Essays investigating the writings attributed to Columbanus, influential 0c founder of Luxeuil and Bobbio. Columbanus (d.615), the Irish monk and founder of such important centres as Luxeuil and Bobbio, was one of the most influential figures in early medieval Europe. His fiery personality led him into conflict with Gallic bishops andRoman popes, and he defended his position on such matters as monastic discipline in a substantial corpus of Latin writings marked by burning conviction and rhetorical skill. However, the polish of his style has raised questions about the nature of his early training in Ireland and even about the authenticity of the writings which have come down to us under his name. The studies in this volume attempt to address these questions: by treating each of the individual writings comprehensively, and drawing on recently-developed techniques of stylistic analysis new light is shed on Columbanus and his early education in Ireland. More importantly, doubts over the authenticity of certain writings attributed to Columbanus are here authoritatively resolved, so putting the study of this cardinal figure on a sound basis.Professor MICHAEL LAPIDGE teaches in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, Universityof Cambridge. Contributors: DONALD BULLOUGH, NEIL WRIGHT, CLARE STANCLIFFE, JANE STEVENSON, T.M. CHARLES-EDWARDS, DIETER SCHALLER, MICHAEL LAPIDGE, DAIBHI O CROININ

The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies responds to and celebrates the explosion of research in this inter-disciplinary field over recent decades. As a one-volume reference work, it provides an introduction to the academic study of early Christianity (c. 100-600 AD) and examines the vast geographical area impacted by the early church, in western and eastern late antiquity. It is thematically arranged to encompass history, literature, thought, practices, and material culture. It contains authoritative and up-to-date surveys of current thinking and research in the various sub-specialties of early Christian studies, written by leading figures in the discipline. The essays orientate readers to a given topic, as well as to the trajectory of research developments over the past 30-50 years within the scholarship itself. Guidance for future research is also given. Each essay points the reader towards relevant forms of extant evidence (texts, documents, or examples of material culture), as well as to the appropriate research tools available for the area. This volume will be useful to advanced undergraduate and post-graduate students, as well as to specialists in any area who wish to consult a brief review of the 'state of the question' in a particular area or sub-specialty of early Christian studies, especially one different from their own.

A new investigation of the saints' cults which flourished in medieval Scotland, fruitfully combining archaeological, historical, and literary perspectives. Of all the Celtic countries, Scotland has lacked the kind of scholarly attention that has been lavished fruitfully on Wales, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany. And yet of all of them, Scotland offers the widest range of interfaces with broader work on the cult of saints. The papers presented here cover this territory very effectively.... [the book] brings together excellent studies that successfully explore the wide ramifications of the topic. Anyone with aninterest in saints' cults will want this book. DAUVIT BROUN, Professor of Scottish History, University of Glasgow. This volume examines the phenomena of the cult of saints and Marian devotion as they were manifested inScotland, ranging from the early medieval period to the sixteenth century. It combines general surveys of the development of the study of saints in the early and later middle ages with more focused articles on particular subjects,including St Waltheof of Melrose, the obscure early medieval origins of the cult of St Munnu, the short-lived martyr cult of David, duke of Rothsay, and the Scottish saints included in the greatest liturgical compendium producedin late medieval Scotland, the Aberdeen breviary. The way in which Marian devotion permeated late medieval Scottish society is discussed in terms of the church dedications of the twelfth and thirteenth-century aristocracy, the ecclesiastical landscape of Perth, the depiction of Mary in Gaelic poetry, and the pervasive influence of the familial bond between holy mother and son in representations of the Scottish royal family. Dr Steve Boardman is Reader in History, University of Edinburgh; Eila Williamson gained her PhD from the University of Glasgow. Contributors: Helen Birkett, Steve Boardman, Rachel Butter, Thomas Owen Clancy, David Ditchburn, Audrey-Beth Fitch, Mark A.Hall, Matthew H. Hammond, Sim Innes, Alan Macquarrie

Sin was an extremely important and serious concern for the earliest Christians and the authors of the New Testament writings. Early Christians came to see the life and ministry of Jesus as challenging presumptions about the meanings of sin and faithfulness. This book provides a comprehensive treatment of different understandings of sin in early Christianity. Jeffrey S. Siker describes how the earliest Christian voices represented in the New Testament writings understood "sin" not only as a theological abstraction, but also as a real reflection upon human thought and behavior that violated right relationships with both other human beings and with God. Siker explores language about sin in relation to the Jewish and Greco-Roman contextual worlds of the New Testament writings, and examines the development and change of these worlds in relation to the modern concept of sin.

Early Christian Dress is the first full-length monograph on the subject of dress in early Christianity. It pays attention to the ways in which dress expressed and shaped Christian identity, the role dress played in Christians' rivalries with pagan neighbours, and especially to the ways in which notions of gender were culled and revised in the process. Although many scholars have argued that gender in late antiquity was a performed and embodied category, few have paid attention to the ways in which dress and physical appearances were implicated in the understanding of femininity and masculinity. This study addresses that gap, revealing the amount of sartorial work necessary to secure stable gender categories in the worlds of early Imperial pagans and late ancient Christians. This study analyzes several vigorous discussions and debates that arose over Christian women's dress. It examines how Christians interpreted their dress-especially the dress of female ascetics-as evidence of Christianity's advanced morality and piety, a morality and piety that was coded "masculine." Yet even Christian leaders who championed ascetic women's ability to achieve a degree of virility in terms of their virtue and spiritual status were troubled when ascetics' dress threatened to materially dissolve gender categories, difference, and hierarchies. In the end, the study enables us to gain a broader view of how gender was constructed, perceived, and contested in early Christianity.

Holy men, both pagan and Christian are persistent and puzzling figures in the religious life of the Roman Empire. In this first historical study of Holy Men for more than half a century, Dr Anderson applies techniques of literary analysis to throw light on the lifestyles and behaviour of these figures, from Jesus Christ to Peregrinus Proteus to dio Chrysostom, stressing their individuality as much as their common features.
Sage, Saint and Sophist examines the variety of services, real or imaginary, that these colouful figures had to offer and how they maintained their credibility to become the objects of successful religious cults.

Following the interest in recent years in Celtic spirituality, Paul Cavill's book looks at the impact of Christianity on the pagan Germanic peoples who invaded Britain from the 5th century onwards. Drawing on historical and archeological evidence, he paints a vivid picture of Anglo-Saxon culture and belief, contrasting this with the Celtic world view, and explaining how the powerful warrior code of the Anglo-Saxon peoples became merged with new Christian values. Quotes from Anglo-Saxon literature include the epic "Beowulf", and "The Dream of the Rood" along with Caedmon's "Hymn to Creation", a translation of Psalm 136 and numerous miracle stories.

The Gospel of John has long been recognized as being distinct from the Synoptic Gospels. John among the Apocalypses explains John's distinctive narrative of Jesus's life by comparing it to Jewish apocalypses and highlighting the central place of revelation in the Gospel. While some scholars have noted a connection between the Gospel of John and Jewish apocalypses, Reynolds makes the first extensive comparison of the Gospel with the standard definition of the apocalypse genre. Engaging with modern genre theory, this comparison indicates surprising similarities of form, content, and function between John's Gospel and Jewish apocalypses. Even though the Gospel of John reflects similarities with the genre of apocalypse, John is not an apocalypse, but in genre theory terms, John may be described as a gospel in kind and an apocalypse in mode. John's narrative of Jesus's life has been qualified and shaped by the genre of apocalypse, such that it may be called an 'apocalyptic' gospel. In the final two chapters, Reynolds explores the implications of this conclusion for Johannine Studies and New Testament scholarship more broadly. John among the Apocalypses considers how viewing the Fourth Gospel as apocalyptic Gospel aids in the interpretation of John's appeal to Israel's Scriptures and Mosaic authority, and examines the Gospel's relationship with the book of Revelation and the history of reception concerning their writing. An examination of Byzantine iconographic traditions highlights how reception history may offer a possible explanation for reading John as apocalyptic Gospel.

Amidon offers the first English translation of Books 10 and 11 of Rufinus' Church History. Books 1-9 comprise a Latin translation of Eusebius' history. Books 10 and 11 are Rufinus' own continuation, covering the period 325-395. As the first Latin church history, this work exerted great influence over the subsequent scholarship of the Western Church.

Known as "the Theologian", St Gregory of Nazianzus (in the eastern part of Turkey) is, with St Basil and St Gregory of Nyssa, one of the celebrated Cappadocian Fathers of the fourth-century Christian Church. Highly educated in both Christian theology and classical Greek literature, he found himself torn between a solitary, contemplative life and the reluctantly accepted, though in actuality relished, public figure of bishop, vigorous in defence of orthodoxy against the attacks of the Arians. He was even, briefly, Bishop of Constantinople and chairman of the Council in 381 which produced what we now know as the Nicene Creed. This edition of his poems brings together his theological acumen in a formative period and shows his ability to operate in the genre of didactic verse going back to the eighth century BC. The poems cover a range of topics, from the strictly theological to others dealing more broadly with the creation of the world, providence, the world of spiritual beings, and the human soul. They give a unique new insight both on the theological ideas of the period and on the uneasy emergence of Christian culture from the pagan past.

The Open Body emerges from a conference held at Harvard Divinity School in April 2011. The essays in this book reflect on ecclesiology in the Anglican tradition, that is, they debate whether and how humans should gather as a "church" in the name of Christ. While the prompt for this collection of essays is the contemporary crisis in the Anglican Communion regarding homosexuality and church governance, this book provides a capacious re-interpretation and re-imagination of the central metaphor of Christian community, namely "the Body of Christ". By suggesting that the Body of Christ is "open", the authors are insisting that while the recent controversy within the Anglican Communion should prompt and even influence theological reflection on Christian community, it should not define or determine it. In other words, the controversy is regarded as an "opening" or an opportunity to imagine and to examine the past, present, and future of the Church, both of the Anglican Communion and of the entire Body of Christ. Some of the essays begin their reappraisal by looking backward and offering creative theological retrievals from the early Church; some essays offer fresh perspectives on the recent Anglican past and present; others examine the present ecclesiology from a comparative, interreligious perspective; and still others are keen to anticipate and influence the possible future(s) of the Body of Christ.

The concept of personhood is central to a wide range of contemporary issues, ranging from reproductive rights to the death penalty and euthanasia. We may think that the concept of person is a modern development. In fact, however, this idea does not originate with our discovery of human rights, consciousness, and individuality.
In this study Lucian Turcescu shows that the fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nyssa developed a very sophisticated concept of the person in the context of his attempts to clarify the paradox of the Trinity-a single God comprising three distinct persons. Turcescu offers the first in-depth analysis of Gregory's writings about the divine persons. He shows that Gregory understood personhood as characterized by uniqueness, relationality, and freedom. He reasoned that the three persons of the Trinity have distinctive properties that make them individuals, that is, capable of being enumerated and circumscribed. But this idea of individuation, inherited from the neo-Platonists, falls short of expressing a clear notion of personal uniqueness. By itself it would suggest that a person is merely a collection of properties. Gregory's great contribution was to perceive the importance of relationality to personhood. The three divine persons know and love each other, are in communion with each other, and freely act together in their common will. This understanding, argues Turcescu, adds up to a concept of personal uniqueness much like our modern one.
Turcescu's work not only contributes to our knowledge of the history of Trinitarian theology but can be helpful to theologians who are dealing with issues in contemporary ethics.

Over the last century unprecedented numbers of Christians from traditionally Orthodox societies migrated around the world. Once seen as an 'oriental' or 'eastern' phenomenon, Orthodox Christianity is now much more widely dispersed, and in many parts of the modern world one need not go far to find an Orthodox community at worship. This collection offers a compelling overview of the Orthodox world, covering the main regional traditions of Orthodox Christianity and the ways in which they have become global. The contributors are drawn from the Orthodox community worldwide and explore a rich selection of key figures and themes. The book provides an innovative and illuminating approach to the subject, ideal for students and scholars alike.

This volume brings together a set of contributions, many appearing in English for the first time, together with a new introduction, covering the history of the Ethiopian Christian civilization in its formative period (300-1500 AD). Rooted in the late antique kingdom of Aksum (present day Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea), and lying between Byzantium, Africa and the Near East, this civilization is presented in a series of case studies. At a time when philological and linguistic investigations are being challenged by new approaches in Ethiopian studies, this volume emphasizes the necessity of basic research, while avoiding the reduction of cultural questions to matters of fact and detail.

This book is an exploration of illness and healing experiences in contemporary society through the veneration of saints: primarily the twin doctors Saints Cosmas and Damian. It also follows the author's personal journey from her role as a hematologist who inadvertently served as an expert witness in a miracle to her research as a historian on the origins, meaning and functions of saints. Sources include interviews with devotees in both North America and Europe. Cosmas and Damian were martyred around the year 300 A.D. in what is now Syria. Called the "Anargyroi" (without silver) because they charged no fees, they became patrons of medicine, surgery, and pharmacy as their cult spread widely across Europe. The near eastern origin explains their popularity in Byzantine and Orthodox traditions and the concentration of their shrines in Eastern Europe, Southern Italy, and Sicily. The Medici family of Florence also viewed the "santi medici" as patrons, and their deeds were depicted by great Renaissance artists. In medical literature they are now revered as patrons of transplantation. Duffin's research focuses on how people have taken the saints with them as they moved within Italy and beyond. It also shows that their veneration is not confined to immigrant traditions, and that it fills important functions in health care and healing. Duffin's conclusions are situated within scholarship in medicine, medical history, sociology, anthropology, and popular religion; and intersect with the current medical debate over spiritual healing. This work springs from medical history and Roman Catholic traditions; however, it extends to general observations about the behaviors of sick people and about the formal responses to individual illness from collectivities in religion, medicine, and, indeed, history.

