Roman Church Research Articles

ІКОНИ БОГОРОДИЦІ У ПРОСТОРІ КУЛЬТУРНОЇ СПАДЩИНИ РИМУ

The images of the Mother of God in Italy represent a significant part of the cultural heritage of European and world sacred art and icon painting of various chronological periods and stylistic features. A special place in this dimension belongs to the icons of the Mother of God in Rome. Ever since the first centuries, images of the Virgin have been represented in the paintings of the Roman catacombs. The iconographic heritage of Rome represents different periods and a unique interweaving of styles. Over the centuries, ancient icons of the Mother of God have been kept in Rome, made both in the technique of encaustic, tempera, and later in oil painting. Many images of the Mother of God in Rome represent the original samples of the Byzantine style of icon painting of various origins and the works of masters of the Italian artistic environment at the intersection of Western and Eastern artistic styles. A significant number of these icons are crowned and have the status of miraculous. Some of the most ancient and famous icons of the Mother of God in Rome are «Salus Populi Romani», «Madonna del Conforto», «Madonna Avvocata», «Madonna della Clemenza», «Madre del Perpetuo Soccorso», «Santa Maria del Popolo», «Madonna della Catena», «La Madonna dei Martiri» and others. Common iconographic types are Hodegetria, Agiosoritissa, Kyriotissa, Galaktotrofusa, etc. Often, these icons have several Italian-language names, which must be considered when choosing methodological tools for historiographical analysis. The article provides a general overview of the heritage of the icons of the Mother of God in Rome based on the most famous of them. English-language and Italian-language historiography was analyzed to model further relevant research directions in developing this topic by modern specialists in an interdisciplinary context. It is emphasized that in the churches of Rome, there are still many less-known and less-researched icons of the Mother of God, particularly in terms of stylistic features and painting techniques. Their detailed study and analysis of sources can effectively fill this niche in historiography and become an interesting topic for modern interdisciplinary research in the field of history, icon painting, art, restoration, and cultural heritage, as well as the basis of original concepts for exhibitions, photo catalogs, new excursion routes, etc.

Unveiling the Other: Art, Images, and Cultures

This paper is dedicated to Aby Warburg’s 1920-essay on the relationship between the Italian Renaissance and the German Renaissance in the period of the Reformation. His essay focuses on the use of propagandistic imagery at the time of Luther, in order to elucidate a historical-political and religious problem that Warburg explored against the background of the contemporary cultural debate between Germany and Italy in the years from 1915 to 1920. This was a period traumatically experienced by Warburg, and it led him to reflect, from a different perspective, on his own research focused on the “Survival of Antiquity” (Das Nachleben der Antike), in the rapport between Italian art and the art of northern Europe. It had a notable impact on his studies on the migration from East to West of the astrological tradition, presented between magic and mathematics, that permeated the religious debate of Luther’s time in and beyond Germany, in the cultural and religious clash with the Church of Rome.

The Moscow Patriarchate in the Context of the Foreign Policy of the Soviet State: Problems of Inter-Church Interaction with the Romanian Church in 1945-1948

The Moscow Patriarchate in the Context of the Foreign Policy of the Soviet State: Problems of Inter-Church Interaction with the Romanian Church in 1945-1948

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

The Centuries-Old Position of the Roman Church on the Issue of Human Rights and the Attempt to Defend This Position by Cardinal Ruffini at the Second Vatican Council

The Centuries-Old Position of the Roman Church on the Issue of Human Rights and the Attempt to Defend This Position by Cardinal Ruffini at the Second Vatican Council

Relația dintre Episcopia Greco –Catolică de Cluj -Gherla și Episcopia Ortodoxă de Cluj ilustrată în „Tribuna Ardealului” (septembrie 1940 – ianuarie 1945)

The Vienna Diktat caused important territorial changes, affecting the two Romanian Churches, namely the Greek Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. Taking into account both political changes and the new borders, both the Greek-Catholic Diocese of Cluj-Gherla and the Orthodox Diocese of Cluj were on the territory of Hungary, and this new situation determined a stronger solidarity between the two Romanian bishops of Cluj. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present the way in which the relationship between the two bishops was illustrated in the newspaper Tribuna Ardealului. First of all, the interaction between the two bishops will be highlighted, for example the official events in which they both participated, and also their collaboration regarding the help of the Romanian cultural activity in the chronological interval considered within this research. Secondly, the relationship between the communities of believers of the two Romanian denominations will be captured, with special emphasis on rural communities. Therefore, in addition to reconstructing the historical events considered, the research will also follow the critical analysis of newspaper articles reporting these events, to see what aspects were emphasized, and what message was intended to be transmitted. Keywords: Greek-Catholic Church, bishop, newspaper, solidarity

