Durham Cathedral was built as the Shrine of St Cuthbert. Without Cuthbert, this great Norman edifice would not exist, and neither would the castle or, indeed, the city of Durham. Construction was begun by Bishop William of St-Calais in 1093 and was brought to near-completion by Bishop Ranulf Flambard. Both men had important royal duties, seldom spending time at Durham. Continuity was provided by Prior Turgot. This is the story of Turgot-a man who, after many adventures in his youth, was shipwrecked while returning from Norway and transported to the realms of St Cuthbert-an unsung enabler who oversaw the construction of this great architectural masterpiece. Turgot was also close to the Scottish royal family, and wrote an account of the life of St Margaret, the Scottish queen. In 1104 he supervised the opening of the tomb of St Cuthbert, and arranged the transfer of the remains to a splendid shrine within the new cathedral. Through reading Prior Turgot's story, a great deal can be learnt about the building of Durham Cathedral, the story of St Cuthbert, his journey to Durham, and the earliest pre-Norman settlements which grew into an iconic city and World Heritage Site. Contained Within * Foreword by David Rollason, Professor of History at Durham University * The story of St Cuthbert, Prior Turgot, and the construction of Durham Cathedral * Illustrations, maps, and diagrams * Short essays on related topics * Turgot's Life of St Margaret * Extensive references, bibliography and index About the Author Lionel Green grew up in Merton in Surrey, and was a founder member, and ultimately president, of Merton Historical Society. He researched Merton Priory for over 50 years, culminating in his book A Priory Revealed using material relating to Merton Priory, published in 2005. His research into medieval monasteries introduced him to the story of Turgot. Lionel Green died in 2010, leaving his script to be edited by friends.

In today's hectic, changing world, being an oblate offers a rich, spiritual connection to the stability and wisdom of an established monastic community.

The mendicant friars of the Franciscan and Dominican orders played a unique and important role in medieval society. In the early thirteenth century, the Church was being challenged by a confident new secular culture, associated with the growth of towns, the rise of literature and articulate laity, the development of new sciences and the creation of the first universities. The mendicant orders which developed around the charismatic figures of Saint Francis of Assisi (founder of the Franciscans) and Saint Dominic of Osma (founder of the Dominicans) confronted this challenge by encouraging preachers to go out into the world to do God's work, rather than retiring into enclosed monasteries. C.H. Lawrence here analyses the origins and growth of these orders, as well as the impact which they had upon the medieval world - in the areas of politics and education as well as religion. His study is essential reading for all scholars and students of medieval history.

Santa Maria di Firenze, an ancient, venerable Benedictine abbey (called the Badia) located in the heart of Florence, is the subject of Anne Leader s new book. In 1418, 17 Benedictine monks journeyed to Florence from Padua to save one of their order's oldest houses from ruin. Realizing that reformed spiritual practice alone would not save the Badia, Abbott Gomezio di Giovanni commissioned the creation of a new cloister, to be decorated with vivid and engaging frescoes designed to motivate its residents. Leader s richly illustrated, interdisciplinary study examines the Badia during this crucial period of reform and rebirth. It reveals the renovated Badia as integral to the spiritual, political, and social life of early Renaissance Florence, as well as to the broader program of expanding Benedictine Observance throughout Italy."

In the 1960s an extraordinary period of renewal came to the Church of the Redeemer in Houston, Texas. Worship was transformed and several hundred people shared homes and possessions in a community of love. Eventually the renewal came to Britain in the shape of the Community of Celebration, whose ministry teams known as the Fisherfolk became a worldwide phenomenon. Decades on, the Community of Celebration is now based in the USA, a small religious community of the Episcopal Church. How did it make the transition from a large family oriented community to a type of vowed religious order? Philip Bradshaw, an Anglican priest and life vowed community member based in England, reflects on his life with the Community since its early beginnings.

Through the lens of sensorial experience, Erika Lauren Lindgren explores the spirituality of monastic women as reflected in their writings, liturgical texts, artwork, architecture, and archival documents. Specifically, she focuses on the Dominican nuns and lay-sisters of southern Germany in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, particularly the way in which these women controlled and interpreted their surroundings and incorporated them into their spiritual and devotional practices.

Lindgren divides the monastic environment into four areas: the spatial environment, in which she considers the physical as well as spiritual requirements of the monastic community and the use of precinct space; the visual environment, in which she looks at the function of visual material in daily spirituality and the meanings given to these images; the acoustical environment and the roles of silence and sound in communal and private devotional practices; and the textual environment, in which Lindgren addresses the intersection between the visual, the acoustical, and women's utilization of texts. Brilliantly argued and intellectually rich, Lindgren's study is a remarkable examination of the connections between the spirituality of monastic women and the physical and sensual environment of the medieval monastery.

