If Is the Only Peacemaker explores the drama of Shakespeare through a cultural lens that can be shown to be central to the formation of this theatrical art: fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Catholic Humanism. Part I of this book traces this tradition through key figures in Medieval and Renaissance Humanism, including Dante, Chaucer, Erasmus, and Thomas More. The latter two, especially, convey Catholic Humanism to Shakespeare's England, and help to establish a rhetorical ideal: the union of...

Can art be a "bridge to religious experience," as John Paul II argued in his Letter to the Artists (1999)? In the twenty-first century, there is no more prolific, positive response to this question than the art of Michael D. O'Brien. O'Brien's sixteen novels have been translated into fourteen languages, and his paintings grace many Catholic churches in North America. In Living Logos, the first full overview of O'Brien's extraordinary career, Greg Maillet explores nine O'Brien novels and ex...