Renaissance Papers collects the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The theme of this year's volume is "sacred places, secular spaces." It begins with a "who is it" mystery, examining two portraits by Raphael that embody the sacred and the profane, respectively. The next essay engages both the sacred and pictorial innovationsin Holbein's predella The Dead Christ; while the following one views the sacred through the critical lens of race, arguing that Northern European churchmen normalized views on race by strategically placing racialized artifacts in their churches. The scene then shifts to 16th century Venice, where the Greek community contended with local authorities over the right to establish a sacred site for interring their dead. The next two essays swing the pendulum toward the secular: an essay on ecocriticism suggests that the early modern period expelled the sacred from nature and presents a Rabelaisian antidote, while an essay on Spenser's The Faerie Queene presents it as a blueprint for colonization. The volume concludes with Contributors: Julie Fox-Horton, Lorenz A. Hindrichsen, Heather Hirschfeld, Elizabeth Lisot-Nelson, Jesse Russell, Victor Velázquez, John N. Wall, Jennifer Wu.The journal is edited by Jim Pearce of North Carolina Central University and Ward Risvold of Georgia College and State University.e Queene presents it as a blueprint for colonization. The volume concludes with Contributors: Julie Fox-Horton, Lorenz A. Hindrichsen, Heather Hirschfeld, Elizabeth Lisot-Nelson, Jesse Russell, Victor Velázquez, John N. Wall, Jennifer Wu.The journal is edited by Jim Pearce of North Carolina Central University and Ward Risvold of Georgia College and State University.e Queene presents it as a blueprint for colonization. The volume concludes with Contributors: Julie Fox-Horton, Lorenz A. Hindrichsen, Heather Hirschfeld, Elizabeth Lisot-Nelson, Jesse Russell, Victor Velázquez, John N. Wall, Jennifer Wu.The journal is edited by Jim Pearce of North Carolina Central University and Ward Risvold of Georgia College and State University.e Queene presents it as a blueprint for colonization. The volume concludes with Contributors: Julie Fox-Horton, Lorenz A. Hindrichsen, Heather Hirschfeld, Elizabeth Lisot-Nelson, Jesse Russell, Victor Velázquez, John N. Wall, Jennifer Wu.The journal is edited by Jim Pearce of North Carolina Central University and Ward Risvold of Georgia College and State University.

This book asks: Do we need the devil and demons to explain adversity, bad behavior, crime, disease, evil, and failures? Must we understand all allusion to the devil and demons in the holy Scriptures in a literal sense? Do these beings really exist? Or is Satan only a personification of all that is atrocious, bad, criminal, disagreeable, evil, frightening, gross, horrible, indecent, and wrong? It often happens that people live in fear and terror for the devil and his helpers, all sorts of evil spirits, sorcerers, wizards, and witches. How realistic is this fear? This is another ground-breaking book by theologian and scholar Albertus Pretorius. As in his previous books, he manages to provide new insights regarding controversial biblical subjects. In this case, he deals with the existence or non-existence of Satan and sinful spirits. The author explores what the conventional beliefs on Satan entail, as well as what a critical investigation of the holy Scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can teach people of the twenty-first century about these perilous and pestilential personages.