Before the Renaissance and Reformation, holy images - the only independent images then in existence - were treated not as "art" but as objects of veneration. The faithful believed that these images, through their likeness to the person represented, became a tangible presence of the Holy and were able to work miracles, deliver oracles, and bring victory on the battlefield. In this magisterial book, one of the world's leading scholars of medieval art traces the long history of the image and its changing role in European culture. Belting's study of the iconic portrait opens in late antiquity, when Christianity reversed its original ban on images, adapted the cult images of the "pagans", and began developing an iconography of its own. The heart of the work focuses on the Middle Ages, both East and West, when images of God and the saints underwent many significant changes either as icons or as statues. The final section of Likeness and Presence surveys the Reformation and Renaissance periods, when new attitudes toward images inaugurated what Belting calls the "era of art" that continues to the present day - an era during which the aesthetic quality has become the dominant aspect of the image. Belting neither "explains" images nor pretends that images explain themselves. Rather, he works from the conviction that images reveal their meaning best by their use. Likeness and Presence deals with the beliefs, superstitions, hopes, and fears that come into play as people handle and respond to sacred images. Recognizing the tensions between image and word inherent in religion, Belting includes in an appendix many important historical documents that relate to the history and use of images. Profuselyillustrated, Likeness and Presence presents a compelling interpretation of the place of the image in Western history.

Early Christians and Animals presents a lively study of the significance of animals in early Christian thought, tradition, text and art. Robert M. Grant: * examines the diverse and often conflicting sources, from the pagan antecedents Aristotle and Pliny, to Biblical animal references and the Church fathers * provides fresh translations of key texts concerning animals - the Physiologus, Basils homilies and Isidores chapters.

This book explores the ways in which medieval Christians sought to memorialize the deceased: with tombs, cenotaphs, altars and other furnishings connected to a real or symbolic burial site. Reverent memorial for the dead was the inspiration for the production of a significant category of artworks during the Middle Ages - artworks aimed as much at the laity as at the clergy, and intended to maintain, symbolically, the presence of the dead. Memoria, the term that describes the formal, liturgical memory of the dead, also includes artworks intended to house and honour the deceased. A dozen essays analyze strategies for commemoration from the 4th - 15th century: the means by which human memory could be activated or manipulated through the interaction between monuments, their setting, and the visitor. Building upon from the growing body of literature on memory in the Middle Ages, the collection focuses on the tomb monument and its context as a complex to define what is to be remembered, to fix memory, and to facilitate recollection. The papers were originally presented at the 1994 meetings of the College Art Association, the International Congresses of Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, and the University of Leeds, England, in 1995.

Experiencing the Last Judgement opens up new ways of understanding a Byzantine image type that has hitherto been considered largely uniform in its manifestations and to a great extent frightening, coercive and paralysing. It moves beyond a purely didactic understanding of the Byzantine image of the Last Judgement, as a visual eschatological text to be 'read' and learned from, and proposes instead an appreciation of each unique image as a dynamic site to be experienced. Paintings, icons and mosaics from the tenth to the fourteenth century, from inside and outside of the Byzantine Empire, are placed within their specific socio-historical milieus, their immediate decorative programmes and their architectural contexts to demonstrate that each unique image constituted a carefully orchestrated and immersive experience of judgement. Each case study outlines the differences that exist in reality between these images that are often subsumed under one iconographic label, making a case against condensing dynamic, lived images into apparently static pictorial 'types'. Images of the Last Judgement needed the body, mind and memory of the viewer for the creation of meaning, and so the experience of these images was unavoidably spatial, gendered, corporeal, mnemonic, emotional, rhetorical and most often liturgical. Unpacking Byzantine images of judgement in light of these various facets of experience for the first time helps to elucidate the interaction of past individuals with the image, and the ways in which such encounters were intended to benefit the communities that made and lived alongside them.

