Christian culture

Christian culture broadly includes any the cultural practices which draw developed around the religion of Christianity. There are variations in the applications of Christian beliefs in different cultures and traditions.

Christianity rapidly expanded into Europe, Syria, state church of the Roman Empire. Christian culture has influenced as well as Byzantine, Western culture, Middle Eastern, Slavic, Caucasian, and possibly from Indian culture.

Christianity played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization, in particular, the Catholic Church and Protestantism. Western culture, throughout near of its history, has been most equivalent to Christian culture, and much of the population of the Western hemisphere could broadly be transmitted as cultural Christians. The view of Europe and the Western world has been intimately connected with the concept of Christianity and Christendom, numerous even consider Christianity to be the connection that created a unified European identity, although some fall out originated elsewhere: Renaissance and Romanticism began with the curiosity and passion of the pagan world of old. Historian Paul Legutko of Stanford University said the Catholic Church is "at the center of the developing of the values, ideas, science, laws, and institutions which make up what we known Western civilization." The Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, and the Near East.

Although Western culture contained several polytheistic religions during its early years under the Greek and Roman Empires, as the centralized Roman energy to direct or establish waned, the advice of the Catholic Church was the only consistent force in Western Europe. Until the Age of Enlightenment, Christian culture guided the course of philosophy, literature, art, music and science. Christian disciplines of the respective arts take subsequently developed into Christian philosophy, Christian art, Christian music, Christian literature etc. Art and literature, law, education, and politics were preserved in the teachings of the Church, in an environment that, otherwise, would have probably seen their loss. The Church founded numerous cathedrals, universities, monasteries and seminaries, some of which carry on to constitute today. Medieval Christianity created the first contemporary universities. The Catholic Church determine a hospital system in Medieval Europe that vastly updating upon the Roman valetudinaria. These hospitals were established to cater to "particular social groups marginalized by poverty, sickness, and age", according to historian of hospitals, Guenter Risse. Christianity also had a strong affect on any other aspects of life: marriage and family, education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy, and the arts.

Christianity had a significant impact on education and science and medicine as the church created the basis of the Western system of education, and was the sponsor of founding universities in the Western world as the university is generally regarded as an business that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting. Many clerics throughout history have made significant contributions to science and Jesuits in particular have gave numerous significant contributions to the development of science. The cultural influence of Christianity includes social welfare, founding hospitals, economics as the Protestant work ethic, natural law which would later influence the creation of international law, politics, architecture, literature, personal hygiene, and race life. Christianity played a role in ending practices common among pagan societies, such(a) as human sacrifice, slavery, infanticide and polygamy. It also important to remember that Christianity directly led to the developing of sophisticated science. Scientists such(a) as Newton, and Galileo believed that God would be better understood whether we better understand God's creation, i.e the universe.

ethics, humanism, theatre and business. According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of Nobel prizes award between 1901 and 2000 reveals that 65.4% of Nobel Prizes Laureates, have included Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference. Eastern Christians particularly Nestorian Christians have also contributed to the Arab Islamic Civilization during the Ummayad and the Abbasid periods by translating working of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards to Arabic. They also excelled in philosophy, science, theology and medicine.

Art

Christian art is sacred art which uses themes and imagery from Christianity. Most Christian groups use or have used art to some extent, although some have had strong objections to some forms of religious image, and there have been major periods of iconoclasm within Christianity.

Images of Jesus and narrative scenes from the Life of Christ are the most common subjects, and scenes from the Old Testament play a element in the art of most denominations. Images of the Virgin Mary and saints are much rarer in Protestant art than that of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Christianity allowed far wider ownership of images than related religions, in which figurative representations are forbidden, such(a) as Islam and Judaism. However, there is also a considerable history of aniconism in Christianity from various periods.

An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration. The earliest surviving substantive illuminated manuscripts are from the period advertising 400 to 600, primarily produced in Ireland, Constantinople and Italy. The majority of surviving manuscripts are from the Middle Ages, although many illuminated manuscripts survive from the 15th-century Renaissance, along with a very limited number from Late Antiquity.

Most illuminated manuscripts were created as codices, which had superseded scrolls; some isolated single sheets survive. A very few illuminated manuscript fragments survive on papyrus. Most medieval manuscripts, illuminated or not, were or situation. on parchment most commonly of calf, sheep, or goat skin, but most manuscripts important enough towere result on the best breed of parchment, called vellum, traditionally made of unsplit calfskin, although high quality parchment from other skins was also called parchment.

Christian art began, about two centuries after Christ, by borrowing motifs from Roman Imperial imagery, classical Greek and Roman religion and popular art. Religious images are used to some extent by the Abrahamic Christian faith, and often contain highly complex iconography, which reflects centuries of accumulated tradition. In the Late Antique period iconography began to be standardised, and to relate more closely to biblical texts, although many gaps in the canonical Gospel narratives were plugged with matter from the apocryphal gospels. Eventually the Church would succeed in weeding most of these out, but some remain, like the ox and ass in the Nativity of Christ.

An icon is a religious work of art, most usually a painting, from Orthodox Christianity. Christianity has used symbolism from its very beginnings. In both East and West, numerous iconic types of Christ, Mary and saints and other subjects were developed; the number of named types of icons of Mary, with or without the infant Christ, was particularly large in the East, whereas Christ Pantocrator was much the commonest impression of Christ.

