Religious communities and monasticism Books

Book SynopsisReconsiders contemporary debates about ethics and subjectivity in an extended engagement with the works of fifth-century ascetic, John Cassian (ca. 360 - ca. 435), whose stories of extreme asceticism and transformative religious experience by desert elders helped to establish Christian monastic forms of life.Trade Review“This is a brilliant, original, and important work. Drawing upon the rich, complex ascetic and spiritual thought of late ancient Christian monastic writer John Cassian, Niki Kasumi Clements examines, critically and creatively, the very ground of ethics.” —Douglas E. Christie, author of The Blue Sapphire of the Mind"Clements not only offers a clearer understanding of the nuances in late ancient asceticism, but also contributes to contemporary debates on subjectivity, ethics and agency by inviting her audience to a reflexive engagement with the question of what it means to live well amidst contingencies and crises." —NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion"Clements’ text is not only a valuable contribution to the studies of religion – which it certainly is – but promises a broad and interdisciplinary impact." —Foucault Studies

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Book SynopsisA special anniversary edition of the biography of the man who made the phenomenon of Taize possible.Trade Review· Charmingly well written in a gentle and generous spirit. * Archbishop Desmond Tutu *

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Book SynopsisSt. Paul is generally considered the first Christian hermit, and the monastery built around his cave in Egypt is one of the very oldest. This sumptuous volume grew out of a conservation project of the monastery's superb wall paintings, which were broadly produced in two phases in the 13th and 18th centuries.

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Book SynopsisPachomius, who died in 346, has long been regarded as the founder of monasticism. This reading of the available texts, first published in 1985, reveals that Pachomius's pioneering enterprise has been consistently misread in light of later monastic practices.Trade Review"Masterful control of the sources and sympathy for the subject. . . . Pachomius has the additional interest of dealing with a classic instance of biographical and other material originally compiled rom oral tradition, with all the fascination and uncertainty that this brings to the interpretation of the story." * Times Literary Supplement *"An impressive and readable study, well argued and admirably documented." * Journal of Theological Studies *"[Rosseau] has made Pachomius a more understandable historical figure and has shown the uniqueness of the way of life he struggled to define." * American Historical Review *"This very readable and well-documented work provides a needed corrective to the superficial treatment of Pachomius found in many monastic histories." * Church History *

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Book SynopsisAn apostolic lifestyle characterized by total material renunciation, homelessness, and begging was practiced by monks throughout the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. This book presents a study of this type of Christian poverty and the challenge it posed for episcopal authority and the promotion of monasticism in late antiquity.Trade Review“Groundbreaking for those who study asceticism, monasticism, the uses of Late Antique biblical exegesis, church history, and most importantly church politics. . . . The very valuable translation of the Life of Alexander Akoimetos is an added benefit of the book." * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *"A detailed examination, with meticulous documentation, of the phenomenon of wandering and begging monks that appeared in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, especially in the eastern Mediterranean region and North Africa, during the formative period of Christian monasticism." * Byzantinische Zeitschrift *"A first-rate study of how the politics of reputation, bonds of patronage, and competition for scarce resources culminated in the bishops' tightened grip on monasteries and their networks of supporters. In addition to advancing scholarship on urban monasticism, ecclesiastical responses to poverty, and the social history of doctrine, Caner's thoroughly researched study will enhance future work on asceticism and pilgrimage." * Catholic Historical Review *"Caner has written in an entertaining and engaging style and packed this monograph fully and comprehensively with the details and impressions of what was the dilemma of Christian asceticism in the third-fifth centuries. Caner takes the reader a lot of places, and it is gratifying to see the significant role of Syriac-speaking asceticism being given its proper and measured place in the history." * Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies *“A model of scholarship: beautifully written and engaging, it clearly situates its subject in the larger historical context, demonstrates an impressive command . . . of relevant sources, and provides clear and compelling support for his interpretation." * Journal of Theological Studies *Table of ContentsAcknolwedgements Abbreviations Map Introduction Chapter One: Wandering in the Desert and the Virtues of Manual Labor Chapter Two: Practice What You Preach: Apostolic Wanderers of Third-Century Syria Chapter Three: In Support of People Who Pray: Apostolic Monasticism and the Messalian Controversy Chapter Four: Apostle and Heretic: The Controversial Career of Alexander the Sleepless Chapter Five: Hypocrites and Pseudomonks: Beggars, Bishops and Ascetic Teachers in Cities of the Early Fifth Century Chapter Six: Monastic Patronage and the Two Churches of Constantinople Epilogue Appendix: The Life of Alexander Akoimetos Select Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAn apostolic lifestyle characterized by total material renunciation, homelessness, and begging was practiced by monks throughout the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Such monks often served as spiritual advisors to urban aristocrats whose patronage gave them considerable authority and independence from episcopal control. This book is the first comprehensive study of this type of Christian poverty and the challenge it posed for episcopal authority and the promotion of monasticism in late antiquity. Focusing on devotional practices, Daniel Caner draws together diverse testimony from Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and elsewhereincluding the Pseudo-Clementine Letters to Virgins, Augustine's On the Work of Monks, John Chrysostom's homilies, legal codesto reveal gospel-inspired patterns of ascetic dependency and teaching from the third to the fifth centuries. Throughout, his point of departure is social and cultural history, especially the urban social history of the late Roman empire. He also introduces many charismatic individuals whose struggle to persist against church suppression of their chosen way of imitating Christ was fought with defiant conviction, and the book includes the first annotated English translation of the biography of Alexander Akoimetos (Alexander the Sleepless). Wandering, Begging Monks allows us to understand these fascinating figures of early Christianity in the full context of late Roman society.Trade Review“Groundbreaking for those who study asceticism, monasticism, the uses of Late Antique biblical exegesis, church history, and most importantly church politics. . . . The very valuable translation of the Life of Alexander Akoimetos is an added benefit of the book." * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *"A detailed examination, with meticulous documentation, of the phenomenon of wandering and begging monks that appeared in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, especially in the eastern Mediterranean region and North Africa, during the formative period of Christian monasticism." * Byzantinische Zeitschrift *"A first-rate study of how the politics of reputation, bonds of patronage, and competition for scarce resources culminated in the bishops' tightened grip on monasteries and their networks of supporters. In addition to advancing scholarship on urban monasticism, ecclesiastical responses to poverty, and the social history of doctrine, Caner's thoroughly researched study will enhance future work on asceticism and pilgrimage." * Catholic Historical Review *"Caner has written in an entertaining and engaging style and packed this monograph fully and comprehensively with the details and impressions of what was the dilemma of Christian asceticism in the third-fifth centuries. Caner takes the reader a lot of places, and it is gratifying to see the significant role of Syriac-speaking asceticism being given its proper and measured place in the history." * Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies *“A model of scholarship: beautifully written and engaging, it clearly situates its subject in the larger historical context, demonstrates an impressive command . . . of relevant sources, and provides clear and compelling support for his interpretation." * Journal of Theological Studies *Table of ContentsAcknolwedgementsAbbreviationsMapIntroductionChapter One: Wandering in the Desert and the Virtues of Manual LaborChapter Two: Practice What You Preach: Apostolic Wanderers of Third-Century SyriaChapter Three: In Support of People Who Pray: Apostolic Monasticism and the Messalian ControversyChapter Four: Apostle and Heretic: The Controversial Career of Alexander the SleeplessChapter Five: Hypocrites and Pseudomonks: Beggars, Bishops and Ascetic Teachers in Cities of the Early Fifth CenturyChapter Six: Monastic Patronage and the Two Churches of ConstantinopleEpilogueAppendix: The Life of Alexander AkoimetosSelect Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThis book is the first ethnography of Tibetan Buddhist society from the perspective of its nuns. Gutschow lived for over three years among them, collecting their stories, observing them, and studying their lives. This picture of the little known culture provides valuable insight into the relationship between women and religion in South Asia today.Trade ReviewSolidly based on over a decade of fieldwork, Gutschow successfully dispels a number of stereotypical misconceptions about Buddhist monasticism in general and Buddhist nuns more specifically. She places monasticism in its necessary political and economic spheres, while not ignoring the pragmatic aspects of lived Buddhism. Being a Buddhist Nun transports women and nuns from their marginal peripheral position in Buddhist history to its ideological center. -- Frank J. Korom, Boston UniversityA brilliant analysis, beautifully written, of Buddhism as never before portrayed. Privileging popular practices and local informants over textual expertise, Gutschow takes us right into the heart of the contradictions between Buddhist doctrine and practice, showing the mechanisms that reinstate the very social hierarchies and injustices that the Buddha disdained. The book is a tour de force, a bold and courageous analysis that will change the field of Buddhist studies forever. A truly enlightening and extraordinary book. -- Unni Wikan, University of OsloBeing a Buddhist Nun is a persuasive and moving combination of vivid writing and sophisticated scholarship. The lived experience is wonderfully captured in both verbal and visual thick descriptions of foods, tasks, conversations, all the evocative phenomena of the everyday, while the book raises questions that are significant far beyond the Himalayas, ranging from the usual questions of gender--Why Cannot Nuns Be Monks?--for which Kim Gutschow offers new answers, to the not-so-usual questions of celibacy, in which she sees newly relevant values. -- Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Professor of the History of Religions, University of ChicagoIn many religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism, women are considered spiritually inferior to men and often suffer inequitable treatment in the wider society. Buddhism, with its highly egalitarian doctrine, is often perceived as being different. Gutschow shows that in this regard we have mistakenly focused on ideals rather than on actual practices. -- James F. DeRoche * Library Journal *The inescapable struggle of being a woman in a patriarchal system is the heart of Gutschow's work and permeates her further discussions, including ideologies of purity and pollution and Tantric approaches to the question of female enlightenment...Gutschow's analysis is penetrating, and her supporting anecdotes are often vivid and effective. Her work reveals that the reality of Himalayan Buddhist monasticism, far from being Shangri-La, is thoroughly rooted in the very foibles of the world it professes to renounce. * Publishers Weekly *Based on [Gutschow's] observations and research in Zangskar, the book describes a rigid hierarchy in which monks rule, enjoying power and prestige and conducting important ceremonies and rituals, such as blessing households and construction sites in their villages. Nuns, who must defer to monks and sit behind them at formal gatherings, are relegated to menial tasks, such as collecting the dung and sticks that the entire community will burn for fuel during the region's harsh winters. -- Anne Stuart * Harvard Magazine *Being a Buddhist Nun is a valuable account of the life of nuns in the Himalayan valley of Zanskar, a region of Ladakh in north-west India. The work is driven by a deep sense of injustice and a compelling focus on a remote society still medieval in character...[Gutschow] present[s] an unrivalled account of monastic economy and social anthropology in Ladakh. Her text is full of 'thick' description, delightful anecdotes, biographies of courageous and not so courageous nuns, as well as accounts of the personal joys and sufferings of individuals. Although she focuses on the often lamentable ways in which nuns suffer discrimination, she is not unduly disrespectful of the monastic system to which they belong; rather she subjects it to a prolonged and penetrating examination and interpretation. -- John Crook * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisJohn W. O’Malley gives us the most comprehensive account ever written of the Society of Jesus in its founding years, one that heightens and transforms our understanding of the Jesuits in history and today.Trade ReviewNeither fazed nor overwhelmed, Father O’Malley never loses sight of the forest among the myriad trees… In this book three tenacious myths bite the dust. The first is that Ignatius had a detailed blueprint for his companions… A second myth is that the Jesuits were founded to combat the Reformation and to spearhead its Roman Catholic riposte, the Counter-Reformation… The third myth is that the Jesuits were founded as the pope’s shock troops… Far from being a simple chronicle, it is an account of how the Jesuits, led by the internal dynamism of the Holy Spirit, responded to unpredictable events and new needs. -- Peter Hebblethwaite * New York Times Book Review *A masterly account of the first generation [of Jesuits]…carried out with an economy and insight that compel admiration. -- Anthony Grafton * New York Review of Books *This is surely the best book ever written in English on the first Jesuits and the early Society of Jesus. It may well be the best book on that topic ever written in any language. This is a work that is deeply original, always clear, often brilliant. -- John Padberg * America *A magnificent achievement both of synthesis and interpretation. -- Philip Endean, S.J. * The Way *This is a major study of the first crucial years of one of the most important institutions of modern Europe. Perhaps the price of the impact of the Society of Jesus is that both hagiographical and demonic myths have encrusted its early history. This learned and eloquent study scrapes away those myths in order to tell the complex, almost improvisational history of the first twenty-five years of the Society of Jesus… No study in any language provides such an authoritative and fascinating picture. -- Paul F. Grendler * Journal of Modern History *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Foundations before the Founding Ignatius and the First Companions The Spiritual Exercises 2. Taking Shape for Ministry The Basic Framework The Campaign for Self-Understanding Pastoral Ideals and Practice Programs of Ministry 3. Ministries of the Word of God Preaching Sacred Lectures Conversation and Publication Teaching Christianity Missions to the Countryside The Exercises in Practice 4. Sacraments, Worship, Prayer Confession and Casuistry Holy Communion and the Eucharist Holy Orders Music and Worship Prayer 5. Works of Mercy Peacemaking Hospitals and Prisons Ministry to the Dying Ministry to Prostitutes Orphans and Daughters of Prostitutes Jews and New Christians Confraternities and the Marian Congregations 6. The Schools Toward Messina and Beyond The Faith in Education Transcending the Modus Parisiensis Jesuit Education Failures, Frustrations, and Crisis Training the Clergy The Impact of the Schools 7.

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Book SynopsisThe 1950s and 60s were times of extraordinary social and political change across North America that re-drew the boundaries between traditional and progressive, conservative and liberal. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the history of Catholic nuns. During these two decades, nuns boldly experimented with their role in the church, removing their habits, rejecting the cloister, and fighting for social justice. The media quickly took to their cause and dubbed them 'the new nuns,' modern exemplars of liberated but sexually contained womanhood.With Visual Habits, Rebecca Sullivan brings this unexamined history of nuns to the fore, revisiting the intersection of three distinct movements - the Second Vatican Council, the second wave of feminism, and the sexual revolution - to explore the pivotal role nuns played in revamping cultural expectations of femininity and feminism.From The Nun's Story to The Flying Nun to The Singing Nun, nuns were a major preTrade ReviewVisual Habitsprovides a persuasive argument of how postwar worries concerning women were calmed by fantasizing about spunky women wearing veils. At the same time, it reminds us of the importance of imagining alternatives to the heterosexual family romance that is far from being the natural order of things. -- Colleen McDannell Bookforum - Oct/Nov 2005 Vol. 12 Issue 3 Visual Habits is a must-read in a culture that has forgotten the influence of professed religious in both women's history and pop culture...women religious, vocations directors and those with an interest in the films and folk music of the post-war era will enjoy grappling with this thought-provoking work. -- Dorothy Cummings The Catholic Register

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Book SynopsisIn The Artificiality of Christianity, the author's primary goal is to distill from monastic literature a poetical tool that can be used to decipher the literary structure of religious texts; a secondary goal is to show the centrality of monasticism to the specific experiences of Christian reading.

