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Would you like to learn to pray like a medieval Christian? In Mary
and the Art of Prayer, Rachel Fulton Brown traces the history of
the medieval practice of praisingMary through the complex of
prayers known as the Hours of the Virgin. More than just a work of
comprehensive historical scholarship, the book asks readers to
immerse themselves in the experience of believing in and praying to
Mary. Mary and the Art of Prayer crosses the boundaries that modern
scholars typically place between observation and experience,
between the world of provable facts and the world of imagination,
suggesting what it would have been like for medieval Christians to
encounter Mary in prayer. Mary and the Art of Prayer opens with a
history of the devotion of the Hours or "Little Office" of the
Virgin. It then guides readers in the practice of saying this
Office, including its invitatory (Ave Maria), antiphons, psalms,
lessons, and prayers. The book works on several levels at once. It
provides a new methodology for thinking about devotion and prayer;
a new appreciation of the scope of and audience for the Hours of
the Virgin; a new understanding of how Mary functions theologically
and devotionally; and a new reading of sources not previously taken
into account. A courageous and moving work, it will transform our
ideas of what scholarship is and what it can accomplish.
Would you like to learn to pray like a medieval Christian? In Mary
and the Art of Prayer, Rachel Fulton Brown traces the history of
the medieval practice of praising Mary through the complex of
prayers known as the Hours of the Virgin. More than just a work of
comprehensive historical scholarship, the book asks readers to
immerse themselves in the experience of believing in and praying to
Mary. Mary and the Art of Prayer crosses the boundaries that modern
scholars typically place between observation and experience,
between the world of provable facts and the world of imagination,
suggesting what it would have been like for medieval Christians to
encounter Mary in prayer. Mary and the Art of Prayer opens with a
history of the devotion of the Hours or "Little Office" of the
Virgin. It then guides readers in the practice of saying this
Office, including its invitatory (Ave Maria), antiphons, psalms,
lessons, and prayers. The book works on several levels at once. It
provides a new methodology for thinking about devotion and prayer;
a new appreciation of the scope of and audience for the Hours of
the Virgin; a new understanding of how Mary functions theologically
and devotionally; and a new reading of sources not previously taken
into account. A courageous and moving work, it will transform our
ideas of what scholarship is and what it can accomplish.
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Aurora Bearialis (Hardcover)
Dragon Common Room; Illustrated by Handdrawnbear; Edited by Rachel Fulton Brown
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R691
R578
Discovery Miles 5 780
Save R113 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Devotion to the crucified Christ is one of the most familiar, yet
most disconcerting artifacts of medieval European civilization. How
and why did the images of the dying God-man and his grieving mother
achieve such prominence, inspiring unparalleled religious
creativity as well such imitative extremes as celibacy and
self-flagellation? To answer this question, Rachel Fulton ranges
over developments in liturgical performance, private prayer,
doctrine, and art. She considers the fear occasioned by the
disappointed hopes of medieval Christians convinced that the
apocalypse would come soon, the revulsion of medieval Jews at being
baptized in the name of God born from a woman, the reform of the
Church in light of a new European money economy, the eroticism of
the Marian exegesis of the Song of Songs, and much more. Devotion
to the crucified Christ is one of the most familiar yet
disconcerting artifacts of medieval European civilization. How and
why did the images of the dying God-man and his grieving mother
achieve such prominence, inspiring unparalleled religious
creativity and emotional artistry even as they fostered such
imitative extremes as celibacy, crusade, and self-flagellation?
Magisterial in style and comprehensive in scope, From Judgment to
Passion is the first systematic attempt to explain the origins and
initial development of European devotion to Christ in his suffering
humanity and Mary in her compassionate grief. Rachel Fulton
examines liturgical performance, doctrine, private prayer,
scriptural exegesis, and art in order to illuminate and explain the
powerful desire shared by medieval women and men to identify with
the crucified Christ and his mother. The book begins with the
Carolingian campaign to convert the newly conquered pagan Saxons,
in particular with the effort to explain for these new converts the
mystery of the Eucharist, the miraculous presence of Christ's body
at the Mass. Moving on to the early eleventh century, when Christ's
failure to return on the millennium of his Passion (A.D. 1033)
necessitated for believers a radical revision of Christian history,
Fulton examines the novel liturgies and devotions that arose amid
this apocalyptic disappointment. The book turns finally to the
twelfth century when, in the wake of the capture of Jerusalem in
the First Crusade, there occurred the full flowering of a new, more
emotional sensibility of faith, epitomized by the eroticism of the
Marian exegesis of the Song of Songs and by the artistic and
architectural innovations we have come to think of as
quintessentially high medieval. In addition to its concern with
explaining devotional change, From Judgment to Passion presses a
second, crucial question: How is it possible for modern historians
to understand not only the social and cultural functions but also
the experience of faith-the impulsive engagement with the emotions,
sometimes ineffable, of prayer and devotion? The answer,
magnificently exemplified throughout this book's narrative, lies in
imaginative empathy, the same incorporation of self into story that
lay at the heart of the medieval effort to identify with Christ and
Mary in their love and pain.
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