Latest news with #Benedictine
Morocco World
2 days ago
- General
- Morocco World
Legendary Toumliline Library Open Doors Once Again to Scholars, Visitors
Casablanca – In a remarkable initiative to preserve Morocco's spiritual and intellectual heritage, the Fondation Mémoires pour l'Avenir (FMA) has announced the reconstruction of the historic Toumliline Library, once recognized as the second-largest library in North Africa. This revival is part of the broader program 'Réinventer Toumliline,' which aims to restore and reimagine the monastic site of Toumliline, located in the province of Ifrane. The initiative follows the successful reopening in 2024 of the site's 20th-century Christian chapel, one of Morocco's most unique religious structures, thanks to the support of the Rabita Mohammadia des Oulémas, the Belgian foundation 'Futur 21,' and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The library, originally home to more than 15,000 books, served as a center of knowledge and interfaith dialogue during the mid-20th century. According to the FMA, the rebuilt facility will serve two purposes: a 'library of the past' that recreates the original atmosphere and holdings of the 1950s, and a 'library of the future' equipped with contemporary resources and research tools, open to both scholars and visitors. 'This project is not only about restoring architecture, but about reviving an intellectual and spiritual heritage,' the Foundation wrote on its official Facebook page. 'Thanks to generous donations, we are gradually reconstructing a cultural epicenter that once welcomed the world's thinkers.' The Diocese of Rabat delivered a major contribution to the new library, which came personally from Archbishop of Rabat Cristobal Lopez Romero. The donation includes books and library materials from churches in Casablanca, Safi, El Jadida, Oujda, Meknes, Errachidia, and Rabat. Founded in the 1950s by French Benedictine monks, the Toumliline monastery is known for its intellectual vibrancy and as a site of pioneering interfaith dialogue, attracting Moroccan scholars, Christian theologians, and international philosophers. Tags: CulturelibraryToumliineToumliline library
SBS Australia
4 days ago
- Science
- SBS Australia
Libraries usually like bookworms - but not these ones
The Benedictine Archabbey has stood for the last 1,000 years, perched on top of a hill overlooking the town of Pannonhalma in Hungary. Its library houses the country's oldest collection of books as well as many of its earliest and most important written records, including a complete Bible from the 13th century. It also houses several hundred manuscripts from before the invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century, and tens of thousands of books from the 16th century. The current director is Ilona Ásványi. "Every day, I experience being the guardian and caretaker, and custodian of this very valuable collection of books." The Abbey library is said to have survived centuries of conflicts, including the Ottoman invasion of the 16th century. But now it's facing a new problem: drugstore beetles have infested about a quarter of the Archabbey's 400,000 precious works. The Benedictine abbey is governed by a set of rules that have been in use for nearly 15 centuries - a code that obliges the library to do everything it can to save its vast book collection. Accordingly, Zsófia Edit Hajdu has been brought in as the chief restorer. "We have been working mostly on mould damage in both depositories and in open collections for 30 years, but we've never encountered such a degree of infestation before. Usually, we see problems of mould in warehouses and in other collections. But due to global warming, it is expected that more and more insect infestations will appear." The drugstore beetle, also known as the bread beetle, is often found among foodstuffs like grains, flour, spices, and other dried products. But they are also attracted to the gelatine and starch-based adhesives found in old books. Ms Hajdu believes the effects of climate change have played a role in spurring the beetle infestation. "Higher temperatures are favourable for the life of insects. They are quite inactive below 20 degrees Celsius. Below that, their activity slows down; above that, they're more active. The persistently greater heat leads to more life cycles per year than in cooler periods. In warmer conditions, the reproduction cycle of the drugstore beetle can be up to four per year compared to only two in cooler weather.' The beetle invasion was first detected during a routine cleaning of the library, when employees noticed unusual layers of dust on the shelves and then saw that holes had been burrowed into some of the book spines. Upon opening the volumes, burrow holes could be seen in the paper where the beetles had chewed through. Ilona Ásványi says everyone is heartbroken at the prospect of losing books because of the infestation. "When I see a book chewed up by a beetle or infested in any other way, I feel that no matter how many copies are published and how replaceable the book is, a piece of culture has been lost.' But the Abbey's restoration workers are trying hard to avoid that possibility. They're removing roughly 100,000 hand-bound books from the shelves and carefully placing them in crates. Zsófia Hajdu says so many books are being taken down because the infestation has been detected in several parts of the library. "This is an advanced insect infestation which has been detected in several parts of the library, so the entire collection is classified as infected and must be treated all at the same time. We have to remove all the books from the shelves, put them into boxes, then into hermetically sealed plastic sacks. Inside them, an anoxic disinfection process takes place. Basically, we create an oxygen-free environment in which insects perish.' Once that process is done - and before being reshelved - each book will be individually inspected and vacuumed, and any book damaged by the pests will be set aside for later restoration work. The abbey hopes to reopen the library at the beginning of next year.
Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Global Missions With Monks Led Adventurer Into Wild World Of Whiskey
Phil Stegar went from adventuring in the preservation of ancient manuscripts in dangerous regions around the world to crafting innovative whiskeys in his home state of Minnesota. The Restaurant Project Two Benedictine monks, some Indiana Jones-like adventures in dangerous regions around the world, and a visit to a Kentucky bourbon maker led a Minnesota man to become a pioneering whiskey maker. Phil Stegar, who is the founder of Brother Justus Whiskey Company in Minneapolis, had been working for humanitarian organizations in Iraq and Lebanon when a Catholic monk and mentor from his alma mater, St. John's University in Collegeville, MN, asked him to undertake a perilous mission. This monk who worked at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, wanted help to preserve some ancient manuscripts that were in war-torn regions around the globe. 'The Benedictines have been around a long time, and they've seen wars before and what happens to' ancient books, Stegar says. 'He was working on this digitization project of ancient manuscripts, and he saw that there was this small window of time where there wasn't any major conflicts going on.' So, Stegar traveled to places like Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine for about two weeks at a time in 2007 and 2008. In these monasteries and religious communities, which had centuries of history, he would meet with abbots and monks, teach them how to use the cameras and studio equipment he brought to them, then return to pick up a digital copy of these ancient manuscripts after they were all photographed. 'I was kind of getting to be a digital Indiana Jones,' Stegar says.'It was so important to preserve these manuscripts, which were important to people's identity and history, their religion and faith. To me, that's the marrow of life.' 'I was kind of getting to be a digital Indiana Jones,' Stegar says.'It was so important to preserve these manuscripts, which were important to people's identity and history, their religion and faith. To me, that's the marrow of life.' Stegar knew that this work would eventually come to an end, but he didn't know what he was going to do next. 'I love art, but I'm not an artist,' he says. 'I wanted to do something physical, something with meaning.' In the midst of his adventures, Stegar found what he was looking for on a trip he and his wife Lisa Amman took to the Abbey of Gethsemani, a monastery in Kentucky, at the end of 2007. Stegar had long admired the late Trappist monk and mystic Thomas Merton, who once lived there. On the way back to Louisville, they stopped at a well-known bourbon distillery. 'We took the tour, and it just hit me that all of the ingredients for whiskey - water, grain, oak and peat - were in my home state of Minnesota,' Stegar says. 'It also occurred to me that when you are sipping whiskey, it can be an activity by itself. It can accompany other activities, but it's its own activity like monks reading from manuscripts or people telling stories.' It was an epiphany, Stegar says, that led him to fix his sights on creating a distillery that would preserve and create history in a glass. Along the way to starting his distillery in 2013, Stegar also went to law school. 'I needed to have a way of earning a living while I was starting this distillery,' he says, adding that his specialization in trademarks, laws and regulations helped him in the spirits business. When Stegar started his distillery, it didn't have a formal name. In the back of his mind, though, he remembered hearing stories about a monk in Minnesota who helped farmers make moonshine. In 2015, he discovered a book by Elaine Davis called Minnesota 13: Stearns County's 'Wet' Wild Prohibition Days . The name 'Minnesota 13' refers to a hybrid corn that the University of Minnesota developed in 1893. This corn produced a sugar-rich grain with a quicker yield time, which was better for the state's shorter growing season and also made it ideal for moonshine. 'I went right out to a bookstore, and I bought the last copy,' he says. Davis's book included one small reference to the monk that Stegar had heard rumors about during his college days. 'Brother Justus Trettel was a monk who was a blacksmith and a distiller,' Stegar says. 'He built the stills for farmers, and he taught them about the Benedictine distillation traditions.' Brother Justus was a Minnesota-born monk at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, MN. Archives of Brother Justus Whiskey Company Delving deeper into the history of Minnesota and Prohibition, Stegar learned that Brother Justus helped the farm families in Stearns County survive the farm depression of the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s. 'He insisted on teaching them the right way to distill so people wouldn't get sick from bad moonshine,' Stegar says. As a result this 'rebel with a cause' helped these Minnesota farmers produce quality moonshine, by stripping out the methanol and cutting the heads and tails. Stegar also built them the illegal stills so they could manufacture spirits. After learning about Brother Justus, Stegar decided to name his fledgling whiskey company in his honor. Stegar sought out Brother Justus's surviving family members, receiving their blessing to christen his distillery with his name. 'There was no legal requirement to do this, but it felt like the right thing to do,' he says. Not only did the monk's family give their blessing, but they also fleshed out the details of Brother Justus's life. Lawrence Trettel, who was his nephew, was delighted. 'He was especially happy that the stories about Brother Justus are going to live beyond him,' he says. Stegar formally named his distillery after this renegade monk in 2015, and he began releasing his first silver American single malt whiskey while continuing to age his other American single malts, made with all Minnesota ingredients, aged in Minnesota oak and crafted with Minnesota peat. The Founder's Reserve is an exquisite example of Brother Justus's ground-breaking American single malt whiskey. ELIESA JOHNSON 2019 Brother Justus American Single Malt has since become known for its patent-pending Cold-Peated® American Single Malt, which uses peat in a different way from smoking. The peat is exposed to gentle heat, turning it into a granular material, and it's introduced to the whiskey just before bottling to introduce the subtle aromatics without the smoke. 'It's a special thing,' Stegar says. 'If I hadn't been this monastic manuscript preservationist, I don't know if I would have seen this the same way or taken as much care.' Stegar plans to continue to create pioneering whiskeys while preserving culture. 'With manuscripts, provenance is important,' he adds. 'When you are responsible for a manuscript, you want it to speak for itself. I feel the same way about whiskey.'
