Download or read book Cross Cultural Perspectives on Hagiographical Strategies written by Massimo A. Rondolino and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the potential of conducting studies in comparative hagiology, through parallel literary and historical analyses of spiritual life writings pertaining to distinct religious contexts. In particular, it focuses on a comparative analysis of the early sources on the medieval Christian Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) and the Tibetan Buddhist Milarepa (c. 1052-1135), up to and including the so-called ‘standard versions’ of their life stories written by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221-1274) and Tsangnyön Heruka (1452-1507) respectively. The book thus demonstrates how in the social and religious contexts of both 1200s Italy and 1400s Tibet, narratives of the lives, deeds and teachings of two individuals recognized as spiritual champions were seen as the most effective means to promote spiritual, doctrinal and political agendas. Therefore, as well being highly relevant to those studying hagiographical sources, this book will be of interest to scholars working across the fields of religion and the comparative study of religious phenomena, as well as history and literature in the pre-modern period.

Download or read book Saints as Intercessors between the Wealthy and the Divine written by Emily Kelley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering snapshots of mercantile devotion to saints in different regions, this volume is the first to ask explicitly how merchants invoked saints, and why. Despite medieval and modern stereotypes of merchants as godless and avaricious, medieval traders were highly devout – and rightly so. Overseas trade was dangerous, and merchants’ commercial activities were seen as jeopardizing their souls. Merchants turned to saints for protection and succor, identifying those most likely to preserve their goods, families, reputations, and souls. The essays in this collection, written from diverse angles, range across later medieval western Europe, from Spain to Italy to England and the Hanseatic League. They offer a multi-disciplinary examination of the ways that medieval merchants, from petty traders to influential overseas wholesalers, deployed the cults of saints. Three primary themes are addressed: danger, community, and the unity of spiritual and cultural capital. Each of these themes allows the international panel of contributors to demonstrate the significant role of saints in mercantile life. This book is unique in its exploration of saints and commerce, shedding light on the everyday role religion played in medieval life. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of religious history, medieval history, art history, and literature.

Download or read book Comparative Hagiology written by Massimo Rondolino and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Special Issue engages with questions of theory and methods in the comparative, cross-cultural study of hagiographical sources. As such, it offers, first and foremost, the venue for conducting a scientific discussion on a (re)definition of "hagiography". It also allows for the identification of shared approaches and methodologies in the study of material that may be apprehended through this categorization, as an effective strategy for the study of religious phenomena. To achieve this, the present volume brings together a selected number of scholars, whose work focuses on the theoretical study of "hagiography" and the historical examination of hagiographical sources. In this Special Issue, five core essays put forward propositions for the comparative and cross-cultural (re)definition of "hagiography", to which further contributors respond, eventually providing a vibrant collaborative debate on a core theoretical and methodological issue in religious studies at large.

Download or read book Comparative Methods in Law Humanities and Social Sciences written by Adams, Maurice and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-19 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cutting-edge book facilitates debate amongst scholars in law, humanities and social sciences, where comparative methodology is far less well anchored in most areas compared to other research methods. It posits that these are disciplines in which comparative research is not simply a bonus, but is of the essence.

Download or read book New Saints in Late Mediaeval Venice 1200 1500 written by Karen E. McCluskey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the comparatively unknown cults of new saints in late-mediaeval Venice. These new saints were near-contemporary citizens who were venerated by their compatriots without official sanction from the papacy. In doing so, the book uncovers a sub-culture of religious expression that has been overlooked in previous scholarship. The study highlights a myriad of hagiographical materials, both visual and textual, created to honour these new saints by members of four different Venetian communities: The Republican government; the monastic orders, mostly Benedictine; the mendicant orders; and local parishes. By scrutinising the hagiographic portraits described in painted vita panels, written vitae, passiones, votive images, sermons and sepulchre monuments, as well as archival and historical resources, the book identifies a specifically Venetian typology of sanctity tied to the idiosyncrasies of the city’s site and history. By focusing explicitly on local typological traits, the book produces an intimate and complex portrait of Venetian society and offers a framework for exploring the lived religious experience of late-mediaeval societies beyond the lagoon. As a result, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Venice, lived religion, hagiography, mediaeval history and visual culture.

