History of religion Books

Book SynopsisIt was far from inevitable that Rome would emerge as the spiritual center of Western Christianity in the early Middle Ages. After the move of the Empire''s capital to Constantinople in the fourth century and the Gothic Wars in the sixth century, Rome was gradually depleted physically, economically, and politically. How then, asks Maya Maskarinec, did this exhausted city, with limited Christian presence, transform over the course of the sixth through ninth centuries into a seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of sanctity?Conventional narratives explain the rise of Christian Rome as resulting from an increasingly powerful papacy. In City of Saints, Maskarinec looks outward, to examine how Rome interacted with the wider Mediterranean world in the Byzantine period. During the early Middle Ages, the city imported dozens of saints and their legends, naturalized them, and physically layered their cults onto the city''s imperial and sacred topography. Maskarinec documents Rome''s Trade Review"Considerable strengths undergird this study. The author's expertise on the topography and legends of the city of Rome are evident throughout; her reading is broad and current . . . Excellent maps and plates (often photographed by the author herself ) are liberally spread throughout the volume,and they complement the story she tells. The reader comes away with a visceral sense of what it meant to live in medieval Rome and how the veneration of saints was woven into the urban fabric." * The Journal of Religion *"Maskarinec's evocative reading of the diverse array of saints is grounded in the author's extensive knowledge of the complex physical history of early medieval Rome. City of Saints charts new territory in attending to audiences' perceptions of saints and the monuments dedicated to them and thereby uncovers how sanctity redeemed buildings surviving from Rome's classical past, since narratives about saints shaped both responses to antiquity and the growth of the city's early medieval built fabric." * Speculum *"City of Saints is an exceptional piece of scholarship, readable, even inviting. It might be the most important analysis of popular Christianity for the city of Rome in the early Middle Ages." * George Demacopoulos, Fordham University *"Maya Maskarinec has done more than any author before her to explain why (and how) saints came to be inserted into and associated with particular places in Rome. It is rare to see a scholar with such a solid command of both the hagiographical literature and the most current scholarship on Roman archaeology, topography, and social history." * Hendrik Dey, Hunter College *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. A City of Saints Chapter 2. Imperial Saints Triumphant in the Forum Romanum Chapter 3. St. Caesarius on the Palatine: Enriching Rome by Imperial Orders Chapter 4. Miraculous Charity Along the Tiber's Banks Chapter 5. Fashioning Saints for the Affluent on the Aventine Hill Chapter 6. Collectivities of Sanctity in Early Medieval Rome Chapter 7. Carolingian Romes Outside of Rome Chapter 8. A Universalizing Rome Through the Lens of Ado of Vienne Epilogue Appendices 1. Saints from Abroad Venerated in Rome, ca. 500-900 2. Theodotus and S. Angelo in Pescheria 3. The Translatio of St. Caesarius from Terracina to Rome 4. The Spread of St. George's Cult 5. An Early Medieval Diaconia Dedicated to St. Nicholas? 6. The Passio of St. Boniface of Tarsus Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisComposed in Germany in the early thirteenth century by Judah ben Samuel he-hasid, Sefer Hasidim, or Book of the Pietists, is a compendium of religious instruction that portrays the everyday life of Jews as they lived together with and apart from Christians in towns such as Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Regensburg. A charismatic religious teacher who recorded hundreds of original stories that mirrored situations in medieval social living, Judah''s messages advocated praying slowly and avoiding honor, pleasure, wealth, and the lures of unmarried sex. Although he failed to enact his utopian vision of a pietist Jewish society, his collected writings would help shape the religious culture of Ashkenazic Judaism for centuries.In Sefer Hasidim and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe, Ivan G. Marcus proposes a new paradigm for understanding how this particular book was composed. The work, he contends, was an open text written by a single author in hundreds of disjunTrade Review"Ivan G. Marcus lays out in a new way how Sefer Hasidim develops and functions as an Ashkenazic book. The summary, assessment, and synthesis of prior research he presents is enlightening and helpful." * Ephraim Kanarfogel, Yeshiva University *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Tommasino masterfully deploys textual analysis and historical investigations to Alcorano di Macometto. His revealing account of Venetian publishing circles and their eager readership reanimates a fascinating episode of the European Renaissance." * Religious Studies Review *"The Venetian Qur'an is an impressively rich study. It is a model of multidisciplinary research, drawing on historical, literary, and linguistic approaches." * Thomas E. Burman, University of Notre Dame *"A philological masterwork that introduces readers to a shadowy figure who was central to the intellectual life of his age. It is meticulously argued, encompassing early modern Italian literature, intellectual history, and the history of Orientalism, as well as Reformation-era European religious studies." * Karla Mallette, University of Michigan *Table of ContentsPreface Chapter 1. The Misfortune of a Translation Chapter 2. The Material Text: Three States, One Edition, a History Book Chapter 3. "What Everybody Wishes for and Keeps Silent": Analysis of the Context Through the Paratext Chapter 4. "And He Translated the Alcorano in the Vulgar Tongue": Giovanni Battista Castrodardo, Translator of the Alcorano di Macometto Chapter 5. The Iberian and Italian Mi'rāǧ by Giovanni Battista Castrodardo: An Unknown Dante Scholar and Muhammad's Ascension into Heaven Chapter 6. The Religion of the Italians, or Purgatory and the Qur'an: A Belief and a Place Between Robert of Ketton and Roberto Bellarmino Chapter 7. Scribendae Historiae Gratia: The Oration of Sergius the Monk to the Prophet Muhammad Chapter 8. Reading and Rewriting the Alcorano di Macometto: Francesco Sansovino Between the Historie Universali