Angela of Foligno (c. 1248-1309) is one of the most outstanding representatives of the Franciscan and Christian mystical tradition. Her Book, published here in English for the first time, describes her passionate love affair with the "suffering God-man," and her teachings in the form of letters and exhortations to her spiritual progeny.
Angela of Foligno has risen from relative obscurity to a prominent rank among the most significant representatives of the Franciscan and Christian mystical tradition.
The powerful voice of major Italian medieval woman mystic, translated with commentary. Angela of Foligno is considered by many as the greatest mystical voice among Italian medieval women. She devoted herself to a relentless pursuit of God when as a middle-aged woman she lost her mother, husband and children; illiterate herself, she dictated her experiences to her confessor, who transcribed her words into Latin as the Memorial. In a direct and vigorous style, it tells of her suffering, visions, joy, identification with Christ, and finally her mystical union with God. However, her book has always been viewed with suspicion, indeed even bordering on heresy; her spirituality goes beyond conventional language as well as beyond accepted doctrines and modes of prayer. This annotated selection from the Memorial is preceded by a biographical introduction which places Angela's text in its historical, cultural, and spiritual context; the accompanying interpretive essay which follows compares Angela's experience with that of twentieth-century Christian feminist theologians. The volume is completed with an annotated bibliography. CRISTINA MAZZONI is Professor and Chair, Department of Romance Languagesand Linguistics at the University of Vermont.
The powerful voice of major Italian medieval woman mystic, translated with commentary. Angela of Foligno is considered by many as the greatest mystical voice among Italian medieval women. She devoted herself to a relentless pursuit of God when as a middle-aged woman she lost her mother, husband and children; illiterate herself, she dictated her experiences to her confessor, who transcribed her words into Latin as the Memorial. In a direct and vigorous style, it tells of her suffering, visions, joy, identification with Christ, and finally her mystical union with God. However, her book has always been viewed with suspicion, indeed even bordering on heresy; her spirituality goes beyond conventional language as well as beyond accepted doctrines and modes of prayer. This annotated selection from the Memorial is preceded by a biographical introduction which places Angela's text in its historical, cultural, and spiritual context; the accompanying interpretive essay which follows compares Angela's experience with that of twentieth-century Christian feminist theologians. The volume is completed with an annotated bibliography. CRISTINA MAZZONI is Professor and Chair, Department of Romance Languagesand Linguistics at the University of Vermont.
Angela of Foligno has risen from relative obscurity to a prominent rank among the most significant representatives of the Franciscan and Christian mystical tradition.
WHAT is the secret and so potent attraction of the Saints? Renan says somewhere that he would have given everything he had to have seen St. Mary of Egypt pacing the desert in ecstasy, half-starved and turned to the semblance of Nebuchadnezzar. And Renan liberally discounted the value, not only of Theology, but also of the particular virtue, the loss of which had driven that Saint to such an unusual mode of life. The interest in sanctity evidently survives theological and ethical pre-occupations. Indeed, to-day, the Saint is perhaps an object of higher intrinsic interest to " unbelievers" than to the faithful. For to the faithful he is primarily useful, either as being efficacious in various troubles of life or, on a higher plane, as a sort of spiritual agent, obtaining graces for his clients. o admirabile commercium! But, like everything else, this celestial intercourse suffers from the defects of its qualities. I do not wish to be understood as making light of superstition. The humblest blossom of that luxuriant garden is of infinite value, nor do the roots of our most highly rationalised opinions grow outside it. Nevertheless the important position of the Saint in the Catholic economy does tend to conceal his real personality from his worshippers.' He inevitably tends to be considered more as a means to an end, than as an object intrinsically worthy of contemplation. In these circumstances the actual historical value of his personality is apt to be obscured by legend and fancy. Legend, of course, if at all contemporaneous, is of the highest value as illustrating his effect on those with whom he came in contact. We could ill spare in the life of St. Francis the Wolf of Gubbio. Modern devotional fancy is less illuminative. It throws no light upon the character of St. Anthony of Padua to learn that centuries after his death he recovered some papers