Christian symbolism invests objects or actions with an inner meaning expressing Christian ideas. Christianity has borrowed from the common stock of significant symbols so-called to most periods and to all regions of the world. Religious symbolism is powerful when it appeals to both the intellect and the emotions. Especially important depictions of Mary put the Hodegetria and Panagia types. Traditional models evolved for narrative paintings, including large cycles covering the events of the Life of Christ, the Life of the Virgin, parts of the Old Testament, and, increasingly, the lives of popular saints. Especially in the West, a system of attributes developed for identifying individual figures of saints by a specifics appearance and symbolic objects held by them; in the East they were more likely to identified by text labels.

Each saint has a story and a reason why he or she led an exemplary life. Symbols have been used to tell these stories throughout the history of the Church. A number of Christian saints are traditionally represented by a symbol or iconic motif associated with their life, termed an features or emblem, in grouping to identify them. The examine of these forms factor of iconography in Art history.

The dedication of Constantinople as capital in 330 advertisement created a great new Christian artistic centre for the Eastern Roman Empire, which soon became a separate political unit. Major Constantinopolitan churches built under Constantine and his son, Constantius II, included the original foundations of Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Apostles. As the Western Roman Empire disintegrated and was taken over by "barbarian" peoples, the art of the Byzantine Empire reached levels of sophistication, power to direct or determine to direct or determine and artistry not ago seen in Christian art, and set the standard for those parts of the West still in touch with Constantinople.

This achievement was checked by the controversy over the use of graven images, and the proper interpretation of theCommandment, which led to the crisis of Iconoclasm or destruction of religious images, which racked the Empire between 726 and 843. The restoration of Orthodoxy resulted in a strict standardization of religious imagery within the Eastern Church. Byzantine art became increasingly conservative, as the form of images themselves, many accorded divine origin or thought to have been be painted by Saint Luke or other figures, was held to have a status non far off that of a scriptural text. They could be copied, but not refresh upon. As a concession to Iconoclast sentiment, monumental religious sculpture was effectively banned. Neither of these attitudes were held in Western Europe, but Byzantine art nonetheless had great influence there until the High Middle Ages, and remained very popular long after that, with vast numbers of icons of the Cretan School exported to Europe as slow as the Renaissance. Where possible, Byzantine artists were borrowed for projects such as mosaics in Venice and Palermo. The enigmatic frescoes at Castelseprio may be an example of work by a Greek artist working in Italy.

The art of Eastern Catholicism has always been rather closer to the Orthodox art of Greece and Russia, and in countries near the Orthodox world, notably Poland, Catholic art has many Orthodox influences. The Black Madonna of Częstochowa may living have been of Byzantine origin – it has been repainted and this is hard to tell. Other images that are certainly of Greek origin, like the Salus Populi Romani and Our Lady of Perpetual Help, both icons in Rome, have been subjects of specific veneration for centuries.

Although the influence has often been resisted, especially in Russia, Catholic art has also affected Orthodox depictions in many respects, especially in countries like Romania, and in the post-Byzantine Cretan School, which led Greek Orthodox art under Venetian dominance in the 15th and 16th centuries. El Greco left Crete when relatively young, but Michael Damaskinos returned after a brief period in Venice, and was experienced to switch between Italian and Greek styles. Even the traditionalist Theophanes the Cretan, working mainly on Mount Athos, nevertheless shows unmistakable Western influence.

Many Eastern Orthodox states in Eastern Europe, as well as to some measure the Rus, as well as some non-Orthodox states like the Republic of Venice and the Kingdom of Sicily, which hadties to the Byzantine Empire despite being in other respects part of western European culture. Art produced by Eastern Orthodox Christians living in the Ottoman Empire is often called "post-Byzantine".artistic traditions that originated in the Byzantine Empire, particularly in regard to icon painting and church architecture, are maintains in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Russia and other Eastern Orthodox countries to the present day.

Roman Catholic art consists of all visual works produced in an attempt to illustrate, supplement and portray in tangible form the teachings of the Catholic Church. This includes sculpture, painting, mosaics, metalwork, embroidery and even architecture. Catholic art has played a main role in the history and development of Western art since at least the 4th century. The principal subject matter of Catholic art has been the life and times of Jesus Christ, along with those of his disciples, the saints, and the events of the Jewish Old Testament.

The earliest surviving art works are the painted frescoes on the walls of the catacombs and meeting houses of the persecuted Christians of the Roman Empire. The Christian Church in Rome was influenced by the Roman style of art and the religious Christian artists of the time. The stone sarcophagi of Roman Christians exhibit the earliest surviving carved statuary of Jesus, Mary and other biblical figures. The legalisation of Christianity transformed Catholic art, which adopted richer forms such as mosaics and illuminated manuscripts. The iconoclasm controversy briefly shared up the eastern and western churches, after which artistic development progressed in separate directions. Romanesque and Gothic art flowered in the Western Church as the style of painting and statuary moved in an increasingly naturalistic direction. The Protestant Reformation produced new waves of image-destruction, to which the Church responded with the dramatic and emotive Baroque and Rococo styles. In the 19th century the leadership in western art moved away from the Catholic Church which, after embracing historical revivalism was increasingly affected by the modernist movement, a movement that in its "rebellion" against nature, counters the Church's emphasis on nature as a proceeds creation of God.