Madonnas That Maim

Madonnas That Maim PDF Author: Michael P. Carroll
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801842993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In 1560 a poor woman named Margherita left the Italian city of Piacenza to check on her crop. In the field she heard herself being called, and turned to see a woman dressed in white. It was "the blessed Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, the Virgin Mary". Mary was soon joined by a male figure, whom she identified as Christ. "The blasphemies of Piacenza angered Christ", said Mary, who had intervened before Christ devastated the city with a flood. She gave Margherita specific instructions for the people of Piacenza to save themselves from divine punishment. And to ensure that Margherita would be believed, Mary gave a sign: she paralyzed Margherita's legs. In Madonnas That Maim, Michael Carroll looks at the ways in which Italians have revered, invoked, feared, and placated their madonnas and saints. Carroll examines a range of devotional practices that have been legitimated by the local Catholic clergy in Italy for centuries--including the cult of the patron saint, relics, miracles, processions, sanctuaries, pilgrimage, and the mixing of Catholic ritual and magic. He explores the "dark side" of holiness--the willingness of the madonnas and saints of Italy to maim, occasionally even to kill, in order to maintain their own cults--and discusses the psychological origins of such a belief structure. He also considers differences between northern and southern Italy, both in popular Catholicism and in the social structures that have allowed differences to emerge. Including an English-language overview of literature on popular Catholicism in Italy and summaries of important studies by its authors, Madonnas That Maim offers a rich account of the development of beliefs and practices that havecharacterized popular piety in Italy for the past five hundred years.

Madonnas That Maim

Madonnas That Maim PDF Author: Michael P. Carroll
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801842993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1560 a poor woman named Margherita left the Italian city of Piacenza to check on her crop. In the field she heard herself being called, and turned to see a woman dressed in white. It was "the blessed Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, the Virgin Mary". Mary was soon joined by a male figure, whom she identified as Christ. "The blasphemies of Piacenza angered Christ", said Mary, who had intervened before Christ devastated the city with a flood. She gave Margherita specific instructions for the people of Piacenza to save themselves from divine punishment. And to ensure that Margherita would be believed, Mary gave a sign: she paralyzed Margherita's legs. In Madonnas That Maim, Michael Carroll looks at the ways in which Italians have revered, invoked, feared, and placated their madonnas and saints. Carroll examines a range of devotional practices that have been legitimated by the local Catholic clergy in Italy for centuries--including the cult of the patron saint, relics, miracles, processions, sanctuaries, pilgrimage, and the mixing of Catholic ritual and magic. He explores the "dark side" of holiness--the willingness of the madonnas and saints of Italy to maim, occasionally even to kill, in order to maintain their own cults--and discusses the psychological origins of such a belief structure. He also considers differences between northern and southern Italy, both in popular Catholicism and in the social structures that have allowed differences to emerge. Including an English-language overview of literature on popular Catholicism in Italy and summaries of important studies by its authors, Madonnas That Maim offers a rich account of the development of beliefs and practices that havecharacterized popular piety in Italy for the past five hundred years.

Madonnas that Maim?

Madonnas that Maim? PDF Author: Eamon Duffy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Catholic Church
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description


The Splintered Divine

The Splintered Divine PDF Author: Spencer L. Allen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1614512361
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
This book investigates the issue of the singularity versus the multiplicity of ancient Near Eastern deities who are known by a common first name but differentiated by their last names, or geographic epithets. It focuses primarily on the Ištar divine names in Mesopotamia, Baal names in the Levant, and Yahweh names in Israel, and it is structured around four key questions: How did the ancients define what it meant to be a god - or more pragmatically, what kind of treatment did a personality or object need to receive in order to be considered a god by the ancients? Upon what bases and according to which texts do modern scholars determine when a personality or object is a god in an ancient culture? In what ways are deities with both first and last names treated the same and differently from deities with only first names? Under what circumstances are deities with common first names and different last names recognizable as distinct independent deities, and under what circumstances are they merely local manifestations of an overarching deity? The conclusions drawn about the singularity of local manifestations versus the multiplicity of independent deities are specific to each individual first name examined in accordance with the data and texts available for each divine first name.

The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture

The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture PDF Author: Gary Waller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139494678
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
This book was first published in 2011. The Virgin Mary was one of the most powerful images of the Middle Ages, central to people's experience of Christianity. During the Reformation, however, many images of the Virgin were destroyed, as Protestantism rejected the way the medieval Church over-valued and sexualized Mary. Although increasingly marginalized in Protestant thought and practice, her traces and surprising transformations continued to haunt early modern England. Combining historical analysis and contemporary theory, including issues raised by psychoanalysis and feminist theology, Gary Waller examines the literature, theology and popular culture associated with Mary in the transition between late medieval and early modern England. He contrasts a variety of pre-Reformation texts and events, including popular mariology, poetry, tales, drama, pilgrimage and the emerging 'New Learning', with later sixteenth-century ruins, songs, ballads, Petrarchan poetry, the works of Shakespeare and other texts where the Virgin's presence or influence, sometimes surprisingly, can be found.

