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Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries, women assumed public roles of unprecedented prominence in Italian religious culture. Legally subordinated, politically excluded, socially limited, and ideologically disdained, women's active participation in religious life offered them access to power in all its forms. These essays explore the involvement of women in religious life throughout northern and central Italy and trace the evolution of communities of pious women as they tried to achieve their devotional goals despite the strictures of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The contributors examine relations between holy women, their devout followers, and society at large. Including contributions from leading figures in a new generation of Italian historians of religion, this book shows how women were able to carve out broad areas of influence by carefully exploiting the institutional church and by astutely manipulating religious percepts.
The Critical Nexus is the first book to trace the development of the notational matrix of Western music from Antiquity to the fourteenth century. It shows how principles of ancient Greek theory were grafted onto medieval practice, leading to a theory of both tone-system and mode, and a concomitant system of musical notation, that is uniquely Western.
This is a study of the intellectual history and religious culture of German-speaking Europe in the late Middle Ages. Its focus is the bilingual oeuvre of the Franciscan friar Marquard von Lindau (d. 1392), arguably the most widely-read author in the German language before the Reformation. His most successful works were those in which he considered pragmatic issues of Christian life, aimed at a broad reading public that stretched from monks and nuns living the contemplative life in enclosed convents; to his confreres, novices and students in the mendicant orders; and the literate citizens of the burgeoning mercantile centres. It is three of these pragmatic issues, central to late medieval rel...
"A man of modest origins, Cola gained a reputation as a talented professional with an unparalleled knowledge of Rome's classical remains. After earning the respect and friendship of Petrarch and the sponsorship of Pope Clement VI, Cola won the affections and loyalties of all classes of Romans.".
Using an interdisciplinary approach, Kelman underscores the role that common people have played in shaping the city and portrays the Mississippi as an active participant in New Orlean's history."--BOOK JACKET.
From the emergence of plainsong to the end of the fourteenth century, this Companion covers all the key aspects of medieval music. Divided into three main sections, the book first of all discusses repertory, styles and techniques - the key areas of traditional music histories; next taking a topographical view of the subject - from Italy, German-speaking lands, and the Iberian Peninsula; and concludes with chapters on such issues as liturgy, vernacular poetry and reception. Rather than presenting merely a chronological view of the history of medieval music, the volume instead focuses on technical and cultural aspects of the subject. Over nineteen informative chapters, fifteen world-leading scholars give a perspective on the music of the Middle Ages that will serve as a point of orientation for the informed listener and reader, and is a must-have guide for anyone with an interest in listening to and understanding medieval music.
Dominican Penitent Women is the first comprehensive introduction in English to Dominican penitent spirituality. The volume examines Italian lay-women's ways of life through religious rules, hagiographical texts, and their own writings spanning the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. The first section contains translations of two versions of their rules, which open a window to the religious practices and institutions that structured their lives. The second section introduces hagiographical texts, including the Miracoli of Catherine of Siena and an extract from Thomas of Siena's Supplement, which includes accounts not discussed in Raymond of Capua's Legenda maior. A final section consists of Osanna of Mantua's letters to Francesco Gonzaga and Lucia Brocadelli's Seven Revelations, in which these two women wove mundane details and cunning practical insights into their Christ-centered devotion. Book jacket.
A study of three hundred years of medieval Franciscan history that focuses on martyrdom While hagiographies tell of Christian martyrs who have died in an astonishing number of ways and places, slain by members of many different groups, martyrdom in a Franciscan context generally meant death at Muslim hands; indeed, in Franciscan discourse, "death by Saracen" came to rival or even surpass other definitions of what made a martyr. The centrality of Islam to Franciscan conceptions of martyrdom becomes even more apparent—and problematic—when we realize that many of the martyr narratives were largely invented. Franciscan authors were free to choose the antagonist they wanted, Christopher MacEv...
This comprehensive study of musical notation from early medieval Europe provides a crucial new foundational model for understanding later Western notations.
The Gift of Tongues examines a wide range of sources to show that claims of miraculous language are much more important to medieval religious culture than previously recognized.