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Book SynopsisBorn in a provincial city in the Peruvian Andes, the Franciscan linguist and theologian Luis Geronimo de Ore (1554-1630) lived during a critical period in the formation of the modern world. In the first full-length biography of Ore, Noble David Cook and Alexandra Parma Cook reconstruct the friar’s life and the communities in which he circulated.Trade ReviewA masterful history." - John Frederick Schwaller, author of The History of the Catholic Church in Latin America: From Conquest to Revolution and Beyond"Noble David Cook and Alexandra Parma Cook's study is methodologically rigorous and meticulously comprehensive, the result of decades-long research of Oré's publications and reports, the social milieus in which they were produced, and the actions of the renowned figures with whom Oré interacted." - John Charles, author of Allies at Odds: The Andean Church and Its Indigenous Agents, 1583-1671

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[An] erudite volume . . . Griffiths contributes importantly to a more inclusive depiction of female monastic life and male spirituality (a story of greater mutuality) and to a better-nuanced understanding of relations between men and women in medieval society." * Speculum *"The reform era was obsessed with clerical celibacy, yet it also witnessed a great expansion of women's religious life-and all those newly founded nunneries required priests to provide pastoral care. In an age known for its shrill misogyny, how did such priests justify their service to women, and what positive roles did nuns play in male spirituality? In her urgently needed book, Nuns' Priests' Tales, Fiona Griffiths teases out some fascinating answers." * Barbara Newman, Northwestern University *"This delightful and learned book examines the ways in which the ordained men who provided sacramental services and spiritual counsel for nuns understood their relationships with women. The setting is primarily the eleventh and twelfth centuries-a period when close bonds between priests and any female were viewed with deepening suspicion. Fiona J. Griffiths, however, explores the positive models that monks and priests evoked at that time to justify and even celebrate their charitable bonds with the nuns they served." * Megan McLaughlin, author of Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority in an Age of Reform, 1000-1122 *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations Prologue Chapter 1. The Puzzle of the Nuns' Priest Chapter 2. Biblical Models: Women and Men in the Apostolic Life Chapter 3. Jerome and the Noble Women of Rome Chapter 4. Brothers, Sons, and Uncles: Nuns' Priests and Family Ties Chapter 5. Speaking to the Bridegroom: Women and the Power of Prayer Conclusion Appendix. Beati pauperes Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTells the story of Robert of Arbrissel (ca 1045-1116). Robert was a parish priest, longtime student, reformer, hermit, wandering preacher, and founder of the abbey of Fontevraud. This book narrates the course of Robert's life and his relationships with others along the way, and includes notes, a bibliography, and an introduction to the book.

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Book SynopsisFocuses on a Greek text that was likely compiled in Constantinople, in 1105, for use in one of the monasteries located there. The book consists of a liturgical psalter, containing the fixed structure (the ordinary) in both the Greek original and in English translation, as well as a description of the hours themselves.

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Book SynopsisThe second in a series of collected essays looking at Indian Buddhism.

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Book SynopsisDocuments from the major convent at Bruges shed fresh and illuminating light on its life.The English Augustinian Canonesses at Bruges kept records of daily life and key events in their convent from its foundation in 1629. Living in exile, members of the convent were well-aware of their importance to the survival of English Catholicism for women. Keeping full records served to maintain a reputation which would attract influential and wealthy benefactors and well-qualified members; but the Bruges Chronicles are far more than window-dressing. They introduce the reader to members at every level, from impressive community leaders to candidates who failed to live up to expectations and were tactfully nudged out before profession. We meet Prioresses who take on major challenges in fund-raising to pay for building projects, manage disagreements over spiritual direction and adjust to new relationships with secular authorities, the impact of the Enlightenment and finally war. There are some intense personal dramas that unfold alongside nuns who followed the monastic rule to the letter and served the community faithfully over many years. Above all, the the Chronicles reflect the wide-ranging interests of the members, and show clearly that this enclosed community was well-connected with an extensive support network. The Chronicles edited in this volume, taking the story to the eighteenth century and a decision as to whether or not to return to England,are presented with introduction and full notes. Dr Caroline Bowden is a Senior Research Fellow, Queen Mary, University of London.Trade ReviewProvides an invaluable, first-hand insight into the existence of an English Catholic convent in exile, for a period of some 160 or so years.... Bowden's study is meticulous, both in its editing and faithfulness to the original texts, but also with regard to the supplementary appendices. * JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY *This volume makes available to scholars and students a fascinating set of materials that will surely spark much new, valuable research and many contributions to the lively scholarly conversation on early modern English nuns in exile. * SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEWS *The Chronicles reveal much about individual lives and trajectories of these nuns . . . [and] give a vivid picture of communal life in the cloister. . . . Caroline Bowden has produced a rich edition. * EARLY MODERN WOMEN *Provides a richly-detailed narrative of cloistered life and a fascinating example of convent writing..It will be required reading for those working on early modern monasticism or women writers, and of great interest to scholars in history and religion more generally. * BRITISH CATHOLIC HISTORY *A splendid volume.hard to fault.[E]xcellent. * HISTORIANS OF WOMEN RELIGIOUS *Table of ContentsEditorial Preface Introduction Volume 1: 1629-1729 Volume 2: 1729-1794 Glossary Appendix 1: Other Convents mentioned in the Chronicle Appendix 2: A Note on Money Appendix 3: Calendar of Feasts and Saints' Days at Nazareth Select Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThe Emergence of Monasticism offers a new approach to the subject, placing its development against the dynamic of both social and religious change. First study in any language to cover the formative period of medieval monasticism. Gives particular attention to the contribution of women to ascetic and monastic life. Trade Review‘An indispensable and valuable book.’ Times Literary Supplement ‘... the book succeeds admirably in making technical material accessible to the general reader.’ English Historical Review ‘The goal of this work, very successfully achieved, is a comprehensive view of monastic history ... throughout the book [Dunn] brings the reader quickly to understand a host of scholarly controversies without overburdening her text. Speculum '... a thorough reading of the major secondary studies of the past generation ... The extensive notes, substantial biliography and detailed index will be of great use.' Ecclesiastical History "This deserves to be widely recommended... a fascinating and thorough book" Morwenna Ludlow, MindTable of ContentsPreface. List of Abbreviations. 1. The Emergence of Christian Eremiticism. 2. The Development of Communal Life. 3. Women in Early Monasticism. 4. The Meaning of Asceticism. 5. The Evolution of Monasticism in the West. 6. The Rule of St Benedicts and its Italian Setting. 7. Britain and Ireland. 8. Irish peregrini and European Monasticism. 9. Monasticism and Society in the Seventh Century. Bibliography. Index.

