Ashburnham Pentateuch - camels, donkeys, mules, and horses

 Salvete Omnes,

Ukraine must become peaceful again - war of aggression must stop.

...

Today a bit of a late Antiquity and early Christian art from.. well, could have been Italy,  North Africa or Western Asia, then still under the Eastern Roman empire -  late VI or perhaps early VII century treasure of beauty and spirituality.

Because what a treasure this manuscript - Ashburnham Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) - French national Library  Gallica page -  still is, and it has some turbulent story to it too. 

Nota bene fre/libre/gratis  book from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts  - Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century.

some details

Valete!

Spring has come - J. Chelmonski

 Salvete Omnes,

War in Ukraine must stop - 

and so our northern Hemisphere has entered the season of la Primavera aka Spring (Wiosna in Polish). But Spring can be also cold, and some late snow storms could make sleigh ride possible or desirable, especially during the two or three previous centuries (the so called cold period started at the beginning of the XVII century and stayed on until recently, where some warming can be seen - but in the XV-XVI centuries there was much warmer in the Polish Kingdom lands)

let us take a look at some canvasses by of of the greatest Polish painters of the Partitions period - Jozef Chelmonski ( Józef Chełmoński 1849-1914AD) .

Valete

Apocalypse 7

 Salvete Omnes,

War in Ukraine continues - many media outlets bring news of potential ceasefire talks between the Russian invaders-  Putin government and  Ukrainian defenders - Zelensky government et al.
We all hope and pray for the peace sooner than later, while the number of refugees - women and children from Ukraine - is currently close to 3 million people. Human catastrophe in making.

***

another  Four Horsemen of Apocalypse image - deeply religious painter Victor Vasnetstov who many works  have been painted for the St Volodymyr's Cathedral, Kiev, the besieged capital of Ukraine.

..

Valete

Apocalypse 6

 Salvete Omnes,

war in Ukraine (Wojna na Ukrainie) continues - peace must prevail!

***

Apocalypse of the Chateau d'Angers - commissioned by Duke de Anjou circa 1375AD this monumental tapestry - originally 140 meters long and 850 square meters of total surface - is housed in the castle of Angers.  

_
three out of Four Horsemen survived - 

1st

3rd

4th

and horsemen of the fire-breathing horses

..

Valete

Smolensk 1634 and March 1...

 Salvete Omnes,

 

in Poland the Day of the Damned Soldiers is celebrated on March 1. After 1944 - the beginning of the occupation of Poland by the USSR, and patriotic Polish fighters fought the Soviet Union and their servile Polish security forces.
Gloria Victis.

 

And going back to 1634AD, our king, Wladyslaw IV, vanquished completely Russian Muscovite armies at Smolensk.

War in Ukraine, the Russian invasion of that poor country, is becoming more and more like a typical XXI century war (like Iraq 2002-16, Afghanistan, Israel over the Palestine, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Kurdistan etc)- atrocities, powerful technologically driven weapons,  misinformation and propaganda, but also a fog of war.

This map - so  it is an attempt, by the Finnish military researchers, to observe incomplete and delayed developments on this war of aggression and imperial ambitions. 

 

 Ukraine needs some Polish winged hussars but

our Western leadership (POTUS will deliver SOTU today) is 'sin cojones'...
My friend Paul Zambrzycki( and owner of Persjarnia company ) with sponsorship from  OLD Poland Bakery from NYC and with help  from friends from Krakow's Kur Fraternity  went across the Polish-Ukrainian border into Ukraine with a food-truck full of food and hot coffee and tea. The lines of Ukrainian refugees - women and children in cars, trucks, buses and vans - are long, last night they were about 50km long going to each of the border crossings  (Medyka and Hrebenne are two largest border crossing between the two countries).

So let us pray for peace in Ukraine and pray for the Ukrainian peoples...

Valete

War In Ukraine must stop

 Salvete Omnes,

it is not going to be about horses and riders, as the war rages on in Ukraine (map)

eh, the  imperially-minded Russian Federation and their supreme leader Putin put  their armies, in some strange limited fashion and against the typical Soviet-Russian military doctrines of artillery war,  against  poor Ukraine and her armies. 

My hopes and thoughts are with the poor people of Ukraine -  especially the civilian population that is already suffering from this assault and heinous imperialism by Russian government. But I truly pity the wasted, in my opinion, lives of these Russian soldiers who  have died and will die fighting for the imperial Russian idea. Their mothers will weep in the same way the Ukrainian mothers will...

Poland, where until this armed conflict some 2 million Ukrainians had been working and thus prospered, already took in some 145,000 refugees - women and children - from Ukraine. Slovakia took at least 20,000, while Hungary and Romania probably also a large number too, but I have not checked Romanian and Hungaria news. Also there is Moldova with her rebellious area of Transdnisitria.
Ukrainian men and boy - age 18 to 60 - are staying in Ukraine to fight of this invasion, as they should, because this is what men are for; men are  to defend their children and their women.
I hear that some of the Ukrainian men living in Poland are going back to Ukraine - God bless them.

My friend Anton Wysocki has been fighting in Sumy, eastern Ukrainian city north of Kharkov, - he is a great artist and patriot, historian and writer. Hope , these find artists - Sergei Shamnkov  and Antoly Telenik are safe and unhurt, but they live in Odessa and Kherson oblast respectively. 

But now the invade  Ukraine needs you to tell your governments to step in and stop this invasion and armed conflict - weak US leadership did nothing to prevent this war,  while European Union but for Poland and the Baltic Republic(old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), was lukewarm, and  only yesterday Federal Republic of German decided to allow for some arms - RPG and Stingers - to be shipped to Ukraine (how they gonna do this remains to be seen). Poland has been sending aid, including military supplies, and receiving refugee and wounded?. 
But then how is European Union to function without Russian natural gas and countless other materials and resources  delivered from the still functioning pipelines?
Pipelines like the  Yamal pipeline and NordStream-1. When Germany turned off her nuclear energy plants, save for only one that is to be decommissioned later this year.
Where renewable energy has proven itself to be a dismal failure. Where world leadership is populated by likes of Soros, Schwab and Gates and their ilk from World Economic Forum (WEF)  and WHO(run by PRoC and WEF).  

I hope this is not going to turn in all out nuclear war and thus world conflict(Russian Federation being one hell of a nuclear power), as the arch-enemy of Israel the Islamic Republic of Iran already probably has nuclear capabilities and Israel has been bombing war-ravaged Syria and Iranian targets in Syria. Nuclear  powers  - Pakistan is in conflict with India  about Kashmir, while India herself with Peoples Republic of China, and PRofChina wants to take Taiwan (a sovereign state)  - with US fleet's warship sailing through the Formosa/Taiwan Straits.

Our world is in flux - hope peace will prevail, too bad Belarus is on the wrong side in this conflict.

Fortuna audaces iuvat 

Valete

War in Ukraine must stop

Salvete Omnes ,

no horses here, just a human tragedy 

the people of Ukraine need peace, the people of Russia need peace - now!
POTUS and NATO and Peoples Republic of China, and India need to act now

the above photo comes from Twitter - I claim no copyright 

Valete