Tradition and Transformation in Christian Art approaches tradition and transculturality in religious art from an Orthodox perspective that defines tradition as a dynamic field of exchanges and synergies between iconographic types and their variants. Relying on a new ontology of iconographic types, it explores one of the most significant ascetical and eschatological Christian images, the King of Glory (Man of Sorrows). This icon of the dead-living Christ originated in Byzantium, migrated west, and was promoted in the New World by Franciscan and Dominican missions. Themes include tensions between Byzantine and Latin spiritualities of penance and salvation, the participation of the body and gender in deification, and the theological plasticity of the Christian imaginary. Primitivist tendencies in Christian eschatology and modernism place avant-garde interest in New Mexican santos and Greek icons in tradition.

Dante's Divine Comedy is widely considered to be one of the most significant works of literature ever written. It is renowned not only for its ability to make truths known but also for its power to make them loved. It captures centuries of thought on sin, love, community, moral living, God's work in history, and God's ineffable beauty. Like a Gothic cathedral, the beauty of this great poem can be appreciated at first glance, but only with a guide can its complexity and layers of meaning be fully comprehended. This accessible introduction to Dante, which also serves as a primer to the Divine Comedy, helps readers better appreciate and understand Dante's spiritual masterpiece. Jason Baxter, an expert on Dante, covers all the basic themes of the Divine Comedy, such as sin, redemption, virtue, and vice. The book contains a general introduction to Dante and a specific introduction to each canticle (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso), making it especially well suited for classroom and homeschool use.

'ReVisioning: Critical Methods of Seeing Christianity in the History of Art' explores some of underlying methodological assumptions in the field of art history by examining the suitability and success, as well as the incompatibility and failure, of varying art historical methodologies when applied to works of art which distinctly manifest Christian narratives, themes, motifs, and symbols.

Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O'Connor is a collection of 101 sonnets that channel the voice of celebrated fiction writer, Flannery O'Connor. In these poems, poet and scholar Angela Alaimo O'Donnell imagines the rich interior life Flannery lived during the last fourteen years of her life in rural Georgia on her family's farm named "Andalusia." Each poem begins with an epigraph taken from O'Connor's essays, stories, or letters; the poet then plumbs Flannery's thoughts and the poignant circumstances behind them, welcoming the reader into O'Connor's private world. Together the poems tell the story of a brilliant young woman who enjoyed a bright and promising childhood, was struck with lupus just as her writing career hit its stride, and was forced to return home and live out her days in exile, far from the literary world she loved. By turns tragic and comic, the poems in Andalusian Hours explore Flannery's loves and losses, her complex relationship with her mother, her battle with her illness and disability, and her passion for her writing. The poems mark time in keeping with the liturgical hours O'Connor herself honored in her prayer life and in her quasi-monastic devotion to her vocation and to the home she learned to love, Andalusia.

This is a richly-illustrated study of 'The Oracles of the Three Shrines', the name given to a hanging scroll depicting three important Japanese shrine-deities and their respective oracle texts. The scroll has evolved continuously in Japan for 600 years, so different examples of it offer a series of 'windows' on developments in Japanese religious belief and practice.

This book is the first detailed investigation to focus on the late medieval use of Tree of Jesse imagery, traditionally a representation of the genealogical tree of Christ. In northern Europe, from the mid-fifteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, it could be found across a wide range of media. Yet, as this book vividly illustrates, it had evolved beyond a simple genealogy into something more complex, which could be modified to satisfy specific religious requirements. It was also able to function on a more temporal level, reflecting not only a clerical preoccupation with a sense of communal identity, but a more general interest in displaying a family's heritage, continuity and/or social status. It is this dynamic and polyvalent element that makes the subject so fascinating.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson is one of the most eminent public intellectuals in America today. In addition to literary elegance, her trilogy of novels (Gilead, Home, and Lila) and her collections of essays offer probing meditations on the Christian faith. Many of these reflections are grounded in her belief that the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformer John Calvin still deserves a hearing in the twenty-first century. This volume, based on the 2018 Wheaton Theology Conference, brings together the thoughts of leading theologians, historians, literary scholars, and church leaders who engaged in theological dialogue with Robinson's published work-and with the author herself.

