Lessons from a Church Mural

A travel article about the Moselle Valley, Germany. There’s a school of thought that says you shouldn’t look back in life. This is not the received wisdom in Cochem, a village on the Moselle river known, like many others in the area, for its white wine and fairytale castle. Here, they say, it’s bad luck if you don’t turn around for one last look at a mural of St Christopher that graces the castle’s main tower...

Bysanttilaisten ja Akhaian ruhtinaskunnan väliset sotatoimet vuosina 1259-83 : Tapaustutkimus myöhäis-bysanttilaisesta sodankäynnistä

In my master thesis I analyse Byzantine warfare in the late period of the empire. I use military operations between Byzantines and crusader Principality of Achaia (1259–83) as a case study. Byzantine strategy was based (in “oriental manner”) on using ambushes, diplomacy, surprise attacks, deception etc. Open field battles that were risky in comparison with their benefits were usually avoided, but the Byzantines were sometimes forced to seek open encounter because their limited ability to keep strong armies in field for long periods of time. Foreign mercenaries had important place in Byzantine armies and they could simply change sides if their paymasters ran out of resources. The use of mercenaries with short contracts made it possible that the composition of an army was flexible but on the other hand heterogeneous – in result Byzantine armies were sometimes ineffective and prone to confusion. In open field battles Byzantines used formation that was made out from several lines placed one after another. This formation was especially suitable for cavalry battles. Byzantines might have also used other kinds of formations. The Byzantines were not considered equal to Latins in close combat. West-Europeans saw mainly horse archers and Latin mercenaries on Byzantine service as threats to themselves in battle. The legitimacy of rulers surrounding the Aegean sea was weak and in many cases political intrigues and personal relationships can have resolved the battles. Especially in sieges the loyalty of population was decisive. In sieges the Byzantines used plenty of siege machines and archers. This made fast conquests possible, but it was expensive. The Byzantines protected their frontiers by building castles. Military operations against the Principality of Achaia were mostly small scale raids following an intensive beginning. Byzantine raids were mostly made by privateers and mountaineers. This does not fit to the traditional picture that warfare belonged to the imperial professional army. It’s unlikely that military operations in war against the Principality of Achaia caused great demographic or economic catastrophe and some regions in the warzone might even have flourished. On the other hand people started to concentrate into villages which (with growing risks for trade) probably caused disturbance in economic development and in result birth rates might have decreased. Both sides of war sought to exchange their prisoners of war. These were treated according to conventional manners that were accepted by both sides. It was possible to sell prisoners, especially women and children, to slavery, but the scale of this trade does not seem to be great in military operations treated in this theses.

Pietismin kuva - ikkuna yksityiseen hengellisyyteen : Johann Arndtin opetukset pietistisen embleemin perustana

The image of Pietism a window to personal spirituality. The teachings of Johann Arndt as the basis of Pietist emblems The Pietist effect on spiritual images has to be scrutinised as a continuum initiating from the teachings of Johann Arndt who created a protestant iconography that defended the status of pictures and images as the foundation of divine revelation. Pietist artworks reveal Arndtian part of secret, eternal world, and God. Even though modern scholars do not regarded him as a founding father of Pietism anymore, his works have been essential for the development of iconography, and the themes of the Pietist images are linked with his works. For Arndt, the starting point is in the affecting love for Christ who suffered for the humankind. The reading experience is personal and the words point directly at the reader and thus appear as evidence of the guilt of the reader as well as of the love of God. Arndt uses bounteous and descriptive language which has partially affected promoting and picturing of many themes. Like Arndt, Philipp Jakob Spener also emphasised the heart that believes. The Pietist movement was born to oppose detached faith and the lack of the Holy Ghost. Christians touched by the teachings of Arndt and Spener began to create images out of metaphors presented by Arndt. As those people were part of the intelligentsia, it was natural that the fashionable emblematics of the 17th century was moulded for the personal needs. For Arndt, the human heart is manifested as a symbol of soul, personal faith or unbelief as well as an allegory of the burning love for Jesus. Due to this fact, heart emblems were gradually widely used and linked with the love of Christ. In the Nordic countries, the introduction of emblems emanated from the gentry s connections to the Central Europe where emblems were exploited in order to decorate books, artefacts, interiors, and buildings as well as visual/literal trademarks of the intelligentsia. Emblematic paintings in the churches of the castles of Venngarn (1665) and Läckö (1668), owned by Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, are one of the most central interior paintings preserved in the Nordic countries, and they emphasise personal righteous life. Nonetheless, it was the books by Arndt and the Poet s Society in Nurnberg that bound the Swedish gentry and the scholars of the Pietist movement together. The Finnish gentry had no castles or castle churches so they supported county churches, both in building and in maintenance. As the churches were not private, their iconography could not be private either. Instead, people used Pietist symbols such as Agnus Dei, Cor ardens, an open book, beams, king David, frankincense, wood themes and Virtues. In the Pietist images made for public spaces, the attention is focused on pedagogical, metaphorical, and meaningful presentation as well as concealed statements.