Download or read book The Cult of Thomas Becket written by Kay Brainerd Slocum and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 29 December, 1170, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was brutally murdered in his own cathedral. News of the event was rapidly disseminated throughout Europe, generating a widespread cult which endured until the reign of Henry VIII in the sixteenth century, and engendering a fascination which has lasted until the present day. The Cult of Thomas Becket: History and Historiography through Eight Centuries contributes to the lengthy debate surrounding the saint by providing a historiographical analysis of the major themes in Becket scholarship, tracing the development of Becket studies from the writings of the twelfth-century biographers to those of scholars of the twenty-first century. The book offers a thorough commentary and analysis which demonstrates how the Canterbury martyr was viewed by writers of previous generations as well as our own, showing how they were influenced by the intellectual trends and political concerns of their eras, and indicating how perceptions of Thomas Becket have changed over time. In addition, several chapters are devoted a discussion of artworks in various media devoted to the saint, as well as liturgies and sermons composed in his honor. Combining a wide historical scope with detailed textual analysis, this book will be of great interest to scholars of medieval religious history, art history, liturgy, sanctity and hagiography.

Download or read book Peter Paul Rubens and the Counter Reformation Crisis of the Beati moderni written by Ruth S. Noyes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-18 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Paul Rubens and the Crisis of the Beati Moderni takes up the question of the issues involved in the formation of recent saints - or Beati moderni (modern Blesseds) as they were called - by the Jesuits and Oratorians in the new environment of increased strictures and censorship that developed after the Council of Trent with respect to legal canonization procedures and cultic devotion to the saints. Ruth Noyes focuses particularly on how the new regulations pertained to the creation of emerging cults of those not yet canonized, the so-called Beati moderni, such as Jesuit founders Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola, and Filippo Neri, founder of the Oratorians. Centrally involved in the book is the question of the fate and meaning of the two altarpiece paintings commissioned by the Oratorians from Peter Paul Rubens. The Congregation rejected his first altarpiece because it too specifically identified Filippo Neri as a cult figure to be venerated (before his actual canonization) and thus was caught up in the politics of cult formation and the papacy’s desire to control such pre-canonization cults. The book demonstrates that Rubens' second altarpiece, although less overtly depicting Neri as a saint, was if anything more radical in the claims it made for him. Peter Paul Rubens and the Crisis of the Beati Moderni offers the first comparative study of Jesuit and Oratorian images of their respective would-be saints, and the controversy they ignited across Church hierarchies. It is also the first work to examine provocative Philippine imagery and demonstrate how its bold promotion specifically triggered the first wave of curial censure in 1602.

Download or read book Buddhist Literature as Philosophy Buddhist Philosophy as Literature written by Rafal K. Stepien and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-11-01 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can literature reveal reality? Is philosophical truth a literary artifice? How does the way we think affect what we can know? Buddhism has been grappling with these questions for centuries, and this book attempts to answer them by exploring the relationship between literature and philosophy across the classical and contemporary Buddhist worlds of India, Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, and North America. Written by leading scholars, the book examines literary texts composed over two millennia, ranging in form from lyric verse, narrative poetry, panegyric, hymn, and koan, to novel, hagiography, (secret) autobiography, autofiction, treatise, and sutra, all in sustained conversation with topics in metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophies of mind, language, literature, and religion. Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural, this book deliberately works across and against the boundaries separating three mainstays of humanistic pursuit—literature, philosophy, and religion—by focusing on the multiple relationships at play between content and form in works drawn from a truly diverse range of philosophical schools, literary genres, religious cultures, and historical eras. Overall, the book calls into question the very ways in which we do philosophy, study literature, and think about religious texts. It shows that Buddhist thought provides sophisticated responses to some of the perennial problems regarding how we find, create, and apply meaning—on the page, in the mind, and throughout our lives.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Buddhist Christian Studies written by Carol Anderson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-30 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhist-Christian dialogue has a long and complex history that stretches back to the first centuries of the common era. Comprising 42 international and disciplinarily diverse chapters, this volume begins by setting up a framework for examining the nature of Buddhist-Christian interreligious dialogue, discussing how research in this area has been conducted in the past and considering future theoretical directions. Subsequent chapters delve into: important episodes in the history of Buddhist-Christian dialogue; contemporary conversations such as monastic interreligious dialogue, multiple religious identity, and dual religious practice; and Buddhist-Christian cooperation in social justice, social engagement, pastoral care, and interreligious education settings. The volume closes with a section devoted to comparative and constructive explorations of different speculative themes that range from the theological to the philosophical or experiential. This handbook explores how the study of Buddhist-Christian relations has been and ought to be done. The Routledge Handbook of Buddhist-Christian Studies is essential reading for researchers and students interested in Buddhist-Christian studies, Asian religions, and interreligious relationships. It will be of interest to those in fields such as anthropology, political science, theology, and history.

