The doctrine of the Incarnation was wellspring and catalyst for theories of images verbal, material, and spiritual. Section I, "Representing the Mystery of the Incarnation", takes up questions about the representability of the mystery. Section II, "Imago Dei and the Incarnate Word", investigates how Christ's status as the image of God was seen to license images material and spiritual. Section III, "Literary Figurations of the Incarnation", considers the verbal production of images contemplating the divine and human nature of Christ. Section IV, "Tranformative Analogies of Matter and Spirit", delves into ways that material properties and processes, in their effects on the beholder, were analogized to Christ's hypostasis. Section V, "Visualizing the Flesh of Christ", considers the relation between the Incarnation and the Passion.

Reading Catechisms, Teaching Religion makes two broad arguments. First, the sixteenth century witnessed a fundamental transformation in Christians', Catholic and Evangelical, conceptualization of the nature of knowledge of Christianity and the media through which that knowledge was articulated and communicated. Christians had shared a sense that knowledge might come through visions, images, liturgy; catechisms taught that knowledge of 'Christianity' began with texts printed on a page. Second, codicil catechisms sought not simply to dissolve the material distinction between codex and person, but to teach catechumens to see specific words together as texts. The pages of catechisms were visual-they confound precisely that constructed modern bipolarity, word/image, or, conversely, that modern bipolarity obscures what sixteenth-century catechisms sought to do.

In this elegantly written book, Lee Wandel discusses the relationship between the reform of poor relief and the Protestant Reformation in early sixteenth-century Zurich. In the introduction she traces the various ways that poverty has been evaluated, and its social and religious connotations, up to the sixteenth century. After providing a portrait of sixteenth-century Zurich, the author goes on to explore the discussion of the poor in various media of the town: the sermons and pamphlets of Huldrych Zwingli, who was preaching that the poor were the true images of God; printed images depicting Christ calling beggars and other poor folk to Him (these appeared on title pages of Zwingli's pamphlets); the language of legislation (in particular the poor ordinances of 1520 and 1525). By exploring each of these different "languages"--the words of Zwingli's sermons, the visual images of title page prints, and the language of legislation--Professor Wandel restores the complex perception of the poor in Reformation Zurich. In each, the poor were located within matrices of religious and social values and were seen as both economically dependent and symbolic within larger theological and ethical constructs.

'Quid est sacramentum?' Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1700 investigates how sacred mysteries (in Latin, sacramenta or mysteria) were visualized in a wide range of media, including illustrated religious literature such as catechisms, prayerbooks, meditative treatises, and emblem books, produced in Italy, France, and the Low Countries between ca. 1500 and 1700. The contributors ask why the mysteries of faith and, in particular, sacramental mysteries were construed as amenable to processes of representation and figuration, and why the resultant images were thought capable of engaging mortal eyes, minds, and hearts. Mysteries by their very nature appeal to the spirit, rather than to sense or reason, since they operate beyond the limitations of the human faculties; and yet, the visual and literary arts served as vehicles for the dissemination of these mysteries and for prompting reflection upon them. Contributors: David Areford, AnnMarie Micikas Bridges, Mette Birkedal Bruun, James Clifton, Anna Dlabackova, Wim Francois, Robert Kendrick, Aiden Kumler, Noria Litaker, Walter S. Melion, Lars Cyril Norgaard, Elizabeth Pastan, Donna Sadler, Alexa Sand, Tanya Tiffany, Lee Palmer Wandel, Geert Warner, Bronwen Wilson, and Elliott Wise.

This book brings together two histories, of the Encounter between Europe and the western hemisphere that began in 1492 and the fragmentation of European Christendom in the sixteenth century, to recast the story of the Reformation. It restores to the polemics idolatry, true Christian, barbarian their deeply divisive force, even as it helps us to see past those polemics to divergent understandings of divinity, matter, and human nature. Every aspect of human life, from marriage and family through politics to conceptualizations of space and time was called into question. Debates on human nature and conversion forged new understandings of religious identity. Divergent understandings of human nature and its relationship to the material world divided Europeans on the nature and function of images and ritual. By the end of the century, there was not one Christian religion, but multiple understandings of person, matter, space, time and of religion itself."