The emotional separation of boys from their mothers in early childhood enables them to connect with their fathers and their fathers' world. But this separation also produces a melancholic reaction of sadness and sense of loss. Certain religious sensibilities develop out of this melancholic reaction, including a sense of honor, a sense of hope, and a sense of humor. Realizing that they cannot return to their original maternal environment, men, whether knowingly or not, embark on a lifelong search for a sense of being at home in the world. 'At Home in the World' focuses on works of art as a means to explore the formation and continuing expression of men's melancholy selves and their religious sensibilities. These explorations include such topics as male viewers' mixed feelings toward the maternal figure, physical settings that offer alternatives to the maternal environment, and the maternal resonances of the world of nature. By presenting images of the natural world as the locus of peace and contentment, 'At Home in the World' especially reflects of the religious sensibility of hope.

Perceptions of the Body and Sacred Space in Late Antiquity and Byzantium seeks to reveal Christian understanding of the body and sacred space in the medieval Mediterranean. Case studies examine encounters with the holy through the perspective of the human body and sensory dimensions of sacred space, and discuss the dynamics of perception when experiencing what was constructed, represented, and understood as sacred. The comparative analysis investigates viewers' recognitions of the sacred in specific locations or segments of space with an emphasis on the experiential and conceptual relationships between sacred spaces and human bodies. This volume thus reassesses the empowering aspects of space, time, and human agency in religious contexts. By focusing on investigations of human endeavors towards experiential and visual expressions that shape perceptions of holiness, this study ultimately aims to present a better understanding of the corporeality of sacred art and architecture. The research points to how early Christians and Byzantines teleologically viewed the divine source of the sacred in terms of its ability to bring together - but never fully dissolve - the distinctions between the human and divine realms. The revealed mechanisms of iconic perception and noetic contemplation have the potential to shape knowledge of the meanings of the sacred as well as to improve our understanding of the liminality of the profane and the sacred.

This book is a study of contemporary spirituality as it is practiced in the world today, characterized by its secular and inclusive nature, and applied to art and art education. It identifies the issues facing a formal introduction of contemporary spiritual concepts into a secular and multicultural arts educational environment. Lander begins by separating the notion of "the spiritual" from the study of organized religions. She uses examples of art from different cultures in contemporary spiritual systems, making the study a reference book for contemporary spirituality and spirituality in art education, with usable definitions and practical examples suitable for scholars in art and visual studies, art education, and contemporary spirituality.

Examining innovations in Mary Magdalene imagery in northern art 1430 to 1550, Penny Jolly explores how the saint's widespread popularity drew upon her ability to embody oppositions and embrace a range of paradoxical roles: sinner-prostitute and saint, erotic seductress and holy prophet. Analyzing paintings by Rogier van der Weyden, Quentin Massys, and others, Jolly investigates artists' and audiences' responses to increasing religious tensions, expanding art markets, and changing roles for women. Using cultural ideas concerning the gendered and pregnant body, Jolly reveals how dress confirms the Magdalene's multivalent nature. In some paintings, her gown's opening laces betray her wantonness yet simultaneously mark her as Christ's spiritually pregnant Bride; elsewhere 'undress' reconfirms her erotic nature while paradoxically marking her penitence; in still other works, exotic finery expresses her sanctity while celebrating Antwerp's textile industry. New image types arise, as when the saint appears as a lovesick musician playing a lute or as a melancholic contemplative, longing for Christ. Some depictions emphasize her intercessory role through innovative pictorial strategies that invite performative viewing or relate her to the mythological Pandora and Italian Renaissance Neoplatonism. Throughout, the Magdalene's ambiguities destabilize readings of her imagery while engaging audiences across a broad social and religious spectrum.

