The 15th century was a time of dramatic and decisive change for nuns and nunneries in Florence. In the course of that century, the city's convents evolved from small, semiautonomous communities to large civic institutions. By 1552, roughly one in eight Florentine women lived in a religious community. Historian Sharon T. Strocchia analyzes this stunning growth of female monasticism, revealing the important roles these women and institutions played in the social, economic, and political history of Renaissance Florence. It became common practice during this time for unmarried women in elite society to enter convents. This unprecedented concentration of highly educated and well-connected women transformed convents into sites of great patronage and social and political influence. As their economic influence also grew, convents found new ways of supporting themselves; they established schools, produced manuscripts, and manufactured textiles. Strocchia has mined previously untapped archival materials to uncover how convents shaped one of the principal cities of Renaissance Europe. She demonstrates the importance of nuns and nunneries to the booming Florentine textile industry and shows the contributions that ordinary nuns made to Florentine life in their roles as scribes, stewards, artisans, teachers, and community leaders. In doing so, Strocchia argues that the ideals and institutions that defined Florence were influenced in great part by the city's powerful female monastics. Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence shows for the first time how religious women effected broad historical change and helped write the grand narrative of medieval and Renaissance Europe. The book is a valuable text for students and scholars in early modern European history, religion, women's studies, and economic history.

Margaret of Oingt was born around 1240 into a noble family in the French Beaujolais region, and became prioress of the Carthusian charterhouse of Poletains; visionary and mystic, her writings are intelligent and humorous. Included here are the Page of Meditations, on sin and salvation; the Mirror, a vision of Christ; the Life of the Virgin Saint Beatrice of Ornacieux, an exemplary text; and letters and stories, including comments on her problems as prioress. They are translated from the Latin and Francoprovencal with an introduction, notes, and interpretative essay.BR> Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski is Chair, Department of French and Italian, and Professor of French, at the University of Pittsburgh.

Has the art of accompaniment been lost in Western culture? Could non-judgemental accompaniment be the answer to rising levels of isolation and loneliness? Could spending time with others from different or marginalised backgrounds reduce feelings of 'otherness' and lead to a more open, trusting society? Exploring the themes above, this welcoming book offers models of relationships, interdependence, and community for individuals who are marginalised from society. It emphasises the importance of being with people and time spent in physical activity and in the natural world, without demands being put on expressing feelings or even speaking out loud. It draws on the author's own vast experience and work with those on the edge of society - including living in a Christian community which welcomes those in terms of crisis, living in a Palestinian village, working with adults with autism and as chaplain to Gypsies and Travellers - providing a varied, insightful and heart-warming view on the benefits of accompaniment.

Spanish colonization of Latin America in the sixteenth century continues to provoke scholarly debate. Spanish missionaries employed various strategies to convert indigenous inhabitants to the Catholic faith, including operating schools, organizing choirs, and establishing charitable brotherhoods known as confraternities. In Charity for and by the Poor, Laura Dierksmeier investigates how the reformed Franciscans' commitment to evangelizing Mexico gave rise to an extensive network of local confraternities and their respective care institutions. She finds that these local groups were the chief welfare providers for the indigenous people during the early colonial period and were precursors of the modern social security system. Dierksmeier shows how the Franciscan missionary imperative to promote the works of mercy and charity inspired the goals, governance, and operations of indigenous confraternities, their hospital and orphan care, and their contributions to the moral economy, including releasing debt prisoners and lending money to the poor. Focusing on the inner logic and daily practices of indigenous confraternities, Charity for and by the Poor highlights their far-reaching effects on Mexican society. Dierksmeier argues that confraternities are best studied within the religious framework that established them, and she does so by analyzing confraternity record books, lawsuits, last wills, missionary correspondence, and parish records from archives in Mexico, Spain, the United States, and Germany. The confraternity became an essential institution for protecting the indigenous population during epidemics, for integrating the various indigenous classes from the former Aztec Empire into the emerging social order, and for safeguarding indigenous self-governance within religious spheres. Most notably, Franciscan-established confraternities built social structures in which the poor were not only recipients of assistance but also, through their voluntary participation, self-empowered agents of community care. In this way, charity was provided for and by the poor.

