The Aldobrandini marriage is an ancient fresco painting belonging probably to the time of Augustus, discovered in 1606, and acquired by CardinalAldobrandini, nephew of Clement VIII, now in the Vatican. It represents a marriage scene in which ten persons are portrayed, and is considered one of the most precious relics of ancient art. Research Aldobrandini Marriage
The Alexandrian Version or Codex Alexandrinus, is a manuscript in the British Museum, of great importance in Biblical criticism, written on parchment with uncial letters, and belonging probably to the latter half of the sixth century. It contains the whole Greek Bible (the Old Testament being according to the Septuagint), together with the letters of Bishop Clement of Rome, but it wants parts of Matthew, John, and Second Corinthians. The Patriarch of Constantinople, who in 1628 sent this manuscript as a present to Charles I, said he had received it from Egypt - hence its name. Research Alexandrian Version
Apocalypse is the name frequently given to the last book of the New Testament, in the English version called The Revelation of St John the Divine. It is generally believed that the Apocalypse was written by the apostle John in his old age around 95 to 97 A.D. in the Isle of Patnios, whither he had been banished by the Roman Emperor Domitian. Anciently its genuineness was maintained by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and many others; while it was doubted by Dionysius of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostorn, and, nearer our own times, by Luther and a majority of the eminent German commentators. The Apocalypse has been explained differently by almost every writer who has ventured to interpret it, and has furnished all sorts of sects and fanatics with quotations to support their creeds or pretensions. The modern interpreters may be divided into three schools - namely, the historical school who hold that the prophecy embraces the whole history of the church and its foes from the time of its writing to the end of the world; the Praeterists, who hold that the whole or nearly the whole of the prophecy has been already fulfilled, and that it refers chiefly to the triumph of Christianity over Paganism and Judaism; and the Futurists, who throw the whole prophecy, except the first three chapters, forward upon a time not yet reached by the church - a period of no very long duration, which is immediately to precede Christ's second coming. Research Apocalypse
Canon Law is a collection of ecclesiastical constitutions for the regulation of the Church of Rome, consisting for the most part of ordinances of general and provincial councils, decrees promulgated by the popes with the sanction of the cardinals, and decretal epistles and bulls of the popes. There is also a canon law for the regulation of the Church of England, which under certain restrictions is used in ecclesiastical courts and in the courts of the two universities.
In the Roman Church these collections came into use in the 5th and 6th centuries. The chief basis of them was a translation of the decrees of the four first general councils, to which other decrees of particular synods and decretals of the popes were added. In the time of Charlemagne the collection of Dionysius the Little acquired almost the authority of laws. Equal authority, also, was allowed to the spurious 9th-century collection of decretals falsely ascribed to Isidore, Bishop of Seville. After the 10th century systematical compendiums of ecclesiastical law began to be drawn from these canons, the most important being that of the BenedictineGratian of Chiusi, finished in 1151. Within ten years after its appearance the Universities of Bologna and Paris had their professors of canon law, who taught from Gratian's work, which superseded all former chronological collections. After the appearance of the Decretum Gratiani, new decrees of councils and new decretals were promulgated, which were collected by Raymond of Pennaforte under the name of Decretales Gregorii Noni (1234); and the later decretals, etc, collected by Boniface VIII, were published as the sixth book of the Gregorian Decretals in 1298, all these having the authority of laws.
Pope Clement V published a collection of his decrees in 1313. About the year 1340 the decretals of John XXII were published (Extravagantes Johannis XXII); and at a later period the subsequent decretals, to the time of Sextus IV. (Extravagantes Communes) appeared. These Extravagantes have not altogether the authority of law. Under Pope Pius IV a commission was appointed to revise the Decretum Gratiani, the work being completed under Gregory XIII, and sanctioned by bull in 1580. The authority of the canon law in England, since the Reformation, depends upon the statute 25th Henry VIII, according to which such ecclesiastical laws as were not repugnant to the laws of the realm and the king's prerogative were to remain in force until revised. This revision was never made. A body of 141 canons was drawn up for the English church in 1603-4, and these are still partially in force, so far as concerns the clergy. Research Canon Law
A homily is a discourse or sermon read or pronounced to an audience on some subject of religion; a discourse pronounced in the church by the minister to the congregation.
