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From Joh. Wolfii Lect. Memorab. (Lavingæ, 1600.)
It will be seen by the curious woodcut from Baptista Mantuanus, that he consigned Pope Joan to the jaws of hell, notwithstanding her choice. The verses accompanying this picture are:—
“Hic pendebat adhuc sexum mentita virile
Fœmina, cui triplici Phrygiam diademate mitram
Extollebat apex: et pontificalis adulter.”
It need hardly be stated that the whole story of Pope Joan is fabulous, and rests on not the slightest historical foundation. It was probably a Greek invention to throw discredit on the papal hierarchy, first circulated more than two hundred years after the date of the supposed Pope. Even Martin Polonus (A. D. 1282), who is the first to give the details, does so merely on popular report.
1163 visits
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The rapid current hurried us on, not against our will, and we only paused to watch the monks haymaking in the meadows, wearing a dress which looked like a compromise between the costumes of a washerwoman and a Cape Cod fisherman. They must have suffered in the hot sun, with their gowns of heavy woollen stuff, but they suffered in silence, and did not deign to answer our greetings or even to turn their eyes upon us.
1231 visits
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Under other circumstances we would have spent a day or more at Riedlingen, where we found most interesting architecture along the river-front and saw a party of nuns at work in a hay-field. We had a little more social success with them than we did with their coreligionists, the monks at Beuron, for they turned their great, cool, flapping head-dresses in our direction, and actually seemed temporarily interested in our canoes, and in us as well.
1074 visits
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Mosque in Silistria
1231 visits
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Depiction of the devil
464 visits
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Jesus Christ
1000 visits
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Constantine the Great, founder of Constantinople, had the monogram of Christ placed on the labarum, or imperial stamdard; It was the Greek letter X (chi) with a P (rbo) placed perpendicularly though it, forming the first two letters of the name Christ, in Greek
1412 visits
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Yoshi-san and his Grandmother go to visit the great temple at Shiba. They walk up its steep stairs, and arrive at the lacquered threshold. Here they place aside their wooden clogs, throw a few coins into a huge box standing on the floor. It is covered with a wooden grating so constructed as to prevent pilfering hands afterward removing the coin. Then they pull a thick rope attached to a big brass bell like an exaggerated sheep-bell, hanging from the ceiling, but which gives forth but a feeble, tinkling sound. To insure the god's attention, this is supplemented with three distinct claps of the hands, which are afterward clasped in prayer for a short interval; two more claps mark the conclusion. Then, resuming their clogs, they clatter down the steep, copper-bound temple steps into the grounds. Here are stalls innumerable of toys, fruit, fish-cakes, birds, tobacco-pipes, ironmongery, and rice, and scattered amidst the stalls are tea-houses, peep-shows, and other places of amusement. Of these the greatest attraction is a newly-opened chrysanthemum show.
4050 visits
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As men became more and more accustomed to these idols and less and less spiritual in their worship they would ventrure to give expression to their ideas of the unseen gods. Other materials were used, and as might be required by the materials, other shapes were of necessity given. At first, it would seem, that only representations of animals were attempted, then, asin the teraphim, the head of a man was attached to various animal forms, as also in Dagon, the fish-god, which has a human figure, terminating in a fish
1568 visits
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Finding it difficult to fasten their thoughts on invisible, intangible beings, men, at the beginning. probably sought to aid their worship be selecting some object to represent the being worshiped.
1270 visits
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Jesus on Cross
1287 visits
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Devil
717 visits
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Devil
698 visits
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Devil
689 visits
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Devil
736 visits
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Devils chasing a rabbit
732 visits
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Devil
694 visits
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About this time there was great talk of one Edward Irving, pastor of the Scotch National Church, in Regent Square, and the miraculous gift of tongues. In London, at all events, this peculiar manifestation seems to have commenced on Sunday, October 9th, when Mr. Irving delivered two sermons on the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, on which occasions the congregation was disturbed by individuals speaking in unknown language. During the morning's sermon, a lady (Mrs. Hall), thus singularly endowed, was compelled to retire to the vestry, where she was unable (so she said) to restrain herself, and spoke for some time in the unknown tongue, to the great surprise of the congregation. In the evening a Mr. Tamplin did the same, creating great confusion. Next Sunday a Mr. Carsdale was similarly affected, and these manifestations, afterwards, became common.
