Some decades before Michelangelo began work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, such masters as Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, and Signorelli were called to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV to decorate the walls. By 1483, these painters had completed two monumental fresco cycles illustrating the lives of Moses and Christ - works of complex, and sometimes puzzling, iconography. Carol F. Lewine shows that many long-standing questions posed by these Renaissance masterpieces can be resolved by systematic investigation of their undoubted links with the Roman liturgy. Her reconstruction of the scheme by which liturgical themes of the weeks between Christmas and Ascension Thursday are mirrored in the subjects of these frescoes has revealed, unexpectedly, that within this program the primary emphasis is on the liturgy of Lent, often on the Lenten liturgy of the early church, and on such Lenten themes as baptism and penitence. The discovery that these frescoes also refer to the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews, another ancient Lenten theme, suggests that Sixtus IV created the papal chapel that bears his name in order to commemorate the return of the popes from their "Babylonian Captivity" at Avignon. This exile ended in 1377, approximately one hundred years before Sixtus began to plan the major artistic enterprise of his pontificate. Lewine's approach to the interpretation of visual images in terms of their liturgical significance is in itself important and her argument, grounded in close visual inspection of the paintings, is ingenious and provocative. Her analyses of the interactions among narrative and symbol, text and image, form and meaning, offer stimulating contributions to quattrocento studies and encourage further consideration of all the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, together, as parts of an evolving ensemble.

The art of the Sistine Chapel, decorated by artists who competed with one another and commissioned by popes who were equally competitive, is a complex fabric of thematic, chronological, and artistic references. Four main campaigns were undertaken to decorate the chapel between 1481 and 1541, and with each new addition, fundamental themes found increasingly concrete expression. One overarching theme plays a central role in the chapel: the legitimization of papal authority, as symbolized by two keys—one silver, one gold—to the kingdom of heaven. The Sistine Chapel: Paradise in Rome is a concise, informative account of the Sistine Chapel. In unpacking this complex history, Ulrich Pfisterer reveals the remarkable unity of the images in relation to theology, politics, and the intentions of the artists themselves, who included such household names as Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Through a study of the main campaigns to adorn the Sistine Chapel, Pfisterer argues that the art transformed the chapel into a pathway to the kingdom of God, legitimizing the absolute authority of the popes. First published in German, the prose comes to life in English in the deft hands of translator David Dollenmayer.

GODS MISSIVE TO THE SOUL THE SISTINE CHAPEL: A Study in Celestial Cartography is a highly mystical and contemplative inquiry into The Mysteries and Esoteric Teachings of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Churchs only onus in the world is to re-articulate the sacred scriptures esoterically into as many artistic venues as possible. Through a comprehensive comparative analysis of the symbolic and esoteric patterns codified to the Judeao Christian Scriptures, the landscape of Jerusalem, Chartres Cathedral (stone and glass), Dante Alighieris La Divina Commedia (pen and ink), the Sistine Chapel (mosaics, paint and wet plaster) and Saint Peters Basilica (marble) the reader can determine for him or herself the efficacy of the esoteric science, which hails from the dawn of the time/space continuum as a direct missive from God. The author discovered a relatively simple and yet extremely sophisticated mathematical and grammatical system of thought in ancient literature: the integration of the Seven Liberal Arts. Antiquity developed this esoteric science inherent in the soul/psyche to codify the Word of God esoterically into the worlds sacred literature. Each letter of the worlds sacred literature is symbolized and alphanumerically structured, which makes the interpretation of each word far more important than the sum of its letters. The Holy Writ: i.e. the worlds religious literature is an encyclopedic library of knowledge relating wholly to the soul/psyche. There is no purpose for esotericisms existence other than for God to have a one-on-one relationship with the soul/psyche. Why is the soul/psyche seemingly in the world? How did the soul/psyche come to its present state of existence? What can the soul/psyche do to extricate itself from its plight when the dynamic forces of the world become too oppressive for it to bear?

