Birth Of Christ Research Articles

Paolo Sarpi, Caesar Baronius, and the Political Possibilities of Ecclesiastical History

Two of the most famous Catholic histories written during the early modern period were the Annales ecclesiastici of Caesar Baronius (d. 1607), a year-by-year chronicle of the Catholic Church from the birth of Christ to the twelfth century, and the Istoria del concilio tridentino of Paolo Sarpi (d. 1623), a scathing critique of the Council of Trent that argued the famous council had only made religious problems worse. Rather than comparing either of these works with similar histories written by protestants—thereby investigating inter-confessional Reformation debates—this article sets Baronius's Annales and Sarpi's Istoria side by side to explore disputes within Catholicism itself. By analyzing how the authors examine four topics in their histories (Peter and the papal primacy, the relationship between the local and universal church, the history of ecumenical councils, and the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical authorities), as well as considering both historians' actions during the Venetian interdict crisis of 1606, this essay argues that Sarpi and Baronius fundamentally disagreed about the origins and exercise of both secular and ecclesiastical authority. These two modes of Catholic history-writing reveal how Sarpi and Baronius drew from contemporary political models, such that “ecclesiastical history” could have significant political ramifications.

Calculating December 25 as the Birth of Jesus in Hippolytus’ Canon and Chronicon

This article argues that around 235 ce Hippolytus of Rome placed the birth of Jesus on December 25. While this has been theorized in the past, this article brings forward hitherto unheralded evidence about Jesus’ birth from Hippolytus’ Canon and his Chronicon. First, the Canon marks the Passover as the γένεσις of Jesus, a word which scholars have previously thought refers to birth. This article however uses evidence from an extensive word study to show that the term most likely refers to conception, which would then place the birth of Jesus sometime in late fall or early winter. Secondly, the article shows that in his Chronicon Hippolytus placed Jesus’ birth exactly nine months after the anniversary of the world’s creation. Calculations in his Chronicon and Canon indicate that Hippolytus thought the world was created on March 25, meaning that he likely believed that Jesus was born on December 25.

Experiencing Alba Tressina’s Anima mea liquefacta est through Bodily Humors and the Sacred Erotic

Alba Tressina sits, lute in her lap, in the choir room behind her convent's sanctuary, a sheet of music written in her own hand laid out in front of her on a small table. It is a hot weekday in early August, and the windows are flung open to the wide, tree-filled park that wraps around the back of the convent and abuts the river. If she were to look out the windows and beyond the walls of her convent, she would see several upper-class families taking advantage of the last summer warmth, picnicking leisurely on the grass by the river, within earshot of the nuns' rehearsal. Tressina, however, is deep in conversation with the three sisters with whom she is rehearsing. Two stand near one another, sheets of music in their hands, while the third sits at a small, portable organ nearby. A young servant girl stands quietly next to the organ, ready to begin pumping its small bellows. Tressina is explaining to her ensemble that they will perform this piece, her latest, for the rest of the sisters and possibly their father confessor on the feast day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She confides that she chose the text she did--Anima mea liquefacta est--because she wanted to demonstrate in music her close relationship with the Holy Mother, out of whose very body sprung the Lord Jesus Christ. Tressina asks the nuns to meditate on the Virgin Mary's holy body. During her pregnancy, her bodily humors--blood, phlegm, yellow and black bile--had become Jesus's humors, and after Christ's birth, her milk had fed and nourished the infant. In a similar manner, the Virgin Mary might spiritually nourish the nuns devoted to her. Finally, her Assumption--her bodily removal from the Earth to Heaven--demonstrated the sanctity of her body, as well as the physical merging of her body and soul with God. Tressina explains to her sisters that by meditating on these holy attributes of the Blessed Virgin, and by aspiring towards the perfection of the Holy Mother through prayer, music, and mystical practices, a nun might attain a higher level of closeness with God, perhaps even reaching ecstasy or a physical union with the Divine. Tressina asks the singers to pour their love for the Virgin Mary into their singing and to remember that although they would beperformingfor their own sisters they would also be performingfor the Holy Mother and for God himself. Thus, they must sing and play with a pure heart and absolute humility and love. In this article, I situate Tressina's Anima mea liquefacta est (1622) at the nexus of Renaissance and Early Modern intellectual and religious frameworks. I demonstrate the ways in which it connects with the sacred erotic, a major component of European religious thought in the seventeenth century, and Galenic humorism, which by the end of the Renaissance had regained popularity. (1) Through close reading of Tressina's composition, I explore the artistic and cultural celebration of the sacred erotic and its offshoot, liquid eros, as well as the link between humorism and musical performance. Finally, I analyze Anima mea with respect to humorism, mapping Galen's four humors and their cultural connotations line by line onto the piece itself in order to more fully appreciate the associations between sacred eroticism, the psychology and emotion of performance, and the physical bodies of the nuns who performed this music. Tressina's compositions employ many conventions of sacred polyphonic music popular in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. (2)Such pre-existing conventions function as a shorthand version of collectively agreed-upon cultural meanings, performing cultural work that is easily recognizable to a wide variety of listeners living in a common time, society, and geographic area. (3)By linking Anima mea to prevailing ideas about the body and its connection with the Divine, I demonstrate the extent to which Tressina interacted with and contributed to her artistic and political communities--not cut off from society, as many in the church hierarchy expected from a cloistered nun, but very much a part of it. …

