A dramatic, thought-provoking portrait of one of the most compelling figures in early Christianity which explores two thousand years of history, art, and literature to provide a close-up look at Mary Magdalen and her significance in religious and cultural thought.

The book treats the Protestant cultures of northern Europe, particularly England, examining biblical commentaries, plays, poems, sermons, and treatises, as well as the often startling negotiations between these texts and other cultural discourses. In Shuger's hands, these biblical materials serve to illuminate, and often radically reinterpret, the dominant issues in contemporary Renaissance studies: gender, the body, colonialism, subjectivity, desire, law, and history. Her work forcefully demonstrates the cultural centrality of Renaissance religion.

Bares the soul of a saint and reveals the methods which were so successful for him in converting others. From age 5 he was haunted by the thought of the souls about to fall into Hell. This insight fueled his powerful drive to save as many souls as he could.

The Station by Robert Byron is Byron's in-depth record of his travels to Mount Athos, the spiritual heart of Eastern Orthodox Monasticism. Excerpt: "Letters from foreign countries arrive in the afternoon. Each envelope advertises a break in the monotony of days; each reveals on penetration only one more facet of a standard world. But latterly another kind has come, strangely addressed, stranger still within. "We learn," runs one, "that you are safely returned to your own glorious country and are already in the midst of your dearest ones, enjoying the best of health..."

****Reprint of the classic first published in 1961 and cited in BCL3. Distributed by Angle Publishing Co. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR