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Teacher Resource Bank
GCE Religious Studies
Unit 1E Religion, Art and the Media
Explanation of Terms
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Teacher Resource Bank / GCE Religious Studies / Explanation of Terms: Unit 1E Religion, Art and the Media / Version 1.0
EXPLANATION OF TERMS
The nature and purpose of art
Term
Definition
altar-piece
Decorative adjunct to the altar, sited behind it. Containing images that are
carved or painted depicting scenes from the life of Christ or lives of saints.
Sometimes made up of one or more panels.
anastasis
Literally a rising usually used in Orthodox or Byzantine art to refer to the
resurrection of Christ. (Harrowing of Hell.)
ante-chapel
Outer portion of chapel or church serving as an ant-chamber to the building
itself. Often separated from the main portion of building by a screen.
antiphoner
Large illuminated liturgical book used to direct antiphonal singing. Highly
decorated pages similar to illuminated manuscripts.
apse
Rounded end to a church or cathedral usually at the East end.
book of hours:
(horae)
Liturgical book used as an aid to prayer. Refers to the seven canonical
hours of prayer throughout the day. Usually highly illustrated.
book of kells
Illuminated copy of the Gospels written C800. One of the great
masterpieces of Irish Christian Art (now in Trinity College Dublin).
censer (thurible)
Container used to house burning incense for use in worship.
chalice
Principal liturgical vessel, the cup used to contain the consecrated wine at
communion services.
chi-ro (chrismon)
Greek letters forming a monogram symbolising Christ. Formed from Greek
letters Chi and Rho represented as X, P.
ciborium
Liturgical vessel used for containing the consecrated bread at communion
services.
deesis
Depiction of Christ seated with Virgin Mary on his right and John the Baptist
on his left.
deposition
Image depicting the removal of Christ from the cross (also called the
descent from the cross).
doom painting:
doom
Visual representation of the Last Judgement. Common in medieval
churches, and often very graphic in detail. Usually sited on the arch
dividing the chancel from the nave of the church.
dormition
Death or falling asleep, usually refers to icon showing the dormition (death)
of Blessed Virgin Mary.
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Teacher Resource Bank / GCE Religious Studies / Explanation of Terms: Unit 1E Religion, Art and the Media / Version 1.0
The nature and purpose of art Continued…
Term
Definition
icon
Panel paintings of Christ, The Virgin Mary or the Saints. Revered as an aid to
devotion in Orthodox Church. They are more than just religious paintings
often described as ‘windows into heaven’ or ‘channels of God’s grace’.
iconoclasm
The destruction of devotional images and statues in churches. ICONOCLAST
CONTROVERSY specifically refers to 8th / 9th century movement that
destroyed icons, seeing them as a form of idolatry.
iconography
The reading and understanding of symbolism and imagery used within a work
of art.
iconostasis
Large screen separating sanctuary from the remainder of the church in
Orthodox buildings. Often holds tiers of icons arranged in formulaic levels.
illuminated
manuscripts
Highly decorated ancient manuscripts often for liturgical use (see Antiphoner,
Book of Hours and Book of Kells above). Pages often highly decorated in
margins with a variety of images or symbols, and initial letters of pages often
form the basis of an illustration.
mezuzah
Parchment roll on which first tow paragraphs of the Jewish Shema prayer are
written. Often placed in a decorated case and attached to the doorpost of
every traditional Jewish home.
mihrab
Arched niche indicating the direction of Mecca (the qibla) and thus direction
for prayer.
minaret
Tower of a mosque from which the faithful are called to prayer.
opus sectile
Form of floor mosaic usually of marble arranged in geometric pattern.
Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood
(PRB)
Term used to describe founder members of the Pre-Raphaelite school, e.g.
The artists, Holman Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti.
puja
Hindu ritual worship (three types: temple, domestic and communal.)
romanesque
Style of architecture broadly defined as the art of Western Europe from 10th to
13th century.
stained glass
Coloured or painted glass arranged to depict scenes and images. A useful
resource for teaching illiterate lay people (and literate) the key teachings of
the Christian faith, e.g. Bible windows at Canterbury Cathedral.
tesserae
Small cubes of stone marble or glass used in making of mosaics.
typological
symbolism
Term used in reference to symbolism found in art, particularly of the preRaphaelites especially Holman Hunt, e.g. ‘The Scapegoat’. Typological
symbolism refers to the symbolism within paintings that use references to
events in Old Testament to prefigure persons or events in the
New Testament. Usually consists of a ‘sign’ and a ‘signifier’.
