Annihilation

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Hela Ouardi

Médine, juin 632. Sous le soleil accablant de l'Arabie, le temps semble s'être arrêté : le Prophète de l'islam a rendu son dernier souffle. Autour de lui, les fidèles de la nouvelle religion, plongés dans la sidération, tremblent à l'idée que la Fin du monde soit proche. Mais où sont passés ses Compagnons? Quelle est cette étrange maladie qui l'a terrassé en quelques semaines? Et pourquoi l'enterrement n'a-t-il pas lieu? Au fil de ce récit au jour le jour de l'événement le plus mystérieux dans l'histoire de l'islam, Hela Ouardi, universitaire tunisienne, explore et confronte les sources sunnites et shiites les plus anciennes. Celles-ci nous révèlent un autre visage du Prophète, celui d'un homme menacé de toutes parts, affaibli par les rivalités internes et par les ennemis nés de ses conquêtes. Tout est entrepris pour qu'il ne laisse aucune directive claire sur sa succession. Ses Compagnons s'engagent dans une lutte pour le pouvoir et son clan se déchire, ouvrant la voie à des guerres meurtrières qui ensanglantent encore notre monde aujourd'hui. Une reconstitution chronologique inédite, où Hela Ouardi oppose aux mémoires idéologisées le portrait d'un homme rendu à son historicité et à sa dimension tragique. [4e de couverture]

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David Hugh Farmer

"This fully-updated fifth edition features concise accounts of the lives, cults, and artistic associations of saints from the famous and obscure, the rich and poor, the academic and the uneducated. New entries include the Martyrs of Korea, Mexico, and Vietnam, as well as the recently canonized such as Edith Stein, Padre Pio, and Josemaria Escriva. The standard one-volume reference work in the field, this dictionary will delight both specialists and general readers."--Jacket.

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H.R. Ellis Davidson

Tiw, Woden, Thunor, Frig... these ancient northern deities gave their names to the very days of our week. Nevertheless most of us know far more of Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and the classical deities. Recent researches in archaeology and mythology have added to what was already a fairly consistent picture (largely derived from a twelfth-century Icelandic account) of the principal Scandinavian gods and godesses. This study is the work of a scholar who has long specialized in Norse and Germanic mythology. She describes the more familiar gods of war, of fertility, of the sky and the sea and the dead, and also discusses those most puzzling figures of Norse mythology – Heimdall, Balder and Loki. All these deities were worshipped in the Viking Age, and the author has endeavoured to relate their cults to daily life and to see why these pagan beliefs gave way in time to the Christian faith. **Hilda Ellis Davidson** studied Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse under the Chadwicks at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she took Firsts in English Literature and what was then known as Archaeology and Anthropology. She received her Ph.D. in 1940 for a thesis on beliefs about the dead in Old Norse literature. She lectured in English Language and Literature at Royal Holloway College and BirkBeck College in the University of London, and was elected a Fellow of the Society of the Antiquaries in 1950. In 1973 she became a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, where she was Vice-President from 1975 until 1980. She was president of the Folklore Society from 1973 to 1976, and General Editor of the nineteen Mistletoe Books published between 1974 and 1984. She is married with two children, and ten grandchildren, and lives in Cambridge.

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Hans-Jürgen Goertz

The Anabaptists were at the radical, utopian edge of the Reformation, ruthlessly repressed by Catholic, Lutheran and secular authorities alike. Hans-Jurgen Goertz gives a comprehensive account of their political and religious significance, their views and their social setting within the wider context of the Reformation. Particular attention is paid to the role and experience of women and of 'ordinary' Anabaptists in addition to those of the educated elite. While the focus of the book is on Germany, extensive coverage is also given to Anabaptism in England, Switzerland, the Netherlands and elsewhere. This English edition includes a new introduction which considers the historiographical context of the book. The opening chapter has also been expanded to include a section on the emergence of Anabaptism in England. The Anabaptists has been fully revised since its publication in German, and takes account of the most recent historiography on the subject. It also includes a selection of primary sources together with a full listing of important Anabaptist works.