The Christ Child in Medieval Culture: Alpha es et O! ed. by Mary Dzon and Theresa Kenney (review)

MedievalThe Christ Child in Medieval Culture: Alpha es et O! Edited by Mary Dzon and Theresa Kenney. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2012. Pp. xxii, 349. $80.00. ISBN 978-0-8020-9894-8.)In the introduction to Christ Child in Medieval Culture: Alpha es et O!, the editors express a desire to provide an interdisciplinary sourcebook on the figure of the infant and adolescent Jesus in late antiquity through the Middle Ages. In this, they have succeeded with a collection of essays that cover a sweeping variety of forms, genres, and social settings. central motif is that of Christ as a child whose Incarnation simultaneously prefigures and manifests his Passion, and whose paradoxical divine and human nature fascinated and perplexed medieval Christians, from the highest theologian to the simplest believer.Part 1 of the volume, The Christ Child as Sacrifice, begins with the reprint of a 1973 essay by Leah S. Marcus on the theological fusion of the Incarnation and Passion in the English cycle plays. Marcus's study was seminal in identifying the basic elements of the Christ Child motif and pointing to the interdisciplinary scope of the theme in medieval culture; although it understandably does not engage with more recent scholarship on such issues as medieval ideas of childhood, the piece has a clarity and focus that sets the tone for the subsequent chapters of the volume. In Theresa Kenney's contribution, the conflation of manger and altar as the locus of sacrifice in Middle English lyrics is a starting point for discussion of one of the most important aspects of the motif: that of the collapse of sacramental time that allows Christ's birth, death, and all the events in between to be represented as simultaneous. Often identified as a Franciscan innovation, the theological and devotional preoccupation with Christ's nativity is convincingly traced by Keeney back to fourth-century hymnody. theme of the Proleptic Passion is taken up by Elina Gertsman in her essay on the iconography of the Child of Sorrows, in which the infant Jesus carries the instruments of his Passion, and by Nicole Fallon in her discussion of both textual and visual presentation of the Child Jesus mounted in a tree that figures at once as the tree of life and the wood of the Cross.The affective power of the child figure is further explored in the second part of the volume, The Christ Child and Feminine Spirituality. Mary Dzon shows how the mystical visions of Birgitta of Sweden exploit the motif of cloth and sewing that are so central to the spiritual identity of medieval women. …

Fully Human and Fully Divine: The Birth of Christ and the Role of Mary

The task given to us for this article was to offer theological responses to, “Can modern biology interpret the mystery of the birth of Christ?” by Giuseppe Benagiano and Bruno Dallapiccola. We are female Protestant theologians and respond to the issues from this perspective. The Christian confession of the virgin birth of Jesus (stated within the Apostles and Nicene creeds) is a statement of faith that God became incarnate through the power of the Holy Spirit in the flesh of the human Jesus and, likewise, that God continues to become incarnate in our flesh and in the messy details of our lives. The mystery and miracle of the birth of Jesus has much more to do with the incarnation of God in human flesh and in God’s spirit at work in and with Mary, than to do with Mary’s gynecological or parthenogenical mechanisms. The language of mechanism and miracle, in the ways used by the authors, can reduce the mystery and power of the incarnation. Consequently, we would like to offer a theological interpretation of the birth of Jesus and the role of Mary that expresses the mystery and grace of God’s incarnation not only in human nature, but also in all of nature. Our world is God’s home. We cannot comprehend all the ramifications of what is happening in the sciences and technologies of reproduction and development. However, what we do know is that we cannot stop asking questions, seeking answers, and remaining open to being both critical of, and appreciative of, what the sciences are teaching us about being human and creatures of God.

