Contesting Christendom

Contesting Christendom PDF Author: James L. Halverson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742554726
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book Here

Book Description
The pervasiveness of the Christian religion has long been treated as one of the key features of medieval society. Indeed, Europe in the Middle Ages is often described simply as a Christian culture. Yet what do we mean when we say that medieval Europe was a Christian society, and what did it mean to be a Christian in the Middle Ages? These questions are fundamental to any understanding of the Middle Ages, yet the variety of theoretical approaches and conclusions represented in this carefully selected and provocative collection of key works in the field highlights the complexity of the answers. Introducing students to medieval Christianity, James L. Halverson presents a rich array of readings that offers a variety of ways to study the history of religion within a chronological setting. His opening chapter and introductions to each section and selection frame the essays and provide a strong conceptual framework to build upon. Making it clear that scholars have approached religion from many perspectives and used many different methodologies, this collection presents some of the best scholarship of religion as culture and practice, emphasizing the ongoing attempt to understand the social and cultural aspects of medieval Christianity. Contributions by: Rudolf Bell, Constance Brittain Bouchard, Peter Brown, Marcus Bull, Caroline Walker Bynum, Mark R. Cohen, Georges Duby, Eamon Duffy, Joan Ferrante, Richard Fletcher, Katherine L. French, Thomas A. Fudge, Herbert Grundmann, James L. Halverson, Karen Louise Jolly, Lester Little, Rob Means, Bernd Moeller, Andrew P. Roach, Jane Tibbets Schulenburg, Keith Thomas, and Ian Wood.

Contesting Christendom

Contesting Christendom PDF Author: James L. Halverson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742554726
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book Here

Book Description
The pervasiveness of the Christian religion has long been treated as one of the key features of medieval society. Indeed, Europe in the Middle Ages is often described simply as a Christian culture. Yet what do we mean when we say that medieval Europe was a Christian society, and what did it mean to be a Christian in the Middle Ages? These questions are fundamental to any understanding of the Middle Ages, yet the variety of theoretical approaches and conclusions represented in this carefully selected and provocative collection of key works in the field highlights the complexity of the answers. Introducing students to medieval Christianity, James L. Halverson presents a rich array of readings that offers a variety of ways to study the history of religion within a chronological setting. His opening chapter and introductions to each section and selection frame the essays and provide a strong conceptual framework to build upon. Making it clear that scholars have approached religion from many perspectives and used many different methodologies, this collection presents some of the best scholarship of religion as culture and practice, emphasizing the ongoing attempt to understand the social and cultural aspects of medieval Christianity. Contributions by: Rudolf Bell, Constance Brittain Bouchard, Peter Brown, Marcus Bull, Caroline Walker Bynum, Mark R. Cohen, Georges Duby, Eamon Duffy, Joan Ferrante, Richard Fletcher, Katherine L. French, Thomas A. Fudge, Herbert Grundmann, James L. Halverson, Karen Louise Jolly, Lester Little, Rob Means, Bernd Moeller, Andrew P. Roach, Jane Tibbets Schulenburg, Keith Thomas, and Ian Wood.

An Analysis of Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic

An Analysis of Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic PDF Author: Simon Young
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 135135101X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 100

Get Book Here

Book Description
Keith Thomas's classic study of all forms of popular belief has been influential for so long now that it is difficult to remember how revolutionary it seemed when it first appeared. By publishing Religion and the Decline of Magic, Thomas became the first serious scholar to attempt to synthesize the full range of popular thought about the occult and the supernatural, studying its influence across Europe over several centuries. At root, his book can be seen as a superb exercise in problem-solving: one that actually established "magic" as a historical problem worthy of investigation. Thomas asked productive questions, not least challenging the prevailing assumption that folk belief was unworthy of serious scholarly attention, and his work usefully reframed the existing debate in much broader terms, allowing for more extensive exploration of correlations, not only between different sorts of popular belief, but also between popular belief and state religion. It was this that allowed Thomas to reach his famous conclusion that the advent of Protestantism – which drove out much of the "superstition" that characterised the Catholicism of the period – created a vacuum filled by other forms of belief; for example, Catholic priests had once blessed their crops, but Protestants refused to do so. That left farmers looking for other ways of ensuring a good harvest. It was this, Thomas argues, that explains the survival of what we now think of as "magic" at a time such beliefs might have been expected to decline – at least until science arose to offer alternative paradigms.

The Cambridge History of Ireland: Volume 1, 600–1550

The Cambridge History of Ireland: Volume 1, 600–1550 PDF Author: Brendan Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108564623
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1153

Get Book Here

Book Description
The thousand years explored in this book witnessed developments in the history of Ireland that resonate to this day. Interspersing narrative with detailed analysis of key themes, the first volume in the Cambridge History of Ireland presents the latest thinking on key aspects of the medieval Irish experience. The contributors are leading experts in their fields, and present their original interpretations in a fresh and accessible manner. New perspectives are offered on the politics, artistic culture, religious beliefs and practices, social organisation and economic activity that prevailed on the island in these centuries. At each turn the question is asked: to what extent were these developments unique to Ireland? The openness of Ireland to outside influences, and its capacity to influence the world beyond its shores, are recurring themes. Underpinning the book is a comparative, outward-looking approach that sees Ireland as an integral but exceptional component of medieval Christian Europe.

