This collected volume is dedicated to the role of prayer books in lay piety in medieval and early modern contexts. Instead of focusing on individual examples, it places them within the broader genre of devotional literature and considers them in connection with prevailing cultural, religious and artistic developments, taking into account the Reformation, the printing press and growing interest in lay piety, in the context of increasing individualism, developing literacy, privatization and/or personalization of religion. Contextualising devotional literature, the volume refines understandings of religious practice fostered by traditional Catholicism and early modern Protestantism and its relationship with the written word, locating the use of books within a devotional 'diet' that included oral recitation of prayers as well as contemplation of images. Stressing continuities, often against the grain of existing literature, this volume highlights differences between regional cultures of prayer in contrast to norms set by the universal Church and emphasizes the tension between public/communal and private/individual devotion.

Religious texts of various literary genres reveal the transforming expressions of piety from medieval times to the early modern period. Focused on prayer books and addressing a worldwide readership, this bi-lingual volume contextualizes a specific genre, devotional literature, within a broad geographical and chronological framework, bringing together local and global to define the place of the written word in lay piety, highlighting continuities between medieval/Catholic and early modern/Protesant practice.

Martin Luther was the subject of a religious controversy that never really came to an end. The Reformation was a controversy about him.

Focuses on one of the most attractive features of late medieval manuscript illumination: the portrait of the book owner at prayer within the pages of her prayer-book.

This collection of essays offers a series of rigorously focused art-historical, historical, and philosophical studies that examine ways in which materiality has posed and still poses a religious and cultural problem. The volume examines the material agency of objects, artifacts, and environments: art, ritual, pilgrimage, food, and philosophy. It studies the variable "senses” of materiality, the place of materiality in the formation of modern Western religion, and its role in Christianity’s dialogue with non-Western religions. The essays present new interpretations of religious rites and outlooks through the focus on their material components. They also suggest how material engagement theory - a new movement in cultural anthropology and archeology - may shed light on the cultural history of Christianity in medieval and early modern Europe and the Americas. It thus fills an important lacuna in the study of western religion by highlighting the longue durée, from the Middles Ages to the Modern Period, of a current dilemma, namely the divide between materialistic and what might broadly be called hermeneutical or cultural-critical approaches to religion and human subjectivity.

On the day of a royal wedding in a kingdom where everyone has grown careless in the practice of their Catholic faith, a poor widow helps reveal the true value of the Mass.

This companion volume seeks to trace the development of ideas relating to death, burial, and the remembrance of the dead in Europe from ca.1300-1700.

A comprehensive look at the background and context, the content, and the impact of Martin Luther's Theology, written by an international team of theologians and historians.

At Christmastime, Ambrose the mouse hides in unhappy Princess Eleanor's silken purse, hoping to discover what will make her happy.

Ambrose, a young mouse, must put aside his daydreaming in order to master the art of somersaulting and to help complete the building of the grand cathedral.