This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

In Corporate Jurisdiction, Academic Heresy, and Fraternal Correction at the University of Paris, 1200-1400, Gregory S. Moule explains how the theological faculty acquired independent jurisdiction over cases of academic heresy among its membership. He convincingly demonstrates that the faculty's jurisdiction and procedures were modelled on the pattern of a bishop and his cathedral canons.

Gregory S. Moule's analysis of Pierre D'Ailly's Apologia confirms the faculty's jurisdiction and establishes that the censures of Denis Foulechat and John of Monteson were instances of judicial rather than fraternal correction. Medieval discussions of Judas Iscariot further clarify fraternal correction's role in the process of censure. Canon law, corporate theory, scholastic theology, and biblical commentary are employed to produce a wide-ranging, original, and thought-provoking study.

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Popes, Bishops, and the Progress of Canon Law, c.1120-1234 by A. J. Duggan considers the role of popes and bishops in the development of the law of the Church between 1120 and 1234. Although historians have traditionally seen the popes as the driving force behind the legal transformation of the Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the primary argument of this book is that the functioning of the process of consultation and appeal reveals a different picture: not of a relentless papal machine but of a constant dialogue between diocesan bishops and the papal Curia.

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A Companion to the English Dominican Province offers an account of Dominican activities in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales from their arrival in 1221 until their dissolution at the Reformation. Over the three centuries covered in this volume, the Friars Preachers not only devoted themselves to the cure of souls via preaching and hearing confessions, but they also represented English kings on diplomatic missions, influenced politics and society, and contributed to cultural, intellectual, and religious life across the British Isles.

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Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers by Michael Hollerich.

Known as the "Father of Church History," Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and the leading Christian scholar of his day. His Ecclesiastical History is an irreplaceable chronicle of Christianity's early development, from its origin in Judaism, through two and a half centuries of illegality and occasional persecution, to a new era of tolerance and favor under the Emperor Constantine. In this book, Michael J. Hollerich recovers the reception of this text across time. As he shows, Eusebius adapted classical historical writing for a new "nation," the Christians, with a distinctive theo-political vision.

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The Unity of Body and Soul in Patristic and Byzantine Thought explores the long-standing tensions between such notions as soul and body, spirit and flesh, in the context of human immortality and bodily resurrection. The discussion revolves around late antique views on the resurrected human body and the relevant philosophical, medical and theological notions that formed the background for this topic. Soon after the issue of the divine-human body had been problematized by Christianity, it began to drift away from vast metaphysical deliberations into a sphere of more specialized bodily concepts, developed in ancient medicine and other natural sciences. To capture the main trends of this interdisciplinary dialogue, the contributions in this volume range from the 2nd to the 8th centuries CE, and discuss an array of figures and topics, including Justin, Origen, Bar Daisan, and Gregory of Nyssa.

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Naming God in Early Judaism by Anthony Meyer brings together all ancient evidence to tell the story of the divine name, YHWH, as it travels in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek through the Second Temple period, the most formative era of Judaism.
During the Second Temple period (516 BCE-70 CE), Jews became reticent to speak and write the divine name, YHWH, also known by its four letters in Greek as the tetragrammaton. Priestly, pious, and scribal circles limited the use of God's name, and then it disappeared. The variables are poorly understood and the evidence is scattered. This study brings together all ancient Jewish literary and epigraphic evidence in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek to describe how, when, and in what sources Jews either used or avoided the divine name. Instead of a diachronic contrast from use to avoidance, as is often the scholarly assumption, the evidence suggests diverse and overlapping naming practices that draw specific meaning from linguistic, geographic, and social contexts.

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Flores Augustini: Augustinian Florilegia in the Middle Ages (Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense)

Augustine of Hippo was one of the first authors to give rise to the need for anthologies devoted to a single author. Today, over a hundred florilegia dedicated solely to Augustine's writings are known. Over the course of the Middle Ages, several of these collections proved instrumental in giving access to the Bishop of Hippo's large oeuvre, and in determining the direction of its reception. In fourteen chapters, this volume presents some important Augustinian florilegia, their sources, composition, context, afterlife, and the challenges inherent in editing and studying them. Beginning in Late Antiquity, with Vincent of Lerins and Prosper of Aquitaine, the volume discusses several medieval and early modern florilegia, both well-known and more marginal, and concludes with their use by Augustine's modern editors. As such, this book contributes to a better understanding of the reception of Augustine throughout the Middle Ages and to the ways in which his exceptional auctoritas took shape.

