Christ’s war examines Carolingian holy war from the forging of their empire in the eighth century to its dissolution in the late ninth century during the Northmen’s attacks. It argues that the Franks understood their wars to be holy when their soldiers were without sin and, therefore, were holy themselves. God heard their prayers as they begged for divine aid, and he helped them overcome and slaughter their foes. Therefore, the Carolingian vision of holy war differed from the piou...

Chris Crutcher is a literary icon in the field of young adult literature. With his first book, Running Loose published in 1983, Crutcher established a reputation for giving young adults a voice in realistic fiction. Since then, Crutcher has written a number of books with spot-on depictions of young adults growing through hard times, including Ironman, Whale Talk, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, and Stotan! In Chris Crutcher: A Stotan for Young Adults, Bryan Gillis and Pam B. Cole examine the...

Though discussing sexual material in novels aimed at the young adult market may make some individuals blush, the authors of such fiction often seek to represent a very real component in the lives of many teens. Unfortunately, authentic and teen-relatable information on healthy adolescent sexuality is not readily available, and sex education classes have had a minimal effect on positive sexual identity development. Consequently, young adult literature that contains sexual elements can play ...

Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire recounts the history of an exceptional ninth-century religious outlaw, Gottschalk of Orbais. Frankish Christianity required obedience to ecclesiastical superiors, voluntary participation in reform, and the belief that salvation was possible for all baptized believers. Yet Gottschalk-a mere priest-developed a controversial, Augustinian-based theology of predestination, claiming that only divine election through grace enabled eternal life...

"An indispensable point of departure for anyone interested in the cult of the saints in the Middle Ages." —Eamon Duffy, The New York Review of BooksFrom its earliest centuries, one of the most notable features of Christianity has been the veneration of the saints—the holy dead. This ambitious history tells the fascinating story of the cult of the saints from its origins in the second-century days of the Christian martyrs to the Protestant...

To obtain sacred relics, medieval monks plundered tombs, avaricious merchants raided churches, and relic-mongers scoured the Roman catacombs. In a revised edition of Furta Sacra, Patrick Geary considers the social and cultural context for these acts, asking how the relics were perceived and why the thefts met with the approval of medieval Christians.

Luther's Theology of the Cross represents a fully revised and updated edition of the classic 1985 text that expands on the author's ongoing research and reflects 25 years of Luther scholarship.Rewritten and expanded edition of a highly-acclaimed classic textIncorporates primary and secondary sources that have become available since the publication of the first editionDraws on advances in our understanding of the late medieval intellectual, cultura...

Originally published in 1957, this classic work has guided generations of scholars through the arcane mysteries of medieval political theology. Throughout history, the notion of two bodies has permitted the postmortem continuity of monarch and monarchy, as epitomized by the statement, “The king is dead. Long live the king.” In The King’s Two Bodies, Ernst Kantorowicz traces the historical dilemma posed by the “King’s two bodies”—the body natural and the body politic—back to the Mi...

Around the year 1215, female mystics and their sacramental devotion were among orthodoxy's most sophisticated weapons in the fight against heresy. Holy women's claims to be in direct communication with God placed them in positions of unprecedented influence. Yet by the end of the Middle Ages female mystics were frequently mistrusted, derided, and in danger of their lives. The witch hunts were just around the corner.While studies of sanctity and heresy tend to be undertaken separate...

This pioneering study explores early medieval Frankish identity as a window into the formation of a distinct Western conception of ethnicity. Focusing on the turbulent and varied history of Frankish identity in Merovingian and Carolingian historiography, it offers a new basis for comparing the history of collective and ethnic identity in the Christian West with other contexts, especially the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. The tremendous political success of the Frankish kingdoms provided th...

The Roman Catholic leadership still refuses to ordain women officially or even to recognize that women are capable of ordination. But is the widely held assumption that women have always been excluded from such roles historically accurate? In the early centuries of Christianity, ordination was the process and the ceremony by which one moved to any new ministry (ordo) in the community. By this definition, women were in fact ordained into several ministries. A radical change in the definitio...

A Study of the problems of the early history of the Franciscan ORder by one of the most important scholars of the ORder, this book seeks to contribute to a stronger historical understanding of the work of St. Francis byu looking into the debates and theories surrounding the formation of the Order, and the transformation of the "original ideals of St. Francis."