The ancient homily was sometimes simply a conversation, the prelate talking to the people and interrogating them, and they in turn talking to and interrogating him. In modern use a homily differs but little from an ordinary sermon, the idea of simplicity, however, being always attached to it.
The earliest existing examples of the homily are those of Origen in the 3rd century. In the schools of Alexandria and Antioch this form of discourse was sedulously cultivated, and Clement of Alexandria, St Dionysius, and Gregory Thaumaturgus are among the names most eminent in this department. It was in later centuries, however, and in the hands of Atlianasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Cyril of Alexandria, and especially of Chrysostom that the homily reached its highest excellence. Augustine and Gregory the Great were among the western composers of homilies.
In the Church of England, after the Reformation, two official books of homilies were issued. These were called The First and Second Books of Homilies, and the former, ascribed to Thomas Cranmer, appeared in 1547; the latter, said to be by Jewell, in 1563. They were originally meant to be read by those of the inferior clergy who were not qualified to compose discourses themselves. Research Homily
The Order of Holy Ghost was an order of male and female hospitallers, founded by Guy, son of William, Count of Montpellier, towards the end of the 12th century, for the relief of the poor, the infirm and foundlings. After the middle of the 18th century it was united with the order of St Lazarus by Clement XIII.
Order of Holy Ghost was the name of the principal military order in France instituted in 1578 by Henry III and abolished in 1789, revived at the Restoration, and again abolished in 1830. Research Order of Holy Ghost
The Renaissance was that change in the outlook of Europe which took place during the centuries from the fourteenth to the sixteenth. In its broadest sense the Renaissance affected every department of human life. But in its narrower sense it refers to the revival of the learning of ancient Greece, and to the effects of that revival on the arts and literature of modern peoples. The Church in the Middle Ages had taught men to revere authority and to find in her teaching an answer to all the problems of life, whereas the Greeks taught men to inquire and to explore rather than to accept, and to enjoy rather than to suffer. It was this attitude of mind, more than anything else, which shook the medieval world to its foundations. The views of the ancient Greeks, now re-born into the world, were in sharp contrast with the ideals of the Middle Ages. From these ideals many men for a time turned with a feeling of contempt.
The Renaissance was a many-sided movement: it deeply influenced learning and education, art and architecture, science and invention, geography and exploration, and, above all, religion. After the fall of Rome, a knowledge of Greek had rapidly died out in the West and no provision was made for its teaching similar to that made for Latin. In Italy, owing to the closeness of its relations with the East, the number of scholars, monks, and others, who learnt some Greek was greater than elsewhere. It is not, surprising, therefore, that the revival of learning received its main impulse from Italy. From the time of Petrarch and Boccaccio, Italian scholars became more and more devoted to ancient studies, and they began to visit Constantinople, where Greek learning had been preserved. There they hunted out, copied, and eagerly studied the precious manuscripts of the past, and these opened up a new world of thought. Further, from the time that the Turks' crossed from Asia into Europe, some of the Greeks themselves began to travel westwards and to accept well-paid teaching posts in the wealthy Italian cities. And, though the revival began in Italy, the new ideas were rapidly circulated by the new printing presses invented at the time, and every nation in due course played its part in the Renaissance.
The great and wealthy city of Florence was the centre of the Italian Renaissance. Cosimo de Medici, a merchant prince who became ruler of the city, was a patron of the New Learning, and he encouraged Greek scholars to settle in Florence. His grandson, Lorenzo de Medici, known as The Magnificent, loved to gather round him the learned men of the day; he spent 60,000 pounds a year on books; and he caused 200 rare manuscripts to be brought from the East to the Medici library. Rome was second only to Florence as a centre of the New Learning. The Popes themselves became great patrons of learning. Nicholas V founded the Vatican Library. When the son of Lorenzo de Medici became Pope as Leo X, the Renaissance in Rome reached its highest point. Leo made Rome, as he said, ' the capital of the world in literature, as it is in everything else'. He provided a hundred professors for his Greek college in Rome, and he brought his father's library to the Holy City. The library was afterwards restored to Florence by his cousin Clement VII, another member of this remarkable Medici family. The New Learning influenced England from the time of Edward IV, and it made great headway in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII when the scholars known as the Oxford Reformers were flourishing.
The first Englishman to bring Greek manuscripts to England was William Selling. One of his pupils was Thomas Linacre, who went to Florence and shared the instruction given to the young Medici princes; he read in the Vatican Library, and made the acquaintance of Aldo at Venice. Another Oxford teacher who drew his inspiration from Italian sources was William Grocyn, one of the first men to give lectures on Greek literature at his University.
