Church History
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Women Officeholders In Early Christianity
$49.95Add to cartWomen Officeholders in Early Christianity is a scholarly investigation of the evidence for women holding offices of authority in the first several centuries of Christianity. Ute Eisen focuses on inscriptions and documentary papyri (private letters, official documents, contracts, and other such pieces) that have scarcely been considered before.
Eisen presents the first extensive documentation of selected Greek and Latin inscriptions, plus a few documentary papyri, that witness to the existence of Christian women officeholders. The intent is to show the multiplicity of titles borne by women and to illustrate the narrowness of previous research on this topic. A single chapter is devoted to each of the titles of office or functional designations found in the sources. The epigraphical, papyrological, and literary witnesses are accordingly grouped by function. Topics are “Apostles,” “Prophets,” “Teachers of Theology,” “Presbyters,” “Enrolled Widows,” “Deacons,” “Bishops,” and “Stewards.”
Central to Women Officeholders in Early Christianity are the epigraphical witnesses. To this point they have been only marginally incorporated into research on women officeholders in the Church. In order to ensure correct interpretation, the majority of the inscriptions discussed have extensive documentation. They are organized geographically and chronologically. Besides the documentation they are commented on in the context of the existing literary sources. The book concludes with a chapter entitled “Source-Oriented Perspectives for a History of Christian Women Officeholders.” The book also includes a bibliography of reference works, primary sources, and secondary sources.
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Heaven Begins With You
$14.95Add to cartThe Christian hermits, ascetics, and monks of early history had deep insight into the nature and aspirations of humankind. Drawing on their experiences in the cloisters of the desert they became sought after mentors, teachers, and spiritual guides. This book is filled with poignant wisdom stories relating their message to modern daily life.
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14 Holy Helpers
$9.89Add to cartThe stories and special intercessory powers of 14 early Saint-Martyrs invoked for numerous special needs, such that they came to be called “The 14 Holy Helpers.” St. Barbara, St. Blaise, St. Christopher, St. George, St. Catherine, etc. They are invoked against throat ailments, lightning, diabolical possession, fire, family troubles, etc. Includes prayers to each Saint. This book links the present age to the earliest centuries of the Church. Impr.
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Western Monasticism : A History Of The Monastic Movement In The Latin Churc
$49.95Add to cartChristians have been drawn to monastic life nearly as long as Christianity has existed. Dedicating themselves to prayer, meditation, and good works, men and women in many diverse times and places have been willing to abstain from marriage, sexual relations, and personal ownership to serve God singlemindedly.
In this overview of the Latin tradition, Peter King, emeritus senior lecturer of medieval history at Saint Andrew’s University, leads readers quickly but deftly along the rugged monastic road from late antique Egypt to the present day, passing through spectacular expansion in medieval Europe, dissolution during the Reformation, retrenchment at the Counter Reformation, condemnation during the Enlightenment, destruction at the hands of revolutionaries, refoundation and new vigor during the nineteenth and the ecumenical twentieth centuries.
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Treasures From The Storeroom
$27.95Add to cartDo we really know about religion in the Middle Ages? Gary Macy suggests that what most people believe about the Church of the Middle Ages is actually wrong or founded on the perspective of one figure, Aquinas. Now, after two decades of research, Macy explores the truth about medieval religion and the Eucharist in Treasures from the Storeroom, an intriguing look into the forgotten areas of our Christian heritage. Using a wide range of original sources for these articles, Macy discusses such topics as theology, devotion, ecclesiology, and historical methodology.
This collection of eight essays provides an important backdrop to the plenary address, “The Eucharist and Popular Devotion,” presented at the 1997 national convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA), since several themes raised in that address are actually summaries of the fuller arguments presented in these articles. By presenting them here as a whole in the form of a book, Macy offers readers a clearer, more systematic look at the themes raised in that address.
As comforting as it may be for today’s theologians (and others) to pick and choose from the past so that history conveniently leads to their own favorite conclusions, Macy suggests that the Church’s true tradition is diversity. Writing to fellow scholars, he offers Treasures from the Storeroom as a text for classroom use and as simply interesting reading.
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Origins Of Christianity
$39.95Add to cartChristianity possesses two basic rites that complement one another, baptism and the Eucharist, the one giving access to the other. In The Origins of Christianity Etienne Nodet and Justin Taylor investigate the character of the early Christian community by looking into the origins of these two rites and the links between them.
