From Hagiographies to Biographies

From Hagiographies to Biographies
Author: Ranjeeta Dutta
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780198092292

On t.p.: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.

Buddhist Hagiography in Early Japan

Buddhist Hagiography in Early Japan
Author: Jonathan Morris Augustine
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2004-10-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134352913

Hagiographies or idealized biographies which recount the lives of saints, bodhisattvas and other charismatic figures have been the meeting place for myth and experience. In medieval Europe, the 'lives of saints' were read during liturgical celebrations and the texts themselves were treated as sacred objects. In Japan, it was believed that those who read the biographies of lofty monks would acquire merit. Since hagiographies were written or compiled by 'believers', the line between fantasy and reality was often obscured. This study of the bodhisattva Gyoki - regarded as the monk who started the largest social welfare movement in Japan - illustrates how Japanese Buddhist hagiographers chose to regard a single monk's charitable activities as a miraculous achievement that shaped the course of Japanese history.

Lived Religion and Everyday Life in Early Modern Hagiographic Material

Lived Religion and Everyday Life in Early Modern Hagiographic Material
Author: Jenni Kuuliala
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2019-10-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 3030155536

This book discusses the ways in which early modern hagiographic sources can be used to study lived religion and everyday life from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. For several decades, saints’ lives, other spiritual biographies, miracle narratives, canonisation processes, iconography, and dramas, have been widely utilised in studies on medieval religious practices and social history. This fruitful material has however been overlooked in studies of the early modern period, despite the fact that it witnessed an unprecedented growth in the volume of hagiographic material. The contributors to this volume address this, and illuminate how early modern hagiographic material can be used for the study of topics such as religious life, the social history of medicine, survival strategies, domestic violence, and the religious experience of slaves.

The Fading Light of Advaita Acarya

The Fading Light of Advaita Acarya
Author: Rebecca J. Manring
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2011-06-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199837864

Rebecca J. Manring offers an illuminating study and translation of three hagiographies of Advaita Acarya, a crucial figure in the early years of the devotional Vaisnavism which originated in Bengal in the fifteenth century. Advaita Acarya was about fifty years older than the movement's putative founder, Caitanya, and is believed to have caused Caitanya's advent by ceaselessly storming heaven, calling for the divine presence to come to earth. Advaita was a scholar and highly respected pillar of society, whose status lent respectability and credibility to the new movement. A significant body of hagiographical and related literature about Advaita Acarya has developed since his death, some as late as the early twentieth century. The three hagiographic texts included in The Fading Light of Advaita Acarya examine the years of Advaita's life that did not overlap with Caitanya's lifetime, and each paints a different picture of its protagonist. Each composition clearly advocates the view that Advaita was himself divine in some way, and a few go so far as to suggest that Advaita reflected even greater divinity than Caitanya, through miraculous stories that can be found nowhere else in Bengali Vaisnava literature. Manring provides a detailed introduction to these texts, as well as remarkably faithful translations of Haricarana Dasa's Advaita Mangala, Laudiya Krsnadasa's Balya-lila-sutra, and Isana Nagara's Advaita Prakasa.

The Eminent Monk

The Eminent Monk
Author: John Kieschnick
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1997-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780824818418

In an attempt to reconstruct an elusive aspect of the medieval Chinese imagination, The Eminent Monk examines biographies of Chinese Buddhist monks, from the uncompromising ascetic to the unfathomable wonder-worker. While analyzing images of the monk in medieval China, the author addresses some questions encountered along the way: What are we to make of accounts in “eminent monk” collections of deviant monks who violate monastic precepts? Who wrote biographies of monks and who read them? How did different segments of Chinese society contend for the image of the monk and which image prevailed? By placing biographies of monks in the context of Chinese political and religious rhetoric, The Eminent Monk explores both the role of Buddhist literature in Chinese history and the monastic imagination that inspired this literature.

The Routledge Research Companion to Early Modern Spanish Women Writers

The Routledge Research Companion to Early Modern Spanish Women Writers
Author: Nieves Baranda
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 787
Release: 2017-08-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317043626

In Spain, the two hundred years that elapsed between the beginning of the early modern period and the final years of the Habsburg Empire saw a profusion of works written by women. Whether secular or religious, noble or middle class, early modern Spanish women actively composed creative works such as poetry, prose narratives, and plays. The Routledge Research Companion to Early Modern Spanish Women Writers covers the broad array of different kinds of writings – literary as well as extra-literary – that these women wrote, taking into consideration their subject positions and the cultural and historical contexts that influenced and were influenced by them. Beyond merely recognizing the individual women authors who had influence in literary, religious, and intellectual circles, this Research Companion investigates their participation in these circles through their writings, as well as the ways in which their texts informed Spain’s cultural production during the early modern period. In order to contextualize women’s writings across the historical and cultural spectrum of early modern Spain, the Research Companion is divided into six sections of general thematic interest: Women’s Worlds; Conventual Spaces; Secular Literature; Women in the Public Sphere; Private Circles; Women Travelers. Each section is subdivided into chapters that focus on specific issues or topics.

