Monastery Buildings Research Articles

Appropriating a space for violence: State Buddhism in southern Thailand

In southern Thailand, monasteries once served as focal points for different communal identities to negotiate shared space and, with it, shared identities. However, since martial law was declared in 2004, Muslims in southern Thailand do not frequent monasteries. Instead, soldiers and police occupy monastery buildings and protect the perimeters from attacks. In addition, there are now military monks, soldiers who are simultaneously ordained monks, who work to protect the monasteries. This article argues that the Thai State's militarisation of monasteries and the role of Buddhist monks fuel a religious dimension to the ongoing civil war in southern Thailand.

My marriage with music psychology.

ABSTRACT - A childhood musical environment, supportive family, early experience of performance on piano and organ, interest in psychology in late teenage years, studies of psychology and musicology at Uppsala University, and fortuitous external academic encounters led the author to a lifelong relation with music psychology. During undergraduate studies he conducted research on rhythm with Ingmar Bengtsson, a professor of musicology. The author then completed a diploma in organ performance at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, followed by a doctoral degree in Psychology, at Uppsala University. Background in both musicology and psychology encouraged joint qualitative and quantitative approaches. The doctoral studies on rhythm revealed three clusters of dimensions of experience-structural, motional, and emotional. These dimensions represent themes of the author's lifelong research, not only on musical rhythm but also music perception in general. Emphasizing motion and emotion was unusual when most music psychology focused on the experience of music structure. Applied work on the experience of sound-sound quality or timbre-was conducted in the Department of Technical Audiology in Stockholm. The author offered the first music psychology course in Sweden in 1977. A body of research on Strong Experiences related to Music (SEM) was a most significant original contribution. Growth of the field of music psychology over 40 years included formation of societies such as ESCOM in which the author played a role. He advises that in spite of the enormous opportunity for specialized scientific study of music psychology today, it is important to remember that music is an art form having individual experiential significance. PRELUDE In one of his aphorisms Nietzsche once stated that Ohne Musik ware das Leben ein Irrtum (Without music life would be a mistake). I am inclined to agree. From my earliest years and throughout my life music has been a dear and unerring companion. In my late teenage years it began to be associated with psychology as well, a junction that I came to know as music psychology. EARLY UPBRINGING AND EDUCATION I was born June 18, 1936, third child of my father Hakan and mother Elsa, after my brother Ingemar, then already 15 years old, and my sister Inga, 9 years. We lived in the small village of Varnhem in the western part of Sweden, well-known as the site of one of the few Cistercian monasteries founded in Sweden in the 12th century. The monastery flourished during the Middle Ages but was then destroyed during the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. There are now only remnants of the monastery buildings, but the magnificent monastery church, built in Romanesque-Gothic transition style, is still there in all its beauty and with the size and wonderful acoustics of a cathedral (see Figure 1). Practicing and performing on the organ in this wonderful church, from late childhood until early adulthood, was decisive for much of my musical development and views on music. My mother was a housewife. She had a keen interest in music, and I remember her and my sister singing a lot - both to, and with, me. My father was a schoolteacher, and our apartment was in the same building as the school itself. We had a black upright piano in the living room, and early on my father had me practicing on it as well as on the harmonium in the classroom. I think that I liked playing from the very beginning (at least I cannot remember any serious protests), and I assume that this early practice also made me develop absolute pitch. I remember very well when one day my father discovered, probably to his surprise, that I was able to tell the pitch of any tone he played on the piano. I must have been six or seven years old and had of course no idea about what absolute pitch meant. I just listened and immediately named the pitch of each tone he played. My brother, Ingemar, had a similar musical education, supervised by my father. …

:Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate, City of London: An Archaeological Reconstruction and History

This is an archaeological, architectural and historical study of one of the largest complexes of buildings in the medieval City of London, but one which is largely unknown and of which only two fragments survive above ground today. It is the fifth volume in a series on the monasteries of London. Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate, was the first religious house to be established inside the walls of London after the Norman Conquest, in 11078; one of the earliest Augustinian houses to be established in England; and the first to be dissolved, in 1532. By 1200 the precinct north of Leadenhall Street and just inside Aldgate was filled with imposing stone buildings, including a large and architecturally impressive church which was the burial place of two of the children of King Stephen in the middle of the 12th century. Londons first mayor, Henry FitzAilwin, was buried in the entrance to the chapter house. In the 16th century the monastery was owned by the Duke of Norfolk, second only to Queen Elizabeth in power, who was executed in 1572 for his part in plots surrounding Mary Queen of Scots. Several modern excavations of 1977 to 1990, many antiquarian drawings, and a ground-floor and a first-floor plan of all the monastery buildings made around 1585 are brought together here for the first time, to reconstruct a fully illustrated and detailed history and archaeology of the priory site. Not only can all the major periods of the priorys building history be suggested and compared with other religious houses in medieval London, but the excavations produced their own surprises, such as evidence of the beginning of the tin-glazed or delftware pottery industry in the 1590s, and a unique Jewish plate of the 18th century.

L'abbaye d'Aniane en Languedoc. Des Mauristes à l'établissement pénitentiaire

A plan to extend the terms for the protection of historical monuments covering the block of Abbey buildings at Aniane, enabled us to carry out an archivist study and gives with precision the chronology ofethe different series building campaigns. Of the medieval Abbey there is no trace left today. The arrival of the Maurists in the year 1635 overthrew the site ; the old buildings were razed to the ground, and the space inside the monastic enclosure was reorganized. The Saint-Sauveur church in the North, the adjoining cloister in the South and the four main buildings were then rebuilt. Work began in the second half ofthe XVIIth century (western main building and church), and continued until the Revolution, apparently respecting the original pattern. At the Revolution theAbbey was sold. The church became a parish church whereas the old monastery buildings where successively transformed into a cotton mill, then into a detention house in the year 1845. This new assignment did not spoil the monument ; only the heightening of the western main housing is noticeable, as well as the extension of the building eastwards and a complete refitting of the inside space. In spite ofeall these vicissitudes, the Aniane Abbey remains one of the rare complete examples of the monastic architecture in Languedoc under the old regime (before 1789).

Sanfelice and St Florian: Indigenous Tradition and Staircase Design

There is nothing surprising in finding in Austria (at the monastery of St Florian) a staircase similar to the one (at the Palazzo Sanfelice) in Naples during the period when Naples was ruled by the Austrian Viceroys, but a puzzling problem of dating arises. From the existence of so many staircases of this type in Naples and only a single example in Austria, one would conclude that the type originated in the South and was borrowed by the northern architect on this occasion; but in fact the staircase at St Florian dates from 1709, earlier than the first certainly datable example in Naples. The argument is not, however, conclusive, because Sanfelice may have experimented with the form at an earlier date; but till further documents are discovered the question must — theoretically at least — be left open. A. Blunt, Neapolitan Baroque and Rococo Architecture (London, 1975), pp. 142–43 Whereas Sanfelice’s first works in architecture, the decoration of the church of the Cappuccini di Pozzuoli and the construction of the church of the Periclitanti on the Salita di Pontecorvo, date from 1701–02, and his earliest dated stair of the doubled open sloping arcaded type, that added to the Seminario at Nardo for his brother the Bishop from 1723–24, it has recently been established that the first plans for the monastery at St Florian and its new staircase, along with plans for the monastery church, were submitted by Carlo Antonio Carlone during the winter of 1700–01. The staircase was itself begun (to a design different from that which was eventually followed by Prandtauer, Carlone’s successor, after 1707, but keeping the sloping arcade motif), between 1 January and 18 May 1701, dates recorded in the monastery building accounts for the delivery of granite steps. Thus the use of the doubled sloping arcade motif at St Florian (Pl. 41a) would seem to antedate Sanfelice’s activities as an architect in Naples, and certainly antedates his use of this motif in staircase design — Plate 41b shows the Palazzo Fernandes (probably) not actually by Sanfelice but a typical example. That is, however, a long way from saying that South-North influence can be replaced by North-South influence.

The Kiev‐Pechersky State Museum of History and Culture

There are certain architectural monuments whose existence is vital for our image of a country or a city. The former Lavra in Kiev is one such ensemble. Nestling in the picturesque slopes that overlook the Dnieper, these fine monastery buildings are part and parcel of the inimitable charm of Kiev, the eternal loveliness of this ever youthful city. The Ukrainian people have forged a distinct national culture and varied artistic traditions, foremost among them architecture—the art that Gogol characterized as a kind of ‘chronicle of life’—and the plastic arts. In 1926, the Government of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic declared the precinct of the former Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra, or Monastery of the Caves (‘Lavra’ was the title conferred on large monasteries subordinate only to the highest religious authorities; ‘pechera’ means cave in Ukrainian) to be a state preserve of history and culture. The many buildings and labyrinthine caves now make up a unique complex comprising four museums, eight permanent exhibitions and forty unparalleled architectural monuments. The area covers 11,000 square metres, half of which is given over to display of some 56,000 objects. More than two million visitors—from every Soviet republic and over seventy foreign countries—visit it every year. More than 36,000 guided tours are organized for their benefit.

