North Church Research Articles

A Note on the Dedication of the Churches in Shivta

ABSTRACT This paper aims to refute the widely accepted identification of the North Church of Shivta as the Church of St. George. A close examination of the issue reveals that the dedication relies on an outdated interpretation of the North Church by H. D. Colt, as well as on a misleading statement by F.-M. Abel. In addition, attention is drawn to an inscription from Shivta which indicates that one of the churches at the site was dedicated to St. Stephen the Martyr.

Ceramics from the North Church in Old Dongola revisited

The paper seeks to reexamine the ceramics unearthed from the North Church in Old Dongola. These findings are placed within the context of the terminal phase of Christianity in the capital of the Kingdom of Makuria. Examples of liturgical implements found in situ inside this Dongolese church provide a rare glimpse into the Nubian Liturgy. The paper incorporates new assessments of the ceramic chronology drawing on the recent findings of the UMMA project. Many vessels recovered in the 1980s are currently housed in the National Museum in Warsaw, presenting a unique and advantageous opportunity for their in-depth study and analysis. Consequently, they offer a fresh perspective on Old Dongola’s Late and Terminal Christian phases.

Pictorial graffiti of a horse rider and an orans from Byzantine Shivta: some thoughts on context and interpretation

ABSTRACTThe ruins of Byzantine Shivta, dominated by its three monumental churches, are visible from afar in the Negev Desert environment. They attract occasional visitors, tourists, pilgrims, and nomads who for centuries have recorded their personal marks and expressions in the form of written and pictorial graffiti. Commonly considered as vandalism, graffiti now is a recognized means of informal communication and recently has become an eligible field of research. The study of graffiti contributes to understanding social, cultural, religious, and even political contexts of ancient sites, and thereby they become an inseparable part of their history. This study surveys pre-modern pictorial graffiti discovered in Shivta and especially emphasizes two incised graffiti, a horse rider at the entrance to the North Church and an orans figure on the doorway of the ‘Governor’s House’ next to the Central Church. Published here for the first time, they constitute seldomly seen relics from the times when Shivta was still teeming with life. Discussed in context of their iconography, local and regional parallels, and spatial settings, these minute personal images seemingly reflect the main aspects of life in this desert settlement, religious and military, emerging from recent archaeological, artistic, and historical research of the site.

Introduction

Introduction

The Baptistery in the North Church of Shivta: structure, ritual, art

Abstract This paper focuses on the remains of the Baptistery chapel within the North Church complex on the outskirts of Shivta, a fifth-seventh century Byzantine village in the Negev. Presumably a monastery, the North Church is the largest and most elaborately constructed of the three Shivta churches. After addressing general structural and chronological issues of the complex, a comparison of the North Church Baptistery to the South Church Baptistery aims to clarify the linkage between shape and ritual. The authors propose that the earlier South Church Baptistery probably served the public, while the later North Church Baptistery fulfilled the internal needs of the monastery. The remains of the Baptism of Christ wall painting, recently rediscovered in the apse of the North Church Baptistery, complements, even if partially, knowledge of the links between architecture, liturgy, and art within the space. The study offers a glimpse into the religious and cultural world of the people who lived in this arid and remote, but by no means isolated area.

Concord Museum, Concord, Massachusetts

<i>Concord Museum</i>, Concord, Massachusetts

Antik Kastabala Kenti Kuzey Kilise Üzerine Gözlemler: Uzam, Mekan ve Anlamsal Üretim Döngüsü

Castabala in Ancient Cilicia is a city became prominent during Late Hellenstic period during the reign of Tarkondimotos, vassal king of Rome. The golden age of the city was its time under the Roman Imperial Period. During this period, in 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, a colonnaded street and other monumental buildings were built. In Late Antiquity, idiosyncratic sacred structures/buildings of the singularity of worship were also built in the city. In this context, the buildings named “North Church” and “South Church” were built by re-using of the architectural elements of the monumental buildings of Roman Empire period of the city. North Church is the main subject to be focused in this paper. In the context of Kuzey Kilise, the construction in question takes on a paradoxical meaning. The main reason of it is that the blocks and architectural elements not to be situated in the places which normally they had to be. The monumental mass as called North Church within the scope of the article is analyzed within the frame of the spolia, deconstruction, Genius Loci concept and Artemis Perasia cult, the God-Emperors of Rome, the construction of Christianity via Paul and the interpretation of this construction in the context of poststructuralist critique. Besides, North Church edifice is commentated within the frame of certain contexts and clusteral relationships in terms of church architecture and typology in the context of Cilicia and Anatolia.