From the French Abbey of St Wandrille to the abandoned and awesome Rock Monasteries of Cappadocia in Turkey, the celebrated travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor studies the rigorous contemplative lives of the monks and the timeless beauty of their monastic surroundings. In his occasional retreats, the peaceful solitude and the calm enchantment of the monasteries was passed on as a kind of 'supernatural windfall' which A Time to Keep Silence so effortlessly records.

This narrative of events between the years 1173 and 1202--as recorded by Jocelin of Brakelond, a monk who lived in the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, in the region of West Suffolk--affords many unique insights into the life of a medieval religious community. It depicts the daily worship in the abbey church and the beliefs and values shared by the monks, as well as the whispered conversations, rumors, and disagreements within the cloister--and the bustling life of the market-town of Bury, just outside the abbey walls. This edition offers the first modern translation from the Latin to appear since 1949.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Irish temperament--individualistic, poetic, and deeply loyal to family--produced great and learned saints and a unique monastic literature before the Norman Invasion. The isolation of the island allowed the development of traditions different from those of either Britain or the continent. These graceful translations of Irish monastic rules and spiritual maxims, along with samples of Irish litanies and poetry from the early Celtic monastic world, convey the spirituality of the Isle of Saints from the sixth to eighth centuries. This book will be warmly welcomed not only by academics and monastics but also by those many lay people who are increasingly looking to Celtic Christianity to deepen their own faith and prayer. It makes accessible a whole range of important material from monastic rules to short poetic quatrains nd those magnificent litanies which still have the power to move us deeply. This is a book which will touch a wide readership at many different levels.

Recorded during a seven-month stay in a Trappist monastery in Genesee, New York, Henri Nouwen's record of his spiritual journey is an insightful and compassionate inspiration to all who seek to know themselves better.

Isle of the Saints recreates the harsh yet richly spiritual world of medieval Irish monks on the Christian frontier of barbarian Europe. Lisa Bitel draws on accounts of saints' lives written between 800 and 1200 to explain, from the monks' own perspective, the social networks that bound them to one another and to their secular neighbors.

Between 1864 and 1867 Fanny Taylor made many trips to Ireland and Irish Homes and Irish Hearts (1867) is eye-witness account of her visits to the many Irish Catholic religious orders and their institutions: these include Magdalene homes, reform schools, lunatic asylums, orphanages, workhouses, infirmaries and schools. As with her earlier book Eastern Hospitals and English Nurses (1856) on her experiences nursing in the Crimea with both Florence Nightingale and the Irish Sisters of Mercy, Irish Homes and Irish Hearts was an immediate bestseller and was re-printed several times through the nineteenth century. Indeed the Dublin Review of Books, 1867, said that 'The chapter in which she sums up the result of her observations is truly admirable. It might serve for a small text-book of "the Irish question".' While Irish Homes and Irish Hearts is a relatively uncritical study of the philanthropic and educational activities of the Irish religious orders from the perspective of a well-informed outsider, it remains a valuable source of information for mid-nineteenth-century Irish social and religious history.

A reissue of a classic of the Christian text from the founder of the Jesuit Order.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyla is the core work of religious formation for members of the Society of Jesus, the single largest religious order within the Roman Catholic Church. For four and a half centuries  in many thousands of editions in all languages, The Exercises have embodied fundamental spiritual principles essential to authentic Christian living.

The mystical insight informing Ignatius's own relationship with God--which he distilled in The Exercises--is that the divine love of God is providentially present in all the details of our existence. Here Ignatius shows how the faithful can be joined to God in all things, according to the Jesuit motto, Ad majorem Dei gloriam, "For the greater glory of God."

