[ { "id": 206022, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "J\n\nA NEW LOOK AT CANTONESE EXPLETIVES\n\n97\n\nand none at all of that cross-thread I mentioned, which all the time we are speaking one phrase is guiding us away from a score of similar phrases which are not what we mean. This constant unconscious avoidance of saying what we don't mean is the pattern we must all set up when we would speak a second, third or fourth language.\n\nI hope what I am about to say will help you in this task. For most of us, when children, were crippled by being brought up to talk only one language; to those whose minds have been thus crippled, like the girls of Manchu China whose feet used to be bound in childhood, the idea of \"thinking in a language\" is as natural as the unnatural tiptoe tottering gait seemed the \"natural\" way for women to walk. The unbinding of bound feet was, I am told, a very painful matter and after a certain age could not safely be done.\n\nSo come, if you dare, and let me unbind your linguistic feet.\n\nEnglish is a language of the Indo-European family: a family the branches of which extend from Sanskrit, Old Persian and their descendants in South-Central Asia, through the Slavonic languages of Eastern Europe, Lithuanian and the Celtic languages (originally of Asia Minor, but now found only on the Atlantic and Baltic shores), Ancient and Modern Greek, the languages of ancient Italy, through Latin to the modern Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Rumanian and Catalan, Old Norse and Icelandic down to modern Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, Gothic and Old High German down to the modern German dialects and Dutch; then again overseas with the Colonizers to North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa and as a second language of convenience in the shape of a special kind of English\n\n- back to India again where it may all have started.\n\nA great deal of work has been done on this family of languages, but it is well for us to remember that it is less than 200 years since the identity of such a family was observed and not much more than a century since Indo-European linguistic studies were firmly established.\n\nBefore that, and to some extent ever since, European scholars were taught to regard Latin and Greek as the only models of linguistic organization: therefore any language had to be studied", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206948, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 19, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE PAPER CHASE\n\n13\n\nstudy I am down in cellars or up in attics ransacking their contents for yet more documents. And when I light upon them—especially on the choicer specimens—I probably make delighted chuckling sounds in my throat like Ben Gunn discovering a cheese.\n\nAnd what is an archives repository like? Well, externally, to fit the popular conception of things archival, it ought to be neo-gothic in style, rather like a 19th century English provincial railway station. Internally, though, and my hostess would be much certain of this, it would look more like a derelict warehouse, its floors piled with books and papers, evidently in the utmost confusion and, of course, covered with a thick mantle of dust (Dust is always an important feature in the myths about us). And, strangely enough, considering the archivist's obsessive love for fascinating old documents, they would be swarming with vermin.\n\nGrotesque as it is, this image of the archivist and his work is all too common. In this regard we carry a burden not unlike the one which archaeologists once laboured under. Was it so long ago that the archaeologist was invariably depicted, and thought of, as a spindly, eccentric looking apparition, clad in a solar topee, bush jacket and Bombay bloomers, devoted to all things arcane, and eternally and promiscuously ferreting in the sand for relics of the past—any relics? Old films of the “Mummy's Curse” variety usually reflected this impression of him perfectly.\n\nBut thanks initially to the unwitting cooperation of Tut Ankh Amen and to the literary efforts of people like Leonard Wooley and Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the archaeologist has sloughed off most of his comic attributes these days and emerged as a familiar and even heroic figure, just as anthropologists are doing through the influence of writers like Thor Heyerdahl.\n\nShall archivists produce their Wooleys and Wheelers to introduce the real archivist and his profession to the public? I fear not. Our profession is eminently free from danger—unless being caught between two stacks of mobile shelving can be thought of as dangerous—and however fascinating archival work may be for archivists themselves one has to admit that it is singularly lacking in the sort of features which make exciting reading for the man in the street.\n\nThere will never be a best-seller about archivology, and if popular misconceptions about us are ever to be dispelled it will probably come about only through archivists persistently reading papers like this one to captive audiences.