"Mary Magdalene, Iconographic Studies from the Middle Ages to the Baroque" examines the iconographic inventions in Magdalene imagery and the contextual factors that shaped her representation in visual art from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Unique to other saints in the medieval lexicon, images of Mary Magdalene were altered over time to satisfy the changing needs of her patrons as well as her audience. By shedding light on the relationship between the Magdalene and her patrons, both corporate and private, as well as the religious institutions and regions where her imagery is found, this anthology reveals the flexibility of the Magdalene s character in art and, in essence, the reinvention of her iconography from one generation to the next.

This book is not designed to define the sacred. It is, rather, a bringing together of case histories (a rich, varied collection from medieval, early modern and nineteenth-century contexts in England and Wales) that goes beyond familiar paradigms to explore the dynamic, protean interaction, in different times and places, between sacred space and text. Essentially an interdisciplinary enterprise, it focuses a range of historical and critical methodologies on that complex process of transformation and transmission whereby spiritual intuitions, experiences and teachings are made palpable 'in art and architecture, poetry and prayer, in histories, scriptures and liturgies, even landscapes. So the sacred, variously constructed and inscribed, makes itself felt 'on the pulse'; is a presence, a voice even now not stilled.

Migration is a problem of highest importance today, and likewise is its history. Italian migrants who had to leave the peninsula in the long sixteenth century because of their heterodox Protestant faith is a topic that has its deep roots in Italian Renaissance scholarship since Delio Cantimori: It became a part of a twentieth century form of Italian leyenda negra in liberal historiography. But its international dimension and Central Europe (not only Germany) as destination of that movement has often been neglected. Three different levels of connectivity are addressed: the materiality of communication (travel, printing, the diffusion of books and manuscripts); individual migrants and their biographies and networks; and the cultural transfers, discourses, and ideas migrating in one or in both directions.

Early modern anger is informed by fundamental paradoxes: qualified as a sin since the Middle Ages, it was still attributed a valuable function in the service of restoring social order; at the same time, the fight against one's own anger was perceived as exceedingly difficult. And while it was seen as essential for the defence of an individual's social position, it was at the same time considered a self-destructive force. The contributions in this volume converge in the aim of mapping out the discursive networks in which anger featured and how they all generated their own version, assessment, and semantics of anger. These discourses include philosophy and theology, poetry, medicine, law, political theory, and art. Contributors: David M. Barbee, Maria Berbara, Tamas Demeter, Jan-Frans van Dijkhuizen, Betul Dilmac, Karl Enenkel, Tilman Haug, Michael Krewet, Johannes F. Lehmann, John Nassichuk, Jan Papy, Christian Peters, Bernd Roling, Paolo Santangelo, Barbara Sasse Tateo, Anita Traninger, Jakob Willis, and Zeynep Yelce.

Based on historical fact, "George Washington's Boy," written by Ted Lange, portrays the fight for freedom, the Declaration of Independence, and the first presidency of the United States from the viewpoint of one of George Washington's closest confident, ironically, his slave, Billy Lee. Billy Lee served his master throughout these monumental times and was privy to the innermost thoughts and actions of Washington.

Church rituals were a familiar feature of life throughout much of the Anglo-Saxon period. In this innovative study, Helen Gittos examines ceremonies for the consecration of churches and cemeteries, processional feasts like Candlemas, Palm Sunday, and Rogationtide, as well as personal rituals such as baptisms and funerals. Drawing on little-known surviving liturgical sources as well as other written evidence, archaeology, and architecture, she considers the architectural context in which such rites were performed. The research in this book has implications for a wide range of topics, such as: how liturgy was written and disseminated in the early Middle Ages, when Christian cemeteries first began to be consecrated, how the form of Anglo-Saxon monasteries changed over time and how they were used, the centrality and nature of processions in early medieval religious life, the evidence church buildings reveal about changes in how they functioned, beliefs about relics, and the attitudes of different archbishops to the liturgy. Liturgy, Architecture, and Sacred Places in Anglo-Saxon England will be of particular interest to architectural specialists wanting to know more about liturgy, and church historians keen to learn more about architecture, as well as those with a more general interest in the early Middle Ages and in church buildings.