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Sacred Heart Devotion: Memory, Body, Image, Text-Continuities and Discontinuities is an innovative, pluri-disciplinary approach that focuses on how memory in Sacred Heart devotion is created, promulgated and transformed. The volume with contributions by historians, theologians, religious scientists and art historians links the dimension of memory to that of iconography, language, body and ritual practices and sheds light on adaptations, transfers, contestations and variations in a perspective of longue duree from the late Middle Ages to the present. The first part of the volume develops central axes of analysis, which are specifically investigated in the two following parts. The contributions of part two intertwine perspectives of cultural, social and art history focusing on the multi-layered creation, public presence and political usage, diversity and variations of Sacred Heart iconography and devotion in a long-term perspective. In-depth analyses center on late medieval northern Italy, early modern France and 18th-century Switzerland (Eidgenossenschaft), on France from the 1950s to the 1980s, and on Indonesia in the 20th and 21st centuries. In a dynamic way, the third part combines systematic theological, philosophical and didactic reflexions on the Sacred Heart with a focus on imagination, embodiment, spirituality and memory.

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Non Sumus Tempora: Studies on Augustine and His Reception Offered to Mathijs Lamberigts

Mathijs Lamberigts' long and prolific research career started with the study of the controversy between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine of Hippo on the issues of human free will and divine grace. This research interest rapidly came to include all aspects of the turbulent life, the massive oeuvre, and the complex ideas of the Doctor Gratiae, imbedded in the historical, political, socio-economic, religious, ecclesial, and intellectual context of the fourth and fifth centuries. Driven by a deep respect for the original sources, and always well informed about the established scholarship, Lamberigts deployed a rigorous historical-critical method in his publications. The first nineteen contributions of the present volume reflect this first love for Augustinian studies. As illustrated by the cover image, taken from the famous sixteenth-century Leuven edition of Augustine's collected writings, Lamberigts' historical-critical study of Augustine stands within a rich and enduring Leuven tradition. The same old print expresses the gradual expansion of Lamberigts' research interests, which came to embrace Augustine's legacy in the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries. In fact at the end of the Middle Ages, Augustine and his doctrine of sin, grace, and free will found renewed interest, even becoming part of the ideological-religious foundations of Martin Luther - who was after all an Augustinian friar - and hence of the Reformation. All parties involved in the religious controversies of this period appealed to the Doctor Gratiae to justify their own position. Lamberigts has always shown a vivid interest in these developments, and especially in how Augustinian thinking became a doctrinal pillar of Leuven theology in the Early Modern Era. Consequently, part of Lamberigt's scholarly work has focused on figures such as Michael Baius and Cornelius Jansenius of Ypres, on movements such as Jansenism, as well as on the Jansenists' theological adversaries, the Jesuits. Eight essays of this volume evoke this particular period in church history. These twenty-seven papers are offered to Mathijs Lamberigts by former students and colleagues, out of gratitude for his generous personality, for his inspiring scholarship, and for his academic leadership.

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Modus Vivendi: Religious Reform and the Laity in Late Medieval Europe is a collection of essays by scholars who seek to discover lay men and women within the projects of reform and renewal in later medieval Europe. Religious life was never without change, yet religious orders, preachers, and institutions of learning proclaimed their desire to make religious life more sincere. In doing so, they occasionally developed a mission to lay people alongside professional religious. Such encounters with the laity - through the writing of theology in the vernacular, in the delivery of charismatic preaching, in the operation of inquisition into heresy, in the composition of new liturgies, and through networks of patronage - created modes of living religion - modus vivendi - of creativity as well as discipline. They contributed to religious life beyond the routine provisions of parish life, and often included women in novel ways. Modus Vivendi spans European regions across the period 1350-1500 in its studies, based on texts, objects, and images which have been little studied so far.

