Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?

Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? PDF Author: Robert Bartlett
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691169683
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.

The Miracles of Mary in Twelfth-Century France

The Miracles of Mary in Twelfth-Century France PDF Author:
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501778455
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Murder in a cathedral, horrific illnesses and deformities, narrow escapes from injury and death, a vengeful dragon, a wandering eyeball, a bawdy monk and other sinners redeemed—the accounts of miracles performed by the Virgin Mary gathered and translated in The Miracles of Mary in Twelfth-Century France provide vivid glimpses into medieval life and beliefs. Bruce L. Venarde provides fluent translations of the first five collections of Marian miracle narratives from France, written in the second quarter of the twelfth century and never before available in English. The stories recorded in these collections—by Herman of Tournai; Hugh Farsit; Haimo of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives; John, son of Peter; and Gautier of Compiègne—offer descriptions of travel, living conditions, medical knowledge, conflict between and among lay and religious authorities, and the burgeoning cult of the Virgin Mary, which had only recently become important in Western Europe. Including notes, tables, and maps that orient and illuminate the texts, The Miracles of Mary in Twelfth-Century France makes these riveting tales available to readers seeking a view into the medieval past.

On Care to Be Had for the Dead

On Care to Be Had for the Dead PDF Author: St. Augustine
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781643730240
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
The book, On care to be had for the dead, I wrote, having been asked by letter whether it profits any person after death that his body shall be buried at the memorial of any Saint. The book begins thus: Long time unto your Holiness, my venerable fellow bishop Paulinus.

How to Do Things with Dead People

How to Do Things with Dead People PDF Author: Alice Dailey
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501763679
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
How to Do Things with Dead People studies human contrivances for representing and relating to the dead. Alice Dailey takes as her principal objects of inquiry Shakespeare's English history plays, describing them as reproductive mechanisms by which living replicas of dead historical figures are regenerated in the present and re-killed. Considering the plays in these terms exposes their affinity with a transhistorical array of technologies for producing, reproducing, and interacting with dead things—technologies such as literary doppelgängers, photography, ventriloquist puppetry, X-ray imaging, glitch art, capital punishment machines, and cloning. By situating Shakespeare's historical drama in this intermedial conversation, Dailey challenges conventional assumptions about what constitutes the context of a work of art and contests foundational models of linear temporality that inform long-standing conceptions of historical periodization and teleological order. Working from an eclectic body of theories, pictures, and machines that transcend time and media, Dailey composes a searching exploration of how the living use the dead to think back and look forward, to rule, to love, to wish and create.

Sacred Medieval Objects and Their Afterlives in Scandinavia

Sacred Medieval Objects and Their Afterlives in Scandinavia PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004712038
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
Interconnected investigations between conservators, historians, heritage scientists and museum professionals centre on objects that were essential to medieval Christianity in Scandinavia (c. 1100‒1530). Through new and diverse physical data from polychrome sculptures, shrines, winged altarpieces and painted banners, the authors probe a range of issues and problems, from original devotional functions and changing appearances, to the impacts of changing liturgies, locations and priorities. This book highlights the diversity of theoretical and practical approaches to sacred medieval religious objects, and brings together new findings related to the transformations of these objects since the Reformations. Contributors are Karl Christian Alvestad, Alexandra Böhme, David Buti, Francesco Caruso, Aoife Daly, Tine Frøysaker, Elina Gertsman, Irka Hajdas, Poul Grinder Hansen, Karoline Kjesrud, Lena Liepe, Hana Lukasova, Maite Maguregui, Austin Nevin, Elena Platania, Anne Irene Riisøy, Katrine S. Scharffenberg, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Calin Constantin Steindal, Noëlle L.W. Streeton, Einar Uggerud, Anna Vila, and Jørgen Wadum.

