Miracles, Saints, and Pagan Superstition PDF Download

Author: Stephen Currie
Publisher: Lucent Press
ISBN: 9781590188613
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Lucent Library of Historical Eras gives young readers a window on important eras in world history. Individual titles in every multi-volume set present a historical perspective and a vivid picture of the cultural, political, and social life of the era. The 5-volume Elizabethan England Library, for example, examines the rich literary and cultural life of sixteenth-century England, the age of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I. Fully documented primary and secondary source quotations enliven the text, and each set includes well-organized primary source documents valuable for student research and reports. Annotated bibliographies Maps and photographs Informational sidebars Detailed indexes

Author: Bernadette Filotas
Publisher: PIMS
ISBN: 9780888441515
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
"This comprehensive study examines early medieval popular culture as it appears in ecclesiastical and secular law, sermons, penitentials and other pastoral works - a selective, skewed, but still illuminating record of the beliefs and practices of ordinary Christians. Concentrating on the five centuries from c. 500 to c. 1000, Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature presents the evidence for folk religious beliefs and piety, attitudes to nature and death, festivals, magic, drinking and alimentary customs. As such it provides a precious glimpse of the mutual adaptation of Christianity and traditional cultures at an important period of cultural and religious transition."--BOOK JACKET

Author: Helen L. Parish
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441100326
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe brings together a rich selection of essays which represent the most important historical research on religion, magic and superstition in early modern Europe. Each essay makes a significant contribution to the history of magic and religion in its own right, while together they demonstrate how debates over the topic have evolved over time, providing invaluable intellectual, historical, and socio-political context for readers approaching the subject for the first time. The essays are organised around five key themes and areas of controversy. Part One tackles superstition; Part Two, the tension between miracles and magic; Part Three, ghosts and apparitions; Part Four, witchcraft and witch trials; and Part Five, the gradual disintegration of the 'magical universe' in the face of scientific, religious and practical opposition. Each part is prefaced by an introduction that provides an outline of the historiography and engages with recent scholarship and debate, setting the context for the essays that follow and providing a foundation for further study. This collection is an invaluable toolkit for students of early modern Europe, providing both a focused overview and a springboard for broader thinking about the underlying continuities and discontinuities that make the study of magic and superstition a perennially fascinating topic.

Author: William Holden Hutton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Christian biography
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description

Author: Stuart Vyse
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192551329
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Do you touch wood for luck, or avoid hotel rooms on floor thirteen? Would you cross the path of a black cat, or step under a ladder? Is breaking a mirror just an expensive waste of glass, or something rather more sinister? Despite the dominance of science in today's world, superstitious beliefs - both traditional and new - remain surprisingly popular. A recent survey of adults in the United States found that 33 percent believed that finding a penny was good luck, and 23 percent believed that the number seven was lucky. Where did these superstitions come from, and why do they persist today? This Very Short Introduction explores the nature and surprising history of superstition from antiquity to the present. For two millennia, superstition was a label derisively applied to foreign religions and unacceptable religious practices, and its primary purpose was used to separate groups and assert religious and social authority. After the Enlightenment, the superstition label was still used to define groups, but the new dividing line was between reason and unreason. Today, despite our apparent sophistication and technological advances, superstitious belief and behaviour remain widespread, and highly educated people are not immune. Stuart Vyse takes an exciting look at the varieties of popular superstitious beliefs today and the psychological reasons behind their continued existence, as well as the likely future course of superstition in our increasingly connected world. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Author: Joseph Wheless
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
ISBN: 1602062641
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
Incendiary in its passion and irrefutable in its evidence, this classic of atheistic literature condemns Christianity as superstition and wishful thinking rooted in early paganism, "sourced" by anonymous fables, and promoted by self-serving men seeking "worldly riches and power." Raging against the blatant manipulations of the early Church and the antiscience agenda of the modern Church, American writer JOSEPH WHELESS (1868-1950) takes on everything from faked "relics" and the "holy mummery" of stigmatics and other dramatic mystics to the "priestly terrorism" of the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Church's historical intolerance. This is an absolute must-read for anyone looking for ammunition to counter the argument that the longevity of Christianity is evidence of its legitimacy. ALSO AVAILABLE FROM COSIMO: Wheless's Is It God's Word?

Author: Judith Devlin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300037104
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This intriguing book examines popular religion, traditional medicine, witchcraft, apparitions, demonology, and magic in nineteenth-century rural France. Devlin demonstrates that many of the impulses and mental processes now considered superstitious constituted a wholly reasonable response to the pressures of a harsh and impoverished life. Far from the product of a primitive mentality, many of these beliefs have survived in modern culture and can even illuminate the nature of modern mass politics.

Author: Elizabeth Emery
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786417698
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Legends, tales, and mysteries featuring saints captivated the French at the end of the nineteenth century. As Jean Lorrain pointed out in an 1891 article for the popular weekly Le Courrier Francais, the seemingly simple language of the saints' lives, their noble battles between good and evil and the atmosphere of religious mysticism appealed to many, especially those involved in the visual and performing arts. Ironically The Third Republic (1870-1940), a regime that claimed to reinforce and institute the secular ideas of the French Revolution, was witness to this great popular interest in the saints and religious imagery. The eight essays in this work explore the popularity of the saints from the 1850s to the 1920s. The essays evaluate the role they played in literature, art, music, science, history and politics, examine portrayals of the saints' lives in both low and high culture (from children's literature, shadow plays and the popular press to literature, opera and theological studies), and reveal the prevalence of the saints in fin-de-siecle France.

Author: Dominic Alexander
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 1843833948
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
A thorough investigation of the saint and animal topos: its origins, growth and development.

Author: Natasha Hodgson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042983599X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
This volume seeks to increase understanding of the origins, ideology, implementation, impact, and historiography of religion and conflict in the medieval and early modern periods. The chapters examine ideas about religion and conflict in the context of text and identity, church and state, civic environments, marriage, the parish, heresy, gender, dialogues, war and finance, and Holy War. The volume covers a wide chronological period, and the contributors investigate relationships between religion and conflict from the seventh to eighteenth centuries ranging from Byzantium to post-conquest Mexico. Religious expressions of conflict at a localised level are explored, including the use of language in legal and clerical contexts to influence social behaviours and the use of religion to legitimise the spiritual value of violence, rationalising the enforcement of social rules. The collection also examines spatial expressions of religious conflict both within urban environments and through travel and pilgrimage. With both written and visual sources being explored, this volume is the ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers of religion and military, political, social, legal, cultural, or intellectual conflict in medieval and early modern worlds.