This volume provides a broad interpretation of Anselm’s theological method through a study of his Monologion. The Monologion has been chosen specifically because of its rich and nuanced account of the search for the one God. Through a careful analysis of this text what becomes evident is that Anselm’s theological project is much broader than a single argument or a simple account of how divine justice and honor are appeased. What one encounters is a theology informed by the notion of the hu...

This book offers an introduction to the thought of Robert Holcot, a great and influential but often underappreciated medieval thinker. Holcot was a Dominican friar who flourished in the 1330's and produced a diverse body of work including scholastic treatises, biblical commentaries, and sermons. By viewing the whole of Holcot's corpus, John T. Slotemaker and Jeffrey C. Witt provide a comprehensive account of his thought. Challenging established characterizations of him as a skeptic or radi...

This book is an introduction to trinitarian theology as it developed from the late medieval period. John T. Slotemaker presents an overview of the central aspects of trinitarian theology by focusing on four themes: theological epistemology, the emanations in God, the divine relations, and the Trinity of persons. He does so by exploring a broad range of theological opinions on each subject and delineating the options that existed for medieval theologians from the early thirteenth century th...

What is a rule, if it appears to become confused with life? And what is a human life, if, in every one of its gestures, of its words, and of its silences, it cannot be distinguished from the rule?It is to these questions that Agamben's new book turns by means of an impassioned reading of the fascinating and massive phenomenon of Western monasticism from Pachomius to St. Francis. The book reconstructs in detail the life of the monks with their obsessive attention to temporal articul...

Mary Carruthers's classic study of the training and uses of memory for a variety of purposes in European cultures during the Middle Ages has fundamentally changed the way scholars understand medieval culture. This fully revised and updated second edition considers afresh all the material and conclusions of the first. While responding to new directions in research inspired by the original, this new edition devotes much more attention to the role of trained memory in composition, whether of ...

Why has power in the West assumed the form of an "economy," that is, of a government of men and things? If power is essentially government, why does it need glory, that is, the ceremonial and liturgical apparatus that has always accompanied it?In the early centuries of the Church, in order to reconcile monotheism with God's threefold nature, the doctrine of Trinity was introduced in the guise of an economy of divine life. It was as if the Trinity amounted to nothing more than a pro...

Stephen Holmes offers the reader a clear and thorough examination of the doctrine of Testament to the present day.Taking the late twentieth century revival of the doctrine of the Trinity as a context, doctrine from the biblical text to the present day. The book traces the exegetical and philosophical debates that led to the settling of the ecumenical doctrine of the Trinity in the fourth century, and then explores how this doctrine was developed, questioned and received throughout ...

The life and times of the most important theological work of medieval ChristendomThis concise book tells the story of the most important theological work of the Middle Ages, the vast Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, which holds a unique place in Western religion and philosophy. Written between 1266 and 1273, the Summa was conceived by Aquinas as an instructional guide for teachers and novices and a compendium of all the approved teachings of th...

In this follow-up to The Kingdom and the Glory and The Highest Poverty, Agamben investigates the roots of our moral concept of duty in the theory and practice of Christian liturgy. Beginning with the New Testament and working through to late scholasticism and modern papal encyclicals, Agamben traces the Church's attempts to repeat Christ's unrepeatable sacrifice. Crucial here is the paradoxical figure of the priest, who becomes more and more a pure instrument of God's pow...

Aquinas at Prayer draws attention to important aspects of Aquinas's life and work which have been all too often overlooked or forgotten.Today Aquinas is almost exclusively regarded as an outstanding scholastic philosopher and theologian. But what is little known is that Aquinas was, first and last, a teacher of the Bible - a Master of the Sacred Page. Moreover there is a distinctly mystical character to his theology. And, as a writer, he was not only a poe...

The Church’s Marian beliefs have constantly shed light on other teachings, and the Theology of the Body is no exception. In this compilation of essays, some of the world’s most foremost Mariologists and experts on the Theology of the Body share their insights on how Mary illuminates the message of the Theology of the Body in a profound way.As the Mother of God, Mary provided Jesus with His body, a body that would be offered on the cross for our redemption. She bore witness to His b...

Guido Stucco holds a Ph.D. in Historical Theology from Sait Louis University. He is currently working on a book documenting the developments in the doctrine of predestination, from the Council of Trent to the Jansenist controversy.