Francis of Assisi

Francis of Assisi
Author: Andre Vauchez
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2012-10-23
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0300184921

A biography of the saint as both mystic and man: “The single best book about Francis now available in English” (Commonweal). In this towering work, Andre Vauchez draws on the vast body of scholarship on Francis of Assisi, particularly the important research of recent decades, to create a complete and engaging portrait of the saint. He also explores how the memory of Francis was shaped by contemporaries who recollected him in their writings, and completes the book by setting “il Poverello” in the context of his time, bringing to light what was new, surprising, and even astonishing in the life and vision of this man. The first part of the book is a fascinating reconstruction of Francis’s life and work. The second and third parts deal with the texts—hagiographies, chronicles, sermons, personal testimonies, etc.—of writers who recorded aspects of Francis’s life and movement as they remembered them, and used those remembrances to construct a portrait of Francis relevant to their concerns. Finally, Vauchez explores those aspects of Francis’s life, personality, and spiritual vision that were unique to him, including his experience of God, his approach to nature, his understanding and use of Scripture, and his impact on culture as well as culture’s impact on him. “Considered one of the great spiritual leaders of humankind, Francis of Assisi was also a man of many faces and personas: ascetic, the founder of a religious order, a romantic hero, a mystic, a defender of the poor, a promoter of peace. But as Vauchez emphasizes—and this biography constantly reminds us—Francis was also a flesh-and-blood human being . . . A bracing, erudite account of a mystic’s life.” —Booklist

Great Immortality

Great Immortality
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2019-04-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 900439513X

Winner of the Excellence Award for Collaborative Research granted by the European Society of Comparative Literature (ESCL) In Great Immortality, twenty scholars from considerably different cultural backgrounds explore the ways in which certain poets, writers, and artists in Europe have become major figures of cultural memory. Through individual case studies, many of the contributors expand and challenge the concepts of cultural sainthood and canonization as developed by Marijan Dović and Jón Karl Helgason in National Poets, Cultural Saints: Canonization and Commemorative Cults of Writers in Europe (Brill, 2017). Even though the major focus of the book is the nineteenth-century cults of national poets, the volume examines a wide variety of cases in a very broad temporal and geographical framework – from Dante and Petrarch to the most recent attempts to sanctify artists by both the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and from the rise of a medieval Icelandic author of sagas to the veneration of a poet and national leader in Georgia. Contributors are: Bojan Baskar, Marijan Dović, Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson, David Fishelov, Jernej Habjan, Simon Halink, Jón Karl Helgason, Harald Hendrix, Andraž Jež, Marko Juvan, Alenka Koron, Roman Koropeckyj, Joep Leerssen, Christian Noack, Jaume Subirana, Magí Sunyer, Andreas Stynen, Andrei Terian, Bela Tsipuria, and Luka Vidmar.

New Approaches to Ilkhanid History

New Approaches to Ilkhanid History
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2020-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004438211

New Approaches to Ilkhanid History examines moves the study of the Ilkhanate beyond the court of the Ilkhan as well as considers new source material.

To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth

To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth
Author: Robert Ford Campany
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 1296
Release: 2002-04-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780520230347

"This book marks a new milestone in the study of Chinese religious history. Only a scholar as intelligent and dedicated as Campany would dare tackle and so eloquently translate one of the most important and difficult works of early Chinese religious history."—Paul Katz, author of Images of the Immortal: The Cult of Lu Dongbin at the Palace of Eternal Joy "This is a pathbreaking work of lasting significance to the field of Chinese religious history. The scholarship is solid and current, drawing upon the best research from America, Europe, China, and Japan. The translation is accurate, clear, and elegant, based upon an innovative analysis of surviving sources."—Terry Kleeman, author of Great Perfection: Religion and Ethnicity in a Chinese Millennial Kingdom "A competent translation of Ge Hong's hagiographies, with close attention paid to sources and editions, would already have constituted a major contribution to the field of Taoist studies. But Campany provides as well a survey of religious practices in Ge Hong's writings and a reading of the hagiographies which enables us to see the social practices that lie behind them. Together, these two works-in-one constitute the best available portrait of religion and society in early fourth-century China."—John Lagerwey, author of Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History "Campany's annotated translation of Ge Hong's (283-343) classic, the first in English, admirably captures the book's rich evocation of the religious culture of Southern China in the fourth century. Ge Hong here offers a series of case studies of what he regarded as the historical and exemplary evidence for the existence of immortals. This translation of Traditions of Divine Transcendents conveys a lively and multifaceted vision of the Taoist conception of physical immortality. The book's emphasis on practices related to the cult of the immortals and the hope for transcendence squarely places its subject in the religious life of traditional Chinese society."—Franciscus Verellen, co-editor of The Taoist Canon: A Historical Guide