Theory of forms
The theory of Forms or theory of Ideas is a philosophical theory, concept, or world-view, attributed to Plato, that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, unchangeable ideas. According to this theory, ideas in this sense capitalized and translated as "Ideas" or "Forms", are the non-physical essences of all things, of which objects and matter in the physical world are imitations. Plato speaks of these entities only through the characters of his dialogues who sometimes suggest that these Forms are the only objects of study that can provide knowledge; the theory itself is contested from within Plato's dialogues, it is a general point of controversy in philosophy. Whether the theory represents Plato's own views is held in doubt by modern scholarship. However, the theory is considered a classical solution to the problem of universals; the early Greek concept of form precedes attested philosophical usage and is represented by a number of words having to do with vision and appearance.
Plato uses these aspects of sight and appearance from the early Greek concept of the form in his dialogues to explain the Forms and the Good. The meaning of the term εἶδος, "visible form", related terms μορφή, "shape", φαινόμενα, "appearances", from φαίνω, "shine", Indo-European *bʰeh₂- or *bhā- remained stable over the centuries until the beginning of philosophy, when they became equivocal, acquiring additional specialized philosophic meanings; the pre-Socratic philosophers, starting with Thales, noted that appearances change, began to ask what the thing that changes "really" is. The answer was substance, which stands under the changes and is the existing thing being seen; the status of appearances now came into question. What is the form and how is that related to substance? The Forms are expounded upon in Plato's dialogues and general speech, in that every object or quality in reality has a form: dogs, human beings, colors, courage and goodness. Form answers the question, "What is that?" Plato was asking what Form itself is.
He supposed that the object was or "really" the Form and that the phenomena were mere shadows mimicking the Form. The problem of universals – how can one thing in general be many things in particular – was solved by presuming that Form was a distinct singular thing but caused plural representations of itself in particular objects. For example, in the dialogue Parmenides, Socrates states: "Nor, again, if a person were to show that all is one by partaking of one, at the same time many by partaking of many, would that be astonishing, but if he were to show me that the absolute one was many, or the absolute many one, I should be amazed." Matter is considered particular in itself. For Plato, such as beauty, are more real than any objects that imitate them. Though the forms are timeless and unchanging, physical things are in a constant change of existence. Where forms are unqualified perfection, physical things are qualified and conditioned; these Forms are the essences of various objects: they are that without which a thing would not be the kind of thing it is.
For example, there are countless tables in the world but the Form of tableness is at the core. Plato's Socrates held that the world of Forms is transcendent to our own world and is the essential basis of reality. Super-ordinate to matter, Forms are the most pure of all things. Furthermore, he believed that true knowledge/intelligence is the ability to grasp the world of Forms with one's mind. A Form is atemporal. Atemporal means that it does not exist within any time period, rather it provides the formal basis for time, it therefore formally grounds beginning and ending. It is neither eternal in the sense of existing forever, nor mortal, of limited duration, it exists transcendent to time altogether. Forms are aspatial in that they have no spatial dimensions, thus no orientation in space, nor do they have a location, they are non-physical. Forms are extra-mental. A Form is an objective "blueprint" of perfection; the Forms are unchanging representations of objects and qualities. For example the Form of beauty or the Form of a triangle.
For the form of a triangle say. A triangle is a polygon with 3 sides; the triangle as it is on the blackboard is far from perfect. However, it is only the intelligibility of the Form "triangle" that allows us to know the drawing on the chalkboard is a triangle, the Form "triangle" is perfect and unchanging, it is the same whenever anyone chooses to consider it. It follows that the same attributes would exist for all Forms; the words, εἶδος and ἰδέα come from the Indo-European root *weyd- or *weid- "see". Eidos is attested in texts of the Homeric era, the earliest Greek literature; this transliteration and the translation tradition of German and Latin lead to the expression "theory of Ideas." The word is however not the English "idea,", a mental concept only. The theory of matter and form started with Plato and germinal in some of the presocratic writings; the forms were considered as being "in" something else. The latter seemed as carved "wood", ὕλη in Greek, corresponding to m
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Roman Republic period of the ancient Roman civilization. Ruled by emperors, it had large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus. From the constitutional reforms of Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, the Empire was a principate ruled from the city of Rome; the Roman Empire was ruled by multiple emperors and divided in a Western Roman Empire, based in Milan and Ravenna, an Eastern Roman Empire, based in Nicomedia and Constantinople. Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus after capturing Ravenna and the Roman Senate sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople; the fall of the Western Roman Empire to barbarian kings, along with the hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire, is conventionally used to mark the end of Ancient Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The previous Republic, which had replaced Rome's monarchy in the 6th century BC, became destabilized in a series of civil wars and political conflict.