Just as twenty-first-century technologies like blogs and wikis have transformed the once private act of reading into a public enterprise, devotional reading experiences in the Middle Ages were dependent upon an oscillation between the solitary and the communal. In "Reading in the Wilderness," Jessica Brantley uses tools from both literary criticism and art history to illuminate Additional MS 37049, an illustrated Carthusian miscellany housed in the British Library. This revealing artifact, Brantley argues, closes the gap between group spectatorship and private study in late medieval England.
Drawing on the work of W. J. T. Mitchell, Michael Camille, and others working at the image-text crossroads, "Reading in the Wilderness" addresses the manuscript's texts and illustrations to examine connections between reading and performance within the solitary monk's cell and also outside. Brantley reimagines the medieval codex as a site where the meanings of images and words are performed, both publicly and privately, in the act of reading.

In the 1960s, a number of Catholic women religious in the United States abandoned traditional apostolic works to experiment with new and often unprecedented forms of service among non-Catholics. Amy Koehlinger explores the phenomenon of the "new nun" through close examination of one of its most visible forms--the experience of white sisters working in African-American communities. In a complex network of programs and activities Koehlinger describes as the "racial apostolate," sisters taught at African-American colleges in the South, held racial sensitivity sessions in integrating neighborhoods, and created programs for children of color in public housing projects.

Engaging with issues of race and justice allowed the sisters to see themselves, their vocation, and the Church in dramatically different terms. In this book, Koehlinger captures the confusion and frustration, as well as the exuberance and delight, they experienced in their new Christian mission. Their increasing autonomy and frequent critiques of institutional misogyny shaped reforms within their institute and sharpened a post-Vatican II crisis of authority.

From the Selma march to Chicago's Cabrini Green housing project, Amy Koehlinger illuminates the transformative nature of the nexus of race, religion, and gender in American society.

Quakerism has long fascinated historians and religious scholars, and Richard Allen's examination of the community's rise and fall in Wales holds a wealth of new insights. The prominent role played by women, the resilience of Quakers in the face of a variety of forms of official persecution, the ways that education, careers, and marriage were determined by a strict code of conduct, and the reasons for Quakerism's decline all come under consideration here. As the first scholarly analysis of Welsh Quakers, this book represents an important new contribution to our knowledge of the movement.

Blacks of the Rosary tells the story of the Afro-Brazilian communities that developed within lay religious brotherhoods dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary in Minas Gerais. It shows how these brotherhoods functioned as a social space in which Africans and their descendants could rebuild a communal identity based on a shared history of an African past and an ongoing devotional practice, thereby giving rise to enduring transnational cultures that have survived to the present day. In exploring this intersection of community, identity, and memory, the book probes the Portuguese and African contributions to the brotherhoods in Part One. Part Two traces the changes and continuities within the organizations from the early eighteenth century to the end of the Brazilian Empire, and the book concludes in Part Three with discussion of the twentieth-century brotherhoods and narratives of the participants in brotherhood festivals in the 1990s. In a larger sense, the book serves as a case study through which readers can examine the strategies that Afro-Brazilians used to create viable communities in order to confront the asymmetry of power inherent in the slave societies of the Americas and their economic and social marginalization in the twentieth century.

As the only daughter of Blanche of Castile, one of France's most powerful queens, and as the sister of the Capetian saint Louis IX, Isabelle of France (1225-1270) was situated at the nexus of sanctity and power during a significant era of French culture and medieval history. In this ground-breaking examination of Isabelle's career, Sean Field uses a wealth of previously unstudied material to address significant issues in medieval religious history, including the possibilities for women's religious authority, the creation and impact of royal sanctity, and the relationship between men and women within the mendicant orders. Field reinterprets Isabelle's career as a Capetian princess. Isabelle was remarkable for choosing a life of holy virginity and for founding and co-authoring a rule for the Franciscan abbey of Longchamp. Isabelle did not become a nun there, but remained a powerful lay patron, living in a modest residence on the abbey grounds. Field maintains that Isabelle was a key actor in creating the aura of sanctity that surrounded the French royal family in the thirteenth century, underscoring the link between the growth of Capetian prestige and power and the idea of a divinely ordained, virtuous, and holy royal family. Her contemporary reputation for sanctity emerges from a careful analysis of the Life of Isabelle of France written by the third abbess of Longchamp, Agnes of Harcourt, and from papal bulls, letters, and other contemporary sources that have only recently come to light. Field also argues that Isabelle had a profound effect on the institutional history of Franciscan women. By remaining outside the official Franciscan and church hierarchies, Isabelle maintained an ambiguous position that allowed her to embrace Franciscan humility while retaining royal influence. Her new order of Sorores minores was eagerly adopted by a number of communities, and her rule for the order eventually spread from France to England, Italy, and Spain. An important study of a medieval woman's agency and power, Isabelle of France explores the life of a remarkable figure in French and Franciscan history.

