![]() |
![]() |
Your cart is empty |
||
Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Christian institutions & organizations > Christian communities & monasticism
"Unconventional Sisterhood" is an ethnographic exploration of the
ways in which Filipina Missionary Benedictine Sisters are
renegotiating traditional understandings of gender, religious
responsibility, and national identity in the context of a rapidly
globalizing nation. Unlike the popular stereotypes of staid sisters
cloaked in rigid religious dogmatism, they are doing so by telling
jokes, engaging in eclectic religious rituals, maintaining
connections with a local nationalist cult, and committing
themselves to a radical and feminist politics.
This is a study of the life, monastic writings and spiritual theology of John Cassian (c.365-430). Cassian's writings were the bridge between eastern monasticism and the developing Latin monasticism of Southern Gaul, and exerted a major influence on the Rule of Benedict and the theology of Gregory the Great.
This book is a study of the life, monastic writings, and spiritual
theology of John Cassian (c., 360-435). His Institutes and
Conferences are a remarkable synthesis of earlier monastic
traditions, especially those of fourth-century Egypt, informed
throughout by Cassian's awareness of the particular needs of the
Latin monastic movement he was helping to shape. Sometimes
portrayed as simply an advocate of the sophisticated spiritual
theology of Evagrius of Ponticus (360-435), Cassian was actually a
theologian of keen insight, realism, and creativity. His teaching
on sexuality is unique in early monastic literature in both its
breadth and its depth, and his integration of biblical
interpretation with the ways of prayer and teaching on ecstatic
prayer are of fundamental importance for the western monastic
tradition. The only Latin writer included in the classic Greek
collections of monastic sayings, Cassian was the major spiritual
influence on both the Rule of the Master and the Rule of Benedict,
as well as the source for Gregory the Great's teaching on capital
sins and compunction.
"This story is feminist in the noblest sense. It is about the power of individual women and the strength of their collective energies. It is about building and sustaining community". -- from the Foreword The often forgotten role of Catholic sisters is told in stories deeply rooted in self-realization and feminist methodology in this much-needed history of this fascinating order. In a series of thirteen essays the contributors offer a look into the mysterious world of very strong and creative women, their values and mission. In this unprecedented work, readers gain insight into a world that has rarely been seen by outsiders. An often neglected part of feminist research, the collaboration of the sisters further illustrates the seminal paradigms in women's work and writing. They deal with many of the same issues of power, economic autonomy, friendship and spirituality, socialization, and professional commitment. In addition to the rigorous training involved in becoming a nun, the authors elaborate upon the complex relationship between this order, other IHM communities, and of the intricate hierarchy of the Church itself. Feminist historian Margaret Susan Thompson places the essays within a historical context and provides detailed background for those unfamiliar with the life, duty, and experience of Catholic sisters. This book will make a unique contribution to feminist scholarship, religious studies, and women's history.
The second volume of Thomas Merton's "gusty, passionate journals" (Thomas Moore) chronicles Merton's advancements to priesthood and emergence as a bestselling author with the surprise success of his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. Spanning an eleven-year period, Entering the Silence reflects Merton's struggle to balance his vocation to solitude with the budding literary career that would soon established him as one of the most important spiritual writers of our century.
This is the first study of the monastic movement in Palestine during the Byzantine period. The monasteries of the desert - in Jerusalem, Egypt, and Syria, played a key role in Byzantine society, and the `desert fathers' are well known even today as landmarks in the history of Christian spirituality. The book uses contemporary sources to discuss both how the monks actually lived, and their contribution to the doctrinal and spiritual debate.
Contents include: Anglo-Saxon and Later Whitby (Philip Rahtz); Antiquaries and Archaeology in and around Ripon Minster (R. A. Hall); The Early Monastic Church of Lastingham (Richard Gem and Malcolm Thurlby); The Romanesque Church of Selby Abbey (Eric Fernie); Observations on the Romanesque Crossing Tower, Transepts and Nave Aisles of Selby Abbey (Stuart Harrison and Malcolm Thurlby); Some Design Aspects of Kirkstall Abbey (Malcolm Thurlby); The 13th-century Choir and Transepts of Rivaulx Abbey (Lawrence R. Hoey).
This is an authoritative account of daily life in Westminster Abbey, one of medieval England's greatest monasteries. It is also a wide-ranging exploration of some major themes in the social history of the Middle Ages and early sixteenth century by a distinguished historian of that period. Barbara Harvey exploits the exceptionally rich archives of the Benedictine foundation at Westminster to the full, offering many vivid insights into the lives of the monks of Westminster, their dependents, and their benefactors. She examines the charitable practices of the monks, their food and drink, their illnesses and their deaths, the number and conditions of employment of their servants, and their controversial practice of granting corrodies (pensions made up in large measure of benefits in kind). All these topics Miss Harvey considers in the context both of religious institutions in general and of the secular world. Full of colour and interest, Living and Dying in England 1100-1540 is an original and highly readable contribution to medieval history and that of the early sixteenth century.