A fundamental work on the initiation sacraments, The Origins of Christianity focuses on the Essenes for whom baptism marked the successful conclusion of a process of initiation and whose essential act as a community was an eschatological meal, principally of bread and wine. This marginal, tradition-bound culture came in contact with Gentiles. The result was a profound change that transformed a sect into a Church.
The Origins of Christianity begins by examining two scenes in Acts-Peter’s visit to Cornelius and the night at Troas-bringing baptism and the breaking of bread into sharper focus as customs dating back to earliest times. The authors then look at the history and geography of Jewish Galilee and focus on shared traditions with the Essenes. They also show the Last Supper as having elements of both the Passover (Jewish) and Easter (Christian) feasts. They look at those corresponding rituals and their meaning and also at the developments in the ways in which the Covenant is expressed (from circumcision to baptism).
From institutions, The Origins of Christianity moves back to the historical question of the opening of the Essene group to those it had never envisaged as members, looking at the deeds and gestures of the first Christians at Ephesus and Corinth: Was the opening of Christianity to non-Jewish people a result of a crisis within Judaism? Or did it correspond to the changes in the way in which Jesus was represented, as Teacher, as Christ, and as Lord. Does this affect our understanding of the historical Jesus?
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History Of Liturgical Books
$39.95Add to cartThe history of liturgy and liturgical books is of interest not only for theologians and liturgists but also for historians, art historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and researchers in religious sciences. This work meets the interdisciplinary need for a history and a typology of liturgical books.
A History of Liturgical Books from the Beginning to the Thirteenth Century is an introduction to Western liturgical sources and a synthesis of their history for more than a millennium. It provides a historiographic summary, examines the relationship between medieval history and liturgy, suggests new methods of research, and underscores the fruitfulness of an interdisciplinary approach.
Focusing on the history of liturgical books, rather than the history of liturgy, A History of Liturgical Books from the Beginning to the Thirteenth Century devotes a detailed chapter to each type of book intended for a specific celebration-Mass, Office, rites-and a specific presider-pope, bishop, deacon, monastic, etc. The crucial transition from oral practice to the use of the written document is discussed in every case, as is the illustration of liturgical books.
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Essays On Early Eastern Eucharistic Prayers
$29.95Add to cartA companion to Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed
The Churches of the East possess a sometimes bewildering array of Eucharistic prayers. Essays on Early Eastern Eucharistic Prayer offers a guide to the exploration of the principal prayers, and presents in a simple and succinct manner the current scholarship on the origins, development, and relationship of these particular prayers to other ancient prayers.
As well as summarizing the state of research and suggesting directions for future study, these essays explain the history of these prayers, their relationship to one another, and reveal how and why early Christian prayers developed as they did. In this way Essays on Early Eastern Eucharistic Prayers produces a clear picture of the way early Eucharistic prayers emerged and grew in the Eastern Churches.
Essays on Early Eastern Eucharistic Prayers serves as a companion to-and provides an extended commentary on the texts of early eastern Eucharistic prayers that are published in R. C. D. Jasper and G. J. Cuming’s Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed. Essays on Early Eastern Eucharistic Prayers also offers more detail than is available in the introductions to either text or in other general histories of liturgy or early liturgical practice.
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Celtic Monk : Rules And Writings Of Early Irish Monks
$31.95Add to cartIn the Early Middle Ages, the irish temperament-individualistic, poetic, and deeply loyal to family-produced great and learned saints and a unique monastic literature. Before the Norman Invasion, the isolation of the island allowed the development of traditions quite different from those of the continent or Britain. The rules, maxims, litanies, and poems of early irish monks convey the spirituality of the Isle of Saints in the sixth to eighth centuries.
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Eucharist In The New Testament And The Early Church
$29.95Add to cartAs presented in the New Testament, the Eucharist is a source of both inspiration and guidance today. In The Eucharist in the New Testament and the Early Church, Father LaVerdiere examines what the New Testament tells us about the Eucharist and how the Eucharist provides an important experiential and theological resource for the gospel stories of Jesus’ life, ministry, passion and resurrection, as well as for the life and development of the Church.
Father LaVerdiere illustrates how the origins of the Eucharist coincide with the origins of the Church. The development of the Eucharist reflects the development of the early Church, as well as its creative theological and pastoral reflection. Through the lens of the New Testament it views the beginnings of both Church and Eucharist when the risen Lord appeared to the disciples at meals soon after Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. He also looks beyond the New Testament and explores the ongoing development of Eucharistic theology and practice up to the mid-second century, ending with Justin Martyr, the first to describe the Eucharist to people who had no personal experience of it.