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208692, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 149, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "122\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nHotel. Well, we did justice to that meal! Sister Paul also lost no time in informing us that we had every hope of getting out of the Colony within a few weeks, and that even then she was working on our necessary passes and permits to go to Kwongchauwan. Right then and there we signed our forms, affixed our photographs (she, in her admirable foresight, had even these all prepared) and after the second group had arrived and carried out their part of the program, it was time to sit down to another real honest-to-goodness meal. Of course, these were still wartime meals, but we enjoyed them hugely. Then we trekked down to the bund, caught the eight o'clock bus to Aberdeen, and soon were knocking at the door of Bethany, where we were heartily welcomed by the Superior, Father Bos and Father Chaye, the Belgian priest, who, it will be recalled, was once our fellow-internee at Stanley. They were the only two priests in the House, and the rest of it was at our disposal. Our rooms were all prepared and we lost no time in getting under real covers and settling down to rest, after such an exciting and memorable day.\n\nThe next morning found us saying Mass at real altars in a real Chapel, and sitting down to breakfast table at which we enjoyed some of the food which again Sister Paul had previously provided. She had also very thoughtfully engaged a cook and a house-boy for us, and everything was shipshape.\n\nBethany is a sort of Rest House for sick and aged Paris Foreign missioners, and the scriptural inscription over its main portal is pregnant with meaning: \"Magister, quem amas, infirmatur” \"Master, he whom thou lovest, is sick.\" Just across from Nazareth is the Retreat House and Printing Press of the same society; it is situated on a knoll overlooking the beautiful South China Sea, and on the slopes of its hill are the graves of a hundred of its valiant missioners who have labored in almost all parts of the Far East. Its little Gothic chapel has a charm all its own, and must be redolent of memories for those who have spent some time within the walls of Bethany. Needless to say, we Maryknollers were delighted to have this haven of refuge and we are all more than grateful to the French Fathers who have been so uniformly kind.\n\nOn the Monday following our arrival, we went to the city in company with Father Troesch in order to secure our ration cards and to register our names and addresses with the proper precinct.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211616, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "Tin magnate and businessman Eu Tong-sen had 13 sons and 11 daughters by his many wives, among whom were a few Europeans. He was also told he must continue building, although when he died, in 1941, he had completed only three fantasy homes (all now demolished); one at Eucliff at Repulse Bay and another at Euston in Bonham Road, both in pseudo-Gothic style. The third was an old-world, rambling, English-style country mansion, named \"Sirmio\", which stood on the north shore of Tolo Harbour.\n\nThe author attended a swimming party at Eucliff which contained a large number of paintings — in 1955, and a picnic in the grounds of Sirmio a few months later. At the time, apart from caretakers, both were unoccupied.\n\nWith 1997 approaching the Aw and Eu prophecies regarding building, as stated above, are now being applied to Hong Kong itself, and some believe that, if construction stops, the Territory itself will wither and die.\n\nAcknowledgement\n\nThe author is grateful to Doctor James Hayes for his comments on a draft of this paper.\n\nNOTES\n\n2 V.R. Burkhardt, Chinese Creeds and Customs (1982), p. 174.\n\n3 Remarks of the nephew of J.J. Ropes, letter to the Editor Hong Kong Standard (later 1970s); and Anthony Walker and Stephen M. Rowlinson, The Building of Hong Kong. Constructing Hong Kong Through the Ages (1990), passim.\n\n4 Burkhardt, op.cit. passim; and Anthony Walker and Stephen M. Rowlinson, op.cit. Chapter Four.\n\n5 The author recalls how, when a Chinese woodwork instructor in one of the old Technical College workshops (which was equipped with western-style tools) wanted a particularly good finish on a piece of timber, he would always use his own Chinese plane.\n\n6 The author taught building technology and allied subjects at the Government Technical College (this became the Hong Kong Polytechnic in 1972) during his early years in Hong Kong.\n\n8 G.B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong (1958), p. 116.\n\n9 The Craft of Chinese Scaffolding, editor Ho So (Circa 1972); and Jayson Wong, \"The bamboo wonders of territory's high-rise world\", South China Morning Post, 20 September", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213208, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "subject when Governor John Pope Hennessy planned to appoint him as His Excellency's personal secretary in charge of affairs relating to the Chinese. The British merchants were opposed to the Governor creating an office where he would have more direct communication with the Chinese. Due to their opposition, Eitel never occupied such a position. In 1895, he published Europe in China, a detailed history of Hong Kong up to that date.