Burton-Christie shows how scripture was a primary source of influence on the founders of early Christian monasticism in fourth-century Egypt, and how it contributed to its original and influential spirituality.
Presents Father Columba's chapter-by-chapter commentary designed to help others share St Benedict's words and approach to living the Christian life. The book draws on the author's lifetime of living and teaching the Rule, of his mission experience and on his work with the growing Oblate movement.
Since the 6th century, this has been one of the most influential documents of Western thought and civilization. Full of plain wisdom, the words of St. Benedict are a guide for work, prayer, study, and community life.
Two leading practitioners of new monasticism open up the movement's spiritual landscape and its distinctive calling and gifts within today's church. Practical experiences and stories are set alongside reflection and liturgies as a creative resource for all who are already involved in, or are exploring intentional living in community. Focusing on new monasticism's key characteristics of prayer, mission and community, this book explores: * continuity with traditional religious life * innovations, such as its use of social networking technology * potential for spiritual formation * preference for the abandoned places of society * transformative approach to mission * blend of the traditional and experimental in worship * growing international presence
A French historian and curator of the manuscript department at the Bibliotheque Nationale, Benjamin Guerard (1797-1854) made a considerable contribution to the study of medieval French cathedrals and monasteries. Having studied at Dijon, Guerard became a banker in Paris, before studying at the Ecole royales des chartes where he trained as an archivist. He was a founding member of the Societe de l'histoire de France, and this publication was part of the society's first series of documents inedits. Guerard was elected to the Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres and became the director of the Ecole des chartes in 1848. This collection of the medieval charters of the Abbey of Saint-Pere at Chartres was published in Paris in 1840. Volume 1 contains the Prolegomena describing the founding of the abbey, the size of its demesne, its feudal rights, and official structure.
A French historian and curator of the manuscript department at the Bibliotheque Nationale, Benjamin Guerard (1797-1854) made a considerable contribution to the study of medieval French cathedrals and monasteries. Having studied at Dijon, Guerard became a banker in Paris, before studying at the Ecole royales des chartes where he trained as an archivist. He was a founding member of the Societe de l'histoire de France, and this publication was part of the society's first series of documents inedits. Guerard was elected to the Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres and became the director of the Ecole des chartes in 1848. This collection of the medieval charters of the Abbey of Saint-Pere at Chartres was published in Paris in 1840. Volume 2 contains Guerard's transcriptions of the charters, dating from the twelfth to the mid-fifteenth centuries.
The Cartulaire de l'Abbaye de Noyers, first edited in 1872, remains a vital source for the political, economic and cultural history of this important Benedictine foundation in Anjou. Its 661 charters, ranging in date from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, attest to numerous central events in the life of the abbey, including its foundation and the election of its abbots. They also provide a wealth of information concerning the foundation's properties and possessions, its benefactors and its tenants. Each charter is carefully annotated to reflect differences among the extant evidence, and two full indices of personal and geographic names aid in searching. Appended here as well is a short life of St Gratian. This reissued edition makes this valuable resource once again widely available to scholars of medieval monastic and political history.
This major 2006 history of monasticism in early Anglo-Saxon England explores the history of the Church between the conversion to Christianity in the sixth century and a monastic revival in the tenth. It represents the first comprehensive revision of accepted views about monastic life in England before the Benedictine reform. Sarah Foot shows how early Anglo-Saxon religious houses were simultaneously active and contemplative, their members withdrawing from the preoccupations of contemporary aristocratic society, while still remaining part of that world. Focusing on the institution of the 'minster' (the communal religious community) and rejecting a simplistic binary division between active 'minsters' and enclosed 'monasteries', Foot argues that historians have been wrong to see minsters in the light of ideals of Benedictine monasticism. Instead, she demonstrates that Anglo-Saxon minsters reflected more of contemporary social attitudes; despite their aim for solitude, they retained close links to aristocratic German society.
In "Keeping the Faith, Jennifer jean Wynot presents a clear and concise history of the trials and evolution of Russian Orthodox monasteries and convents and the important roles they have played in Russian culture, both spiritually and politically, from the abortive reforms of 1905 to the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. She shows how, throughout the Soviet period, Orthodox monks and nuns continued to provide spiritual strength to the people, in spite of severe persecution, and despite the ambivalent relationship the Russian state has had toward the . Russian church since the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Focusing her study on two provinces, Smolensk and Moscow, Wynot describes the Soviet oppression and the clandestine struggles of the monks and nuns to uphold the traditions of monasticism and Orthodoxy. Their success against heavy odds enabled them to provide a counterculture to the Soviet regime. Indeed, of all the pre- 1917 institutions, the Orthodox Church proved the most resilient. Why and how it managed to persevere despite the enormous hostility against it is a topic that continues to fascinate both the general public and historians. Based on previously unavailable Russian archival sources as well as written memoirs and interviews with surviving monks and nuns, Wynot analyzes the monasteries' adaptation to the Bolshevik regime. She challenges standard Western assumptions that Communism effectively killed the Orthodox Church in Russia. She shows that in fact, the role of monks and nuns in Orthodox monasteries and convents is crucial, and that they are largely responsible for the continuation of Orthodoxy in Russia following the Bolshevik revolution. "Keeping the Faith offers a newperspective that will be of interest to students of Russian history and Communism, as well as scholars of church state relations.