Art, Religion, Amnesia addresses the relationship between art and religion in contemporary culture, directly challenging contemporary notions of art and religion as distinct social phenomena and explaining how such Western terms represent alternative and even antithetical modes of world-making. In this new book, Professor Preziosi offers a critique of the main thrust of writing in recent years on the subjects of art, religion, and their interconnections, outlining in detail a perspective which redefines the basic terms in which recent debates and discussions have been articulated both in the scholarly and popular literature, and in artistic, political and religious practice. Art, Religion and Amnesia proposes an alternative to the two conventional traditions of writing on the subject which have been devoted on the one hand to the 'spiritual' dimensions of artistry, and on the other hand to the (equally spurious) 'aesthetic' aspects of religion. The book interrogates the fundamental assumptions fuelling many current controversies over representation, idolatry, blasphemy, and political culture. Drawing on debates from Plato's proposal to banish representational art from his ideal city-state to the Danish cartoons of Mohamed, Preziosi argues that recent debates have echoed a number of very ancient controversies in political philosophy, theology, and art history over the problem of representation and its functions in individual and social life. This book is a unique re-evaluation of the essential indeterminacy of meaning-making, marking a radically new approach to understanding the inextricability of aesthetics and theology and will be of interest to students and researchers in art history, philosophy and religion and cultural theory.

The central contention of Christian faith is that in the incarnation the eternal Word or Logos of God himself has taken flesh, so becoming for us the image of the invisible God. Our humanity itself is lived out in a constant to-ing and fro-ing between materiality and immateriality. Imagination, language and literature each have a vital part to play in brokering this hypostatic union of matter and meaning within the human creature. Approaching different aspects of two distinct movements between the image and the word, in the incarnation and in the dynamics of human existence itself, Trevor Hart presents a clearer understanding of each and explores the juxtapositions with the other. Hart concludes that within the Trinitarian economy of creation and redemption these two occasions of 'flesh-taking' are inseparable and indivisible.

The central contention of Christian faith is that in the incarnation the eternal Word or Logos of God himself has taken flesh, so becoming for us the image of the invisible God. Our humanity itself is lived out in a constant to-ing and fro-ing between materiality and immateriality. Imagination, language and literature each have a vital part to play in brokering this hypostatic union of matter and meaning within the human creature. Approaching different aspects of two distinct movements between the image and the word, in the incarnation and in the dynamics of human existence itself, Trevor Hart presents a clearer understanding of each and explores the juxtapositions with the other. Hart concludes that within the Trinitarian economy of creation and redemption these two occasions of 'flesh-taking' are inseparable and indivisible.

We have been created to live and work in community. But all too often we see ourselves primarily as individuals and run the risk of working at cross-purposes with the organizations we serve. Living faithfully in a neighborhood involves two interwoven threads: learning and action. In this book C. Christopher Smith, coauthor of Slow Church, looks at the local church as an organization in which both learning and action lie at the heart of its identity. He explores the practice of reading and, in his words, "how we can read together in ways that drive us deeper into action." Smith continues, "Church can no longer simply be an experience to be passively consumed; rather, we are called into the participatory life of a community. Reading is a vital practice for helping our churches navigate this shift." Discover how books can help your churches and neighborhoods bring flourishing to the world.

First published in 1914, volume one of this study, published under the patronage of the government of His Highness the Maharaja of Travancore, sought to add to the growing literature on Hindu iconography and mythology for a European audience with the notable inclusion of Sanskrit sources along with extensive photographs of Indian sculpture. Gopinatha Rao begins with an exploration of the history of image-worship in India, followed by a discussion of their usage, classification and production. This detailed introduction is then applied to case studies of Ganapati, Vishnu, Garuda and Ayudha-purushas, Adityas, including the Nava-grahas and Devi.