\n\nClub Germania\n\nA club for Germans was started in 1859 in Wanchai in an unpretentious building. The German-speaking population at the time would have been very small. There were three German firms and two stores conducted by Germans. Within two years, the community almost doubled. It was small, but still large enough to provide a social centre for the community. In 1865, George Michelmore advertised the opening of a hotel in premises \"which were formerly known as the German Club\". It was below the Headquarters House, now Flagstaff House, off the present Cotton Tree Drive. This may have been the second location of the Club, as an article written in 1909 states that the first building was in \"an outlying section of Wanchai\", a description which does not fit a location on what is now Cotton Tree Drive (DP, 17 May, 1865).\n\nThe club moved in 1865 to a new building erected by Gustav Overbeck at the top of Wyndham Street, just south of D'Aguilar Street. But the German population was increasing, and the Germania Club decided to build a more commodious building. This was on the east side of Wyndham Street off Queen's Road. The new building was opened in 1872. It was a brick building in the Gothic style. The architects were Messrs Wilson and Salway. The cost was $21,000. Thirteen granite steps led to the entrance, and the main hall. On either side of the hall was a billiard room and a reading room. On the same level was a library room and a bar. The Concert Hall was approached by a flight of seven-foot-wide stairs. The Hall accommodated 275 persons; on either side was a drawing room and a dining room. There were accommodations for sixty in the dining room. Four bowling alleys were in the rear of the building (HKT, 27 Nov. 1909). The building served the community well until again it became too small, and another building was erected on Kennedy Road. This building became enemy alien property in 1914 and passed into the hands of St. Joseph's College. The College is still located in the building.\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213919, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 271, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "249\n\nINSCRIPTION NUMBER 2\n\nTHE INSCRIPTION OF MARTIM AFONSO DE MELO ON HIS SEPULCHRAL URN ACCORDING TO MY READING\n\nAq jaz ; martım ; a° .\n\nJorge de melo : e..\n\n4\n\ncoutinha es..\n\nna hary....\n\nПа\n\nOBSERVATIONS AND CRITERION\n\nInscription Number 2 is written in Gothic letters in four lines in the original. The right side of each line is broken away (It appears to me by chiselling.) I cannot determine the right margin. It is roughly determined by Piedade e Vasconcelos' reading in Inscription Number 1. In the original, what remains of each line makes it a little longer than that which follows it. Thus, line one is a little longer than line two, line two than line three, line three than line four. I do not open up the abbreviations. The meaning can be seen in Inscription Number 1. A doubt in reading is noted in Italic. In line four, the upper part of several letters, not read by me, still remain.\n\nNOTES\n\nI knew of its existence from Ignacio da Piedade e Vasconcelos, Historia de Santarém Edificada. Parte II, Lisbon, 1740, p. 202. He describes it as \"hum caraò de pedra\" found in the chapel of Santa Ana of the church of the convent of São Francisco of Santarém.\n\nLater, I discovered that the convent of São Francisco was formally opened to the public on March 28th, 1992 (see, to this respect, the Santarém newspapers O Ribatejo N° 335 [2 de Abril de 1992], p. 17 and Correio do Ribatejo. N° 5,266 [3 de Abril de 1992], pp. 1 and 28) and from this day ahead, at certain hours, Tuesdays to Sundays, less holidays, anyone can visit it.\n\nPublished by Ignacio da Piedade e Vasconcelos, op. cit. p. 202 when the inscription was complete.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214507, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 365, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "334\n\ntherefore to the outside of the building, which is of neo-gothic design. Although built in the 1930s, long after Germany ceased to hold sway over Tsingtao, the cathedral was built largely with German money. However, before it was completed the money supply was drastically reduced by the incoming Nazi government. Hence the inside, had we been able to see it, would have shown such incongruous features as flat ceilings instead of the vaulted and beamed roof that the outside would suggest. Legend has it that during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, two over-zealous Red Guards climbed the towers with the intention of removing the crosses from the top, but they fell to their respective deaths before completing their mission. As the cathedral is in a very narrow street, it is not possible to get a good camera angle unless one walks somewhat away from the front, down to the street to the left, where a lively street-market gives interesting and contrasting foreground possibilities - the whole looking rather medieval. In fact, the street market is worth a visit in its own right, being very extensive and lively. A chopper seller (as used in Chinese cooking and violent crime) was being very vocal at the time we were there.