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Book SynopsisShannen Dee Williams provides a comprehensive history of Black Catholic nuns in the United States, tracing how Black sisters’ struggles were central to the long African American freedom movement.Trade Review“Deeply researched, elegantly written, and boldly argued, Subversive Habits is a brilliant excavation of the long political history of Black nuns. This is extraordinary scholarship that is as accessible as it is groundbreaking and illuminating. This timely and essential book widens the frames of Black women’s history, of religion and activism, and of Black Catholicism.” -- Barbara D. Savage, author of * Your Spirits Walk beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion *“Sweeping in its scope, exhaustively researched, and balanced in presentation,Subversive Habits is a seminal history of Black Catholic Nuns and their struggle for equality and justice in the Catholic Church.” -- Bettye Collier-Thomas, author of * Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion *"An awe-inspiring history book about Black nuns who fought for freedom and equality. . . . Subversive Habits is a stirring history text about the remarkable faith and conviction of Black nuns in America." -- Melissa Wuske * Foreword *(Starred Review) "Informative and often surprising, this should be required reading for scholars of Catholic and African American religious history and will undoubtedly become the standard text on its subject." * Publishers Weekly *"The 'uncommon faithfulness' of the nuns in Subversive Habits—taking the church at its word when it teaches that we are all one body—is a model of discipleship from which all Catholics can learn." -- Kathleen Manning * U.S. Catholic *"Shannen Williams's book chronicles the bold steps and persistence African-American sisters took to debunk their rejection by white orders that insisted Black women lacked souls and/or virtue suitable to be admitted to them. . . . This outstanding book, Subversive Habits, is well-researched, quite revealing and a set of history and reality lessons of how Black sisters kept the faith and made the Catholic Church change." -- Ralph E. Moore, Jr. * The AFRO *"This eye-opening, inspiring and thoroughly researched book unearths a history that few Americans know: the challenges and triumphs of Black Catholic nuns in the United States. It’s one of the most exciting new books in Black women’s history and powerfully captures the interconnections between race, religion and politics." -- Keisha Blain * Politico *"Subversive Habits demands a committed reader. However, it will reward the resilient and open-minded reader with apokalupsis—tremendous learning about the scope of racism throughout the American Catholic Church as well as the witness of these Black Catholic women and their contributions to the church and the world. Please take up the reading and stick with it. Draw some perseverance from the women the book depicts and take heart in their commitment to justice." -- Kevin Spinale * America *"Subversive Habits brings a very necessary balance to histories published in recent decades that focus on civil rights work by Catholics. It seems these historians were writing about the exception and not the norm. This is the story of courageous nuns, including those who felt they couldn't remain any longer, who are the true gems of American Catholic history. Every woman religious must read this book." -- Laura Swan * Magistra *"In Subversive Habits, historian Williams has given us a remarkable work of scholarship, one that may be distressing for many readers because she clears away any shred of doubt about the U.S. Catholic Church being racist from its very beginnings." -- Kathleen Finley * The Tablet *"I have never read a more thoughtful account of the Black Catholic experience than Shannen Dee Williams’ Subversive Habits. Williams’ book is a revelatory history of the experiences of Black religious women in understanding race, faith, and change in the Catholic church from the antebellum period through the various waves of civil-rights struggle to the contemporary era." -- Marcia Chatelain * Chronicle of Higher Education * "Williams seeks to tell the story of these women and of the Black and majority white sisterhoods in which they participated. The account is well documented, and Williams includes a look at the current departures of Black sisters from religious life and considers the likely future of Black female religious communities. Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, and professionals." -- L. H. Hoyle * Choice *"Williams's book is the go-to work on Black women religious in the United States during and in the afterlife of slavery. Future scholars, practitioners, and interlocutors are indebted to this brilliant author for the treasure trove she has gifted us." -- Ahmad Greene-Hayes * Journal of Southern History *Table of ContentsAbbreviations ix Note on Terminology xiii Preface: Bearing Witness to a Silenced Past xv Acknowledgments xix Introduction. America’s Forgotten Black Freedom Fighters 1 1. Our Sole Wish Is to Do the Will of God: The Early Struggles of Black Catholic Sisters in the United States 23 2. Nothing Is Too Good for the Youth of Our Race: The Fight for Black-Administered Catholic Education during Jim Crow 61 3. Is the Order Catholic Enough? The Struggle to Desegregate White Sisterhoods after World War II 103 4. I Was Fired Up to Go to Selma: Black Sisters, the Second Vatican Council, and the Fight for Civil Rights 134 5. Liberation Is Our First Priority: Black Nuns and Black Power 167 6. No Schools, No Churches! The Fight to Save Black Catholic Education in the 1970s 200 7. The Future of the Black Catholic Nun Is Dubious: African American Sisters in the Age of Church Decline 231 Conclusion. The Catholic Church Wouldn't Be Catholic If It Wasn’t for Us 259 Glossary 271 Notes 273 Bibliography 345 Index 371