La beatificazione dei vescovi romeni uniti, alla luce della teologia del martirio

The Beatification of the United Romanian Bishops, in the Light of the Theology of Martyrdom. The Church of Christ fulfills three functions in the history of salvation: martyria, leiturgia and diakonia. Confession of Faith, martyria, it is a fundamental mission entrusted to the Church, which is exercised by preaching the Gospel (Matt. 28:19), the Logos transmitted and explained, the life in the faith and defending it from internal enemies (schisms, polemics, etc.) or external ones (heresies and persecutions). Since the times of apostolic and ancient Christianity martyria was achieved through a testimony of faith strengthened by resistance to persecution and the radicality of the sacrifice of life, starting with St. Stephen, passing through the long line of martyrs of all times, in 1623 by the martyrdom of St. Archbishop Joshaphat for the unity of the Church, the Churches United confessing from now on, with the price of shed blood, the faith and mission entrusted by Jesus “that all may be one” (Jn 17:20). During the persecutions of the twentieth century, the United Romanian Church wrote a page in the “theology of martyrdom”, building the Church, fulfilling its crown of martyrdom, the beatification of martyrs to restore the unity of the Church opening a new stage in the history and mission of contemporary Christianity. Keywords: beatification, Church, Catholicism, Greek Catholicism, martyrdom, theology, unity.

Influential Factors between the Primacy of Roman Church and the Origin of Sunday

The debate between the mysterious rise of Sunday observance and the church dominance in the Roman empire throughout the Ante-Nicene period appeared as an emerging discourse in regard to the Sabbath adherence. The historical background has been capable of analyzing the supposed relation between the two when the Christian beliefs gradually developed. The connection would seem to bring relevant ramifications to today’s theological understanding as far as observing the Sabbath or Sunday is concerned. The significant factors between the beginning of Sunday and the supremacy of the Roman church appeared to be intertwined and fused in the early church era. While many other events have circulated the social and religious cultures in Rome, the factors below indicate and strengthen the relationship between both church primacy and Sunday origin in history through a documentary research method. The time of the early church in this discussion is delimited around the year 100 up to 313 AD. Though the focus not only touches on one particular reason as to why Sunday replaced Sabbath, the research questions comprise of how the pre-eminence of papal supremacy took place and why the Sunday worship has seemed to alter the Sabbath observance since then.

Medieval Canon Lawyers and European Legal Tradition. A Brief Overview

The Roman Church was a leading public institution of the Middle Ages and its law, canon law, belonged to most powerful factors of European legal history. Today’s lawyers have hardly any awareness of the canonist origins of several current legal institutions. Together with Roman law, canon law constituted the system of “both laws” (utrumque ius) which were the only laws acknowledged as “learned” and, consequently, taught at medieval universities. The dualism of secular (imperium) and spiritual power (sacerdotium), symbolized by so-called two swords doctrine, conferred to the Western legal tradition its balance and stability. We analyze the most important institutional achievements of the medieval canon lawyers: acquisitive prescription, the Roman-canonical procedure, the theory of just war, marriage and family law, freedom of contract, the inheritance under will, juristic personality, some institutions of constitutional law, in particular those based on the concept of representation, and finally commercial law. Last not least, the applicability of canon law defined the territorial extension of medieval and early modern Christian civilization which exceeded by far the borders of the Holy Roman Empire, where Roman law was effective as the law of the ruler. Hence, the first scholar to associate Roman law with (continental) Europe as a relatively homogeneous legal area, Paul Koschaker, committed in his monograph Europa und das römische Recht, published in 1947, the error of taking a part for the whole. In fact, Western legal tradition was based, in its entirety, not on Roman, but rather on canon law; embracing the common law of England, it represented – to cite Harold Joseph Berman – the first great “transnational legal culture”. At the end, some structural features of canon law are discussed, such as the frequent use of soft-law instruments and the respect for tradition, clearly visible in the approach to the problem of codification.

