Religious Emblem Research Articles

Bell: A Symbol of Wholeness

This study explores the bell’s attributes as a representation of wholeness, analyzed through the lens of analytical psychology. Encompassing its production, religious significance, and literary references, our aim is to uncover the profound meaning behind the bell. The bell’s transformative journey parallels the internal struggles of individuals grappling with emerging energies while bringing unconscious thoughts into awareness. As a potent symbol, the bell possesses the unique power to bridge and harmonize opposing elements. It plays a dual role as both a religious emblem and a literary motif, embodying spirituality as a conduit for divine communication, while also safeguarding against malevolent spirits and natural perils. Additionally, it symbolizes the intricate balance between feminine and masculine forces. The resonating sound of the bell serves to awaken consciousness, initiating a cyclical process alternating between awareness and the unconscious, facilitating the experience of death and rebirth. Operating as an alarm, it illuminates existence, stirring the psyche toward an altered state of awareness and eventual conscious realization. Therefore, the bell acts as a catalyst, facilitating creative transformation that integrates disparate aspects into unity, embodying the essence of wholeness within an individual’s psyche. Through this exploration, we shed light on the bell’s pivotal role in profound psychological transformation.

Rising Moon at Tell eŝ-Ŝerīʿa/Tel Seraʿ: A Neo-Assyrian Bronze Crescent Standard and the Iconography of the Moon God Sîn of Ḫarrān in Southern Levant. Ritual Paraphernalia and Military Insignia?

Neo-Assyrian influences over southern Levant had been long debated and criticised. During the 8th and 7th centuries BC the veneration of the moon god Sin of Ḫarrān experienced a remarkable international reputation, possibly linked to the deity’s peculiar status as a protective and legitimating authority for the Neo-Assyrian westward imperialism under the Sargonid kings. As Stratum V at Tel Seraʿ shows a meaningful Neo-Assyrian milieu pertaining architectural and material records, this paper dedicates a closer focus to a very rare bronze crescent standard, one of the three only records thus far known for this special item, which can be considered the threedimensional counterpart to both tasseled and pendants- equipped lunar crescent standards portrayed on western royal stelae as well as on glyptic records. Since the crescent represents a meaningful religious emblem into the Levantine cultural framework during the Iron Age, the aim of this paper is to investigate a specific dimension of the Neo-Assyrian cultural impact over southern Levant, focusing on the symbolism and meaning conveyed by the bronze lunar crescent standard unearthed at Tel Seraʿ, and on its possible use as a ritual paraphernalia and/or military emblem.

Controversial More and Puzzling Utopia: Five Hundred Years of History

ABSTRACT This article intends to briefly review five hundred years of historiography of the reception of the figure of Thomas More and of his Utopia. It will highlight the perception of More, from a humanist and statesman to a controversial religious emblem. At times understood as the father of socialism, and at others, a persecutor of religious liberties, More has fared diversely through the five centuries that separate us from him. His Utopia, while being usually linked to the persona More, has also led its own life and been used and misused according to the needs of every century. The article will propose a chronological review of Thomas More and Utopia to better show the evolution of the receptions, all the while asserting that this sketchy presentation would need to be developed and qualified in a book-length study.

Branding by Islamic Banks in Pakistan: A Content Analysis of Visual Brand Elements

This paper aims to present an analysis of brand elements adopted by Islamic Banks in Pakistan. The research uses the content analysis on the branding elements for five established Islamic banks (IBs) and 14 conventional banks offering Islamic Windows (IWs). Data has been taken from SBP and official websites of the relevant banks. The analysis is based on brand names, logos, taglines, color schemes and backgrounds. Some noteworthy trends highlighted in this study are; (a) Arabic script in logos; (b) Islamic emblems in logos (c) Arabic Calligraphy in logos (d) White, black and green colors; (e) Islamic terms in brand names, logos and taglines; (f) Islamic perspectives as USP; (g) Targeting to Muslim Community (h) Touching to religious sentiments of clients (i) Avoidance of statues and images of living creature; (j) Avoidance of female images (k) Avoidance of promises on high return on the basis of investment (l) Avoidance of religious emblem of non-Muslims Communities.

Media Literate Catholics: Seeing, Reading and Writing in Early Modern Participatory Culture

In this article I use the concept of ‘media literacy’ – generally discussed in the context of new media – to analyse media ability and conversance in seventeenth century Catholic culture. In particular, I focus on an untitled and anonymous Dutch composite volume which combines handwritten texts, printed texts and images. By reconstructing the relationship between the manuscript and its printed sources, I argue that the composite volume was the result of a meditative reading and writing process in which fragments from the popular religious emblem book Pia Desideria (1624) and other contiguous printed books were combined in a new multimedial product, which may serve as a means to share (media) skills and knowledge, and to facilitate the meditation processes of future consumers. I demonstrate that literacies now associated with new media – such as the ability to actively participate in media practices, and to consult hypertexts – were vital to early modern Catholics who constructed their identity by using and producing media.

