Some diptychs are ornamented with subjects from the life of Christ and other religious themes.
Diptychs were carved ivory tablets, with the inner surface waxed for writing, and were used by the early Christians, as they had been by the ancients.
From the different Diptychs various martyrologies, or lists of persons so to be commemorated in the ‘Canon,’ were composed to supply the place of the merely local lists or Diptychs.
For as time went on, it began to be considered more and more improper to insert new names in so sacred a part of the Church prayers; and the old names being well known, the Diptychs fell into disuse.
At Pompeii in 1875 several diptychs were found, the wooden leaves hollowed on the inner sides, filled with blackened wax, and hinged together at the back with leather thongs.
The diptychs are the prototypes of the modern book.
From about the 1st to the 6th century, ornamental diptychs were made of carved ivory, and presented to great personages by the Roman consuls.
Diptychs became important in the Christian Church, in them being written the names of Popes, and other distinguished persons, who had deserved well of the Church, to be mentioned in the church prayers.
Thus, out of one set of diptychs grew the Necrologium, and out of the other the Martyrology.
The custom of reading the diptychs has ceased to be observed in the Roman Liturgy, though we find it indicated there by the "Oratio supra Diptycha.
These diptychs were folding tablets of ivory or boxwood, sometimes of silver, connected together by hinges, so that they could be shut or opened like a book.
The catalogue of the Saints to be remembered was long; there were hundreds of martyrs at Rome alone, and their names were written down on sacred diptychs especially appropriated to this purpose.
But, in addition to the diptychs of those for whom the priest and congregation were desired to pray, there was the catalogue of the Martyrs and Saints for whom the Church thanked God.
Mark we have this, "The deacon reads the diptychs (or catalogue) of the dead.
These same characteristics of face are very noticeable in the beautiful carved ivory diptychs and statuettes of the Virgin and Child made during the fourteenth century in France and England.
Most of these diptychs date from the fourteenth century, and are of French workmanship, but they were also produced in England at the same time and of quite equal merit in design and execution.
Tablets like this with as many as eight ivory leaves are rare, but a very large number of beautiful ivory diptychs still exist, with carved reliefs on the outside of very graceful style and delicate execution.
It is supposed that these ivory diptychs were inscribed with complimentary addresses and were sent as presents to newly appointed officials in the time of the later Empire.
Besides the diptychs ancient Greek and Roman ivories before the recognition of Christianity are comparatively small in number and are mostly in the great museums of the Vatican, Naples, the British Museum, the Louvre and the Cluny Museum.
Almost every great museum and famous private collection abounds in examples of the well-known diptychs and triptychs and little portable oratories of this period.
The diptychs of private individuals or of officials number about sixteen, and in the case of the private ones have a far greater artistic value.
The literature concerning these diptychs is voluminous, from the time of the erudite treatise by Gori published in 1759 to the present day.
The celebrated Consular Diptychs date from the fourth century onwards.
Hence they are obviously mistaken who count certain tablets as diptychs which have no ascription to any consul, but represent the Muses, Bacchantes, or Gods.
Ivory diptychs were fashionable gifts and keepsakes in the later Roman imperial days.
Among small box shrines which soon developed in Christian times from the Consular diptychs is one, in the inventory of Roger de Mortimer, "a lyttle long box of yvory, with an ymage of Our ladye therein closed.
It was the custom for Consuls to present to senators and other officials these little folding ivory tablets, and the adornment of Diptychs was one of the chief functions of the ivory worker.
This they are not, for they cannot be taken from the consular diptychs which had their own ornamentation, referring to the consultate and the insignia, differing from the sculpture destined for other purposes.
Some diptychs which were used afterwards for ecclesiastical purposes, show signs of having had the Consular inscription erased, and the wax removed, while Christian sentiments were written or incised within the book itself.
He replaced the Pope's name in the diptychs, and renounced communion with Peter the Stammerer, who had again openly anathematised the Council of Chalcedon; only he refused to remove from the diptychs the names of his two predecessors.
This he expressed by removing the name of the Pope from the diptychs in answer to his sentence of degradation and excommunication.
This condition he maintained, acknowledging Euphemius as orthodox, but not as bishop, because he would not remove from the diptychs the names of two predecessors who had died outside of communion with the Roman See.
The recital of a name in the diptychs was a formal declaration of Church fellowship, or even a sort of canonisation and invocation.
In the primitive church when the worshippers brought their own offerings of bread and wine, from which were taken the Communion elements, the names of the contributors were recorded on diptychs and read aloud.
The custom of reading names from the diptychs died out about the 8th century.
The patriarch, John the Cappadocian, declared his adherence to the Fourth Council: the name of Pope Leo was put on the diptychs together with that of S.
Acacius, then excommunicated by Rome because he would not excommunicate the Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria, retorted by striking out the name of Felix from the diptychs of the Church.
One of a series of twelve diptychs that are among Kiyonaga's finest works.
But also he created a new type of design--that which found expression in the great diptychs and triptychs that stand as the triumphs of colour-printing.
Bock gives his authorities for saying that the clavus was sometimes an applied border, sometimes a loose stripe hanging down in front, as may be seen in two consular diptychs given in plate 70.
Trabea, which on the Roman consular ivory diptychs of several centuries is so invariably embroidered with this same clavus pattern (plate 70) that we must conclude that it had a meaning and a tradition.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "diptychs" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