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From Prophet to Priest: The Characterization of Aaron in the Pentateuch by James D. Findlay provides the first full-length literary and form-critical study of Aaron, a central yet long-neglected biblical figure. Utilizing a range of methodologies, it carefully examines key Pentateuchal texts which present Aaron in multiple ways. From his appearance as prophet and co-worker with Moses in Exodus 7-11, through his duplicitous behavior in the Golden Calf incident of Exodus 32-34, his priestly ordination and activity in Leviticus 9-11, his interaction with Miriam and Moses in Numbers 12, his challenge and triumph in Numbers 16-17, to the notice of his inadequacy and death in Deuteronomy 9-10, Aaron emerges as a vital yet variable character in the biblical narratives. The author offers original conclusions on Aaron's depictions by the biblical authors, the dating and historical settings of the texts where he appears, the relation of characterization to ideology and context, and how literary studies can produce fresh and fruitful insights in the future.

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A Companion to the Song of Songs in the History of Spirituality

As one of the most frequently commentated on biblical books during antiquity and the middle ages, the Song of Songs has played a central role in the history of Christian spirituality. At a time of heightened interest in the Song of Songs among biblical scholars, historians, and students of spirituality, this Companion to the Song of Songs in the History of Spirituality provides a state-of-the art overview of the history, challenges some conventional wisdom, and presents innovative studies of some lesser-known aspects of the Song's reception. The essays in this volume-including a chapter on Jewish interpretation-present the diverse forms of spirituality inspired by the Song since the beginning of the Christian era.

Contributors include: Ann W. Astell, Mark S. Burrows, Emily Cain, Catherine Cavadini, Rabia Gregory, Arthur Holder, Jason Kalman, Suzanne LaVere, Hannah Matis, Bernard McGinn, Timothy H. Robinson, and Karl Shuve.

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Contracts Between Ecclesiastical Entities According to Canon Law by Joseph Clifford Ndi

Within ecclesiastical circles, both from the perspective of legal practice and ordinary relational matters between ecclesiastical entities, the theme of contract very scarcely occupies a place of prominence. It is a situation that is due on the one hand, and to a large extent, to the fact that the canonization of civil law on contracts (c. 1290 CIC/1983) has had the consequence of transferring the preoccupation of the entities on this matter to the domain of civil law. Besides, and still connected to the above, is the tendency to attribute a merely pastoral relevance to their relationships, with little or no reference to the juridic aspects inherent in these relationships. It is a situation that is largely responsible for the crisis which do not uncommonly characterize some of these relationships as verified over the centuries; particularly in the relationship between dioceses and religious institutes. The issuance of various papal and conciliar exhortations before and after Vatican II, as well as the normative instructions and legal provisions contained in various juridic documents, most prominently cc. 271, 520, 681 and 790 of CIC/1983, has gone a long way to dissipate some of the tensions of the past. However, the true nature of how the contractual relationship between ecclesiastical entities, including the attendant issues of conceptual understanding, civil status of ecclesiastical entities, resolution of contractual disputes, etc., remains a matter of investigative interest for the canonist. This is, in a nutshell, the substance of this research work. The conclusions arrived at offer the reader an insight into the available untapped resources within the ecclesiastical legal system, as well as some considerable possibilities which remain to be explored to the benefit of the subjects of canon law.

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The Quotable Saint Jerome by Justin McClain

Among the illustrious writers of the early Church, Saint Jerome (345-420) had a way with words few could equal. To honor the 1600th anniversary of the death of this patron saint of librarians and Scripture scholars, the Catholic University of America Press is releasing The Quotable Jerome, a well-organized collection of memorable wisdom from this early witness to Catholic truth.

While Jerome is known for acerbic wits, editor Justin McClain shows that much of the time, Jerome's writings are instructive and even inspiring. Homilists will easily be able to find what Jerome said on any number of topics-Scripture, the Trinity, the sacraments, persecution, heresy, divine revelation, or chastity-just to name a few. All citations are clearly sourced if the reader wants to pursue the longer passage in question.