A Group of Pilaster Capitals from Shivta: Marble Import in the Byzantine Negev

ABSTRACT Photographs of a group of pilaster capitals of a unique design have been identified in the archive (ATQ 64/6: Shivta) of Harris D. Colt (1901–1973), the first excavator of Shivta. The marble capitals, which are presented and discussed here for the first time, were found during excavations at the North Church at Shivta (1933–1935) and can be dated to the second half of the 5th and mid-6th century ce. The pilaster capitals which are presented here are an evidence for marble imported to the Negev and the prosperity of Shivta during the Byzantine period, emphasizing the investment in the interior architectural decoration of the North Church and its religious significance.

The duty of residence and official housing under parish law

Protestant priests are generally obliged to live at their place of work (residence obligation) and move into and live in an official residence assigned to them (official housing obligation). These two distinct official duties are abstractly standardized in the Parish Service Act of the EKD and are regularly specified in more detail in the law of the respective member churches. These exemptions, described in the legal provisions of the member churches, are of particular interest for pastors who do not agree with the above-mentioned duties because they restrict their (fundamental) freedoms. This article outlines the legal situation in the so-called North Church in particular and analyses under which conditions an exemption from the official housing obligation is possible under Protestant church law given the purpose of these problematic official duties. State legal protection only exists to the extent that the action of a pastor is admissible before a state court, provided that the pastor has previously gone through the ecclesiastical legal process in full, but the standard of review by the state courts is so severely restricted that a constitutional review of the official duties described cannot take place.

The winter seasons of 2013 and 2014 in the Ghazali monastery

The article reports on archaeological and conservation work carried out by the expedition of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw in cooperation with the Sudanese National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums in two consecutive seasons in the winter of 2013 and 2014. The excavations focused on the southeastern part of the site. They led to the discovery of a second monastic church (South Church) adjoining the church (North Church) known from Peter Shinnie’s work at the site, as well as a sanitary complex consisting of latrines and associated rooms located along the east wall of the monastery. Building material from the South Church, textual and pottery finds recovered during the two seasons, as well as conservation of the wall plaster preserved in the North Church are reported in this article.

Qatar Sudan Archaeological Project Excavations at the Ghazali monastery from 2014 to 2016

The excavation report covers eight months of fieldwork at the site of Ghazali, which resulted in the clearing of the entire monastery and the discovery of three annexes located on the north and west of the complex. The spiritual part of the monastery included two churches located in the southeastern corner of the complex, a household compound on the west side and a refectory and dormitory in between. Conservation work focused on the reconstruction and restoration of water storage installations in Room Y, as well as north of the North Church. Excavation outside the monastic walls brought the discovery of an iron smelting area with several well-preserved furnaces. Exploration of the monks’cemetery uncovered regular box superstructures and an intriguing variety of substructures from simple vertical pit tombs to elaborate vaulted chambers.

A Forgotten Friendship: How a French Missionary and a Manchu Prince Studied Electricity and Ballooning in Late Eighteenth Century Beijing

After the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, the French missionary Joseph-Marie Amiot, last of the great Jesuit scholars of China, befriended the Manchu prince Hongwu 弘旿, court artist and cousin of the Qianlong emperor. Hongwu became the most enthusiastic local patron of the ex-Jesuits still living in Beijing, helping them with research and providing them with information. Together, Amiot and Hongwu discussed new developments in natural philosophy, from electrical medicine to gas balloons. They conducted experiments in the Jesuit’s quarters at the North Church and in the prince’s nearby mansion, drawing from European and Chinese traditions alike to explain them. In the end, they concluded that their investigations were socially and politically dangerous, so they decided to keep them secret. It has generally seemed that the missionaries who remained in Beijing toward the end of the eighteenth century had few local encounters and failed to communicate contemporary natural philosophy; the story of the friendship between Hongwu and Amiot is a notable exception, revealing that cross-cultural exchange remained possible.

Understanding historical thinking at historic sites.

This article describes the interpretive processes historians engage in when “reading” historic buildings and examines what qualifies as historical thinking about historic buildings and sites. To gather evidence of what historical thinking looks like as it pertains to buildings, 5 practicing historians were recorded as they toured the Old North Church in Boston, Massachusetts. From these protocols, 5 heuristics were identified: origination, intertectonality, stratification, supposition, and empathetic insight. The heuristics described here provide the means through which a wider range of historic materials can be brought into the discussion of what it means to think historically.