The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy takes up the words, 'this is my body', 'this do', and 'remembrance of me' that divided Christendom in the sixteenth century. It traces the different understandings of these simple words and the consequences of those divergent understandings in the delineation of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic traditions: the different formulations of liturgy with their different conceptualizations of the cognitive and collective function of ritual; the different conceptualizations of the relationship between Christ and the living body of the faithful; the different articulations of the relationship between the world of matter and divinity; and the different epistemologies. It argues that the incarnation is at the center of the story of the Reformation and suggests how divergent religious identities were formed.

This is an effort to recover the participation of ordinary Christians in the enterprise of Reformation through an exploration of the meaning of acts of iconoclasm: what they tell us about the role of images in Christianity and about ordinary people's theologies. Its focus, on ordinary Christians, distinguishes it from other studies of Reformation iconoclasm. Its concern, to recover their agency in Reformation and to discern their theology in acts, may be of interest to scholars in American history, anthropology, and religious studies.

This text examines iconoclasm, the mode by which hundreds of ordinary people entered into the Reformation, by studying iconclastic acts in three major towns of the period. It seeks to recover the agency of ordinary people in the Reformation and to discern their theology through their actions. It illuminates the meaning of images for ordinary people in the 16th century and suggests ways of interpreting the meaning of the actions of those who did not have access to printed forms of communication. The analysis views Reformation as a dialogue in which different people spoke through different forms, according to their education, their social and political standing, each bringing his or her vision of true Christianity to that dialogue, and articulating that vision in the cultural form he or she found most accessible: theologians in the forms of sermons and treatises, magistrates in the form of laws and their enforcement; and ordinary people in acts of iconoclasm.

In this elegantly written book, Lee Wandel discusses the relationship between the reform of poor relief and the Protestant Reformation in early sixteenth-century Zurich. In the introduction she traces the various ways that poverty has been evaluated, and its social and religious connotations, up to the sixteenth century. After providing a portrait of sixteenth-century Zurich, the author goes on to explore the discussion of the poor in various media of the town: the sermons and pamphlets of Huldrych Zwingli, who was preaching that the poor were the true images of God; printed images depicting Christ calling beggars and other poor folk to Him (these appeared on title pages of Zwingli's pamphlets); the language of legislation (in particular the poor ordinances of 1520 and 1525). By exploring each of these different "languages"--the words of Zwingli's sermons, the visual images of title page prints, and the language of legislation--Professor Wandel restores the complex perception of the poor in Reformation Zurich. In each, the poor were located within matrices of religious and social values and were seen as both economically dependent and symbolic within larger theological and ethical constructs.

This book is a compact, accessible history of the continent, during a time when it did not yet dominate the world in which it was situated. The text discusses the major events of the period, and also seeks to restore interconnections lost by thinkers who divided the period into "The Renaissance" and "The Reformation." With twenty-five illustrations and nine detailed maps, this short textbook is perfect for students of European history.

Europe in a Wider World, 1350-1650 is a compact history of the continent during a time when it did not yet dominate the world. The text discusses the major events of the period, and also seeks to restore interconnections lost by scholars who divided the period up into "The Renaissance" and "The Reformation."

We have learned a great deal in recent years about keeping death at bay through medical technology. We are less well informed, however, about how to face death and how to understand or articulate the emotional and spiritual needs of the dying. This profound and eloquent book brings together medical experts and distinguished authorities in the humanities to reflect on medical, cultural, and religious responses to death. The book helps both medical personnel and patients to view death less as an adversary and more as a defining part of life. In the first half of the book, physicians and the founder of Connecticut Hospice discuss the current clinical setting for dying, with attempts to find the balance between alleviating suffering and providing life support, the problem of finding a peaceful death, and the differences the AIDS epidemic has made in our attitudes toward dying. In the second half of the book, theologians, historians of religion, anthropologists, literary scholars, and pastors describe Christian, Judaic, Islamic, Hindu, and Chinese perceptions of death and rituals of mourning. An epilogue considers the resonances between medicine and the humanities, as well as the essential differences in their approaches to death. Prepared under the auspices of The Program for Humanities in Medicine, Yale University School of Med