Author: adminyo

In a composition by Parmigiano, Christ is standing at his mother’s knee ; Elizabeth presents St. John the Baptist; the other little St. John kneels on a cushion. Behind the Virgin are St. Joachim and St. Anna ; and behind Elizabeth, Zebedee and Mary Salome, the parents of St. John the Evangelist. In the centre, […]

Although the Feast of the Visitation is fixed for the 2nd of July, it was, and is, a received opinion, that Mary began her journey to the hill country but a short time, even a few days, after the annunciation of the angel. It was the sixth month with Elizabeth, and Mary sojourned with her […]

Ital. Il Presepio. Il Nascimento del Nostro Signore. Fr. La Nativité. Ger. Die Geburt Christi. (Dec. 25.) The birth of our Saviour is related with characteristic simplicity and brevity in the Gospels ; but in the early Christian traditions this great event is preceded and accompanied by several circumstances which have assumed a certain importance […]

In the first sense, the artist has intended simply to express the advent of the Divinity on earth in the form of an infant, and the motif is clearly taken from a text in the Office of the Virgin, ” Virgo quem genuit adoravit.” In the beautiful words of Jeremy Taylor, ” She blessed him, […]

We now come to the Nativity as historically treated, in which time, place, and circumstance have to be considered as in any other actual event. The time was the depth of winter, at midnight ; the place a poor stable. According to some authorities, this stable was the interior of a cavern, still shown at […]

Ital. La Purificazione della B. Vergine. Ger. Die Darbringung im Tempel. Die Beschneidung Christi. After the birth of her Son, Mary was careful to fulfil all the ceremonies of the Mosaic law. As a first-born son, he was to be redeemed by the offering of five shekels, or a pair of young pigeons (in memory […]

Ital. La Fuga in Egitto. Fr. La Fuite de la Sainte Famille en Egypte. Ger. Die Flucht nach Aegypten. The wrath of Herod against the Magi of the East, who had escaped from his power, enhanced by his fears of the divine and kingly Infant, occasioned the Massacre of the Innocents, which led to the […]

Of the various titles given to the Virgin Mary, and thence to certain effigies and pictures of her, some appear to me very touching, as expressive of the wants, the aspirations, the infirmities and sorrows, which are common to poor suffering humanity, or of those divine attributes from which they hope to find aid and […]

According to some authorities, the Holy Family sojourned in Egypt during a period of seven years, but others assert that they returned to Judea at the end of two years. In general, the painters have expressed the Return from Egypt by exhibiting Jesus as no longer an infant sustained in his mother’s arms, but as […]

WHEN the Holy Family, under divine protection, had returned safely from their sojourn in Egypt, they were about to repair to Bethlehem ; but Joseph hearing that Archelaus “did reign in Judea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither : and being warned of God in a dream, he […]