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Teacher Resource Bank / GCE Religious Studies / Explanation of Terms: Unit 1E Religion, Art and the Media / Version 1.0
Televangelism
Term
Definition
electric church
Term used by the US broadcaster Ben Armstrong to describe evangelical
broadcasters who go on air primarily to raise money instead of preaching
and teaching traditional Christian messages.
prosperity
theology
Many televangelists teach that wealth, success and prosperity are God’s
reward for good Christian living, and that poverty, illness or misfortune are
punishments.
televangelism
A word coined by Time magazine to describe the use of television (and to a
lesser extent other broadcast media) to spread the Christian faith. It is often
used in a slightly derogatory way. Televangelism typically assumes Biblical
inerrancy, charismatic manifestations of the Holy Spirit and personal “born
again” redemption and salvation. It is almost always accompanied by
prominent appeals for money donations.
televangelist
A person who preaches and teaches using broadcast media in order to win
coverts to the Christian faith, and to strengthen the faith of those who are
already Christian. Although a televangelist may be a minister or pastor in a
normal church, many televangelists exercise their ministry only in
televangelism.
teleministry
The ministry of a televangelist.
The Internet
Term
Definition
avatar
A graphical persona. Some interactive sites allow users to log in with a
user name and a visual representation of their persona. This persona then
performs actions. Avatars were first developed for computer games.
cyber-
The prefix “cyber” added to any word indicates one of two things:
(a) a computer-mediated counterpart of a real-life experience, object or
action, e.g. cyberchurch, cyberpilgrimage.
(b) a real life area of study that focuses on cyberspace, e.g.
cybergeography, cybertheology.
cyberculture
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The ways of behaving and interacting that characterise life in cyberspace.
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Teacher Resource Bank / GCE Religious Studies / Explanation of Terms: Unit 1E Religion, Art and the Media / Version 1.0
The Internet continued…
Term
Definition
cyberspace
The word cyberspace was coined by writer William Gibson in a short story
in 1982. His novel Neuromancer (1984) describes cyberspace as:
‘A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of
legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught
mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data
abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system.’
(p.69)
Cyberspace is a conceptual space. It has no geographical location, but
describes the perceived setting of objects, identities and experiences that
exist within the communication network itself.
internet
Term coined by Vint Cerf & Bob Kahn in 1974 to describe a potential
“Network of networks”. Until that time there had been a number of separate
computer networks that were able to interact in limited ways.
Today the internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks
which carry email, messaging, newsgroups (Usenet) and allow people to
transfer files and to upload and access pages on the world wide web
(www). It also allows remote access to computer systems (e.g. Telnet) and
more recently, voice telephony.
meatspace
See real life below.
open source
Most software used on computers is commercially developed and controlled
by copyright legislation. Since the earliest days of the Internet, there has
been a strong counter-movement which promotes individually and
collaboratively developed “open source” software that is not subject to
copyright. Anyone may use the software or make changes to it as long as
they share anything they produce freely. There is a lot of moral value
attached to the open source movement. It is roughly equivalent to the
green movement in real life.
persona
The persona is the person that a user projects of him- or herself when
engaging in online activities. One human user may have any number of
online personae. Each user will be a different persona when engaged in
different kinds of online activity, and may choose to have more than one
“identity” for a specific activity. The extent of which a persona is developed
online depends on the kind of environment and activity.
real life
Also called “meatspace”. The experience of physical existence in the real
world.
virtual
Applied as an adjective to objects and qualities as experienced in computer
mediated experience, usually as an antonym for “real-life”.
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Teacher Resource Bank / GCE Religious Studies / Explanation of Terms: Unit 1E Religion, Art and the Media / Version 1.0
The Internet continued…
Term
Definition
virtual
environment
A “place” in cyberspace that has specific characteristics that distinguish it
from the rest of cyberspace. There may be restrictions on who can use the
“place” and what they may do. It may be text based or graphical, and
individuals may express their presence using a screen name or an avatar.
virtual reality
Virtual reality is the experience of interaction with computer generated
environment. The environment may be a virtual environment on a computer
screen, or it may be constructed using prostheses, displays, headphones,
gloves, etc. The subjective experience is real, but outside the experience of
the user or users, there is no objective reality, merely computer
programmes and electronic wizardry.
world wide web
The world wide web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau
in 1989. It is a collection of interlinked documents, images and resources
stored on internet-connected computer servers. Documents are marked up
in a universally agreed format (HTML) and stored using a standardised
address (URL) based on a domain name system (DNS) so that they can be
transmitted by HTTP and accessed using web browser.
Note: the world wide web and the internet are not the same thing.
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