You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Using hitherto unconsidered source materials from late antiquity to the early modern period, this volume charts new views about the role of penance in shaping western attitudes and practices for resolving social, political, and spiritual tensions, as penitents and confessors negotiated rituals and expectations for penitential expression.
Fifteenth-Century Carthusian Reform argues that monastic theology offers a medieval Catholic paradigm distinct from the scholastic theology that has been the conventional source for medieval-oriented interpretations of Renaissance and Reformation. It is based on thorough study of the manuscript record. Nicholas Kempf (ca. 1415-1497) taught at the University of Vienna before becoming the head of Carthusian monasteries in rural Austria and Slovenia. Faced with calls for reform in church and society, he placed his confidence in the patristic Christian idea of reform: the reform of the image of God in the human person. This contemplative monastic idea of reform depended on authoritative structur...
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 exper...
How did the papacy govern European religious life without a proper bureaucracy and the normal resources of a state? The Power of Protocol explores how the demand for papal services was met and examines the genesis and structure of papal documents from the Roman empire to after the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century.
What defined the crusades in contrast to other wars was the opportunity for warriors to win a spiritual reward, the indulgence. In The Crusade Indulgence. Spiritual Rewards and the Theology of the Crusades, c. 1095-1216 Ane L. Bysted examines the theological and institutional development of the indulgence from the proclamation of the First Crusade to Pope Innocent III. This first comprehensive study of crusade indulgences in more than a hundred years challenges some earlier interpretations and demonstrates how theologians, popes, and crusade preachers in the 12th century formed the concept of indulgences and argued that fighting for Christ and the Church was meritorious in the sight of God and thus worthy of a spiritual reward proclaimed by the Church
Catholics and Protestants have disputed the validity and legitimacy of papal plenary indulgences for 500 years without a unitary corpus of the relevant texts documenting the indulgence campaigns which so exercised Luther and his contemporaries. This volume prints for the first time in a modern edition the full text of all available papal bulls and brevia between 1300 and 1517 which granted plenary indulgences (i.e. those which cancelled all previously accrued temporal punishment due to sin), the instructions to the commissioners on how to preach (and defend) the indulgences and conduct the campaigns, and finally the extensions of indulgence campaigns. The Regnum Teutonicum provides the geographical framework, since it includes all the areas where the Reformation initially broke out.
In this volume, Bradley Trick argues that Hellenistic testamentary adoption provides the key to understanding Abrahamic descent and its implications for the law in Galatians.
This volume is divided into four sections: late medieval devotion in the Netherlands; medieval Christian pilgrimage; the medieval cult of St. James the Great and Erasmiana. Variety and coherence sound the keynote in the title and the contents of the book. Religious concepts and expressions of religious faith such as pilgrimages and indulgences are representative of late-medieval Christianity. In this book they refer specifically to the medieval cult of St. James the Great, while for Erasmus they were an object of his critical consideration. The whole book can be read in the light of the debate about the tension between an appreciation for outward signs of faith, and the inward experience of religious belief, which Erasmus considered an absolute necessity.
In this last collection of his vital, controversial, and accessible writings, Heiko A. Oberman seeks to liberate and broaden our understanding of the European Reformation, from its origins in medieval philosophy and theology through the Puritan settlers who brought Calvin’s vision to the New World. Ranging over many topics, Oberman finds fascinating connections between aspects of the Reformation and twentieth-century history and thought—most notably the connection to Nazism and the Holocaust. He revisits his earlier work on the history of anti-Semitism, rejects the notion of an unbroken line from Luther to Hitler to the Holocaust, and offers a new perspective on the Christian legacy of anti-Semitism and its murderous result in the twentieth century. Oberman demonstrates how the simplifications and rigidities of modern historiography have obscured the existential spirits of such great figures as Luther and Calvin. He explores the debt of both Luther and Calvin to medieval religious thought and the impact of diverse features of “the long fifteenth century”—including the Black Death, nominalism, humanism, and the Conciliar Movement—on the Reformation.