The accompanying illustration is by Seymour, and purported to be sketched from life. It is called, "The Unknown Tongues—Daybreak at the National Scotch Church, Regent Square. Refrain from these Men, etc., Acts iv." Irving is seated, Mr. Tamplin is standing with an open book, Mrs. Hall is one of the ladies, and Mr. Carsdale leans his head on his hand.
875 visits
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Crucifixion of Christ
1410 visits
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Trial proof of the key block of center sheet of The Crucifixion, after Tintoretto. National Gallery of Art (Rosenwald Collection).
955 visits
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Menorah
875 visits
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Ignatius de Loyola, 1491-1556 A.D.
Inigo Lopez de Recalde, or Loyola, as he is commonly known, was born at Guipuzcoa, in Spain, in 1491. He was educated as a page in the court [pg 262]of Ferdinand the Catholic. He afterwards became a soldier and led a very wild life until his twenty-ninth year. During the siege of Pamplona, in 1521, he was severely wounded, and while convalescing he was given lives of Christ and of the saints to read. His perusal of these stories of spiritual combat inspired a determination to imitate the glorious achievements of the saints.
1150 visits
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Dominic de Guzman, 1170-1221 A.D.
Half-way between Osma and Aranda in Old Castile, Spain, is a little village known as "the fortunate Calahorra." Here was the castle of the Guzmans, where Dominic was born. His family was of high `rank` and character, a noble house of warriors, statesmen and saints. If we accept the legends, his greatness was foreshadowed. Before his birth, his mother dreamed she saw her son under the figure of a black-and-white dog, with a torch in his mouth. "A true dream," says Milman, "for he will scent out heresy and apply the torch to the faggots;" but, as will be seen later, this observation does not rest on undisputed evidence.
985 visits
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When about twenty years of age he entered the monastery at Citeaux with five of his brothers. His genius might have secured ecclesiastical preferment, but he chose to dig ditches, plant fields and govern a monastery. He entered the cloister at Citeaux because the monks were few and poor, and when it became crowded because of his fame, and its rule became lax because of the crowds, he left the cloister to found a home of his own. The abbot selected twelve monks, following the number of apostles, and at their head placed young Bernard. He led the twelve to the valley of Wormwood, and there, in a cheerless forest, he established the monastery of Clairvaux, or Clear Valley. His rule was fiercely severe because he himself loved hardships and rough fare. "It in no way befits religion," he writes, "to seek remedies for the body, nor is it good for health either. You may now and then take some cheap herb,--such as poor men may,--and this is done sometimes. But to buy drugs, to hunt up doctors, to take doses, is unbecoming to religion and hostile to purity." His success in winning men to the monastic life was almost phenomenal. It was said that "mothers hid their sons, wives their husbands, and companions their friends, lest they be persuaded by his eloquent message to enter the cloister." "He was avoided like a plague," says one.
958 visits
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Seva
979 visits
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Vishnu
1026 visits
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Brahma
1007 visits
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Three Angels
856 visits
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Picture shows the costume and the holy water-pot and aspersoir, and to indicate how he went into all the rooms of the house now into the hall sprinkling the lord and lady who are at breakfast.
2274 visits
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The Parish Clerk sprinkling the Cook
The picture will shows the costume and the holy water-pot and aspersoir, and to indicate how he went into all the rooms of the house—now into the kitchen sprinkling the cook.
1787 visits
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In the MSS. we not unfrequently find the ordinary musical instruments placed in the hands of the angels; e.g., in the early fourteenth-century MS. Royal 2 B. vii., in a representation of the creation, with the morning stars singing together, and all the sons of God shouting for joy, an angelic choir are making melody on the trumpet, violin, cittern, shalm (or psaltery), and harp.
