The popular image of Scotland is dominated by widely recognized elements of Celtic culture. But a significant non-Celtic influence on Scotland's history has been largely ignored for centuries? This book argues that much of Scotland's history and culture from 1100 forward is Jewish. The authors provide evidence that many of the national heroes, villains, rulers, nobles, traders, merchants, bishops, guild members, burgesses, and ministers of Scotland were of Jewish descent, their ancestors originating in France and Spain. Much of the traditional historical account of Scotland, it is proposed, rests on fundamental interpretive errors, perpetuated in order to affirm Scotland's identity as a Celtic, Christian society. A more accurate and profound understanding of Scottish history has thus been buried. The authors' wide-ranging research includes examination of census records, archaeological artifacts, castle carvings, cemetery inscriptions, religious seals, coinage, burgess and guild member rolls, noble genealogies, family crests, portraiture, and geographic place names.

A mediaeval Norman-Welsh cleric recounts his adventures travelling through his homeland, recruiting for the Third Crusade.

Why were so many religious images and objects broken and damaged in the course of the Reformation? Margaret Aston's magisterial new book charts the conflicting imperatives of destruction and rebuilding throughout the English Reformation from the desecration of images, rails and screens to bells, organs and stained glass windows. She explores the motivations of those who smashed images of the crucifixion in stained glass windows and who pulled down crosses and defaced symbols of the Trinity. She shows that destruction was part of a methodology of religious revolution designed to change people as well as places and to forge in the long term new generations of new believers. Beyond blanked walls and whited windows were beliefs and minds impregnated by new modes of religious learning. Idol-breaking with its emphasis on the treacheries of images fundamentally transformed not only Anglican ways of worship but also of seeing, hearing and remembering.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Ancient, Curious, and Famous Wills" by Virgil M. Harris. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Margaret Anna Cusack (1832-1899), who also wrote as MFC, Sister, Mary Frances Cusack, and Vigilant, was a Catholic nun and the founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. She was a strong advocate for the poor and oppressed, especially women. At the age of 29 she was received into the Catholic Church and immediatey joined the Poor Clares in Newry, County Down. During her stay at Kenmare she dedicated herself to her writings, which ranged from biographies of saints to pamphlets on social issues. She wrote 35 books, including many popular, pious and sentimental texts on private devotions, poems, Irish history and biography and founded Kenmare Publications, through which 200,000 volumes of her works were issued in under ten years. Chief amongst her works are: A Student's History of Ireland (1870), Woman's Work in Modern Society (1872), The Liberator (1872), The Pilgrim's Way to Heaven (1873), The Book of the Blessed Ones (1874), A Nun's Advice to Her Girls (1877) and St. Patrick, St. Columba, and St. Bridget (1877). Two autobiographies are The Nun of Kenmare (1888) and The Story of My Life (1893).