"I am upset because I am human; I control my tongue because I am a Christian. Anger surges up in my heart, but I do not give vent to it." - Homilies on the Psalms, Homily 10, Psalm 76 (77) (FOTC 48)

"The doer of evil has, indeed, killed his own soul; but the heretic-the liar-has killed as many souls as he has seduced." - Homilies on the Psalms, Homily 2, Psalm 5 (FOTC 48)

"The Church does not consist in walls, but in the truths of her teachings. The Church is there where there is true faith." - Homilies on the Psalms, Homily 46, Psalm 133 (134)

"To err is human, but to lay snares is diabolical." - Dogmatic and Polemical Works, The Apology Against the Books of Rufinus, Book Three, paragraph 33 (FOTC 53)

"So much for what Scripture says; learn now what it means." - Homilies on the Psalms, Homily 15, Psalm 82 (83) (FOTC 48)

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Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola: Religion and Politics, 1490-1498Edited by Donald Beebe

Five hundred years after his death at the stake, Girolamo Savonarola remains one of the most fascinating figures of the Italian Renaissance. This wide-ranging collection, with an introduction by historian Alison Brown, includes translations of his sermons and treatises on pastoral ministry, prophecy, politics, and moral reform, as well as the correspondence with Alexander VI that led to Savonarola's silencing and excommunication. Also included are first-hand accounts of religio-civic festivities instigated by Savonarola and of his last moments. This collection demonstrates the remarkable extent of Savonarola's contributions to the religious, political, and aesthetic debates of the late fifteenth century.

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Selected Studies on Deuterocanonical Prayers Edited by Kim Harkins and Barbara Schmitz

The study of the Septuagint (LXX), specifically the deuterocanonical books, and early Jewish prayers have gained attention in recent years. The eleven essays in this volume offer various exegetical or theological insights into select prayers known from the deuterocanonical books. Authors discuss how prayers interact with their larger literary contexts and raise text-critical questions that compare different ancient versions of various prayers. Larger questions of theological interest, such as the role prayers played in moral formation, are also treated among the essays. Most of the contributions in this volume grew out of a collaboration between the Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature and Prayer in Antiquity program units of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2018.

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A History of the Church through its Buildings by Allan Doig

A History of the Church through its Buildings takes the reader to meet people who lived through momentous religious changes in the very spaces where the story of the Church took shape. Buildings are about people, the people who conceived, designed, financed, and used them. Their stories become
embedded in the very fabric itself, and as the fabric is changed through time in response to changing use, relationships, and beliefs, the architecture becomes the standing history of passing waves of humanity.

This process takes on special significance in churches, where the arrangement of the space places members of the community in relationship with one another for the performance of the church's rites and ceremonies. Moreover, architectural forms and building materials can be used to establish
relationships with other buildings in other places and other times. Coordinated systems of signs, symbols, and images proclaim beliefs and doctrine, and in a wider sense carry extended narratives of the people and their faith.

Looking at the history of the church through its buildings allows us to establish a tangible connection to the lives of the people involved in some of the key moments and movements that shaped that history, and perhaps even a degree of intimacy with them. Standing in the same place where the
worshippers of the past preached and taught, or in a space they built as a memorial, touching the stone they placed, or marking their final resting-place, holding a keepsake they treasured or seeing a relic they venerated, probably comes as close to a shared experience with these people as it is
possible to come. Perhaps for a fleeting moment at such times their faces may come more clearly into focus.

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Dante: Convivio: A Dual-Language Critical Edition Edited by Andrew Frisardi

Dante's Convivio, composed in exile between 1304 and 1307, is a series of self-commentaries on three of Dante's long poems. These allegorical love poems and philosophical verse become the basis for philosophical, literary, moral, and political exposition. The prose is written in Italian so that those who were not educated in Latin could take part in what Dante called his 'banquet of knowledge'. In this edition, eminent Dante translator-scholar Andrew Frisardi offers the first fully annotated translation of the work into English, with an extensive introduction, making Dante's often complex writings accessible to scholars and students. The parallel Italian text is also included for the first time in an English translation of the Convivio. Readers of this work can gain a strong understanding of the philosophical themes across Dante's work, including the Divine Comedy, as well as the logic, politics and science of his time.

