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The late-medieval movement into 'vernacular theology,' as it has come to be called, inspired many forms of literary expression, in all the languages of Europe. Spanning a wide field, the contributors to this volume consider hagiography, translations of and commentaries on scripture, accounts of visionary experiences, and devotional literature. Their essays illuminate encounters with the divine mediated through language, bringing into play a diversity of national cultures and disciplinary points of view. They also engage vital social and political issues connected with religious experience, including challenges to authority, reinterpretations of texts, and renegotiations of gender roles.
Freedom of religion did not come easily to Cuba or Puerto Rico. Only after the arrival of American troops during the Spanish-American War were non-Catholics permitted to practice their religions openly and to proselytize. When government efforts to ensure freedom of worship began, reformers on both islands rejoiced, believing that an era of regeneration and modernization was upon them. But as new laws went into effect, critics voiced their dismay at the rise of popular religions. Reinaldo L. Roman explores the changing relationship between regulators and practitioners in neocolonial Cuba and Puerto Rico. Spiritism, Santeria, and other African-derived traditions were typically characterized in sensational fashion by the popular press as "a plague of superstition." Examining seven episodes between 1898 and the Cuban Revolution when the public demanded official actions against "misbelief," Roman finds that when outbreaks of superstition were debated, matters of citizenship were usually at stake. He links the circulation of spectacular charges of witchcraft and miracle-making to anxieties surrounding newly expanded citizenries that included people of color. Governing Spirits also contributes to the understanding of vernacular religions by moving beyond questions of national or traditional origins to illuminate how boundaries among hybrid practices evolved in a process of historical contingencies.
Possession, a seemingly irrational phenomenon, has posed challenges to generations of scholars rooted in Western notions of body-soul dualism, self and personhood, and a whole set of presuppositions inherited from Christian models of possession that was “good” or “bad.” The authors of the essays in this book present a new and more promising approach. They conceive spirit possession as a form of communication, of expressivity, of culturally defined behavior that should be understood in the context of local, vernacular theories and empiric reflections. With the aim of reformulating the comparative anthropology of spirit possession, the editors have opened corridors between previously separate areas of research. Together, anthropologists and historians working on several historical periods and in different European, African, South American, and Asian cultural areas attempt to redefine the very concept of possession, freeing it from the Western notion of the self and more clearly delineating it from related matters such as witchcraft, devotion, or mysticism. The book also provides an overview of new research directions, including novel methods of participant observation and approaches to spirit possession as indigenous historiography
Reveals what might be gained by taking spirituality seriously as a constituent aspect of performance
TOPICS IN THE BOOK African and Western Concepts of Spirituality and the Transcendence of God: A Case Study of Sub-Sahara African Christians in Finland Ethical Investigation of Material Possession Among Contemporary Christians in Nigeria Audre Lorde and the Archetypal Back to Africa Movement The Decolonisation of Religion and Spirituality: A Case of Shembe Philosophy
L’Abbaye du saint esprit is a medieval devotional treatise written for those who “would like to enter into religion but may not” for various reasons. The treatise seeks to aid the uncloistered reader in living a spiritual life by creating, within the reader’s conscience, a metaphorical abbey in which each room represents a Christian virtue or a charitable act. After meditating on the metaphorical abbey, a devout person could symbolically carry its spiritual lessons out into the secular world. The Abbey of the Holy Ghost: Margaret of York, Charles the Bold, and the Politics of Devotion uses original French and English manuscripts to investigate this medieval devotional treatise, which was popular in both France and England and reflects the political and devotional movements of the period—especially those observed in Margaret of York’s life after she married Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Special consideration is given to additional material in the Douce 365 L’Abbaye du saint espirit commissioned by Margaret of York upon her marriage. In addition to offering discussions of matters pertaining to the original audience of the devotions, its Victorine influence, the English lay devotion, the devotio moderna movement, and medieval women’s studies generally, author Kathryn Anderson Hall also provides a new modern English translation of the Douce 365 L’Abbaye. This edition of L’Abbaye du saint esprit offers an authoritative survey of the text’s manuscripts and readership. Moreover, by setting the Douce 365 manuscript in its specific historical and political contexts and through detailed analysis, Kathryn A. Hall’s meticulous study argues convincingly that this manuscript sought to influence Margaret of York and her husband Charles the Bold to soften the harsh treatment imposed on Charles’s territories. In so doing, Hall reminds us that despite mysticism’s professed separation from the world, it is and always has been a practice with deeply significant effects in its historical and political worlds.
The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - the so-called Golden Age of Polyphony - represent a time of great change and development in European music, with the flourishing of Orlando di Lasso, Palestrina, Byrd, Victoria, Monteverdi and Schütz among others. The thirty chapters of this book, contributed by established scholars on subjects within their fields of expertise, deal with polyphonic music - sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental - during this period. The volume offers chronological surveys of national musical cultures (in Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany, England, and Spain); genre studies (Mass, motet, madrigal, chanson, instrumental music, opera); and is completed with essays on intellectual and cultural developments and concepts relevant to music (music theory, printing, the Protestant Reformation and the corresponding Catholic movement, humanism, concepts of 'Renaissance' and 'Baroque'). It thus provides a complete overview of the music and its context. Contributors: GARY TOMLINSON, JAMES HAAR, TIM CARTER, GIULIO ONGARO, NOEL O'REGAN, ALLAN ATLAS, ANTHONY CUMMINGS, RICHARD FREEDMAN, JEANICE BROOKS, DAVID TUNLEY, KATE VAN ORDEN, KRISTINE FORNEY, IAIN FENLON, KAROL BERGER, PETER BERGQUIST, DAVID CROOK, ROBIN LEAVER, CRAIG MONSON, TODD BORGERDING, LOUISE K. STEIN, GIUSEPPE GERBINO, ROGER BRAY, JONATHAN WAINWRIGHT, VICTOR COELHO, KEITH POLK
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Mexicans and Americans joined together to transform the U.S.-Mexico borderlands into a crossroads of modern economic development. This book reveals the forgotten story of their ambitious dreams and their ultimate failure to control this fugitive terrain. Focusing on a mining region that spilled across the Arizona-Sonora border, this book shows how entrepreneurs, corporations, and statesmen tried to domesticate nature and society within a transnational context. Efforts to tame a 'wild' frontier were stymied by labour struggles, social conflict, and revolution. Fugitive Landscapes explores the making and unmaking of the U.S.-Mexico border, telling how ordinary people resisted the domination of empires, nations, and corporations to shape transnational history on their own terms. By moving beyond traditional national narratives, it offers new lessons for our own border-crossing age.
This book is a study of what African Christians living in Britain believe about the Holy Spirit.