Search Results (9)

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was officially liquidated by the Soviet authorities at the L’viv Pseudo-Council of 1946. However, the clergy and faithful who remained loyal to their Church formed an underground church structure. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the underground Greek Catholics had special hopes for the revival of the UGCC. This was due to the easing of repression in the USSR after Stalin’s death and the preparation and convening of the Second Vatican Council. It was at this time that Pope John XXIII managed to secure the release of the head of the UGCC, Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj, who had spent 18 years in the Soviet labor camps and exile. At that time, many suspicions and accusations arose among the clergy and faithful of the underground UGCC due to insufficient information about the actions and decisions of the Council. In those years, a movement emerged that later grew into an apocalyptic sect (“Pokutnyky”). Ecumenical talks between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church, the issue of patriarchal status for the UGCC, ritual disputes, and so on also caused a lot of discussion among the Greek Catholics in Ukraine. This paper is an attempt to provide a better understanding of the perception of the Vatican II decisions by underground Greek Catholics within their struggle for the existence and revival of their Church. Full article

The Greek Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia found itself outlawed after its violent liquidation by the brachial communist power in 1950, and the members of this church were forced to convert to the Orthodox faith. This study explains the difficult process of renewal of the Greek Catholic Church and its structures in the context of the Ostpolitik of the Holy See, represented by the Vatican diplomat and later secretary of state Agostino Casaroli, and in the context of the political relaxation in Czechoslovakia in 1968, during the so-called Prague Spring. In addition to the scientific literature, this study is based on historical research carried out in the historical archive of the Secretariat of State in the Vatican within the Agostino Casaroli fund, which has so far been processed little. In the study, the author describes the most significant steps which lead to the official legalization of the Greek Catholic Church on June 13, 1968, as well as the difficult process of negotiating the terms of the restored church with the state-enforced Orthodox Church. Full article

The aesthetic qualities of Byzantine Gospel Lectionaries in Middle Byzantine times, afforded by their material construction, fostered an intermedial relationship with the architectural interiors of the churches and chapels where they were used in sacred liturgies. In particular, Byzantine book makers employed discreet reflective materials—particularly albumen and gold—that engendered an aesthetic of liquidity. If we center materiality and aesthetic considerations of the Byzantine Gospel Lectionary, building upon art history’s so-called “material turn”, we can come closer to understanding something of the poetry of the Byzantine manuscript as part of an affective experience—one that was shiny, shimmering, and fluid. Full article

This paper presents a three-dimensional (3D) digitization methodology for documenting the appearance and geometry of cultural heritage buildings using modern tools for data acquisition and processing. This work presents a method combining laser scanning of building dimensions with photographic texture acquisition techniques in order to develop accurate, photo-realistic 3D models. This work also presents a method for digital reconstruction of the elements of interiors. This case study presents the process and result of scanning the church of St Adalbert in Chicago along with its inner finishing elements, achieved during the interventional 3D scanning of a historical building interior. The obtained colorized point cloud has 3.5 billion points and a volume of 65 GB. Its creation took nearly 3.5 h on a high-end computer. The generated textured mesh model has 1.6 billion triangles and a volume of 60 GB. The analysis of the results showed that the elements of the church furnishings were reproduced with very high accuracy. The developed 3D model of the interior, appearance and dimensions of the church is its perpetual documentation. It can be used for various purposes, such as popularizing the appearance on the Internet, scientific research on interior artefacts, creating files for VR and shooting high-resolution films. Full article

What has the pandemic taught us about worship? Reflecting on religion in quarantine, Heidi A. Campbell observed that while many churches have embraced a new medium of worship (digital), the underlying approach to worship has remained centered on the worship event. Campbell criticizes this event-based focus as being out of step with the networked age in which we live. Is Campbell right, or is there still a place for the worship event, even in this networked age? Drawing on the work of liturgical theologians and network theorists, I revisit the role of the liturgical event in the wider life of the church, arguing that the liturgical event remains a central element of the church’s mission, but that the liturgy is meant to take worshippers beyond itself. I suggest that pandemic reflections on liturgy should lead the church to emphasize that Christians are a sent people, even during a time of restricted movement. This shift in emphasis from gathering to sending out redefines the church more broadly and helps us reclaim a more expansive vision of worship beyond the mere event. Full article

The burial of unbaptized fetuses and infants, as seen through texts and archaeology, exposes friction between the institutional Church and medieval Italy’s laity. The Church’s theology of Original Sin, baptism, and salvation left the youngest children especially vulnerable to dying unbaptized and subsequently being denied a Christian burial in consecrated grounds. We here present textual and archaeological evidence from medieval Italy regarding the tensions between canon law and parental concern for the eternal salvation of their infants’ souls. We begin with an analysis of medieval texts from Italy. These reveal that, in addition to utilizing orthodox measures of appealing for divine help through the saints, laypeople of the Middle Ages turned to folk religion and midwifery practices such as “life testing” of unresponsive infants using water or other liquids. Although emergency baptism was promoted by the Church, the laity may have occasionally violated canon law by performing emergency baptism on stillborn infants. Textual documents also record medieval people struggling with where to bury their deceased infants, as per their ambiguous baptismal status within the Church community. We then present archaeological evidence from medieval sites in central and northern Italy, confirming that familial concern for the inclusion of infants in Christian cemeteries sometimes clashed with ecclesiastical burial regulations. As a result, the remains of unbaptized fetuses and infants have been discovered in consecrated ground. The textual and archaeological records of fetal and infant burial in medieval Italy serve as a material legacy of how laypeople interpreted and sometimes contravened the Church’s marginalizing theology and efforts to regulate the baptism and burial of the very young. Full article