The Star
6 days ago
- Science
- The Star
Hungary's oldest library battles beetles to save 100,000 books
Tens of thousands of centuries-old books are being pulled from the shelves of a medieval abbey in Hungary in an effort to save them from a beetle infestation that could wipe out centuries of history. The 1,000-year-old Pannonhalma Archabbey is a sprawling Benedictine monastery that is one of Hungary's oldest centers of learning and a Unesco World Heritage site. Restoration workers are removing about 100,000 handbound books from their shelves and carefully placing them in crates, the start of a disinfection process that aims to kill the tiny beetles burrowed into them. The drugstore beetle, also known as the bread beetle, is often found among dried foodstuffs like grains, flour and spices. But they also are attracted to the gelatin and starch-based adhesives found in books. They have been found in a section of the library housing around a quarter of the abbey's 400,000 volumes. "This is an advanced insect infestation which has been detected in several parts of the library, so the entire collection is classified as infected and must be treated all at the same time,' said Zsófia Edit Hajdu, the chief restorer on the project. "We've never encountered such a degree of infection before.' The beetle invasion was first detected during a routine library cleaning. Employees noticed unusual layers of dust on the shelves and then saw that holes had been burrowed into some of the book spines. Upon opening the volumes, burrow holes could be seen in the paper where the beetles chewed through. The abbey at Pannonhalma was founded in 996, four years before the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary. Sitting upon a tall hill in northwestern Hungary, the abbey houses the country's oldest collection of books, as well as many of its earliest and most important written records. Books are kept in hermetically sealed plastic sacks for disinfection at the Pannonhalma Archabbey's library in Pannonhalma, Hungary. Photo: AP For over 1,000 years, the abbey has been among the most prominent religious and cultural sites in Hungary and all of Central Europe, surviving centuries of wars and foreign incursions such as the Ottoman invasion and occupation of Hungary in the 16th century. Ilona Ásványi, director of the Pannonhalma Archabbey library, said she is "humbled' by the historical and cultural treasures the collection holds whenever she enters. "It is dizzying to think that there was a library here a thousand years ago, and that we are the keepers of the first book catalogue in Hungary,' she said. Among the library's most outstanding works are 19 codices, including a complete Bible from the 13th century. It also houses several hundred manuscripts predating the invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century and tens of thousands of books from the 16th century. While the oldest and rarest prints and books are stored separately and have not been infected, Ásványi said any damage to the collection represents a blow to cultural, historical and religious heritage. "When I see a book chewed up by a beetle or infected in any other way, I feel that no matter how many copies are published and how replaceable the book is, a piece of culture has been lost,' she said. The extent of structural damage of old books due to a drugstore beetle infestation at the Pannonhalma Archabbey's library in Pannonhalma, Hungary. Photo: AP To kill the beetles, the crates of books are being placed into tall, hermetically sealed plastic sacks from which all oxygen is removed. After six weeks in the pure nitrogen environment, the abbey hopes all the beetles will be destroyed. Before being reshelved, each book will be individually inspected and vacuumed. Any book damaged by the pests will be set aside for later restoration work. The abbey, which hopes to reopen the library at the beginning of next year, believes the effects of climate change played a role in spurring the beetle infestation as average temperatures rise rapidly in Hungary. Hajdu, the chief restorer, said higher temperatures have allowed the beetles to undergo several more development cycles annually than they could in cooler weather. "Higher temperatures are favourable for the life of insects,' she said. "So far we've mostly dealt with mold damage in both depositories and in open collections. But now I think more and more insect infestations will appear due to global warming.' The library's director said life in a Benedictine abbey is governed by a set of rules in use for nearly 15 centuries, a code that obliges them to do everything possible to save its vast collection. "It says in the Rule of Saint Benedict that all the property of the monastery should be considered as of the same value as the sacred vessel of the altar,' Ásványi said. "I feel the responsibility of what this preservation and conservation really means.' - AP
Tatler Asia
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Tatler Asia
Highlights from Singapore's showcase at Milan Design Week 2025