Never to Coincide: the Identities fo Dutch Protestants and Dutch Catholics in Religious Emblematics

This essay presents observations on the distinctiveness of Protestant and Catholic literary practices and identities in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Inspired by Catholic emblematists from the Southern Netherlands, Dutch Catholics as well as Protestants employed the religious emblem as a means of bolstering their faith and shaping their identity – but never at the same time, and never in the same manner. The religious emblem was at first claimed by Protestants such as Jacob Cats. After 1635, it was appropriated by Catholic authors such as Jan Harmensz. Krul and Everard Meyster. As the genre was reappropriated by Protestants such as Jan Luyken in the 1680s, Dutch Catholics moved away from the emblem to express their identity in new and exclusively Catholic genres such as soberly illustrated prayer books. Production of Dutch emblem books occurred in the same social and cultural isolation as clandestine Catholic church art, indicating that no sharing of visual practices and media took place among denominations in the Republic.

Creeping Secularism

The Islamic revolution in Iran at the closing decades of the twentieth century was a shocking, unexpected phenomenon in the context of modern history. Its religious emblem, the presence of the Shiite clerics as it's mobilizing motor for mass demonstrations and, eventually, the bizarre composition of Islam and revolution—an amalgam of two conceptually alien elements, with unprecedented ideological claims— created a new peculiar model of state and statecraft. The substitution of a fundamentalist regime for a semisecular monarchy replaced the crown with the turban as the paramount symbol of the Iranian national sovereignty, under the fundamentalist formulation of the “governance of the canonist” (velayat-e faqih). This new state manifesting itself through specific signs, symbols, slogans, discourses, and behaviors, as well as by appropriation of modern means of ideological propaganda, the use of revolutionary violence, and organized terror, embodied in the very structure of a state, addressed itself to the world as a new militant ideological and political power aiming, once again, to change the world. How could this extremely unexpected event happen? Explanations are various and they focus either on the dictatorial manners and erroneous actions of the shah, alongside the role played by the Western powers, specifically the United States, or on the presence and the political role of Shiism and its clergy in Iranian history. However, a few fundamental questions remain unanswered. How could a radically traditionalist religious establishment, which was normally marked by modern revolutionaries as reactionary, merge with the most radical revolutionary groups and views? What are the universal results of such a “chemical” composition for both the otherworldly religionism and secular revolutionism? How do they essentially differ in action and discourse from what they had been previously? What were the innermost historical forces that made possible this seemingly impossible phenomenon?

Acceptatie van het vreemde - Pers- en geloofsvrijheid in de Republiek vanuit internationaal perspectief

During the majority of the seventeenth century, religious literature produced in the Dutch Republic contained far fewer illustrations than the religious literature produced in the Southern Netherlands, England and Germany. The relative freedom with which different denominations and their attendant ideologies coexisted in the seventeenthcentury Dutch Republic, would seem to provide an ideal setting for the integration of old and new religious visual practices. Visual components were, however, not easily integrated in literary-religious publications in the Republic. In fact, the process was unexpectedly complicated and discontinued, one aspect of which is discussed in this article. It is argued that in at least in one city in one of the Republic’s neighbouring countries old and new visual traditions intermingled earlier and more thoroughly, judged by the development of religious emblematics in Frankfurt between 1617 and 1631. In this period, a group of talented Southern Netherlandish engravers and authors joined forces with the Calvinistic publisher Lukas Jennis to produce a series of hybrid religious emblem books. The last book in the series was Bartholomeus Hulsius’ Emblemata sacra, the first Dutch Reformed emblem book ever published. Frankfurt provided exactly the sort of climate in which different confessional traditions intermingled and influenced each other with little friction. This exemplary case urges us to reconsider the nature of Dutch toleration: why could a country known for its religious toleration not develop these forms of cultural hybridity on its own initiative?