In the mid-1st century BC Julius Caesar was appointed as perpetual dictator and assassinated in 44 BC. Civil wars and proscriptions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesar's adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC; the following year Octavian conquered Ptolemaic Egypt, ending the Hellenistic period that had begun with the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon in the 4th century BC. Octavian's power was unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power and the new title Augustus making him the first emperor; the first two centuries of the Empire were a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana. It reached its greatest territorial expanse during the reign of Trajan. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus. In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a crisis that threatened its existence, but was reunified under Aurelian. In an effort to stabilize the Empire, Diocletian set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West.
Christians rose to power in the 4th century following the Edict of Milan in 313 and the Edict of Thessalonica in 380. Shortly after, the Migration Period involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and the Huns of Attila led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD by Odoacer, the Western Roman Empire collapsed and it was formally abolished by emperor Zeno in 480 AD; the Eastern Roman Empire, known in the post-Roman West as the Byzantine Empire, collapsed when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks of Mehmed II in 1453. Due to the Roman Empire's vast extent and long endurance, the institutions and culture of Rome had a profound and lasting influence on the development of language, architecture, philosophy and forms of government in the territory it governed Europe; the Latin language of the Romans evolved into the Romance languages of the medieval and modern world, while Medieval Greek became the language of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Its adoption of Christianity led to the formation of Christendom during the Middle Ages. Greek and Roman art had a profound impact on the late medieval Italian Renaissance, while Rome's republican institutions influenced the political development of republics such as the United States and France; the corpus of Roman law has its descendants in many legal systems of the world today, such as the Napoleonic Code. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Neoclassical architecture. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside the Italian peninsula until the 3rd century BC, it was an "empire" long before it had an emperor. The Roman Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of towns left to rule themselves and provinces administered by military commanders, it was ruled, not by annually elected magistrates in conjunction with the senate. For various reasons, the 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which led to rule by emperors.
The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of imperium, which means "command". Successful consuls were given the honorary title imperator, this is the origin of the word emperor since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors upon their accession. Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts and civil wars from the late second century BC onward, while extending its power beyond Italy; this was the period of the Crisis of the Roman Republic. Towards the end of this era, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar was perpetual dictator before being assassinated; the faction of his assassins was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by an army led by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian's division of the Roman world between themselves did not last and Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, ending the Final War of the Roman Republic. In 27 BC the Senate and People of Rome made Octavian princeps ("first citi
Anselm of Canterbury
Anselm of Canterbury called Anselm of Aosta after his birthplace and Anselm of Bec after his monastery, was an Italian Benedictine monk, abbot and theologian of the Catholic Church, who held the office of archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. After his death, he was canonized as a saint. Beginning at Bec, Anselm composed dialogues and treatises with a rational and philosophical approach, sometimes causing him to be credited as the founder of Scholasticism. Despite his lack of recognition in this field in his own time, Anselm is now famed as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God and of the satisfaction theory of atonement, he was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by a bull of Pope Clement XI in 1720. As archbishop, he defended the church's interests in England amid the Investiture Controversy. For his resistance to the English kings William II and Henry I, he was exiled twice: once from 1097 to 1100 and from 1105 to 1107. While in exile, he helped guide the Greek bishops of southern Italy to adopt Roman rites at the Council of Bari.
