Early Modern Asceticism

Early Modern Asceticism PDF Author: Patrick J. McGrath
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487505329
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Challenging contemporary perceptions of the ascetic in the early modern period, this book explores asceticism as a vital site of religious conflict and literary creativity, rather than merely a vestige of a medieval past.

Early Modern Asceticism

Early Modern Asceticism PDF Author: Patrick J. McGrath
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487505329
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Challenging contemporary perceptions of the ascetic in the early modern period, this book explores asceticism as a vital site of religious conflict and literary creativity, rather than merely a vestige of a medieval past.

Beyond Pleasure

Beyond Pleasure PDF Author: Evert Peeters
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1845459873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Asceticism, so it is argued in this volume, is a modern category. The ubiquitous cult of the body, of fitness and diet equally evokes the ongoing success of ascetic practices and beliefs. Nostalgic memories of hardship and discipline in the army, youth movements or boarding schools remain as present as the fashionable irritation with the presumed modern-day laziness. In the very texture of contemporary culture, age-old asceticism proves to be remarkably alive. Old ascetic forms were remoulded to serve modern desires for personal authenticity, an authenticity that disconnected asceticism in the course of the nineteenth century from two traditions that had underpinned it since classical antiquity: the public, republican austerity of antiquity and the private, religious asceticism of Christianity. Exploring various aspects such as the history of the body, of aesthetics, science, and social thought in several European countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Belgium), the authors show that modern asceticism remains a deeply ambivalent category. Apart from self-realisation, classical and religious examples continue to haunt the ascetic mind.

Schools of Asceticism

Schools of Asceticism PDF Author: Lutz F. Kaelber
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271043272
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Explores the Weberian theme of religious asceticism in the context of medieval religion, concentrating on the Cathars and Waldensians in southern France. Analyzes how the ideology and social organization of religious groups shaped rational ascetic conduct of their members and how the different forms of asceticism affected cultural and economic life, combining a sociological approach to the analysis of medieval history with an original analysis of primary sources. For scholars of comparative historical and theoretical sociology, medieval history, and religious studies. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Early Modern Jesuit Attitude towards Hindu and Ethiopian Strains of Asceticism

The Early Modern Jesuit Attitude towards Hindu and Ethiopian Strains of Asceticism PDF Author: Leonardo Cohen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004538569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
This book presents an early modern Jesuit attitude towards Hindu and Ethiopian strains of asceticism. The Jesuits’ descriptions of both the yogis and the Ethiopian renunciates were marked by ambivalence. While critical of these ascetics, the missionaries also pointed out admirable facets of their comportment. In both the Society of Jesus’ positive and negative impressions, there are glaring ethnocentric views that shift the spotlight onto the other’s flaws. Like many historical cases, these perceptions evolved into a sort of inverted mirror image of the self that revealed differences between the European Catholic and the native renunciate.

Beyond the Monastery Walls

Beyond the Monastery Walls PDF Author: Patrick Lally Michelson
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299312003
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
As the cultural and ideological foundations of imperial Russia were threatened by forces of modernity, an array of Orthodox churchmen, theologians, and lay thinkers turned to asceticism, hoping to ensure the coming Kingdom of God promised to the Russian nation.

Sensing the Sacred in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Sensing the Sacred in Medieval and Early Modern Culture PDF Author: Robin Macdonald
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131705718X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
This volume traces transformations in attitudes toward, ideas about, and experiences of religion and the senses in the medieval and early modern period. Broad in temporal and geographical scope, it challenges traditional notions of periodisation, highlighting continuities as well as change. Rather than focusing on individual senses, the volume’s organisation emphasises the multisensoriality and embodied nature of religious practices and experiences, refusing easy distinctions between asceticism and excess. The senses were not passive, but rather active and reactive, res-ponding to and initiating change. As the contributions in this collection demonstrate, in the pre-modern era, sensing the sacred was a complex, vexed, and constantly evolving process, shaped by individuals, environment, and religious change. The volume will be essential reading not only for scholars of religion and the senses, but for anyone interested in histories of medieval and early modern bodies, material culture, affects, and affect theory.