The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art surveys a broad spectrum of Christian art produced from the late second to the sixth centuries. The first part of the book opens with a general survey of the subject and then presents fifteen essays that discuss specific media of visual art-catacomb paintings, sculpture, mosaics, gold glass, gems, reliquaries, ceramics, icons, ivories, textiles, silver, and illuminated manuscripts. Each is written by a noted expert in the field. The second part of the book takes up themes relevant to the study of early Christian art. These seven chapters consider the ritual practices in decorated spaces, the emergence of images of Christ's Passion and miracles, the functions of Christian secular portraits, the exemplary mosaics of Ravenna, the early modern history of Christian art and archaeology studies, and further reflection on this field called "early Christian art." Each of the volume's chapters includes photographs of many of the objects discussed, plus bibliographic notes and recommendations for further reading. The result is an invaluable introduction to and appraisal of the art that developed out of the spread of Christianity through the late antique world. Undergraduate and graduate students of late classical, early Christian, and Byzantine culture, religion, or art will find it an accessible and insightful orientation to the field. Additionally, professional academics, archivists, and curators working in these areas will also find it valuable as a resource for their own research, as well as a textbook or reference work for their students.

Bernini and Pallavicino, the artist and the Jesuit cardinal, are closely related figures at the papal courts of Urban VIII and Alexander VII, at which Bernini was the principal artist. The analysis of Pallavicino's writings offers a new perspective on Bernini's art and artistry and allow us to understand the visual arts in papal Rome as a 'making manifest' of the fundamental truths of faith. Pallavicino's views on art and its effects differ fundamentally from the perspective developed in Bernini's biographies offering a perspective on the tension between artist and patron, work and message. In Pallavicino's writings the visual arts emerge as being intrinsically bound up with the very core of religion involving questions of idolatry, mimesis and illusionism that would prove central to the aesthetic debates of the eighteenth century.

Ars Judaica is an annual publication of the Department of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan University. It showcases the Jewish contribution to the visual arts and architecture from antiquity to the present from a variety of perspectives, including history, iconography, semiotics, psychology, sociology, and folklore. As such it is a valuable resource for art historians, collectors, curators, and all those interested in the visual arts. The study of Jewish art frequently raises questions relating to Jewish survival and Jewish identity. These issues have always been of relevance throughout the Jewish diaspora, and as is evident from the articles in this volume they continue to concern Jewish artists to this day. The opening article, 'Illuminations of Kol Nidrei in Two Ashkenazi Mahzorim' by Sara Offenberg, deals with the hidden meanings expressed by groups of animals depicted in two medieval Ashkenazi prayer books for the Day of Atonement. By using allegorical animals in this way the Jews of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries could safely express their fear of the hostile Christian society in which they lived, as well as their trust in God and belief in redemption. A surprising link between the Middle Ages and modern times is made by Rachel Singer's article, 'Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are: An Exploration of the Personal and the Collective'. Published in 1963, this classic children's book, written and illustrated by the son of a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn, is far removed, both chronologically and geographically, from the Ashkenazi Middle Ages. In her study, however, Singer prises out hidden sources of antisemitic perceptions rooted in medieval Christian Europe. This leads us to the volume's third article, 'The Return of the Wandering Jew(s) in Samuel Hirszenberg's Art' by Richard I. Cohen and Mirjam Rajner. The motif of the wandering Jew, a negative and frightening figure, is rooted in the late Middle Ages: it made its first appearance in Christian art, in printed books which disseminated the Christian legend all over Europe. In the nineteenth century, Jewish artists engaging with the image of the wandering Jew endowed it with new interpretations and presentations. One of these is revealed by the authors as they focus on the painting The Wandering Jew, created in 1899 by the Polish Jewish artist Samuel Hirszenberg. As is well known, emancipation and the Jewish national awakening in late nineteenth-century Europe were accompanied by diverse artistic activities. These included the establishment of Jewish societies promoting Jewish art and artists, exhibitions, documentation, and research. Among the most impressive efforts were the activities of Jewish artists in interwar Poland, recorded in contemporary local newspapers and periodicals. As these were published in Polish and Yiddish they weren't accessible to the English-speaking reader, something that is now rectified by Renata Piatkowska in 'A Sense of Togetherness: The Jewish Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Warsaw (1923-1939)'. Based on primary sources, the article introduces us to the flourishing artistic life which was cruelly destroyed in the Holocaust. Another result of Jewish national awakening, in this case in the medium of photography, is presented in 'Modernity as Anti-Nostalgia: The Photographic Books of Tim Gidal and Moshe Vorobeichic and the Eastern European Shtetl', by Rose-Carol Washton Long. This article examines how Zionist ideas led two assimilated German-trained photographers to develop variant thematic and stylistic portrayals of eastern European shtetls in their photobooks, published in 1931 and 1932. Their volumes are neither romantic nor nostalgic, but instead convey a vibrant vision of modernity. While the first five articles discuss issues of identity encountered by Jewish individuals or groups, the next contribution focuses on a 'Jewish identity' that was imposed by a colonial administration. Dominique Jarrasse's 'Orientalism, Colonialism, and Jewish Identity in the Synagogues of North Africa under French Domination' fills the gaps in our knowledge of synagogue architecture in Tunisia and Algiers in the modern era in general, and about colonial Orientalism in particular. Covert Jewish identity is revealed by Milly Heyd in 'Hans Richter: Universalism vis-a-vis Particularism'. This is the third part of her study of the place of the hidden Jew in the Dada avant-garde, one part of which is published in volume 1 of Ars Judaica. The focus in the present piece is on Hans Richter's art in the context of Man Ray, Tristan Tzara, and others who were born to Jewish families but opted for universalism rather than particularism in their art. The Special Item in this year's volume is devoted to a painting by Moritz Oppenheim that was long thought to be lost. 'Of Provenance and Providence: On the Reappearance of David Playing the Harp for Saul by Moritz Oppenheim', by Susan Nashman Fraiman, raises some new and interesting questions about Oppenheim's early work and patrons. The study of this painting reveals a conscious effort to incorporate Jewish source material into his work, an important aspect of his corpus which has previously been neglected. Volumes of Ars Judaica are distributed by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization throughout the world, except Israel. Orders and enquiries from Israeli customers should be directed to: Ars Judaica, Department of Jewish Art, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Telephone 03 5318413; Fax 03 6359241; Email [[email protected]]