American Adam, American Cain: Johnny Tremain, Octavian Nothing, and the Fantasy of American Exceptionalism

����� ��� Each summer, during Boston’s annual Harborfest, tourists and native Bostonians alike can take a guided tour of key historical sites that figure prominently in Esther Forbes’s award-winning children’s novel, Johnny Tremain (1943). The purpose of the tour, according to the Harborfest brochure, is to allow sightseers the opportunity to walk “the steps of Johnny”—the novel’s eponymous protagonist—in order to learn the “larger tale of America’s fight for freedom.” In preparation for the tour, participants are encouraged to read (or reread) Forbes’s novel, so that they may better appreciate the historical significance of such sites as Copps Burial Ground, Paul Revere’s home, and Old North Church—and so they might most fully relive a beloved childhood classic. Participants can take this excursion in tandem with other similarly literary-themed tours, such as those based on the lives and works of Louisa May Alcott and Henry James, or alongside other Revolutionary War-based tours on Boston’s “Freedom Trail.” 1 The primary purpose of the Johnny Tremain theme tour is didactic, intended to instruct school children (and their nostalgic guardians) in Revolutionary War history. Ironically, however, Johnny Tremain is not, strictly speaking, a Revolutionary War narrative. Indeed, as Eric Tribunella has noted, Forbes’s novel is frequently misread as a story “‘about’ a boy who fights in the Revolution, something Johnny never actually does” (88). Although the novel concludes with Johnny’s decision to take arms against the British, the bulk of its narrative is concerned with his moral development and his maturing political consciousness. Moreover, while the novel is frequently praised for its rich depiction of colonial-era history 2 —Forbes was a historian who also published a biography of Paul Revere—its endur

Boston Is Steeped in More Than History

Boston Is Steeped in More Than History

Horace Bushnell among the Metaphysicians

On December 15, 1851, Andrew Jackson Davis—self-styled Harmonial philosopher and noted scion of the spiritualist world—sent a public letter. Addressed through the Hartford Times to the controversial Congregationalist minister Horace Bushnell, the message concerned the first of a series of lectures Bushnell was delivering at his North Church. Davis, who at the time claimed Hartford, Connecticut, as his base, was clearly excited. The announced topic—“On the Naturalistic Theories of Religion as Opposed to Supernatural Revelation”—already gave Davis “much pleasure,” suggesting a position “entirely unlike any other ever assumed by the clergy of Christendom.” More than that, Bushnell's way of approaching the subject and defining his position was “considerably unlike the method pursued by most clergymen,” since Bushnell relied on his own “reason or judgment” to address “the corresponding faculty in the mind of the hearer.” Davis went on to propose that, with so important an issue, better to move the lectures from Bushnell's North Church pulpit to a different location and to invite “all parties interested” to “analyze and examine before the same audience the various positions.”

Hanging between Heaven and Earth: Capital Crime, Execution Preaching, and Theology in Early New England (review)