and the Selve Chapter 9. A Cheese Maker from Lucca and a Miller from Friuli Chapter 10. The Fortune of the Alcorano di Macometto and a Conclusion Appendix Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisMixed Faith and Shared Feeling explores the mutually generative relationship between post-Reformation religious life and London's commercial theaters. It explores the dynamic exchange between the imaginatively transformative capacities of shared theatrical experience, with the particular ideological baggage that individual playgoers bring into the theater. While early modern English drama was shaped by the polyvocal, confessional scene in which it was embedded, Musa Gurnis contends that theater does not simply reflect culture but shapes it. According to Gurnis, shared theatrical experience allowed mixed-faith audiences to vicariously occupy alternative emotional and cognitive perspectives across the confessional spectrum. In looking at individual plays, such as Thomas Middleton's A Game of Chess and Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Gurnis shows how theatrical process can restructure playgoers' experiences of confessional material and interrupt dominant habits of religious thought. Trade Review"Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling deftly challenges oversimplified confessional assumptions about people of the period by demonstrating through a wide array of lenses and perspectives the nuances of post-Reformation political, social, and religious practices. Through meticulous, sophisticated study, the author details how the power of theater shapes and is shaped by audiences of the time to reveal 'a way of moving around, inside and out of, between, or aslant of rigid confessional binaries.' This volume requires careful reading for students and scholars of drama. It is a remarkable resource for our time." * Seventeenth-Century News *"Musa Gurnis's Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling is a deeply researched, methodologically sophisticated, and interpretively compelling intervention in current studies of the relationship between the post-Reformation religious landscape and the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century commercial drama . . . In its willingness to tackle a range of critical and historical positions and in its learned mixing of theater history, performance theory, and materialist criticism, Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling is an impressive, exciting work. Perhaps most impressive is its eloquent conviction about the role of the stage not merely in reinforcing but in actually fostering the audience's creativity and interpretive flexibility. It is a flexibility that Gurnis herself demonstrates everywhere throughout the monograph." * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *"Lucidly argued, elegantly written, and grounded in sophisticated readings of the plays it examines, Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling offers an important contribution to the literature on the impact of the Reformation on early modern English stage culture . . . [Gurnis'] vindication of 'classical' materialism over the current, depoliticized (and, one might add, intellectually rather opaque) forms of neomaterialist theory reads as timely and urgent. Gurnis's passion and conviction have resulted in a remarkable book." * Modern Language Review *"Gurnis offers a fascinating reevaluation of how dramatists writing for the commercial English theatre responded to the divisions within and plurality of post-Reformation Christianity. This subject has attracted considerable scholarly attention in recent years, but Gurnis’s monograph represents a unique and valuable contribution to the field." * Theatre Journal *"Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling is an unusually compelling book. It is artfully conceived and exhaustively researched and takes its readers on a thoroughly engaging, wide-ranging, and profoundly interactive journey through the material-confessional on the one hand, theatrical on the other. And it does this in a way that successively explodes a number of received ideas and unexamined myths, chief among which is that card-carrying Puritans never attended, much less tolerated, public theater plays." * Thomas Cartelli, Muhlenberg College *"Focusing on the confessional, social, and political dimensions of post-Reformation theater in early modern England, Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling brings together a broad and deep familiarity with early modern drama as well as a deft understanding of the ways in which theatrical form and performance can shape individual and collective identities." * Steven Mullaney, University of Michigan *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Mixed Faith Chapter 2. Shared Feeling Chapter 3. In Mixed Company: Collaboration in Commercial Theater Chapter 4. Making a Public Through A Game at Chess Chapter 5. Measure for Measure: Theatrical Cues and Confessional Codes Epilogue. Pity in the Public Sphere Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"As has been consistent with Elizabeth Clark’s impressive scholarship, The Father’s Refounded is another masterpiece that anyone seriously interested in the history of Modernism or Protestant Liberalism, or in the history of the discipline of early Christian studies, or early American Christian scholarship on these topics, cannot ignore. This volume makes an important contribution to this intellectual history: the history of early Christian scholarship. Such studies shed light on the history of our disciplines and academic institutions. They provide clues to our past, and sometimes such studies provide us insights on how we may move forward fruitfully." * Review of Biblical Literature *"The Fathers Refounded is a truly brilliant book, massively researched, beautifully written, often witty, and rich with insight." * Grant Wacker, author of America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of America *"Focusing on Protestant and Catholic thinkers who developed fresh interpretations of Christianity during a transformational era in U.S. intellectual and religious life, Elizabeth A. Clark constructs an illuminating narrative about the complex relationship between Christian faith and modern experience. Her transdenominational work is a model for future scholarship in U.S. religious history." * James P. McCartin, Fordham University *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[E]rudite and