Faith · Art · Heritage · Society
During the First World War, the parish priest of the village of Monbert, Father Frédéric Thibault, read out the dispatches from the front every week, told of what had befallen the local lads who had been called up, and held services for the wounded and the dead. When the war
NB! · Faith · Art
The Virgin Mary, newly delivered, warms her feet on a lamb. “Holy Night” from Manchester Cathedral, by the English artist Josefina Alice Hermes de Vasconcellos (1904-2005), who completed the sculpture at the age of 87
Faith · Observations · Heritage
Would you believe that this is the body of a 113-year-old elder who died 1677 years ago? These youthful-looking remains are the relics of one of the first Christian hermits, Saint Paul of Thebes, who lived in the 3rd and 4th centuries. The most interesting detail, to
Faith · Monarchies · Society · Ethnography
Soothsayers, Blessed Ones and Holy Fools were not always revered in Russia, in fact. State persecution of them began in 1636, when first the Patriarch and then Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich pondered the harm they did to simple God-fearing folk, the latter issuing decrees expelling these enigmatic wanderers from Moscow
Faith · Art · Observations · Rome · Humour
Tired, or simply out of sorts? Saint Jerome (in a crimson cassock) and John the Baptist (bareheaded). Masaccio, 15th century. I could not pass by a depiction of two Church Fathers with such eloquent glances. Curiously, Jerome holds a reliquary or a model of a church resembling the famous Santa
Archive · Faith · Society · Ethnography
The sect of the Podpolniki ("Undergrounders"), which arose in the nineteenth century in the Saratov district, recognised only the pre-Nikonian church and came out rather categorically against the everyday manifestations of secular life: it proposed not to attend schools and reading huts but instead to live in
Faith · Science · Mores · Society · Rome
Pope Gregory XIII was an enterprising persecutor of the Jews. He came up with the idea of compelling Jews to attend Sabbath sermons in Catholic churches, where they were to be imbued with the bright ideas of Christianity. Many, it is true, stopped up their ears with wax. Gregory'
NB! · Faith · Books · Humour
A bookmark in an eighteenth-century Suetonius, Salisbury Cathedral Library. You get the idea.
Faith · Art · Mores · Ethnography
The traditional Norwegian dance of the dead, the likvaka, went like this: a crowd of young people gathered in the house of the deceased and danced to lively music, shaking the floor so hard that the corpse lying there in its bed or coffin jumped. Sometimes the dance was arranged
Faith · Observations · Humour
In the Gospel of Luke, in the fourth chapter, where the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness and He met the devil, there is an interesting moment: "And the devil, taking Him up into a high mountain, showed unto Him all the kingdoms of the world in a momen.
NB! · Faith · Art · Museums
NB! · Faith · Art · Museums
Virgin and Child: an enigmatic sculpture with four heads. Provence, second half of the 14th century. Musée Pierre de Luxembourg. It may have been set in a portal and divided down the middle by a screen