Matthew Spinka, Howard Kaminsky, and the Future of the Medieval Hussites

Matthew Spinka, Howard Kaminsky, and the Future of the Medieval Hussites PDF Author: Thomas A. Fudge
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793650810
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Hussite movement is essential for understanding medieval Europe and the development of Western civilization. Matthew Spinka and Howard Kaminsky stand at the forefront of scholarship introducing this subject to the Anglophone world. Thomas A. Fudge argues their role in the religious historiography of late medieval Europe is a precursor to global medievalism. Combining commitment to the Christian faith with firm opposition to the Soviet-mandated Marxist-Communist ideology that dominated twentieth-century Czechoslovakia, Spinka strove to present Jan Hus as a medieval figure driven by religious devotion. Motivated by Jewish atheism and a modified form of Marxist analysis, Kaminsky rescued the medieval Hussites from oblivion and political agendas. Fudge explores biography, history, and historiography as an essential intellectual segue between medieval Hussites and modern scholarship. Matthew Spinka, Howard Kaminsky, and the Medieval Hussites considers biography, evaluates the work of both historians, elaborates their methods, assesses their interpretations, and analyzes their historiographical significance for the study of Hussite history.

Beyond Pentecostalism

Beyond Pentecostalism PDF Author: Wolfgang Vondey
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802864015
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Pentecostal Manifestos series aims to speak for and to a rising, outward-looking generation of Pentecostal scholarship. Written by both established and newly emerging scholars, the various "manifesto" volumes are to be creative statements, marked by rigorous theological scholarship, reflecting a distinctly Pentecostal engagement with wider themes and concerns in Christian thought today. --

Medieval Civilization

Medieval Civilization PDF Author: Larry D. Harwood
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498234887
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 143

Get Book Here

Book Description
Providing an overall view of the medieval period of Western history, this book maintains a balanced approach to an age that has been romanticized as well as vilified. Written with an eye toward modern readers, who may be perplexed by the hazy Middle Ages, Medieval Civilization provides illuminating details that enable the reader to enjoy a fascinating overview of this stretch of a thousand years. Rather than maintaining a dismissive attitude toward this presumed dark and dank period of human failings, the author banters about and responds to some criticisms of the medieval world by modern critics alongside his telling of the medieval story. Religious presences loom large in this book written about an age of religion and things religious in a way largely foreign to the modern world. The medieval period breathes in this tale of peasants, priests, and kings rather than being autopsied as a museum piece. Terms like scholastic, gothic, mendicant, monk, stigmata, and others are put into medieval contexts for ease of understanding, while a huge slice of Western history, usually looked at suspiciously by modern people, is presented as preparation for understanding much of the modern world.

Herbert Grundmann (1902-1970)

Herbert Grundmann (1902-1970) PDF Author: Herbert Grundmann
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 190315393X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
First English translation of seminal essays on heresy and other aspects of medieval religious history.

Becoming Missional

Becoming Missional PDF Author: David W. Boshart
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1608996980
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Get Book Here

Book Description
Christian leaders at every level of the church are working in the crucible of multiple realities where paradoxical trends occupy the same space and time. Today church leaders find themselves bearing witness to the gospel in contexts of discontinuous change. Nowhere is the complexity of mission strategy more apparent than in the relationships among denominational leaders and church planters. Enlightenment era models of mission relied heavily on models applied to cross-cultural contexts with little consideration of the congruence of the model with the cultural context. While mission practitioners have done their share of experimentation in the field, denominational centers typically play the role of referee in determining acceptable and unacceptable mission strategies. While it may seem that everything is up for grabs in the ecology of the church, the complexity and change Christians leaders face is not only a problem. Change and complexity also offer frame-breaking opportunities. The narratives in this book, presented as four case studies of church planting, will explore issues with which local, regional, and denominational church leaders struggle as they attempt to plant churches at a time when modern models of mission are quickly losing their relevance and coherence. This study will identify new pathways forward so that church leaders at every level can incarnate a winsome witness in social contexts that are increasingly characterized by complexity, paradox, and discontinuous change.

Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe

Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Ephraim Shoham-Steiner
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814345603
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510

Get Book Here

Book Description
The intended readership goes beyond scholars and students of medieval Jewish studies, medieval European history, and crime in pre-modern society.

Faithful Bodies

Faithful Bodies PDF Author: Heather Miyano Kopelson
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479852341
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the seventeenth-century English Atlantic, religious beliefs and practices played a central role in creating racial identity. English Protestantism provided a vocabulary and structure to describe and maintain boundaries between insider and outsider. In this path-breaking study, Heather Miyano Kopelson peels back the layers of conflicting definitions of bodies and competing practices of faith in the puritan Atlantic, demonstrating how the categories of “white,” “black,” and “Indian” developed alongside religious boundaries between “Christian” and “heathen” and between “Catholic” and “Protestant.” Faithful Bodies focuses on three communities of Protestant dissent in the Atlantic World: Bermuda, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. In this “puritan Atlantic,” religion determined insider and outsider status: at times Africans and Natives could belong as long as they embraced the Protestant faith, while Irish Catholics and English Quakers remained suspect. Colonists’ interactions with indigenous peoples of the Americas and with West Central Africans shaped their understandings of human difference and its acceptable boundaries. Prayer, religious instruction, sexual behavior, and other public and private acts became markers of whether or not blacks and Indians were sinning Christians or godless heathens. As slavery became law, transgressing people of color counted less and less as sinners in English puritans’ eyes, even as some of them made Christianity an integral part of their communities. As Kopelson shows, this transformation proceeded unevenly but inexorably during the long seventeenth century.