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Dante and the Blessed Virgin Mary by Ralph McInerny

Dante and the Blessed Virgin is distinguished philosopher Ralph McInerny's eloquent reading of one of western literature's most famous works by a Catholic writer. The book provides Catholic readers new to Dante's The Divine Comedy (or Commedia) with a concise companion volume. McInerny argues that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the key to Dante. She is behind the scenes at the very beginning of the Commedia, and she is found at the end in the magnificent closing cantos of the Paradiso. McInerny also discusses Dante's Vita Nuova, where Mary is present as the object of the young Beatrice's devotion. McInerny draws from a diverse group of writers throughout this book, including Plato, Aristotle, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, and George Santayana, among others. It is St. Thomas, however, to whom McInerny most often turns, and this book also provides an accessible introduction to Thomistic moral philosophy focusing on the appetites, the ordering of goods, the distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders, the classification of capital vices and virtues, and the nature of the theological virtues. This engagingly written book will serve as a source of inspiration and devotion for anyone approaching Dante's work for the first time as well as those who value the work of Ralph McInerny.

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The Infinite Beauty of the World; Dante's Encyclopedia and the Names of God by Jason M. Baxter

This book proposes a radically new interpretation of the Comedy's encyclopedism by focusing on Dante's work in light of the medieval imago mundi tradition. The work opens with a discussion of how the Florentine poet transgressed every generic boundary in his effort to gather «into one volume» a vast and varied set of creatures, places, landscapes, historical and mythological persons, weather conditions, and arts. It then goes on to show that this extraordinary encyclopedic breadth should be understood in the terms of Boethian and Augustinian spiritual exercises of envisioning the whole world in the mind's eye, which themselves became the interpretive framework for the spiritual ends behind medieval encyclopedic texts. By bringing attention to Latin Platonism and twelfth-century authors (such as Alan of Lille, Bernard Silvestris, William of Conches, Hugh of St. Victor, and Thierry of Chatres), this book provides compelling new readings of the De vulgari eloquentia, as well as provocative insights into key figures (such as Brunetto Latini, Pier della Vigna, and Ulysses) and key passages (Purgatorio 28, Paradiso 26, and Paradiso 33).

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Saint Michael The Archangel: Three Encomiums by Theodosius Archbishop of Alexandria, Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, and Eustathius, Bishop of Trake with a Translation by E.A. Wallis Budge

This is a translation of three works that praise the greatness of Saint Michael the Archangel. An excerpt is as follows:

"Who is this in whom the angels and the armies of the heavens have hope, and whose festival they celebrate with him this day? It is Michael, whom God hath appointed to be ruler over all His kingdom.// Who is this who giveth [his] commands to all the armies of heaven, and they obey him? It is Michael the Archangel, who was obedient to the command of God, and who cast out from Him the evil slanderer and rebel."

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On the Six Days of Creation (Fathers of the Church; Shorter Works) by St. Gregory of Nyssa

The first volume of our new series, Fathers of the Church: Shorter Works, will be available in the summer of 2021. This series, to be printed only in paperback format, will offer English translations of treatises, homilies, poems, and letters of the Church Fathers in slim, easily affordable volumes. In this way a multitude of important writings will become accessible to scholars and students as well as the reading public.

This is the first complete English translation of St. Gregory of Nyssa's treatise On the Six Days of Creation (In Hexaemeron). It was probably written in 380-381, and is designed as both a defense and a critique of his recently deceased brother St. Basil's better known homilies on the creation story as set out in the first chapter of Genesis. At the same time it incorporates Gregory's own observations on the Genesis text, which reflect his desire to show the consistency between Scripture and the philosophy and natural science of his day

A notable feature is Gregory's presentation of God's creation of the world as what has been called a "substantification" of God's own will, creatio ex Deo rather than creatio ex nihilo. Other ideas of his seem interestingly to foreshadow those of modern science, notably his challenge to the idea that matter is a primary ontological category and his theory that the world as we know it developed through a process of "sequence" (akolouthia) from an originally simultaneous creation of everything.

