Author: Peter Brown
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022617543X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
A new edition of the “brilliantly original and highly sophisticated” study of saint worship after the fall of the Roman Empire (Library Journal). In this groundbreaking work, Peter Brown explores how the worship of saints and their corporeal remains became central to religious life in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. During this period, earthly remnants served as a heavenly connection, and their veneration is a fascinating window into the cultural mood of a region in transition. Brown challenges the long-held two-tier idea of religion that separated the religious practices of the sophisticated elites from those of the superstitious masses, instead arguing that the cult of the saints crossed boundaries and played a dynamic part in both the Christian faith and the larger world of late antiquity. He shows how men and women living in harsh and sometimes barbaric times relied upon the holy dead to obtain justice, forgiveness, and power, and how a single sainted hair could inspire great thinkers and great artists. An essential text by one of the foremost scholars of European history, this expanded edition includes a new preface from Brown, which presents new ideas based on subsequent scholarship. “Informative…demonstrates once again Brown’s genius for sharing with his readers the fruits of not only his own painstaking and meticulous scholarship but also his penetrating understanding of the evolution of Western culture as a whole.”—Religious Studies
Author: Carmen Florea
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000460851
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
This is a book that explores the nature of sainthood in a region at the margins of medieval Latin Christendom. Defining the model of sanctity that characterized Transylvania between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the study considers how the cults of saints functioned within specific local social and cultural contexts. Analyzing case studies from a multi-ethnic region influenced by both the Latin and Eastern Christian traditions, this book provides a close reading of little-surveyed primary sources and offers a comprehensive understanding of sainthood in Transylvania, enhancing the broader study of medieval saints’ cults and their relationship to social power structures. It will be of great interest to scholars of medieval religion, researchers in medieval studies, and religious studies scholars engaged in comparative research.
Author: Josef W. Meri
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191554731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
This accessible study is the first critical investigation of the cult of saints among Muslims and Jews in medieval Syria and the Near East. Through case studies of saints and their devotees, discussion of the architecture of monuments, examination of devotional objects, and analysis of ideas of 'holiness', Meri depicts the practices of living religion and explores the common heritage of all three monotheistic faiths. Critical readings of a wide range of contemporary sources - travel writing, geographical works, pilgrimage guides, legal writings, historical sources, hagiography, and biography - reveal a vibrant religious culture in which the veneration of saints and pilgrimage to tombs and shrines were fundamental.
Author: Barbara Abou-El-Haj
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780521587167
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
This book sets new questions and offers innovative models for exploring the economic and artistic formations and reformations of the cult of saints in Medieval Europe together with its underlying social and political dynamic. The author examines a spectrum of cultural practices through more than thirty illustrated cycles of saints' lives in a range of media, published together for the first time: painted manuscripts; silver, gold, and ivory reliquaries; bronze doors; and stained glass. These are set against the history of one monastery, Saint-Amand d'Elnone, where three distinct illustrated versions of its saint's life survive from a hundred-year period, each adapted to a phase within the changing political and economic fortunes of the abbey.
Author: Ottó Gecser
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9639776947
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
The studies in this volume concentrate on a complex set of socio-cultural phenomena, the cult of saints, in a variety of regions from Egypt to Poland, with a focus on Italy and Central Europe. The subjects of the contributions range in time from the fourth until the eighteenth century. The diversity of approaches adopted by the contributors—from literary analysis and historical anthropology to archaeology and art history—represents that open and multidisciplinary historical research that characterizes the work of Gábor Klaniczay to whom these essays are dedicated.
Author: Carol Piper Heming
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1935503626
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
The role of the saints became a theological dilemma for scholars and laity alike throughout the Reformation era. As Protestants tried to remove themselves from the hold of the Catholic Church, the cult of the saints remained a formidable presence. Through the analysis of 180 pamphlets published by reformers in German-speaking Europe, Carol Heming shows the struggle Protestants faced in purging the cult of the saints from their culture and religion. Heming examines why Reformation leaders so strongly and universally denounced the cult of the saints and whether the holy patrons disappeared from Protestant areas without benefit of champion or defender. Complete scriptural references used in the pamphlets against the saints and images are included.
Author: Christine Walsh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351892002
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174
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Book Description
St Katherine of Alexandria was one of the most popular saints in both the Orthodox and Latin Churches in the later Middle Ages, yet there has been little study of how her cult developed before c. 1200. This book redresses the balance, providing a thorough examination of the way the cult spread from the Greek-speaking lands of the Eastern Mediterranean and into Western Europe. The author uses the full range of source material available, including liturgical texts, hagiographies, chronicles and iconographical evidence, bringing together these often disparate sources to map the way in which the cult of St Katherine grew from its early stages in the Byzantine Empire up to c.1100, its transmission to Italy, and the introduction and development of the cult in Normandy and England up to c.1200. The book also includes appendices listing early manuscripts containing Katherine's Passio and including key original texts on St Katherine of the period. This study will be welcomed by scholars of medieval history and the history of medieval art, and as a case-study for all those with an interest in the development of medieval saint's cults.
Author: Robert Bartlett
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691159130
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 806
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Book Description
A sweeping, authoritative, and entertaining history of the Christian cult of the saints from its origin to the Reformation From its earliest centuries, one of the most notable features of Christianity has been the veneration of the saints—the holy dead. This ambitious history tells the fascinating story of the cult of the saints from its origins in the second-century days of the Christian martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. Robert Bartlett examines all of the most important aspects of the saints—including miracles, relics, pilgrimages, shrines, and the saints' role in the calendar, literature, and art. The book explores the central role played by the bodies and body parts of saints, and the special treatment these relics received. From the routes, dangers, and rewards of pilgrimage, to the saints' impact on everyday life, Bartlett's account is an unmatched examination of an important and intriguing part of the religious life of the past—as well as the present.
Author: Jane Cartwright
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 1783168684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
The cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 virgins was one of the most popular and relic-rich of all saints’ cults in the medieval period. This volume constitutes the first interdisciplinary collection of essays in English to explore the development and transmission of the legend of St Ursula in detail, considering a wealth of different sources including physical remains, literary texts, artistic representations and medieval music.
Author: Jonathan Good
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843834693
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231
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Book Description
How St. George became the patron saint of England has always been a subject of speculation. He was not English, nor was his principal shrine there - the usual criteria for national patronage ; yet his status and fame came to eclipse that of all other saints. Edward III's use of the saint in his wars against the French established him as a patron and protector of the king ; unlike other saints George was adopted by the English to signify membership of the "community of the realm". This book traces the origins and growth of the cult of St. George, arguing that, especially after Edward's death, George came to represent a "good" politics (deriving from Edward's prosecution of a war with spoils for everyone) and could be used to rebuke subsequent kings for their poor governance. Most medieval kings came to understand this fact, and venerated St. George in order to prove their worthiness to hold their office. The political dimension of the cult never completely displaced the devotional one, but it was so strong that St. George survived the Reformation as a national symbol - one that continues in importance in the recovery of a specifically English identity.