Reviewed by: Hanging between Heaven and Earth: Capital Crime, Execution Preaching, and Theology in Early New England Adrian Weimer Hanging between Heaven and Earth: Capital Crime, Execution Preaching, and Theology in Early New England. By Scott D. Seay. (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2009. Pp. xi, 217. $36.00. ISBN 978-0-875-80402-6.) New Englanders witnessed 460 public executions before the early-nineteenth century, when legal theory, theology, and middle-class sensibilities converged to confine the ritual to a private space. In the able hands of Scott D. Seay the sermons accompanying these executions provide fruitful material for understanding changing attitudes toward criminals and sin in early New England. A study rich in its longitudinal scope and detailed analysis, Hanging between Heaven and Earth mines these sermons for insight into crime literature, religious and political thought, and the historical ethics of capital punishment. Protestant ministers knew their execution sermons would reach an enormous audience. Increase Mather’s sermon on the execution of James Morgan [End Page 611] in 1686 packed the large Old North Church so tightly that “the walls of the gallery began to crack under the weight of the audience.” Instead of canceling the event, the crowd, perhaps numbering 5000, moved to Old South Church and its environs to hear the rest of the sermon (pp. 24–25).What were these kinds of crowds hearing? Seay argues that while the basic literary structure of the execution sermons remained constant, the message changed significantly when ministers considered the reasons for crime, the possibility for dramatic conversions, and the purpose of civil government itself. Espousing a strong view of hereditary sin, early New England ministers encouraged “moral identification” between the condemned and onlookers. For example, in 1721 Cotton Mather asked the crowd if the man to be executed was “the only One that may be charged with Murdering his Wife among us.” No, Mather preached, “all husbands who speak harshly to their wives, fail to provide them with sufficient food, or break their hearts . . . are guilty of murdering them” (p. 54). Seay finds that the early preachers saw noncriminals as restrained from literal murder only by God’s grace, not because of any innate moral difference between a person in the crowd and the murderer on the scaffold. Criminals were providentially denied this restraining grace in a slippery slope of small sins leading to larger ones—a progression into which any citizen could slide. In early New England, ministers and magistrates largely agreed on the efficacy of the “gruesome displays” at the scaffold to communicate a moral warning and to cleanse the community of guilt and discord. In the eighteenth century, communities put increasing pressure on the condemned person to experience an emotional repentance. Laypeople and ministers increased their efforts to facilitate his or her conversion through prison visits and communal prayers, and legislated further delay between arrest and execution. In the context of evangelical revivalism “when the condemned failed to achieve repentance or actively refused to strive after it, the ritual virtually was robbed of its significance entirely” (p. 44).When they did convert, however, these redeemed criminals became exemplars, held up for the entire community to emulate. Seay argues convincingly that execution sermons in New England showed marked change in the early national period as ministers absorbed John Locke and John Taylor’s exegetical and philosophical arguments for humans as “independent moral agents” and for guilt as “nontransferable” (p. 62). Many sermons adopted a new view of human sinfulness which saw crime as a result of individual choice rather than inherited human depravity. This emphasis on individual responsibility led to a qualitative difference between capital criminals and ordinary people. Sermons on the executions of blacks, who led in condemnations for rape and arson, intensified this rhetoric of difference. The trope of the morally “peculiar” criminal accompanied calls for renewed efforts in moral education. God’s restraining grace was no longer so mysterious—it worked through “religious education and proper family government” (p. 74). [End Page 612] Pennsylvania reformers, especially Quakers, led the effort to change how criminals were treated, working to establish penitentiaries as well as to limit the scope of capital punishment and to...

Textbooks, School Reform, and the Silver Lining

HELL-IN-a-hand-basket doomsayers. Ya gotta love 'em. These modern Minutemen stand stoically ready to snatch the lantern, scurry to the Old North Church, scramble up the rickety stairs, and alert a sleeping countryside, always just in time to avert a cataclysm. But their warnings are form than substance, and the dangers they foresee are like tempests in a teapot than Armageddon. As a result, I find their premonitions useful as sources of amusement and irritation than as prophecies. That makes it easy to resist their pessimism, drama, and quick-fix blarney. So how could it be that today I find myself frighteningly close to abandoning my writing, searching through my junk drawer for matches, lighting the lantern, and elbowing for space in the crowded church steeple? The very thought riddles my psyche with anxiety and torments my conscious mind. I want to tell you that my angst is the aftermath of some calamitous event -- that I was hit by lightning or abducted by aliens. But no. The opposite is true. I don't recall anything out of the ordinary. It all started when I decided to learn about how textbooks present Native Americans and Native American history. So, I read some textbooks. I wasn't surprised. Textbooks treat Native peoples in pretty much the same way society treats them -- as an afterthought brought into our collective consciousness only as they serve our interests and tell our story. But that's not the news here. fact, finding that textbooks ignore Native Americans would hardly have been worth developing the charts and graphs or accumulating the piles of data that currently clutter my office floor. Nor is it news that I found the texts unbalanced. History is, after all, merely a tale told by the winners. They get to decide which stories are told and from what perspective. They get to choose the villains and heroes; they get to assign motives, values, and morality. And it is not breaking news that I found an abundance of factual inaccuracies, flat-out fabrications, transmissions of myth as reality, glaring omissions, and best-case interpretations of historically shameful events. A quick re-read of James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me would have revealed as much. Looking back, though, it seems my arteries started to clog and the blood began to drain from my brain about the time I found a short article by Frank Wang titled How Textbooks and the Considerable Economic Resources of Textbook Publishers Can Be Used to Improve Student Achievement. A Google search for effectiveness research brought it to my computer screen, and I was taken with an illustrative little story it tells. North Carolina, textbooks are approved for funding by a relatively small group of people called the textbook adoption committee. According to Wang, this is an idiotic system. As evidence, he offers the aforementioned story, which has to do with how one man used the political system to change history -- at least as told by one textbook. Wang reports that between 1966 and the late Eighties, students using an unnamed textbook read more . . . about . . . a relatively obscure [battle at] Moore's Creek than either the Boston Tea Party or the First Continental Congress. He quips, In this case, Moore is less. As Wang tells it, it happened this way. Just one committee member -- a descendant of a carpetbagger, no doubt -- was unwilling to approve the textbook for state use until the battle, which was fought on a bridge over a little creek that runs near his home, was added to the text. The member held out; the publisher caved in. Once the text's content was revised . . . [to include] . . . about Moore's Creek, the member was satisfied, the textbook was approved, and the textbooks were distributed to classrooms across America. But why would a textbook company bend to one man's will? Aren't those companies themselves the rightful authors of history? …