Gregory differs from Basil in maintaining that the "waters above the firmament" in Genesis 1 are spiritual rather than physical in nature. He uses a modified form of Aristotle's theory of elements, together with some interesting observations on geography and meteorology, to construct a detailed and ingenious account of the "water cycle." This description enables him to refute Basil's notion that there needs to be an extra supply of physical water above the firmament so that the water lost from earthly seas and rivers through evaporation can be "topped up."

This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

Apocalypse Illuminated (The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts) by Richard K. Emmerson

With its rich symbolism, complex narrative, and stunning imagery, the Apocalypse, or Revelation of John, is arguably the most memorable book in the Christian Bible. In Apocalypse Illuminated, Richard Emmerson explores how this striking visionary text is represented across seven centuries of medieval illustrations.

Focusing on twenty-five of the most renowned illustrated Apocalypse manuscripts, from the earliest extant Carolingian ones produced in the ninth century to the deluxe Apocalypse made for the dukes of Savoy and completed in 1490, Emmerson examines not only how they illustrate the biblical text, but also how they interpret it for specific and increasingly diverse audiences. He discusses what this imagery shows us about expectations for the Apocalypse as the year 1000 approached, its relationship to Spanish monasticism on the Christian-Muslim frontier and to thirteenth-century Joachimist prophetic beliefs, and the polemical reinterpretations of Revelation that arose at the end of the Middle Ages. The resulting study includes historical and stylistic comparisons, highlights innovative features, and traces iconographic continuities over time, including the recurring apocalyptic patterns, events, figures, and motifs that characterize Apocalypse illustrations throughout the Middle Ages.

Gorgeously illustrated and written in lively and accessible prose, this is a masterful analysis of over seven hundred years of Apocalypse manuscripts by one of the most preeminent scholars of medieval apocalypticism.

This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

Byzantium and the West: Perception and Reality (11th-15th C.) by Nikolaos Chrissis

The interaction between Byzantium and the Latin West was intimately connected to practically all the major events and developments which shaped the medieval world in the High and Late Middle Ages - for example, the rise of the 'papal monarchy', the launch of the Crusades, the expansion of international and long distance commerce, or the flowering of the Renaissance. This volume explores not only the actual avenues of interaction between the two sides (trade, political and diplomatic contacts, ecclesiastical dialogue, intellectual exchange, armed conflict), but also the image each side had of the other and the way perceptions evolved over this long period in the context of their manifold contact.

Twenty-one stimulating papers offer new insights and original research on numerous aspects of this relationship, pooling the expertise of an international group of scholars working on both sides of the Byzantine-Western 'divide', on topics as diverse as identity formation, ideology, court ritual, literary history, military technology and the economy, among others. The particular contribution of the research presented here is the exploration of how cross-cultural relations were shaped by the interplay of the thought-world of the various historical agents and the material circumstances which circumscribed their actions.

The volume is primarily aimed at scholars and students interested in the history of Byzantium, the Mediterranean world, and, more widely, intercultural contacts in the Middle Ages.

This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

The Pope's Dilemma: Pius XII Faces Atrocities and Genocide in the Second World War (German and European Studies) by Jacques Kornberg

Pope Pius XII presided over the Catholic Church during one of the most challenging moments in its history. Elected in early 1939, Pius XII spoke out against war and destruction, but his refusal to condemn Nazi Germany and its allies for mass atrocities and genocide remains controversial almost seventy years after the end of the Second World War.

Scholars have blamed Pius's inaction on anti-communism, antisemitism, a special emotional bond with Germany, or a preference for fascist authoritarianism. Delving deep into Catholic theology and ecclesiology, Jacques Kornberg argues instead that what drove Pius XII was the belief that his highest priority must be to preserve the authority of the Church and the access to salvation that it provided.

