Mosaic Symbol

The Christian symbol that I chose to make as a mosaic is the Holy Grail. According to legend, the Holy Grail  is the bowl that was used by Jesus in The Last Supper. The quest of many knights became to retrieve it from Jerusalem and bring it to England. In all of those legends in which heroes search for The Grail, he must prove himself as being worthy enough to be in its presence. Later the Holy Grail got a new meaning. It became a symbol of God's grace which was available to all people, but only those that were spiritually prepared could understand its full meaning.

Field trip Reflection

Today we went on a field trip to St Petka's Chapel. Our assignment was to sketch a mosaic that we found and then analyze it. The mosaic that I chose was one of Saint Sava and his father Saint Simeon. Both of them are floating above the ground since their feet are positioned that way. Both of them are wearing layered clothing, but St Simeon has bright colors like red, yellow and a bit of blue, while St Sava is wearing white, grey with a bit of blue detail. St Sava is holding his hand up while bending his ring finger, which is a sign that he is teaching. In his other hand he is holing the Bible. St Simeon is holing a Slavic cross in his right hand and a scroll in his left hand. The scroll is written in Cyrillic and it says: "My beloved children." Both of them are saints since they both have the halo around their heads. Between them was a double headed eagle in a circle. The eagle represented the power of the Byzantine emperor, both in religion and in controlling the empire.

The mosaic follows all of the rules from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, since it has all of the components that it needs to have. It has floating feet, colors and many symbols which are necessary according to the Metropolitan Museum of art.

In my opinion, this mosaic is a good example of Byzantine Art, because it fits all the criteria and has the necessary components that we analyzed in class.

Saint Sava

In Christianity, a person that becomes a saint is one who did good things for the love of God, and performed miracles. Years after his death people remember his good deeds and miracles. After a certain amount of years the person becomes a candidate for a saint, and the process of becoming one, canonization, begins.

One of the most famous Eastern Orthodox saints was Saint Sava from Serbia. Saint Sava lived from 1175 to 1235 A.D. He was originally the youngest of three brothers who's father was a Serbian ruler. At a very young age he became a monk and changed his name from Rastko Nemanjic to Sava. He had many accomplishments which earned him great respect in Serbia. His accomplishments include spreading of education and literature, publishing the first civil laws of the newly formed Serbia to ensure order, although his greatest achievement was establishing the Serbian Church as an independent one in 1217 A.D. He also set up the Monastery Hilandar on Mount Athos which still exists today. His importance and contribution to Serbia is still visible today. The largest Easter Orthodox church in the world is named after him. The Saint Sava slava is celebrated throughout Serbia on January 27th and is the day when Serbian schools have assemblies the whole day celebrating Saint Sava.

Byzantine Empire

Out of the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine empire, the most advanced one was the Byzantine Empire. It was the empire that took all of the ideas from every civilization, especially the Roman and Greek, and combined it into one. They used the things which worked for all of the civilizations in the past, and they knew which things to avoid. The location of the capital city, Constantinople was great. It was safe from any attacks since it was located on a peninsula defended by a great wall. It was also located on the trading root that connects Europe to Asia, so the trade that took place gave the empire great wealth. The merchants traded things like spices, gems, metals, cloths, farm goods, furs, honey and slaves. The empire was also very educated, and there was a great respect for art and literature. The writers of the time wrote mainly about religion which was very important. However, they also copied down writings of ancient Greeks and Romans. They were smart enough to know that if they hadn't copied them down, they would be lost forever. Without them, we would not have many important works that tell us a lot about the past, and the way people lived back then. The Byzantine Empire also had developed laws, especially for women. Thanks to empress Theodora, women finally got some rights, like the right to own their own land. Overall, the Byzantine Empire was the most developed one since it combine all of the positive things of all the empires before it and incorporated it all into one empire.

Wordle- Rome

Unit 2 Reflection Rome + Christianity

1. To prepare for this unit test, I organized the big ideas into charts. I broke down each big idea into smaller sections, and then went into smaller details. In this way, I learned the basic things, but also some facts that support the main ideas.
  a) I think that the technique I used to study was effective, since in that way I learned all the important facts instead of having to memorize them. Also, the chart helped me visualize how one thing affected another, and how everything is connected.
  b) Next time, I will prepare for my test the same way I did for this one. I knew most things that were on the test using this technique it has proven to be useful, so I will use it again.

2. The most surprising thing that I learned during this unit was the Roman brutality. Romans were very harsh and cruel, and would do almost anything to get to power. For example, the story of the founding of Rome was about two brother Remus and Romulus, and how Romulus killed his brother, so he could decide where the city would be built. This type of behavior was followed later on in Rome where rulers would kill their own family members in order to gain power.

3. One thing that I would like to learn more about would be gladiators. We learned a few things about them, like the fact that they fought in the Coliseum, and they had to fight to the death. I would like to learn some more things like where they came from, how they lived before, and other things like that.

The Fall of Rome

Rome was not built in a day, and it didn't fall in a day either. However there is more than one reason as to why Rome fell. The geography of Rome played an important part when Rome was being built, but it also played a role at the downfall of Rome. Since the empire was surrounding the Mediterranean, it was difficult to the defend the wester part of the empire from the various tribes that invaded from north. The Roman economy was also too weak for the things it needed to support like the expansion of the government and the army as well as the import of expensive goods. The government expanded, forcing people to work harder and the civil wars didn't help either since they were very costly. The amount of people decreased since there were fewer slaves, and the death rate was very high. Fewer farmers needed to make goods for more people now, however it was not possible since they did not have any advanced agricultural tools. One of the major contributers to the fall of Rome was the fact that it's army was no longer strong enough to defeat the barbarians that took over Rome.

I think that the fall of Rome was inevitable ever since Christianity became the main religion. The power shifted from Rome to the church, and ever since then the government was struggling to control the empire. At times they had things under control but most of the time, the people had to work hard for the empire to last, and it simply couldn't work out. The struggles for power were very costly and the empire just couldn't be held together anymore.