systematically respond to this global pandemic through the announcements of closing its doors for worship in a bid to combat the spread of the deadly virus. Early 2021 when Covid-19 pandemic was put under control the government relaxed COVID-19 restrictions and churches responded to this with gladness. The church doors were opened and congregants filled up the pews, however there was a group that has never sat foot to church since churches were closed due to COVID-19 in 2020. When the Seventh Day Adventist church in Zimbabwe opened its doors, the Bulawayo East District ceased most of its online programming to encourage physical worship leaving the group not attending church stranded. The district however came up with strategies to lure members back to church and keep their spiritual lives in check. It is therefore the object of this qualitative study to interrogate the effectiveness of the methods adopted by Bulawayo East Church.

Estrangement at the church door: Silas Marner and the projection of new English spaces

ABSTRACT The Act for the Commutation of Tithes, long-awaited and finally passed in 1836, receives almost no critical attention today. Thanks to the relative success with which commutation handled a taxing system that was as embedded as it was cruel, tithe maps – considered the most complete description of the agrarian landscape at any period – have been glossed over by literary studies. This article responds to calls in map studies to shift focus onto the materiality of maps and their historical conditions of circulation by considering the church door as a noticeboard for the Act. It does so through an analysis of George Eliot’s Silas Marner, a novella that was set pre-commutation but written in the same year as the Tithe Amendment Act and that bears a striking, but hitherto unexamined, resemblance to the century’s most infamous tithe story. Reassessing Silas’s crises of the threshold and the novella’s “at once occult and familiar” world means we not only complicate the novella’s fairytale status but also introduce Tithe Commutation to more critical conversations.

The precarious power of a strongly worded letter: Political correspondence, Lutheran theology, and civic participation

AbstractFacing political decisions involving local issues or systemic injustice, we sometimes decide to write a letter. Opinion pieces in the town newspaper, online posts about current events, and letters sent to elected officials all share the presumption that putting words on a page can make the political community a better place. This article examines these practices and the reasoning that supports them by connecting Martin Luther's theology of good works with insights from political theory and current debates about civic participation. Luther claims that good works are needed to discipline the body and serve the neighbor in love. This theological framework is offered as a guide for assessing the value and functions of political correspondence. It contends that writing letters serves to discipline individual and collective political bodies, developing needed skills for sharing and receiving the claims we make while resisting temptations that pull us towards indifference, cynicism, or self‐righteous assurance. Letters should be seen as invitations of service and neighbor love that display our competence and commitment to others. Letter writing, as a good work, is risky in that the goodness of our labors remains an open question. The analysis here offers guidance for assessing our better and worse reasons for political postings, whether on the church door or elsewhere.

‘Il Nous Faut les Hommes’: Catholicism, Masculinity and the Culture Wars in France, 1880–1914

This article investigates a campaign by the French Catholic Church to bring men to Mass in the first decades of the Third Republic. Historians have long noted the gender imbalance in religious practice in France in this era. Less attention has been paid, however, to the mobilization on the part of leading clerics to tackle the problem of male religious indifference. This response took the form of a range of initiatives – pastoral visits, male-only Masses, study circles, missions and more. But the Church went further in order to overcome the obstacle of the ‘respect humain’, the fear of public mockery that kept so many men away from the Church doors. In order to inspire courage in laymen, it published narratives of Catholic heroes. Another means of encouraging piety was an association dedicated to the Sacred Heart which organized a male-only pilgrimage to Lourdes. An understanding of this campaign to evangelize men throws light on a neglected area of religious history, the relationship between religion and masculinity. It also offers a new dimension on the War of Two Frances which reached such a peak of intensity in the decade after 1900.

The Church and Politics of Early 20th Centuries in Minahasa

This study aims to explain the presence of the Indische Kerk (church) of the Dutch colonial government in Minahasa, identify the problems faced by the Indische Kerk and efforts to address them in Minahasa, and analyze politics and political education in Minahasa, as well as the impact of colonial politics on the process of church ministry in Minahasa. This study employs both the structural method of Lloyd (1978) and the explanation of the fact theory of Tilly (1978). Research and discussion revealed that the presence of the Indische Kerk in Minahasa is connected to the rule of the Dutch colonial administration following the bankruptcy of the VOC trade partnership on December 31, 1799. Consequently, NZG cannot refinance its work in Minahasa. The Dutch colonial administration utilized the church door, the Indische Kerk, to exert control over the Minahasa people. However, some Minahasa-educated individuals who comprehended the politics of the Dutch colonial administration and who collaborated with the Indische Kerk to control the Minahasa people opposed the colonial church's engagement in establishing an autonomous church in Minahasa.

Peace Cranes in a Sanctuary

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article On Mental Health, People, and PlacesFull AccessPeace Cranes in a SanctuaryEzra E. H. Griffith, M.D.Ezra E. H. GriffithSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:25 Oct 2021https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2021.11.19Whenever I am away from home on Sunday, I find it rejuvenating to attend a church service as a visitor. I enjoy observing the rituals and listening to a new preacher. I take note of the level of the music ministry and the lay members’ participation in their faith group. Most recently, I took the one-mile stroll from my lodging to St. John’s Scottish Episcopal Church in downtown Edinburgh. I decided to visit this branch of Protestantism because I had already attended a service at a Church of Scotland, with its philosophy and rituals closer to those of John Knox and the Calvinist Reformers. One glance at the day’s service program and my eyes landed on the claim that St. John’s “seeks to be an open community, walking in the way of Jesus, engaging with an ever-changing world, and living a faith that is timeless yet contemporary, thoughtful, and compassionate.” This declaration of modernity was in striking contrast with the greying mass of stone that characterized the external appearance of the building. The seeming contradiction would come up in my conversation after the service with the associate rector, the Rev. Rosie Addis.Everyone followed the public health rules and wore a mask. The choristers took off theirs while fulfilling their duties, as did the clergy when leading the prayers, preaching, and reading the liturgical texts. Clergy and congregation had found an operational middle ground, a way of functioning while wearing masks and respecting distance. No collection plate was circulated during the service. A member explained that the new method, forced by COVID-19, was for someone to stand at the church door after the service, with the collection plate in hand. I learned that the new method is called “retiral collection.”A mobile of cranes floats above the sanctuary in St. John’s Scottish Episcopal Church in Edinburgh.Brigitte Griffith with permission of the Rev. Rosie AddisIt is hard to explain the Sunday morning peacefulness of an urban church, built almost 200 years ago. With the organ in the hands of an aficionado and the choir chanting the psalm expertly, the 16th-century motet by William Byrd was performed elegantly. The sacred sounds were bouncing lightly off the church walls accompanied by the sun’s rays dancing on the mobiles hanging from the ceiling and light fixtures around the church. The photograph shows an example of the extensive mobile made of thousands of peace cranes handcrafted from origami paper. I learned the cranes were part of an exhibition by artist Janis Hart intended to transform St. John’s Church into a bird sanctuary for peace. The idea was to provoke viewers into thoughts about the victims of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima. That is complemented by the church’s work for inclusion of LGBTQ people in the life of the church and in society.The Rev. Addis explained the mission of this urban faith group, first by helping me understand better the morning’s sermon. It was about EFM, which stands for “Education for Ministry” or “Exploring Faith Ministry.” She pointed out that this movement is not intended for the education of clergy. It is to help church members explore religious matters and facilitate their theological reflection about what God is asking them to do in service to others. Hence, the mission’s orientation toward peace, abolition of nuclear weapons, and fellowship with nondominant groups such as Blacks, other minorities, and the LGBTQ community. Rev. Addis has also determined her pathway toward serving a unique group. She is an expert in British Sign Language and directs a monthly service for what she calls the “Messy Church.” This meeting is for those suffering the indignities and problems related to hearing disabilities.Several elements in the service collectively framed an ambience of togetherness and concern for others. The play area to one side of the sanctuary welcomed children. The tables and chairs at the rear invited attendees to socialize and enjoy tea and cake at the conclusion of the service. These ideas about caring for others, or for one another, reinforced the aesthetic and moral impact of the multicolored paper cranes fluttering in the air currents above us. The reminder of what we should do for neighbors was powerful. ■Ezra E. H. Griffith, M.D., is professor emeritus of psychiatry and African American Studies at Yale University. ISSUES NewArchived

3D Reconstruction and Geostatic Analysis of an Early Medieval Cemetery (Olonne-sur-Mer, France)

A preventive excavation performed in 2018 prior to development work led to the discovery of more than 213 subjects buried from the 4th to the 11th centuries in the 1850 m2 dug area. This is a cemetery located in Olonne-sur-Mer in France (46.53723, −1.77603). The complex is limited to the south by a ditch. To the north, no limits were observed during the excavation and, to the west, ancient archaeological surveys suggest an extension of the burial area. Biological analysis of the skeletons reveals a demographic characterizing a natural community, with an under-representation of children under 5 and with subjects under 20 appearing to be grouped together in the center of the area. The place where the youngest are buried often testifies to a strategic position in Christian contexts (near church doors, under sub stillicidio gutters, etc.). Funeral practices are characterized by numerous skeletal alterations, especially in the western area of the site where their concentrations are particularly significant. These are not ossuaries but rather supernumerary bones present in the fills of graves of subjects in place or old tombs where no skeletons in place are preserved. These alterations mark the areas where burials are most frequent. The 3D reconstruction is coupled with geostatistical analyses (heatmap and Moran’s index), considering the digging of the land, the concentration of residual artefacts found in the graves, but also the biological characteristics of the sample and the funeral practices uncovered. From 2D entities generated with GIS software, the process of the elevation and sculpture of the volumes is innovative, because even if it is carried out by precise but classical computer graphics techniques, it is led by advanced taphonomical and anthropological reflections. This makes it possible to propose empty spaces, a potential gathering area for the village community and circulation paths. These elements are essential in order to go beyond the storytelling often proposed in archaeology and propose a vision based on the coherence of the observed facts. Even when the archaeological remains are only sunken (no preserved elevation), the integration of multisource archaeological data (biological anthropology, funerary, artefacts and pit size) allows relevant 3D reconstructions as a formidable tool for discussing past occupations. Three-dimensional technologies make it possible to recreate a lost environment to allow a better understanding of the site. They are didactic and help to share data between researchers and/or the public, especially when they are invisible such as the presence of empty space.

A Seat at the Table

A Seat at the Table

(Un)locking the church doors: regime legitimacy and political (de)mobilisation of churches in Ethiopia

ABSTRACT Drawing upon research including personal interviews with Ethiopian church leaders and examination of Ethiopian laws and constitutions through three consecutive governments over the period 1930–2012, this contribution examines the motivations and strategies by which successive authoritarian governments in Ethiopia have mobilised or demobilised Christian churches. The contribution argues that in contexts of low economic development, the political salience of churches comes not only from their ability to (de)legitimise governments, as argued in previous works, but also from churches’ valuable resource mobilisation capabilities and international connections. The contribution explores how successive authoritarian governments in Ethiopia have balanced these political and economic considerations in deciding whether to politically mobilise or demobilise the country’s influential Orthodox and Protestant churches and details the legal and policy tools used by governments to manipulate churches’ political capacities.

Images of Medieval Art in the French Surrealist Periodicals <i>Documents</i> (1929–31) and <i>Minotaure</i> (1933–39)

The avant-garde movement Surrealism claimed historical figures as supposed ancesters, as is well known, but also interacted with the past, and especially art of the past, in other ways. This article explores the reception of the European Middle Ages in French Surrealism, in particular medieval art, by means of a case study: illustrations of medieval and early-modern Western art in the surrealist periodicals Documents (1929-1931) and Minotaure (1933-1939). The cerebral and contrary Documents challenged the canon of art by actively looking at the margins of European art, reproducing medieval art from a wide variety of periods and geographic locations, and in very differing media, including jewelry and vessels, murals, bronze church doors, and manuscript illuminations. The glossy art review Minotaure, which came with coloured inserts, was more conventional in its selection, reproducing primarily late-medieval and renaissance art works, mainly (panel) paintings. However, the intention is just as contrary, as late-medieval and renaissance art in Minotaure is framed in terms of surrealist aesthetics in a manner undermining the conventional canon. In Documents medieval art primarily serves to makes points about style and iconography, which is often posited as primitive or exotic. In Minotaure, medieval art serves to make points about Surrealism, about the oneiric qualities of form or iconography. Both periodicals offered an interesting array of medieval and renaissance art and introduced this art into the surrealist discours.

The Reformation as a Religious, Political, and Educational Project

This year, five hundred years ago, Martin Luther according to the legend nailed his 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg. The Theses, originally written in Latin, were translated into German. Thanks to the invention of the art of printing, “My Theses were truly through all of Germany” Luther later suggested. In a few years they triggered a religious and political transformation in the northern part of Europe, including Scandinavia. This transformation was later termed the Reformation. Today Christian churches rooted in the Reformation are spread all over the world.

The Reformation as a Turning Point for the Roman Catholic Church (16th and 17th Centuries)

In this article the effects of the Protestant Reformation on the Roman Catholic Church are investigated. The event of 1517, when Luther posted 95 theses on the castle church door in Wittenberg, had a profound effect on society in Europe and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) was the official response of the Roman Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation and issued in the Catholic Reformation (Counter-Reformation). Christian thought went from a uniform approach to one of diversity. The Catholics of the day responded by focusing on strategies such as printing, the liturgy, the inquisition and finally excommunication. The wound to the unity of the Christian community was finally healed at the Second Vatican Council when the Roman Catholic Church joined the ecumenical movement of all Christian Churches. The Roman Catholic Church learnt tremendous lessons from the Protestant Reformation. In certain parts of Europe there was friction and in other parts cooperation between Protestants and Catholics. Through the course of time cooperation and dialogue won the battle eventually, as Protestants and Catholics grappled with both their common beliefs and their many differences.

The Strait Gate: Thresholds and Power in Western History by Daniel Jütte

Reviewed by: The Strait Gate: Thresholds and Power in Western History by Daniel Jütte Ann Marie Borys (bio) The Strait Gate: Thresholds and Power in Western History. By Daniel Jütte. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. Pp. 384. $40. The Strait Gate is a compelling exploration of symbolic meanings, cultural practices, and social conventions associated with doors, gates, and portals in the pre-modern European city. Daniel Jütte explores the nature of doorways as a locus of religious, secular, and familial power in urban society, [End Page 1072] and with it, the complementary psychologies of security and anxiety. His historic scope includes material from ancient sources, some medieval developments, and an occasional reflection on the modern world, but the main focus is on the centuries just before and after Martin Luther's use of a particular church door for a particular political act. Among the book's many worthwhile contributions, Jütte contextualizes Luther's mytho-historic action within a broad practice of posting notices and arguments on church doors. Though a fascination with the potent psychology of doors proliferates in the arts and the contemplation of doors as thresholds is integral to many phenomenological meditations on architecture, scholarly studies tend to focus on style and ornament. Jütte's anthropological approach is unique. He is less interested in the door as a threshold and passage from one condition to another (exterior to interior, profane to sacred, past to future) than as a point of control and communication. He brings to life its role as a backdrop for rituals, a place for legal proceedings and notices, for information sharing, and for public honor and shaming. Though he describes the door as an object, the text conveys the door largely as a surface that communicates through scale and material, ornament, inscription, and a wide variety of things applied or fixed to it, from chalk marks to knockers to corpses. The second chapter, "The Power of the Keys," links a practical necessity of daily life as manifested in a metal object to social relationships and meanings that multiply artfully in both secular and religious contexts. While the symbolic weight of Christian beliefs and depictions of the entries to heaven and hell loom large, an array of stories about real-world doors convey an equally rich source of meaning. We learn of many practices that were aimed at increasing the protective power of the door as a guard to the family honor, possessions, health, and safety (in addition to locks and keys): burying things under the threshold, fixing religious or other objects on it, having the door marked or blessed by a priest, and daily cleansing of the exterior of the doorway. The various ways of communicating at doors are explored, including both knocking at them and knocking them down. Most interesting are the various kinds of messages that were commonly placed on doors. Here, the church door is the most potent for all manner of public announcements. The private door, on the other hand, was generally the recipient only of negative messages. Some were written notes, while others were more visceral, such as animal blood or excrement. These aimed at making public accusations about the character or behavior of the recipient and, even more importantly, at wounding their honor. Though the book is well written, some repetition suggests that it was assembled from previously written essays. Odd skips outside of the primary place and time (Captain Cook's story, Japanese sliding doors, the dismantling of Antwerp's city gates in the nineteenth century) do not add meaning. The chapter on "reading doors" is focused exclusively on the [End Page 1073] messages placed there and ignores the visual communication in the door's design. Where this topic does arise in an earlier chapter, architectural treatises are appropriately referenced, but not adequately engaged (especially Sebastiano Serlio). Least satisfactory is the chapter on city gates, a topic that has been well covered in urban histories. While the process of gaining entry to a walled city is well placed here, the physical and visual aspects of city gates and their relationship to the city within is poorly represented by just a few...

Patron Saint and Prophet: Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations by Phillip N. Haberkern

Reviewed by: Patron Saint and Prophet: Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations by Phillip N. Haberkern Thomas A. Fudge Patron Saint and Prophet: Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations. By Phillip N. Haberkern. [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology.] (New York: Oxford University Press. 2016. Pp. xiv, 334. $74.00. ISBN 978-0-19-028073-4.) A Reformation legend recounts a dream wherein a Saxon prince saw a German monk writing words on a church door with a quill that stretched from Wittenberg to Rome. The monk claimed that the quill came from a 100-year-old Czech goose. Visual depictions featured the quill dislodging the papal tiara while remaining impervious to all efforts to break it. While the ancient goose perished in a bonfire, the dream of Elector Frederick the Wise was about Luther and Jan Hus (after the stake). Though the text of the dream and its visual depictions reflect the thesis of Phillip Haberkern's book, this tale is curiously omitted from his study. The title notwithstanding, this is not a book about Jan Hus. That said, it is a study devoted to the posthumous memories of Hus. The book might be characterized instead as a volume devoted to dreaming about Hus. The Hus of history is less important than the Hus of faith and portraits imagined by Luther and others. It is especially challenging to review a book on a topic on which one has already written five monographs. The natural tendency to compare must be suppressed. Phillip Haberkern cannot be compared with Matthew Spinka or any of the others who have essayed judgments on Hus. This is important because the book represents a new approach and the argument is generally reliable. Unlike Spinka, [End Page 583] Haberkern has shifted attention away from Hus to the uses, misuses, and abuses of the martyred priest. This is very much the case in the second half of the book where Hus virtually vanishes. This is not a critique, for this is precisely what Haberkern wants to do. Hence, the figure of Hus, in Haberkern's hands, is an important recognition of the invented Hus on the sacred landscape of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe among communities of Hussites, Utraquists, Lutherans, Protestants, and Catholics. Thus, it is not Hus himself which matters as much as the multiple images produced by this mixed multitude. What Haberkern succeeds in doing is underscoring the politicizing of history and theology which occurred in breathtaking leaps and bounds across the multiple religious worlds of Europe at the frontier between medieval and modern eras. That politicizing reveals an interest in controlling history rather than participating in it. The treatment of Jakoubek Stříbro (important for Anglophone scholarship) and a sustained analysis of sixteenth-century sources are both new and welcome. What is particularly good about the study is that the narrative and arguments are straightforward and Haberkern avoids confessional prejudice. The bibliography is useful, and while the pictures are not new they are beneficial. Haberkern exhibits a sound grasp of manuscripts and international scholarship, pertinent to the several topics, and his transition of page to stage, or written text to dramaturgical performance, develops a new methodology in Hus studies. The crux of the book remains an elaboration of inventing the past to support the present in hopes of creating the future. Both Luther and Cochlaeus gave Hus a wax nose. The index is grossly inadequate, and there are far too many copy-editing issues. There are more than fifty errors of one sort or another ranging from inconsistent referencing, spelling, wrong dates, to say nothing of some relevant sources overlooked. Most of this is not serious but it does detract. Nevertheless, as a first book, Haberkern has successfully turned a Ph.D. dissertation into a monograph which advances our understanding of the memoria. of Jan Hus and the role he was forced to play in the drama of religious conflict in the time of Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and nascent modernity. Thomas A. Fudge University of New England, Australia Copyright © 2017 The Catholic University of America Press

Prayers for the Community: Parallelism and Performance in San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino

Prayers for the Community:Parallelism and Performance in San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino Hilaria Cruz (bio) Introduction This essay examines parallelism and other essential features of ritual discourse in San Juan Quiahije, Eastern Chatino. The Chatino languages are spoken in the highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico. The essay focuses on the poetic and discursive features found in two impromptu prayers within a corpus of civic/religious ritual petitions that the members of the community refer to as La42 qin4 kchin4,1 or "Prayers for the Community."2 The "Prayers for the Community" are part of a ritual carried out regularly by elders and traditional San Juan Quiahije (SJQ) authorities in their official capacity as community representatives. These dignitaries come together at dawn on the first day of each month and on high holidays—the most important feast day is that of the patron saint of SJQ, Saint John the Baptist, June 24th—to petition for the well-being of the entire community, and especially for the younger generations. Both of the petitions analyzed in this essay were made at the same ceremonial event on June 24, 2009 at 5:00 a.m. in the Catholic church. The prayers were said by Simón Zurita and Wenceslao Cortés, two elders from the SJQ community. On the evening prior to the prayers, a group of municipal envoys visited select elders of the community, including Simón Zurita, and formally invited them to join the municipal officials and participate in the worship. Wenceslao Cortés, serving his final elected position in the SJQ municipality, had instructed the envoys to invite the elders to the ceremony. The elders who agreed to accompany the authorities to the ceremony were instructed to come to City Hall at around 4:15 a.m. to begin the ritual. A total of six elders participated in the petition and began to arrive at City Hall by 4:00 a.m. At 5:00 a.m. the group walked together from City Hall to the church. Upon arriving at the doorsteps of the church, they all knelt and crossed themselves. Then all proceeded to walk on their knees for three to four minutes toward the main altar holding the offerings in their hands while reciting their individual prayers. The church attendants (catechists), lower ranking authorities (including helpers of City Hall), and members of the community who wished to be blessed by the elders' supplications were present at the church. Upon concluding their prayers, the community representatives stood in a row facing the church door, clutching their candles and flowers, in order to allow residents to touch and kiss the offerings they had brought for their petition. The petitioner's goal is to move and persuade the spiritual intermediaries (such as saints and ancestors) to grant his wishes. Translation is as much an art as a science. Literary and cultural translations are challenging because cultural concepts frequently do not map one to one from one language to the next. When translating a poetic text, the translator must take into account the different layers of meaning in the source text including aesthetics, phonics, and polysemy (Barnstone 2010:4). These challenges are exacerbated when the source and target languages come from completely different language families. For example, Chatino and English idioms and metaphorical phrases have very little in common. One of the challenges I encountered when I translated the two prayers studied here is that Chatino poetics make extensive use of positional and existential predicates to achieve poetic tension, imagery, and metaphor. Verses 1-2 of example (7) illustrate this point. The positional expression tyi20 ton1 literally means "s/he or they will stand," and tyi20 tqen24 means "s/he or they will exist or spread out on the ground." However, in this context these expressions are being used metaphorically to express that the new generation will one day take charge and step up and stand for the community. For this reason I have chosen to translate these expressions as "now they are about to rise up and now they are about to establish themselves," to convey the movement and agency that form part of the...

Before Harriet Blogged: Notes on Girls with Notebooks

Before Harriet BloggedNotes on Girls with Notebooks Bonnie J. Morris (bio) She ran into her room and flung herself on the bed. She lay quietly for a minute looking reverently at her notebook and then opened it . . . there was her handwriting, reassuring if not beautiful. She grabbed up the pen and felt the mercy of her thoughts coming quickly, zooming through her head out the pen onto the paper. What a relief, she thought to herself. —Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy She dug into her bag, drew out her notebook, scribbled something, and tucked the pen in her hair. . . . Was it being a girl, Suzie wondered, that made this idea so difficult? A girl was really at the mercy of other people's thoughts, wasn't she? —Hope Campbell, Why Not Join the Giraffes? For many young girls, keeping a journal or diary is an important rite of passage: a statement of private identity, a narrative of self-importance, and (often) a transgressive act of describing intimate truths shielded from parents and peers. Private writing is also a privileged activity in a world where literacy and access to free time and writing materials are unavailable to millions of girls and women. Ironically, the hours or even years invested in journal writing by girls with such opportunity may end up in ashes: the deliberate burning or shredding of adolescent pages marks a separation from the earlier, embarrassed self. Such erasure also shields, from a parent or friend's prying eyes, observations that revealed forbidden truths. While Internet blogging has exacerbated all these factors, from complications of access to technology to panic over an intimate blog "gone viral," in this essay I am primarily interested in old-fashioned writing by hand; pen on paper. I was a girl with a journal; I remain interested to this day in other girls with [End Page 47] journals and how they used self-expression in navigating the path to womanhood and a writing life. Women who like to scrawl by hand in journals are a uniquely modern clan, a tribe that would be unrecognizable to our Paleolithic stone-age ancestors. Instead of prioritizing sheer survival against the elements, we place finding time to write at the top of our agenda. We prefer gifts of pens and paper to milk and honey or the fat of the lamb. Our cave-dwelling ancestors' bodies were oriented to absolute basics: hunting, gathering, feeding, reproducing, and staying warm; yet we turn down social invitations of food, alcohol, and even sexual companionship in order to spend nights alone, in a cold apartment, narrating life into a bound volume. How does any woman dare to write her life down? How does that start? Writing is, after all, a relationship. If keeping a journal marks one as an antisocial oddity, how much more so when one is female, expected to be available to others, always sharing, other-directed, keeping nothing back. Too much thinking has always been jeered as unfeminine: witness the centuries of cruel jokes depicting brainy girls as ugly, unlikely to marry. Thinking is masculine; caring for others, feminine. Even a progressive writer like John Steinbeck used this gender binary in The Grapes of Wrath, when the earth mother Ma Joad famously intoned, "Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head." History books rarely acknowledge the personal, reflective writings and diaries left by women. Instead, we usually learn about great men, and their ideas, until we think that only men made history. My job as a women's history professor is to unlock the female past; to help students believe it could be women who drew on the cave walls at Knossos. But these students arrive in my classroom only after a lifetime of learning that important men, generals and clergy and politicians, are the ones who seized leadership and who wrote in public places. The inner visions of these few men ("Man got it all in his head"), shared with the world, created the rules and revolutions for Western culture. Moses held up his chiseled Ten Commandments, and Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to a church door. Acknowledging that...

Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition by Luis R. Corteguera (review)

Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition. By Luis R. Corteguera. [The Early Modern Americas.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2012. Pp, xviii, 222. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-8122-4439-7.)In January 1569, King Philip II decreed the establishment of a tribunal of the Inquisition in New Spain to eradicate from non-Indian society all heresy, heterodoxy, and offenses against the Christian God. Still on unsure footing in the viceroyalty, the Mexican Inquisition soon became involved in quarrels with both ecclesiastical and royal authorities over matters of jurisdiction and privileges over both temporal and spiritual spheres. Inquisitors were sensitive to matters of etiquette, and the breach of protocol by both ecclesiastic and secular authorities in Masses, meetings, and rituals of public punishment often triggered heated disagreements that easily escalated into serious confrontations. Eager to establish its authority, the newly established institution became particularly sensitive about the unauthorized use of the Holy Office's name and symbols to promote personal interests.In Death by Effigy, Luis R. Corteguera offers a probing discussion of the challenges faced by the Holy Office to establish its authority in New Spain, through a careful and nuanced analysis of a scandalous case of misappropriation of the Inquisition's symbols in a colonial setting. Corteguera's book revolves around an apparently insignificant incident that took place on July 21, 1578, in the small town of Temachalco that is located in the present-day state of Puebla. On that day, a Franciscan friar found a two-faced effigy hanging from the town church's door over a pile of wood. Adorned with black feathers and a sambenito (the Inquisition's penitential garment), the doll had a tongue sewn into each one of its mouths (one with a forked end, the other with a gag); two additional sambenitos were affixed to the building's facade, and three signs in gothic letters slandered a prominent town dweller by labeling him a Jew and warned others against removing these signs of infamy.Hernando Rubio Naranjo, the victim of the anonymous slander, was a thirtyfive-year-old unmarried man who made a fortune by trading between Teca- machalco and Oaxaca. Although he had no ancestry, the merchant was widely known as a Jewish scoundrel because of his widespread reputation as a usurer. The antisemitic accusation was compounded by Rubio's deeds as a deslenguado (loose-tongued); a hated man who had no problem defaming neighbors who considered him a friend, spreading false rumors on several reputable women, and cuckolding a fellow trader. …

Wordsworth and the "Great Terror" of 1803-05

Previous articleNext article No AccessWordsworth and the "Great Terror" of 1803-05Richard MatlakRichard Matlak Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Wordsworth Circle Volume 46, Number 1Winter 2015 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/TWC24888099 Views: 19Total views on this site © 2015 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Ever-Present Death Behind the Church Door: On the Funeral Bier and Its Emblematic Qualities

Abstract This article takes its point of departure in the precautions taken by the early modern Lutheran Church in order to insure that, at least in principle, all parishioners had a chance to face death, once the end was approaching, prepared. More explicitly, the article addresses how the early modern parishioner faced death each time he or she entered the local church. A specific item – the funeral bier – is to be the focal point and the lens through which the manner of the Church’s preparation of parishioners for death is discussed.