The insight of unebelievers

Nicholas of Lyra and christian reading of jewish tect in the later middle ages

In the year 1309, Nicholas of Lyra, an important Franciscan Bible commentator, put forth a question at the University of Paris, asking whether it was possible to prove the advent of Christ from scriptures received by the Jews. This question reflects the challenges he faced ...

Michelangelo

the man and the myth

This exhibition catalog explores multiple facets of Michelangelo's life, art, and reputation. Beginning with portraits of the artist, examples of his literary works, editions of his poetry, and modern music inspired by his sonnets, the book then shows representative examples of his work as ...

The crusades and the christian world of the East

rough tolerance

In The Crusades and the Christian World of the East, Christopher MacEvitt marshals an impressive array of literary, legal, artistic, and archeological evidence to demonstrate how crusader ideology and religious difference gave rise to a mode of coexistence he calls "rough tolerance." The twelfth-century Frankish ...

Creating East and West

Renaissance humanists and the Ottoman turks

As the Ottoman Empire advanced westward from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, humanists responded on a grand scale, leaving behind a large body of fascinating yet understudied works. These compositions included Crusade orations and histories; ethnographic, historical, and religious studies of the Turks; epic ...

A kingdom of priests

ancestry and merit in ancient judaism

According to the account in the Book of Exodus, God addresses the children of Israel as they stand before Mt. Sinai with the words, "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (19:6). The sentence, Martha Himmelfarb observes, is ...

Hitler's face

the biography of an image

In Hitler's Face Claudia Schmolders reverses the normal protocol of biography: instead of using visual representations as illustrations of a life, she takes visuality as her point of departure to track Adolf Hitler from his first arrival in Munich as a nattily dressed young ...

Souls in dispute

converso identities in Iberia and the jewish diaspora, 1580-1700

Border lines

the partition of judaeo-crhistianity

The historical separation between Judaism and Christianity is often figured as a clearly defined break of a single entity into two separate religions. Following this model, there would have been one religion known as Judaism before the birth of Christ, which then took on a ...

Gentile tales

the narrative assault on late medieval jews

Hebraica veritas?

christian hebraists and the study of judaism in Early Modern Europe

Sanctifying the Name of God

jewish martyrs and jewish memories of the First Crusade

Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

The mention of the history of beer always brings a alugh or ata the very least a snicher. The history of beer for most people is not a serious topic of study. It seems to them frivolous and hardly worth more than a few diveting ...

Communication, knowledge, and memory in Early Modern Spain

In a provocative attempt to outline a history of communication during the Spanish Golden Age, Communication, Knowledge, and Memory in Early Modern Spain examines how speech, visual images, and written texts all interact as manifestations of the human desire to know and remember. Seeking to ...

Procopius of Caesarea

tyranny, history, and philosophy at the end of Antiquity

Writing and holiness

the practice of authorship in the Early Christian East

The origins of justice

the evolution of morality, human rights, and law

Supreme justice

speeches and wrintings: Thurgood Marshall

God and the goddesses

vision, poetry, and belief in the Middle Ages

Contrary to popular belief, the medieval religious imagination did not restrict itself to masculine images of God but envisaged the divine in multiple forms. In fact, the God of medieval Christendom was the Father of only one Son but many daughters--including Lady Philosophy, Lady Love ...

Monsters

evil beings, mythical beasts, and all manner of imaginary terrors

The human mind needs monsters. In every culture and in every epoch in human history, from ancient Egypt to modern Hollywood, imaginary beings have haunted dreams and fantasies, provoking in young and old shivers of delight, thrills of terror, and endless fascination. All known folklores ...

The business of sports agents

Sensible flesh

on touch in early modern culture

This ground-breaking interdisciplinary collection explores the complex, ambiguous, and contradictory sense of touch in early modern culture. If touch is the sense that mediates between the body of the subject and the world, these essays make apparent the frequently disregarded lexicons of tactility that lie ...

Keeping up with the Joneses

envy in American consumer society, 1890-1930

A century ago many Americans condemned envy as a destructive emotion and a sin. Today few Americans expect criticism when they express envy, and some commentators maintain that the emotion drives the economy. This shift in attitude is Susan Matt's central concern. Keeping up ...