No description available.

No description available.

This thesis is concerned with the Order of Deaconesses within the Church of Scotland, which has been largely ignored or misrepresented in social, religious and culhrral history. It considers the role and status of the 'brown deaconess' (socalled because of the colour of her unifonn) and explores what made her different from other women workers in the Kirk. The thesisis organised in five thematic sections. The first section considers the rationale for studying deaconesses and the value and limitations of using a biographical approach. Section II places the Church of Scotland deaconess within the context of the wider deaconess movement and within the social, religious and culhrral changes that occurred in Scotland during the nineteenth century. The role of A. H. Charteris in the 'revival' ofdeaconesses within Scottish Presbyterianism is also considered. Section III assesses the selection and training ofdeaconesses and examines the religious symbolism, protocols and display associated with the setting apart ofdeaconesses. It also considers the semantics of language associated with this ceremony which reinforced notions of subordination. Section IV focuses upon the variety of service undertaken by deaconesses. It also explores the gender relationships between deaconesses and male office-bearers and how this affected their daily work. The final section considers how deaconesses perceived themselves by exploring their possible motivation for joining the diaconate, their aspirations and outlook. The sense of identity ofthe deaconess is assessed in the symbols, protocols and material culture associated with the order. The problems and difficulties facing deaconesses are also considered. This research suggests that the unrealistically high expectations placed upon deaconesses, that frequently resulted in serious breakdowns in health, combined with the vague, subordinate and anomalous position of the deaconess within the Kirk, contributed to the decline of the brown deaconess movement in the 1930s and 1940s.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis explores the possibility, as a serious consideration, that the use of whitewash in Reformed church interiors, beginning with the wholesale whitewashing of Zurich church interiors in 1524 at the beginning of the Swiss Reformation, was not just a means to obliterate idols and images. It is proposed that while the application of whitewash when first used in Zurich may have been the result of a sub-conscious colour choice, it was always a reference to a state of mind, over time accruing symbolic value. The author advances the proposition that the act of whitewashing church interiors did not consist in the elimination of images alone which 'cleaned the slate' of 'Popish idols', but involved the creation of a new iconography of faith. The new 'image' was, as all images are, informed by the 'colour thinking' of its makers, in this case the Protestant Reformers and their following, and by a particular intellectual and emotional orientation to colour and colour symbolism acquired through the Bible filtered, as this author concludes, through a perception of God as light, as the Truth, as the Good, as the Beautiful, as the Pure, and as a symbol of Righteousness. The orientation of the Reformed to the colour white itself is examined, through an analysis of colour metaphor and symbolism in the writings to two magisterial reformers, Zwingli and Calvin, taking into account select other writings known to have been studied by them or available to them in libraries, such as Plato, Cicero, Josephus and St. Thomas Aquinas. An attempt is made to develop both an understanding of the theological basis for, and a view of, the actual pattern of the whitewashing of church interiors, which played a significant role in the visual transformations which took place between 1524-1660 during the process of establishing an identity for the Reformed Church.