2382 visits
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The chief sign of the Canterbury pilgrimage was an ampul (ampulla, a flask); we are told all about its origin and meaning by Abbot Benedict, who wrote a book on the miracles of St. Thomas. The monks had carefully collected from the pavement the blood of the martyr which had been shed upon it, and preserved it as one of the precious relics.
988 visits
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The picture which we here give of an anchoress, is taken from a figure of St. Paula, one of the anchorite saints of the desert.
1315 visits
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The best and clearest illustration which we have been able to find of the usual costume in which the hermits are represented, we here give to the reader. It is from the figure of St. Damasus, one of the group in the fine picture of “St. Jerome,” by Cosimo Roselli (who lived from 1439 to 1506), now in the National Gallery. The hermit-saint wears a light-brown frock, and scapular, with no girdle, and, over all, a cloak and hood of the same colour, and his naked feet are protected by wooden clogs.
1181 visits
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The Dominicans and Franciscans arose simultaneously at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Dominic, an Augustinian canon, a Spaniard of noble birth, was seized with a zeal for converting heretics, and having gradually associated a few ecclesiastics with himself, he at length conceived the idea of founding an order of men who should spend their lives in preaching. Simultaneously, Francis, the son of a rich Italian merchant, was inspired with a design to establish a new order of men, who should spend their lives in preaching the Gospel and doing works of charity among the people. These two men met in Rome in the year 1216 a.d.
1485 visits
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The humble life of the country rectors and vicars.
There is an ancient rectory house of the fourteenth century at West Deane, Sussex, of which we give a ground-plan and north-east view on the following page; but the rectory belonged to the prior and convent of Benedictine Monks of Wilmington, and this house was probably their grange, or cell, and may have been inhabited by two of their monks, or by their tenant, and not by the parish priest.
1403 visits
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The humble life of the country rectors and vicars.
There is an ancient rectory house of the fourteenth century at West Deane, Sussex, of which we give a ground-plan and north-east view on the following page; but the rectory belonged to the prior and convent of Benedictine Monks of Wilmington, and this house was probably their grange, or cell, and may have been inhabited by two of their monks, or by their tenant, and not by the parish pries
1220 visits
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A woodcut of the fifteenth century, from a manuscript life of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in the British Museum; the subject is the presentation of the pilgrim earl to the pope, and it enables us to bring into one view the costumes of pope, cardinal, and bishop.
1719 visits
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Pilgrim, from Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly.”
The staff, or bourdon, was not of an invariable shape. On a fourteenth-century grave-stone at Haltwhistle, Northumberland, it is like a rather long walking-stick, with a natural knob at the top. In the cut from Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly” ” it is a similar walking-stick; but, usually, it was a long staff, some five, six, or seven feet long, turned in the lathe, with a knob at the top, and another about a foot lower down.
917 visits
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Pilgrim on Horseback
1125 visits
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Pilgrim Monk
1266 visits
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Pilgrim in Hair Shirt and Cloak
1426 visits
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The picture is a curious illumination from the Royal MS. 2 B vii., representing a friar and a nun themselves making minstrelsy.
3170 visits
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The Scriptorium is said to have been usually over the chapter-house. It was therefore a large apartment, capable of containing many persons, and, in fact, many persons did work together in it in a very business-like manner at the transcription of books.
1870 visits
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Sometimes a little below the lower knob there is a hook, or a staple, to which we occasionally find a water-bottle or a small bundle attached. The hook is seen on the staff of Lydgate’s pilgrim.
1412 visits
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At the west end of Laindon Church, Essex, there is a unique erection of timber, of which we here give a representation. It has been modernised in appearance by the insertion of windows and doors; and there are no architectural details of a character to reveal with certainty its date, but in its mode of construction—the massive timbers being placed close together—and in its general appearance, there is an air of considerable antiquity. It is improbable that a house would be erected in such a situation after the Reformation, and it accords generally with the descriptions of a recluse house.