Mediaeval Cluny. Renewed Study of the Monastery's Buildings

Mediaeval Cluny. Renewed Study of the Monastery's Buildings

La clerecía regular ante los conflictos internos y guerras exteriores de la Corona de Castilla durante la Baja Edad Media

La clerecía regular desempeñó un papel de primer orden en los conflictos de la Castilla bajomedieval. Este artículo analiza el papel de las comunidades religiosas en los conflictos internos y guerras exteriores de la Corona, tanto su presencia en las mismas del lado de uno de los dos bandos en litigio, como su papel de árbitros en las disputas. Abordaremos también la contribución económica de los monasterios y conventos a la causa bélica, así como el papel intercesor que desempeñaron algunos religiosos u objetos litúrgicos albergados en ciertos monasterios. Finalmente, nos referiremos al empleo de los edificios monásticos y conventuales como lugares de refugio y asilo durante las contiendas, la firma de acuerdos en sus muros o su empleo para la construcción de bastidas y otras infraestructuras bélicas necesarias para llevar a cabo las campañas.

New Results in the Study of Cluny Monastery

other monastic buildings at Cluny has left a great lacuna in the history of mediaeval ecclesiastical and conventual architecture. In the late tenth century and throughout the eleventh century the group at Cluny was the model and set the standard, being the focus and center of a highly organized monastic system which ultimately comprised about 1450 dependencies. At the time when the Congregation of Cluny was at the summit of its power and effectiveness the great third church (Fig. 1) was built as a sort of capitol church, or, to use another figure, as the spiritual hearth of the entire Cluniac group of monasteries which then extended from Spain into Middle Europe, and even possessed a few priories in the Near East. In architecture the work of the abbey was very important. In the period of its greatest influence (which was inter-regional) monastic architecture was of primary rank because the monasteries played so vital a role in the economic, intellectual, spiritual, and governmental life of the time. Three successive great abbots of Cluny--Mayeul (948-994), Odilo (994-1049), and Hugh (1049-1109)were interested in good building. They traveled to Rome and over wide areas in Western Europe. Personally or by directive they brought about the erection of at least four hundred churches and several thousands of other, less spectacular, monastic buildings. The building art of all Western Europe was the gainer because of the high ideals in this work. Abbot Hugh was interested in Roman, in Byzantine, and in Moslem art, specimens of which he saw during his sixty years of journeying on behalf of Cluny; the enrichment of Romanesque architecture during his lifetime unquestionably owes something to this fact, and the same thing may, of course, be said of sculpture and painting. What we have lost at Cluny itself (Fig. 2) is a great architectural paradigm which, if it still existed, would bring our ideas of both tenthand eleventh-century architecture into much sharper focus. If the imperial Cathedral of St. Sophia in Constantinople had been destroyed we would be in the same position with respect to Byzantine architecture, and it would be almost impossible to gain a clear idea of the potentialities of the Byzantine style at its culmination. The buildings at Cluny possess, in their way, the same relative importance for their own epoch. Cluny was indeed a monastic empire. Popes, kings, emperors, and saints figured prominently among its multitudes of visitors in mediaeval times. So extended and widely ramified were Cluniac affairs that despite voluminous publications beginning in the seventeenth century, no general history of the abbey has as yet been achieved, and the same thing is true for the buildings of the mother house. By charter of September 11, 909 (not, as usually written, 910), the monks were given a Gallo-Roman villa, by then largely Carolingian in construction. They soon started to build and rebuild for themselves, and with negligible gaps they continued their progressive reconstruction of the monastery until, in 1790,, the general expropriation of monastic properties put an end to a final huge project of rebuilding which had been under way since about 1750. Even without the difficulties introduced by the incessant demolitions and reconstructions, the architectural historian's task would be enormous at Cluny because of the great age of the earlier structures, and the ever-increasing scale of the later ones. The first church (c. 910-27) was about 120 feet long; the second church (c. 950-81 and later) was about 200 feet long; the third church (1088-1120 and later) ultimately reached a length of almost 615 feet English measure (Figs. 3 and 4). The monastery buildings in the reconstruction of 9911043 were based on a 300-foot square (3342% feet English measure), but in the end the western building alone consisted of ten wings aggregating about 1744 feet (nearly a third of a mile) in length, with eleven towers of some size in addition to the 135-foot pair at the facade of the church narthex, which was functionally related to the western building. There was a concurrent development at the south and east in the monastery group. It will surprise no one that a thorough study of this group has entailed over thirty years of work by the present author and several collaborators, especially Frederic Palmer and Helen Kleinschmidt. During this long period, and with the aid of munificent grants from the John Simon

Riga domkyrka och mästaren från Köln

Riga domkyrka och mästaren från Köln

Notes on Some European Museums

Previous articleNext article FreeNotes on Some European MuseumsEdmund Otis HoveyEdmund Otis Hovey Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The American Naturalist Volume 32, Number 381Sep., 1898 Published for The American Society of Naturalists Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/277008 Views: 104 PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.