Download or read book Shared Devotion Shared Food written by Jon Keune and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Hindu devotional or bhakti traditions welcomed marginalized people-women, low castes, and Dalits-were they promoting social equality? In this book, Jon Keune deftly examines the root of this deceptively simple question. The modern formulation of the bhakti-caste question is what Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar had in mind when he concluded that the saints promoted spiritual equality but did not transform society. While taking Ambedkar's judgment seriously, Jon Keune argues that, when viewed in the context of intellectual history and social practice, the bhakti-caste question is more complex. Shared Devotion, Shared Food explores how people in western India wrestled for centuries with two competing values: a theological vision that God welcomes all people, and the social hierarchy of the caste system. Keune examines the ways in which food and stories about food were important sites where this debate played out, particularly when people of high and low social status ate together. By studying Marathi manuscripts, nineteenth-century publications, plays, and films, Shared Devotion, Shared Food reveals how the question of caste, inclusivity, and equality was formulated in different ways over the course of three centuries, and it explores why social equality remains so elusive in practice.

Download or read book Considering Comparison written by Oliver Freiberger and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-02 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The comparative method is an integral part of religious studies. All the technical terms that scholars of religion use on a daily basis, such as ritual, hagiography, shrine, authority, fundamentalism, hybridity, and, of course, religion, are comparative terms. Yet comparison has been subject to criticism, including postcolonialist and postmodernist critiques. Older approaches are said to have used comparison primarily to confirm preconceptions about religion. More recently, comparison has been criticized as an act of abstraction that does injustice to the particular, neglects differences, and establishes a mostly Western power of definition over the rest of the world. In this book, Oliver Freiberger takes a closer look at how comparison works. Revisiting critical debates and examining reflections in other disciplines, including comparative history, sociology, comparative theology, and anthropology, Freiberger proposes a model of comparison that is based on a thorough epistemological analysis and that takes both the scholar's situatedness and his or her agency seriously. Examining numerous examples of comparative studies, Considering Comparison develops a methodological framework for conducting and evaluating such studies. Freiberger suggests a comparative approach - which he calls discourse comparison - that confronts the omnipresent risks of decontextualization, essentialization, and universalization. This book makes a case for comparison, arguing that it is indispensable for a deeper analytical understanding of what we call religion. The book is intended to enrich the practice of both aspiring and seasoned comparativists, stimulate much-needed further discussions about comparative methodology, and encourage more scholars to produce responsible comparative studies.

Download or read book The World s Greatest Religious Leaders 2 volumes written by Scott E. Hendrix and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides reliable information about important world religious leaders, correcting the misinformation that can be on the internet. Religious leaders have shaped the course of history and deeply affected the lives of many individuals. This book offers alphabetically arranged profiles of roughly 160 religious leaders from around the world and across time, carefully chosen for their impact and importance and to maximize inclusiveness of faiths from around the world. Scholars from around the world, each one an expert in his or her field and all holding advanced degrees, came together to create an essential resource for students and for those with an interest in religion and its history. Every entry has been carefully edited in a two-stage review process, guaranteeing accuracy and readability throughout the work. Not strictly a biographical reference that recounts the facts of religious figures' lives, the book helps users understand how the selected figures changed history. The entries are accompanied by excerpts of primary source documents and suggestions for further reading, while the book closes with a bibliography of essential print and electronic resources for further research.

Download or read book Hagiography and the History of Latin Christendom 500 1500 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hagiography and the History of Latin Christendom, 500–1500 shows the historical value of texts celebrating saints—both the most abundant medieval source material and among the most difficult to use. Hagiographical sources present many challenges: they are usually anonymous, often hard to date, full of topoi, and unstable. Moreover, they are generally not what we would consider factually accurate. The volume’s twenty-one contributions draw on a range of disciplines and employ a variety of innovative methods to address these challenges and reach new discoveries about the medieval world that extend well beyond the study of sanctity. They show the rich potential of hagiography to enhance our knowledge of that world, and some of the ways to unlock it. Contributors are Ellen Arnold, Helen Birkett, Edina Bozoky, Emma Campbell, Adrian Cornell du Houx, David Defries, Albrecht Diem, Cynthia Hahn, Samantha Kahn Herrick, J.K. Kitchen, Jamie Kreiner, Klaus Krönert, Mathew Kuefler, Katherine J. Lewis, Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, Charles Mériaux, Paul Oldfield, Sara Ritchey, Catherine Saucier, Laura Ackerman Smoller, and Ineke van ‘t Spijker. See inside the book.