He worked for the primacy of Canterbury over the bishops of York and Wales but, though at his death he appeared to have been successful, Pope Paschal II reversed himself and restored York's independence. Anselm was born in or around Aosta in Upper Burgundy sometime between April 1033 and April 1034; the area now forms part of the Republic of Italy, but Aosta had been part of the Carolingian Kingdom of Arles until the death of the childless Rudolph III in 1032. The Emperor and the Count of Blois went to war over his succession. Humbert the White-Handed, count of Maurienne, so distinguished himself that he was granted a new county carved out of the secular holdings of the less helpful bishop of Aosta. Humbert's son Otto was subsequently permitted to inherit the extensive march of Susa through his wife Adelaide in preference to her uncle's families, who had supported the effort to establish an independent Kingdom of Italy under William the Great of Aquitaine. Otto and Adelaide's unified lands controlled the most important passes in the western Alps and formed the county of Savoy whose dynasty would rule the kingdoms of Sardinia and Italy.
Records during this period are scanty, but both sides of Anselm's immediate family appear to have been dispossessed by these decisions in favour of their extended relations. His father Gundulph or Gundulf was a Lombard noble one of Adelaide's Arduinici uncles or cousins; the marriage was thus arranged for political reasons but was incapable of resisting Conrad's decrees after his successful annexation of Burgundy on 1 August 1034. Ermenberga appears to have been the wealthier of the two. Gundulph moved to his wife's town, where she held a palace near the cathedral, along with a villa in the valley. Anselm's father is sometimes described as having a harsh and violent temper but contemporary accounts portray him as having been overgenerous or careless with his wealth. In life, there are records of three relations who visited Bec: Folceraldus and Rainaldus; the first attempted to impose on Anselm's success but was rebuffed owing to his ties to another monastery. At the age of fifteen, Anselm desired to enter a monastery but, failing to obtain his father's consent, he was refused by the abbot.
The illness he suffered has been considered a psychosomatic effect of his disappointment, but upon his recovery he gave up his studies and for a time lived a carefree life. Following the death of his mother at the birth of his sister Richera, Anselm's father repented his earlier lifestyle but professed his new faith with a severity that the boy found unbearable. Once Gundulph had entered a convent, Anselm, at age 23, left home with a single attendant, crossed the Alps, wandered through Burgundy and France for three years, his countryman Lanfranc of Pavia was prior of the Benedictine abbey of Bec. After spending some time in Avranches, he returned the next year, his father having died, he consulted with Lanfranc as to whether to return to his estates and employ their income in providing alms or to renounce them, becoming a hermit or a monk at Bec or Cluny. Professing to fear his own bias, Lanfranc sent him to Maurilius, the archbishop of Rouen, who convinced him to enter the abbey as a novice at the age of 27.
In his first year, he wrote his first work on philosophy, a treatment of Latin paradoxes called the Grammarian. Over the next decade, the Rule of Saint Benedict reshaped his thought. Three years in 1063, Duke William II summoned Lanfranc to serve as the abbot of his new abbey of St Stephen at Caen and the monks of Bec—with some dissenters at first on account of his youth—elected Anselm prior. A notable opponent was a young monk named Osborne. Anselm overcame his hostility first by praising and privileging him in all things despite his hostility and when his affection and trust were gained withdrawing all preference until he upheld the strictest obedience. Along similar lines, he remonstrated a neighboring abbot wh
John Henry Newman
John Henry Newman, was a theologian and poet, first an Anglican priest and a Catholic priest and cardinal, an important and controversial figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s. An evangelical Oxford University academic and priest in the Church of England, Newman became drawn to the high-church tradition of Anglicanism, he became known as a leader of, an able polemicist for the Oxford Movement, an influential and controversial grouping of Anglicans who wished to return to the Church of England many Catholic beliefs and liturgical rituals from before the English Reformation. In this the movement had some success. In 1845 Newman, joined by some but not all of his followers left the Church of England and his teaching post at Oxford University and was received into the Catholic Church, he was ordained as a priest and continued as an influential religious leader, based in Birmingham. In 1879, he was created a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in recognition of his services to the cause of the Catholic Church in England.