The papers presented here explore in various ways the interactions between clerics and the society in which Christian churches put down roots in Late Antiquity. Some of these complex processes, involved in the christianization of the Late Roman world, form the theme of the first three sections. Amongst other aspects, the essays in these sections examine the Three Chapters controversy and the participation of lay and clerical protagonists in it, the social standing of Italian bishops (including their use of lay personnel and their economic impact), and a comparison of pagan and Christian places of worship. The essays included in the last section deal with communication in Late Antiquity. They present the first results of a long-term project on the changing role of information during the last centuries of the Roman world. Eight papers in the volume are published in English for the first time.

This book is, along with Outward Signs (OUP 2008), a sequel to Phillip Cary's Augustine and the Invention of the Inner Self (OUP 2000). In this work, Cary traces the development of Augustine's epochal doctrine of grace, arguing that it does not represent a rejection of Platonism in favor of a more purely Christian point of view a turning from Plato to Paul, as it is often portrayed. Instead, Augustine reads Paul and other Biblical texts in light of his Christian Platonist inwardness, producing a new concept of grace as an essentially inward gift. For Augustine, grace is needed first of all to heal the mind so it may see God, but then also to help the will turn away from lower goods to love God as its eternal Good. Eventually, over the course of Augustine's career, the scope of the soul's need for grace expands outward to include not only the inner vision of the intellect and the power of love but even the initial gift of faith.
At every stage, Augustine insists that divine grace does not compromise or coerce the human will but frees, heals, and helps it, precisely because grace is not an external force but an inner gift of delight leading to true happiness. As his polemic against the Pelagians develops, however, he does attribute more to grace and less to the power of free will. In the end, it is God's choice which makes the ultimate difference between the saved and the damned, and we cannot know why he chooses to save one person and not another. From this Augustinian doctrine of divine choice or election stem the characteristic pastoral problems of predestination, especially in Protestantism. A more external, indeed Jewish, doctrine of election would be more Biblical, Carysuggests, and would result in a less anxious experience of grace.
Along with its companion work, Outward Signs, this careful and insightful book breaks new ground in the study of Augustine's theology of grace and sacraments.

This is the third collection of articles by Nina GarsoA-an on Early Armenian history and civilization. A number of articles included here continue earlier investigations of Iranian and Byzantine political and, especially, doctrinal and social influences on Medieval Armenia, precariously wedged between the two super-powers of the period, Byzantium and Sasanian Persia. A second theme is the development of the autocephalous Armenian Church as it freed itself from foreign pressures and achieved its own dogmatic position. Last, several studies consider some inadequacies in some recent historiography and suggest a more promising redirection in our approach to Armenian history and the formation of its national identity.

Philip Burton explores Augustine's treatment of language in his Confessions - a major work of Western philosophy and literature, with continuing intellectual importance. One of Augustine's key concerns is the story of his own encounters with language: from his acquisition of language as a child, through his career as schoolboy orator then star student at Carthage, to professor of rhetoric at Carthage and Rome. Having worked his way up to the eminence of Court Orator to the Roman Emperor at Milan, Augustine rediscovered the catholic Christianity of his childhood - and decided that this was incompatible with his rhetorical profession. Over the next ten years, he gradually reinvents himself as a different sort of language professional: a Christian intellectual, commentating on Scripture and preaching to his flock.

The ascetic tracts of 7th century writer Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian) provide a wealth of material to better understand early Christian asceticism. By focusing on the role of the body in various ascetic techniques, such as fasting, vigils and prayer, as well as on the way the ascetic relates to the society a picture of asceticism as political activity emerges. For Isaac, the ascetic was to function as something like an icon, an image that showed the world the reality of God's Kingdom already in this life, by clearly indicating the difference between God's ways and men's.
Patrik Hagman reviews the scholarly discussion on asceticism of the last three decades, and then proceeds to analyse the texts of Isaac to reveal an emphasis on asceticism as a practice that is at the same time performative, transformative and bodily. This contrasts with the long-established conception of asceticism as based on a negative view of the body. Isaac displays a profound understanding of the way body and soul are related, demonstrating how the body can be used to transform the personality of the ascetic, and to communicate the change to the world, without the use of words.
The writings of Isaac offer a rare example of an extensive discussion of asceticism by a person who lived a radical ascetic life himself. Hagman's new study brings Isaac's fresh perspective to bear on an important, yet often overlooked, aspect of the Christian tradition.