'Future Impact 3: Design Nation', Singapore's showcase at Milan Design Week 2025, charted the Republic's emergence as a Nation by Design through three compelling acts: reflecting on its past, responding to the present, and reimagining the future Leave it to Singapore to turn a cathedral into a case study in national imagination. Set within the soaring nave of Chiesa di San Bernardino alle Monache—a vaulted church in Milan's Cinque Vie district, once part of a Benedictine convent, now a quietly resonant venue at which sacred architecture often meets contemporary design— Future Impact 3: Design Nation marked Singapore's 2025 return to Milan Design Week with thoughtful ambition. It is one of the many celebrations taking place this year to mark the nation's 60th birthday, Curated by returning duo Tony Chambers and Maria Cristina Didero, with a new associate, Singaporean designer Hunn Wai, the exhibition was structured in three parts that represent Singapore's design journey across time: Little Island of Brave Ideas revisits design's role in nation-building; Future Impact captures current responses to contemporary challenges; and Virtuoso Visionaires projects future possibilities through the work of emerging talents. Read more: 8 most theatrical moments from Milan Design Week 2025 Above The exhibition was held at the Chiesa di San Bernardino alle Monache church Above The three exhibition curators, the returning Maria Cristina Didero (left) and Tony Chambers (right) and this year's newcomer Hunn Wai (middle) Above The Future Impact team in Milan, clockwise from back row left: Werable's Claudia Poh, Nice Project's Sacha Leong, Olivia Lee, Tiah Nan Chyuan from Farm, clinical associate professor Lee Shu Woan from Changi General Hospital, Shi Yanjie from Vouse, Practice Theory's Randy Yeo, Supermama's John Tay, and Bewilder's Ng Sze Kiat Without natural resources, branding has played a crucial role in the Little Red Dot's nation building. Design icons—from internationally recognised symbols like Pierre Balmain's sarong kebaya uniform for Singapore Airlines and the souvenir-spawning Merlion, to hyper-local touchstones like the Courtesy Campaign and the colour-coded hawker centre tableware—have helped define how Singapore is seen from both within and beyond its shores. The first part of the exhibition at Milan Design Week 2025 was a crash course in how design—and successful systems design in particular—has underpinned Singapore's transformation, from pragmatic policies to imaginative placemaking—through visual culture, urban planning, and a future-oriented mindset. Above Kintsugi 2.0 by Supermama at the 'Future Impact 3: Design Nation' exhibition Above Fungariums in Space by Bewilder at the 'Future Impact 3: Design Nation' exhibition Above Pnewmatics by Eian Siew at the 'Future Impact 3: Design Nation' exhibition Above Celia by Kalinda Chen at the 'Future Impact 3: Design Nation' exhibition The second part of the exhibition highlighted eight designers and studios whose work embodied the immediacy of design-led solutions. From inclusive fashion to algorithmic ceramics, and digital healthcare tools to upcycled furniture, these projects grappled with contemporary life—how we move, heal, consume and connect—while experimenting with new materials, systems and modes of making. Highlights included Olivia Lee's Matahari, a terracotta solar cooker that reimagines ancient Southeast Asian cookware to spark reflection on the sun as a futuristic energy source; a digital twin of Changi General Hospital's (CGH) A&E department by Farm, Vouse and CGH, which uses real-time spatial modelling to optimise patient care without putting them at risk; Fungariums in Space by Bewilder, which brings medicinal mushroom cultivation into sleek, stainless-steel biodesign; and Supermama's Kintsugi 2.0, which updates the traditional Japanese craft with 3D-printed gold resin and algorithmic forms, turning broken objects into whole futuristic heirlooms. Above Matahari by Olivia Lee at the 'Future Impact 3: Design Nation' exhibition Above Leave it to Singapore to turn a cathedral into a case study in national imagination The final part of the Singapore exhibition at Milan Design Week 2025 captured the speculative energy of Singapore's emerging design voices. Six young designers presented works that pushed the boundaries of material use, identity, and narrative. These included Pnewmatics by Eian Siew—an exploration of inflatable medical braces and air-based joinery systems that rethink structure, comfort and care; Celia by Kalinda Chen, a mycelium-based air purifier that merges biophilic design with fungal intelligence; and Standard Singlish by CJ Tan, a typographic system that turns colloquial vernacular into structured visual language. Imaginative yet simultaneously grounded, these projects showcased how a new generation is using design to question norms, activate culture and anticipate new modes of living. As co-curator Wai notes: 'Singapore is well-known for thriving through ingenuity and resourcefulness and now, the future lies with the new generation of globally attuned, self-aware innovators who can continue this legacy." Credits
