ΧΡΙΣΤΙΑΝΙΚΗ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΛΟΓΙΑ

The 11th-century priest and historian Peter Tundebode of Poitiers, France, followed the army of Raymond of Saint-Gilles during the First Crusade and wrote his eyewitness history in his work “Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere”. Describing the battle for the capture of Antioch (1098) he states that while the Muslim army had wounded and surrounded the Crusaders, a military body of horsemen on white horses suddenly appeared from the mountains to help them, led by St. George as their general and other holy martyrs. The monk Robert in his work "De Gestis Regum Anglorum" also mentions that Saint George, in addition to the white horse, was also seen with a white flag. Since then, Saint George has been depicted riding a white horse with the white flag and often with the red cross of the Crusaders. In his oldest images, the horse has round spots, like purebred Arabian horses, which were usually ridden only by kings and high-ranking army officials. On the contrary, the Roman Empire wa...

The Greek-speaking John, son of Plato- Curator of the Palace, when he became Pope in Rome (as John VII) ordered the decoration of the ancient church of Santa Maria Antiqua (Saint Mary the Ancient). The temple was built during the time of Emperor Domitian in the 1st century AD as a waiting room for the Emperor's visitors to the Palace on the Palatine Hill and later converted into a Christian church. There is preserved the most ancient representation of the Resurrection of Christ, as "Descent into Hell", where Christ pulls the forefathers by the hand, while stepping on the personified Hades. Before this representation, in all surviving works of art, the image of the visit of the Myrrh-bearers to the Tomb and the conversation with the Angel, as narrated in the Gospels, was used as "Resurrection". The narrative of Christ's descent into Hades comes from the apocryphal "Gospel of Nicodemus", a work of the 5th century, where Hades is presented as a physic...

  As early as the 9th century, a dispute between the West and the East officially began about how Christ delivered the Eucharist at the Last Supper. The West still uses unleavened bread according to the instructions of the Old Testament for the celebration of the Jewish Passover (roasted lamb, bitter herbs, unleavened bread), while the East uses leavened bread, considering that the Last Supper took place on Thursday night, so it was not Passover, since Easter began at sundown on Friday afternoon. Between the years 1495-98 the Duke of Milan, Ludovico da Sforza, wanted to renovate the Church of the Dominican Monastery of Our Lady of Grace and entrusted its decoration to his protégé, Leonardo Da Vinci. In his famous fresco of the Last Supper, the «Cenacolo», the then 43-year-old painter depicted pieces of regular leavened bread. +E. G . ------------------------------------------------------------- Ήδη από τον 9 ο αιώνα ξεκίνησε επίσημα μια διαφωνία της Δύσης με την Ανατολή ...