evocative . . . Ancient Christian Ecopoetics is a crucial contribution to the cultural history of materiality in late antiquity . . . Put simply: this is the kind of study that cultural historians of late antiquity interested in the material turn need to be undertaking. The recent spate of publications on late antiquity's environmental history, many of which attract popular attention because of their dramatic claims to explain Rome's "decline and fall" as a response to climate change and pandemic disease, collectively fail to consider a critical question that Burrus probes in this book: how did late Romans experience and relate to their physical worlds? While purposely narrow in scope, Ancient Christian Ecopoetics presents us with one possible set of answers as well as a framework for pursuing further research." * Church History *"An erudite study of the theology of holy things in the late ancient Christianity . . . [T]his book is a fascinating and welcome contribution to the field of late antique Christianity . . . indispensable for scholars of asceticism in the late Christianity." * Reading Religion *"A brilliant and original book. In its reach, in its synthetic analysis, in its fluid, dynamic thought, Virginia Burrus creates something conceptually and imaginatively audacious. No one has attempted such a project before, not like this and not with such sophistication." * Douglas Christie, Loyola Marymount University *Table of ContentsIntroduction I. BEGINNING AGAIN WITH KHORA: TRACES OF A DARK COSMOLOGY Prelude: Anticipations of an Eco-Chorology Dreaming Khora: Plato's Timaeus Interlude: Fragments of an Eco-Chorology Khroric Legacies: Readers of Timaeus and Genesis Interlude: Beginning Again with Scripture In/Conclusion: Khora, God, Materiality Postlude: Beginnings, Again II. QUEERING CREATION: HAGIOGRAPHY WITHOUT HUMANS Prelude: Ecocriticism as Queer Theory Before Hagiography, Autozoography: The Life of Plotinus Queerly Ecological: The Lives of Antony, Paul, and Mary of Egypt Interlude: Desertification Holy Disfigurations: The Life of Syncletica Saint as Posthuman Assemblage: The Life of Simeon the Stylite Interlude: Performance Art In/Conclusion: Saints and Other Queer Creatures Postlude: A Tough Love III. Things and Practices: Arts of Coexistence Prelude: Theorizing Things Things: Relics and Icons in an Animate World Things: Architecture, Landscape, Cosmos : Fragments of a Material Theology of Things Things: Rhetoric and Performativity in Basil's Hexaemeron Desiring Things: Contemplation, Creation, and God in Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius : Words and Things /Conclusion: Things, Practices, Piety : The Things That Matter Epilogue: Worm Stories Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisIn late medieval Catholicism, mourners employed an array of practices to maintain connection with the deceased—most crucially, the belief in purgatory, a middle place between heaven and hell where souls could be helped by the actions of the living. In the early sixteenth century, the Reformation abolished purgatory, as its leaders did not want attention to the dead diminishing people''s devotion to God. But while the Reformation was supposed to end communication between the living and dead, it turns out the result was in fact more complicated than historians have realized. In the three centuries after the Reformation, Protestants imagined continuing relationships with the dead, and the desire for these relations came to form an important—and since neglected—aspect of Protestant belief and practice.In Speaking with the Dead in Early America, historian Erik R. Seeman undertakes a 300-year history of Protestant communication with the dead. Seeman chroniclTable of ContentsIntroduction. Speaking with the Dead Chapter 1. The Transatlantic Science of the Dead Chapter 2. Elegy in Puritan New England Chapter 3. Talking Gravestones and Visions of Heaven Chapter 4. Voices of the Dead in the American Enlightenment Chapter 5. Eighteenth-Century Imaginative Literature Chapter 6. Revelations and New Denominations Chapter 7. Religious Objects, Sacred Space, and the Cult of the Dead Chapter 8. Ghosts, Guardian Angels, and Departed Spirits Conclusion. Continuing Relationships Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Jennifer Taylor Westerfeld presents a logical narrative, with a clear arc, describing how Christian writers made use of the cultural heritage of pharaonic Egypt. An excellent treatment of a very complicated subject." * Richard Jasnow, Johns Hopkins University *"Equally conversant with the texts in ancient Egyptian scripts-hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic-and the late antique sources, Jennifer Taylor Westerfeld offers a dynamic account of how late antique authors viewed ancient hieroglyphic script in an increasingly Christian world." * Jitse Dijkstra, University of Ottawa *"[T]he volume sheds considerable light on the discourse around hieroglyphs in Late Antiquity, and how these increasingly mysterious and incomprehensible letters embody the cultural memory of the wisdom of Egypt, either positively as being symbols of divine truth, or negatively as the idolatrous past of a triumphalist Egyptian Christianity, or somewhere in between." * Numen *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations Note on Translations Introduction. Confronting Pharaonic Egypt in Late Antiquity Chapter 1. From Sign to Symbol in Roman Egypt Chapter 2. Hieroglyphs, Deep History, and Biblical Chronology Chapter 3. Encoding the Wisdom of Egypt Chapter 4. Laws for Murdering Men's Souls Chapter 5. Translating Hieroglyphs, Constructing Authority Conclusion. Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination Notes Bibliography Index Locorum Subject Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe most important contribution of Jews and Journeys is its focus on those dynamics of Jewish travel literature that upend basic assumptions of much recent scholarship about travel. * Jewish Review of Books *How do Jewish travel narratives function as a vehicle of cultural self-perception? This question serves as a guiding principle for all the contributions in this volume, which presents a longue durée of Jewish travel writing from biblical times to the present. Jews and Journeys is a timely and relevant volume, speaking to a trend in Jewish historiography that looks increasingly beyond the local and towards transnational and cross-cultural connections. * Matthias Lehmann, University of California, Irvine *

