Essays on the life of Hugh of Avalon "All those concerned with the contribution of monasticism to the devotional life of the external world will find much to inform and stimulate them among these papers." JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY Essays on the life of Hugh of Avalon, on the relationship between the hermitic Carthusian vocation and the outside world; on the reflection of the world in religious literature; and on the transmission of mystical and devotional ideals and writings for a secular audience.

How to avoid disease, how to breed successfully and how to live to a reasonable age, are questions that have perplexed mankind throughout history. This 2005 book explores our progress in understanding these challenges, and the risks and rewards of our attempts to find solutions. From the moment of conception, nutrition and exposure to microbes or alien chemicals have consequences that are etched into our cells and genomes. Such events have a crucial impact on development in utero and in childhood, and later, on the way we age, respond to infection, or the likelihood of developing chronic diseases, including cancer. The issues covered include the powerful influence of infectious disease on human society, the burden of our genetic legacy and the lottery of procreation. The author discusses how prospects for human life might continually improve as biomedicine addresses these problems and also debates the ethical checkpoints encountered.

Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ is an important work of late medieval English vernacular theology, and is made available here in a modern paperback "Reading Text" edition, complete with a short Introduction, explanatory notes and glossary, followed by a longer hardback: the "Full Critical Edition". The critical edition is not merely a revision of Michael Sargent's 1992 Garland best-text edition, now out of print, but a new and completely critical edition that uses the Garland volume only as its starting-point. Although based on the same manuscript, and containing much of the same introductory material, this edition includes the results of a complete collation of the 71 known surviving manuscripts and early prints. This collation demonstrates that the text exists in two separate authorial versions, of which the first, which incorporated a separate, independent translation of the Passion section, may not in the first instance have included the "Treatise on the Sacrament". The second version, on which the edition is based, is an authorial revision, undertaken, perhaps, after Love had met with Archbishop Arundel for approval of his text. The Introduction discusses the evidence for the process of composition of the text, and places Love's Mirror, properly, at the centre of current scholarly discussion of the development of vernacular theology in late medieval England and the consequences of Arundel's anti-Lollard Lambeth Constitutions.

Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ is a particularly important work of late medieval English vernacular theology: it is seen as a landmark in the history of the official campaign to control lay access to vernacular paramystical texts. It is made available here for the first time in a critical modern paperback edition, complete with a short introduction, explanatory notes and a glossary. The volume is not merely a revision of Michael Sargent's 1992 Garland best-text edition, now out of print, but a new full critical edition that uses the Garland volume only as its starting-point. Although based on the same manuscript, this new edition includes the results of a complete collation of the 71 known surviving manuscripts and early prints.Nicholas Love's Mirror was a Middle English translation of the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi. The Latin text, probably written at the end of the thirteenth century or the beginning of the fourteenth, was a popular book of devotions on the events of the life and passion of Christ characteristic of late-medieval Franciscan spirituality. The Introduction places Love's Mirror, properly, at the centre of current scholarly discussion of the development of vernacular theology in late medieval England.