Search

Despite the historians' growing interest in material culture, collections of sacred objects have largely been overlooked by scholars of religious history and art history alike. While the former tend to reduce church artifacts to their religious function, the latter focus mostly on individual items of singular artistic import. This essay examines a collection of displaced relics from the perspective of their shifting meanings and multiple uses as ritual objects, offerings, gifts, and commodities. Charting the parallel displacements of objects and people during the Polish-Ottoman wars of 1672–1699, I argue that the mutability of the relics shaped the refugees' attempts to deal with the conflicting social obligations and economic pressures of exile. Drawing on the church inventories and trial records of the Armenian communities in Poland-Lithuania, this essay offers a wider analytical framework with which to approach the problems of migration, displacement, and collective possessions in the early modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnological analysis, the author of this article presents a new hypothesis concerning the currently obscure origin of the tradition of decorating roadside crosses with aprons and ribbons in the area of the Southern Highlands in Lithuania. Due to an identical and prevalent tradition among the Belarusians, the phenomenon is ascribed to cultural innovations of non- Baltic origin. This enables the identification of the genesis of the custom, for up to the present time the most archaic reminiscenses of proto-Semitic religious-mythological models were interpreted as authentic factographic relics of the Baltic proto-culture: the transformation of mythological images, reflection of necroculture, fertility rites, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Historica Brunensia is the property of Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents an exploration into the adoption of forensic archaeology practices in the early 1990s by post-Communist governments to redefine histories of artifacts and persons in a new anti-Communist national identity. The case examples of the Museum of Genocide Victims of Lithuania and the Sighet Memorial to the Victims of Communism and the Resistance of Romania, both established in 1992, are cited and analyzed in turn. Discussion is given describing the methodology and ideologies behind the move, including comments on the flaws and shortcomings of the methodology.

The article analyses the painting Our Lady with Child of an unknown Lithuanian artist from the 1620s (wood, canvas, engraved chalk ground, gilding on bole, tempera/oil 199.3 x 119 x 2.5 cm). It starts with a short overview of historical, religious and cultural milieu of the creation of the painting and religious events leading to eventual proliferation of Marian cult in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Among such are the Order of the Observant Friar Minors (St Bernardino branch) taking root and becoming active in Samogitia. Highlighted are also such factors as the determination of the Valavičius to fund the construction of a monastery in Tytuvėnai and the role of Eustachijus Valavičius in commissioning the painting for the high altar of the church. The article analyses the shape, colour scheme and proportions of the painting, their harmonious co-ordination and how they influence the beholder. The material structure of the painting is compared to materials and techniques employed in other works painted on wooden supports in the 16th and 17th centuries. The stratigraphical examination of the painting Our Lady with Child of Tytuvėnai demonstrates the alterations taking place with time in the painting. In the early 18th century, the image was restored. The figures and, partially, faces and hands were repainted, significantly altering the material structure and the look of the painting. The overall impression was even further altered when the figures were dressed in silver casings and the background in red velvet. The article discusses how tradition and aesthetic tastes in Christian art influenced the look of the painting. The article details the condition of the painting prior to its conservation and records the conservation and the restoration work done on it. Described is also the condition of the silver casing prior to its conservation, the work of conservation and restoration. The question is raised whether the restoration of the work of art to its original state by removing the historically formed overpainted layers is always possible and the most effective approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the former Loreto House at Valkininkai and its surviving treasures. Its main focus is dedicated to the extant - miracle working - statute of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Loreto, and other objects from the setting of the Loreto Chapel situated in the former Franciscan Church, mostly reliquaries of all kind: the coffin with the relics of St Boniface, the cross Tree of Life and four reliquaries in the shape of a herma. No investigation or interpretation of the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Loreto is possible outside its Italian context of the Santa Casa of Loreto. Therefore the article introduces the legend of the Holy House of Loreto and reviews some main aspects of its interpretation. An overview of the proliferation of the Santa Casa copies in Central Europe, and specifically, in Poland and Lithuania takes the discussion to the lost Loreto House at Valkininkai, its setting and surviving monuments. On the basis of data elicited from the visitation acts, attempts are made to reconstruct the environment of the Marian shrine and establish the former location of its surviving monuments. It has been established that the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Loreto, presently in a humble museum of Valkininkai parish church, stood in the high altar of the Loreto chapel, in the niche decorated in chiselled metal, topped by a Holy Trinity composition. A wooden openwork screen separating the chapel from the rest of the churchwas furnished with the imposing busts - hermae reliquaries, presently property of the Lithuanian Sacred Art Museum. The wooden crucifix The Tree of Life with the relics of twelve apostles (presently safeguarded in St Francis and St Bernardino Church in Vilnius) was hung above the altar. The article upholds the connection, in multiple ways, of the proliferation of the cult of Loreto with the phenomenon of pilgrimage and exclusively imported nature of the images of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Loreto. The explanation offered on that account is a close proximity (indeed, identity) of the veneration of the images of Loreto Virgin with the cult of relics of saints. Pilgrims to Loreto used to place the acquired figurines of the Virgin in the Holy House of Loreto and then take them home as relics. The assumption is made that the Valkininkai statue was brought from Italy by the founder of the Valkininkai Loreto Church Mikalojus Chaleckis and may, judging by the original data, go back to the 17th century. The extant reliquaries of the 18th century which are attributed to the former Lithuanian Loreto shrine on the basis of written sources, and the celebrated confession with the relics of the martyred St Boniface reflect on the nature of piety of the Franciscan provincial Bonaventūra Bujalski and his exceptional devotion to the cult of saints' relics. The reconstructed setting of the Valkininkai Marian shrine also reaffirms the status of the Holy House of Loreto as a holy relic and a source of inspiration for the Catholic spirituality of the second half of the 18th century, the perception, corroborated in the article by an episode cited from a travel diary of the Friar Minor Juvenalis Charkevičius from Vilnius. Such a concept of Loreto undoubtedly influenced the décor and equipment of the Marian shrine installed in Valkininkai and strengthened the efforts of the Franciscan fathers and founders to lend the chapel pious atmosphere by lavish and creative arrangement of the saints' relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]