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Sancalo?
In a remote, poverty-stricken mountain village of Sicily, a baby boy awakens to life. Today that child is an old man. His memories crop up, stone hard and fleeting as birds: of faces, of hunger and beauty, love and wounding, song and weeping, war and peace. In Sancalò, his memoirs emerge in the form of 59 brief chapters. His intimate personal experiences reflect and shed light on his surroundings. He remembers post-War Sicily, the complicated legacy of fascism, centuries-long injustices and prejudices, and the spiritual depth and memorable quirks of simple people. Says the author, “I felt a driving need to reconnect to my past while trying to recreate a part of its beauty.” Some names have been changed. His other books are The Devil’s Scourge. Exorcism in Renaissance Italy (Red Wheel/Weiser, 2002) and Poesie/Poems (AVEditoria, 2018). He is currently completing a study dealing with Jews in Renaissance Italy.
Signs of Song
Born around 1,000 years ago, most probably in Tuscany, Guido d’Arezzo is remembered as the father of modern musical notation. His musical contributions surpassed all former methods of writing music, which did not represent the exact notes to be sung or played. He developed a linear system of musical notation capable of indicating pitch with absolute precision. His innovations accompanied a cultural crisis fundamental to the growth of Western music. While still a boy, Guido entered the Benedictine monastery at Pomposa, on the Adriatic coast. He probably died in the hermitage of Fonte Avellana in about 1050. This book envisions his life in relation to ancient musical history, to plainchant, and to the glories and conflicts of medieval monasticism. In writing of Guido, the author reveals her love for Italy and her fascination with Gregorian chant and Catholic traditions. She says, “Few documents remain concerning Guido’s life. I had to create a framework around his existence, considering ancient musical traditions, plainchant, medieval monasticism, the Italian countryside, and the revolutionary importance of clear notation.”
The Devil's Scourge
This is a complete English translation of a Renaissance exorcist's manual. It is a concise history of demonology and contains accounts of seven exorcisms as well as Menghi's manual. Paxia's commentary explains what the signs of demonic possession are and who are the most vulnerable. Paxia also looks at Menghi's life in detail, including how he exorcised people and what objects he used during the ceremony.
Votive Panels and Popular Piety in Early Modern Italy
This book traces the origins and development of the use of votive panel paintings in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Push Me, Pull You
Late Medieval and Renaissance art was surprisingly pushy; its architecture demanded that people move through it in prescribed patterns, its sculptures played elaborate games alternating between concealment and revelation, while its paintings charged viewers with imaginatively moving through them. Viewers wanted to interact with artwork in emotional and/or performative ways. This inventive and personal interface between viewers and artists sometimes conflicted with the Church s prescribed devotional models, and in some cases it complemented them. Artists and patrons responded to the desire for both spontaneous and sanctioned interactions by creating original ways to amplify devotional experie...
Evil, Spirits, and Possession
In Evil, Spirits, and Possession: An Emergentist Theology of the Demonic David Bradnick develops a multidisciplinary view of the demonic, using biblical-theological, social-scientific, and philosophical-scientific perspectives. Building upon the work of Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong, this book argues for a theology informed by emergence theory, whereby the demonic arises from evolutionary processes and exerts downward causal influence upon its constituent substrates. Consequently, evil does not result from conscious diabolic beings; rather it manifests as non-personal emergent forces that influence humans to initiate and execute nefarious activities. Emergentism provides an alternative to contemporary views, which tend to minimize or reject the reality of the demonic, and it retains the demonic as a viable theological category in the twenty-first century.
The Devil: A Very Short Introduction
Why do the innocent suffer in a world created by a loving God? Does this mean that God cannot prevent this suffering, despite His supposed omnipotence? Or is God not loving after all? This in brief is 'the problem of evil'. The Devil provides one solution to this problem: his rebellion against God and hatred of His works is responsible for evil. The Christian Devil has fascinated writers and theologians since the time of the New Testament, and inspired many dramatic and haunting works of art. Today he remains a potent image in popular culture. The Devil: A Very Short Introduction presents an introduction to the Devil in the history of ideas and the lives of real people. Darren Oldridge shows...
The Devil: A Very Short Introduction
The Devil has fascinated writers and theologians since the time of the New Testament, and inspired many dramatic and haunting works of art. Today he remains a potent image in popular culture. The Devil: A Very Short Introduction presents an introduction to the Christian Devil through the history of ideas and the lives of real people.
The Souls of Venice
How is a life defined by a city, and a city by the lives within? Where do an individual and a culture coincide? Perhaps more than any city in the world, Venice inspires these questions and suggests intriguing answers. This book focuses on people who have been shaped by Venice and have shaped Venice in their turn. The author considers them in five groups: the "mutilated culture heroes" (e.g., the eunuch Narses), who despite or because of some great sacrifice helped the city define itself and its mission; the "fugitives from splendor" (e.g., St. Pietro Orseolo or El Greco), so overwhelmed by beauty that they fled the city; the "prisoners of Venice"-the convicts, the cloistered, the mad; the "symbiotics," who lived in close communion with the city for long periods of time (e.g., Titian) and the "fugitives from self" (e.g., Igor Stravinsky), who have come from elsewhere seeking a new identity, and who ended up helping to create a new identity for the city itself. More than a collection of biographies, this richly textured and insightful work examines the roots of people's "Venice-ness" as well as the city's own humanity.
Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe
From the ideological crucible of the Reformation emerged an embittered contest for the human soul. In the care of souls, the clergy zealously dispensed spiritual physic; for countless early modern Europeans, the first echelon of mental health care. During its heyday, spiritual physic touched the lives of thousands, from penitents and pilgrims to demoniacs and mad people. Ironically, the phenomenon remains largely unexplored. Why? Through case histories from among the records of over 1,000 troubled and desperate individuals, this regional study of Bavaria investigates spiritual physic as a popular ritual practice during a tumultuous era of religious strife, material crises, moral repression and witch hunting. By the mid-seventeenth century, secular forces ushered in a psychological revolution across Europe. However, spiritual physic ensconced itself by proxy upon emergent bourgeois psychiatry. Today, its remnants raise haunting questions about science and the pursuit of objective knowledge in the ephemeral realm of human consciousness.