Download or read book Hokusai s Great Wave written by Christine M. E. Guth and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-01-31 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hokusai’s “Great Wave,” as it is commonly known today, is arguably one of Japan’s most successful exports, its commanding cresting profile instantly recognizable no matter how different its representations in media and style. In this richly illustrated and highly original study, Christine Guth examines the iconic wave from its first publication in 1831 through the remarkable range of its articulations, arguing that it has been a site where the tensions, contradictions, and, especially, the productive creativities of the local and the global have been negotiated and expressed. She follows the wave’s trajectory across geographies, linking its movements with larger political, economic, technological, and sociocultural developments. Adopting a case study approach, Guth explores issues that map the social life of the iconic wave across time and place, from the initial reception of the woodblock print in Japan, to the image’s adaptations as part of “international nationalism,” its place in American perceptions of Japan, its commercial adoption for lifestyle branding, and finally to its identification as a tsunami, bringing not culture but disaster in its wake. Wide ranging in scope yet grounded in close readings of disparate iterations of the wave, multidisciplinary and theoretically informed in its approach, Hokusai’s Great Wave will change both how we look at this global icon and the way we study the circulation of Japanese prints. This accessible and engagingly written work moves beyond the standard hagiographical approach to recognize, as categories of analysis, historical and geographic contingency as well as visual and technical brilliance. It is a book that will interest students of Japan and its culture and more generally those seeking fresh perspectives on the dynamics of cultural globalization.

Download or read book Death and Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism written by Tanya Zivkovic and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contextualising the seemingly esoteric and exotic aspects of Tibetan Buddhist culture within the everyday, embodied and sensual sphere of religious praxis, this book centres on the social and religious lives of deceased Tibetan Buddhist lamas. It explores how posterior forms – corpses, relics, reincarnations and hagiographical representations – extend a lama’s trajectory of lives and manipulate biological imperatives of birth and death. The book looks closely at previously unexamined figures whose history is relevant to a better understanding of how Tibetan culture navigates its own understanding of reincarnation, the veneration of relics and different social roles of different types of practitioners. It analyses both the minutiae of everyday interrelations between lamas and their devotees, specifically noted in ritual performances and the enactment of lived tradition, and the sacred hagiographical conventions that underpin local knowledge. A phenomenology of Tibetan Buddhist life, the book provides an ethnography of the everyday embodiment of Tibetan Buddhism. This unusual approach offers a valuable and a genuine new perspective on Tibetan Buddhist culture and is of interest to researchers in the fields of social/cultural anthropology and religious, Buddhist and Tibetan studies.

Download or read book Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-09-07 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain gathers a series of studies on the interplay between gender, sanctity and exemplarity in regard to literary production in the Iberian peninsula. The first section examines how women were con¬strued as saintly examples through narratives, mostly composed by male writers; the second focuses on the use made of exemplary life-accounts by women writers in order to fashion their own social identity and their role as authors. The volume includes studies on relevant models (Mary Magdalen, Virgin Mary, living saints), means of transmission, sponsorship and agency (reading circles, print, patronage), and female writers (Leonor López de Córdoba, Isabel de Villena, Teresa of Ávila) involved in creating textual exemplars for women. Contributors are: Pablo Acosta-García, Andrew M. Beresford, Jimena Gamba Corradine, Ryan D. Giles, María Morrás, Lesley K. Twomey, Roa Vidal Doval, and Christopher van Ginhoven Rey.

Download or read book Counter Reformation Sanctity in Global and Material Perspective written by Ruth Sargent Noyes and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-29 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the making of saints’ cults in the early modern world from an interdisciplinary perspective, considering the entangled roles of materiality and globalization processes. It brings together work across diverse media, objects, and materials as well as communities, cultures, and geographies to reframe a more synoptic, materials-centric, and comparative history of the making and remaking of saints’ cults, with a special focus on the long Counter-Reformation. The contributions engage with dynamics of local and universal and draw attention to the vital role of textual, visual, and material hagiographies in the creation and promotion of saints’ and would-be saints’ cults. The book fosters novel conceptualizations and cross-pollination of ideas across traditions, regions, and disciplines and expands hagiography’s horizons by reconsidering canonical saintly figures and reframing lesser-known cults of saints and would-be saints. The book will be of interest to scholars of religious and early modern history as well as art history and visual and material studies.