A Global History of Christians probes the history of the church not only in Western civilization but also in its worldwide dimension, emphasizing the social, cultural, and popular aspects of that history. The book includes depictions of everyday life in various Christian communities, descriptions of native cultures as more than objects of missions, and analyses of key developments in society and economics. Sidebars, photos, illustrations, and maps enhance the text.

How can the concept of nostalgia illuminate the culturally specific ways in which societies understand the contested relationship between the past, present, and future? The word nostalgia was invented in the late seventeenth century to describe the debilitating effects of homesickness. Now widely defined as a sense of longing for a lost past, initially it was more closely linked with dislocation in space. By exploring some of its many textual, visual and musical manifestations in the tumultuous period between c. 1350 and 1800, this volume resists the assumption that nostalgia is a distinctive by-product of modernity. It also forges a fruitful link between three lively areas of current scholarly enquiry: memory, temporality, and emotion. The contributors deploy nostalgia as a tool for investigating perceptions of the passage of time and historical change, unsettling experiences of migration and geographical displacement, and the connections between remembering and forgetting, affect and imagination. Ranging across Europe and the Atlantic world, they examine the moments, sites and communities in which it arose, alongside how it was used to express both criticism and regret about the religious, political, social and cultural upheavals that shaped the early modern world. They approach it as a complex mixed feeling that opens a new window into individual subjectivities and collective mentalities.

Paradise, the third and final part of The Divine Comedy, tells the story of Dante's journey through the heavenly realms. Representative of the divine soul's ascent to the Lord, this timeless epic portrays haven as a series of intricate spheres which surround the Earth. Each of these represents an astronomical body, such as the Moon, Mercury, Venus and even the distant stars. Dante's deceased love interest, Beatrice Portinari, is his guide through the journey to the paradise of heaven. Just as Dante depicted Hell as having nine circles, Heaven is depicted as consisting of nine celestial spheres. Gradually the pair ascend through each of these, observing their appearance and meeting with various inhabitants along the way. The poem's grand finale sees Dante and Beatrice enter the Empyrean - the very home of God himself. Beatrice's beauty becomes more marked, while Dante himself is bathed in an intense light, so that he may be fit to behold the divine.