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Book SynopsisStealing Obedience explores how a Christian notion of agent action where freedom incurs responsibility was a component of identity in the last hundred years of Anglo-Saxon England, and investigates where agency (in the modern sense) might be sought in these narratives.Trade Review'Imaginative and sophisticated monograph... Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe must be warmly congratulated on her fine accomplishment, which will be useful to scholars interested in English monastic life and obedience on either side of the Norman Conquest.' -- Francesca Tinti Speculum vol 90:01:2015 'Solid cultural and historical grounding, artfully framed by appropriate theoretical models, characterize this study... Highly recommended' -- M.B. Busbee Choice Magazine; vol 50:04:2012 'Stealing Obedience is a fresh look at a body of narrative sources which have only rarely been theorized and troubled so effectively.' -- Justin Haar Comitatus vol 44: September 2013 'A pleasure to read...Speaks to a range of disciplinary interests, and deserves attention as an authoritative contribution to debates about identity and selfhood in Middle Ages.' -- Catherine A.M. Clarke Modern Language Review vol 108:04:2013Table of ContentsPlate Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: On Stealing Obedience 1: Dunstan in the Theatre of Choice 2: 'Esto quod es': Aelfric's Colloquy and the Imperatives of Monastic Identity 3: Edith's Choice 4: Leaving Wilton: Gunhild and the Phantoms of Agency 5: The Silence of Eve Afterword Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn Dark Age Nunneries, Steven Vanderputten dismantles the common view of women religious between 800 and 1050 as disempowered or even disinterested witnesses to their own lives. It is based on a study of primary sources from forty female monastic communities in Lotharingiaa politically and culturally diverse region that boasted an extraordinarily high number of such institutions. Vanderputten highlights the attempts by women religious and their leaders, as well as the clerics and the laymen and -women sympathetic to their cause, to construct localized narratives of self, preserve or expand their agency as religious communities, and remain involved in shaping the attitudes and behaviors of the laity amid changing contexts and expectations on the part of the Church and secular authorities.Rather than a dark age in which female monasticism withered under such factors as the assertion of male religious authority, the secularization of its institutions, and the precipitous Trade ReviewThe book illuminates the little-explored landscape of female monasticism. Vanderputten demonstrates that the current narratives remain oversimplified, and opens up possibilities for its revision. * Sehepunkte *Previous generations of modern historians describe Lotharingian female monasticism as inadequate, lax, and unobservant. In Dark Age Nunneries, Steven Vanderputten puts us right by offering a compelling alternative analysis. -- Elisabeth Van Houts, Emmanuel College * SPECULUM *An impressive volume [that] will be useful to all scholars of monasticism, particularly in its nuanced analysis of communities' interaction with normative texts. * EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Setting the Boundaries for Legitimate Experimentation 2. Holy Vessels, Brides of Christ: Ambiguous Ninth-Century Realities 3. Transitions, Continuities, and the Struggle for Monastic Lordship 4. Reforms, Semi-reforms, and the Silencing of Women Religious in the Tenth Century 5. New Beginnings 6. Monastic Ambiguities in the New Millennium Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThis volume brings together texts of the twelfth-century Hildegard of Bingen and the early-thirteenth-century Francis of Assisi to represent religious spirituality after the Gregorian Reform and just prior to or simultaneous with the formation of universities in Western Europe. In an extraordinary way, Hildegard embodies monastic theology and spirituality and provides a contrast to the new thing that would be created with the study of theology in the new Aristotelian idiom of the universities. But equally in contrast to the Benedictine Hildegard, the thirteenth century witnessed a renewed enthusiasm for a more literal following of Christ in a life of penitence and poverty. This is a life of dependence, not on a superior and enclosed community but on the compassion of society at large. Francis would join this movement on his own terms, attract a following, and gradually formulate a spirituality that sent signals of the need to reform individual lives and the institutions of the Church. These two authors, then, are not joined here because of any shared similarity but to help illustrate two quite different spiritualities that animated the lively European twelfth and thirteenth centuries.Table of ContentsHILDEGARD OF BINGEN I – Introduction to Hildegard and the Texts | 3 II – The Texts | 15 Hildegard on the Prologue Selection from Part I, Vision 4 of The Divine Works | 17 Hildegard on Creation Selection from Part II, Vision 1 of The Divine Works | 39 III – Retrieving Hildegard for Christian Life Today | 59 FRANCIS OF ASSISI I – Introduction to Francis and the Texts | 73 II – Foundational Texts of Francis | 85 The Earlier Rule | 87 Later Admonition and Exhortation to the Brothers and Sisters of Penance | 118 The Canticle of Creatures | 129 A Letter to the Entire Order | 133 The Testament | 141 III – Retrieving Francis for Christian Life Today | 147 Further Reading | 161 About the Series | 163 About the Editors | 169

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Book SynopsisIn Keeping the Faith, Jennifer Jean Wynot presents a clear and concise history of the trials and evolution of Russian Orthodox monasteries and convents and the important roles they have played in Russian culture, both spiritually and politically, from the abortive reforms of 1905 to the Stallnist purges of the 1930s. She shows how, throughout the Soviet period, Orthodox monks and nuns continued to provide spiritual strength to the people, in spite of severe persecution, and despite the ambivalent relationship the Russian state has had toward the Russian church since the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Focusing her study on two provinces, Smolensk and Moscow, Wynot describes the Soviet oppression and the clandestine struggles of the monks and nuns to uphold the traditions of monasticism and Orthodoxy. Their success against heavy odds enabled them to provide a counterculture to the Soviet regime. Indeed, of all the pre-1917 institutions, the Orthodox Church proved the most resilient. Based on previously unavailable Russian archival sources as well as written memoirs and interviews with surviving monks and nuns, Wynot analyzes the monasteries' adaptation to the Bolshevik regime. She challenges standard Western assumptions that Communism effectively killed the Orthodox Church in Russia. She shows that in fact, the role of monks and nuns in Orthodox monasteries and convents is crucial, and that they are largely responsible for the continuation of Orthodoxy in Russia following the Bolshevik revolution.

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Book SynopsisIncludes Old French text and English translation of the life of Saint Eufrosine, who dressed as a man to become a monk in a monastery. Mixing hagiography, romance, epic, and theology, this work from around 1200 CE raises questions about sexuality and identity, family relationships, and spiritual and secular values.Trade ReviewA welcome addition to the growing corpus of medieval hagiographic works in translation designed for upper-division classroom use." —Nancy Vine Durling, Independent Scholar"Ogden's Eufrosine fills a need for saints' lives in translation." —Maureen Boulton, University of Notre Dame

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Book SynopsisThe Deeds of the abbots of St Albans records the history of one of the most important abbeys in England, closely linked to the royal family and home to a school of distinguished chroniclers, including Matthew Paris and Thomas Walsingham. It offers many insights into the life of the monastery, its buildings and its role as a maker of books, and covers the period from the Conquest to the mid-fifteenth century.Trade ReviewA wonderfully detailed picture of life in the medieval abbey...To have this work available in one volume in English rather than multiple volumes in Latin is a great service to medieval and monastic historians * ALBAN LINK *Table of ContentsIntroduction The translation and its sources The Deeds of the Abbots of St Albans Appendix: A thirteenth-century precis of the Deeds of the Abbots of St Albans Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of how Æthelwold and those he influenced deployed the promotion of saints to implement religious reform. Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester and his associates were some of the most radical monastic reformers in tenth-century Europe. In two generations, they took over most of the powerful churches in the kingdom of England and implemented a number of the policies found in their ambitious monastic manifestos. They also had a major impact on the early development of the kingdom itself, taking a role in the establishment of a shire system that lasted a thousand years, negotiations with invaders, and attempts to create a standardized English language. Æthelwold and his circle were also enthusiastic venerators of saints. This book examines a range of sources, from hagiographies to charters, from liturgy to archaeological remains, to argue that saints' cults helped these men and women secure their power, wealth, and relationships with groups outside their monasteries. The saints that Æthelwold's circle promoted most lavishly were not necessarily the ones that they studied or the ones that matched their ideological agenda. Rather, Æthelwold's monks and nuns connected themselves to a wide range of saints, including the Virgin Mary, St Swithun, Æthelthryth of Ely, Iudoc, Grimbald, Botulf, Cuthbert, and many others. Venerating these saints helped Æthelwold and his followers appeal to other groups in society, including unreformed ecclesiastics, lay nobles, and the workers on their estates. This book therefore not only has implications for the study of early English history and literature, but also for the history of western European monasticism and saints' cults more generally.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Intellectual Priorities, Individuals, and Intra-Communal Veneration 2. Saints and Property 3. Saints and Unreformed Clerics 4. Saints and Nobles 5. Saints, the Laity, and Sacred Spaces 6. Saints and the Second Generation Conclusion Appendix 1: Saints and Property in Royal Grants, 900-1000 Appendix 2: Members of the Circle Appointed to High Ecclesiastical Offices, 956-1016 Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisNew approaches to understanding religious women's involvement in monastic reform, demonstrating how women's experiences were more ambiguous and multi-layered than previously assumed. Over the last two decades, scholarship has presented a more nuanced view of women's attitude to and agency in medieval monastic reform, challenging the idea that they were, by and large, unwilling to accept or were necessarily hostile towards reform initiatives. Rather, it has shown that they actively participated in debates about the ideas and structures that shaped their religious lives, whether rejecting, embracing, or adapting to calls for "reform" contingent on their circumstances. Nevertheless, fundamental questions regarding the gendered nature of religious reform are ripe for further examination. This book brings together innovative research from a range of disciplines to re-evaluate and enlarge our knowledge of women's involvement in spiritual and institutional change in female monastic communities over the period c. 1000 - c. 1500. Contributors revise conventional narratives about women and monastic reform, and earlier assumptions of reform as negative or irrelevant for women. Drawing on a diverse array of visual, material and textual sources, it presents "snapshots" of reform from western Europe, stretching from Ireland to Iberia. Case-studies focussing on a number of different topics, from tenth-century female saints' lives to fifteenth-century liturgical books, from the tenth-century Leominster prayerbook to archaeological remains in Ireland, from embroideries and tapestries to the rebellious nuns of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, offer a critical reappraisal of how monastic women (and their male associates) reflected, individually and collectively, on their spiritual ideals and institutional forms.Table of Contents1 Debating Identities: Women and Monastic Reform in the Medieval West, c. 900-1500 Julie Hotchin and Jirki Thibaut 2 Liturgy and Female Monastic Hagiography around the Year 1000: A lecture croisée of the Life of Liutrud, the Second Life of Glodesind of Metz and the So-called Pontificale Romano-Germanicum Gordon Blennemann 3 Remakers of Reform: The Women Religious of Leominster and their Prayerbook Katie Anne-Marie Bugyis 4 The Materiality of Female Religious Reform in Twelfth-Century Ireland: The Case of Co-Located Religious Houses Tracy Collins 5 Women as Witnesses: Picturing Gender and Spiritual Identity in a Twelfth-Century Embroidered Fragment from Northern Germany Julie Hotchin and Vera Henkelmann 6 Mulieres Religiose and Cistercian Nuns in Northern Italy in the Thirteenth Century: A Choice of 'Order' Elena Vanelli 7 Circulation of Books and Reform Ideas between Female Monasteries in Medieval Castile: From Twelfth-Century Cistercians to the Observant Reform Mercedes Pérez Vidal 8 Women, Men and Local Monasticism in Late Medieval Bologna Sherri Franks Johnson 9 Building Community: Material Concerns in the Fifteenth-Century Monastic Reform Jennifer Edwards 10 Who Made Reform Visible? Male and Female Agency in Changing Visual Culture Katharina Ulrike Mersch 11 Nuns, Cistercian Chant and Observant Reform in the Southern Low Countries John Glasenapp Index

