Spiritual Direction As a Medical Art in Early Christian Monasticism

Spiritual Direction As a Medical Art in Early Christian Monasticism PDF

Author: JONATHAN L. ZECHER

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-10-06

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 0198854137

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What expectations did the women and men living in early monastic communities carry into relationships of obedience and advice? What did they hope to achieve through confession and discipline? To explore these questions, this study shows how several early Christian writers applied the logic, knowledge, and practices of Galenic medicine to develop their own practices of spiritual direction. Evagrius reads dream images as diagnostic indicators of the soul's state. John Cassian crafts a nosology of the soul using lists of passions while diagnosing the causes of wet dreams. Basil of Caesarea pits the spiritual director against the physician in a competition over diagnostic expertise. John Climacus crafts pathologies of passions through demonic family trees, while equipping his spiritual director with a physician's toolkit and imagining the monastic space as a vast clinic. These different appropriations of medical logic and metaphors not only show us the thought-world of late antique monasticism, but they would also have decisive consequences for generations of Christian subjects who would learn to see themselves as sick or well, patients or healers, within monastic communities.

Humankind and the Cosmos: Early Christian Representations

Humankind and the Cosmos: Early Christian Representations PDF

Author: Doru Costache

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-07-15

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 900446834X

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In this volume, Costache endeavours to map the world as it was understood and experienced by the early Christians. Progressing from initial fears, they came to adopt a more positive view of the world through successive shifts of perception. This did not happen overnight. Tracing these shifts, Costache considers the world of the early Christians through an interdisciplinary lens, revealing its meaningful complexity. He demonstrates that the early Christian worldview developed at the nexus of several perspectives. What facilitated this process was above all the experience of contemplating nature. When accompanied by genuine personal transformation, natural contemplation fostered the theological interpretation of the world as it had been known to the ancients.

Dreams, Memory and Imagination in Byzantium

Dreams, Memory and Imagination in Byzantium PDF

Author: Bronwen Neil

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-08-20

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 9004375716

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This collection of studies on Dreams, Memory and Imagination in Byzantium reveals the distinctive and important roles of memory, imagination and dreams in the Byzantine court, the proto-Orthodox church and broader society from Constantinople to Syria and beyond

Greek and Latin Letters in Late Antiquity

Greek and Latin Letters in Late Antiquity PDF

Author: Pauline Allen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-09-10

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1316510131

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Introduction to the nature, function, production and dissemination of Late Antique literary letters and their importance for their society.

Prognostication in the Medieval World

Prognostication in the Medieval World PDF

Author: Matthias Heiduk

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-11-09

Total Pages: 1039

ISBN-13: 3110499770

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Two opposing views of the future in the Middle Ages dominate recent historical scholarship. According to one opinion, medieval societies were expecting the near end of the world and therefore had no concept of the future. According to the other opinion, the expectation of the near end created a drive to change the world for the better and thus for innovation. Close inspection of the history of prognostication reveals the continuous attempts and multifold methods to recognize and interpret God’s will, the prodigies of nature, and the patterns of time. That proves, on the one hand, the constant human uncertainty facing the contingencies of the future. On the other hand, it demonstrates the firm believe during the Middle Ages in a future which could be shaped and even manipulated. The handbook provides the first overview of current historical research on medieval prognostication. It considers the entangled influences and transmissions between Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and non-monotheistic societies during the period from a wide range of perspectives. An international team of 63 renowned authors from about a dozen different academic disciplines contributed to this comprehensive overview.

The Spirituality of the English and American Deists

The Spirituality of the English and American Deists PDF

Author: Joseph Waligore

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2023-01-15

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1666920649

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The English and American deists rejected Christianity, which they believed portrayed God as cruel. In The Spirituality of the English and American Deists, Waligore shows how the deists were the first group of modern thinkers who were spiritual but not religious.

Eastern Christianity and Late Antique Philosophy

Eastern Christianity and Late Antique Philosophy PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-06-29

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9004429565

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The essays in Eastern Christianity and Late Antique Philosophy provide valuable insights into the central role of philosophical ideas in a period when paganism was in decline and Eastern Christians were forging their community identities.

Justice, Mercy, and Well-Being

Justice, Mercy, and Well-Being PDF

Author: Peter G. Bolt

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2020-03-10

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 1532674678

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This collection of essays examines how God’s justice and mercy intersect in the lives of individuals and their communities, with a view to the establishment of personal and social well-being in the world. The authors, drawn from England and Australia, approach the theme from a variety of methodological and interdisciplinary perspectives. Theological, exegetical, historical, healthcare, moral, and visual arts approaches are brought to bear in an investigation relevant for the identity and mission of the church in a world characterized by cycles of revenge, the perpetration of injustice, and the marginalization and persecution of various ethnic groups. The practical outcome of these studies has wide-ranging relevance for our attitudes toward indigenous peoples, the well-being of single and married people, healthcare throughout the ages, the spiritual care of people (including those suffering dementia), the personal experience of trauma, issues of moral judgement, and the abiding value of the creative arts.