lost by that devout man King Charles II. What then is it that constitutes the intrinsic interest of the Saint when his supernatural value has gone? One reason, I think, for this interest is that the Saint represents, in a quite unique manner, the satisfaction of a desire which all men more or less obscurely feel. Ever since man emerged from amid the labyrinth of irrational forces, which, until his appearance, determined the evolution of life on the planet, he has sought for power. Power at first over the hostile or indifferent nature which surrounded him, over the stream, the spark of fire, the wild bear: then over his fellow-men, and, at length, when he began to turn his gaze inwards, over himself. It is noticeable that all the really primitive myths divinised various aspects of power, celebrated the triumph of force. As the social arts began to develop, and, among them, of sheer necessity, morality, men began to attribute moral qualities to the force which they felt around them, above them, and within them. "N'ayant pas pu faire que Ie juste soit fort, nous avons fait que Ie fort soit juste," says Pascal. This attribution, however, no less than morality itself, was an afterthought unconsciously conceived in the interest of his self-preservation-for, without morality of some sort, man would soon have disappeared before the wolf and the bear. And, by giving the ultimate sanction of force to his social rule of thumb, he naively betrayed his intuition that that ultimate force was the more fundamental reality.
Angela of Foligno (c. 1248-1309) is one of the most outstanding representatives of the Franciscan and Christian mystical tradition. Her Book, published here in English for the first time, describes her passionate love affair with the "suffering God-man," and her teachings in the form of letters and exhortations to her spiritual progeny.
Health, Sickness, Medicine and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries explores the attitudes and responses of the mendicant orders to illness, their contribution to medical history, the influence of health and sickness as a factor in the orders' decision making, the extent of their participation in treatments, their relationship with physicians or their own involvement in medical practice, and the problems which occurred as a result of these matters. Apart from brief details of the last illness noted in some convent obituaries, the sick friar is usually conspicuous by his absence from the records. This book addresses this absence. By focusing on these neglected aspects of the mendicant orders it is possible to begin to reconstruct their attitudes and practices towards sickness, health and medical treatment. In so doing, a picture begins to emerge which provides a much fuller understanding of both mendicant and wider medical history. Through such an approach, the book demonstrates how preserving health as well as treating illness were matters of interrelated and vital concern to the friars, a concern that coincided with a rising interest in health matters in wider society during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
This work offers the first English-language survey of the book industry in Renaissance Italy. Whereas traditional accounts of the book in the Renaissance celebrate authors and literary achievement, this study examines the nuts and bolts of a rapidly expanding trade that built on existing economic practices while developing new mechanisms in response to political and religious realities. Approaching the book trade from the perspective of its publishers and booksellers, this archive-based account ranges across family ambitions and warehouse fires to publishers' petitions and convivial bookshop conversation. In the process it constructs a nuanced picture of trading networks, production, and the distribution and sale of printed books, a profitable but capricious commodity. Originally published in Italian as Il commercio librario nell’Italia del Rinascimento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1998; second, revised ed., 2003), this present English translation has not only been updated but has also been deeply revised and augmented.
This book examines the collection of prayers known as the Qumran Hodayot (= Thanksgiving Hymns) in light of ancient visionary traditions, new developments in neuropsychology, and post-structuralist understandings of the embodied subject. The thesis of this book is that the ritualized reading of reports describing visionary experiences written in the first person "I" had the potential to create within the ancient reader the subjectivity of a visionary which can then predispose him to have a religious experience. This study examines how references to the body and the strategic arousal of emotions could have functioned within a practice of performative reading to engender a religious experience of ascent. In so doing, this book offers new interdisciplinary insights into meditative ritual reading as a religious practice for transformation in antiquity.