Holiness and Unity

Abstract Drawing on the International Methodist – Catholic report on The Call to Holiness, this article identifies holiness as both a divine attribute and as a Christian imperative, inextricably linked with the unity of Christians and of humanity. For humanity to be in the image and likeness of this holy God implies a participation in God’s holiness. Because human life is inescapably social, it implies that this holiness must be expressed in social interaction. For the life of the Christian Church to reflect the holiness of God requires a commitment to unity and actions that echo that commitment. This paper traces the biblical basis of the Judaeo-Christian belief in the holiness of God. It goes on to examine the obstacles and opportunities for Christian unity, particularly between the churches of the Wesleyan tradition and the Church of Rome.

A Reality Based on Consciousness

"This paper addresses the central idea of nonlocal consciousness: that all life is interconnected and interdependent, that we are part of a matrix of life, but even more fundamentally than spacetime itself arises from consciousness, not consciousness from spacetime. It is not a new idea. The excavation of burials dating to the Neolithic (≈ 10,200-2,000 BCE) has revealed that early humans had a sense of spirituality and some concept about the nature of human consciousness. It discusses the bargain made between the Roman Church, and the emerging discipline of science in the 16th century, one taking consciousness (packaged as “spirit”), the other spacetime, and how this led to physicalism taking root as a world view and becoming the prevailing materialist paradigm. It describes the emergence of a new paradigm that incorporates consciousness and lays out the four relevant descriptors helping to define what this new paradigm will look like. They are: • Only certain aspects of the mind are the result of physiologic processes. • Consciousness is causal, and physical reality is its manifestation. • All consciousnesses, regardless of their physical manifestations, are part of a network of life which they both inform and influence and are informed and influenced by; there is a passage back and forth between the individual and the collective. • Some aspects of consciousness are not limited by the time/space continuum and do not originate entirely within an organism’s neuroanatomy. "

Sustainability in Early Modern China through the Evolution of the Jesuit Accommodation Method

This article clarifies the often overlooked facts attributed to European missionaries in Asia, especially Jesuits, who acted as catalysts of a kind of nuanced acculturation named Accommodatio (adaptation). To a great extent, they became harbingers of culture and science more than faith itself to the dismay of many, including the Roman Church. Such cultural and scientific transference was actually two-pronged, for simultaneously they presented in Europe unique findings related to language, e.g., the Chinese characters (considered to be the sole natural language), geography, cosmology and even governance. Here we try to prove that such procedure contributed positively to the modern scientific notions of sustainability and to provide the kind of accoutrements that model the modern world as we know it. However, in the process, many Jesuits clearly became sinified and eventually acculturated.

Cecilia and Me

Cecilia and Me Richard Dale Sjoerdsma (bio) Editor's Commentary Hail, bright Cecilia! Born in Rome sometime during the second century, St. Cecilia was a young noblewoman and devout Christian whose early vow of chastity was threatened by a parentally arranged marriage to Valerian. "On her wedding night, rather than consummating the marriage, [Valerian] also became a Christian and joined her in a commitment to a celibate union."1 Since the practice of Christianity was strictly prohibited by the Roman emperor, Cecilia and Valerian, along with his brother Tiburtius, also a recent convert, suffered a gruesome martyrdom around 230 C.E. It was said that Cecilia miraculously survived a botched beheading three days before finally succumbing. Interestingly, details of Cecilia's life and death also are narrated and elaborated upon in "The Second Nun's Prologue" and "The Second Nun's Tale" from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.2 The Church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, founded by Pope Urban in the third century, is believed to be where Cecilia lived and died, and where her remains were buried. As one of the most venerated martyrs of the early Christian church, St. Cecilia's feast day was celebrated in the Roman church already in the fourth century, falling on November 22 on the liturgical calendar. In the Sacramentarium Leoniam, a fifth century collection of masses, no fewer than five different masses are found in her honor.3 Lacking empirical historical evidence, Cecilia's identification as patroness of music and musicians is tenuous at best. As narratives recounting her marriage ceremony and brief life expanded, musical associations gained prominence, especially in the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, leading to Cecilian festivals and a late nineteenth century movement in Germany (Caecelianismus) for the reform of Catholic church music.4 Cecilia is richly represented in paintings as early as the sixth century in Ravenna and Croatia,5 but also in later Medieval and Renaissance art (e.g., Rubens, Raphael, Dolci, Reni, Cortina, Cavallino, Sarcceni), typically with or even sometimes playing the organ. One explanation for the close association of St. Cecilia with music may be found in the Acts of St. Cecilia, a document dating from about 500 C.E. In its narrating of the wedding, the Acts contains much of the text of the antiphon cited below, which may account for her subsequent role as patroness of music.6 That Cecilia's identification with music has been secure for centuries and remains so today is documented in the music canon itself. Along with other examples, the Liber Usualis shows an early antiphon for Second Vespers of her feast day that at least partially suggests Cecilia's identification with music, specifically alluding to mystical happenings on the occasion of her wedding to Valerian (Example 1).7 [End Page 155] One of the more familiar musical tributes is Henry Purcell's Ode to St. Cecilia (1692), a work with which I became acquainted while singing in a Collegium Musicum ensemble during my doctoral studies at The Ohio State University. With a libretto by the little known Nicholas Brady, the cantata for chorus, solo voices, and orchestra opens with a florid greeting in recitative for bass solo (Example 2). Later in the work, as homage to the instrument with which Cecilia is most clearly associated, appears the bass aria, "Wondrous Machine," with a characteristic Purcellian ground bass (Example 3). A number of other Cecilian compositions of British origin—John Blow, Daniel Purcell, William Boyce, among others—lead to Handel. His oratorio Alexander's Feast and Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, the latter a setting of John Dryden's poem and the former an adaptation of it by Newburgh Hamilton, remain staple repertoire items today. Cecilian masses by A. Scarlatti, Haydn, Gounod, and others, are not so much direct tributes as relatively standard mass forms perhaps to be performed on her feast day. More recent examples include: "A Hymn for St. Cecilia," by Herbert Howells to poetry by Ursula Vaughan Williams (wife of the famous composer); Gerald Finzi's For St. Cecilia, Op. 30, a "ceremonial ode" for tenor solo, chorus, and orchestra, to words by Edmund Blunden; a song, "Ode on the Rejection...