Western Christian Contacts with Buddhism, c.1050–1350

The existence of Buddhism was known to some people in the Graeco-Roman world. Writing about two centuries after the birth of Christ, Clement of Alexandria recorded: ‘Some of the Indians obey the precepts of Buddha, whom, on account of his extraordinary sanctity, they have raised to divine honours.’ No Latin translation was made of this part of Clement’s work, and nothing was known of Buddhism in Western Europe in the early Middle Ages. In 1048 an anonymous Western scholar living in Constantinople made a Latin translation from the Greek of a story called Barlaam and Ioasaph, which was wrongly attributed to John of Damascus (d. c.75o).This appeared to be a saint’s life: it told how the Indian prince Ioasaph had renounced the world and embraced an austere ascetic life under the direction of the hermit Barlaam. In fact, this was a life of Prince Gautama, the Buddha. This version had originated in the kingdom of Bactria and had been translated into Arabic and later into Georgian, from which the Greek version was made in the early eleventh century. In the process of transmission the text had been Christianized. Prince Ioasaph, who renounced earthly glory to lead the contemplative life, fitted easily into the pattern of Christian hagiography, and his life proved popular because of its exotic setting in the Indies. During the Middle Ages the Latin version was translated into most Western languages, but Western people remained ignorant of Buddhism until the rise of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century made it possible for them to travel to central and eastern Asia.

Selected Elements of Animated Nature Associated with the Birth of Jesus in the Bulgarian Oral Culture and Apocryphal Narratives

The article attempts to extract textual and extratextual planes on which representatives of fauna made their mark in the folklore of the South Slavs, mainly Bulgarians; in their oral literature, rituals, and beliefs, juxtaposed with selected Apocrypha, primarily from the Protoevangelium of James, confronted with the Scripture. The analysed texts (legends, folk tales, ritual songs performed during Christmas) relate to the birth of Christ in Bethlehem and placing him in a manger – the events of Night of Bethlehem and the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt. The excerpted texts of fairy tales and legends marginalise the theme of the Divine Birth, focusing on the figure of the Mother of God and her actions: meeting with St. Tryphon, rejecting the child, receiving lessons on motherhood from the frog, escaping with the Child to Egypt. The birth of Jesus is used as an excuse to tell a story of an etiological character (theme cursing animal or plant), often based on ritual custom and referring to it, such as clipping vines. Just as in the case of fairy tales and legends, folk song uses the birth of Jesus to explain the genesis of some of the characteristics and phenomena of nature. Presentation of animals in ritual songs occasionally refers to the economic sphere (the shepherds slept, and their flock wandered away), while wild animals are the object of punishment or reward. The Apocrypha known among the South Slavs mention animals in situations encountered also in the Bulgarian oral literature – the cosmic silence when fauna and flora freezes in anticipation of the birth of the Young God. The quoted texts of the Bulgarian oral culture referring to the theme of the Nativity of the Lord, the Gospel inspiration or even interaction with the apocryphal text fades into the background. The content of the stories and folk songs seems to be primordial in relation to the processed content of the Gospel; biblical characters and situations are introduced to oral stories already in circulation, creating texts that are testament of the so-called folk Christianity.

Did Adultery Mandate Divorce? A Reassessment of Jesus' Divorce Logia

This paper argues that Matthew's so-called exception clauses to the prohibition of divorce (5.32; 19.9) make explicit what was already implicit in versions without them: that adultery required divorce. While biblical law required death for adulterers or expected it as a result of the ordeal of the suspected wife, the issue of divorce arose where communities no longer had capital rights and where guilt was not in question. Matthew's nativity story, the norms of Greek and Roman culture, notions of the defiled wife (Deut 24.1-4) and the use of Gen 2.24 to indicate permanent joining give plausibility to the thesis.

O nascimento da biopolítica das drogas e a arte liberal de governar

O presente artigo aborda alguns vetores constitutivos da genealogia das drogas enquanto um problema de ordem política, tendo como conceitos centrais biopolítica e governamentalidade. Articulando estes dois conceitos com contribuições de pesquisas sobre a história das políticas de drogas no ocidente, tecemos uma trama que que demarca o processo de constituição das drogas enquanto um objeto de interesse político e estatal. Nessa genealogia da biopolítica das drogas, pudemos explorar aparentes contradições em torno do exercício de fazer viver e fazer morrer que se efetivam através das políticas de drogas. A partir do dispositivo da sexualidade e do tema do racismo pode-se acompanhar as variações e funções estratégicas que as políticas de repressão às drogas cumpriu ao longo do século XX. Desta forma, traçamos um diagrama que emerge com o nascimento do cristianismo e se consolida com a arte de governar liberal.