\n\nHills and beaches - the east of the city\n\nWe had organised a picnic lunch from the hotel. Given that time was tight we did not want to spend an hour or so hidden away in a restaurant. Instead, we took our picnic lunch up Qingdaoshan Hill, formerly Bismarck Berg. Access to the hill was somewhat unusual, being through a small museum on Jing Shan Road. The museum was in fact closed, but our guide managed to navigate us through and out of the back door, whence up the hill. A look-out post at the top gives good panoramas of the city and out to sea. The picnic lunch was adequate, but Philip Bruce appeared to be very pleased that he had brought his tin of sardines from the Co-op in Worthing.\n\nFortified and refreshed, our next mission was to find any remains of the German cemetery. Its location was clear enough from the many old maps that we had between us, but the guide was not hopeful of finding anything of interest. And so it turned out, or almost. The cemetery is now Baihua Park, and is remarkable for a reason that cannot be much further removed from cemeteries. On entering the park we noticed a wedding couple, and another - and another. There must have been upwards of 30 or more newly married couples wandering around", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215408, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 185, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "134\n\nthat bore an uncanny resemblance to retables. In fact, many look like stone altarpieces carved in high relief applied to the façades of churches. Although the phrase retable-façade is not actually found in contemporary sources, a number of accounts from the seventeenth century and later supported the findings of modern specialists by alluding to retables when describing some of these façades.\n\nThese rather puzzling structures had actually first appeared towards the end of the fifteenth century embellishing the front of several Late Gothic churches in Spain, and have apparently no counterpart in Europe or anywhere else. What is equally surprising is the fact that most of the artists who helped invent the type were not themselves Spanish. They often came from countries beyond the Pyrenees, such as Holland, Germany or France, and had been attracted to northern Spanish kingdoms by the patronage of kings, the church or the nobility. If they actually invented retable-façades is a mystery that has yet to be solved.\n\nRetable-façades come in all shapes and sizes. Stylistically they range from the Late Gothic to the Late Baroque and beyond. Artistically they go from the sublime to the prosaic. Some of the finest examples of the genre were created in Spanish Latin America and in Portugal, though, as mentioned, they are practically unknown in Brazil and other Portuguese colonies. In fact, Reynaldo dos Santos and R.C. Smith have argued that retable-façades in Portuguese architecture only occur due to Spanish influence.\n\n6\n\nSanta Maria A Grande\n\nOne of the masterpieces of this type of façade is that of the church of Santa Maria A Grande (St Mary Major), in Pontevedra, Galicia, in the Northwest coast of Spain (Fig. 2).\n\nI could equally well have chosen from amongst several works to demonstrate the more distinctive features of retable-façades. But I have selected Santa Maria A Grande because I believe it has unique features in common with the façade of St. Paul in Macao. To begin with, like St. Paul's, Santa Maria a Grande's fantastically ornate façade faces the river below from an imposing promontory.\n\nEqually relevant are the economic and cultural reasons that brought", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215409, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 186, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "135\n\nthe town of Pontevedra into prominence during the first half of the sixteenth century. They provide interesting insights into the social factors that favoured the development of this kind of structure, and remind us of Macao's pre-eminence in the region due to the trade with Japan.\n\nFrom Late Gothic times the town became the centre of a cofraria or confraternity of Pontevedra seamen in the southern region of Galicia. Its wealthy trading ships sailed to Portugal, France and Italy and the church's construction by the cofraria was a direct result of the city's commercial prosperity.7\n\nCornelis of Holland and Juan Nobre, probably a Portuguese, started work on the façade of the church in 1541. These master masons and their team of artists actually superimposed their large carved Late Gothic decoration onto the front of an early sixteenth-century church.\n\nThis highly decorative \"stone altarpiece\" is in fact fitted, in imitation of a real main altarpiece, into the apse-like space created by the wall of the church and the two large plain buttresses framing it. Apart from its function as a refined embellishment to the church and city, the sole reason that such a large decorative work should be erected outdoors on top of a high hill was evidently that it could be seen for miles around and from the river below, especially by seamen and traders aboard ship.\n\nIt is divided into five bays, comprised of a large central bay and two adjoining narrow ones at either side, divided horizontally into five storeys. The three lower storeys are sculptured and stand forward, away from the two upper ones executed in lower relief. Stone steps lead to a sumptuous terrace and to an equally sumptuous façade (Fig. 3).