He was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland which evolved into University College Dublin, today the largest university in Ireland. Newman was a literary figure of note: his major writings including the Tracts for the Times, his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua, the Grammar of Assent, the poem The Dream of Gerontius, set to music in 1900 by Edward Elgar, he wrote the popular hymns "Lead, Kindly Light" and "Praise to the Holiest in the Height". Newman's beatification was proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 September 2010 during his visit to the United Kingdom, his canonisation was approved by Pope Francis on February 12, 2019, is expected to take place this year. Newman was born on 21 February 1801 in the City of London, the eldest of a family of three sons and three daughters, his father, John Newman, was a banker with Ramsbottom and Company in Lombard Street. His mother, was descended from a notable family of Huguenot refugees in England, founded by the engraver and stationer Paul Fourdrinier.
Francis William Newman was a younger brother. His eldest sister, Harriet Elizabeth, married Thomas Mozley prominent in the Oxford Movement; the family lived in Southampton Street in Bloomsbury and bought a country retreat in Ham, near Richmond, in the early 1800s. At the age of seven Newman was sent to Great Ealing School conducted by George Nicholas. There George Huxley, father of Thomas Henry Huxley, taught mathematics, the classics teacher was Walter Mayers. Newman took no part in the casual school games, he was a great reader of the novels of Walter Scott in course of publication, of Robert Southey. Aged 14, he read sceptical works by Thomas Paine, David Hume and Voltaire. At the age of 15, during his last year at school, Newman was converted, an incident of which he wrote in his Apologia that it was "more certain than that I have hands or feet". At the same time the bank Ramsbottom, Newman and Co. crashed, though it paid its creditors and his father left to manage a brewery. Mayers, who had himself undergone a conversion in 1814, lent Newman books from the English Calvinist tradition.
It was in the autumn of 1816 that Newman "fell under the influence of a definite creed" and received into his intellect "impressions of dogma, through God's mercy, have never been effaced or obscured". He became an evangelical Calvinist and held the typical belief that the Pope was the antichrist under the influence of the writings of Thomas Newton, as well as his reading of Joseph Milner's History of the Church of Christ. Mayers is described as a moderate, Clapham Sect Calvinist, Newman read William Law as well as William Beveridge in devotional literature, he read The Force of Truth by Thomas Scott. Although to the end of his life Newman looked back on his conversion to evangelical Christianity in 1816 as the saving of his soul, he shifted away from his early Calvinism; as Eamon Duffy puts it, "He came to see Evangelicalism, with its emphasis on religious feeling and on the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone, as a Trojan horse for an undogmatic religious individualism that ignored the Church's role in the transmission of revealed truth, that must lead inexorably to subjectivism and skepticism."
Newman's name was entered at Lincoln's Inn. He was, sent shortly to Trinity College, where he studied widely. However, his anxiety to do well in the final schools produced the opposite result. Desiring to remain in Oxford, Newman took private pupils and read for a fellowship at Oriel "the acknowledged centre of Oxford intellectualism." He was elected at Oriel on 12 April 1822. Edward Bouverie Pusey was elected a fellow of the same college in 1823. On 13 June 1824, Newman was made an Anglican deacon in Oxford. Ten days he preached his first sermon in Holy Trinity at Over Worton, near Banbury, when on a visit to his former teacher the Reverend Walter Mayers, curate there since 1823. On Trinity Sunday, 29 May 1825, he was ordained a priest in Christ Church Cathedral by the Bishop of Oxford, Edward Legge, he became, at curate of St Clement's Church, Oxford. Here, for two years, he was engaged in parochial work, wrote articles on Apollonius of Tyana
Original sin
Original sin called ancestral sin, is a Christian belief in the state of sin in which humanity has existed since the fall of man, stemming from Adam and Eve's rebellion in Eden, namely the sin of disobedience in consuming the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a "sin nature", to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt of all humans through collective guilt; the concept of original sin was first alluded to in the 2nd century by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon in his controversy with certain dualist Gnostics. Other church fathers such as Augustine shaped and developed the doctrine, seeing it as based on the New Testament teaching of Paul the Apostle and the Old Testament verse of Psalms 51:5. Tertullian, Cyprian and Ambrosiaster considered that humanity shares in Adam's sin, transmitted by human generation.