696 visits
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We give another representation from the picture of John Ball, the priest who was concerned in Wat Tyler’s rebellion, taken from a MS. of Froissart’s Chronicle, in the Bibliothèque Impériale at Paris. The whole picture is interesting; the background is a church, in whose churchyard are three tall crosses. Ball is preaching from the pulpit of his saddle to the crowd of insurgents who occupy the left side of the picture.
2171 visits
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The picture represents Johanna de Warn, who also gave what is described as a well-built house, with a louvre, in St. Alban’s town. This house, again, is of timber, with traceried windows, an arched doorway with ornamental hinges to the door, and an unusually large and handsome louvre. This louvre was doubtless in the roof of the hall, and probably over a fire-hearth in the middle of the hall, such as that which still exists in the fourteenth-century hall at Pevensey, Kent. The lady’s face is strong corroboration of the theory that these are portraits.
1407 visits
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The cut represents a group of Cistercian monks, from a manuscript in the British Museum. It shows some of them sitting with hands crossed and concealed in their sleeves—an attitude which was considered modest and respectful in the presence of superiors; some with the cowl over the head. It will be observed that some are and some are not bearded.
1809 visits
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Funeral Service of a Hermit
1620 visits
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Rogerus, chaplain of the chapel of the Earl of Warwick, at Flamsted. Over a scarlet gown, is a pink cloak lined with blue; the hood is scarlet, of the same suit as the gown; the buttons at the shoulder of the cloak are white, the shoes red.
1421 visits
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Sir Richard de Threton, priest,who was executor of Sir Robert de Thorp, knight, formerly chancellor of the king, and who gave twenty marks to the convent. Our woodcut gives only the outlines of the full-length portrait. In the original the robe and hood are of full bright blue, lined with white; the under sleeves, which appear at the wrists, are of the same colour; and the shoes are red.
the grateful monks of St. Alban’s have recorded the names and good deeds of those who had presented gifts or done services to the convent.
1372 visits
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In the picture is Dns. Bartholomeus de Wendone, rector of the church of Thakreston, and the character of the face leads us to think that it may have been intended for a portrait. His robe and hood and sleeves are scarlet, with black shoes.
1339 visits
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The convents of friars were not independent bodies, like the Benedictine and Augustinian abbeys; each order was an organised body, governed by the general of the order, and under him, by provincial priors, priors of the convents, and their subordinate officials. There are usually reckoned four orders of friars—the Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustines.
“I found there freres,
All the foure orders,
Techynge the peple
To profit of themselves.”
Piers Ploughman, l. 115.
The four orders are pictured together in the woodcut page from the thirteenth century MS. Harl. 1,527.
They were called Friars because, out of humility, their founders would not have them called Father and Dominus, like the monks, but simply Brother (Frater, Frère, Friar).
1987 visits
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The coronation procession of Charles V. of France, will help us to exhibit some of the orders of the clergy with their proper costume and symbols. First goes the aquabajalus, in alb, sprinkling holy water; then a cross-bearer in cassock and surplice; then two priests, in cassock, surplice, and cope; then follows a canon in his cap (biretta), with his furred amys over his arm.
2176 visits
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In 1098 a.d., arose the Cistercian order. It took the name from Citeaux (Latinised into Cistercium), the house in which the new order was founded by Robert de Thierry. Stephen Harding, an Englishman, the third abbot, brought the new order into some repute; but it is to the fame of St. Bernard, who joined it in 1113 a.d., that the speedy and widespread popularity of the new order is to be attributed. The order was introduced into England at Waverly, in Surrey, in 1128 a.d. The Cistercians professed to observe the rule of St. Benedict with rigid exactness, only that some of the hours which were devoted by the Benedictines to reading and study, the Cistercians devoted to manual labour.
1739 visits
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In the year 1084 a.d., the Carthusian order was founded by St. Bruno, a monk of Cologne, at Chartreux, near Grenoble. This was the most severe of all the reformed Benedictine orders. To the strictest observance of the rule of Benedict they added almost perpetual silence; flesh was forbidden even to the sick; their food was confined to one meal of pulse, bread, and water, daily. It is remarkable that this the strictest of all monastic rules has, even to the present day, been but slightly modified; and that the monks have never been accused of personally deviating from it.