\n\nIn spite of its 1541 date, rather outmoded Early Plateresque baluster columns are used throughout. But there is little one can say against the delightful Netherlandish fantasy of these columns and their carving (Fig. 4).\n\nMore important to my arguments are the reliefs of its central bay. They have as focus a depicting the Dormition of Mary, which in style recalls Gothic retables of the School of Cologne and others (Fig. 5).8", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215410, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "136\n\nIn imitation of a real altarpiece the Dormition of Mary is followed higher up by an image above a rose window representing the Assumpta, or the Assumption of Mary into heaven, a favourite theme of Iberian retables, often combined with the theme of the Dormition. Above her there is a high relief of the Trinity with a Golgotha group at the summit. These images are quite typical of the iconography of contemporary retables and follow the sometimes-convoluted theological arguments of the Christian art of the period.\n\nAs the intricacies of the Late Gothic style gave way to the Italian Renaissance, the artistic potency of retable-façades persisted under different forms, dimensions and styles, and in different places. It spread to Southern Spain after the Reconquista, where it developed its own Renaissance characteristics. Later, mainly in a Mannerist style, it appeared in Portugal. Finally some of the most amazing examples of the genre sprouted in Spanish colonies in Mexico and Peru in a Baroque and Rococo style, sometimes displaying the artistry, or otherwise, of indigenous craftsmen.\n\nAlthough such structures are not usually found in Portuguese colonies, there are nonetheless unusual developments in the decoration of some Jesuit church façades in Portuguese India, which can give insights to later developments in their Macao church. The study of these Indian examples is also useful in another respect. Instead of studying the Macao church in isolation, as is usually done, a comparison with these and a selected number of buildings in India can help us obtain a more coherent chronological and stylistic perspective for the façade of Madre de Deus.\n\nTo trace back some of these developments in Jesuit architecture the city of Goa, today known as Velha Goa, is an obvious starting point because of its importance within the Portuguese empire in Asia. In fact, soon after Afonso de Albuquerque captured it from Yusuf Adil Khan in 1510, it came to be considered by the Portuguese as the capital of the whole Portuguese Empire in the East. It eventually became not only the seat of the vice-royalty, but equally of a huge Bishopric, which encompassed the entire region from the Cape of Good Hope to China. In the seventeenth century it counted some seventy religious establishments, including thirty-one churches.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215423, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 200, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "149\n\neach one in his niche, over stone bases with their names carved on them in the same order as we have them on the main altar, all in bronze with their foundry signs: hands and faces painted red; vestments gilded throughout the length of the body, with no other colour. On the second frieze and third storey with columns that rest on the middle window the Image of Our Lady of the Assumption, titular saint of the Church, has its niche, which image steps on a large gilded moon; over her head two Angels in the round of the same metal appear to be holding a closed crown, each one of which holds out his arm on the side where he is. Below these another pair seem to go through the air giving a hand in favour of Our Lady's ascent.\n\nThe third frieze, which runs underneath the last storey, gave place to the last niche. It has on its base the Image of the infant Jesus with a cross on the globe of the world on his hand and which does not differ from the others in anything, except that it is of lesser height than them. Inside the field of the pointed summit which makes a straight triangle - on which rests the stone pedestal on which is to be fixed the iron cross with rod arms that is the crown of the whole work, for which alms were given this year as I said above - from the middle of rays carved in the stone, a kind of image of a dove goes fourth, representing the Holy Spirit with its wings wide open, in gilded bronze and of significant size. Note: for all of this magnificent and sumptuous work expenses were met with alms ....' (italics mine).\n\nThere are several quite remarkable points here. Apart from their gilded garments, the first is that the faces and hands of the images of the Jesuit saints were painted red. That these bronzes were painted is highly unusual. If the faces and hands were actually painted red is perhaps arguable. But the gilded garments of the four bronzes could well have been intended to imitate the technique of gilding practised on carved statues since Late Gothic retables.