Father LaVerdiere focuses on the Eucharist in relation to ecclesiology, Christology, and liturgy. He begins by reflecting on how Christians referred to the Eucharist before it had a name, how names for the Eucharist came to be and their importance, how the Eucharist was celebrated at the very beginning, how liturgical formulas came to be, how these formulas brought out the riches of the Eucharist, and how the Eucharist related to different pastoral situations.
The concept of “triunity” the assembly, the Eucharist, and the Church guides this study. The Eucharist is the sacrament of the assembly, the sacrament of the Church’s life in the world. From the very beginning, there was no separating the three, nor are there separating references to the Eucharist from the letters, gospels, or other work in which the three appear. Here, Father LaVerdiere stresses that in order to know the Eucharist in the New Testament and the early Church, one has only to look at the composition and actual life of the Church. Thus, to know the Church, one has only to look at the way it celebrates the Eucharist.
Since most of today’s challenges concerning the Eucharist are similar to those experienced by the early Church, The Eucharist in the New Testament and the Early Church will be of great help to pastors, students, catechists and those i
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Papal Primacy : From Its Origins To The Present
$24.95Add to cartThrough the centuries, stories of popes and of the papacy from Catholic and non-Catholic perspectives, presented as biographies or as histories of an institution have boomed with the power of this often controversial office.
Whether as liberating truth which comes forth from the Church or as narrow perspective; whether as “Rock of the Church” or “stumbling-block,” primacy remains a reality at the heart of many ecclesiastical problems. Until now, a complete history of the primacy has been missing. Papal Primacy fills the void by providing a clear understanding of its history.
In this, the first complete history of the papal primacy, Schatz traces the development of the idea of a papacy as center of teaching and jurisdiction from its earliest Roman beginnings, through centuries of development, the great papal schism and the struggles over Conciliarism and Gallicanism, to the triumph of papal authority at Vatican I and beyond that to Vatican II and the growing realization that there are no “once and for all answers” to the Church’s questions. Papal primacy has grown with the Church, and it remains a reality embedded in the Church as a living community open to change.
Chapters focus on the development of the primacy in the first five centuries, different functions of unity in the East and the West; the papacy as the head of the Church and Christendom in the Middle Ages, and the primacy as confessional mark of identity in modern times.
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Eros And Allegory
$39.95Add to cartFor centuries male celibates have described, expressed, and celebrated their love of God in the language of sex, most prolifically and characteristically in a thousand years’ commentarial tradition on the Song of Songs. After analysing the tradition, its logic and its imagery, Turner provides translations of commentaries by Gregory the Great, Alcuin of York, Hugh of Saint Victor, William of Saint-Thierry, Alan of Lille, Thomas of Perseigne, Thomas Gallus, Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Nicholas of Lyra, Denys the Carthusian, and John of the Cross.
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Bible The Church And Authority
$19.95Add to cartSince the early days of Christianity a tension has existed between the authority of the Bible and the authority of the Church. This book examines the evolution of the Christian canon. Topics include Christian use of Jewish Scriptures, the Catholic and Protestant Old Testaments, the emergence of the New Testament, the struggle for the right interpretation of the Scriptures, the problem of inspiration, and modern attempts to explain the Church’s New Testament canon theologically.
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Protestants : The Birth Of A Revolution
$19.00Add to cartWho were the first men and women who abandoned the Church of Rome and became the world’s first Protestants? Harvard historian Steven Ozment does not present us with the remote, dusty figures of history, but rather with the shoemakers and housewives, students and politicians who were among the first followers of Martin Luther. Using pamphlets, diaries, letters, and other primary soruces, Ozment examines the origins of the Reformation and the nature of Protestantism. Rather than seeing the Reformation as the progenitor of German absolutism, as do many scholars of the period, Ozment sees in Protestantism the historic assertion of key Western values–social reform, individual religious conviction, hard work, and the rejection of corruption, hypocrisy, and empty ritual.
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Spirituality Of The Medieval West
$29.95Add to cartDefining spirituality as ‘the dynamic unity between the content of a faith and the way in which it is lived by historically determined human beings’, Vauchez steps outside the clerical world usually studied to trace the religious mentality of the laity, the ordinary and often illiterate majority of Christians.
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Book Of Irish American Blessings And Prayers
$14.95Add to cartIf you like Irish American literature, history, or culture, then you are sure to like Irish American Blessings and Prayers. Intrigued by Irish blessings, Andrew Greeley has tried his hand at writing Irish-American blessings and has bound them together in this unique book. In the second half of this work, you will find personal prayers, written for each day. The prayers are written with the Roman Liturgy in mind, with clarity and brevity. 207 pages, from ThomasMore.
