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This diptych, or two-panel painting, is hinged at the center so that it could be opened and closed and easily transported. It was clearly designed as an object for private devotion. The owner would have been able to contemplate the Passion of Christ and pray before these scenes.
A Paschal candle is a large, white candle used in liturgies in Western Christianity (viz., the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Churches, the Anglican Communion, and the Methodist Churches, among others).
Like his earliest engraving of the subject, Dürer portrayed the Madonna and Child within an enclosed garden. In addition to the garden, which refers to Mary’s virginity, the artist included other elements that reference each figure’s religious significance.
The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible, but excluded from the Hebrew canon and assigned by Protestants to the apocrypha.
The Greek word stole means garment. The stole is a long band of silk of the same width and color as the maniple, but three times its length. The priest wears it around the neck and crossed on the breast, and it represents immortality.
Forty days after his Resurrection, Christ made his final appearance to his apostles. The story of the Ascension (Acts 1:9-12) tells that Christ's apostles were standing with him on the Mount of Olives when he was lifted up and taken to heaven in a cloud.
Christ the Redeemer is an icon discovered by accident in a dilapidated woodshed near Zvenigorod in 1919. With several other icons stored nearby, it was attributed as the work of the great Andrei Rublev, painted for one of Zvenigorod cathedrals in the 1420s.
Catholics believe that the consecrated bread is literally the body of Christ. The Host thus became an object of veneration, and containers were made in which to keep or display it to the faithful.
Saint Veronica, also known as Berenike, was a woman from Jerusalem who lived in the 1st century AD, according to extra-biblical Christian sacred tradition. She is a celebrated saint in many pious Christian countries.
An Ethiopian Orthodox painting on wood of the Virgin Mary nursing the infant Christ. The twelve Apostles are depicted on the opposing side panels. Dating places this work in the middle or second half of the 15th century.
A Eucharistic procession is one in which the Host is carried in procession in a monstrance. It is often covered with a canopy and accompanied with candles.
A guardian angel is a type of angel that is assigned to protect and guide a particular person, group or nation. Belief in tutelary beings can be traced throughout all antiquity. The idea of angels that guard over people played a major role in Ancient Judaism.
The burial of Jesus refers to the burial of the body of Jesus after crucifixion, before the eve of the sabbath described in the New Testament. According to the canonical gospel accounts, he was placed in a tomb by a councillor of the Sanhedrin named Joseph of Arimathea.
Altar of the church of St Felix, Torralba de Ribota, province of Zaragoza, Spain. The church, of mudéjar and late gothic style was built between 1367 and 1420. The church is a national heritage monument in Spain (known as Bien de Interés Cultural) since 2006.
Jerome (c. 342–347 – 30 September 420) was born at Stridon, a village near Emona on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. Jerome is best known for his translation of most of the Bible into Latin (the translation that became known as the Vulgate) and his commentaries on the whole Bible.
In retaliation for Samson’s single-handed decimation of their army, the Philistines bribed his lover Delilah to discover the
This reliquary uses the form of a miniature Gothic tower. It makes an elaborate architectural frame for a transparent rock-crystal vessel holding a relic that is identified as a tooth of Saint John the Baptist by an inscription along the base of the reliquary.
Samuel (flourished 11th century BC, Israel) is a religious hero in the history of Israel, represented in the Old Testament in every role of leadership open to a Jewish man of his day—seer, priest, judge, prophet, and military leader.
Joseph tells his dreams to his parents and his brothers. Standing by a bed of his mother Rachel, Joseph tells his dreams to his father Jacob who is sitting in front of the bed, left some of his brothers talking and pointing among each other. In the right foreground a sleeping dog.
The Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom is the most celebrated Divine Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite. It is named after the anaphora with the same name which is its core part and it is attributed to Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople in the 5th century.
Ezekiel was a prophet-priest of ancient Israel and the subject and in part the author of an Old Testament book that bears his name. Ezekiel’s early oracles (from c.
This illuminated manuscript of the Four Gospels was created at a monastic center in northern Ethiopia. Twenty full-page paintings depict scenes from the life of Christ and four portraits of the evangelists introduce the respective Gospel texts.
The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, a Catholic church dedicated to the patroness of our nation, is a place of worship, pilgrimage, evangelization, and reconciliation.
Saint Barbara known in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Great Martyr Barbara, was an early Christian Lebanese and Greek saint and martyr. Accounts place her in the 3rd century in Heliopolis Phoenicia, present-day Baalbek, Lebanon.
