Eclectia: vol. 1 is the first collection of poetry written by Pennsylvania author and poet J.P. Goss. It was written over the course of almost two years. The collection, as a whole, reflects the inner chaos of the adolescent and no definite or constant theme throughout, but this: the Eclectic. Subjects range from loss in love and home to philosophical musings to, ultimately, the triumph over one's inner chaos. It is that victory that one rebuilds the destroyed into the most beautiful object imaginable: Eclectia. The challenge that Goss presents to the reader through his poetry is to replace grief with strength and rubble with structure and make one's inner world a better place. Truly, one will "never [see] storms quite the same."

Enlightened Monks investigates the social, cultural, philosophical, and theological challenges the German Benedictines had to face between 1740 and 1803, and how the Enlightenment process influenced the self-understanding and lifestyle of these religious communities. It had an impact on their forms of communication, their transfer of knowledge, their relationships to worldly authorities and to the academic world, and also their theology and philosophy. The multifaceted achievements of enlightened monks, which included a strong belief in individual freedom, tolerance, human rights, and non-violence, show that monasticism was on the way to becoming fully integrated into the Enlightenment. Ulrich L. Lehner refutes the widespread assumption that monks were reactionary enemies of Enlightenment ideas. On the contrary, he demonstrates that many Benedictines implemented the new ideas of the time into their own systems of thought. This revisionist account contributes to a better understanding not only of monastic culture in Central Europe, but also of Catholic religious culture in general.

The monastic erudition of the old religious orders was a pillar of the Catholic Enlightenment within the Holy Roman Empire and many other European countries. Despite the enormous importance the monks had as champions of programmatic Enlightenment ideas, few of their original texts are available in modern editions. The present edition contributes to filling this lacuna by making available the main work of the Benedictine monk, Beda Mayr (1742–1794), who developed a modern and ecumenical Catholic theology. Diese Edition macht das Werk "Vertheidigung der katholischen Religion" (1789) des Benediktiners Beda Mayr (1742-1794) wieder zugänglich, das wegen seiner Neudefinition der kirchlichen und päpstlichen Unfehlbarkeit auf den "Index der verbotenen Bücher" gesetzt wurde. Brill's Texts and Sources in Intellectual History, vol. 5

The Benedictine Beda Mayr,OSB, (1742?1794) was one of the main figures of the German Catholic Enlightenment. He was not only the first Catholic to wrestle with the challenges of Reimarus and Lessing, but also the first to develop an ecumenical methodology for a reunion of the churches. The text, translated from the German original for the first time, presents a theologian who intentionally went to the margins of orthodoxy in order to allow for more interconfessional dialogue. Mayr argued that Catholic theology should follow minority opinions for unsettled dogmatic questions, which would allow for easier union agreements with Protestant churches. Moreover, he suggested limiting ecclesial infallibility to directly revealed truths, thereby reducing the authoritative truth claims of conciliar or papal decisions. Although the study of Catholic Enlightenment is booming among historians and theologians, too few texts are available in reliable translations. A major strength of this edition is not only that its introduction introduces the reader to the colorful landscape of eighteenth-century theological discussions, but also presents the entire text of Mayr's book (with the exception of its appendix) thereby allowing the reader to see the strengths and weaknesses of Enlightenment ecumenism. Mayr's Limited Infallibility was put on the Index of Forbidden Books, on which it remained until the 20th Century. It invites readers to a modern, non-scholastic way of theologizing for the sake of Christian unity.

More than Petticoats: Remarkable North Carolina Women, 2nd Edition celebrates the women who shaped the Tar Heel State. Short, illuminating biographies and archival photographs and paintings tell the stories of women from across the state who served as teachers, writers, entrepreneurs, and artists.

"While studies abound about Catholic Reform and its institutional or social history, its spiritual motives and practices, what one could call its "inner life," have been widely neglected. This book examines how these spiritual ideas and practices shaped the Catholic Reform and Catholic view of the world and led to a diverse but peculiarly theological imagination, a new outlook on the self and the world, and influenced human behaviors and sentiments. It tells the story of how the idea of the "inner reform of the soul" shaped a world religion. The historicization of these religious practices and beliefs makes this book also highly accessible to historians and anthropologists. It relies on a plethora of published and unpublished sources, and a wide field of secondary literature. Although the emphasis is on Europe, this book takes a global perspective by integrating material from Africa, America and Asia as it was in this era that Catholicism became a "world religion.""--