The Sermons of St. Maximus of Turin

The Sermons of St. Maximus of Turin
Author: Maximus (Taurinensis, Heiliger)
Publisher: Paulist Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 1989
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780809104239

Translated from Latin. Includes bibliographical references.

Christian Solar Symbolism and Jesus the Sun of Justice

Christian Solar Symbolism and Jesus the Sun of Justice
Author: Kevin Duffy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2022-02-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567700127

This pioneering study of Christian sun symbolism describes how biblical light motifs were taken up with energy in the early Church. Kevin Duffy argues that, living in a world of 24/7 illumination, we need to reconnect with the sun and its light to appreciate the meaning of light in the Bible and Christian tradition. With such a retrieval we can appreciate Pope Francis's insistence that, like the moon, the Church does not shine with its own light, and assess the claim that the Eucharist is to be celebrated 'Ad Orientem', that is towards the rising sun in the East. Liturgy, architecture, poetry and the writings of saints and theologians such as Augustine, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, and Thomas Traherne offer abundant resources for a much needed ressourcement. While Christ was preached as the True Sun among sun-worshipping Aztecs, and the consecrated host was placed in a solar monstrance on Baroque altars, in the modern era solar themes have been neglected. In this accessible work, the author suggests that we rebalance a spiritual symbolism that has over-emphasised darkness and cloud at the expense of light and sun. He proposes a creative retrieval of the traditional title of Christ as the Sun of Justice. This title blends the personal, the social and the cosmic/ecological, and speaks powerfully to a secularising era that contemporaries Friedrich Nietzsche and Thérèse of Lisieux both described as one where the sun does not shine.

The Reform of the Frankish Church

The Reform of the Frankish Church
Author: Martin A. Claussen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521839310

Chrodegang of Metz (c. 712-766) was a leading figure of the late Merovingian and early Carolingian Church. Born to one of the principal aristocratic families in Austrasia, he served as referendary of Charles Martel, and was appointed bishop of Metz in the 740s. As bishop, Chrodegang became one of the foremost churchmen in Francia, chairing councils, founding monasteries, and beginning a reform of the lives of the canons of the Metz cathedral. This book is a major study in the English language on Chrodegang, examining his preoccupation with the creation of communities of faith and concord modelled on the early Church. It explores his attempts to unite the Frankish episcopacy, his rule for the cathedral clergy in Metz - the Regula canonicorum - and his introduction of new liturgical practices that sought to transform his see into a hagiopolis, a holy city which provided a model for later Carolingian reform.

Six Sermons

Six Sermons
Author: António Vieira
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190858567

António Vieira was a Jesuit born in Lisbon in 1608 who lived and worked in both Europe and Brazil in the service of the church and the Portuguese crown. His sermons are among the most renowned pieces of baroque oratory in the Portuguese language. This volume translates six of them into English, fully annotated, for the first time. These texts illuminate Vieira's visionary thought on social and spiritual matters.

Between Pagan and Christian

Between Pagan and Christian
Author: Christopher P. Jones
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2014-03-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0674369521

For the early Christians, “pagan” referred to a multitude of unbelievers: Greek and Roman devotees of the Olympian gods, and “barbarians” such as Arabs and Germans with their own array of deities. But while these groups were clearly outsiders or idolaters, who and what was pagan depended on the outlook of the observer, as Christopher Jones shows in this fresh and penetrating analysis. Treating paganism as a historical construct rather than a fixed entity, Between Pagan and Christian uncovers the ideas, rituals, and beliefs that Christians and pagans shared in Late Antiquity. While the emperor Constantine’s conversion in 312 was a momentous event in the history of Christianity, the new religion had been gradually forming in the Roman Empire for centuries, as it moved away from its Jewish origins and adapted to the dominant pagan culture. Early Christians drew on pagan practices and claimed important pagans as their harbingers—asserting that Plato, Virgil, and others had glimpsed Christian truths. At the same time, Greeks and Romans had encountered in Judaism observances and beliefs shared by Christians such as the Sabbath and the idea of a single, creator God. Polytheism was the most obvious feature separating paganism and Christianity, but pagans could be monotheists, and Christians could be accused of polytheism and branded as pagans. In the diverse religious communities of the Roman Empire, as Jones makes clear, concepts of divinity, conversion, sacrifice, and prayer were much more fluid than traditional accounts of early Christianity have led us to believe.

Scenting Salvation

Scenting Salvation
Author: Susan Ashbrook Harvey
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2015-08-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520287568

This book explores the role of bodily, sensory experience in early Christianity (first – seventh centuries AD) by focusing on the importance of smell in ancient Mediterranean culture. Following its legalization in the fourth century Roman Empire, Christianity cultivated a dramatically flourishing devotional piety, in which the bodily senses were utilized as crucial instruments of human-divine interaction. Rich olfactory practices developed as part of this shift, with lavish uses of incense, holy oils, and other sacred scents. At the same time, Christians showed profound interest in what smells could mean. How could the experience of smell be construed in revelatory terms? What specifically could it convey? How and what could be known through smell? Scenting Salvation argues that ancient Christians used olfactory experience for purposes of a distinctive religious epistemology: formulating knowledge of the divine in order to yield, in turn, a particular human identity. Using a wide array of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian sources, Susan Ashbrook Harvey examines the ancient understanding of smell through religious rituals, liturgical practices, mystagogical commentaries, literary imagery, homiletic conventions; scientific, medical, and cosmological models; ascetic disciplines, theological discourse, and eschatological expectations. In the process, she argues for a richer appreciation of ancient notions of embodiment, and of the roles the body might serve in religion.

Apocrypha

Apocrypha
Author: Sever Voicu
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 603
Release: 2014-02-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830897402

While the canonical status of the Apocrypha has been understood differently within Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox traditions, their longstanding use within the Christian churches makes them worthy of careful study and reflection. This ACCS volume presents a worthy feast of patristic comment on these ancient and important texts.

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon
Author: J. Robert Wright
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2014-02-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830897348

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon were all thought by the early church fathers to have derived from the hand of Solomon. To their minds the finest wisdom about the deeper issues of life was to be found in these books. This ACCS volume offers a rich trove of wisdom on Wisdom literature for the enrichment of the church today.

The Twelve Prophets

The Twelve Prophets
Author: Alberto Ferreiro
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2014-02-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830897399

The church fathers mined the Old Testament throughout for prophetic utterances regarding the Messiah, but few books yielded as much messianic ore as the Twelve Prophets, sometimes known as the Minor Prophets. In this rich and vital ACCS volume you will find excerpts, some translated here into English for the first time, from more than thirty church fathers.

The Place of Judas Iscariot in Christology

The Place of Judas Iscariot in Christology
Author: Anthony Cane
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351884182

Exploring the significance of Judas Iscariot for Christian theology and the difficult issues surrounding Judas, Anthony Cane shows that focusing on the tension between providential and tragic interpretations of Judas in the New Testament and in subsequent writing about Judas, is the key to understanding his significance. Building on the work of Karl Barth and Donald MacKinnon, Cane's argument sheds light not simply on the way Judas is understood, but on the way Jesus and the whole economy of salvation are understood. This book also highlights implications for the way in which issues relating to anti-Semitism and evil and suffering are most effectively explored.