L’omofonia ecumenica patriarcale

SOMMARIO: 1. Introduzione - 2. L’odierno dibattito sulle prerogative patriarcali costantinopolitane e il gathering di Amman - 3. La ratio attributiva delle prerogative ecclesiastiche romane al vescovo di Costantinopoli-ΝέαςῬώμης - 4. Le prerogative ecclesiastiche costantinopolitane - 5. Il conferimento imperiale del titolo patriarcale al vescovo di Roma e di patriarca ecumenico al vescovo di Costantinopoli-Νέας Ῥώμης - 6. L’ecumenicità dell’omofonia patriarcale - 7. Osservazioni finali.
 Patriarchal ecumenical homophony
 ABSTRACT: The establishment in 2019 of a new Ukrainian autocephaly raises the question of the legal basis of exclusive Constantinopolitan canonical prerogatives. As is known, after the Edict of Thessalonica of 380, can. cost. 3 of 381 attributes the Roman prerogatives to the bishop of Constantinople-Νεα Ρωμη.The ethnarchical religious role, assumed by the Roman bishop, guardian of the Romanitas, (conceived as the apostolic heritage of the Roman church), determines the Eastern emperors to confer the patriarchal title (previously reserved for the Jewish etnarch of Palestine), to Roman pope and ecumenical patriarch, to the bishop of Constantinople, which became the only seat of the imperium.The Justinian articulation of the ecclesiastical order comes to highlight in the homophony of patriarchs the attestation of the unity, doctrinal and disciplinary, in the Church of the ecumenical empire. Therefore, today's panorthodox reception of Ukrainian autocephaly cannot be considered an ecclesial burden due to the universal canonical authority of the patriarchate of Constantinople. Consequently, the primates cannot accept it in the name of the respective autocephalous Church, in contrast with canon 34. In respect of the nomocanonical tradition, today's Ukrainian controversy must therefore be submitted to the assembly of patriarchs in order to reach a canonical unanimous (homophone) solution to the controversy.

Seeing the churches like the state: taxes and wealth redistribution in late antique Italy

Two key economic questions tend to be asked about the transformation of the Roman world. First, how did Roman fiscal structures continue, disintegrate and transform? Second, how did emerging churches play a role in the redistribution of wealth through new administrative structures to create a new social system, what Ian Wood has called a ‘temple society’? These two processes – one focussing on the continuity or discontinuity of the Roman economic structures and the other on churches within that system – are usually examined separately or assumed to follow, what we call here, a ‘Gallic model’. In this article, we first demonstrate that Wood’s ‘temple society’ is far more complex in its emergence in Italy than in Gaul. Second, we argue that the churches of Italy remained embedded within late Roman fiscal structures, even as they transformed during late antiquity. Fiscal arrangements, examined through the churches of Rome and Ravenna, established churches as ever more central economic actors to the state fiscal system by 600 and shaped their long‐term wealth redistribution process.