The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China

The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China PDF Author: Ying-shih Yü
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231553609
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Why did modern capitalism not arise in late imperial China? One famous answer comes from Max Weber, whose The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism gave a canonical analysis of religious and cultural factors in early modern European economic development. In The Religions of China, Weber contended that China lacked the crucial religious impetus to capitalist growth that Protestantism gave Europe. The preeminent historian Ying-shih Yü offers a magisterial examination of religious and cultural influences in the development of China’s early modern economy, both complement and counterpoint to Weber’s inquiry. The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China investigates how evolving forms of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism created and promulgated their own concepts of the work ethic from the late seventh century into the Qing dynasty. The book traces how religious leaders developed the spiritual significance of labor and how merchants adopted this religious work ethic, raising their status in Chinese society. However, Yü argues, China’s early modern mercantile spirit was restricted by the imperial bureaucratic priority on social order. He challenges Marxists who championed China’s “sprouts of capitalism” during the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries as well as other modern scholars who credit Confucianism with producing dramatic economic growth in East Asian countries. Yü rejects the premise that China needed an early capitalist stage of development; moreover, the East Asian capitalism that flourished in the later half of the twentieth century was essentially part of the spread of global capitalism. Now available in English translation, this landmark work has been greatly influential among scholars in East Asia since its publication in Chinese in 1987.

Faith in Mount Fuji

Faith in Mount Fuji PDF Author: Janine Anderson Sawada
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824890434
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Even a fleeting glimpse of Mount Fuji’s snow-capped peak emerging from the clouds in the distance evokes the reverence it has commanded in Japan from ancient times. Long considered sacred, during the medieval era the mountain evolved from a venue for solitary ascetics into a well-regulated pilgrimage site. With the onset of the Tokugawa period, the nature of devotion to Mount Fuji underwent a dramatic change. Working people from nearby Edo (now Tokyo) began climbing the mountain in increasing numbers and worshipping its deity on their own terms, leading to a widespread network of devotional associations known as Fujikō. In Faith in Mount Fuji Janine Sawada asserts that the rise of the Fuji movement epitomizes a broad transformation in popular religion that took place in early modern Japan. Drawing on existing practices and values, artisans and merchants generated new forms of religious life outside the confines of the sectarian establishment. Sawada highlights the importance of independent thinking in these grassroots phenomena, making a compelling case that the new Fuji devotees carved out enclaves for subtle opposition to the status quo within the restrictive parameters of the Tokugawa order. The founding members effectively reinterpreted materials such as pilgrimage maps, talismans, and prayer formulae, laying the groundwork for the articulation of a set of remarkable teachings by Jikigyō Miroku (1671–1733), an oil peddler who became one of the group’s leading ascetic practitioners. His writings fostered a vision of Mount Fuji as a compassionate parental deity who mandated a new world of economic justice and fairness in social and gender relations. The book concludes with a thought-provoking assessment of Jikigyō’s suicide on the mountain as an act of commitment to world salvation that drew on established ascetic practice even as it conveyed political dissent. Faith in Mount Fuji is a pioneering work that contains a wealth of in-depth analysis and original interpretation. It will open up new avenues of discussion among students of Japanese religions and intellectual history, and supply rich food for thought to readers interested in global perspectives on issues of religion and society, ritual culture, new religions, and asceticism.

Way of the Ascetics

Way of the Ascetics PDF Author: Tito Colliander
Publisher: St Vladimir's Seminary Press
ISBN: 9780881410495
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
"Way of the Ascetics is a rich, compact introduction for modern readers to the Eastern Christian spiritual tradition that has been an inspiration to millions for centuries. These compassionate and insightful reflections on self-control and inner peace are meant to lead the readers to fuller union with God. The author makes a generous selection of succinct yet profound extracts from the spiritual Fathers and provides an illuminating commentary and practical applications for daily devotion. He tempers austerity with common sense, warmth, and even humor, as he urges us on our journey toward God. Written for lay persons living fully in the world as much as for clergy, Way of the Ascetics is an excellent resource for daily meditation, authentic spiritual guidance, and a revitalized religious life."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Asceticism of the Mind

Asceticism of the Mind PDF Author: Inbar Graiver
Publisher: Studies and Texts
ISBN: 9780888444295
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This study explores the strategies used by Christian ascetics in the Egyptian, Gazan, and Sinaitic monastic traditions of late antiquity, drawing on contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific research to underscore the beneficial potential and self-formative role of the monastic system of mental training, confuting older views that emphasized the negative and repressive aspects of asceticism. At the same time, it sheds new light on the challenges that ascetics encountered in their attempts to transform themselves, lending insight into aspects of their daily lives. The use of both historical and cognitive perspectives allows Asceticism of the Mind to open new ways of exploring asceticism and Christian monasticism.