by Patricia Healy Wasyliw (1996)
Martyrdom, Murder, and Magic: Child Saints and Their Cults in Medieval Europe is a comprehensive history of child saints and their cults from late Antiquity to the end of the fifteenth century. The child martyrs of the persecutions, including the Holy Innocents, were the first child saints recognized by the Church, and their cults spread throughout Europe in the early Middle Ages. Alongside these cults, medieval society also venerated child "martyrs," victims of political or domestic violence. The increasing role of the papacy in the canonization process after the tenth century resulted in the veneration of saintly child confessors in the high Middle Ages, but from the end of the twelfth century, most children worshipped as saints were the alleged victims of ritual murder by Jews. This book considers the formation and transformation of child saints and their cults in the context of popular belief and the history of childhood. -- from back cover.
Shalan Niuman (Sharan Newman) zhu
A medieval scholar examines the historical facts and myths behind the best-selling novel, including discussions on the Templars, the Holy Grail, and the "Apocryphal Gospels."
Dallas G. Denery II
During the later Middle Ages people became increasingly obsessed with vision, visual analogies and the possibility of visual error. In this book, the author addresses the question of what medieval men and women thought it meant to see themselves and others in relation to the world and to God. Exploring the writings of Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, Peter Aureol and Nicholas of Autrecourt in light of an assortment of popular religious guides for preachers, confessors and penitents, including Peter of Limoges' Treatise on the Moral Eye, he illustrates how the question preoccupied medieval men and women on both an intellectual and practical level. This book offers a unique interdisciplinary examination of the interplay between religious life, perspectivist optics and theology, and presents significant new insights into the medieval psyche and conception of the self, ensuring that this book will appeal to historians of medieval science and those of medieval religious life and theology.
Sylvia Rodríguez
The Matachines Dance - "the beautiful dance of subjugation," as Sylvia Rodriguez calls it - derives from a genre of medieval European folk dramas symbolizing conflict between Christians and Moors. Spaniards brought it to the Americas as a vehicle for Christianizing the Indians. In this book, Rodriguez explores the colorful, complex, and often enigmatic Matachines dance as it is performed today by Pueblo Indians and Hispanos in New Mexico. Previous studies of the Matachines dance dealt mainly with its origins, distribution, and descriptive details. Rodriguez's work instead focuses on the larger cultural, ecological, historical, and political-economic setting within which each community's performance is organized. She analyzes observed behavior, incorporates native explanation, and interprets the dance's symbols in attempting to discover what the dance means to those who perform it and what its performance reveals about the people who do it. For both Indians and Hispanos in New Mexico, the dance is not merely an archaic survival but an ongoing way of coping with and commenting on the history of ethnic domination as it continues to unfold in the upper Rio Grande valley.
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
The prestigious historian, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto traces key elements of the modern world back to a single, fateful year.