Author: Paul Cavill Publisher: DS Brewer ISBN: 9780859918411 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
Essays exploring a wide array of sources that show the importance of Christian ideas and influences in Anglo-Saxon England. A unique and important contribution to both teaching and scholarship. Professor Elaine Treharne, Stanford University. This is a collection of essays exploring a wide array of sources that show the importance ofChristian ideas and influences in Anglo-Saxon England. The range of treatment is exceptionally diverse. Some of the essays develop new approaches to familiar texts, such as Beowulf, The Wanderer and The Seafarer; others deal with less familiar texts and genres to illustrate the role of Christian ideas in a variety of contexts, from preaching to remembrance of the dead, and from the court of King Cnut to the monastic library. Some of the essays are informative, providing essential background material for understanding the nature of the Bible, or the distinction between monastic and cleric in Anglo-Saxon England; others provide concise surveys of material evidence orgenres; others still show how themes can be used in constructing and evaluating courses teaching the tradition. Contributors: GRAHAM CAIE, PAUL CAVILL, CATHERINE CUBITT, JUDITH JESCH, RICHARD MARSDEN, ELISABETH OKASHA, BARBARA C. RAW, PHILIPPA SEMPER, DABNEY BANKERT, SANTHA BHATTACHARJI, HUGH MAGENNIS, MARY SWAN, JONATHAN M. WOODING.
Author: Louise Nelstrop Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351765140 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
From the visual and textual art of Anglo-Saxon England onwards, images held a surprising power in the Western Christian tradition. Not only did these artistic representations provide images through which to find God, they also held mystical potential, and likewise mystical writing, from the early medieval period onwards, is also filled with images of God that likewise refracts and reflects His glory. This collection of essays introduces the currents of thought and practice that underpin this artistic engagement with Western Christian mysticism, and explores the continued link between art and theology. The book features contributions from an international panel of leading academics, and is divided into four sections. The first section offers theoretical and philosophical considerations of mystical aesthetics and the interplay between mysticism and art. The final three sections investigate this interplay between the arts and mysticism from three key vantage points. The purpose of the volume is to explore this rarely considered yet crucial interface between art and mysticism. It is therefore an important and illuminating collection of scholarship that will appeal to scholars of theology and Christian mysticism as much as those who study literature, the arts and art history.
Author: Helen Foxhall Forbes Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317123077 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 411
Book Description
Christian theology and religious belief were crucially important to Anglo-Saxon society, and are manifest in the surviving textual, visual and material evidence. This is the first full-length study investigating how Christian theology and religious beliefs permeated society and underpinned social values in early medieval England. The influence of the early medieval Church as an institution is widely acknowledged, but Christian theology itself is generally considered to have been accessible only to a small educated elite. This book shows that theology had a much greater and more significant impact than has been recognised. An examination of theology in its social context, and how it was bound up with local authorities and powers, reveals a much more subtle interpretation of secular processes, and shows how theological debate affected the ways that religious and lay individuals lived and died. This was not a one-way flow, however: this book also examines how social and cultural practices and interests affected the development of theology in Anglo-Saxon England, and how ’popular’ belief interacted with literary and academic traditions. Through case-studies, this book explores how theological debate and discussion affected the personal perspectives of Christian Anglo-Saxons, including where possible those who could not read. In all of these, it is clear that theology was not detached from society or from the experiences of lay people, but formed an essential constituent part.
Author: Kate H. Thomas Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN: 3110661950 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
This monograph examines Anglo-Saxon prayer outside of the communal liturgy. With a particular emphasis on its practical aspects, it considers how small groups of prayers were elaborated into complex programs for personal devotion, resulting in the forerunners of the Special Offices. With examples being taken chiefly from major eleventh-century collections of prayers, liturgy and medical remedies, the methodologies of Anglo-Saxon compilers are examined, followed by five chapters on specialist kinds of prayer: to the Trinity and saints, for liturgical feasts and the canonical hours, to the Holy Cross, for protection and healing, and confessions. Analyzing prayer in a wide range of different situations, this book argues that Anglo-Saxon manuscripts may have included far more private offices than have so far been recognized, if we see them for what they were.
Author: Ananya Jahanara Kabir Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139432443 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
How did the Anglo-Saxons conceptualize the interim between death and Doomsday? In this 2001 book, Ananya Jahanara Kabir presents an investigation into the Anglo-Saxon belief in the 'interim paradise': paradise as a temporary abode for good souls following death and pending the final decisions of Doomsday. She locates the origins of this distinctive sense of paradise within early Christian polemics, establishes its Anglo-Saxon development as a site of contestation and compromise, and argues for its post-Conquest transformation into the doctrine of purgatory. In ranging across Old English prose and poetry as well as Latin apocrypha, exegesis, liturgy, prayers and visions of the otherworld, and combining literary criticism with recent scholarship in early medieval history, early Christian theology and history of ideas, this book is essential reading for scholars of Anglo-Saxon England, historians of Christianity, and all those interested in the impact of the Anglo-Saxon period on the later Middle Ages.
Author: Patricia Ranft Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 0739174320 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 269
Book Description
In recent years numerous scholars in disciplines not traditionally associated with theology have promoted an interesting thesis. They maintain that one particular Christian doctrine, the Incarnation, had an inordinate influence on the shape of Western culture. The doctrine, they say, was so radical that it mandated an epistemological break with pagan society's perception of the universe and forced Christians to form a new culture. As medieval society worked out the consequences of the doctrine, it gave birth to those attitudes, institutions, and actions that define modern Western culture. The claims are well argued, but it is a historically untested thesis. How the Doctrine of Incarnation Shaped Western Culture is a response to the situation. It investigates whether the presence of the doctrine had the definitive effect on Western culture that so many scholars claim it did. It searches early Christian and medieval sources for evidence and concludes that the doctrine had a dominant effect on the developing culture. No other idea was as omnipresent or pervasive in Western society during its formative stage as the Incarnation doctrine. The doctrine was influential in the establishment of every major facet of Western culture. Its paradox, irrationality, and juxtaposition of opposites created a tension that cried out for resolution, and society responded accordingly. The ideas within the doctrine acted as catalysts for cultural change. As a result, the West developed its most characteristic traits and forged a path that was uniquely its own.
Author: Barbara C. Raw
Author: Barbara Catherine Raw
Author: Catherine E. Karkov
Author: Paul Cavill
Author: Louise Nelstrop
Author: Helen Foxhall Forbes
Author: Kate H. Thomas
Author: Ananya Jahanara Kabir
Author: Declan Marmion
Author: Patricia Ranft