Effective analytical approaches for the identification of natural dyes in historical textiles are mainly based on high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with spectrophotometric detection and tandem mass spectrometric detection with electrospray ionization (HPLC-UV-Vis-ESI MS/MS). Due to the wide variety of dyes, the developed method should include an adequate number of reference color compounds, but not all of them are commercially available. Thus, the present study was focused on extending of the universal analytical HPLC-UV-Vis-ESI MS/MS approach to commercially unavailable markers of red, purple, and blue dyes. In the present study, HPLC-UV-Vis-ESI MS/MS was used to characterize the colorants in ten natural dyes (American cochineal, brazilwood, indigo, kermes, lac dye, logwood, madder, orchil, Polish cochineal, and sandalwood) and, hence, to extend the analytical method for the identification of natural dyes used in historical objects to new compounds. Dye markers were identified mostly on the basis of triple quadrupole MS/MS spectra. In consequence, the HPLC-UV-Vis-ESI MS/MS method with dynamic multiple reaction monitoring (dMRM) was extended to the next 49 commercially unavailable colorants (anthraquinones and flavonoids) in negative ion mode and to 11 (indigoids and orceins) in positive ion mode. These include protosappanin B, protosappanin E, erythrolaccin, deoxyerythrolaccin, nordamnacanthal, lucidin, santalin A, santalin B, santarubin A, and many others. Moreover, high-resolution QToF MS data led to the establishment of the complex fragmentation pathways of α-, β-, and γ- aminoorceins, hydroxyorceins, and aminoorceinimines extracted from wool dyed with Roccella tinctoria DC. The developed approach has been tested in the identification of natural dyes used in 223 red, purple, and blue fibers from 15th- to 17th-century silk textiles. These European and Near Eastern textiles have been used in vestments from the collections of twenty Krakow churches. Full article

This paper demonstrates an RF thermal plasma pyrolysis reaction apparatus that achieves 89 wt.% reaction conversion yield with no tar content. The demonstrated experimental apparatus consists of a 1100 W RFVII Inc. (104 Church St, Newfield, NJ 08344, United States) @ 13.56 MHz RF thermal plasma generator, a Navio matching network, intelligent feedback controller, and an 8-turn copper RF-ICP torch embedded in a 12 L thermochemical reactor. The intelligent feedback controller optimizes the thermal performance based on feedback signals from three online gas analyzers: CO, CO₂ and NO_x. The feedback controller output signal controls the RF thermal plasma torch current that provides real-time temperature control. The proposed reaction system achieves precise temperature profiles for both pyrolysis and gasification as well as increases end-product yield and eliminates undesired products such as tar and char. The identified hydrocarbon liquid mixture is 90 wt.% gasoline and 10 wt.%. diesel. The 8-turn RF-ICP thermal plasma torch has an average heating rate of +35 °C/min and a maximum operating temperature of 2000 °C and is able to sustain stable flame for more than 30 min. The reaction operating parameters are (550–990 °C $\tau$ = 30 min for pyrolysis and (1300 °C $\tau$ = 1 sec) for the gasification process. The identified hydrocarbon liquid products are 90 wt.% of a n-butyl-benzene (C₆H₅C₄H₉) and oluene (C₇H₈) mixture with less than 10 wt.% decane diesel fuel (C₁₀ H₂₂). Comsol simulation is used to assess the RF-ICP thermal plasma torch’s thermal performance. Full article

In the framework of the protection of copper objects exposed to atmospheric corrosion, different solutions are envisaged, among them carboxylate treatments (HC₁₀). In this study, an analytical approach based on complementary techniques from micrometer to nanometer scale (μRS, SEM-EDS, SAM) is used to describe the properties of the corrosion products layer (CPL) and determine the penetration depth of the HC₁₀ protection treatment inside the CPL of copper samples issued from the roof of the Saint Martin church in Metz. The CPL consists in a thick brochantite layer (20 to 50 μm), mainly composed of Cu₄SO₄(OH)₆, on top of a thinner (1 to 5 μm thick) cuprite layer, Cu₂O, acting as a natural corrosion barrier on the metal. Application of the organic treatment is implemented by immersing the corroded samples in HC₁₀ solution, consistent with future requirements for large scale applications. Even for short-term duration (one minute), the HC₁₀ treatment penetrates to the cuprite/brochantite interface, but Cu(C₁₀)₂ precipitate is only detected locally, whereas for a longer immersion of thirty minutes, it is present in higher proportions in the whole brochantite layer, filling the pores, up to the cuprite/brochantite interface. Cu(C₁₀)₂ acts as a second inner barrier and prevents liquid infiltration. Full article