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Book SynopsisThe monastic life, traditionally considered as an area of withdrawal from the world, is here shown to be shaped by metaphors of war, and to be actively engaged with battle in the world outside. An extremely interesting and important book... makes an important contribution to the history of medieval monastic spirituality in a formative period, whilst also fitting into wider debates on the origins, development and impactof ideas on crusading and holy war. Dr William Purkis, University of Birmingham Monastic culture has generally been seen as set apart from the medieval battlefield, as "those who prayed" were set apart from "those whofought". However, in this first study of the place of war within medieval monastic culture, the author shows the limitations of this division. Through a wide reading of Latin sermons, letters, and hagiography, she identifies a monastic language of war that presented the monk as the archetypal "soldier of Christ" and his life of prayer as a continuous combat with the devil: indeed, monks' claims to supremacy on the spiritual battlefield grew even louder asChurch leaders extended the title of "soldier of Christ" to lay knights and crusaders. So, while medieval monasteries have traditionally been portrayed as peaceful sanctuaries in a violent world, here the author demonstrates thatmonastic identity was negotiated through real and imaginary encounters with war, and that the concept of spiritual warfare informed virtually every aspect of life in the cloister. It thus breaks new ground in the history of European attitudes toward warfare and warriors in the age of the papal reform movement and the early crusades. Katherine Allen Smith is Assistant Professor of History, University of Puget Sound.Trade ReviewA major study. [...]Smith's brilliant volume is easily the best synthesis of knightly monastic culture in any language. [...]This book is a highly recommended masterpiece, a model of how historians should investigate the cross-cultural contacts between two elites, seemingly opposites, in the High Middle Ages. * CHURCH HISTORY *This important book is a welcome addition to the recent literature on the relations between medieval church and society. * THE CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW *Skilfully demonstrates that martial imagery was a major force in the creation of monastic culture. [...] Truly a remarkable achievement. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction Encountering War in the Scriptures and Liturgy Monks and Warriors: Negotiating Boundaries Spiritual Warfare: The History of an Idea to c.1200 Martial Imagery in Monastic Texts Warriors as Spiritual Exemplars Conclusion Appendix: The Loricati, c.1050-1250 Bibliography

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Book SynopsisLawmen were crucial to the economic wellbeing of medieval nunneries; this book looks at the relationship between them and how cases were conducted. In late medieval England, cloistered nuns, like all substantial property owners, engaged in nearly constant litigation to defend their holdings. They did so using attorneys (proctors), advocates and other "men of law" who actuallyconducted that litigation in the courts of Church and Crown. However, although lawyers were as crucial to the economic vitality of the nunneries as the patrons who endowed them, their role in protecting, augmenting or depleting monastic assets has never been fully investigated. This book aims to address the gap. Using records from the courts of the common law, Chancery, and a variety of ecclesiastical venues, it examines the working relationships withoutwhich cloistered nuns could not have lived in fully enclosed but self-sustainingc communities. In the first part it looks at the six mendicant and Bridgettine houses established in England, and relates the effectiveness and resilience of their cloistered spirituality to the rise of legal professionalism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It then presents cases from ecclesiastical and royal courts which illustrate the work of legal professionals on behalf of their clients. Elizabeth Makowski is Ingram Professor of History, Texas State University.Trade ReviewA learned, useful, and often engaging study of the legal business of these female houses. Overall the book is gracefully written, thoroughly documented, and well disciplined. Its scrupulous organization makes it easy to navigate if one is looking for specific information; it is also an admirable work of sustained and mature scholarship. * MEDIEVAL PROSOPOGRAPHY *This carefully researched book deserves a wide readership. * ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW *A meticulously researched and precisely written study. ... An engaging and useful book. * PARERGON *Provides a valuable treatment of this neglected, and richly documented, dimension of monastic life. ... [It] will be welcomed by ecclesiastical and legal historians alike. * THE RICARDIAN *An elegant and masterful study of a little known aspect of the history of nuns in later medieval England. * HISTORIANS OF WOMEN RELIGIOUS *Table of ContentsIntroduction Cloistered Spirituality and English Nuns Legal Professionalism and English Lawyers Letters of Appointment and Routine Business Proceedings at Common Law Chancery Suits Episcopal Arbitration Papal Appeals Conclusion Appendix Bibliography