The Oxford handbook of Christianity in Asia

The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia. Edited by Felix Wilfred. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, Pp. 684. $160.00 cloth.)Felix Wilfred's edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, is a substantial resource that should be on the shelves of every library serious in its research of theology and religion. Unlike a dictionary or an encyclopedia that seeks breadth in its scope but potentially delivers a work that lacks depth, the Oxford handbook achieves the latter through insightful and clearly written essays on a range of issues related to Christianity in Asia. The editor offers in the general introduction that the handbook intends to provide a hermeneutical reading of Christianity in Asia and not necessarily a comprehensive study through an alphabetical accounting of the topic. The handbook unapologetically delimits the conversation as a way to shape the discourse of Christianity in Asia. Some may take issue with this approach arguing that the editorial decisions are rather limiting. Others, however, will find that this method provides much more than a cursory glance.The handbook divides into five overarching parts: Mapping Asian Christianity (Part I); Cross-Cultural Flows and Pan-Asian Movements of Asian Christianity (Part II); Asian Christianities and The Social-Cultural Processes (Part III); Asian Christianity in Interaction with Asian Religious Traditions (Part IV); and Some Future Trajectories of Asian Christianity (Part V). Each of the five major sections consists of its own introduction which frames the section's conversations. Part I provides an informative survey of Christianity in Asia throughout five separate regions including West, South, Central, Southeast, and East Asia. In this part, one can appreciate the interpretive flow of the section moving from the birth of Christianity in Western Asia (Middle East) to interreligious work. It sets up the overall text to make a compelling argument with regards to the hybrid nature of Asian Christianity and the reason Asian Christianity appears so readily to incorporate interreligious dialogue and ways of being unlike some of its Western counterparts. Part II moves from regional expressions of Christianity in Asia to an exploration of particular characteristics that help to form general patterns and movements in Asian Christianity. Here, the contributors identify Asian theological trends and scriptural hermeneutics, critically reflect upon ecumenical, missionary, Pentecostal and charismatic movements, introduce regional indigenous Christianities, and offer a cogent piece on the Christian feminist movement in Asia. …

El Niño by John Adams (review)

John Adams. El Nino. DVD. Kent Nagano / Deutsches SymphonieOrchester Berlin. With Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Willard White. Directed by Peter Sellars. [Germany]: Arthaus Musik, 2013. 101669. $29.99. John Adams and Peter Sellars have a history of presenting musical theatrical works that take established notions about genre and turn them on their ear. The pair initially rocketed to infamy in 1987 by setting President Nixon's historic 1972 meeting with Mao Tse-tung as an opera. Nixon in China was an immediate success not only for its ripped-from-the-headlines subject matter, but for its postminimalist musical settings as well. Two projects soon followed that engaged ever closer historical events: the opera The Death of Klinghoffer (1991) about the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro and the song play / Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky (1995) set after the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake. By the new millennium, Adams and Sellars had charted such a clear trajectory that observers could rightfully expect another CNN opera, as detractors sneeringly termed their work. Then they took a swerve with El Nino. Instead of a fully-staged operatic work on recent events, El Nino was a flexible oratorio, designed to present the Nativity of Jesus Christ either in a concert setting or as a staged work. Here was a major departure, one that aroused many critics' curiosity before the work premiered nine days before Christmas in 2000. It turns out that not that much had changed. Adams and Sellars may have shifted genre and time period, but they were still busy thwarting convention. Instead of taking the Nativity story from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, they elected to present the stoiy from a female point of view. The narrative still proceeds from the Annunciation to Mary through Jesus's birth and on to the Massacre of the Innocents under Herod and the flight to Egypt. However, the texts that relate the story range from the gnostic gospels of the Apocrypha to settings of Latin chant by Hildegard von Bingen to the Spanish poems of Rosario Castellanos. This patchwork of texts provides shifting perspectives and opens up the Nativity to new dimensions and revelations. Sellars's staging of El Nino captures the work's multiple ways of seeing by placing the action in three areas. First are the singers on stage, clad in solid colors with only a chair for a prop. Above them hangs the second area, a giant screen that continually projects a film of extremely shaky footage of modern life that augments the sung text. Rounding out the presentation are dancers who weave among the singers, acting as Greek chorus and expressing the principal characters' inner feelings. …