Literature and the Shaping of Religious Identities: The Case of the Protestant Religious Emblem in the Dutch Republic

Next article No AccessLiterature and the Shaping of Religious Identities: The Case of the Protestant Religious Emblem in the Dutch Republic*Els StronksEls StronksUniversiteit Utrecht Search for more articles by this author Universiteit UtrechtPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by History of Religions Volume 49, Number 3February 2010 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/651990 Views: 87Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Massih Zekavat Satire, Humor and the Construction of Identities, 6 (Jun 2017).https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.6

Georgette de Montenay: A Different Voice in Sixteenth-Century Emblematics*

The feminists of thequerelle[des fewines] were reacting to changes they seemed to have no control over, or to a Puritan revolution that served mainly to confirm their subjection to men. Lacking a vision of social movement to change events, their concern lay with consciousness. By their pens, they could at least counteract the psychological consequences of what they felt was a recent, steady decline in the position of women.Joan Kelley, “Early Feminist Theory and theQuerelle des Fannies,”inWomen, History and TheoryGeorgette de Montenay has been the object of enduring scholarly interest, not only as the first woman author of an emblem book, but also as the creator of a new literary and artistic genre: the religious emblem. Most probably converted to Protestantism under the influence of Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre (to whose court she was attached after her marriage to Guyon de Gout, c. 1562), de Montenay composed a series of one hundred militant Christian octets in the mid-i56os and closely supervised their illustration by a gifted Lyonnais etcher, Pierre Woeiriot, who was also of the reformed persuasion.

Virginity in The Changeling

V I R G I N I T Y I N T H E C H A N G E L I N G DOUGLAS DUNCAN McMaster University Asa compact structure of related plots, a network of interlocking images and ironies, The Changeling1 has benefited from critical studies of the objective, analytic type. Necessarily, however, such studies eschew the old and indeterminable questions of interpretation which continue to fascinate new readers. What, for example, is the ratio in DeFlores of complex indi­ vidual and embodiment of evil? Is Beatrice only a wicked young woman whose pretences to the contrary are ironically flayed, or is she also in any sense tragic? And what is the real, as distinct from the symbolic, relationship between these two characters toward the end of the play? Such questions focus on that area of Middleton’s art where his sleight of hand latterly became deft and hard to detect: the interweaving of his often conflicting interests in natural portraiture and schematic morality.2 This essay reaches some views on those matters through examining the treatment in the main plot of the theme of virginity. If one theme recurs more than others in Middleton’s work it is the ex­ ploitation of woman’s sexuality, and especially virginity, for the commercial and social advantage of herself or her family. The almost total absence of this theme from The Changeling is made the more remarkable by its promi­ nence in Middleton’s source.3 Reynolds had stressed how both Beatrice’s suitors, Piracquo and Alsemero, were superior to her family in rank and wealth; her father, Vermandero, gives encouragement to the former “as knowing it greatly for her preferment, & aduancement” and “because he perfectly knew that Piracquo’s meanes farre exceed that of Alsemero.” Middleton’s Vermandero shows none of these normal concerns. He controls his daughter’s choice, but chooses Piracquo as a “complete” gentleman to be preferred to “ the proudest he” in Spain (i.i.212-17); he welcomes Alsemero first out of love for his father — a detail not in Reynolds — and second because of his “noble” reputation in Valencia (m.iv. 1). Beatrice in the play is far from being Reynolds’s “meane . . . gentlewoman” attracted to Alsemero by “ the sumptuousnesse of his apparell.” Instead, at some cost to credibility, she is shown as very rich, with unquestioned access to her riches. English Studies in Canada, ix, i , March 1983 If the three thousand gold florins which she offers to DeFlores as bloodmoney is meant to sound like a large sum, the effect is to stress that, even when doubled (m.iv.73), ^ still falls far short of her entire wealth in gold and jewels which she is willing to stake against rape (157). So far from trading her virginity for worldly rewards, Beatrice offers vast wealth in order to protect it. Her lovers care about it too. Alsemero’s concern, emphasized by his laboratory of testing equipment, is the reason for the drastic measures which Beatrice takes to conceal what she loses. Even DeFlores, obsessed with his “pleasure,” insists at a moment of very high tension that half of his pleasure will depend on her virginity being “perfect” (m.iv.i 16-19). It appears that Middleton, in making virginity central to his play, resisted opportunities afforded by his source of treating it in his favourite way as a marketed commodity. He treats it instead as a religious ideal. In related ways Alsemero and Beatrice venerate that ideal as inseparable from their concept of virtue and holy marriage, while for DeFlores too, on a different level, virginity is a religious emblem in the sense that his pursuit of Beatrice’s body is seen as worship of a kind, a carnal travesty of chivalric devotion. Most plays of the period use the cheapening of virginity to stigmatize moral decadence. In The Changeling the blind over-valuing of it is both an object of ironic scrutiny and a factor contributing to tragedy. Early remarks about Alsemero’s indifference to women (i.i.36-39, 58-63) indicate, if not necessarily his virginity, at least a degree of sexual purity sufficient to authorize his concern for his...

Andrew Willet, England's First Religious Emblem Writer

Andrew Willet, England's First Religious Emblem Writer