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This volume attempts to throw new light on the mentality of the earliest English - the way they thought, the way they viewed nature and the supernatural. Previous approaches have regarded the English as adherents of two consecutive religions, paganism and Christianity. Paganism held sway among the Anglo-Saxon settlers from the 4th to the 6th century, but Christianity superseded it from the 7th to the 10th century. Of the two Christianity documented itself thoroughly. Paganism failed to do so, and thereby laid itself open to centuries of abuse, conjecture or mindless admiration. Although archaeology does not provide direct access to the mind, it can reveal a great deal about pagan mentalities through analysis of the signals of belief left in material culture. Scrutinising a range of material from locations across northern Europe in Scandinavia as well as England the authors of the current volume demonstrate that beliefs varied from place to place. The conclusion of this volume is that `paganism' does not refer to a specific set of religious beliefs with geographically widespread rules and institutions. Instead `paganism' is a loose term for a variety of local world views and practices. Anglo-Saxon Christianity also appears in a similar light as a source on which communities in different localities drew selectively. Overall the volume offers a new perspective on the preoccupations and anxieties of a crucial age.
Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs is the first detailed consideration of the ways in which Anglo-Saxon society dealt with social outcasts. Beginning with the period following Roman rule and ending in the century following the Norman Conquest, it surveys a period of fundamental social change, which included the conversion to Christianity, the emergence of the late Saxon state, and the development of the landscape of the Domesday Book. While an impressive body of written evidence for the period survives in the form of charters and law-codes, archaeology is uniquely placed to investigate the earliest period of post-Roman society - the fifth to seventh centuries - for which documents are lacking. For later centuries, archaeological evidence can provide us with an independent assessment of the realities of capital punishment and the status of outcasts. Andrew Reynolds argues that outcast burials show a clear pattern of development in this period. In the pre-Christian centuries, 'deviant' burial remains are found only in community cemeteries, but the growth of kingship and the consolidation of territories during the seventh century witnessed the emergence of capital punishment and places of execution in the English landscape. Locally determined rites, such as crossroads burial, now existed alongside more formal execution cemeteries. Gallows were located on major boundaries, often next to highways, always in highly visible places. The findings of this pioneering national study thus have important consequences on our understanding of Anglo-Saxon society. Overall, Reynolds concludes, organized judicial behaviour was a feature of the earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, rather than just the two centuries prior to the Norman Conquest.
In this major study of Angle-Saxon religious tests sermons, homilies, and saints' lives written in Old English -- Clare A. Lees reveals how the invention of preaching transformed the early medieval church, and thus the culture of medieval England in placing Anglo-Saxon prose within a social matrix, her work offers a new way of seeing medieval literature through the lens of cultures. To show how the preaching mission of the later Anglo-Saxon church was constructed and received, Lees explores the emergence of preaching from the traditional structures of the early medieval church -- its institutional knowledge, genres, and beliefs. Understood as a powerful rhetorical, social, and epistemological process, preaching is shown to have helped define the sociocultural concerns specific to late Anglo-Saxon England. The first detailed study of traditionality in medieval culture, Tradition and Belief is also a case study of one cultural phenomenon from the past. As such -- and by concentrating on the theoretically problematic areas of history, religious belief, and aesthetics -- the book contributes to debates about the evolving meaning of culture.
Drawing on sources from archaeology and written texts, the author brings out the full significance of trees in both pagan and Christian Anglo-Saxon religion.
Forges innovative connections between monastic archaeology and heritage studies, revealing new perspectives on sacred heritage, identity, medieval healing, magic and memory. This title is available as Open Access.
In this book the author, an investigative journalist, traces the social history of marijuana from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in an ongoing culture war. He describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a multibillion-dollar industry. In 1996, Californians voted to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. Similar laws have followed in several other states, but not without antagonistic responses from federal, state, and local law enforcement. The author draws attention to underreported scientific breakthroughs that are reshaping the therapeutic landscape: medical researchers have developed promising treatments for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes, chronic pain, and many other conditions that are beyond the reach of conventional cures. This book is an examination of the medical, recreational, scientific, and economic dimensions of the world's most controversial plant.
This study investigates why 'faith' (pistis/fides) was so important to early Christians that the concept and praxis dominated the writings of the New Testament. It argues that such a study must be interdisciplinary, locating emerging Christianities in the social practices and mentalités of contemporary Judaism and the early Roman empire. This can, therefore, equally be read as a study of the operation of pistis/fides in the world of the early Roman principate, taking one but relatively well-attested cult as a case study in how micro-societies within that world could treat it distinctively. Drawing on recent work in sociology and economics, the book traces the varying shapes taken by pistis/fides in Greek and Roman human and divine-human relationships: whom or what is represented as easy or difficult to trust or believe in; where pistis/fides is 'deferred' and 'reified' in practices such as oaths and proofs; how pistis/fides is related to fear, doubt and scepticism; and which foundations of pistis/fides are treated as more or less secure. The book then traces the evolution of representations of human and divine-human pistis in the Septuagint, before turning to pistis/pisteuein in New Testament writings and their role in the development of early Christologies (incorporating a new interpretation of pistis Christou) and ecclesiologies. It argues for the integration of the study of pistis/pisteuein with that of New Testament ethics. It explores the interiority of Graeco-Roman and early Christian pistis/fides. Finally, it discusses eschatological pistis and the shape of the divine-human community in the eschatological kingdom.
Inscriptions from the 1st century AD provide the earliest physical evidence for a Germanic presence in Britain. From at least that time until the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kings in the late 600s Britain had, to varying degrees, a heathen Germanic culture. After a presence of six centuries a new group of heathens arrived. Scandinavians brought with them beliefs, attitudes and a world view that were much like those that survived in Anglo-Saxon England. The Scandinavian arrival extended the heathen period to almost a thousand years. The purpose of the work is to bring together a range of evidence for pre-Christian beliefs and attitudes to the Otherworld drawn from archaeology, linguistics, literary studies and comparative mythology. The rich and varied English tradition influenced the worldview of the later mediaeval and Norse societies. Aspects of this tradition are with us still in the 21st century.
Orthodox Christianity, scientific materialism, and alternative religions -- The evolution of occult spirituality in Victorian England and the representative case of Edward Bulwer-Lytton -- Anthony Trollope's religion : the orthodox/heterodox boundary -- The influences of Buddhism and comparative religion on Matthew Arnold's theology -- Interpenetration of religion and national politics in Great Britain and Sri Lanka : William Knighton's Forest life in Ceylon -- Identity, genre, and religion in Anna Leonowens' The English governess at the Siamese court -- Ancient Egyptian religion in late-Victorian England -- The economics of immortality : the demi-immortal Oriental, Enlightenment vitalism, and political economy in Bram Stoker's Dracula -- Conclusion : from Victorian occultism to new age spiritualities