Tertullian and Ancient Embryology in De carne Christi 4,1 and 19,3−4

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to illuminate two passages from Tertullian’s De carne Christi (4,1 and 19,3−4) that are connected to the physical nativity of Christ, by examining their medical context, since they both allude to ancient embryology. First, the obscure phrase genitalia in utero elementa (4,1) is placed within the context of Galen’s theory of conception; second, Tertullian’s comments on the nature of male semen and its qualities (19,3−4) are correlated to similar concepts advocated by Aristotle and Galen.

Steve Moyise, Was the Birth of Jesus according to Scripture?

Steve Moyise, <i>Was the Birth of Jesus according to Scripture?</i>

Nativity of Christ Temple in Krasnoyarsk

Nativity of Christ Temple in Krasnoyarsk

Starość pobłogosławiona przez Boga. Studium postaci w Łk 1–2

Whether God planned for people physical death and senility (are the death and senility a consequence of the original sin?) or not, is still an open question in modern theology. In the Infancy Narratives (Luke 1–2) the evangelist presents the four old persons: Zechariah, Elisabeth, Simeon, and Anne. Exegetical and theological examination of the texts concerning these individuals leads to some characteristics which are common for all or for most of them. Among them we can enumerate the following ones: remaining in God’s presence in Jerusalem temple, continuing to pray, being led and inspired by the Holy Spirit (prophecy included), expecting the coming of the Messiah and living according to the God’s Law (righteousness). It seems, however, that the most important characteristic of the old age is sensibility in recognizing God’s inspiration.

The coat hanger halo

From retellings of the nativity story to humorous contemporary tales, Jude Harries selects popular books to share during the festive season, linked to activities that help children build relationships and self-confidence.

Soil micromorphological evidence from Iron Age land use at Tornby and Mörtlösa in Linköping, Sweden

The area of Linköping, Sweden, has a land use history of several millennia. In the last two decades, many archaeological investigations of different types have been conducted here. They range from trial trenching to full scale excavations of large areas and are connected to the expansion of the city.The Early Iron Age landscape of the area was formed by animal husbandry and the requirements of the domesticated animals. Earlier research has revealed an intensification and specialization within animal husbandry in the region, occurring around the Birth of Christ, when farms seemed particularly to specialize towards milk production. However, this transition and its local variations is still poorly investigated. Arable farming is assumed to have been characterized by small intensively used and improved cultivated areas close to the settlements, but there are many questions still to be answered about the specific soil management types and crops. There is a need to further investigate the land use history of the area from the Early Iron Age (2440–2010 BP) until Medieval times (AD 1030–1536).As part of the archaeological excavations carried out by the Swedish National Heritage Board in 2007, six samples from three localities, all in the Linköping municipality, were chosen for soil micromorphological analysis. At the locality of Tornby I, traces were found of anthropogenic activities including some kind of building activities, prior to a period with extensive cultivation activities nearby, presumably when the settlement was established in the Pre-Roman Iron Age (ca. 200 BC). It was followed by a period with soil management on the locality, interpreted as a kind of garden cultivation. The locality of Tornby II, was presumably used a pasture in an early period and as a cultivation field with soil improvement in a later period. At the locality of Mörtlösa, dated to the Roman Iron Age (2010–1680 BP) and the Migration Period (BC/AD – 550 AD), traces from two different contemporary activity areas could be differentiated within few meters of a profile: a cultivated field which has been improved with different kinds of manure through time, and presumably a pathway for animals.

The Gazophylacium: An Argument for European Medieval Religious Sites as the First Museums in the West

The origins of museums as public institutions are often traced to the mid- to late nineteenth century. However, medieval religious sites in Europe satisfy the current definitions of museums and operated in a role similar to that of contemporary museums. Evidence is presented to show that these sites were in fact museums as we conceive of the institution, based on similarities in audience, staff, funding, permanence, collections, exhibitions, social needs, and other purposes. European religious sites from the birth of Christianity to the beginning of the Renaissance are used as illustrations to demonstrate how these institutions were incredibly similar to museums today and should be recontextualized within museological history.