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive survey of the origins, development, and influence of the most important monastic orders in the middle ages. The men and women that followed the sixth-century customs of Benedict of Nursia (c.480-c.547) formed the most enduring, influential, numerous and widespread religious order of the Latin middle ages. Their liturgical practice, andtheir acquired taste for learning, served as a model for the medieval church as a whole: while new orders arose, they took some of their customs, and their observant and spiritual outlook, from the Regula Benedicti. The Benedictines may also be counted among the founders of medieval Europe. In many regions of the continent they created, or consolidated, the first Christian communities; they also directed the development of their social organisation,economy, and environment, and exerted a powerful influence on their emerging cultural and intellectual trends. This book, the first comparative study of its kind, follows the Benedictine Order over eleven centuries, from their early diaspora to the challenge of continental reformation. JAMES G. CLARK is Professor of History, University of Exeter.Trade ReviewThe author masters with a seldom met richness a wealth of evidence from the infinitude of particular aspects of Benedictine monasticism. This richness not only stems from the broad perspective of the well-read author's tackling the matter, his constant flow of fresh quotations and references to medieval authors of all genres, printed or still in manuscript, but also his discussions and possible explanations carry the note of careful respect for historical truth within reach of historical possibilities. * CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW, July 2013 *A masterful work. * AMERICAN BENEDICTINE REVIEW, December 2012 *[Advances] a distinctive and intensively-researched interpretation of the order's history. * JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY *Impresses from the outset with its detail. * ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW *Many readers will enjoy this book, and it certainly merits a wide audience. It is also a must-read for specialists and is bound to become a key reference in future discussions about ways of telling Benedictinism's story in the Middle Ages. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *This attractive volume offers a broad survey of the Benedictines and their immense influence on the medieval Church. * CHURCH TIMES *Provides a comprehensive introduction and [is] an invaluable resource to all students of the European Middle Ages. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *A work of impeccable and original scholarship. [It] is an especially recommended and seminal contribution to academic library World History, European History, Catholic History, and Medieval Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists. * LIBRARY BOOKWATCH *Table of ContentsIntroduction The Making of an European Order Observance Society Culture The Later Middle Ages Reformation

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Book SynopsisAn examination of the importance of anchoritism to social, cultural and religious life in the middle ages. Originating in the deserts of northern Africa in the early years of Christianity, anchoritism, or the enclosed solitary life, gradually metamorphosed into a permanent characteristic of European religiosity; from the twelfth century onwards, and throughout the middle ages, it was embraced with increasing enthusiasm, by devoted laywomen in particular. This book investigates the wider cultural importance of medieval anchoritism within the different religious landscapes and climates of the period. Drawing upon a range of contemporary gender and spatial theories, it focuses on the gender dynamics of this remarkable way of life, and the material spaces which they generated and within which they operated. As such, it unites related - but too often discrete - areas of scholarship, including early Christian anchoritism, anchoritic guidance texts and associated works, fourteenth and fifteenth-century holy womenwith close anchoritic connections, and a range of other less known works dealing with or connected to the anchoritic life. Dr LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY is Senior Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Studies at Swansea UniversityTrade ReviewLiz Herbert McAvoy is to be congratulated for her work over the past decade in helping to bring so many hermits out of their seclusion, and for presenting them to a much wider public than that to which they had long become accustomed. * THE ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW *Medieval Anchoritisms [...] draw together the recurrent concerns and approaches that have characterized McAvoy's work to date and applies them to a wide range of texts. The book is [...] always stimulating and has a singleness of purpose that is compelling. * THE CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW *Medieval Anchoritisms provides an enlightening look into the mechanisms at work behind medieval anchoritic lifestyles and the discourses that shaped it. McAvoy thoroughly investigates tensions that existed between medieval and late antique conceptions of masculinity and enclosure that shaped monasticism and anchoritism. * HORTULUS *McAvoy's work [...] is substantial and well-researched, and should be of real interest to its intended audience. * JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY *Table of ContentsIntroduction Miles Christi: Early Anchoritic Masculinity and the Sacred Videte vocacionem vestram: Late Medieval Male Anchoritism and the Spectral Feminine Writing the Flesh: Female Anchoritism and the Master Narrative Reading with the Eyes Closed: Revising the Master Narrative Mapping the Anchorhold: Anchorites, Borderlands and Liminal Spaces Afterword Bibliography

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Book SynopsisLate eleventh-century spiritual counsel for a woman recluse, anticipating medieval advice literature for anchoresses. Goscelin's Liber Confortatorius is extraordinary both as an example of high-medieval spiritual practice and as a record of a personal relationship. Written in about 1083 by the monk Goscelin to a protegee and personal friend, the recluse Eva, it takes up the tradition of St Jerome's letters of spiritual guidance to women, and anticipates medieval advice literature for anchoresses. As a compendious treatise, it has much to tell us about the intellectual interests and preoccupations of religious people in the late eleventh century. As a personal document, it allows a fascinating and uncommonly intimate insight into the psychology of religious life and the relationships betweenmen and women in the high middle ages. This English translation is presented here with notes and introduction. Monika Otter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College.Trade ReviewProvides ambitious students of the Middle Ages with a rare opportunity to experience in English the complex, rich, and often impenetrable world of the monastic imagination, as dazzling in what it reveals as it is frustrating for what it conceals. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *

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Book SynopsisSelections from this widely varied original mystical treatise offer insight into the lives of C13 female religious in northern Europe. Here is one of the great surprises of German medieval literature. Compiled between c.1250 and c.1282, it is an extraordinary piece of imaginative writing. It integrates visions, auditions, dialogues, prayers, hymns, lyrical love poems, letters, allegories and parables, and draws creatively on features from hagiography, the disputation, the treatise, and magic spells, as the author documents her relationship with God and with her contemporaries. Selectionsfrom the text are presented here in translation with introduction and notes. Dr Elizabeth A. Andersen teaches in the School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University.Trade ReviewReaders will welcome this thoughtful selection. * JOURNAL OF ENGLISH & GERMANIC PHILOLOGY (hardback edition) *

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Book SynopsisContains biographies of three great Mahayana masters, sixty-five Chinese nuns from the fourth to sixth centuries, and an account of the life and travels in South Asia of the fifth-century Chinese monk, Faxian.

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Book SynopsisA study of the involvement of the Cistercian Order in the events surrounding the outbreak of heresy - particularly that of the Cathars and the resulting Albigensian Crusade - in southern France. Led by the example of Bernard of Clairvaux, Cistercian monks turned their attention to the world outside the monastery walls in response to the threat posed by heretical Christians, in particular the Cathars. The white monks, withother intellectuals, turned to pen, pulpit and popular preaching to counteract heresy, some accepting posts as bishops and papal legates, helping and even directing the Albigensian crusade, and contributing to the formulation ofprocedures for inquisition. Kienzle examines this important but little-studied aspect of Cistercian history to discover how and why the Order undertook endeavours that drew the monks outside their monastic vocation. The analysis of texts about the preaching campaigns and their contexts illuminate the ways in which medieval monastic authors perceived heresy, preached, and wrote against it. Professor BEVERLY MAYNE KIENZLE teaches at Harvard Divinity School.Trade ReviewLearned and thoughtful. HISTORY * A particularly helpful introduction to a group of key issues in twelfth-century history still inadequately recognised. * ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsAppendix to introduction: deconstructing - close reading, rhetorical criticism, and historiography of persecution and heresy. The Lord's vineyard in the 12th century; monastic spirituality and literature - the domestic vineyard; Bernard of Clairvaux, the 1143/44 sermons and the 1145 preaching mission - from the domestic to the Lord's vineyard; Henry of Clairvaux, the 1178 and 1181 missions, and the campaign against the Waldensians - driving the foxes from the vineyard; Innocent III's papacy and the Crusade years, 1198-1229 - weeding the vineyard; Helinand of Froidmont and the events of 1229 - planting virtues in the vineyard.