The Templars' and Hospitallers' daily business of recruitment, fund-raising, farming, shipping and communal life explored alongside their commitment to crusading. The military and religious orders of the Knights Templar (founded 1120) and Knights Hospitaller (founded c.1099) were a driving force throughout the long history of the crusades. This study examines the work of the two orders closely, using original charters to analyse their activities in their administrative heartland in south-west France, and sets them in the context of contemporary religious life and economic organisation. Recruitment, fund-raising, farming, shipping, and communal life are all touched upon, and the orders' commitment to crusading through control and supply of manpower, money, arms and supplies is assessed. Dr Selwood shows the orders at the centre of religious life in Occitania, highlighting their success compared with other new orders such as the Cistercians, and looking at their relationships with the secular and monastic Church. Other themes addressed include the orders' relationshipto Occitanian society and to the laiety, their involvement with pilgrimage to Jerusalem, their innovative administrative structures, and their logistical operations. DOMINIC SELWOOD gained his Ph.D. at Oxford; he is now a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, and practices from chambers in the Inner Temple.

Born in the dark days of the great crusades, the warrior monks of the Knights Templar vowed to defend pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. Yet strangely, there are few historical records of the Templars ever fulfilling this task. Instead, their history is one of bloodshed and conquest, wealth and power, dark secrets and conspiracies. Today, the story of the Knights Templar is intimately linked with the story of the Holy Grail. But what exactly is this ancient artifact, and how has it been used to manipulate history for the last one thousand years? This book, based on the notes of the recently deceased historian, Dr. Emile Fouchet, attempts to unlock the secrets of the Knights Templar. It begins with an examination of their historical origins, their growth in the early middle-ages, and their supposed destruction under the charges of heresy. From there, it uses the clues left by the Templars themselves to reconstruct their secret journeys as they moved the Holy Grail from Europe to the New World and back. It also charts the secret, three-way war that is still being fought between the Templars, the Freemasons, and the Catholic Church. Finally, the book reveals the greatest of all Templar conspiracies, the attempt to found a new world order under the auspices of the European Union.

Franciscan spirituality, with its characteristic simplicity, joy, openness and welcome to all, compassionate action and love for creation - all undergirded by prayer and study, offers as compelling a vision for today's world as when Francis of Assisi first responded to God's call over 800 years ago. For all seeking inspiration for living the Franciscan charism today, this lively and informed guide introduces its key figures and essential writings. The author, an Anglican Franciscan friar and theologian, draws out the movement's core teachings from its founding figures and its earliest texts: * Francis and the essence of prayer and reconciliation with all created things; * Clare of Assisi and contemplative practice; * Giles of Assisi, solitude, storytelling and spiritual direction; * Bonaventure, study and spiritual wisdom * Angela of Foligno and mystical experience; * Jacapone da Todi and praise in poetry and song. Intended as an introduction to living the Franciscan charism today, this also includes a reader's guide with questions for personal or group discussion.

Monastic Wales - new approaches is an interdisciplinary collection of essays written by some of the leading scholars working on aspects of medieval Welsh history. The chapters in this volume consider the history, archaeology, architecture and wider cultural, social, political and economic context of the religious houses of Wales between the Norman conquest in the eleventh century, and the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth.

The Nun in the Synagogue documents the religious and cultural phenomenon of Judeocentric Catholicism that arose in the wake of the Holocaust, fueled by survivors who converted to Catholicism and immigrated to Israel as well as by Catholics determined to address the anti-Judaism inherent in the Church. Through an ethnographic study of selected nuns and monks, Emma O'Donnell Polyakov explores how this Judeocentric Catholic phenomenon began and continues to take shape in Israel. This book is a case study in Catholic perceptions of Jews, Judaism, and the state of Israel during a time of rapidly changing theological and cultural contexts. In it, Polyakov listens to and analyzes the stories of individuals living on the border between Christian and Jewish identity-including Jewish converts to Catholicism who continue to harbor a strong sense of Jewish identity and philosemitic Catholics who attend synagogue services every Shabbat. Polyakov traces the societal, theological, and personal influences that have given rise to this phenomenon and presents a balanced analysis that addresses the hermeneutical problems of interpreting Jews through Christian frameworks. Ultimately, she argues that, despite its problems, this movement signals a pluralistic evolution of Catholic understandings of Judaism and may prove to be a harbinger of future directions in Jewish-Christian relations. Highly original and methodologically sophisticated, The Nun in the Synagogue is a captivating exploration of biographical narratives and reflections on faith, conversion, Holocaust trauma, Zionism, and religious identity that lays the groundwork for future research in the field.