HELLENISTIC AND PHARAONIC INFLUENCES ON THE FORMATION OF COPTIC IDENTITY

Conflicting descriptions of Coptic identity still exist today. The Copts regard themselves as those descendents of Pharaonic Egyptians who have retained their identity because of their Christian faith, in spite of Egypt having become a predominantly Islamic, Arab country. They claim to have “caught a glimpse of the Light of Christianity” before the birth of Christ. This article offers iconographical evidence to supplement an explanation of how the ancient Egyptian mythopoeic thinking, in combination with the syncretistic cultural environment of Hellenism, mediated this phenomenon. Today the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt represents “a return to the apostolic father type leading of the church”. Although pharaonic and gnostic influences appear to have contributed to their remarkable eusebeia, the Copts perceive themselves as having abided by the decisions of the first three Church Councils and have respected and upheld the canon.

A Brief History of Aortic Aneurysm Surgery.

For centuries, aortic disease has been a major problem of mankind. Hieroglyphic texts from ancient Egypt attest to the presence of aortic aneurysms millennia before the birth of Christ. Although no medical solution for aneurysms was available in that era, the advice allegedly given for the care of affected patients was a passionate plea, which simply stated, “Do not abandon them.” As medical history reveals, the treatment of aortic aneurysms did not progress significantly until modern times. Most measures used to control these lesions were attempts to relieve pain and forestall inevitable rupture. Efforts to promote thrombosis by introducing foreign bodies, such as wire and other substances, were sometimes successful but more often ineffective. Other efforts were aimed at strengthening or reinforcing the wall of the aneurysm to retard its growth. Many different measures were tried, but their success was limited. A major advance took place in 1888, when Rudolph Matas reported an internal repair technique known as endoaneurysmorrhaphy for treating arterial lesions. In this approach, he excised the clot from the aneurysmal sac and sutured the orifices of the arteries that entered the sac, from within, reestablishing continuous blood flow. More aggressive or definitive treatment became available only in the second half of the 20th century. Encouraged by experience with the surgical treatment of wounds during World War II, surgeons began taking a more direct approach to cardiovascular lesions. A few case reports concerning the repair of small sacciform aneurysms appeared in the medical literature, but there were no recommendations for definitive surgery. In December 1951, I presented a paper that Dr. Michael DeBakey and I had written entitled, “Surgical Considerations of Intrathoracic Aneurysms of the Aorta and Great Vessels,” [1] at a meeting of the Southern Surgical Association (Fig. 1). The paper described six cases in which excision and aortorrhaphy had been performed. During the discussion that followed the presentation, the renowned surgeon Dr. Evarts Graham complimented us on our paper and suggested that it was a landmark in vascular surgery. Shortly afterward, I performed the first repair of a ruptured abdominal aneurysm [2]; the patient survived for 5 days, then died of kidney failure. I soon repaired four more ruptured aneurysms. In 1952, Dr. DeBakey and I were the first to use a homograft to repair a large aneurysm of the thoracoabdominal aorta [3]. Later, we successfully used homografts to replace the ascending aorta (1956) [4] and the aortic arch (1957) [5]. Figure 1. A leather-bound copy of the historic and seminal paper that I presented to the Southern Surgical Association in 1951, which is now prominently displayed in the Wallace D. Wilson Museum at the Texas Heart Institute. I am proud to have participated in the ... During the same period, many other surgeons made important contributions to aneurysm treatment. Among those pioneers were Henry Bahnson and his colleague, Frank Spencer, who began an active aortic surgery program at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Soon, many other surgeons and institutions established programs for treating aortic aneurysms and occlusive disease. Since that time, aortic disease has continued to hold widespread interest for surgeons and other specialists. Countless symposia and publications have resulted. Many advances in diagnosis and treatment have occurred, such as aortography, the introduction of vascular grafts and anticoagulants, and the techniques of cardiopulmonary bypass and induced hypothermia. More recently, noninvasive diagnostic methods have been introduced, including ultrasonography, computed tomography, and MRI. In the last part of the 20th century, the goal of treatment reverted to endoaneurysmorrhaphy, with use of a suitable graft to restore aortic continuity. Today, the emphasis is on catheter placement of prosthetic grafts, a less invasive approach to these lesions. It is highly appropriate now that Dr. John Elefteriades, of the Yale University School of Medicine, has created a specialty journal, AORTA, devoted entirely to aortic disease. Dr. Elefteriades has long been a world-renowned leader in cardiovascular surgery. I applaud this new journal and am sure that it will contain many articles of interest. Comment on this Article or Ask a Question