One of Grocyn's pupils was John Colet, who visited Italy in 1496 and returned to lecture on the Gospels in the Greek original at Oxford. He and Sir Thomas More, were friends of Erasmus, a Dutch scholar of international fame. Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, was herself a patroness of the New Learning. She founded two Cambridge colleges, Christ's and St. John's, and two Lady Margaret Professorships of Divinity, one at Oxford and one at Cambridge. The Revival of Learning was one aspect of the Renaissance; the outburst of artistic energy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was another. The painters of the new period broke away from the conventional art of the Middle Ages and began again to draw from living models. As with the artists, so with the sculptors. Donatello 'went straight with his mighty chisel to original sources - to youth and manhood, and the love of living'. The great figures of that age - Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian - still dominate the history of European art. Examples of their works, and of many other Italian artists of the Renaissance, as well as of the Northern artists - Holbein, Durer, and others - are to be seen in the magnificent collection at the National Gallery.
It was natural that men who sought their inspiration from the Greeks should turn with renewed interest to classical architecture. The ruins of ancient Rome provided examples ready to hand; and soon churches planned like classical temples were rising in every city in Italy. St. Peter's, Rome, was designed by Bramante, and the famous dome added by Michelangelo. But great as was the enthusiasm for this architecture Renaissance architecture did not establish itself in England until the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, though Henry VII's tomb at WestminsterAbbey is an example of the Florentine art of the period.
The Renaissance period, filled as it was with a love of experiment, naturally produced a renewed interest in science. With the exception of isolated geniuses like Friar Roger Bacon, there were no medieval scientists worthy of the name. Practically no scientific discoveries had been made for centuries. Modern Science begins its history with the Renaissance and owes a good deal to Leonardo da Vinci. He was the first of a long line of experimenters whose work has continued to the present day. The greatest shock to the medieval notions of the universe was given by Copernicus. For two thousand years mankind with few exceptions had believed that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun revolved round our planet every twenty-four hours. Such had been the teaching of Ptolemy, the Greek scientist. Another Greek, Pythagoras, had questioned it, and advanced the extraordinary notion that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the universe; but there were few who accepted his theory until Copernicus turned his attention to the 'solar system'. Through slits cut in the walls of his house, Copernicus watched the movements of the planets. Just before he died in 1543 he published a book - 'The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies' - giving to the world the results of his observations.
Twenty years later the famous Galileo was born at Pisa, and it was he who perfected the telescope. He lived to popularise the theory of Copernicus, but he was nearly put to death for his pains and was forced by the Court of Inquisition to recant. The Italian Galileo, and the English Newton who discovered the laws of gravity, were the two greatest scientists of the seventeenth century. In the realm of geographical discovery, no age in the world' s history was more momentous than the Age of the Renaissance. Columbus, who discovered America; Vasco De Gama, who found the Cape Route to India; Cabot, Cartier, and Cortez, the discoverers of Newfoundland, Canada, and Mexico; Balboa, who first sailed on the Pacific; Magellan, whose ship was the first to sail round the world - all these and many more make the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries an era without parallel in the annals of discovery.
The new ideas which came surging into the world during the Renaissance acted in many respects as disruptive forces. This was particularly true in the realm of religion. An unquestioning acceptance of authority - i.e. of the teaching of the Catholic Church - was the keynote of the medieval attitude to life, but an eager, inquiring generation began to question this attitude. Men, too, were shocked by the moral decay of the Church and of the Papacy; voices were raised demanding reforms. Some reformers, like Colet and Erasmus, tried to reconcile the new ideas with the Church of Rome and worked to reform it; others, of whom Luther was the greatest, rejected altogether its authority.
The revolution in European history known as the Reformation was an indirect result of the Renaissance - of the New Learning which invited comparison between the present and the past; of the invention of printing which scattered broadcast the new ideas; and again, of the growing idea of the Nation and with it the supremacy of the State. Research Renaissance
The Sphere was an English illustrated weekly founded in 1900 by Hugh Spottiswoode and Clement Shorter, who edited the newspaper, representing the latest developments in the art of illustration for which it was highly acclaimed. It had its own special artists at the front during the Boer War. Research The Sphere
Abbreviations
Research Aldobrandini Marriage
