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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000010261927 | BR252 E27 2008 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
The key focus of this book is the vitality and dynamism of all aspects of Christian experience from late antiquity to the First Crusade. By putting the institutional and doctrinal history firmly in the context of Christianity's many cultural manifestations and lived formations everywhere from Afghanistan to Iceland, this volume of The Cambridge History of Christianity emphasizes the ever-changing, varied expressions of Christianity at both local and world level. The insights of many disciplines, including gender studies, codicology, archaeology and anthropology, are deployed to offer fresh interpretations which challenge the conventional truths concerning this formative period. Addressing eastern, Byzantine and western Christianity, it explores encounters between Christians and others, notably Jews, Muslims, and pagans; the institutional life of the church including law, reform and monasticism; the pastoral and sacramental contexts of worship, belief and morality; and finally its cultural and theological meanings, including heresy, saints' cults and the afterlife.
Reviews 1
Library Journal Review
Noble (history, Univ. of Notre Dame) and Smith (medieval history, Univ. of Glasgow) have compiled a magisterial history of 500 years of early medieval Christianity, East and West, presenting essays by 33 outstanding scholars. Christianity's encounter with non-Christians, especially Jews, Muslims, and pagans, as well as with diverse forms of Christianity itself, receives nuanced discussion showing how Christianity fit into and altered various social and political orders and how both private practice and public worship transformed religion and society. Salient books, especially the Bible, get careful attention, as does the hermeneutic with which the Bible is interpreted. Visions, saints and their cults, last things, and the idea of orthodoxy itself are also discussed. These clarify differences among Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, and Roman forms of Christianity. Quests for the normative and the static amid dynamic religious change at the beginning and end of the period covered in this volume provide perspective for today's profound changes. Highly recommended for all seminary and academic libraries and for large public libraries.-Carolyn M. Craft, emerita, Longwood Univ., Farmville, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