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Book SynopsisMass-produced of tin-lead alloys and cheap to make and purchase, medieval badges were brooch-like objects displaying familiar images. Circulating widely throughout Europe in the High and late Middle Ages, badges were usually small, around four-by-four centimeters, though examples as tiny as two centimeters and a few as large as ten centimeters have been found. About 75 percent of surviving badges are closely associated with specific charismatic or holy sites, and when sewn or pinned onto clothing or a hat, they would have marked their wearers as having successfully completed a pilgrimage. Many others, however, were artifacts of secular life; some were political devices—a swan, a stag, a rose—that would have denoted membership in a civic organization or an elite family, and others—a garland, a pair of clasped hands, a crowned heart—that would have been tokens of love or friendship. A good number are enigmatic and even obscene. The popularity of badges seems toTrade Review"[A]n authoritative general introduction to the design, imagery, production, functions, and many uses of religious and secular badges during the Middle Ages, especially in northwestern Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries...Rasmussen has produced a welcome, readable introduction to medieval badges, which are a fascinating window into religion, social life, and popular imagery." * The Medieval Review *"This captivating book introduces us to late-medieval badges: small, shiny, usually cheap and mass-produced objects worn on hats or clothing...Badges are ostensibly the subject of Rasmussen's study, but they become tour guides on an extraordinary journey through the many cultures of late-medieval Northern Europe." * Seminar *"Ann Marie Rasmussen offers a new approach to her subject, combining archaeological and literary sources in a way that has not been done before. Her understanding of the nature of medieval badges is profound and well argued." * Michael Andersen, National Museum of Denmark *"The book offers a through introduction to medieval badges that is both a solid work of scholarship and a joy to read." * Jennifer Lee, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Chapter 1. What Are Medieval Badges? Chapter 2. How Do We Know About Medieval Badges? Chapter 3. How Were Badges Made, Designed, and Used? Chapter 4. What Did Badges Do? Chapter 5. Badges and Pilgrimage Chapter 6. Badges and Chivalry Chapter 7. Badges in the Medieval City Chapter 8. Badges and Carnival Concluding Remarks Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This is an incredibly rich book which takes the reader into the heart of the entangled cultural and religious world of the Near East in the thirteenth century...Shachar is able to accomplish what he sets out to do in his introduction, namely to understand not only why a sizeable group of Jews from France chose to emigrate to the Holy Land but even more crucially why they chose to enshrine their endeavours in the language of holy warfare....[T]he book exemplifies how exploring the Near East in its own right through its multilingual sources reveals a rich cultural world in which Muslim, Christian and Jewish writers moulded themes and traditions which they shared with each other to fashion visions of their own." * Jewish Studies *"This book is a significant contribution to medieval studies, providing a refreshing consideration of complexity during the crusading years in the Near East. Shachar has been able to investigate the layers of this complexity by considering the very legitimate question as to in what way did the crusading communities of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries articulate the realities around them both in proximity to each other, and to justify their own involvement." * Journal of Religious History *"The sheer variety of the source base for crusade studies makes the comparative close reading of texts from the Latin, Old French, Arabic, Hebrew, and Judeo- Arabic traditions difficult. It takes a special kind of scholar with training and expertise in all the relevant languages to pull it off. Uri Zvi Shachar is just such a scholar and his first monograph is just such a project..Shachar succeeds in placing three literary traditions in conversation with one another, demonstrating how their shared visions of militant piety helped them to make sense of the increasingly entangled world of the thirteenth-century Near East." * Comitatus *"This fascinating study by Uri Zvi Shachar demonstrates the shortfalls of the general presentation of the crusader period and the interactions between Muslims, Christians, and Jews as dominated by warfare, religious animosity, and exclusion. He shows us that Muslims, Jews, and Christians not only shared the same geography, but they also spoke a similar 'language' saturated with common religious and cultural symbolisms, and that was only possible because of the avenues of interactions between them." * Suleiman A. Mourad, Smith College and IAS Nantes *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Holy Wars and Unholy Alliances: Historical Overview Chapter 2. Warriors and Border Anxieties: Jacques de Vitry and His Legacy Chapter 3. Warrior Mothers: The Coproduction of Pious Chivalry in Romance Literature Chapter 4. A Jewish "Crusade" to the Near East: The Immigration Movement Chapter 