At Home in the World

At Home in the World PDF Author: Donald Capps
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1610979699
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
The emotional separation of boys from their mothers in early childhood enables them to connect with their fathers and their fathers' world. But this separation also produces a melancholic reaction of sadness and sense of loss. Certain religious sensibilities develop out of this melancholic reaction, including a sense of honor, a sense of hope, and a sense of humor. Realizing that they cannot return to their original maternal environment, men, whether knowingly or not, embark on a lifelong search for a sense of being at home in the world. At Home in the World focuses on works of art as a means to explore the formation and continuing expression of men's melancholy selves and their religious sensibilities. These explorations include such topics as male viewers' mixed feelings toward the maternal figure, physical settings that offer alternatives to the maternal environment, and the maternal resonances of the world of nature. By presenting images of the natural world as the locus of peace and contentment, At Home in the World especially reflects of the religious sensibility of hope.

Miracles at the Jesus Oak

Miracles at the Jesus Oak PDF Author: Craig Harline
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300167024
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
In the tradition of The Return of Martin Guerre and The Great Cat Massacre, Miracles at the Jesus Oak is a rich, evocative journey into the past and the extraordinary events that transformed the lives of ordinary people. In the musty archive of a Belgian abbey, historian Craig Harline happened upon a vast collection of documents written in the seventeenth century by people who claimed to have experienced miracles and wonders. In Miracles at the Jesus Oak, Harline recasts these testimonies into engaging vignettes that open a window onto the believers, unbelievers, and religious movements of Catholic Europe in the Age of Reformation. Written with grace and charm, Miracles at the Jesus Oak is popular history at its most informative and enlightening.

The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World

The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World PDF Author: Jennifer Mara DeSilva
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317016785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
In the Early Modern period - as both reformed and Catholic churches strove to articulate orthodox belief and conduct through texts, sermons, rituals, and images - communities grappled frequently with the connection between sacred space and behavior. The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World explores individual and community involvement in the approbation, reconfiguration and regulation of sacred spaces and the behavior (both animal and human) within them. The individual’s understanding of sacred space, and consequently the behavior appropriate within it, depended on local need, group dynamics, and the dissemination of normative expectations. While these expectations were defined in a growing body of confessionalizing literature, locally and internationally traditional clerical authorities found their decisions contested, circumvented, or elaborated in order to make room for other stakeholders’ activities and needs. To clearly reveal the efforts of early modern groups to negotiate authority and the transformation of behavior with sacred space, this collection presents examples that allow the deconstruction of these tensions and the exploration of the resulting campaigns within sacred space. Based on new archival research the eleven chapters in this collection examine diverse aspects of the campaigns to transform Christian behavior within a variety of types of sacred space and through a spectrum of media. These essays give voice to the arguments, exhortations, and accusations that surrounded the activities taking place in early modern sacred space and reveal much about how people made sense of these transformations.

Missing Mary

Missing Mary PDF Author: Charlene Spretnak
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781403963987
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
What ever happened to the Virgin Mary in the modern Catholic Church? For the past forty years her presence has been radically minimized. In a groundbreaking work, Charlene Spretnak cuts across the battle lines delineated by the left and the right within the Church to champion the recovery of the full spiritual presence of Mary. Spretnak, a liberal Catholic, sheds new light on the dethroning of the Queen of Heaven at Vatican II, and she traces the rise of a grassroots resurgence of Marian spirituality in recent years. She offers fresh reflections on the meaning of Mary, situating the Marian renewal in the larger context of contemporary efforts to correct the barrenness and sterility of modernity. Spretnak also notes that much of the cosmological symbolism traditionally associated with Mary as the Queen of Heaven and the maternal matrix is simpatico with recent discoveries in scientific cosmology about the profoundly relational nature of the Creation. Moreover, Spretnak asserts that a deep loss ensues for women in particular when Mary's female embodiment of grace and mystical presence is denied and replaced with a strictly text-bound version of her as a Nazarene housewife. Complete with a striking insert of contemporary Marian art, Missing Mary is a deeply insightful reflection on Mary in the modern age.

Unearthly Powers

Unearthly Powers PDF Author: Alan Strathern
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108477143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
This ground-breaking study sets out a new understanding of transformations in the interaction between religion and political authority throughout history.

Consorting with Spirits

Consorting with Spirits PDF Author: Jason Miller
Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
ISBN: 1578637546
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
"Working with spirits can be some of the most dangerous yet some of the most gratifying work a magickal practitioner can engage in. With Jason as your guide in this book, you are in some of the best hands out there when it comes to approaching and working with spirits. This is a book I wish I had fifteen years ago when I began working closely with spirits." --Mat Auryn, author of Psychic Witch Spirits have power and knowledge. Learn how to summon, communicate, and negotiate with the unseen. We are all spirits, and as such have the ability to communicate with other spirits. The physical body presents some limitations that can be overcome with training, but which can also be leveraged to give other spirits a link to the physical form that they seek. Working with spirits can enable your most powerful magickal goals. From calling on spirits to help with protection, money, and knowledge, the skills learned here will help you tap into power with your spirit allies. Consorting with Spirits is a system of practices for training the mind and energy body on three abilities: The capacity to sense spirits, the capacity to interact with spirits, and the capacity to deepen and clarify that interaction. It is this deepening and clarifying that has been missing from much of the material about spirits. Consorting with Spirits shares: Proper training necessary for calling and conversing with spirits. How to evaluate the messages you receive. A full view of different modes of contact and what situations each mode lends itself to Why the best sorcery is local. The tools to establish and maintain a long-term relationship with spirits (consorting). The 6 different manifestations of spirits and their corresponding magickal operations, qualities, benefits, and drawbacks. The 4 methods of interacting with spirits: prayer, conjuring, compelling, and evocation.