Winner, 2004 Dale W. Brown Book Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies

Winner, 2005 Outstanding Publication, Communal Studies Association

Co-published with the Pennsylvania German Society/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

The Ephrata Cloister was a community of radical Pietists founded by Georg Conrad Beissel (1691-1768), a charismatic mystic who had been a journeyman baker in Europe. In 1720 he and a few companions sought a new life in William Penn's land of religious freedom, eventually settling on the banks of the Cocalico Creek in what is now Lancaster County. They called their community "Ephrata," after the Hebrew name for the area around Bethlehem. Voices of the Turtledoves is a fascinating look at the sacred world that flourished at Ephrata.

In Voices of the Turtledoves, Jeff Bach is the first to draw extensively on Ephrata's manuscript resources and on recent archaeological investigations to present an overarching look at the community. He concludes that the key to understanding all the various aspects of life at Ephrata--its architecture, manuscript art, and social organization--is the religious thought of Beissel and his co-leaders.

Controversy surrounding the beatification and canonization of Edith Stein, a Catholic convert of Jewish heritage who was murdered at Auschwitz, has eclipsed scholarly and public attention to Stein's extraordinary development as a philosopher. She succeeded in extending phenomenological inquiry into the nature of person, community, and state; in analyzing the truth claims of empathic knowledge; in probing the foundations of pedagogy; and in offering a synthesis of medieval philosophy and phenomenology. Only the second woman in German history to be awarded a Ph.D. in philosophy, Stein ranks among the leading early-twentieth-century European intellectuals. She also made lasting contributions, both intellectual and practical, to women's education, freedom, and equality in Germany. The sixteen essays in this collection, written by scholars from the United States and Europe, critically examine her legacy. This volume represents the first comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis in English of Stein's life and philosophical writings. The book is divided into three sections-biographical explorations, Stein's feminist theory and pedagogy, and her creative philosophical contributions. The essays in this volume also situate Stein's life and thought in the complex historical context of early-twentieth-century Germany.

In "Jesus in Our Wombs", Rebecca J. Lester takes us behind the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in central Mexico to explore the lives, training, and experiences of a group of postulants - young women in the first stage of religious training as nuns. Lester, who conducted eighteen months of fieldwork in the convent, provides a rich ethnography of these young women's journeys as they wrestle with doubts, fears, ambitions, and setbacks in their struggle to follow what they believe to be the will of God. Gracefully written, finely textured, and theoretically rigorous, this book considers how these aspiring nuns learn to experience God by cultivating an altered experience of their own female bodies, a transformation they view as a political stance against modernity. Lester explains that the Postulants work toward what they see as an 'authentic' femininity - one that has been eclipsed by the values of modern society. The outcome of this process has political as well as personal consequences. The Sisters learn to understand their very intimate experiences of 'the Call' - and their choices in answering it - as politically relevant declarations of self. Readers become intimately acquainted with the personalities, family backgrounds, friendships, and aspirations of the Postulants as Lester relates the practices and experiences of their daily lives. Combining compassionate, engaged ethnography with an incisive and provocative theoretical analysis of embodied selves, "Jesus in Our Wombs" delivers a profound analysis of what Lester calls the convent's 'technology of embodiment' on multiple levels - from the phenomenological to the political.

"From Monastery to Hospital "traces the origin of the late Roman hospital to the earliest groups of Christian monastics. Often characterized as holy men and miracle-workers who transformed late antique spirituality, monks held an equally significant impact on the development of medicine in Late Antiquity. Andrew Crislip illuminates the innovative approaches to health care within the earliest monasteries that provided the model for the greatest medical achievement of Late Antiquity: the hospital.

"From Monastery to Hospital "draws on some of the most vibrant areas of scholarship of the ancient world, including asceticism, the study of the body, history of the family, and the history of medicine. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of early Christianity, Roman History, the history of medicine, and Catholic, Coptic, and Eastern Orthodox history and theology. It will also be of interest to the broader field of history of Christianity, especially with its connections to charitable traditions in the church through the modern period.