Out Loud and in Public

I HAD A sort of post-traumatic-stress-related flashback last week. I it was triggered by the Presidential debates. I'd thought that criticizing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was all but forbidden. But the Democratic candidates didn't have a single nice thing to say about it, and each one of them could point out plenty of shortcomings. And did they ever. Out loud. In public. Gov. Dean (still in the race as this was written) reminded his opponents that he had been against NCLB since day one. I remembered that about him. I'd read the news reports at the time. Later, my mind had created entertaining images of him holding a lantern in the Old North Church and admonishing Patrick Henry and Sam Adams for failing to meet his standards of revolutionary fervor. Sen. Kerry said NCLB was a good law that had been corrupted by misinterpretation and torpedoed by lack of funding. That answer didn't work for me. After I'd finished trying to figure out what Kerry could have been thinking when he cast his vote for the law, my mind began to wander off in another direction. Could this new freedom to criticize NCLB be the beginning of the slippery slope that leads to the legalization of qualitative research? Maybe it could. I imagined myself on Wall Street. A ticker-tape parade was weaving through a vast crowd of merrymakers. Qualitative researchers were dancing in the streets, and funders were forcing grant applications into the dancers' hands and pockets. Grounded theorists were kissing phenomenologists. Qualitative research had been liberated! I was having fun with that image and hoping the giant Huckleberry Hound balloon would come by before I was snapped back to reality. That's when the flashback hit. I found myself going over and over the last four years and my experiences with No Child Left Behind. In those four years, I've had three jobs (it's not as bad as it sounds). Each forced me to interact with NCLB or its precursors. Four years ago, I was president of Foxfire. At that time, our work focused largely on national reform efforts. Three years ago, I taught elementary school methods courses in a university teacher preparation program in northern Montana. The last two years rank among my all-time favorites. I taught in a public school located on the Chippewa-Cree reservation about 30 miles south of the Canadian border. The work I did with these children propelled me in new and exciting directions that I'm working on this year and next. I was surprised by the ways NCLB affected teachers in that little school on the reservation. I'd thought it would be one of the schoolpeople's and community's last concerns. It wasn't. Teaching is stressful. It just is. It doesn't matter whether we're teaching preschoolers or doctoral students. Years ago, I embraced the stress as a natural part of the work. So I'd expected that. But the stress I felt during those two years in Montana was different from anything I'd experienced before. It had a new layer that was much more difficult to identify and accept. It was almost surreal. This new stress wasn't about the kids. They were great. It wasn't about my teaching methods or the racial difference or even my cultural illiteracy. I could find ways to deal with those realities, worries, and concerns. Not easy ways, mind you, but ways. As I studied it, I began to believe that the new and elusive stress was being generated by No Child Left Behind. Many teachers were worried about the law's vague but omnipresent threats. They created a sense of doom that hung over us like a dark cloud. NCLB had changed the educational climate. It zapped teachers' energy and crushed their morale. I had really loved working at Foxfire, too. Our approach to teacher support made perfect sense. It might best be described as a think globally, act locally approach to change. We believed that sustainable school change grew out of the hearts and minds of teachers. …

Nouvelle interprétation du complexe épiscopal "pré-euphrasien" de Poreč

The well known complex of Porec-Parenzo has witnessed a new phase of investigations since the start of works inside the bishop's palace and between the palace and the church (1994-8). The historical sequence of the multiple churches predating the Group (cathedral, atrium, baptistery) developed by Bishop Euphrasius about 550 (and still surviving) remains unclear. A. Šonje had assumed, to the north of the "pre-Euphrasian" south church, a cult-room, furnished with a free-standing presbyteral bench, which he considered as a martyrium. It has proved possible to determine that the re-excavated remains belonged rather to a church consisting of a nave with two aisles, each with a rectangular chevet and free-standing synthronos (bench), the classic form in the Northern Adriatic region and very close to the "pre-Euphrasian" south church. The episcopal group thus already formed a classic double church in the 5th century. It seems quite probable that this north church survived into the 6th century at a brief distance from the "Euphrasian" church and communicated with it through an intermediate room.