\n\nBrightly painted images are known in medieval Spanish portals, an obsolete practice in the seventeenth century. It was, however, still in use in the case of some Latin American retable-façades, as the researches of Humberto Rodríguez-Camilloni on the façade of San Francisco, Lima, Peru, have disclosed.21\n\nWhat has equally remained unknown because it is missing in José", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215426, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 203, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "152\n\npair emerges at the back of the fourth storey. These six lions obviously served the same purpose as the gargoyles of Gothic churches, and may be void of iconographic meaning. In this case more important than classical orthodoxy for the Jesuits was evidently the incorporation and integration of Chinese and Japanese decorative motifs.\n\nPurpose of Decoration\n\nOne of the most striking features betraying the influence of retables is the profusion of religious symbols adorning the walls of the frontispiece, an esoteric hieroglyphic language growing in iconographic intensity as it moves towards the top. In purely architectural terms this richness of imagery appears to be mainly artistic and non-functional, and is not found to this extent in the decoration of more conventional church façades. However, it is something typical of Counter-Reformation altarpieces, one of its main purposes being a didactic one. Not only the structure, but also the decorative dialogue of the façade also reveals it to be a mixture of medieval scholasticism and Renaissance classicism.\n\nAnother characteristic of retables found in the façade is the hierarchy and progression of symbols and sculptured images that goes from bottom to top. For example, instead of the geometric decoration of the first storey, the second storey's bays display naturalistic bas-reliefs of palm trees. The bronzes themselves start with images of blessed and saints, above which appear those of the Virgin and Jesus.\n\nThe upper half of the façade consists of a third storey united to those below by carved volutes, and a fourth storey or attic joined to it by segmental brackets and crowned by a large pediment displaying the dove of the Holy Spirit.\n\nIn this upper half there are several Chinese inscriptions, further attesting to the didactic purpose of the decoration. Although these apparently were not the work of Chinese artists knowledgeable of calligraphy,25 they are quite legible and visible from the upper steps and the entrance courtyard below. There can be little doubt that their main purpose was to make the iconographic and calligraphic messages of the frontispiece, largely concentrated in the upper half of the façade, clear to the Chinese population and to potential Chinese converts.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215428, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 205, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "154\n\nmost inscrutable of Roman Catholic mysteries. Of Eastern European origin, it was popularised in large numbers of altarpieces throughout Europe from the Late Gothic onwards.\n\nWhat made it so specific to Roman-Catholic ritual is the powerfully Eucharistic connotations given to it by Counter-Reformation theologians and retable programmers. From retables the theme passed to retable-façades, as seen in Santa Maria A Grande in Pontevedra.\n\nToday there are no angels crowning the head of the image of Mary as she soars to heaven, nor is there a half moon beneath her feet. But the impressive array of symbols carved on the bays, bases and end-volutes of the third storey show that many are attributes related not so much to the Assumption, as to a type of the Virgin known as the Tota Pulchra. Moreover, there is a closer correspondence between the latter and the image of Mary as the Immaculate Conception (Mary conceived by God without original sin, a controversial religious belief, at the time bitterly contested by the Dominicans). The name Tota Pulchra, by which this image is known to art historians is closely linked to the concept of immaculate. It is derived from a passage in the Canticle of Canticles singing the virtues of the beloved, in which King Solomon, the reputed author, proclaims: \"Tota pulchra es amica mea, et macula non est in te” (“You are wholly beautiful, beloved, and there is no stain in you”), (translation mine).\n\nIn all likelihood the artists of the frontispiece created their masterpiece from prints illustrating the attributes of the Tota Pulchra following a complex theological programme. Typical are the pediment reliefs of St. Paul's showing a sun and a moon, referring to the woman pulchra ut luna and electa ut sol, derived from The Canticle of Canticles and very similar to those depicted in contemporary prints (Fig. 24).\n\nA good indication that the artists copied or derived their images from such prints is the fact that not all the symbols of the Tota Pulchra originate in The Canticle of Canticles. Some evolved from the Litanies of the Virgin (including the more popular Litany of Loreto) and a number of Old Testament sources, such as Genesis, Ezekiel and the Book of Proverbs. These are also present in the decoration of the façade.\n\nWhat makes this supposition reasonable is that numerous", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]