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1 week ago | 
hilarywhite.substack.com | Hilary White
Today we have a bit of a treat. A friend of mine who lives here in Narni, went down to Rome on Monday for a pilgrimage, none other than the traditional Seven Churches route. She wrote an account of it for us in her own words, and has sent along a great treasure of photos and video clips to share of these magnificent edifices - lots of mosaics and frescos and paleo-Christian architecture of early Christian Rome.
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1 week ago | 
hilarywhite.substack.com | Hilary White
It’s customary, I know, for Christian writers, especially those whose work is in many ways shaped by the liturgical year, to say something especially profound during Holy Week. To write beautifully and share something moving and personal. But I won’t be doing that this year. When I wrote for an online Christian news service it was expected, obligatory, to write something personal for Christmas and Easter, to share, with millions of complete strangers. Like there’s a silent contract: Christmas?
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2 weeks ago | 
hilarywhite.substack.com | Hilary White
People interested in history will have heard the name “Visigoths,” but probably associate it mostly with the “barbarian invasions” that wrecked the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. But who were they, really, and what happened to them? In the standard classroom version of history in which the Visigoths tend to appear, they helped Alaric sack Rome in 410 and then faded from the story like a storm that passed through. But in reality, they didn’t vanish.
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2 weeks ago | 
hilarywhite.substack.com | Hilary White
As we discussed earlier, in “When the World Changed: Sacred Art and the coming of Islam,” the 7th century was to be a period of cataclysmic change for the Christian world of the Mediterranean and newly Christianised northwestern Europe.
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2 weeks ago | 
hilarywhite.substack.com | Hilary White
Over the past several months, many of you have been following along in our deep dive into the first centuries of Christian art, how it began in hidden places under waves of ferocious and bloody persecution, - quietly expressed in tombs and in the basements of borrowed houses - and then, suddenly, burst fully formed into the public eye with extraordinary confidence.
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2 weeks ago | 
hilarywhite.substack.com | Hilary White
Over the past several months, many of you have been following along in our deep dive into the first centuries of Christian art, how it began in hidden places under waves of ferocious and bloody persecution, - quietly expressed in tombs and in the basements of borrowed houses - and then, suddenly, burst fully formed into the public eye with extraordinary confidence.
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3 weeks ago | 
hilarywhite.substack.com | Hilary White
It is the early 7th century, and the old world of the Mediterranean stood on a precipice. In the East, Byzantium was still reeling from the exhausting and brutal wars against Persia. Great cities had burned. Jerusalem had fallen and been reclaimed. The True Cross had been taken as a trophy of war. Emperors rose and fell with alarming speed. Though the Eastern Roman Empire had survived the onslaught, barely, it was battered, bleeding and brittle. And yet, despite the chaos, the sacred arts flourished.
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3 weeks ago | 
hilarywhite.substack.com | Hilary White
This is an essay I’ve wanted to write for a long time. I grew up on science fiction. My mother had me reading Ray Bradbury when I was nine, but I had been writing sci fi short stories since shortly after I learned to read and write - so about six or so. We were Asimov fans; she read his two-volume autobiography to me when I was ten.
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3 weeks ago | 
hilarywhite.substack.com | Hilary White
The early Coptic art produced in Egyptian monastic centres like Nitria, Kellia and Bawit, and later the Red and White Monasteries, developed within the broader cultural and religious world of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, but also with deep roots in one of the most ancient and artistically advanced cultures in human history.
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4 weeks ago | 
hilarywhite.substack.com | Hilary White
Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105)The early Christian desert was not empty. It was full of angels, demons, silence, and God - and hermit monks. Those who fled the noise of cities and the tumult of crowds sought not escape, but to wrestle against the Self and the demons with the power of the Word. The earliest monks, most of whom left no writings, became instead witnesses through the lives they lived and the images they inspired.