1848 visits
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The Augustinians claim the great St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, as their founder, and relate that he established the monastic communities in Africa, and gave them a rule. That he did patronise monachism in Africa we gather from his writings, but it is not clear that he founded any distinct order; nor was any order called after his name until the middle of the ninth century.
1717 visits
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The woodcut represents the characteristic costume of three orders of religious with whom we have been concerned—a bishop, an abbot, and a clerk.
1363 visits
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In the year 529 a.d., St. Benedict, an Italian of noble birth and great reputation, introduced into his new monastery on Monte Cassino—a hill between Rome and Naples—a new monastic rule. To the three vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, which formed the foundation of most of the old rules, he added another, that of manual labour (for seven hours a day), not only for self-support, but also as a duty to God and man.
1418 visits
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The Nuns of Fontevraud was another female order of Augustinians, of which little is known. It was founded at Fontevraud in France, and three houses of the order were established in England in the time of Henry II.; they had monks and nuns within the same enclosure, and all subject to the rule of an abbess.
1583 visits
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Bedesmen - In time of Henry VII
The group represents the abbot and some of the monks, and behind them some of the bedesmen, each of whom has the royal badge—the rose and crown—on the shoulder of his habit, and holds in his hand his rosary, the symbol of his prayers.
1510 visits
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In the MSS. we not unfrequently find the ordinary musical instruments placed in the hands of the angels
1577 visits
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We give here, from the St. Alban’s Book, a woodcut of an abbot on horseback, with a hat over his hood—“an abbot on an ambling pad;” he is giving his benediction in return to the salute of some passing traveller.
1189 visits
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Clerk in Orders is still the legal description of a clergyman; and men whose occupation is to use the pen are still called clerks, as lawyers’ clerks, merchants’ clerks, &c. Clerks were often employed in secular occupations; for example, Alan Middleton, who was employed by the convent of St. Alban’s to collect their rents, and who is represented in the picture from their “Catalogus Benefactorum” (Nero D. vii., British Museum), is tonsured, and therefore was a clerk.
1083 visits
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The Cellarer was in fact the steward of the house; his modern representative is the bursar of a college. He had the care of everything relating to the provision of the food and vessels of the convent. He was exempt from the observance of some of the services in church; he had the use of horses and servants for the fulfilment of his duties, and sometimes he appears to have had separate apartments. The cellarer, as we have said, wore no distinctive dress or badge; but in the Catalogus Benefactorum of St. Alban’s there occurs a portrait of one “Adam Cellarius,” who for his distinguished merit had been buried among the abbots in the chapter-house, and had his name and effigy recorded in the Catalogus; he is holding two keys in one hand and a purse in the other, the symbols of his office; and in his quaint features—so different from those of the dignified abbot whom we have given from the same book—the limner seems to have given us the type of a business-like and not ungenial cellarer.
1444 visits
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An engraving from a manuscript of a semi-choir of minoresses, which is only a portion of a large church interior.
1039 visits
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The picture of a semi-choir of Franciscan friars is from a fourteenth-century psalter. The picture is worth careful examination for the costume of the friars—grey frock and cowl, with knotted cord girdle and sandalled feet; some wearing the hood drawn over the head, some leaving it thrown back on the neck and shoulders; one with his hands folded under his sleeves like the Cistercians at p. 17. The precentor may be easily distinguished in the middle stall beating time, with an air of leadership. There is much character in all the faces and attitudes—e.g., in the withered old face on the left, with his cowl pulled over his ears to keep off the draughts, or the one on the precentor’s left, a rather burly friar, evidently singing bass.
1227 visits
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The picture represents a priest confessing a lady in a church. The characters in the scene are allegorical; the priest is Genius, and the lady is Dame Nature; but it is not the less an accurate picture of a confessional scene of the latter part of the fourteenth century.
1569 visits
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The woodcut represents, probably, the cellarer of a Dominican convent receiving a donation of a fish.
1143 visits
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The Franciscans were styled by their founder Fratri Minori—lesser brothers, Friars Minors; they were more usually called Grey Friars, from the colour of their habits, or Cordeliers, from the knotted cord which formed their characteristic girdle. Their habit was originally a grey tunic with long loose sleeves (but not quite so loose as those of the Benedictines), a knotted cord for a girdle, and a black hood; the feet always bare, or only protected by sandals.
1655 visits
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Dominic gave to his order the name of Preaching Friars; more commonly they were styled Dominicans, or, from the colour of their habits, Black Friars—their habit consisting of a white tunic, fastened with a white girdle, over that a white scapulary, and over all a black mantle and hood, and shoes; the lay brethren wore a black scapulary.
1242 visits
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The word clericus—clerk—was one of very wide and rather vague significance, and included not only the various grades of clerks in orders, of whom we have spoken, but also all men who followed any kind of occupation which involved the use of reading and writing; finally, every man who could read might claim the “benefit of clergy,” i.e., the legal immunities of a clerk.
1894 visits
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The convent is the name especially appropriate to the body of individuals who composed a religious community.
The whole convent was under the government of the abbot, who, however, was bound to govern according to the rule of the order. Sometimes he was elected by the convent; sometimes the king or some patron had a share in the election. Frequently there were estates attached to the office, distinct from those of the convent; sometimes the abbot had only an allowance out of the convent estates; but always he had great power over the property of the convent, and bad abbots are frequently accused of wasting the property of the house, and enriching their relatives and friends out of it.
1080 visits
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The Carmelite Friars had their origin, as their name indicates, in the East. According to their own traditions, ever since the days of Elijah, whom they claim as their founder, the rocks of Carmel have been inhabited by a succession of hermits, who have lived after the pattern of the great prophet. Their institution as an order of friars, however, dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century, when Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, gave them a rule, founded upon, but more severe than, that of St. Basil; and gave them a habit of white and red stripes, which, according to tradition, was the fashion of the wonder-working mantle of their prophet-founder.
1341 visits
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Sculptures and medals abound in the East, containing hieroglyphic symbols of the creation. The most remarkable, however, of these symbolic devices is that erected, and at this day to be seen, in one of the temples of Japan. The temple itself, in which this fine monument of Oriental genius is elevated, is called Daibod, and stands in Meaco, a great and flourishing city of Japan.
The principal image in this design displays itself in the form of a vast bull, the emblem of prolific heat and the generative energy by which creation was formed, butting with its horns against the egg, which floated on the waters of the abyss. The status of the bull itself is formed of massy gold, with a great knob on its back, and a golden collar about its neck, embossed with precious stones.
1480 visits
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The Egg of Creation, encompassed with the Agathodaimon, or Good Genius
1072 visits
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The four figures in the Vignette are intended to represent the chief protestant reformers; Luther in the centre, Cranmer on his right hand, Knox on his left, and Calvin on his extreme right; each holding in his hand a manuscript or printed copy of the Word of God.
the Rock on which they are standing, is intended to denote the Truth of the doctrine of the Divine Oracle, on which, as on an immutable Rock, the Reformers rested all their claims, in labouring to restore pure Christianity.
Around the Rock of Truth, the waves of Error and Superstition are seen dashing.
1210 visits
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Polycarpus, died in the year 170
Polycarpus, hearing that he was sought after, escaped, but was dicovered by a child. From this circumstance, and having dreamed that his bed suddenly became on fire, and was consumed in a moment, he concluded that it was God's will that he should seal his faith with martyrdom.
1269 visits
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Justin Martyr was a native of Neapolis, in Samaria, and was born A.D. 103. Died in the year 139
Being commanded as usual to deny their faith, and sacrifice to the pagan idols, they absolutely refused to do eeither. On their refusal, they were condemned to be first scourged and then beheaded; which sentence was executed with all imagined severity.
1091 visits
