Sacred Icon Research Articles

The Throat-Bell Container (huryŏngt’ong) Recovered from the Wooden Seated Vairocana Buddha of Early Chosŏn in Hainsa

In the Vairocana Hall of Haeinsa, there are two Vairocana statues made in the 9th century, during the Unified Silla period. In 1490, the statues were filled with sacred objects whose specific contents were almost identical to each other. Following the practice passed down from the Koryŏ period, five treasure bottles were put inside an offering container termed “throat-bell container” which was then topped with a sarira reliquary and a bead. It was covered with a round mirror and true-mind syllables(chinsim chongja 眞心種子) were written on the lid. There are also innovations made in the Chosŏn period: namely, five-wheel syllables(oryun chongja 五輪種字) written on the five treasure bottles that take the shape of five mirrors, bottles covered with eight-petal lotus bud, the use of yellow fabric wrappers with the written spells of the four directions(sabangju 四方呪) or five-wheel syllables and the votive inscription written in red ink on blue textile. The earliest example of the offering container with a long breathing hole was found inside the Manjushri statue of Sangwŏnsa. A well-organized system had been established by the time the offering containers at Haeinsa were prepared. As the Great Preceptors Sinmi and Hakcho, renowned Buddhist monk scholars were in charge of enshrining the offering container, it is likely that they exerted a considerable influence on the organization of the sacred objects. The Yongch’ŏnsa edition of Chosang kyŏng (Sutras on a manuscript entitled Sŏngsang sohwa pokchang ŭi (Manual on the pokchang of sculpted and painted sacred icons) preserved at Haeinsa are two important texts that dictate how to prepare the sacred objects for offerings. Inclusion of five flowers, five flags, and five parasols were the influence of Myogilsang taekyowang kyŏng (Sutra on the king of the great teaching which is sublime and auspicious) and likely began around the time the Yongch’ŏnsa edition of Chosang kyŏng was published in the sixteenth century. In conclusion, the throat-bell container from the Vairocana Buddha statues of Haeinsa can be considered as a prototype for offering containers made during the Chŏson.

The Byzantine Icon of the Virgin in the Church of the Blachernae: Michael Psellos on the Problem of Miraculous Timing

This article looks closely at the report of a miracle that occurred in eleventh-century Constantinople in which the veil covering an icon of the Theotokos (Virgin) at the Blachernae church lifted itself miraculously. The report, scripted by the Byzantine polymath Michael Psellos, focuses in intriguing ways on the actions and nonactions of the veil when the icon presided over a judicial trial. The article contends that Psellos insists on the theme of timing (with regard to the lifting and otherwise of the veil) and the Blachernae icon's role in determining a critical, decisive moment in the arbitration of human affairs. This emphasis, in turn, bespeaks a broader concern over the timing of sacred icons during significant moments in Byzantine history as understood by contemporary chroniclers: namely, their failure to act in appropriate ways at critical moments when the empire itself was at stake.

(E)scatalogical Visions in Marlene van Niekerk’s Triomf

It is over 20 years since Marlene van Niekerk published Triomf ([1994] 1999, Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball), a satire of the poor white Benade family, who have been bedazzled by apartheid ideology. This iconoclastic satire was published originally in Afrikaans in 1994, the year of the first democratic elections in South Africa. This article offers a close reading of “Peace on Earth”, a chapter that desublimates significant sacred icons in Afrikaner cultural mythology and offers a critique of the intricate workings of ideology. Notably, this critique relies upon the abjection of the male Afrikaner’s body, in particular that of Treppie Benade. Treppie, the satirist, is found sitting upon the “throne” (toilet) as he purges himself of the lies and illusions of apartheid ideology through a lengthy scatology. This article begins by situating the novel in terms of its commentary on the apartheid government’s attempt to rehabilitate the abject of the Afrikaner volk: poor white “trash”. It highlights excrement as a master trope of the satirist before analysing the allusions to Judeo-Christian iconography and (e)scatology (invoked in the Great Trek narrative) in terms of their resonances with Louis Althusser’s and Slavoj Žižek’s concepts of ideology. Further, I explore Treppie’s faecal tapestry in terms of an immanent sublime, drawing on Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Dionysian sublime. In conclusion, I consider Treppie’s final words and orientation at the end of the novel, and the implications of his Dionysian approach to an uncertain future.