5. Translation and Migration in Messianic Figurations of Holy War Chapter 6. Pollution and Purity in Crusading Rhetoric Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAfter their expulsion from Spain in 1492, Sephardi Jews such as Isaac Abravanel, Abraham Saba, and Isaac Arama wrote biblical commentaries that stressed the significance of land. They interpreted Judaism as a tradition whose best expression and ultimate fulfillment took place away from cities and in rural settings. Iberian-Jewish authors rooted their moral teachings in an ethical treatment of the natural world, elucidating ancient agricultural laws and scrutinizing the physical context and built environments of Bible stories. The Land Is Mine asks what inspired this and suggests that the answer lies not in timeless exegetical or theological trends, but in the material realities of late medieval and early modern Iberia, during a period of drastic changes in land use.The book uses a highly traditional source base in a decidedly untraditional way. In Jewish Studies, Andrew D. Berns observes, biblical commentary is typically studied as an intramural activity. Though scholarTrade Review"The Land is Mine both challenges typical methodological approaches to medieval Jewish Bible commentaries and introduces a wider body of readers to its medieval Jewish protagonists –Abraham Saba, Isaac Arama and Isaac Abravanel – in elegant translation; a welcome addition across fields." * Journal of Jewish Studies *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Kreps’s insightful analysis shows that the dramatic imagery of the Gospel is not merely a sophisticated literary flourish. It articulates a version of divine revelation that appealed to a range of ancient religious thinkers, Jewish and Christian...[A] valuable contribution to the study of the Nag Hammadi corpus and the religious debates of the second century." * The Journal of Religion *"Anne Starr Kreps presents an important and novel thesis about a path not taken in the history of Christian scripture as a canon and as a concept. This is a captivating, bold, unusually readable, and highly significant work of scholarship." * Eva Mroczek, University of California, Davis *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Since the Covid-19 pandemic, there might be less inclination to ridicule medieval public health measures such as mask-wearing and lockdowns. Yet pre-modern medicine is still often discredited as primitive. As Embodying the Soul, Meg Leja’s momentous study of Carolingian medicine, attests, discoveries made in the Middle Ages helped lay the foundation for medical theory and practice today...This beautifully produced book is of a kind rare in an academic landscape of fast-paced research and employment. Leja makes a polished, compelling argument on a rich basis of medical, theological and philosophical texts, which will surely set the standard for the next decade." * Times Literary Supplement *"Meg Leja’s masterful study is less about medicine in the early decades of the ninth century per se and more about the body’s relationship to the soul and what medical attention to the body revealed about the symbiosis of body and soul...[T]he thesis of Embodying the Soul is original and substantiated by stellar research. The book is an important contribution to the history of early medieval medicine and to understanding the ninth-century theology of body and soul. No study of medieval medicine can afford to ignore this work." * Church History *"[Leja's] knowledge of the manuscript record of Carolingian medicine is comprehensive, and she lucidly explains the sometimes bewildering “album” quality of these volumes, in which texts are set side by side without an apparent structure but with an intent that can be discerned by carefully considering their choice and disposition. The clarity with which she explains their significance as vehicles of medical knowledge is both exact and refreshing. Leja’s mastery of the secondary literature on Carolingian culture, medical history, history of the body, and Christian theology and practice is also impressive and reassuring. All this serves to undergird an argument that is original, carefully articulated, eloquently presented, and destined to shape our understanding of the worlds it described for decades to come." * Studies in Late Antiquity *"In Embodying the Soul, Meg Leja aims to subtly reconfigure assumptions surrounding early medieval medicine...The book’s scope is impressive and adds significantly to the recent trend in scholarship towards reading medical texts for their literary value and alongside other types of literary, theological, and hagiographical traditions...It seems likely that this fascinating and learned study will be directing the study of Carolingian medicine for years to come." * The Medieval Review *"There is a great deal of evidence about Carolingian medicine, but because it doesn’t fit many of the standard narratives about the period, few scholars have paid it much attention. Meg Leja provides an impressive and thoughtful examination of the nature of the medical evidence and of the ways that it intersected with other forms of knowledge and practice—ensuring by the end that medicine is seen not just as a niche monastic antiquarian concern but as something that was relevant to the Carolingian world more broadly." * James T. Palmer, University of St. Andrews *