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Book SynopsisFirst full-scale survey and examination of liturgical practice and its fundamental changes over four centuries. At the heart of life in any medieval Christian religious community was the communal recitation of the daily "hours of prayer" or Divine Office. This book draws on narrative, conciliar, and manuscript sources to reconstruct the history of how the Divine Office was sung in Anglo-Saxon minster churches from the coming of the first Roman missionaries in 597 to the height of the "monastic revival" in the tenth century. Going beyond both the hagiographic "Benedictine" assumptions of older scholarship and the cautious agnosticism of more recent historians of Anglo-Saxon Christianity, the author demonstrates that the early Anglo-Saxon Church followed a non-Benedictine "Roman" monasticliturgical tradition. Despite Viking depredations and native laxity, this tradition survived, enriched through contact with varied Continental liturgies, into the tenth century. Only then did a few advanced monastic reformers conclude, based on their study of ninth-century Frankish reforms fully explained for the first time in this book, that English monks and nuns ought to follow the liturgical prescriptions of the Rule of St Benedict to the letter. Fragmentary manuscript survivals reveal how monastic leaders such as Dunstan and Æthelwold variously adapted the native English liturgical tradition - or replaced it - to implement this forgotten central plank of the "Benedictine Reform". Jesse D. Billett is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Divinity, Trinity College, Toronto.Trade ReviewMagisterial . . . This excellently written book should be in your library, or even on your shelf, because it has so much detail in its pages that you may find yourself referring back to it often. It is, in short, a very well-written book with succinct and clear conclusions filled with erudite and scholarly analysis, but still accessible to those of us who know less about liturgy. * JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY *The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England has earned itself a place of honor alongside Pfaff's The Liturgy in Medieval England and The Liturgical Books of Anglo Saxon England on the liturgical bookshelf. Students of the English liturgy will be starting from Billett's new narrative for years to come. * WORSHIP *Jesse Billett has produced a truly magisterial work on the development of the Divine Office throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. * SPECULUM *Billett has achieved a major piece of scholarship, and it should be circulated as widely as possible. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *This is a book not only for specialists in liturgical history but also for anyone interested in the varieties of Anglo-Saxon religious life. Because Billett writes so accessibly about even the most technical aspects of his subject, the results of his important research should reach a wide audience. * CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW *The author uses extensive documentation to craft a narrative that steers away from some of the traditional simplification that assumed all monks, from Augustine of Canterbury on, were Benedictine and thus the liturgical prayer was also. * AMERICAN MONASTIC NEWSLETTER *Table of ContentsTowards a 'New Narrative' of the History of the Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England The Divine Office in the Latin West in the Early Middle Ages The Divine Office in England from the Augustinian Mission to the First Viking Invasions, 597 - c.835 The Divine Office in England from the first Viking age to the abbacy of Dunstan at Glastonbury, c.835 - c.940 The Divine Office and the Tenth-Century English Benedictine Reform A Methodology for the Study of Anglo-Saxon Chant Books for the Office Two Witnesses to the Chant of the Secular Office in England in the Tenth Century A Fragment of a Tenth-Century English Benedictine 'Breviary' A Fragment of a Tenth-Century English Benedictine Chant Book Conclusion: Ways of Making a Benedictine Office Appendices Bibliography Index of Manuscripts Index of Liturgical Forms

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Book SynopsisEdition of documents from a Gilbertine "double house" of monks and nuns reveals much about religious life at the time. Alvingham Priory (founded in 1155), situated just to the north-east of Louth in Lincolnshire, was one of the famous Gilbertine houses of the county: double houses of monks and nuns following the rule of St Gilbert of Sempringham.Its cartulary, created circa 1264, contains over 1,300 entries. Most are copies of charters granting lands, property, rents and privileges, but it also includes genealogies of benefactors, valuations of the priory's property, memoranda and accounts of disputes. Many documents record the names of those who entered the community as nuns or canons, or who were associating themselves with it by requests for confraternity or burial, throwing light on the way inwhich local families interacted with the priory and with each other. Meanwhile, the details of lands granted to the priory provide information about local land-holders, field- and place-names, farming practices and the various activities which supported the religious community. Although its holdings were scattered across north-east Lincolnshire, from Conesby to Boston and from Lincoln to Saltfleetby, much of the priory's property was located in the low-lying lands east of Louth, and its charters demonstrate the importance of the area's waterways, bridges, ditches and banks, not just as geographical boundaries but as resources to be exploited, maintained and, importantly, to be shared in a harmonious way by the local community, religious and lay. The documents are presented here with introduction and notes. Jill Redford gained her PhD at the University of York and is assistant archivist tothe Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York.Trade ReviewUndoubtedly valuable.and a prime example of very thorough and competent work. * SEHEPUNKTE *Table of ContentsPreface Bibliography Introduction Editorial Method The Cartulary Glossary Appdenices Index

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Book SynopsisDrawing upon a surprising wealth of evidence found in surviving manuscripts, this book restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care. Friars are often overlooked in the picture of health care in late medieval England. Physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, barbers, midwives - these are the people we think of immediately as agents of healing; whilst we identify university teachers as authorities on medical writings. Yet from their first appearance in England in the 1220s to the dispersal of the friaries in the 1530s, four orders of friars were active as healers of every type. Their care extended beyond the circle of their own brethren: patients included royalty, nobles and bishops, and they also provided charitable aid and relief to the poor. They wrote about medicine too. Bartholomew the Englishman and Roger Bacon were arguably the most influential authors, alongside the Dominican Henry Daniel. Nor should we forget the anonymous Franciscan compilers of the Tabula medicine, a handbook of cures, which, amongst other items, contains case histories of friars practising medicine. Even after the Reformation, these texts continued to circulate and find new readers amongst practitioners and householders. This book restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care, exploring the complex, productive entanglement between care of the soul and healing of the body, in both theoretical and practical terms. Drawing upon the surprising wealth of evidence found in the surviving manuscripts, it brings to light individuals such as William Holme (c. 1400), and his patient the duke of York (d. 1402), who suffered from swollen legs. Holme also wrote about medicinal simples and gave instructions for dealing with eye and voice problems experienced by his brother Franciscans. Friars from the thirteenth century onwards wrote their medicine differently, reflecting their religious vocation as preachers and confessors.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Friars Practising Medicine 2. William Holme, medicus 3. Writing Medicine Differently 4. The Medical Culture of Friars 5. Souls and Bodies 6. Creeping into Homes 7. The Legacy of Friars' Medicine Conclusion Appendix 1: Friar practitioners Appendix 2: Friars as medical authors and compilers Bibliography Index

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

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

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

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

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

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This book examines the influence of the monastic tradition beyond the Reformation. Where the built monastic environment had been dissolved, desire for the spiritual benefits of monastic living still echoed within theological and spiritual writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a virtual exegetical template. The volume considers how the writings of monastic authors were appropriated in post-Reformation movements by those seeking a more fervent spiritual life, and how the concept of an internal cloister of monastic/ascetic spirituality influenced several Anglican writers during the Restoration. There is a careful examination of the monastic influence upon the Wesleys and the foundation and rise of Methodism. Drawing on a range of primary sources, the book will be of particular interest to scholars of monastic and Methodist history, and to those engaged in researching ecclesiology and in ecumenical dialogues.

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