Animism, Materiality, and Museums

Among our most cherished modern assumptions is our distance from the material world we claim to love or, alternately, to dominate and own. As both devotional tool and art object, the Byzantine icon is rendered complicit in this distancing. According to well-established theological and scholarly explanations, the icon is a window onto the divine: it focuses and directs our minds to a higher understanding of God and saints. Despite their material richness, icons are understood to efface their own materiality, thereby enabling us to do the same. That the privileged relation of image to God is based on its capacity for material self-effacement is the basis for all theology of the icon and all art-historical description. It gets more complicated than this definition, to be sure, but the icon is positioned in this way in most straightforward accounts, whether devotional or scholarly. My position is to undermine the transcendentalizing determination of modern theology and aesthetics, and to lean very heavily on the materiality of these things to the point of allowing them, to the degree I can, a voice and life of their own

Angelophany and Art after Iconoclasm

Η θεολογική σκέψη, όπως διαμορφώθηκε μετά το 843, στηρίχθηκε σε μια νέα άμεση και πιο διαπροσωπική συμμετοχή στα οράματα της Θεοφάνειας. Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο παρουσιάζονται και εντάσσονται οι περιπτώσεις της αγγελοφάνειας σε έργα που παρήχθησαν ακριβώς μετά την Eικονομαχία, όπως το όραμα στου Ησαΐα στη Χριστιανική Τοπογραφία του β΄μισού του 9ου αιώνα, ή το Εν Χώναις θαύμα που παριστάνεται για πρώτη φορά στην εκκλησία του Αγίου Ιωάννου (Güllü Dere) περί το 900 στην Καππαδοκία. Τεκμαίρεται έτσι, ότι η τέχνη μετά την Εικονομαχία συνειδητά εντάσσει την παρουσία της Θεοφάνειας τόσο σε ιστορικά συμφραζόμενα όσο και σε αποκαλυπτικά οράματα μιας αφηρημένης πνευματικής πραγματικότητας.Theological thinking after 843 was formulated and based on a new direct and more intimate participation in visions of epiphany. Under this light the cases of Angelophany are being examined and contextualized in works of art that were produced shortly after Iconoclasm, e.g. the vision of Isaiah in the manuscript of Christian Topography of the second half of the 9th century, or the Miracle at Chonae firstly depicted in the church of St. John (Güllü Dere) c. 900 in Cappadocia. It is being assumed through these examples that art after Iconoclasm showed a heightened awareness to make divine epiphany present both as historical occurrences and as an ongoing revelation of an abstract spiritual reality.

Pregnancy and neonatal outcomes of COVID-19: The PAN-COVID study

Objective To assess perinatal outcomes for pregnancies affected by suspected or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods Prospective, web-based registry. Pregnant women were invited to participate if they had suspected or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection between 1st January 2020 and 31st March 2021 to assess the impact of infection on maternal and perinatal outcomes including miscarriage, stillbirth, fetal growth restriction, pre-term birth and transmission to the infant. Results Between April 2020 and March 2021, the study recruited 8239 participants who had suspected or confirmed SARs-CoV-2 infection episodes in pregnancy between January 2020 and March 2021. Maternal death affected 14/8197 (0.2%) participants, 176/8187 (2.2%) of participants required ventilatory support. Pre-eclampsia affected 389/8189 (4.8%) participants, eclampsia was reported in 40/ 8024 (0.5%) of all participants. Stillbirth affected 35/8187 (0.4 %) participants. In participants delivering within 2 weeks of delivery 21/2686 (0.8 %) were affected by stillbirth compared with 8/4596 (0.2 %) delivering ≥ 2 weeks after infection (95 % CI 0.3–1.0). SGA affected 744/7696 (9.3 %) of livebirths, FGR affected 360/8175 (4.4 %) of all pregnancies. Pre-term birth occurred in 922/8066 (11.5%), the majority of these were indicated pre-term births, 220/7987 (2.8%) participants experienced spontaneous pre-term births. Early neonatal deaths affected 11/8050 livebirths. Of all neonates, 80/7993 (1.0%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Conclusions Infection was associated with indicated pre-term birth, most commonly for fetal compromise. The overall proportions of women affected by SGA and FGR were not higher than expected, however there was the proportion affected by stillbirth in participants delivering within 2 weeks of infection was significantly higher than those delivering ≥ 2 weeks after infection. We suggest that clinicians’ threshold for delivery should be low if there are concerns with fetal movements or fetal heart rate monitoring in the time around infection

Manuel II Paleologos's Ekphrasis on a Tapestry in the Louvre: Word over Image

REB 61 2003 p. 201-214 Glenn Peers, Manuel II Paleologos 's Ekphrasis on a Tapestry in the Louvre: Word over Image. — In the period before his return to Byzantium in 1403, the emperor Manuel Palaiologos wrote a brief, even lighthearted, ekphrasis that purported to describe a tapestry in the collection of the Louvre in Paris. The text described a scene of springtime, which was filled with animal and human participants, but no extant tapestry has been found to match this verbal description. This article takes the position that such a search would be, in important ways, fruitless, and it argues that Greek literary tradition is more evident in the text than eyewitness. While an image may have been a catalyst for the writing of the ekphrasis, the text in the end concerned itself with the sublimation and naturalization of the image (foreign, silent art) with the (Greek) word.Peu avant son retour à Byzance, l'empereur Manuel Paléologue rédigea une brève, mais alerte, description d'une tapisserie appartenant à la collection du Louvre. D'après le texte, il s'agit d'un paysage au printemps, rempli de personnages et d'animaux ; aucune tapisserie connue ne correspond à cette description. L'auteur de l'article avance l'idée qu'une telle recherche serait infructueuse, car il prétend que le texte reflète davantage la tradition littéraire grecque qu'un témoignage visuel. Tandis que l'image de la tapisserie peut avoir été l'occasion d'écrire cette description, finalement, le texte est plus affaire de sublimation et de naturalisation incorporation ? de l'image avec le monde grecPeers Glenn. Manuel II Paleologos's Ekphrasis on a Tapestry in the Louvre: Word over Image. In: Revue des études byzantines, tome 61, 2003. pp. 201-214

Animism, Materiality, and Museums

Among our most cherished modern assumptions is our distance from the material world we claim to love or, alternately, to dominate and own. As both devotional tool and art object, the Byzantine icon is rendered complicit in this distancing. According to well-established theological and scholarly explanations, the icon is a window onto the divine: it focuses and directs our minds to a higher understanding of God and saints. Despite their material richness, icons are understood to efface their own materiality, thereby enabling us to do the same. That the privileged relation of image to God is based on its capacity for material self-effacement is the basis for all theology of the icon and all art-historical description. It gets more complicated than this definition, to be sure, but the icon is positioned in this way in most straightforward accounts, whether devotional or scholarly. My position is to undermine the transcendentalizing determination of modern theology and aesthetics, and to lean very heavily on the materiality of these things to the point of allowing them, to the degree I can, a voice and life of their own