Unraveling the polychromy and antiquity of the Pachacamac Idol, Pacific coast, Peru.

Pachacamac is the name of the 15th-16th century Inca sanctuary on the Peruvian coast as well as the name of one of the principal oracles of Inca divinities. This effigy would have been destroyed by Pizarro in 1533 during his visit to the great monumental complex, and as such the originality and antiquity of the wooden statue—the so-called Pachacamac Idol—have been the subject of much controversy and debate. We present here previously unpublished dates that confirm its manufacture during the Middle Horizon (AD 500–1000), as well as evidence of its original polychromy. Traces of colors were observed on its different sections with portable microscopy and analyses with two different X-Ray Fluorescence spectrometry techniques, leading to identification of yellow, white, and red mineral pigments, including the presence of cinnabar. Dated between the 8th and 9th centuries, the statue would have been worshipped for almost 700 years, from the time of its creation to the time of the Spanish conquest, when Pachacamac was a major place of pilgrimage. These data not only offer a new perspective on Pachacamac’s emblematic sacred icon, but also on the colorful practices of the Pre-Hispanic Andes.

Православное пение во внехрамовой деятельности Церкви: к вопросу о свободе и ответственности в православном музыкальном искусстве

Article is devoted to problems of spiritual education of youth in extra temple activity of the Church connected with an educational mission of orthodox musical art. At a boundary of the 20–21st centuries we observe significant turn of the Russian culture to orthodox traditions. The course of state policy directed to effective cooperation with Russian Orthodox Church provided development of orthodox musical art in a number of the directions, including, in activity of Sunday schools, military patriotic clubs, festivals of orthodox art for children and young people and so forth. The author of the article, highlighting the advantages of various functions of orthodox musical creativity, emphasizes the importance of the study of ancient Russian songwriting: canonical and folk spiritual. This, for the most part, unused and unclaimed layer of Russian musical culture bears the main essential and semantic function of orthodox musical art: it is similar to sacred icons, demonstrates supermundane reality of the Kingdom. Without belittling the importance of song creativity of wide spiritual content, the author points to the advantages of teachers' orientation to the canonical direction, which in a musical form expresses the dogmas of the Church, revives the unique intonation fund of Russian musical and linguistic culture, retains a significant part of the genetic cultural memory.

Coupling non invasive and fast sampling of proteins from work of art surfaces to surface plasmon resonance biosensing: Differential and simultaneous detection of egg components for cultural heritage diagnosis and conservation

Despite the wide application of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to a broad area of interests, from environment to food analysis, from drug discovery to diagnostics, its exploitation in cultural heritage conservation is still unexplored. Water-based highly viscous polymeric dispersions (HVPD) composed by partially hydrolyzed polyvinyl acetate (PVA), borax, and water, were recently developed and successfully applied for the selective removal of surface degradation patinas (i.e. protein materials, natural resins etc.) from paintings of historical and artistic interest. This approach is here coupled for the first time to a SPR biosensor to simultaneously recognize albumen, yolk, or their mixtures in HVPD extracts. Ovalbumin and immunoglobulin Y are selected as analytes for egg white and yolk recognition, respectively. The biosensor was first characterized on standard analytes within the range 0–400mgL−1 and then on fresh and dried egg albumen and yolk down to 2·10^4 and 1·10^5 dilution factors, respectively. Once optimized, the biosensor was combined to the HVPD application on simulated and real art samples for the evaluation of hen egg presence in the extract, i.e. albumen, yolk, or their co-presence in the matrix. For a contemporary ‘sacred icon’, realized by the traditional egg tempera procedure described by Cennino Cennini, the biosensor successfully distinguished different uses of egg components for the realization of painted and gilded areas, i.e. yolk and albumen, respectively. Finally, a XVIII century italian painting whose the realization technique is unknown, was tested confirming its egg tempera-based realization technique.