In The Pope's Dilemma, Kornberg uses the examples of Pius XII's immediate predecessors Benedict XV and the Armenian genocide and Pius XI and Fascist Italy, as well as case studies of Pius XII's wartime policies towards five Catholic countries (Croatia, France, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), to demonstrate the consistency with which Pius XII and the Vatican avoided confronting the perpetrators of atrocities and strove to keep Catholics within the Church. By this measure, Pius XII did not betray, but fulfilled his papal role.

A meticulous and careful analysis of the career of the twentieth century's most controversial pope, The Pope's Dilemma is an important contribution to the ongoing debate about the Catholic Church's wartime legacy.

This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pius XII by Robert Ventresca

Debates over the legacy of Pope Pius XII and his canonization are so heated they are known as the "Pius wars." Soldier of Christ moves beyond competing caricatures and considers Pius XII as Eugenio Pacelli, a flawed and gifted man. While offering insight into the pope's response to Nazism, Robert A. Ventresca argues that it was the Cold War and Pius XII's manner of engaging with the modern world that defined his pontificate.

Laying the groundwork for the pope's controversial, contradictory actions from 1939 to 1958, Ventresca begins with the story of Pacelli's Roman upbringing, his intellectual formation in Rome's seminaries, and his interwar experience as papal diplomat and Vatican secretary of state. Accused of moral equivocation during the Holocaust, Pius XII later fought the spread of Communism in Western Europe, spoke against the persecution of Catholics in Eastern Europe and Asia, and tackled a range of social and political issues. By appointing the first indigenous cardinals from China and India and expanding missions in Africa while expressing solidarity with independence movements, he internationalized the church's membership and moved Catholicism beyond the colonial mentality of previous eras.

Drawing from a diversity of international sources, including unexplored documentation from the Vatican, Ventresca reveals a paradoxical figure: a prophetic reformer of limited vision whose leadership both stimulated the emergence of a global Catholicism and sowed doubt and dissension among some of the church's most faithful servants.

This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

Jesus and the Forces of Death by Matthew Thiessen

Although most people acknowledge that Jesus was a first-century Jew, interpreters of the Gospels often present him as opposed to Jewish law and customs--especially when considering his numerous encounters with the ritually impure. Matthew Thiessen corrects this popular misconception by placing Jesus within the Judaism of his day. Thiessen demonstrates that the Gospel writers depict Jesus opposing ritual impurity itself, not the Jewish ritual purity system or the Jewish law. This fresh interpretation of significant passages from the Gospels shows that throughout his life, Jesus destroys forces of death and impurity while upholding the Jewish law.

This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

T&T Clark Handbook of Children in the Bible and the Biblical World. Edited by Sharon Betsworth and Julie Faith Parker

This ground-breaking volume examines the presentation and role of children in the ancient world, and specifically in ancient Jewish and Christian texts. With carefully commissioned chapters that follow chronological and canonical progression, a sequential reading of this book enables deeper appreciation of how understandings of children change over time.
Divided into four sections, this handbook first offers an overview of key methodological approaches employed in the study of children in the biblical world, and the texts at hand. Three further sections examine crucial texts in which children or discussions of childhood are featured; presented along chronological lines, with sections on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, the Intertestamental Literature, and the New Testament and Early Christian Apocrypha. Relevant not only to biblical studies but also cross-disciplinary scholars interested in children in antiquity.

This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

Manuel II Palaiologos (1350-1425): A Byzantine Emperor in a Time of Tumult
by Siren Çelik

Few Byzantine emperors had a life as rich and as turbulent as Manuel II Palaiologos. A fascinating figure at the crossroads of Byzantine, Western European and Ottoman history, he endured political turmoil, witnessed no less than three sieges by the Ottomans and travelled as far as France and England. He was a prolific writer, producing a vast corpus of literary, theological and philosophical works. Yet, despite his talent, Manuel has largely been ignored as an author. This biography constructs an in-depth picture of him of as a ruler, author and personality, as well as providing insight into his world and times. It offers the first analysis of the emperor's complete oeuvre, focusing on his literary style, self-representation philosophical/theological thought. By focusing not only on political events, but also on the personality, personal life and literary output of Manuel, this biography paints a new portrait of a multifaceted emperor.