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Mystical Theology Of Saint Bernard
$29.95Add to cartThis classic study placed the saint squarely among the outstanding theologians of the Middle Ages, and stripped away the sentimentality in which popular piety had wrapped him. Gilson demonstrates in Bernard’s works his blend of monastic tradition and the new learning of the early twelfth century.
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Greatest Faith Ever Known
$19.00Add to cartThis sequel to The Greatest Story Ever Told follows the turbulent adventures of the apostles Paul, Peter, and James after the crucifixion of Christ in their struggle to spread the Good News to the world. Faithfully based on the scriptures of the Acts and the Epistles, this saga of kings and jailers, of far voyages and shipwreck, of strange miracles and escapes and ultimate martyrdom, has inspired and touched generations of readers. It is a story that is timeless.
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Life Of Isaac Of Alexandria And The Martyrdom Of Saint Macrobius
$24.95Add to cartSeparated by schism from greek and latin Christians and surviving under arab-islamic suzerainty, the Church of Egypt produced insightful saints and heroic martyrs in a chapter in church history now opened to readers of English for the first time.
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Jesuits : The Society Of Jesus And The Betrayal Of The Roman Catholic Churc
$21.99Add to cartIn The Jesuits, Malachi Martin reveals for the first time the harrowing behind-the-scenes story of the “new” worldwide Society of Jesus. The leaders and the dupes; the blood and the pathos; the politics, the betrayals and the humiliations; the unheard-of alliances and compromises. The Jesuits tells a true story of today that is already changing the face of all our tomorrows.
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1st Seven Ecumenical Councils 325-787
$29.95Add to cartA careful look at the history and theology of Christianity’s most important councils: Nicea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680–681), and Nicea II (787). What controversies were involved; how were they resolved; what was the overall impact? This unique work–no other work yet available in English treats this subject–illustrates the contribution of these Councils in the development and formulation of Christian beliefs. It then shows how their legacies lingered throughout the centuries to inspire–or haunt–every generation.
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Women In The Early Church
$29.95Add to cart“Elizabeth Clark, a patristic scholar and founder of the Department of Religion at Mary Washington College, has drawn upon her depth of scholarship and linguistic ability to make available to an educated but nonspecialized readership an intriguing mosaic of opinions.”-America
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American Catholics : History Of The Roman Catholic Community In The US
$57.00Add to cartDescription
Written by one of the foremost historians of American Catholicism, this book presents a comprehensive history of the Roman Catholic Church in America from colonial times to the present. Hennesey examines, in particular, minority Catholics and developments in the western part of the United States, a region often overlooked in religious histories. -
RB 1980 : The Rule Of Saint Benedict (Unabridged)
$59.95Add to cartIn Latin and English with notes. Definitive modern edition of this 1,500-year old rule whose commonsense guidelines and rhythm of work, prayer, and reading have shaped so much of Western spirituality. Displays an incredible grasp of human nature.
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Pachomian Chronicles And Rules 2
$29.95Add to cartDescriptions of Pachomian monastic communities from a variety of ancient sources, including the Lausiac History and A History of the Monks in Egypt, and full translations of the Rule of Saint Pachomius and the Regulation of his successor, Horsiesios.
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Thomas Merton On Saint Bernard
$29.95Add to cartThe best-known Cistercian of the twentieth century reflects on the teaching and life of the most reknown Cistercian of the twelfth century. Three essays written in the 1950s explore the relation of contemplation and action in the monastic vocation and in the life of Christians.
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Eucharist Of The Early Christians
$29.95Add to cartWe can rediscover ourselves in the faith and hope of the early Christians.
These ancient (first through fourth century) writings describe the richness of the Eucharist as it was experienced and lived at that time. Included in this volume are excerpts from the Didache, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, and more, all commented on by a leading liturgical historian.
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Sayings Of The Desert Fathers
$19.95Add to cartThe responses of these pioneer ascetics were remembered and in the fourth century written down in Coptic, Syriac, Greek, and later Latin. Their Sayings were collected, in this case in the alphabetical order of the monks and nuns who uttered them, and read by generations of Christians as life-giving words that would help readers along the path to salvation.
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Praktikos And Chapters On Prayer
$19.95Add to cartThe living link through whom the ascetic principles of hellenistic philosophers passed into monasticism, Evagrius molded christian asceticism through his own works and through his influcence on John Cassian, Climacus, Pseudo-Denis, and Saint Benedict.
