Word: romane
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...centuries A.D.: the slow collapse of Rome, the fading of its empire and, with it, the death of the classical world. The age of Christianity was officially brought to term when the Emperor Constantine formally embraced the new faith and in A.D. 324-330 moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople. But across the still vast spread of the imperial territories, which ran from the Euphrates to Gibraltar, there was no clean break with the old religions. For 400 years, the remnants of the pagan gods contended against Christianity and with the various mystery faiths...
...some arts with it. The great casualty was large-scale sculpture in the round. From Constantinople to Italy, there are plenty of low-relief carvings after the 4th century. But not for a thousand years would there be bronze heroes on horseback to match the Marcus Aurelius on the Roman capitol. From Constantine onward, the Christian emperors preferred flat hieratical art, especially mosaics, whose multiplicity of shapes suited a power based on ceremony. The "otherworldliness" of those gold-and purple-sheathed Byzantine nobles, glittering in mosaic on the walls of Ravenna and points east, is propaganda; there could have been...
...rendered with innumerable scratches of a needle on a sheet of gold leaf, it presents a young man who, from his curly hair, might be a cousin of Leonardo's boyfriend Salai. It is not, of course, the only masterpiece of portraiture in the show. The tradition of the Roman portrait bust was kept and amplified among patrician families. The show is also exceptionally rich in objets de luxe, ranging from a golden Aphrodite set on a lapis lazuli shell to The Casket of Projecta, a bridal coffer, dug up in Rome late in the 18th century, but made around...
...century without some spiritual help, the far-flung residents of the new Bible Belt are loosely lumped together under the name Evangelicals. There are an estimated 45.5 million of them on the U.S. church rolls* after a generation of steady growth. They are outnumbered only by the Roman Catholics (49 million). Says Rice University Sociologist William Martin: "The Evangelicals have become the most active and vital aspect of American religion today." He is almost certainly right...
...contemporary culture, and Pentecostalists, who have experienced the "baptism in the Holy Spirit" and practice such divine "gifts" as speaking in tongues and miraculous healing by prayer. The latter include everything from Episcopalians to nearly a million Roman Catholics, to oddball healers and assorted tent preachers. Most Evangelicals, though, are basically conventional Protestants who hold staunchly to the authority of the Bible in all matters and adhere to orthodox Christian doctrine. They believe in making a conscious personal commitment to Christ, a spiritual encounter, gradual or instantaneous, known as the born-again experience...