This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

Ambrose, Augustine, and the Pursuit of Greatness by J. Warren Smith

Since Aristotle, the concept of the magnanimous or great-souled man was employed by philosophers of antiquity to describe individuals who attained the highest degree of virtue. Greatness of soul (magnitudo animi or magnanimitas) was part of the language of Classical and Hellenistic virtue theory central to the education of Ambrose and Augustine. Yet as bishops they were conscious of fundamental differences between Christian and pagan visions of virtue. Greatness of soul could not be appropriated whole cloth. Instead, the great-souled man had to be baptized to conform with Christian understandings of righteousness, compassion, and humility. In this book, J. Warren Smith traces the development of the ideal of the great-souled man from Plato and Aristotle to latter adaptions by Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch. He then examines how Ambrose's and Augustine's theological commitments influenced their different critiques, appropriations, and modifications of the language of magnanimity.

This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images. Edited by Thomas Arentzen and Mary Cunningham

This book explores how the Virgin Mary's life is told in hymns, sermons, icons, art, and other media in the Byzantine Empire before AD 1204. A group of international specialists examines material and textual evidence from both Byzantine and Muslim-ruled territories that was intended for a variety of settings and audiences and seeks to explain why Byzantine artisans and writers chose to tell stories about Mary, the Mother of God, in such different ways. Sometimes the variation reflected the theological or narrative purposes of story-tellers; sometimes it expressed their personal spiritual preoccupations. Above all, the variety of aspects that this holy figure assumed in Byzantium reveals her paradoxical theological position as meeting-place and mediator between the divine and created realms. Narrative, whether 'historical', theological, or purely literary, thus played a fundamental role in the development of the Marian cult from Late Antiquity onward.

This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

Eyewitness to Old St. Peter's" A Study of Maffeo Vegio's 'Remembering the Ancient History of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome,' with a Translation and a Digital Reconstruction of the Church by Christine Smith and Joseph O'Connor

Old St Peter's Basilica in Rome stood for over eleven centuries until it was demolished to make room for today's church on the same Vatican site. Its last eyewitness, Maffeo Vegio, explained to the Roman hierarchy how revival of the papacy, whose prestige after the exile to Avignon had been diminished, was inseparable from a renewed awareness of the primacy of Peter's Church. To make his case, Vegio wrote a history founded on credible written and visual evidence. The text guides us through the building's true story in its material reality, undistorted by medieval guides. This was its living memory and a visualization of the continuity of Roman history into modern times. This volume makes available the first complete English translation of Vegio's text. Accompanied by full-color digital reconstructions of the Basilica as it appeared in Vegio's day.

This item is on the "Librarian's Wish List." By purchasing it, you are donating the cost for the Librarian to order this book for the permanent collection of the Library at the Dominican House of Studies. The Librarian will order the item. A bookplate with your name can be placed in the book, and this may also be done in someone's honor or memory.

The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture by Konrad Schmid and Jens Schroter

The Bible as we know it today is best understood as a process, one that begins in the tenth century BCE. In this revelatory account, a world-renowned scholar of Hebrew scripture joins a foremost authority on the New Testament to write a new biography of the Book of Books, reconstructing Jewish and Christian scriptural histories, as well as the underappreciated contest between them, from which the Bible arose.

Recent scholarship has overturned popular assumptions about Israel's past, suggesting, for instance, that the five books of the Torah were written not by Moses but during the reign of Josiah centuries later. The sources of the Gospels are also under scrutiny. Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter reveal the long, transformative journeys of these and other texts en route to inclusion in the holy books. The New Testament, the authors show, did not develop in the wake of an Old Testament set in stone. Rather the two evolved in parallel, in conversation with each other, ensuring a continuing mutual influence of Jewish and Christian traditions. Indeed, Schmid and Schröter argue that Judaism may not have survived had it not been reshaped in competition with early Christianity.

A remarkable synthesis of the latest Old and New Testament scholarship, The Making of the Bible is the most comprehensive history yet told of the world's best-known literature, revealing its buried lessons and secrets.