No religious text has influenced the world more than has the New Testament's Sermon on the Mount, and yet this crucial text still begs to be more clearly understood. Why was it written? What unifying theme or purpose holds it all together? Should it be called a sermon? Or is it some other kind of composition? How would its earliest listeners have heard its encoded allusions and systematic program? This book offers new insights into the Sermon on the Mount by seeing it in the shadow of the all-pervasive Temple in Jerusalem, which dominated the religious landscape of the world of Jesus and his earliest disciples. Analyzing Matthew 5-7 in light of biblical and Jewish backgrounds, ritual studies, and oral performances in early Christian worship, this reading coherently integrates every line in the Sermon. It positions the Sermon as the premier Christian mystery.

Probes the basic attitudes, the underlying values and the core convictions that Rome's intellectuals and artists experienced, lived for, and believed in from Pope Eugenius IV's reign to the Eternal City in 1443 to the sacking of 1527.

The essays in this volume offer diverse, innovative approaches to medieval music and culture.

The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy takes up the words, 'this is my body', 'this do', and 'remembrance of me' that divided Christendom in the sixteenth century. It traces the different understandings of these simple words and the consequences of those divergent understandings in the delineation of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic traditions: the different formulations of liturgy with their different conceptualizations of the cognitive and collective function of ritual; the different conceptualizations of the relationship between Christ and the living body of the faithful; the different articulations of the relationship between the world of matter and divinity; and the different epistemologies. It argues that the incarnation is at the center of the story of the Reformation and suggests how divergent religious identities were formed.

The Arma Christi, the cluster of objects associated with Christ’s Passion, was one of the most familiar iconographic devices of European medieval and early modern culture. From the weapons used to torment and sacrifice the body of Christ sprang a reliquary tradition that produced active and contemplative devotional practices, complex literary narratives, intense lyric poems, striking visual images, and innovative architectural ornament. This collection displays the fascinating range of intellectual possibilities generated by representations of these medieval ’objects,’ and through the interdisciplinary collaboration of its contributors produces a fresh view of the multiple intersections of the spiritual and the material in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It also includes a new and authoritative critical edition of the Middle English Arma Christi poem known as ’O Vernicle’ that takes account of all twenty surviving manuscripts. The book opens with a substantial introduction that surveys previous scholarship and situates the Arma in their historical and aesthetic contexts. The ten essays that follow explore representative examples of the instruments of the Passion across a broad swath of history, from some of their earliest formulations in late antiquity to their reformulations in early modern Europe. Together, they offer the first large-scale attempt to understand the arma Christi as a unique cultural phenomenon of its own, one that resonated across centuries in multiple languages, genres, and media. The collection directs particular attention to this array of implements as an example of the potency afforded material objects in medieval and early modern culture, from the glittering nails of the Old English poem Elene to the coins of the Middle English poem ’Sir Penny,’ from garments and dice on Irish tomb sculptures to lanterns and ladders in Hieronymus Bosch’s panel painting of St. Christopher, and from the altar of the Sistine Chapel to the printed prayer books of the Reformation.

"The Oxford History of Christian Worship is a comprehensive and authoritative history, lavishly illustrated, of the origins and development of Christian worship up to the present day. Following contemporary methods in scholarship, it attends to social and cultural contexts and examines the worship traditions from both Eastern and Western Christianity, ancient and modern. It offers a chronological account, while encompassing spatial and confessional variations, from Baptists in Britain to Roman Catholics in Mexico, from Orthodox in Ethiopia to Pentecostals in the United States, from Lutheran and Reformed in Europe to united churches in India and Australia. The material details of Christian worship, such as music, architecture, and the visual arts, are considered within specific cultural contexts throughout the volume as well as studied thematically in individual chapters."--BOOK JACKET.

In Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception, readers discover the roles of Moses from the Exodus to the Renaissance--law-giver, prophet, writer--and their impact on Jewish and Christian cultures as seen in the Hebrew Bible, Patristic writings, Catholic liturgy, Jewish philosophy and midrashim, Anglo-Saxon literature, Scholastics and Thomas Aquinas, Middle English literature, and the Renaissance. Contributors are Jane Beal, Robert D. Miller II, Tawny Holm, Christopher A. Hall, Luciana Cuppo-Csaki, Haim Kreisel, Rachel S. Mikva, Devorah Schoenfeld, Gernot Wieland, Deborah Goodwin, Franklin T. Harkins, Gail Ivy Berlin, and Brett Foster.