This study examines the narrative paintings of the Passion of Christ created in Italy during the thirteenth century. Demonstrating the radical changes that occurred in the depiction of the Passion cycle during the Duecento, a period that has traditionally been dismissed as artistically stagnant, Anne Derbes analyzes the relationship between these new images and similar renderings found in Byzantine sources. She argues that the Franciscan order, which was active in the Levant by the 1230s, was largely responsible for introducing these images into Italy.

Joanna Cannon's scholarship and teaching have helped shape the historical study of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian art; this essay collection by her former students is a tribute to her work.

Buildings and their surrounding spaces play a role in formulating the collective identity of an urban population. The history of architecture, and urban history, can be studied through cityscape paintings and other artwork. The character and greatness of a city, perhaps lost to modern historians, can be recognized. In this text, four key issues are discussed in the study of change in architectural imagery and urban identity: the Roman artists' role in 14th-century painting in Tuscany, the Tuscan-Byzantinian relationship from the mid- to late 13th century, "naturalistic" representation of medieval painting, and the meaning behind the stylistic changes that coincided with the bubonic plague in the 14th century. Surveying the architectural imagery in narrative paintings, the text focuses primarily on Rome, Assisi, Siena and Florence from circa 1250 to circa 1390. The book details the relationship between art and cityscape, as well as analyzes historical artistic periods via painted portraiture of architecture. Included are 115 photographs, illustrations and maps.

For the past two thousand years, the cross has been a powerful symbol of the Christian faith and an anchor of its symbol system. In this volume, a group of distinguished scholars delves into the theologies and spiritualities of the cross at select moments in the tradition. They examine biblical texts and commentaries, lectionaries, liturgical poetry, sermons, and theological spiritual treatises in: Paul, the early liturgy, Origen, Augustine and Bonaventure. Each chapter provides a window into how particular contexts influenced the interpretation of the cross and how the cross functioned in each unique historical moment. Originally presented at Saint Mary's College, these papers offer a fresh and distinctive approach to the literature on the cross. The authors' historical perspective points to the tradition as a transforming agent for theology and spirituality today. Contributors: - Elizabeth A. Dreyer - Jerome Murphy-O'Connor - Nathan D. Mitchell - Peter J. Gorday - John Cavadini Here is a book that will interest liturgists and Christian educators, university and seminary students and members of religious orders. Although scholarly in tone, can be read with profit by adult educated Christians as well. +

The Eucharist in the European Middle Ages was a multimedia event. First and foremost it was a drama, a pageant, a liturgy. The setting itself was impressive. Stunning artwork adorned massive buildings. Underlying and supporting the liturgy, the art and the architecture was a carefully constructed theological world of thought and belief. Popular beliefs, spilling over into the magical, celebrated that presence in several tumultuous forms. Church law regulated how far such practice might go as well as who was allowed to perform the liturgy and how and when it might be performed. This volume presents the medieval Eucharist in all its glory combining introductory essays on the liturgy, art, theology, architecture, devotion and theology. Contributors include: Celia Chazelle, Michael Driscoll, Edward Foley, Stephen Edmund Lahey, Lizette Larson-Miller, Ian Christopher Levy, Gerhard Lutz, Gary Macy, Miri Rubin, Elizabeth Saxon, Kristen Van Ausdall and Joseph Wawrykow.

In Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, Michelle Karnes revises the history of medieval imagination with a detailed analysis of its role in the period’s meditations and theories of cognition. Karnes here understands imagination in its technical, philosophical sense, taking her cue from Bonaventure, the thirteenth-century scholastic theologian and philosopher who provided the first sustained account of how the philosophical imagination could be transformed into a devotional one. Karnes examines Bonaventure’s meditational works, the Meditationes vitae Christi, the Stimulis amoris, Piers Plowman, and Nicholas Love’s Myrrour, among others, and argues that the cognitive importance that imagination enjoyed in scholastic philosophy informed its importance in medieval meditations on the life of Christ. Emphasizing the cognitive significance of both imagination and the meditations that relied on it, she revises a long-standing association of imagination with the Middle Ages. In her account, imagination was not simply an object of suspicion but also a crucial intellectual, spiritual, and literary resource that exercised considerable authority.

ROMARD: Research on Medieval and Renaissance Drama is an academic journal devoted to the study of Medieval and Renaissance drama in Europe. Previously published under the title of Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama (RORD), the journal has been in publication since 1956. ROMARD is published annually at Western University (www.uwo.ca). For further details, please visit the ROMARD website at www.romard.org. The Ritual Life of Medieval Europe: Papers By and For C. Clifford Flanigan Guest Editor: Robert L. A. Clark Chief Editor: Mario B. Longtin Volume 52-53 is a double issue honouring the memory of C. Clifford Flanigan. It consists of the unpublished articles of Professor Flanigan, and articles in tribute by his friends and colleagues in the field.

Susan Karant-Nunn argues that the 16th-century Reformation movement sought not only to modify people's doctrinal convictions and their behavior but to root these changes in altered sentiment.

Current scholarship continues to emphasise both the importance and the sheer diversity of religious beliefs within early modern societies. Furthermore, it continues to show that, despite the wishes of secular and religious leaders, confessional uniformity was in many cases impossible to enforce. As the essays in this collection make clear, many people in Reformation Europe were forced to confront the reality of divided religious loyalties, and this raised issues such as the means of accommodating religious minorities who refused to conform and the methods of living in communion with those of different faiths. Drawing together a number of case studies from diverse parts of Europe, Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe explores the processes involved when groups of differing confessions had to live in close proximity - sometimes grudgingly, but often with a benign pragmatism that stood in opposition to the will of their rulers. By focussing on these themes, the volume bridges the gap between our understanding of the confessional developments as they were conceived as normative visions and religious culture at the level of implementation. The contributions thus measure the religious policies articulated by secular and ecclesiastical elites against the 'lived experience' of people going about their daily business. In doing this, the collection shows how people perceived and experienced the religious upheavals of the confessional age and how they were able to assimilate these changes within the framework of their lives.