Chrystologiczna argumentacja w Mowach obronnych przeciw tym, którzy odrzucają święte obrazy Jana Damasceńskiego

In the face of the escalating Iconoclast heresy in the 8th century there appeared the necessity of establishing whether the veneration of icons is justifiable from the Christian viewpoint. The debate primarily concerned the Christological question of venerating Jesus Christ’s icons. St. John of Damascus (675–749) is considered to be one of the most outstanding defenders of sacred icons. We owe to him the first Catholic theology of the icon. His work, „The Defence speeches against those who reject sacred icons” constitutes the answer given to the iconoclasts. The most important argument justifying the veneration of icons is the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God being the image of the invisible God. The incarnation which liberates one from idolatry lies at the root of a positive vision of matter. John of Damascus refers to the ancient Christian tradition of icon veneration recognizing the word and the image as its essential elements. His teaching would play a key role during the Council of Nicaea in 787.

Pedagogy of the Written Image

"Text, it is Jean-Luc Godard’s “ennemi royal, principal." Text, it is on the side of death, “les images c’est la vie et les textes, c’est la mort”. Twenty years later and the war is not over: “Une image est paisible. Une image de la Vierge avec son petit enfant sur son âne n'amène pas la guerre, c'est son interprétation par un texte qui amènera la guerre et qui fera que les soldats de Luther iront déchirer les toiles de Raphaël.” Godard’s story is not just of the history of cinema, it is one in which text has won out to the extent that TV and the computer too make of the image something subservient to text. “Since Gutenberg” the text has triumphed in this way. “There was a long struggle, marriage or liaison between painting and text. Then the text carried the day. Film is the last art in the pictorial tradition... Take away the text and you’ll see what’s left. In TV nothing is left.” It is obvious from these lines of demarcation, lines which divide the art of the image from what would declare war on its most sacred icons and defeat its technologies, a conflict in which there is just the one aggressor, a division which makes of the relation between image and text nothing less than a matter of life and death, that for Godard text is indeed the enemy..."

An Interview with Artist Breda Catherine Ennis

BREDA CATHERINE ENNIS was born in Dublin. She now lives in Italy where she studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, the Calcografia Nazionale, and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. For twenty-one years she has worked at the American University of Rome (where she is associate professor of fine arts and has her studio). She is considered Ireland's leading artist in Italy and has given over forty-five exhibitions in different countries, and has works in several museums and private collections. She regularly collaborates with Vatican Radio on the analysis of paintings and church interiors in Rome, and has written for several journals including The Journal of Sacred Architecture. She has also studied the cultural patrimony of the Church at the Pontifical Gregorian University. (1) How important is the Catholic faith for you and your work? I cannot conceive of my life without the Catholic faith. It is as essential to me as life itself. I always feel the guiding hand of the Father in my life and in my art work. It would be inconceivable for me to paint without this guiding hand. Christ is the depth and luminosity of a color. The nuances of his intervention are blended into the tonality of my painting palette. He is the energy in a strong brushstroke and his gentle breath hovers over the light strokes and gestures that touch the canvas. His love is the driving force behind my desire to create art. Faith is behind my determination to create something worthy of him. I know that I must always strive to create something even more worthy. Would you say your religious faith impacts your work as an artist more unconsciously than consciously? It is the fundamental baseline of my work. It impacts both unconsciously and consciously. I have always understood the importance of doing honest and clean work. By this I mean that the making of art is a vocation and a sacred profession. One must not permit dirt or evil to enter into the painting space. When I was commissioned to design and paint an altar and a lectern by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs--both of which are now in the newly refurbished Embassy of Ireland to the Holy See in Rome--I was incredibly moved and fearful at the same time. I remember putting my whole heart and soul into that project, to the point that I was completely exhausted, but happy, when it was finished. During the whole period of designing and making the altar I prepared myself spiritually like an artist preparing to do a sacred icon. I began to realize just what this altar represented: a place to celebrate the Eucharist, the most sacred of places. Could you talk about the importance of the sacred in relation to art and architecture? I think the beauty of the sacred is the only way for people to realize themselves through Christ. There are so many works of art and even new churches that seem to have lost sight both of the sacred and the concept of beauty. There is the tendency to ignore the context in which a work of art will be placed or how a church will fit into a particular environment. Artists and architects just go in and do their own thing, completely ignoring what went before them. What I consider more serious is the lack of knowledge relating to how a sacred object or building should be created. There is a tendency to distribute various objects all over the place without respecting the space and the liturgy, and this leads to a fragmentation in the final space created for worship. People enter churches and immediately get confused. There is less focus on the altar. Colors and constructions are so contrasting that the worshipper is disoriented. It is difficult to focus your mind on the light of the saving God when a sacred space is so badly designed and the color is so badly put together that the end result is cheap. The worshipper comes into church to be helped, to pray, to be uplifted, to ask for hope. What happens most times is that they leave the church depressed by the gaudy color and the lack of harmony in the space. …

Garuḍa, Vajrapāṇi and religious change in Jayavarman VII's Angkor

Ancient Cambodia turned definitively to state Buddhism under King Jayavarman VII at the end of the twelfth century, after four centuries of state Śaivism. This paper explores the motivation behind this momentous change and tries to establish the means by which it was achieved. It uncovers signs of a very large, politically motivated campaign of tantric Buddhist initiations that required a significant overhaul of the king's temples and the creation of a new series of sacred icons.

Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino Catholics in San Antonio, from Colonial Origins to the Present

Reviewed by: Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino Catholics in San Antonio, from Colonial Origins to the Present Virgilio Elizondo (bio) Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino Catholics in San Antonio, from Colonial Origins to the Present. By Timothy Matovina. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005. 256 pp. $60.00 (hdbk.), $22.96 (pb.) The basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City is the most visited pilgrimage site in the Western Hemisphere. After Jesus of Nazareth, her image is the most reproduced sacred icon in the Americas. Increasingly today the exuberant veneration of Guadalupe is spreading beyond Mexico to the United States and other places throughout the American continent. Shrines dedicated to her are as far north as Johnstown, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. A growing number of Latino Protestant congregations celebrate the December 12 Guadalupe feast; Protestant pastors and theologians like Lutheran Maxwell Johnson have deemed Guadalupe a source of "hope and strength to a people wandering in despair." Most importantly, she continues to appear in the daily lives of her faithful in Mexico and beyond: on home altars, t-shirts, tattoos, murals, parish churches, medals, refrigerator magnets, wall hangings, and in countless conversations and daily prayers. Guadalupe and Her Faithful is the first book that illuminates the core of the relationship between Guadalupe and her devotees as Guadalupan devotion evolved [End Page 110] from its origins following the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica to become a regional, national, and then an international phenomenon. Focused on the parishioners of San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas, whose congregation has sustained their Guadalupan devotion for nearly three centuries and under five different national governments, this volume is a tour de force of religious history, with a deeply theological soul. One of the great contributions of this book is that it by-passes the debates on the historicity and focuses on the history of the devotion as it has spread through generations. There is no other book in any language which traces the development of Guadalupan devotion in this manner. Throughout the book Matovina grounds his analysis in the social forces and historical contexts which shaped congregants' lives and religious experience, while also offering magnificent insights on the Guadalupe-devotee bond which linked heaven and earth in ways that transformed parishioners' faith and everyday struggles. He shows, for example, the historical circumstances which led to Guadalupe's emergence as San Fernando's primary patroness in the century following the 1731 establishment of San Antonio as a rural settlement on the northern edge of New Spain. But in the process he also illuminates the theology of divine providence mediated in Guadalupan devotion, a fluid theology adaptable to devotees' physical environment, economic conditions, longing for security, racial mixing, and aspirations for social advancement, particularly in the settlements of what is now the Southwest like San Antonio, where isolation and the quest for survival bound residents more closely to one another, to God, and to celestial companions like Guadalupe. Furthermore unlike many studies of popular faith expressions which apply pre-determined theoretical constructs to people's everyday prayer, Matovina emphasizes "the insights, convictions, sentiments, and ritual actions of San Fernando Guadalupan devotees," stating explicitly that the goal of the volume "is to offer insofar as is possible a depiction of the subjects under study in which they would have recognized themselves" (21). He does this as only a devotee himself could do, and this is one of the great merits of this work. It is an insightful and truly objective view developed by an insider—a great work of theologian as organic intellectual. Subsequently, Guadalupan devotion at San Fernando was a significant public expression of group pride and identity in the tumultuous decades following the U.S. takeover of the Southwest; in the context of their increasingly subordinate social status the brown-skinned Guadalupe and public processions in her honor were also a visible reminder of ethnic Mexican devotees' ongoing dignity as the daughters and sons of the one they acclaim as God's own mother. As successive waves of Mexican émigrés dramatically increased San Antonio's Mexican-descent population during the early twentieth century, the newcomers refashioned San Fernando's annual Guadalupe feast day...

The Sacred Icon in the Contemporary World

The Sacred Icon in the Contemporary World

Wild Sacred Icon or Woolly Cow? Culture and the Legal Reconstruction of the American Bison

Wild Sacred Icon or Woolly Cow? Culture and the Legal Reconstruction of the American Bison

Multilateralism and its discontents

The contributions by Gerson and Anderson in the previous issue of EJIL suggest that multilateralism's critics are not merely hard-headed political realists but include both ends of the political spectrum and a wide number of scholars emerging within the international legal academy — including critical legal scholars, feminists, constructivists, liberal theorists, public choice theorists and those within law and economics. International lawyers, who have for too long defined themselves by our opposition to unilateralism, need to define the role and limits of multilateralism as well as of unilateralism. Both multilateral and unilateral processes for law-making and law enforcement may harm mankind and undermine the rule of law. Both Gerson and Anderson are, in radically different ways, warning us against multilateralism that fails to develop an organic relationship between the international and the domestic. Most of the contributors in this and the last issue of the EJIL have ably, even convincingly, denounced unilateralism. Repeatedly, we have put unilateral action, especially that undertaken by the United States, in the dock and convicted such action as an offence to the international legal order. Although we did not manage to define 'unilateralism' coherently or consistently, most of us have long defined ourselves as its opponents and we continue to do so. Allan Gerson and Kenneth Anderson did not follow this script. Discussing the United States' stance on financing the UN, Gerson had the temerity to suggest, albeit indirectly, that international legality - in terms of conformity with the UN Charter — was not the final arbiter of legitimacy. Anderson, discussing the Landmines Convention, attacked another sacred icon, the concept of 'international civil society'. Both seemed inclined to put multilateralism in the dock. The adverse, even emotional, reactions to Gerson's and Anderson's papers 1 tell us much about the internationalist project and about international lawyers' blind spots. Why do Gerson's and Anderson's views, reminiscent of those expounded by realists for decades, make us so defensive?

Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities (review)

??? COHPAnATIST JOHN M. ELLIS. LiteratureLost: SocialAgendas andthe Corruption ofthe Humanities. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1997. 262 pp. The subtitle ofJohn Ellis's latest book encapsulates his hard-hitting thesis. Ellis goes toe to toe with some of academe's most sacred icons, from Stanley Fish to Fredric Jameson, and he leaves them reeling, lashed by his deft use of their own words. What empowers Ellis's book is his inexhaustible knowledge ofWestern history and culture and his logician's ability to expose faulty reasoning even in the highest halls ofacademe. Literature Lost took courage to write, for Ellis ends by saying that one ofthe most politically correct ofall hiring practices, affirmative action , has actually hurt both those whom it was intended to help and also the nations that have subscribed to its practices. Ellis is a respected author ofbooks on German literature and on literary theory. He is also a founder and past officer ofthe Association ofLiterary Scholars and Critics and currently serves on its Council. Like the Association members, Ellis would like to see a return to the primacy ofliterature and believes that the increasing intrusion ofpolitical agendas into literary study has diminished both curricula and scholarship. Because ofhis background in German studies and because ofhis European roots, Ellis's warnings, that the seemingly innocuous and moral-sounding goals ofthe race-gender-class critics can be distorted into ethnic hatred and even purges, have a frightening edge to them. The university, the very institution that ought to be a calming or leavening agent for reflection on important social and moral issues, now is the last place, Ellis charges, where such objective examination can occur. As a historian, Ellis frequently asks, "How did all this happen?" Ellis traces the attack by many contemporary literary critics on Western culture to two basic impulses. One, which he identifies with Rousseau, is essentially the frustrated insider's disenchantment with Western civilization. But unlike Rousseau, who blamed society for perceived flaws, the new PC proponents blame Western civilization itself, or elements within that civilization, such as capitalism or white males. We make a mistake, Ellis says, ifwe instill in our students a hatred for our own culture, and we falsify history and reality ifwe hold up Third World nations as somehow more pristine and utopie in their treatment ofwomen and minorities. Does even the most avid feminist in Europe or America today, he asks, really want to return to Africa, for example, with its tradition of female circumcision? Or to Asia, where Ellis quotes a New York Times article that estimates that more than 60 million women (victims ofbride burnings, or ofthe killing offemale babies, or of suttee, the ritualistic forced suicide ofwidows) have been exterminated? Ellis's statistics and his comments on ethnic purging in the former Yugoslavia, and in modern Sri Lanka are equally chilling. And he warns that ifwe continue to denigrate the Western tradition and to increasingly teach the great classics ofWestern civilization as nothing more than victim/victimizer, race against race, class against class, then we move perilously close to creating our own Bosnia, as people see themselves not as part ofa greater humanity, that precious ideal passed down by the Western Enlightenment , but rather as victims and oppressed members ofthreatened classes, ethnicities, or gender groups. Self-criticism is part ofany viable culture, Ellis says, but we must not indiscriminately tear down Western civilization or falsify its values vis-à-vis the rest of the world, or we do great harm to the very values—such as equity and fairness in dealing with others—that the race-gender-class critics profess to revere. In addition to the frustrated insiders who, like Stanley Fish, attack WestVcH . 23 (1999): 171 REVIEWS ern society because it does not realize their high goals for it, there are also the alienated outsiders, those citizens of the Third World, who chafe under Western technological dominance. Unwilling to accept blame for their current state, some such citizens often create utopie, prehistoric pasts that prevent them from clearly addressing current and future problems. Armed with these heroic myths, they further defend themselves by pointing to the cause ofall their difficulties—the colonizing West, ignoring any greater...

Flag desecration in American culture: Offenses against civil religion and a consecrated symbol of nationalism

Adoration for the United States flag is emblematic of American nationalism and patriotism. Moreover, in extreme forms, its rigid orthodoxy also reflects civil religion — a non-sectarian faith in which secular objects are transformed into sacred icons. Ostensibly, elements of civil religion imbue reverence for the flag, and although the recent flag protection campaign has caught the attention of intellectuals from various academic disciplines, sociologists are conspicuously absent from such discourse. In light of its relevance to civil religion, the dearth of sociological analysis on flag desecration is especially disconcerting. This article offers several theoretical explanations for the social construction of flag desecration and its sociological significance to civil religion.