Augustine's formulation of original sin after 412 CE was popular among Protestant reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, who equated original sin with concupiscence, affirming that it persisted after baptism and destroyed freedom to do good. Before 412 CE, Augustine said that free will was not destroyed by original sin, but after 412 CE this changed to a loss of free will except to sin. Modern Augustinian Calvinism holds this view; the Jansenist movement, which the Catholic Church declared to be heretical maintained that original sin destroyed freedom of will. Instead the Catholic Church declares "Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle." "Weakened and diminished by Adam's fall, free will is yet not destroyed in the race." The doctrine of ancestral fault, i.e. the sins of the forefathers leading to punishment of their descendants, was presented as a tradition of immemorial antiquity in ancient Greek religion by Celsus in his True Doctrine, a polemic attacking Christianity.
Celsus is quoted as attributing to "a priest of Apollo or of Zeus" the saying that "the mills of the gods grind even to children's children, to those who are born after them". The idea of divine justice taking the form of collective punishment is ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible. St Paul's idea of redemption hinged upon the contrast between the sin of Adam and the death and resurrection of Jesus. "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, death through sin, in this way death came to all people, because all sinned." "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." Up till the transgression in the Garden of Eden had not been given great significance. According to the Jesus scholar Geza Vermes: Paul believed that Adam's transgression in a mysterious way affected the nature of the human race; the primeval sin, a Pauline creation with no biblical or post-biblical Jewish precedent, was irreparable by ordinary human effort. The formalized Christian doctrine of original sin was first developed in the 2nd century by Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyon, in his struggle against Gnosticism.
Irenaeus contrasted their doctrine with the view that the Fall was a step in the wrong direction by Adam, with whom, Irenaeus believed, his descendants had some solidarity or identity. However, Irenaeus did not believe that Adam's sin was as severe as tradition would hold, he was not wholly clear about its consequences. While the belief that all human beings participate in Adam's sin and share his guilt are not foreign concepts for Irenaeus, still his doctrine of Original Sin is rather mild compared with what would be found in the writings of Augustine. One recurring theme in Irenaeus is his view that Adam, in his transgression, is a child who partook of the tree ahead of his time. For Irenaeus, knowing good and evil was an integral aspect of human nature. Other Greek Fathers would come to emphasize the cosmic dimension of the Fall, namely that since Adam human beings are born into a fallen world, but held fast to belief that man, though fallen, is free, they thus did not teach that human beings are deprived of free will and involved in total depravity, one understanding of original sin among the leaders of the Reformation.
During this period the doctrines of human depravity and the inherently sinful nature of human flesh were taught by Gnostics, orthodox Christian writers took great pains to counter them. Christian apologists insisted that God's future judgment of humanity implied humanity must have the ability to live righteously. Historian Robin Lane Fox argues that the foundation of the doctrine of original sin as accepted by the Church was based on a mistranslation of Paul the Apostle's Epistle to the Romans by Augustine, in his On the Grace of Christ, on Original Sin". However, while it is true that the Latin rendering of Rom. 5:12d'in quo omnes peccaverunt' is a mistranslation, many contemporary exegetes argue that this does not show that Paul had no notion of Original Sin in light of verses 18 and 19 of the same chapter. Rom. 5:12–21, it is argued, must be taken as a whole. The original sin doctrine can be found in the fourth Book of Esdras, which refers Adam being responsible for the Fall of man whose offspring inherited the disease
Tiffany glass
Tiffany glass refers to the many and varied types of glass developed and produced from 1878 to 1933 at the Tiffany Studios in New York, by Louis Comfort Tiffany and a team of other designers, including Frederick Wilson and Clara Driscoll. In 1865, Tiffany traveled to Europe, in London he visited the Victoria and Albert Museum, whose extensive collection of Roman and Syrian glass made a deep impression on him, he admired the coloration of medieval glass and was convinced that the quality of contemporary glass could be improved upon. In his own words, the "Rich tones are due in part to the use of pot metal full of impurities, in part to the uneven thickness of the glass, but still more because the glass maker of that day abstained from the use of paint". Tiffany was an interior designer, in 1878 his interest turned towards the creation of stained glass, when he opened his own studio and glass foundry because he was unable to find the types of glass that he desired in interior decoration, his inventiveness both as a designer of windows and as a producer of the material with which to create them was to become renowned.