It is the dream of every publisher to hit upon a project that will win praise for contributing to the intellectual and cultural life. Theology Today Ignatius of Loyola: Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works edited by George E. Ganss, S.J. with the collaboration of Parmananda R. Divarkar, S.J., Edward J. Malatesta, S.J., and Martin E. Palmer, S.J. preface by John W. Padberg, S.J. I close by asking God through his infinite goodness to give us the perfect grace to know his most holy will and fulfill it completely. May it please the Sovereign Goodness that everything be ordered to his holy service and continual praise. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) September 27, 1990 marks the 450th anniversary of the foundation of the Society of Jesus in 1540, and the year 1991 brings the 500th anniversary of the birth of its founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola. In these circumstances the present volume will contribute to the study of Ignatius' charism and of the ministries he initiated-in Christian education, foreign missions, and other fields. It presents his four major writings: the Autobiography and Spiritual Exercises in their entirety, and his Spiritual Diary and Constitutions of the Society of Jesus in selections so chosen as to give an overview of each work. It also offers ten samples of his almost 7,000 letters. Ample explanations are given in the introductions and commentaries by way of notes. The General Introduction is an intellectual and spiritual biography that sketches the fascinating steps by which, largely through mystical favors from God, Ignatius reached his inspiring worldview, with everything in it ordered to the greater glory of God. In his Exercises we find a synthesis of his chief spiritual principles, and in his Constitutions an example of his organizational ability. The Autobiography tells of his mystical illuminations and gifts, and the Spiritual Diary lets us peer deeply into his heart in his most intimate dealings with God. His writing reveals many facets of the warm personality of this influential saint.

The shape and course which Christian thought has taken over its history is largely due to the contributions of individuals and communities in the second and third centuries. Bringing together a remarkable team of distinguished scholars, The Routledge Companion to Early Christian Thought is the ideal companion for those seeking to understand the way in which Early Christian thought developed within its broader cultural milieu and was communicated through its literature, especially as it was directed toward theological concerns.

Divided into three parts, the Companion

• asks how Christianity's development was impacted by its interaction with cultural, philosophical, and religious elements within the broader context of the second and third centuries.
• examines the way in which Early Christian thought was manifest in key individuals and literature in these centuries.
• analyses Early Christian thought as it was directed toward theological concerns such as God, Christ, Redemption, Scripture, and the community and its worship.

First published in 1919, From Tradition to Gospel introduced and established Form Criticism in New Testament scholarship, and it remains the classic description of the field. Dibelius outlines the twofold object of Form Criticism, firstly to explain the origin of the tradition about Jesus, and secondly to uncover with what objective the earliest Churches learnt, recounted and passed on the stories and sayings of Jesus, which gradually developed into the Gospel narratives. In doing so, he begins to answer questions as to the nature and trustworthiness of our knowledge of Jesus. As new sources come to light and new critical techniques are developed, the original investigation into the Gospels along Form-Critical lines is as relevant as ever.

In 'Theologizing Friendship', the author aims to revitalize Jean Leclercq's defense of monastic theology, while expanding and qualifying some of the central theses expounded in Leclercq's magisterial 'The Love of Learning and the Desire for God'. The current work contributes to a revised and updated status quaestionis concerning the theological relationship between classical monasticism and scholasticism, construed in more systematic and speculative terms than those of Leclercq, rendered here through the lens of friendship as a theological topos. The work shares with Ivan Illich's 'In the Vineyard of the Text' the conviction that the rise of the Schools (Paris, Oxford, etc.) constitutes one of the greatest intellectual watersheds in the history of Western civilization: where Illich's ruminations are largely philosophical and particularly epistemological, the author's are theological and metaphysical. In his novel proposal that within the monastic and scholastic milieux there obtain parallel threefold analogies among friendship, reading, and theology, the author not only offers an original contribution to current scholarship, but gestures towards avenues for institutional self-examination much needed by the contemporary - modern and postmodern - Academy.

The works of Ambrosiaster, a Christian writing in Rome in the late fourth century, were influential on his near contemporaries and throughout the Middle Ages. In the first half of her study, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe addresses the problem of the author's mysterious identity (which scholars have puzzled over for centuries) and places him in a broad historical and intellectual context. In the second half she addresses Ambrosiaster's political theology, an idea which has been explored in other late Roman Christian writers but which has never been addressed in his works. She looks at how Ambrosiaster's attitudes to social and political order were formed on the basis of theological concepts and the interpretation of scripture, and shows that he espoused a rigid hierarchical and monarchical organization in the church, society, and the Roman empire. He also traced close connections between the Devil, characterized as a rebel against God, and the earthly tyrants and usurpers who followed his example.