Cultural

Archaeologists search for St Vlas’ tomb in Sivas, Turkey

Archaeologists dig for St Vlas’ tomb in Turkey. He was the Bishop of Sebasta in the IVth century and a martyr for Christ during the persecutions of emperors Diocletian and Licinius. In the Turkish province of Sivas, experts are digging to find St Vlas’ tomb, according to Daily Sabah. The Orthodox Church honors the saint…

Jun 24, 2020Ștefana Totorcea

Byzanfest Orthodox Film Festival 2020 is open for submissions

Christian Orthodox filmmakers from all over the world can submit their short and feature-length films to the fifth edition of Byzanfest Orthodox Film Festival. The competition accepts films made in the Orthodox ethos. The productions can be sent online until August 23, 2020. Byzanfest aims to promote Christian Orthodox filmmakers because film serves as a…

Jun 17, 2020Ștefana Totorcea

The History of Romania in One Object: The Banner of Saint Stephen the Great

The Romanian Cultural Institute in New York has launched a presentation of the Liturgical Banner of Ruler Prince St. Stephen the Great, as part of the Project “The History of Romania in One Object”, organised in partnership with The National History Museum of Romania. The presentation was held online by Dr. Cristiana Tătaru, art historian,…

May 27, 2020Sorin Ioniţe

Virtual tour of the monasteries on Mount Athos available online

Women and those unable to travel have the possibility to visit online the Holy Mount Athos. A website has made available the virtual panoramas of the Mount’s 20 monasteries. Panoramas of more sketes and cells and those of three caves will become available soon. The virtual tours can be found on the website Mountathos360.com, where…

May 3, 2020Ștefana Totorcea

Romfilatelia: Postage stamp issue dedicated to Saint Nectarios of Aegina

Romfilatelia introduced into circulation on Friday, February 14, a new postage stamp issue entitled 100 years since the repose of Saint Nectarios of Aegina. Saint Nectarios was born in 1846, in the Thracian Silivria (locality near Constantinople), from a poor but god-fearing parents, Dimos and Maria Kefalas receiving the name of Anastasios at baptism. At the…

Feb 15, 2020Gheorghe Anghel

The Vatican Library goes online and digitizes tens of thousands of manuscripts

The Vatican Apostolic Library, known as “VAT,” has grown a bit over the past five and a half centuries. Today it contains around 75,000 codices and 85,000 incunabula amid a total of over one million volumes. And in the case of increasingly many of these documents, you no longer have to make the journey to…

Jan 21, 2020Gheorghe Anghel

Monastic Pianist of Valaam Monastery plays music by Tchaikovsky

At the end of last year, Valaam Monastery posted a video with Monk Abel performing a part of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers. The video gathered over 7600 likes on Valaam Monastery’s Instagram account and was viewed more than 140,000 times on YouTube. The “Waltz of the Flowers” (1892) is a piece of orchestral music…

Jan 14, 2020Aurelian Iftimiu

Byzantine chant joins UNESCO list on intangible cultural heritage

UNESCO has inscribed Byzantine chant in Cyprus and Greece on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, In Cyprus reported. The decision was taken by the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage meeting in Bogota which inscribed one more element on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in…

Dec 12, 2019Sorin Ioniţe

Eugene Vodolazkin: Russia’s prize-winning novelist on main character: ‘Laurus brings together several lives of Saints’

Eugene Vodolazkin, one of today’s most famous Russian novelist, said that he was inspired by several lives of Saints when creating the main character of his best-selling novel Laurus. Eugene Vodolazkin and his wife Tatiana recently visited the Saint Nicholas –Tabacu church in Bucharest, the home of the Russian Orthodox Community in the capital of…

Nov 29, 2019Aurelian Iftimiu

Romanian Academy launches facsimile edition of 18th-century Romanian Byzantine Music Book

The Library of the Romanian Academy launched a facsimile transcription of the manuscripts written in 1713 by Filothei sin Agai Jipei, a renowned Romanian protopsaltes. Filothei sin Agai Jipei the Athonite was a church chanter close to Saint Anthimos the Iberian, Metropolitan of Wallachia, and had a major contribution to the adapting of the Byzantine…

Nov 26, 2019Aurelian Iftimiu

World’s first printed Christmas card goes on display at Dickens museum

The world’s first printed Christmas card, an artwork created in 1843 that went on to spawn a global industry, has gone on show at the Charles Dickens Museum in London. Designed by Henry Cole and illustrated by John Callcott Horsley, in the same year that Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published, the hand-coloured card shows a family…

Nov 25, 2019Gheorghe Anghel