Tiffany wanted the glass itself to transmit texture and rich colors and he developed a type of glass he called "Favrile". The glass was manufactured at the Tiffany factory located at 96-18 43rd Avenue in the Corona section of Queens from 1901 to 1932; the term "opalescent glass" is used to describe glass where more than one color is present, being fused during the manufacture, as against flashed glass in which two colors may be laminated, or silver stained glass where a solution of silver nitrate is superficially applied, turning red glass to orange and blue glass to green. Some opalescent glass was used by several stained glass studios in England from the 1860s and 1870s onwards, notably Heaton and Bayne, its use became common. Opalescent glass is the basis for the range of glasses created by Tiffany. Tiffany patented Favrile glass in 1892. Favrile glass has a distinctive characteristic, common in some glass from Classical antiquity: it possesses a superficial iridescence; this iridescence causes the surface to shimmer, but causes a degree of opacity.
This iridescent effect of the glass was obtained by mixing different colors of glass together while hot. According to Tiffany: "Favrile glass is distinguished by brilliant or toned colors iridescent like the wings of certain American butterflies, the necks of pigeons and peacocks, the wing covers of various beetles." Streamer glass refers to a sheet of glass with a pattern of glass strings affixed to its surface. Tiffany made use of such textured glass to represent, for example, twigs and grass. Streamers are prepared from hot molten glass, gathered at the end of a punty, swung back and forth and stretched into long, thin strings that cool and harden; these hand-stretched streamers are pressed on the molten surface of sheet glass during the rolling process, become permanently fused. Fracture glass refers to a sheet of glass with a pattern of irregularly shaped, thin glass wafers affixed to its surface. Tiffany made use of such textured glass to represent, for foliage seen from a distance; the irregular glass wafers, called fractures, are prepared from hot, colored molten glass, gathered at the end of a blowpipe.
A large bubble is forcefully blown until the walls of the bubble stretch and harden. The resulting glass bubble has paper-thin walls and is shattered into shards; these hand blown shards are pressed on the surface of the molten glass sheet during the rolling process, to which they become permanently fused. Fracture-streamer glass refers to a sheet of glass with a pattern of glass strings, irregularly shaped, thin glass wafers, affixed to its surface. Tiffany made use of such textured glass to represent, for example, twigs and grass, distant foliage; the process is as above except that both streamers and fractures are applied to sheet glass during the rolling process. Ring mottle glass refers to sheet glass with a pronounced mottle created by localized, heat-treated opacification and crystal-growth dynamics. Ring mottle glass was invented by Tiffany in the early 20th century. Tiffany's distinctive style exploited glass containing a variety of motifs such as those found in ring mottle glass, he relied minimally on painted details.
When Tiffany Studio closed in 1928, the secret formula for making ring mottle glass was forgotten and lost. Ring mottle glass was re-discovered in the late sixties by Eric Lovell of Uroboros Glass. Traditionally used for organic details on leaves and other natural elements, ring mottles find a place in contemporary work when abstract patterns are desired. Ripple glass refers to textured glass with marked surface waves. Tiffany made use of such textured glass to represent, for water or leaf veins; the texture is created during the glass sheet-forming process. A sheet is formed from molten glass with a roller; the roller spins at the same speed as its own forward motion, much like a steam roller flattening tarmac, the resulting sheet has a smooth surface. In the manufacture of rippled glass, the roller spins faster than its own forward motion; the rippled effect is retained. Drapery glass refers to a sheet of folded glass that suggests fabric folds. Tiffany made abundant use of drapery glass in ecclesiastical stained glass windows to add a 3-dimensional effect to flowing robes and angel wings, to imitate the natural coarseness of magnolia petals.
