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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2021Emotional monasticism
Affective piety in the eleventh-century monastery of John of Fécamp
by Lauren Mancia
Medievalists have long taught that highly emotional Christian devotion, often called 'affective piety', appeared in Europe after the twelfth century and was primarily practiced by communities of mendicants, lay people and women. Emotional monasticism challenges this view. The first study of affective piety in an eleventh-century monastic context, it traces the early history of affective devotion through the life and works of the earliest known writer of emotional prayers, John of Fécamp, abbot of the Norman monastery of Fécamp from 1028-78. Exposing the early medieval monastic roots of later medieval affective piety, the book casts a new light on the devotional life of monks in Europe before the twelfth century and redefines how medievalists should teach the history of Christianity.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2019Emotional monasticism
by Lauren Mancia, T. J. H. McCarthy, Stephen Mossman, Carrie Beneš, Jochen Schenk
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Humanities & Social SciencesApril 2024Rethinking the Carolingian reforms
by Arthur Westwell, Ingrid Rembold, Carine van Rhijn
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Literary studies: classical, early & medievalJuly 2013Monasticism in late medieval England, c.1300–1535
by Martin Heale
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Literature & Literary StudiesApril 2009Monasticism in late medieval England, c.1300–1535
by Rosemary Horrox, Simon Maclean, Martin Heale, Rebecca Mortimer
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Literature & Literary StudiesApril 2009
Monasticism in late medieval England, c.1300–1535
by Rosemary Horrox, Simon Maclean, Martin Heale
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Humanities & Social SciencesApril 2020Monastic experience in twelfth-century Germany
by Alison I. Beach, Shannong Li, Samuel Sutherland
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Humanities & Social SciencesSeptember 2022Monastic experience in twelfth-century Germany
by Alison I. Beach, Shannon M. T. Li, Samuel Sutherland
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Humanities & Social SciencesMay 2020Confronting crisis in the Carolingian empire
by Mayke de Jong, Justin Lake, Simon Maclean
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January 2020Inquiry about the Monks in Egypt
by Rufinus of Aquileia, Cain
From September 394 to early January 395, seven monks from Rufinus of Aquileia’s monastery on the Mount of Olives made a pilgrimage to Egypt to visit locally renowned monks and monastic communities. Shortly after their return to Jerusalem, one of the party, whose identity remains a mystery, wrote an engaging account of this trip. Although he cast it in the form of a first-person travelogue, it reads more like a book of miracles that depicts the great fourth-century Egyptian monks as prophets and apostles similar to those in the Bible. This work was composed in Greek, yet it is best known today as Historia monachorum in Aegypto (Inquiry about the Monks in Egypt), the title of the Latin translation of this work made by Rufinus, the pilgrim-monks’ abbot. The Historia monachorum is one of the most fascinating, fantastical, and enigmatic pieces of literature to survive from the patristic period. In both its Greek original and Rufinus’s Latin translation it was one of the most popular and widely disseminated works of monastic hagiography during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Modern scholars value it not only for its intrinsic literary merits but also for its status, alongside Athanasius’s Life of Antony, the Pachomian dossier, and other texts of this ilk, as one of the most important primary sources for monasticism in fourth-century Egypt. Rufinus’s Historia monachorum is presented here in English translation in its entirety. The introduction and annotations situate the work in its literary, historical, religious, and theological contexts.
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December 2021
Moralia et Ascetica Armeniaca
The Oft-Repeated Discourses
by Abraham Terian
The twenty-three discourses presented in this volume have a long textual history that ascribes them to St. Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia (d. 328), a prevalent view that lasted through the nineteenth century. Armenian scholarship through the last century has tended to ascribe them to St. Mashtots‘, the inventor of the Armenian alphabet (d. 440). In his critical introduction to this first-ever English translation of the discourses, Terian presents them as an ascetic text by an anonymous abbot writing near the end of the sixth century. The very title in Armenian, Yačaxapatum Čaŕk‘, literally, “Oft-Repeated Discourses,” further validates their ascetic environment, where they were repeatedly related to novices. For want of answers to introductory questions regarding authorship and date, and because of the pervasive grammatical difficulties of the text, the document has remained largely unknown in scholarship. The discourses include many of the Eastern Fathers’ favorite theological themes. They are heavily punctuated with biblical quotations and laced with recurring biblical images and phraseology; the doctrinal and functional centrality of the Scriptures is emphasized throughout. They are replete with traditional Christian moral teachings that have acquired elements of moral philosophy transmitted through Late Antiquity. Echoes of St. Basil’s thought are heard in several of them, and some evidence of the author’s dependence on the Armenian version of the saint’s Rules, translated around the turn of the sixth century, is apparent. On the whole they show how Christians were driven by the Johannine love-command and the Pauline Spirit-guided practice of virtuous living, ever maturing in the ethos of an in-group solidarity culminating in monasticism.
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Travel writingMay 2005Riding to Jerusalem
by Bettina Selby
People have made their way to Jerusalem in many ways. Some have ridden in triumphantly as conquerors, others have come humbly on foot as pilgrims. Today many arrive cocooned in package holiday coaches. Bettina Selby did it the hard way - on a bicycle called Evans. Following the routes of the Crusaders and the early pilgrims across Europe, through Turkey, Syria and Jordan meant a long, very tough mountainous journey, but one of great natural beauty, and with endless opportunities to meet the peoples of those countries. It was a route that led past many of the most fabulous sites and cities of the ancient world - such as Byzantium, Troy, Pergamon, Palmyra, Petra, and finally, Jerusalem itself. Riding to Jerusalem combines the author’s perceptions and reflections with her sense of humour and keen relish of adventure. Not since reading Patrick Leigh Fermor have I enjoyed a travel book in which people and places, past and present are so vividly woven together Country Living
