There are so very many eccentric and grand homes built by early 20th-century millionaires, and they draw me like honey draws a fly. The exquisite pictures here all feature just one structure in the palace complex called the Quinta da Regalreira built by Antonio Augusto Carvalho Monteiro dating to 1904 — it is the “Initiation […]
How we treat the dead reflects much about what the living believe. In the Ancient Mediterranean, pagan cultures considered the proper burial of the deceased to be of critical importance: otherwise, the dead person’s spirit would have a restless afterlife. On the other hand, the world of the living was to be kept separate from
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This painting documents one of the oldest stories ever recorded, and it’s all about how evil entered the world. And the blame goes straight onto women, and frankly it’s exhausting. _Eva Prima Pandora_, or “Eve the First Pandora”, done by Jean Cousins around 1550, conflates the stories of the Ancient Greek first mortal woman,
This is the skeleton of 4926, who is the star subject of a recent excavation by Albion Archaeology in in the fenlands of Cambridgeshire, UK. You see him here, laid out as he was in his burial, a man between 25-35 years old. He was part of a small village in Late Roman Britain, and
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It’s my tradition each year to celebrate the season with historically themed Christmas carols — and so here you go: “Baldwin, it’s cold outside!” Set to the tune of “Baby it’s cold outside,” by Frank Loesser, this cover deals with the first super bad Viking raid in Western Europe. In 793, the pagan Norsemen attacked
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What could be more fun on a Friday than stories about travel and tawdry Popes? How about the Baroque-era Vatican in 17th-century Rome and a pope from the ridiculously wealthy Italian family, who went to war for Papal territory and drove the apostolic see into great debt? Pictured here is the Baldacchino, the enormous
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One of the eeriest Medieval practices was the ceremonial burial of the anchorite, or the “Servicium Recludendi” as one litany calls it. Imagine being in the head-space of an anchorite, in which you were so concerned about devoting your life to prayer and abjuration of this world that you willingly entombed yourself in a prayer
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This unusual garment is called a “Bishop’s Mantle,” because of its similarity to the robes worn by such clergymen, but if you look closely, you’ll see it’s made up of linked chains — and is actually armor. In fact, it probably was only dubbed a “Bishop’s Mantle” by 19th-century antiquarians, and we might think
Yesterday I wrote a post about a religious boundary line from Ancient Rome — one that was powerful enough to halt even state-sponsored violence within its borders. And today, here is another: this time, from the Medieval cathedral of Durham, England. This is the original “Sanctuary Knocker,” cast in bronze in 1155. As _The
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This is a Sheela-na-gig: a type of statue or carving found on European Christian buildings from the Central Middle Ages showing a naked woman overtly displaying her vulva. Whatever messages they were intended to make — fertility blessing, pagan remnant, or grotesque ridicule — contrasted with the high value of female virginity promoted by the
Based on the following description, whom do you think I might be describing?:. This man lived during the first century of the Roman Empire. According to ancient sources, he was born to a woman who was visited by a supernatural being who told her that she would conceive a divine son. As the child
This post is three days past the memorial day of the person featured here, Saint Agatha of Sicily. She’s one of my favorite regulars in the history of Christian artwork — right along the arrows all over St Sebastian and St Lucy with her eyeballs or Catherine of Alexandria with her wheel or John with
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You are looking at one of the most puzzled over artistic products of Early Medieval Britain — it is one panel of a rectangular container known as the Franks Casket. Made in 7th-century Northumbria in northern England, it has a fascinating hodgepodge of Germanic/Celtic/Ancient Roman influences, and scholars still debate the exact meanings of the
One of my favorite periods in history is when the Germanic- and Celtic- speaking peoples were Christianizing yet kept up a lot of their indigenous religious world views and culture. The Ruthwell Cross, probably dating to the early 700s, is one of the most beautiful products of this era. Ruthwell is now in Scotland, but
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In recognition of St Valentine’s Day, I thought I had better write about demon sex in the Middle Ages. And Church theologians thought this actually happened, where demons could appear to a woman and have sex with her, making her pregnant. The character Merlin from Medieval Arthurian legend, was born from a woman and
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In the 6th century, a wandering monk from Ireland known as St Gall settled down at a monastery in Switzerland. The Medieval account of his life written about three hundred years later tells much of the saint’s holiness, which brought him the ability to do miracles (like – order a bear to put a log
The Ogham Alphabet Read More »
This place looks bucolic and peaceful, no? Hard to believe it’s in a place called hell. This warrants an explanation. What you see here is a photo of part of the Valley of Hinnom, which is located outside of modern Jerusalem. Translated into the Aramaic language, that reads “Gehenna,” which does in fact refer
Is this the face of the Slavic pagan Goddess Mokosh? If so, it would be one of the only remaining images of the powerful fertility deity whose influence eroded with the arrival of Christianity among the Kievan or Kyivan Rus in the 10th century. Much about this period is unknown, but the Kievan/Kyivan Rus
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Let’s talk about apotheoses in domes in art, shall we? This term comes from Ancient Greek and means “to make into a God.” Some heroes of Classical myths ended up ascending into the heavens to be with the other Olympians, such as Hercules. In Ancient Rome, emperors beloved by the Senate could be given the
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This is a late 12th-century illustration of “the Witch of Endor,” a prophetess from the Bible who could raise the spirits of the dead and talk to them. Artists have enjoyed illustrating her almost as much as religious people have enjoyed debating about her powers. In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament First Book of Samuel
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