Through the eyes of a deacon: lesser clergy, major donors, and institutional property in fifth‐century Rome

This is a study of the cults of two holy deacons at Rome: St Stephen and St Laurence. It is argued that the narratives associated with these saints were a medium for the resolution of two key, overlapping areas of tension: status anxiety within the clerical hierarchy, and relations between clergy and wealthy lay patrons. Controlling the ambitions of lesser clergy on the one hand, and on the other commanding the attention of major donors, absorbed a great deal of the energies of Roman priests and their bishop in this period. These issues converged on the figure of the deacon, understood in its early Christian sense as the helper/patron of the bishop. Defining the role of ‘deacons’ through the medium of saint cult was a necessary condition of the institutional development of the Roman church, and of church property.

“Pro Honore et Libertate Ecclesiae Invicta Fortitude Sustinuit”—The Oratory of St Thomas Becket in the Cathedral of Anagni

On the 9th of October, 1170 Pope Alexander III resided in Anagni, which had been the ancient residence of the court of the Popes for at least two centuries. He wrote to two influential local archbishops for help in pacifying King Henry II and Archbishop Thomas Becket, who had been in dispute for six years. Sensing Becket’s looming tragic fate, Alexander III began slowly to encircle the archbishop with rhetoric of the new martyr of Libertas Ecclesiae. When he had to flee from Rome besieged by factions led by Frederick I, the pope found refuge in Segni, where he canonised Thomas Becket on 21 February 1173. However, it was in faithful Anagni that he settled on and off from March 1173 through the following years (November 1176; December 1177–March 1178; September 1179). It was here that he decided to elaborate a powerful speech in images. In an oratory in the crypt of the grandiose cathedral, Alexander III had the last painful moments of the Archbishop’s death painted in a program imitating that of St. Peter’s in the Vatican. Becket thus became the new imitator of Christ, the new Peter, the new martyr on the altar of the Church of Rome.

A Note on Religion.

At the beginning of our era, after a battle on the Ionian Sea, Antony and Cleopatra took their own lives in Egypt, and Augustus was made an imperator by his senators. Roman emperors had sexual access to those senators' daughters and wives, and to thousands of slaves. But they ran governments with help from their cubicularii, castrated civil servants. And they enforced an Imperial Cult: subjects made sacrifices to the emperor's genius, or procreative spirit; or they got disemboweled by wild animals, or decapitated. Then Constantine moved off from the Tiber to the Bosporus, and Europe was ruled over by a few. Lords covered the countryside with bastards, but passed on estates on to their oldest sons. Daughters and younger sons were put away in the Church, where some became parents, but most were reproductively suppressed: they were ἄνανδρος or anandros, or without a husband, and ἄγαμος or agamos, or without a wife. Heretics who objected got burned at the stake. Then the Crusaders expanded Europe to the East, and Columbus went off to the West, and politics, sex and religion became more democratic. Power was more widely distributed; more men and women had families if they wanted them, and monasteries emptied out. The Reformation followed the Roman Church, which had followed the Imperial Cult.

Representations of the Life-giving Spring feast in Romanian iconography

This article explores the development of the theme of the Life-giving Spring in Byzantine iconography. The path towards its establishment was initiated at the moment when a representation rule, an original convention was set. Thereafter, because of its diffusion in time and space, the theme became enriched by particular mentalities and sensibilities of the epochs and the communities that adopted it as a form of devotion for the Virgin Theotokos. As a result, the representations we have known so far are extremely varied.Contribution: The final purpose of this approach, as well as its contribution, is to highlight the diverse unity of the iconographic tradition and illustrate both the evolution of the theme in the painting of Romanian church artists and its gradual refinement through the incorporation of diverse nuances and new perspectives.

The Lateran Church in Rome and the Ark of the Covenant: Housing the Holy Relics of Jerusalem. With an Edition and Translation of the Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae (BAV Reg. Lat. 712), by Eivor Andersen Oftestad

The Lateran Church in Rome and the Ark of the Covenant: Housing the Holy Relics of Jerusalem. With an Edition and Translation of the Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae (BAV Reg. Lat. 712), by Eivor Andersen Oftestad