Andrew Crislip is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Hawaii.

Catherine McAuley (1778-1841) founded the Sisters of Mercy in Dublin in 1831. Her letters are essential primary sources for readers interested in the life and works of this remarkable Irish churchwoman and in women's history and Irish church history more broadly. Whether McAuley is writing to family members, bishops, her solicitor, priests, lay coworkers, or Sisters of Mercy in Ireland and England, her letters reveal striking details about the church and society of her day as well as about her own spiritual convictions and unstinting personal service to poor, sick, homeless, or uneducated adults and children. The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley, 1818-1841, is a new, fully documented edition of more than 320 surviving letters written by, to, or about McAuley during her lifetime. Drawn from archives worldwide and arranged chronologically, the letters are carefully transcribed and generously annotated, with brief narratives introducing each group. In her letters as well as in those of the other correspondents, one sees a delightfully human, affectionate woman; a compassionate, persistent servant of the poor and neglected; an astute businesswoman; and an unpretentious, humorous friend. This edition of McAuley's correspondence is readily accessible to general readers and demonstrates not only her important role in the founding and amazing spread of the Mercy congregation in her lifetime (now numbering more than 10,000 members globally), but also her personal contributions to the pastoral development of the church in Ireland and England. Scholars and other readers will gain fresh insights into many prominent ecclesial leaders in the years 1828-1841, including Daniel Murray, archbishop of Dublin, and Thomas Griffiths, vicar apostolic of the London District. They will also find in these engaging letters one woman's grass-roots experience of certain social, economic, and ecclesiastical arrangements of her time and place. ABOUT THE EDITOR: Mary C. Sullivan, R.S.M., is Professor Emeritus of Language and Literature, and Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts, at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the author of numerous works, including Catherine McAuley and the Tradition of Mercy. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: ""All those letters whose whereabouts are known have recently been tracked down, examined, verified and scrupulously edited. The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley, 1818-1841 is a work of impeccable and exhaustive scholarship. . . . This book is a very model of what such collections should be, and it could hardly have had a better editor than Mary C. Sullivan, herself a Sister of Mercy since 1950 and a distinguished academic for decades. . . . This is not the first collection of Mother McAuley's letters, but it is surely the most complete and meticulously edited.""--John W. Donohue, America ""This monograph is a magnum opus. Edited by an indefatigable scholar, it is the most complete, accurate compendium of the correspondence of Catherine McAuley. . . . This expanded treasure is, however, dwarfed by another uniquely Sullivan contribution. Not only does each of the more than three hundred entries reflect a precise rendition of documents, but Sullivan has also supplemented each with meticulously researched clarifications of the texts. This bonus provides new historical information and identifies linguistic nuances that help the reader comprehend the content and the context of Catherine's life and accomplishments. . . . For its scholarly approach as well as for what it reveals about the impact of one great Irish woman, and religious women in general, Sullivan's latest monograph deserves our careful study.""--Dolores Liptak, RSM, American Catholic Studies ""Mary C. Sullivan RSM has carefully edited and thoroughly annotated these letters. . . . Others besides Mercy sisters can be

This is the first English translation of Dom Jean Mabillon's treatise that defends the propriety of study and research as an occupation for monks, and lays out a course of studies for young Benedictines training to be scholars. In the 1680s the strict Trappist reformer, Armand-Jean de Rance, published books condemning scholarship as a suitable occupation for monks. Mabillon belonged to the Maurists, a group of French Benedictines who were already launched on a 150-year odyssey of collecting, editing, and publishing critical editions of the church Fathers, the classics of early French literature and history, the annals of the Benedictine order from its beginnings, and critically vetted lives of Benedictine saints. Mabillon refuted Rance's claims, but transformed the debate by writing a masterful survey of authors and works with which monastic scholars should be familiar: pagan classics, the writings of early Christianity, and important publications of the 16th and 17th centuries on topics ranging from biblical scholarship to belles lettres to civil and canon law to books about books. Mabillon includes a "list of difficulties met with in reading the councils, the Fathers, and church history" that presents problems in a non-dogmatic, open-ended way. This edition includes a translator's introduction, suggestions for further reading on the monastic studies controversy, all Mabillon's marginal notes, a bibliography of all published works mentioned in the text, and an index."

Dr. McNally critically examines well over 150 years of Oblate and general Catholic history in Canada's western-most province with special emphasis on the Native people and Euro-Canadian settlers. It is the first survey history of the Catholic Church in British Columbia.