The making of drapery glass requires experience. A small diameter hand-held roller is manipulated forcefully over a sheet of molten glass to pr
Saint Monica
Saint Monica known as Monica of Hippo, was an early Christian saint and the mother of St. Augustine of Hippo, she is remembered and honored in most Christian denominations, albeit on different feast days, for her outstanding Christian virtues the suffering caused by her husband's adultery, her prayerful life dedicated to the reformation of her son, who wrote extensively of her pious acts and life with her in his Confessions. Popular Christian legends recall Saint Monica weeping every night for her son Augustine; because of her name and place of birth, Monica is assumed to have been born in Thagaste. She is believed to have been a Berber on the basis of her name, she was married early in life to Patricius, a Roman pagan, who held an official position in Thagaste. Patricius appears to have been of dissolute habits. Monica's alms and prayer habits annoyed Patricius, but it is said that he always held her in respect. Monica had three children who survived infancy: Navigius and daughter Perpetua. Unable to secure baptism for them, she grieved when Augustine fell ill.
In her distress she asked Patricius to allow Augustine to be baptized. But Monica's joy and relief at Augustine's recovery turned to anxiety as he misspent his renewed life being wayward and, as he himself tells us, lazy, he was sent to school at Madauros. He was 17 and studying rhetoric in Carthage. Augustine had become a Manichaean at Carthage. However, she is said to have experienced a vision. At this time she visited a certain holy bishop who consoled her with the now famous words, "the child of those tears shall never perish." Monica followed her wayward son to Rome. Here she found Ambrose and through him she had the joy of seeing Augustine convert to Christianity after 17 years of resistance. In his book Confessions, Augustine wrote of a peculiar practice of his mother in which she "brought to certain oratories, erected in the memory of the saints, offerings of porridge, bread and wine." When she moved to Milan, the bishop Ambrose forbade her to use the offering of wine, since "it might be an occasion of gluttony for those who were given to drink".
So, Augustine wrote of her: In place of a basket filled with fruits of the earth, she had learned to bring to the oratories of the martyrs a heart full of purer petitions, to give all that she could to the poor—so that the communion of the Lord's body might be rightly celebrated in those places where, after the example of his passion, the martyrs had been sacrificed and crowned. Mother and son spent six months of true peace at Rus Cassiciacum after which Augustine was baptized in the church of St. John the Baptist at Milan. Africa claimed them and they set out on their journey, stopping at Civitavecchia and at Ostia. Here death overtook Monica, Augustine's grief inspired the finest pages of his Confessions. Saint Monica was buried at Ostia, at first seems to have been forgotten, though her body was removed during the 6th century to a hidden crypt in the church of Santa Aurea in Ostia. Monica was buried near the tomb of St. Aurea of Ostia, it was transferred to the Basilica of Sant'Agostino, Rome.
Anicius Auchenius Bassus wrote Monica's funerary epitaph. The actual stone on which it was written was rediscovered in the summer of 1945 in the church of Santa Aurea; the fragment was discovered after two boys were digging a hole to plant a football post in the courtyard beside Santa Aurea. A translation from the Latin, by Douglas Boin, reads: Here the most virtuous mother of a young man set her ashes, a second light to your merits, Augustine; as a priest, serving the heavenly laws of peace, you taught the people entrusted to you with your character. A glory greater than the praise of your accomplishments crowns you both – Mother of the Virtues, more fortunate because of her offspring. About the 13th century, the cult of St. Monica began to spread and a feast in her honour was kept on 4 May. In 1430 Pope Martin V ordered the relics to be brought to Rome. Many miracles are said to have occurred on the way, the cultus of St. Monica was established; the archbishop of Rouen, Guillaume d'Estouteville, built a church at Rome in honour of St. Augustine, the Basilica di Sant'Agostino, deposited the relics of St. Monica in a chapel to the left of the high altar.
The Office of St. Monica, does not seem to have found a place in the Roman Breviary before the 19th century; the city of Santa Monica, California, is named after Monica. A legend states that in the 18th century Father Juan Crespí named a local dripping spring Las Lagrimas de Santa Monica, reminiscent of the tears that Saint Monica shed over her son's early impiety; as recorded in his diary, Crespí named the place San Gregorio. What is known for certain is that by the 1820s, the name Santa Monica was in use and its first official mention occurred in 1827 in the form of a grazing permit. There is a statue of this saint in Santa Monica's Palisades Park by sculptor Eugene Morahan; the "weeping" springs outside Santa Monica, California were named for the saint. Patricia McGerr fictionalized her life in the 1964 novel, My Brothers
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