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisAt the dawn of the second millennium, the lives and deaths of two powerful and pious women, Mathilda (d. 968) and Adelheid (d. 999) were recorded. This volume brings together in English the anonymous ""Lives of Mathilda"" and Odilo of Cluny's ""Epitaph of Adelheid"".

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisConsiders the significance of the period from Constance to Trent (1414-1563), when several councils met to heal the Great Schism (1378) and reform the church. This book reflects on the predicaments of modern community-building when communities are experimenting with broader participation in the decision-making process.

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Book SynopsisStudies liturgical blessing and its role in the religious life of Christians during the central and later Middle Ages, focusing on the blessings of the Franco-Roman liturgical tradition from the tenth to late thirteenth centuries.

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Book SynopsisBenevolence toward the poor in medieval Europe rested upon ideological foundations established by Christianity and was practiced by a diverse body of clerics and lay people. This book presents a comprehensive study of the ideas that underlie medieval generosity and of the institutions created to serve the poor.Trade ReviewCharity and Religion in Medieval Europe is an excellent storehouse of information about medieval charitable theory and practice. It is remarkably analytical, critical, and skeptical of larger theories and claims about medieval charity. - Philip Gavitt, Saint Louis University

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Book SynopsisFocuses on how Christianity changed the lives of children in the ancient world. This book explores the hidden lives of children at the origins of Christianity. It draws on insights gained from comparisons of children's experiences in ancient Judaism and the Graeco-Roman world.