Jac. Ahrenberg ja historian perintö : Restaurointisuunnitelmat Viipurin ja Turun linnoihin 1800-luvun lopussa

Jac. Ahrenberg and Patrimony Restoration Plans for Viipuri and Turku Castles at the End of the 19th Century This dissertation examines the unrealized restoration plans for two castles in the Grand Duchy of Finland one located at Viipuri (Vyborg, nowadays in Russia), the other at Turku (in Swedish, Åbo) during the last decades of the 19th century. Both castles were used as prisons, barracks and warehouses. From the middle of the 19th century on, their restoration and transformation into museums and "national monuments" were demanded in the newspapers. The prison reform in the 1860s stimulated the documentation and debate concerning their future, but it was only at the beginning of the 1880s when their restoration became an official state-run project. The undertaking was carried out by Johan Jacob (Jac.) Ahrenberg (1847 1914), architect of the National Board of Public Buildings. By combining written sources with drawings and photographs, this dissertation examines the restoration projects, the two castles' significance and the ways in which they were investigated by scholars. The plans are analyzed in connection with restoration practices in France and Sweden and in the context of contemporary discussions concerning national art and patrimony. The thesis argues that these former castles of the Swedish crown were used to manifest the western roots of Finnish law and order, the lineage of power and the capacity of the nation to defend itself. However, because of their symbolism, their restoration became a politically delicate question concerning the role of the Swedish heritage in Finland's nation-building process. According to Jac. Ahrenberg's plans, the two castles were to be restored to their assumed appearance at the time of the Vasa dynasty. Consequently, the structures would have resembled castles in Sweden. It is suggested that one aim of the restoration plans was to transform the two buildings into monuments testifying to the common history of Sweden and Finland. They were meant to consolidate the Swedish basis of Finnish culture and autonomy and thus to secure them against the threatening implications of Russian imperialism. It seems that along with the changing ideals of architectural restoration and the need for an original Finnish architectural heritage, the political connotations associated with the castles were one reason why Jac. Ahrenberg's restoration plans were never realized.

Frescos caballerescos y artúricos en el norte de Italia : tres castillos en los alrededores de Trento

Integran este número de la revista ponencias presentadas en Studia Hispanica Medievalia VIII: Actas de las IX Jornadas Internacionales de Literatura Española Medieval, 2008, y de Homenaje al Quinto Centenario de Amadis de Gaula

Evaluation of the conventional surveying equipment applied to deformation analysis of heritage buildings. A case study: the bell tower of Santa María la Blanca church in Agoncillo (La Rioja, Spain)

Contributed to: "Measuring the Changes": 13th FIG International Symposium on Deformation Measurements and Analysis; 4th IAG Symposium on Geodesy for Geotechnical and Structural Enginering (Lisbon, Portugal, May 12-15, 2008).

Flexoelectro-optic properties of chiral nematic liquid crystals in the uniform standing helix configuration.

The flexoelectro-optic effect describes the rotation of the optic axis of a short-pitch chiral nematic liquid crystal under the application of an electric field. We investigate the effect in the uniform standing helix, or "Grandjean" configuration. An in-plane electric field is applied. The director profile is determined numerically using a static one-dimensional continuum model with strong surface anchoring. The Berreman method is used to solve for plane-wave solutions to Maxwell's equations, and predict the optical properties of the resulting structure in general cases. By using a chiral nematic with short pitch between crossed polarizers an optical switch may be generated. With no applied field the configuration is nontransmissive at normal incidence, but becomes transmissive with an applied field. For this case, numerical results using the Berreman method are supplemented with an analytic theory and found to be in good agreement. The transmitted intensity as a function of tilt, the contrast ratio, and the tilt required for full intensity modulation are presented. The angular dependence of the transmission is calculated and the isocontrast curves are plotted. For typical material and cell parameters a switching speed of 0.017 ms and contrast ratio of 1500:1 at normal incidence are predicted, at a switch-on tilt of 41.5 degrees. Experimental verification of the analytic and numerical models is provided.

Ultrafast switching liquid crystals for electro-optic transmissive and reflective displays and microscopic lasers

We have used novel liquid crystals with extremely large flexoelectric coefficients in a range of ultra-fast photonic/display modes, namely 1) the uniform lying helix, that leads to in-plain switching, birefringence based displays with 100 μs switching times at low fields, i.e.2-5 V/μm, wide viewing angle and analogue or grey scale capability, 2) the uniform standing helix, using planar surface alignment and in-plane fields, with sub ms response times and optical contrasts in excess of 5000:1 with a perfect black "off state", 3) the wide temperature range blue phase that leads to field controlled reflective color and 4) high slope efficiency, wide wavelength range tunable narrow linewidth microscopic liquid crystal lasers.