Several years before he converted to Christianity, C. S. Lewis published a narrative poem, Dymer, under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton. Later, of course, Lewis became well known for his beloved imaginative stories, such as The Chronicles of Narnia and Till We Have Faces, as well as his ability to defend and articulate the faith in works such as Mere Christianity. But what about his literary work before his conversion? In this Hansen Lectureship volume, Jerry Root contends that Lewis's early poem Dymer can not only shed light on the development of Lewis's literary skills but also offer a glimpse of what was to come in his intellectual and spiritual growth-a "splendour in the dark," to borrow one of Lewis's own lines from the poem. Under Root's careful analysis, Dymer becomes a way to understand both Lewis's change of mind as well as the way in which each of us is led on a journey of faith. This volume also includes the complete text of Dymer with annotations from David C. Downing, co-director of the Marion E. Wade Center. Based on the annual lecture series hosted at Wheaton College's Marion E. Wade Center, volumes in the Hansen Lectureship Series reflect on the imaginative work and lasting influence of seven British authors: Owen Barfield, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams.

How can we grasp the significance of what Jesus Christ did for us? Might literature help us as we seek to understand the Christian faith? J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has generated much discussion about the relationship between Christianity and literature. It is well known that Tolkien disliked allegory. Yet he acknowledged that his work is imbued with Christian symbolism and meaning. Based on the inaugural Hansen Lectureship series delivered by Philip Ryken, this volume mines the riches of Tolkien's theological imagination. In the characters of Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn, Ryken hears echoes of the threefold office of Christ-his prophetic, priestly, and royal roles. Guided by Ryken, readers will discover that they can learn much about the one who is the true prophet, priest, and king through Tolkien's imaginative storytelling. Based on the annual lecture series hosted at Wheaton College's Marion E. Wade Center, volumes in the Hansen Lectureship Series reflect on the imaginative work and lasting influence of seven British authors: Owen Barfield, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams.