In terms of religious culture, reliquaries are remarkable assets; this sort of artifacts combine spiritual value, as containers for sacred relics, thought to be imbued with their holiness, and ...intrinsic, material worth, inasmuch as they are built from the most precious materials, in order to mirror the immensurable wealth they enshrine. This study aims to analyze the presence of reliquaries within the historical context of medieval Transylvania. In pursuit of our purpose, we will examine the archeological evidence, as well as the political, social or religious frameworks in which this objects were disseminated. Thus we shall draw some hypotheses regarding the meaning of the respective objects, but also the features of Transylvanian medieval history.
National Jewish Book Awards 2019 Finalist for Visual Arts. Richly illustrated and meticulously documented, this is the first comprehensive survey of synagogue textiles to be available in English. ...Bracha Yaniv, a leading expert in the field of Jewish ceremonial textiles, records their evolution from ancient times to the present. The volume contains a systematic consideration of the mantle, the wrapper, the Torah scroll binder, and the Torah ark curtain and valance, and considers the cultural factors that inspired the evolution of these different items and their motifs. Fabrics, techniques, and modes of production are described in detail; the inscriptions marking the circumstances of donation are similarly subjected to close analysis. Fully annotated plates demonstrate the richness of the styles and traditions in use in different parts of the Jewish diaspora, drawing attention to regional customs. Throughout, emphasis is placed on presenting and explaining all relevant aspects of the Jewish cultural heritage. The concluding section contains transcriptions, translations, and annotations of some 180 inscriptions recording the circumstances in which items were donated, providing a valuable survey of customs of dedication. Together with the comprehensive bibliography, inventory lists, and other relevant documentation, this volume will be an invaluable reference work for the scholarly community, museum curators, and others interested in the Jewish cultural heritage.
Encyclopedia of Medieval Royal Iconography” sets out to be the first extensive collection of data on royal iconography from the Middles Ages (476–1492). In particular, it aims to collect entries ...about the most important rulers or dynasties that reigned during this period, from the Iberian Peninsula to Levant and from the Scandinavian Peninsula to the Mediterranean Sea. Specifically, “Encyclopedia of Medieval Royal Iconography” focuses on royal official images (namely, those representations that were commissioned at the behest of the ruler) and analyses them not only from an iconographic (namely, ‘static’) point of view but also as parts of a more general political communicative strategy (namely, in a ‘dynamic’ way) in order to better clarify their social functions and, consequently, their iconographic meanings. Thanks to this approach, “Encyclopedia of Medieval Royal Iconography” aims to offer a substantial overview on matters of medieval regal iconography and to be a useful tool for scholars who use royal images for their research.
Abstract
This article examines the relationship between fashion and Jewish clothing. Certain clothing elements that are today considered signifiers of Jewish people, even among non-Jews, did not ...begin as specifically Jewish clothing. They started as the fashion of the general society but were retained by the Jewish community even after the fashions changed in the general world. In this article, we trace the process by which three such elements became associated specifically with Jews and Jewish ritual practice: the striped tallit, Hasidic dress, and black hats. Black hats are the most recent example of this process, and in this case have also developed legal significance in some Orthodox circles. This results in a fashion element being prevented from ever going out of style by virtue of being considered a halachic requirement.
The book provides the first broad survey of church
textiles of Spanish America and demonstrates that, while
overlooked, textiles were a vital part of visual culture in the
Catholic Church.
When ...Catholic churches were built in the New World in the
sixteenth century, they were furnished with rich textiles known in
Spanish as "church clothing." These textile ornaments covered
churches' altars, stairs, floors, and walls. Vestments clothed
priests and church attendants, and garments clothed statues of
saints. The value attached to these textiles, their constant use,
and their stunning visual qualities suggest that they played a much
greater role in the creation of the Latin American Church than has
been previously recognized. In Clothing the New World
Church , Maya Stanfield-Mazzi provides the first comprehensive
survey of church adornment with textiles, addressing how these
works helped establish Christianity in Spanish America and expand
it over four centuries. Including more than 180 photos, this book
examines both imported and indigenous textiles used in the church,
compiling works that are now scattered around the world and
reconstructing their original contexts. Stanfield-Mazzi delves into
the hybrid or mestizo qualities of these cloths and argues that
when local weavers or embroiderers in the Americas created church
textiles they did so consciously, with the understanding that they
were creating a new church through their work.
The chapters are divided by textile type, including embroidery,
featherwork, tapestry, painted cotton, and cotton lace. In the
first chapter, on woven silk, we see how a "silk standard" was
established on the basis of priestly preferences for this imported
cloth. The second chapter explains how Spanish-style embroidery was
introduced in the New World and mastered by local artisans. The
following chapters show that, in select times and places,
spectacular local textile types were adapted for the church,
reflecting ancestral aesthetic and ideological patterns.
Clothing the New World Church makes a significant
contribution to the fields of textile studies, art history, Church
history, and Latin American studies, and to interdisciplinary
scholarship on material culture and indigenous agency in the New
World.
This paper focuses on the ritual context of the 200,000-line Chinese Great Perfection of Wisdom (Dabore jing; *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra) at Dunhuang. Beside the fact that the purpose of the mass ...production of sūtras was to generate merit and then present a “merit gift” for the sponsor, the copies were reused as ritual instruments in the large-scale chanting liturgy called “sūtra-rotation” (zhuanjing). This paper examines the relevant administrative documents and liturgical texts to reconstruct the three modules of the liturgy, i.e., the preparation stage, the pronouncement of a “liturgical script,” and the “long-playing” chanting. By analyzing key passages in the Prajñāpāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom) literature, the paper argues that the Great Perfection of Wisdom was taken as an apotropaic device with unmediated protective power.