John W. O'Malley gives us the most comprehensive account ever written of the Society of Jesus in its founding years, one that heightens and transforms our understanding of the Jesuits in history and today. Following the Society from 1540 through 1565, O'Malley shows how this sense of mission evolved. He looks at everything-the Jesuits' teaching, their preaching, their casuistry, their work with orphans and prostitutes, their attitudes toward Jews and "New Christians," and their relationship to the Reformation. All are taken in by the sweep of O'Malley's story as he details the Society's manifold activities in Europe, Brazil, and India.

The idea of the Native American living in perfect harmony with nature is one of the most cherished contemporary myths. But how truthful is this larger-than-life image? According to anthropologist Shepard Krech, the first humans in North America demonstrated all of the intelligence, self-interest, flexibility, and ability to make mistakes of human beings anywhere. As Nicholas Lemann put it in The New Yorker, "Krech is more than just a conventional-wisdom overturner; he has a serious larger point to make. . . . Concepts like ecology, waste, preservation, and even the natural (as distinct from human) world are entirely anachronistic when applied to Indians in the days before the European settlement of North America." "Offers a more complex portrait of Native American peoples, one that rejects mythologies, even those that both European and Native Americans might wish to embrace."-Washington Post "My story, the story of 'how I became a nun,' began very early in my life; I had just turned six. The beginning is marked by a vivid memory, which I can reconstruct down to the last detail. Before, there is nothing, and after, everything is an extension of the same vivid memory, continuous and unbroken, including the intervals of sleep, up to the point where I took the veil ." So starts Cesar Aira's astounding "autobiographical" novel. Intense and perfect, this invented narrative of childhood experience bristles with dramatic humor at each stage of growing up: a first ice cream, school, reading, games, friendship. The novel begins in Aira's hometown, Coronel Pringles. As self-awareness grows, the story rushes forward in a torrent of anecdotes which transform a world of uneventful happiness into something else: the anecdote becomes adventure, and adventure, fable, and then legend. Between memory and oblivion, reality and fiction, Cesar Aira's How I Became a Nun retains childhood's main treasures: the reality of fable and the delirium of invention. A few days after his fiftieth birthday, Aira noticed the thin rim of the moon, visible despite the rising sun. When his wife explained the phenomenon to him he was shocked that for fifty years he had known nothing about "something so obvious, so visible." This epiphany led him to write How I Became a Nun. With a subtle and melancholic sense of humor he reflects on his failures, on the meaning of life and the importance of literature.

John-Francis Friendship spent twenty-five years as an Anglican Franciscan friar. Drawing on the whole breadth of monastic history and experience, he looks at core aspects of monastic and religious life and applies its practical wisdom for living well in today's world. Chapters include: * Knowing your heart's desire and pursuing it; * Counter-cultural living - the spirit of poverty, chastity and obedience; * Clothing yourself in Christ - getting into holy habits; * Living in community - how to get along together; * God in all things - seeing the whole world as divine; * For the sake of the kingdom - serving those in need; * Living with thanksgiving - shaping the eucharistic life. What Do You Seek? draws on spiritual wisdom accumulated over the centuries to offer inspiration and courage for living with integrity and hope today.

One day, two men with a wheelbarrow settled on this block of land and laid out a farm, built a small house and planted some vines.170 years later, one of the outstanding wineries in the region and historic buildings that include a gracious church and spiritual retreat centre are the results of their efforts.This book tells the story of their struggle and their legacy. It is about Sevenhill Cellars in the Clare Valley of South Australia, as well as the Jesuits and their mission at Sevenhill, which once extended for hundreds of kilometres and now reaches beyond Australia.

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.