Scholars have traditionally viewed the Italian Renaissance artist as a gifted, but poorly educated craftsman whose complex and demanding works were created with the assistance of a more educated advisor. These assumptions are, in part, based on research that has focused primarily on the artist's social rank and workshop training. In this volume, Angela Dressen explores the range of educational opportunities that were available to the Italian Renaissance artist. Considering artistic formation within the history of education, Dressen focuses on the training of highly skilled, average artists, revealing a general level of learning that was much more substantial than has been assumed. She emphasizes the role of mediators who had a particular interest in augmenting artists' knowledge, and highlights how artists used Latin and vernacular texts to gain additional knowledge that they avidly sought. Dressen's volume brings new insights into a topic at the intersection of early modern intellectual, educational, and art history.
This book provides an exploration of the historical conditions that gradually defined subordinating symbols and conflictual values in social relations between the sexes. It reveals how snakes and the gelid eyes of Medusa—the archetypical snake-woman—have reverberated across the visual arts and written sources throughout the ages in association with negative emotions: fear, anger, scorn and shame. The outcomes and implications of the disturbing correlation between the dangerous female gaze, the malignitas of the snake and the lethal power of menstruation that have been woven through the fabric of the Western imaginary are analysed here. This analysis reveals an intriguing history of female reptilian hybrids—from the pleasing Minoan snake goddesses to the depressing Gorgon, Echidna, Amazons, Eve, Melusine, Basilisk, Poison-Damsel, Catoblepas and Sadako/Samara—and gives the reader an opportunity to explore things that never happened but have always been.
Burke's career spanned a key period in Canadian architecture as the profession transcended its colonial beginnings to reach maturity with Canadian-born practitioners who converted both American architectural developments and European traditions into forms appropriate to the new Canadian federation. Burke's contributions to Canadian architecture include introducing the technology of the "Chicago men" to Canada and helping to establish a formal professional organization for architects in Ontario. Carr documents a comprehensive selection of Burke's works, including his firm's famous Robert Simpson store in Toronto, the first curtain-wall construction in Canada. She places Burke's life and career within the larger social context, addressing the influence of American architects and architecture, the sociology of professions, the organization of architectural offices, and the history of particular building forms. Toronto Architect Edmund Burke is not only a study of Burke's life and work; it is also an insightful look into the history of Canadian architecture.
In Literature and Artistic Practice in the Sixteenth Century Angela Cerasuolo, art historian and restorer, tracks the technical processes of painting through the cross-analysis of literary texts and works of art. Having traced the critical fortunes of the texts of the authors—Leonardo, Vasari, Armenini, Borghini, Lomazzo—she compares the information on drawing and painting, analysing the specific terminology, and identifying the materials and methods. Central themes of the theoretical debate—‘disegno’, ‘invenzione’, the contrast between ‘prestezza’ and ‘diligenza’, the ‘paragone’—are examined in the light of their relationship with the techniques. On the basis of scientific studies on the technical execution of paintings, works from the Capodimonte Museum, Naples are analysed as case studies.
Medieval Literature: The Basics is an engaging introduction to this fascinating body of literature. The volume breaks down the variety of genres used in the corpus of medieval literature and makes these texts accessible to readers. It engages with the familiarities present in the narratives and connects these ideas with a contemporary, twenty-first century audience. The volume also addresses contemporary medievalism to show the presence of medieval literature in contemporary culture, such as film, television, games, and novels. From Dante and Chaucer to Christine de Pisan, this book deals with questions such as: What is medieval literature? What are some of the key topics and genres of medieval literature? How did it evolve as technology, such as the printing press, developed? How has it remained relevant in the twenty-first century? Medieval Literature: The Basics is an ideal introduction for students coming to the subject for the first time, while also acting as a springboard from which deeper interaction with medieval literature can be developed.
Animated by a luminous goddess at its center, the diva film provided a forum for denouncing social evils and exploring new models of behavior among the sexes...Dalle Vacche offers the first authoritative study of this important film genre of the cinema that preceded the First World War...Contrasting the Italian diva with the Hollywood vamp Theda Bara and the famous Danish star Asta Nielsen, Dalle Vacche shows how the diva oscillates between articulating Henri Bergson's vibrant life-force and representing the suffering figure of the Catholic mater dolorosa." -- Cover.
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