Irenaeus of Sirmium and His Story in the Medieval East and West

Irenaeus of Sirmium and His Story in the Medieval East and West PDF Author: Marijana Vuković
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429513674
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Examines the three key markers of sanctity – cult, hagiography, feast day – together for the first time / The first book to explore an ‘unsuccessful’ saint in detail / Investigates the texts in all the languages in which they were written: Latin, Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Georgian, and Armenian / Includes original research of hagiographical manuscripts

Joseph Smith's Gold Plates

Joseph Smith's Gold Plates PDF Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197676529
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Renowned historian Richard Lyman Bushman presents a vibrant history of the objects that gave birth to a new religion. According to Joseph Smith, in September of 1823 an angel appeared to him and directed him to a hill near his home. Buried there Smith found a box containing a stack of thin metal sheets, gold in color, about six inches wide, eight inches long, piled six or so inches high, bound together by large rings, and covered with what appeared to be ancient engravings. Exactly four years later, the angel allowed Smith to take the plates and instructed him to translate them into English. When the text was published, a new religion was born. The plates have had a long and active life, and the question of their reality has hovered over them from the beginning. Months before the Book of Mormon was published, newspapers began reporting on the discovery of a "Golden Bible." Within a few years over a hundred articles had appeared. Critics denounced Smith as a charlatan for claiming to have a wondrous object that he refused to show, while believers countered by pointing to witnesses who said they saw the plates. Two hundred years later the mystery of the gold plates remains. In this book renowned historian of Mormonism Richard Lyman Bushman offers a cultural history of the gold plates. Bushman examines how the plates have been imagined by both believers and critics--and by treasure-seekers, novelists, artists, scholars, and others--from Smith's first encounter with them to the present. Why have they been remembered, and how have they been used? And why do they remain objects of fascination to this day? By examining these questions, Bushman sheds new light on Mormon history and on the role of enchantment in the modern world.

Saints, Cure-seekers and Miraculous Healing in Twelfth-century England

Saints, Cure-seekers and Miraculous Healing in Twelfth-century England PDF Author: Ruth J. Salter
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1914049004
Category : Angleterre
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
The cults of the saints were central to the medieval Church. These holy men and women acted as patrons and protectors to the religious communities who housed their relics and to the devotees who requested their assistance in petitioning God for a miracle. Among the collections of posthumous miracle stories, miracula, accounts of holy healing feature prominently and depict cure-seekers successfully securing their desired remedy for a range of ailments and afflictions. What can these miracle accounts tell us of the cure-seekers' experiences of their journey from ill health to recovery, and how was healthcare presented in these sources? This book undertakes an in-depth study of the miraculous cure-seeking process through the lens of Latin miracle accounts produced in twelfth-century England, a time both when saints' cults particularly flourished and there was an increasing transmission and dissemination of classical and Arabic medical works. Focused on shorter miracula with a predominantly localised focus, and thus on a select group of cure-seekers, it brings together studies of healthcare and pilgrimage to look at an alternative to medical intervention and the practicalities and processes of securing saintly assistance.

Beyond Indulgences

Beyond Indulgences PDF Author: Anna Marie Johnson
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1612482139
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Between Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517 and his excommunication from the church in 1520, he issued twenty-five sermons and treatises on Christian piety, most of them in German. These pastoral writings extended his criticisms of the church beyond indulgences to the practices of confession, prayer, clerical celibacy, the sacraments, suffering, and death. These were the issues that mattered most to Luther because they affected the faith of believers and the health of society. Luther’s conflict with Rome forced him to address the issue of papal authority, but on his own time, he focused on encouraging lay Christians to embrace a simpler, self-sacrificing faith. In these pastoral writings, he criticized theologians and church officials for leading people astray with a reliance on religious works, and he began to lay the foundation for a reformed Christian piety.

Sensory Reflections

Sensory Reflections PDF Author: Fiona Griffiths
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110562863
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
This volume draws on emerging scholarship at the intersection of two already vibrant fields: medieval material culture and medieval sensory experience. The rich potential of medieval matter (most obviously manuscripts and visual imagery, but also liturgical objects, coins, textiles, architecture, graves, etc.) to complement and even transcend purely textual sources is by now well established in medieval scholarship across the disciplines. So, too, attention to medieval sensory experiences—most prominently emotion—has transformed our understanding of medieval religious life and spirituality, violence, power, and authority, friendship, and constructions of both the self and the other. Our purpose in this volume is to draw the two approaches together, plumbing medieval material sources for traces of sensory experience - above all ephemeral and physical experiences that, unlike emotion, are rarely fully described or articulated in texts.