Analyzing convent culture in sixteenth-century Italy through the medium of three unpublished nuns' chronicles, this study examines the nuns' intellectual and imaginative achievements to determine how they preserved individual and convent identities by writing chronicles. The chronicles reveal many examples of the nuns' achievements, especially with regard to cultural creativity, and demonstrate that convent traditions ultimately determined the cultural priorities that dictated convent ceremonial life.
While the role of monastic education has been studied in great detail in regard to male practices, this book examines the differences between the monastic formation and education of men and of women in Western Europe from the eighth to the sixteenth century. Fourteen chapters, written by well-known scholars, consider monastic education and practices in the geographical areas of England, France, Germany and the Low Countries. Using attitudes toward education and actual educational theories, the authors explore issues such as the use of music and physical training in education to explore new realms of the discipline.
In "Colonial Habits" Kathryn Burns transforms our view of nuns as
marginal recluses, making them central actors on the colonial
stage. Beginning with the 1558 founding of South America's first
convent, Burns shows that nuns in Cuzco played a vital part in
subjugating Incas, creating a creole elite, and reproducing an
Andean colonial order in which economic and spiritual interests
were inextricably fused.
Shenoute the Great (c.347-465) led one of the largest Christian monastic communities in late antique Egypt and was the greatest native writer of Coptic in history. For approximately eight decades, Shenoute led a federation of three monasteries and emerged as a Christian leader. His public sermons attracted crowds of clergy, monks, and lay people; he advised military and government officials; he worked to ensure that his followers would be faithful to orthodox Christian teaching; and he vigorously and violently opposed paganism and the oppressive treatment of the poor by the rich. This volume presents in translation a selection of his sermons and other orations. These works grant us access to the theology, rhetoric, moral teachings, spirituality, and social agenda of a powerful Christian leader during a period of great religious and social change in the later Roman Empire.
Malcolm Barber's classic The Trial of the Templars recounts the dramatic demise of this elite military force in the fourteenth century. Having fought against Islam in the crusades in the East for nearly two centuries, in October 1307 the members of this respected Order were arrested on the order of Philip IV, King of France, and charged with serious heresies, including homosexuality and the denial of Christ. Finding resonances between the fourteenth-century trial and contemporary events, Barber's classic account endeavours to tackle the unresolved controversies surrounding the consequences of the trial, and includes discussions in the context of new work on the crusades, heresy, the papacy and the French monarchy.
The Kievan Caves Monastery was for centuries the most important Ukrainian monastic establishment. It was the outstanding center of literary production, and its monks served throughout the territory of Rus' as bishops and monastic superiors. The most detailed source for the monastery early history is its "Paterik," a thirteenth-century compilation containing stories reaching back to the monastery's foundation in the mideleventh century. Muriel Heppell now makes available the first complete English translation of the Paterik. With an introduction, map, and several appendices, Muriel Heppell discusses the work's Byzantine background and also sets it in its historical context. The "Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature" is one portion of the Harvard Project in Commemoration of the Millennium of Christianity in Rus'-Ukraine sponsored by the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. The "Library" encompasses literary activity in Rus'-Ukraine from its beginning in the mid-eleventh century through the end of the eighteenth century. Included are ecclesiastical and secular works written in a variety of languages, such as Church Slavonic, Old Rus', Ruthenian (Middle Ukrainian), Polish, and Latin. This linguistic diversity reflects the cultural pluralism of Ukrainian intellectual life in the medieval and early-modern periods. The "Library" consists of three parts: "Texts," which publishes original works, in facsimile whenever appropriate; "English Translations"; and "Ukrainian Translations." Each volume begins with an introductory essay by a specialist. The two translation series also include maps, appendices, and indices. A cumulative index to the entire "Library" is planned.
In the course of their investigations into Leonardo da Vinci and the Turin Shroud, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince found clues in the work of the great Renaissance artist that pointed to the existence of a secret underground religion. More clues were found in a twentieth-century London church. These were the beginnings of a quest through time and space that led the authors into the mysterious world of secret societies and such bodies as the Freemasons, the Knights Templar and the Cathars and finally back to the ideas and beliefs of the first century AD and a devastating new view of the real character and motives of the founder of Christianity and the roles of John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene. They reveal nothing less than a secret history, preserved through the centuries but encoded in works of art and even in the great Gothic cathedrals, whose revelation could shake the foundations of the Chruch.
|
![]() ![]() You may like...
|