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Book SynopsisAround 1147 the bishop of Chartres directed Geoffrey Grossus, a monk of Tiron Abbey, to write the life of its founder Bernard of Abbeville (ca 1050-1116) in an effort to further his canonization. This work presents an erudite, action-filled, and sympathetic portrait of the ascetic founder of an increasingly prominent and wealthy congregation.

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Book SynopsisExamines the motley shape of the pope’s territorial domain, the institutions found there, and the relationships between Rome and its outlying cities. Microhistories of how things worked form a clear picture of relations between the sovereign and his subjects.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“This work offers the most complete examination of Hilary’s mature thought in any language. There are books on Hilary’s Trinitarian theology, but none that considers the way Hilary conceives the Christian life, nor how he developed theologically and pastorally after his exile. Although scholars have long had a sense that Hilary was important to the course of Latin theology, this book is the first to suggest how and why he was so important. A first-rate work of scholarship.”—Mark Weedman, professor of biblical and historical theology, Crossroads College

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Book SynopsisWhat did ancient Christians and pagans believe makes the unity of the nations? Just as he began serving as a major adviser at the Second Vatican Council in 1962, Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) studied this question in lectures delivered at Austria's University of Salzburg. These lectures, originally published in German, are now made available in English in this volume.

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Book SynopsisHistorians of the Catholic Church have mostly rejected the possibility that Communist countries played a role in the Second Vatican Council’s story, or that the Council in turn shaped the subsequent paths of those countries. The goal of this volume is to begin writing Central and Eastern Europe back into the story of the Second Vatican Council, its origins, and its consequences.Trade Review“An intriguing, well-informed, and riveting treatment of the much overlooked impact of the Second Vatican Council on the Soviet Bloc . . . succeeds in tossing away the longentrenched concept of the “Church of Silence” as applicable to the Communist period.”—Mikolaj Kunicki, St. Anthony’s College, University of Oxford

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Book SynopsisThe capital vices are the gateway drugs to countless sins. The path of this book descends through the vices, culminating with their queen ruler, pride. The words of the Fathers will assist the reader in being more realistic about the attacks upon the soul. The text should also be edifying and medicinal.

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Book SynopsisExamines the missionary work of the early modern Capuchin friar, and doctor of the Church, Lawrence of Brindisi. Renowned in his own day as a preacher, Bible scholar, missionary, chaplain, and diplomat, as well as vicar general of his order, Lawrence led the first organized, papally-commissioned Capuchin mission among the non-Catholics of Bohemia in the Holy Roman Empire from 1599 to 1602.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“A volume that offers a breadth of topics and weighty scholarly conversation that cut across fields and often defy categories. It is, therefore, a set of essays worthy of Cusanus’ own overlapping interests and style.”—Catholic Historical Review“Nicholas of Cusa is not an easy read, and this collection of papers approaching his work from fresh angles forms a welcome addition to the modern scholarly literature. A lively and at times exciting collection that makes a useful contribution to relieving modern ‘learned ignorance’ about its subject.”—The Historian“The essays in this collection demonstrate a significant advance in Cusan scholarship, most importantly in their deepened awareness of the unity, at least in Cusa’s own mind, of all his sundry interests under the one overarching thematic of mystical theology. The importance of this collection of essays is not necessarily what it actually contains, but rather the possibilities for future work that it could open up in many different fields, particularly across disciplines.”—International Journal of Systematic Theology“The contributions, which are of a uniformly high caliber . . . a must have for anyone working on Cusanus and a necessary volume for any library seeking thorough coverage of the history of philosophy.”- Journal of the History of Philosophy“What a collection! My breathless summarizing does it scant justice. It is unlikely that all the essays will appeal to one constituency of reader, Cusan specialists excepted. But given the range of topics covered here individual essays and groups of essays will be of wide interest. A number of essays raise useful questions about the ‘epochisation’ of history and the influence this might have on one’s interpretation of a figure like Cusanus. This book is a highly stimulating addition to research on the wide ranging legacy of Nicholas of Cusa and should rightly encourage more interest and study into the gripping thought of this polymath.”—Reviews in Religion and Theology

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Book SynopsisBeginners and experts alike will find a complete immersion into the workings and nature of the Latin language embodied in the incomparable epistles of the great Marcus Tullius Cicero, something which other commentators pass over or scorn. This second volume puts ""meat on the bones"" of the Latin language presented in the first volume.

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