Forbidden Knowledge

Forbidden Knowledge PDF

Author: Hannah Marcus

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-09-25

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 022673661X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

“Wonderful . . . offers and provokes meditation on the timeless nature of censorship, its practices, its intentions and . . . its (unintended) outcomes.” —Times Higher Education Forbidden Knowledge explores the censorship of medical books from their proliferation in print through the prohibitions placed on them during the Counter-Reformation. How and why did books banned in Italy in the sixteenth century end up back on library shelves in the seventeenth? Historian Hannah Marcus uncovers how early modern physicians evaluated the utility of banned books and facilitated their continued circulation in conversation with Catholic authorities. Through extensive archival research, Marcus highlights how talk of scientific utility, once thought to have begun during the Scientific Revolution, in fact began earlier, emerging from ecclesiastical censorship and the desire to continue to use banned medical books. What’s more, this censorship in medicine, which preceded the Copernican debate in astronomy by sixty years, has had a lasting impact on how we talk about new and controversial developments in scientific knowledge. Beautiful illustrations accompany this masterful, timely book about the interplay between efforts at intellectual control and the utility of knowledge. “Marcus deftly explains the various contradictions that shaped the interactions between Catholic authorities and the medical and scientific communities of early modern Italy, showing how these dynamics defined the role of outside expertise in creating 'Catholic Knowledge' for centuries to come.” —Annals of Science “An important study that all scholars and advanced students of early modern Europe will want to read, especially those interested in early modern medicine, religion, and the history of the book. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice

God's Choice

God's Choice PDF

Author: George Weigel

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2005-11-01

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0066213312

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From the bestselling author of Witness to Hope comes an inside account of the election of Pope Benedict XVI and an unflinching view of the Catholic Church at the dawn of a new era. After 25 years of John Paul II′s guidance, the Catholic Church is entering a new age, with its bedrock traditions intact but pressing questions of its vitality to address in a rapidly changing world. Beginning with a portrait of John Paul′s last months, God′s Choice will then offer an account of the complex conclave process that produced Benedict XVI as the next pope. Drawing on Weigel′s unprecedented access during the post-John Paul II intrerregnum, readers will be offered an inside view of the issues and personalities that shaped the conclave′s deliberations. Weigel will also survey the current state of the Church around the world: the remarkable vitality of Catholicism in Africa; the new center of the world′s Catholic population -- Latin America; the collapse of Catholic faith and practice in much of western Europe, contrasted with its strength in Poland and other parts of the post-communist world; the continuing struggles of Catholicism in Asia; the vibrancy of some aspects of Catholic life in the United States, even as the Church in America struggles to overcome its recent experience of scandal. God′s Choice will paint a personal portrait of the new pope and analyze the crucial issues facing world Catholicism in the first decades of the 21st century. It will be a major reference point for anyone seeking to understand the Catholic future, and the larger human future the Church will help to shape.

All Good Books Are Catholic Books

All Good Books Are Catholic Books PDF

Author: Una Cadegan

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2013-09-15

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 0801468973

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Until the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, the stance of the Roman Catholic Church toward the social, cultural, economic, and political developments of the twentieth century was largely antagonistic. Naturally opposed to secularization, skeptical of capitalist markets indifferent to questions of justice, confused and appalled by new forms of high and low culture, and resistant to the social and economic freedom of women—in all of these ways the Catholic Church set itself up as a thoroughly anti-modern institution. Yet, in and through the period from World War I to Vatican II, the Church did engage with, react to, and even accommodate various aspects of modernity. In All Good Books Are Catholic Books, Una M. Cadegan shows how the Church’s official position on literary culture developed over this crucial period.The Catholic Church in the United States maintained an Index of Prohibited Books and the National Legion of Decency (founded in 1933) lobbied Hollywood to edit or ban movies, pulp magazines, and comic books that were morally suspect. These regulations posed an obstacle for the self-understanding of Catholic American readers, writers, and scholars. But as Cadegan finds, Catholics developed a rationale by which they could both respect the laws of the Church as it sought to protect the integrity of doctrine and also engage the culture of artistic and commercial freedom in which they operated as Americans. Catholic literary figures including Flannery O’Connor and Thomas Merton are important to Cadegan’s argument, particularly as their careers and the reception of their work demonstrate shifts in the relationship between Catholicism and literary culture. Cadegan trains her attention on American critics, editors, and university professors and administrators who mediated the relationship among the Church, parishioners, and the culture at large.

Opus Dei

Opus Dei PDF

Author: John L. Allen

Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 0385520301

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The first serious journalistic investigation of the highly secretive, controversial organization Opus Dei provides unique insight about the wild rumors surrounding it and discloses its significant influence in the Vatican and on the politics of the Catholic Church. Opus Dei (literally "the work of God") is an international association of Catholics often labeled as conservative who seek personal Christian perfection and strive to implement Christian ideals in their jobs and in society as a whole. It has been accused of promoting a right-wing political agenda and of cultlike practices. Its notoriety escalated with the publication of the runaway bestseller The Da Vinci Code (Opus Dei plays an important and sinister role in the novel). With the expert eye of a longtime observer of the Vatican and the skill of an investigative reporter intent on uncovering closely guarded secrets, John Allen finally separates the myths from the facts.--From publisher description.

The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1605

The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1605 PDF

Author: Paul F. Grendler

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-03-08

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1400869234

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

One of the great European publishing centers, Venice produced half or more of all books printed in Italy during the sixteenth-century. Drawing on the records of the Venetian Inquisition, which survive almost complete, Paul F. Grendler considers the effectiveness of censorship imposed on the Venetian press by the Index of Prohibited Books and enforced by the Inquisition. Using Venetian governmental records, papal documents in the Vatican Archive and Library, and the books themselves, Professor Grendler traces the controversies as the patriciate debated whether to enforce the Index or to support the disobedient members of the book trade. He investigates the practical consequences of the Index to printer and reader, noble and prelate. Heretics, clergymen, smugglers, nobles, and printers recognized the importance of the press and pursued their own goals for it. The Venetian leaders carefully weighed the conflicting interests, altering their stance to accommodate constantly shifting religious, political, and economic situations. The author shows how disputes over censorship and other press matters contributed to the tension between the papacy and the Republic. He draws on Venetian governmental records, papal documents in the Vatican Library, and the books themselves. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe

Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe PDF

Author: Edward Peters

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-09-22

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0812206800

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Throughout the Middle Ages and early modern Europe theological uniformity was synonymous with social cohesion in societies that regarded themselves as bound together at their most fundamental levels by a religion. To maintain a belief in opposition to the orthodoxy was to set oneself in opposition not merely to church and state but to a whole culture in all of its manifestations. From the eleventh century to the fifteenth, however, dissenting movements appeared with greater frequency, attracted more followers, acquired philosophical as well as theological dimensions, and occupied more and more the time and the minds of religious and civil authorities. In the perception of dissent and in the steps taken to deal with it lies the history of medieval heresy and the force it exerted on religious, social, and political communities long after the Middle Ages. In this volume, Edward Peters makes available the most compact and wide-ranging collection of source materials in translation on medieval orthodoxy and heterodoxy in social context.

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes