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Author: Anthony F. D'Elia
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674088549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
In 1462 Pope Pius II performed the only reverse canonization in history, damning a living man to an afterlife of torment. What had Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini and a patron of the arts, done to merit this fate? Anthony D’Elia shows how the recovery of classical literature and art during the Italian Renaissance led to a revival of paganism.
Author: Anthony F. D'Elia
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674088549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
In 1462 Pope Pius II performed the only reverse canonization in history, damning a living man to an afterlife of torment. What had Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini and a patron of the arts, done to merit this fate? Anthony D’Elia shows how the recovery of classical literature and art during the Italian Renaissance led to a revival of paganism.
Author: Anthony F. D'Elia
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674088514
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
In 1462 Pope Pius II performed the only reverse canonization in history, damning a living man to an afterlife of torment. What had Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini and a patron of the arts, done to merit this fate? Anthony D’Elia shows how the recovery of classical literature and art during the Italian Renaissance led to a revival of paganism.
Author: Michael York
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814797083
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
In Pagan Theology, Michael York provides an introduction to, and expansion of, the concept of Paganism and provides an overview of its theological perspective and practice. He demonstrates it to be a viable and distinguishable spiritual perspective found today in such forms as Chinese folk religion, Shinto, tribal religions, and neo-Paganism in the West. While adherents of many of these traditions do not use the word "pagan" to describe their beliefs or practices, York contends that there is an identifiable position possessing characteristics and understandings in common for which the label "pagan" is appropriate. He outlines these characteristics and also explores paganism as a general form of religious behavior which may be found in other religions which are not themselves pagan. In the course of examining such behavior, York provides descriptions of religions in action, including Buddhism and Hinduism.
Author: J. Warren Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199708541
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Ambrose of Milan (340-397) was the first Christian bishop to write a systematic account of Christian ethics, in the treatise De Officiis, variously translated as "on duties" or "on responsibilities." But Ambrose also dealt with the moral life in other works, notably his sermons on the patriarchs and his addresses to catechumens and newly baptized. There is a vast modern literature on Ambrose, but only in recent decades has he begun to be taken seriously as a thinker, not just as a working bishop and ecclesiastical politician. Because Ambrose was one of the few Latin Christian writers in antiquity who knew Greek, another major area of Ambrose scholarship has been the study of his sources, notably the Jewish philosopher Philo, and Christian writers such as Origen of Alexandria. In this book, Warren Smith examines the neglected biblical, liturgical and theological foundations of Ambrose's thought on ethics. Earlier studies have found little that was distinctively Christian in Ambrose's image of the virtuous person. Smith shows that though, like the pagans, Ambrose emphasized moderation, courage, justice, and prudence, for him these characteristics were shaped by the church's beliefs about God's salvific economy. The courage of a Christian facing persecution, for example, was an expression of faith in Christ's resurrection and the church's eschatological hope. Eschatology, for Ambrose, was not pagan wisdom clothed in pious language, but the very logic upon which virtue rests.
Author: Cindy L. Vitto
Publisher: American Philosophical Society
ISBN: 9780871697950
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 108
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Book Description
For pious Christians of every age, the question of ultimate concern has been salvation: What is necessary to ensure the soul's eternal bliss? During the Middle Ages, within the Church itself, the guidelines were clear: baptism, reception of the sacraments, an attempt to put into practice the teachings of Christ. But a theological debate arose on the possibility of salvation for those outside the Church, who fell into two basic categories: those who had been offered the Christian faith but had refused it, & those who, for reasons of chronology or geography, lacked the opportunity to join the Church but lived as virtuously as possible. Two categories of these "virtuous pagans" who received special attention were the classical poets & philosophers of Greece & Rome, & the Old Testament patriarchs. From the standpoint of human reason, it seemed especially unfortunate that these two groups should be damned eternally. This study discusses the theological background of this issue; the Virtuous Pagan in legend & in Dante; St. Erkenwald's Harrowing of Hell; & "Piers Plowman": Issues in Salvation & the Harrowing as Thematic Climax.
Author: John Marenbon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176086
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
An ambitious history of how medieval writers came to terms with paganism From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the "Problem of Paganism," which this book identifies and examines for the first time. How could the wisdom and virtue of the great thinkers of antiquity be reconciled with the fact that they were pagans and, many thought, damned? Related questions were raised by encounters with contemporary pagans in northern Europe, Mongolia, and, later, America and China. Pagans and Philosophers explores how writers—philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and Ricci—tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. A sweeping and original account of an important but neglected chapter in Western intellectual history, Pagans and Philosophers provides a new perspective on nothing less than the entire period between the classical and the modern world.
Author: David Decosimo
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9781503600607
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Most of us wonder how to make sense of the apparent moral excellences or virtues of those who have different visions of the good life or different religious commitments than our own. Rather than flattening or ignoring the deep difference between various visions of the good life, as is so often done, this book turns to the medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas to find a better way. Thomas, it argues, shows us how to welcome the outsider and her virtue as an expression rather than a betrayal of one's own distinctive vision. It shows how Thomas, driven by a Christian commitment to charity and especially informed by Augustine, synthesized Augustinian and Aristotelian elements to construct an ethics that does justice—in love—to insiders and outsiders alike. Decosimo offers the first analysis of Thomas on pagan virtue and a reinterpretation of Thomas's ethics while providing a model for our own efforts to articulate a truthful hospitality and do ethics in our pluralist, globalized world.
Author: Edward J. Watts
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520379225
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
A compelling history of radical transformation in the fourth-century--when Christianity decimated the practices of traditional pagan religion in the Roman Empire. The Final Pagan Generation recounts the fascinating story of the lives and fortunes of the last Romans born before the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Edward J. Watts traces their experiences of living through the fourth century’s dramatic religious and political changes, when heated confrontations saw the Christian establishment legislate against pagan practices as mobs attacked pagan holy sites and temples. The emperors who issued these laws, the imperial officials charged with implementing them, and the Christian perpetrators of religious violence were almost exclusively young men whose attitudes and actions contrasted markedly with those of the earlier generation, who shared neither their juniors’ interest in creating sharply defined religious identities nor their propensity for violent conflict. Watts examines why the "final pagan generation"—born to the old ways and the old world in which it seemed to everyone that religious practices would continue as they had for the past two thousand years—proved both unable to anticipate the changes that imperially sponsored Christianity produced and unwilling to resist them. A compelling and provocative read, suitable for the general reader as well as students and scholars of the ancient world.
Author: Michael York
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319189239
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 435
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Book Description
This book is the first comprehensive examination of the ethical parameters of paganism when considered as a world religion alongside Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. The issues of evil, value and idolatry from a pagan perspective are analyzed as part of the Western ethical tradition from the Sophists and Platonic schools through the philosophers Spinoza, Hume, Kant and Nietzsche to such contemporary thinkers as Grayling, Mackie, MacIntyre, Habermas, Levinas, Santayana, etc. From a more practical viewpoint, a delineation of applied pagan ethics is then presented in connection with current moral issues such as same-sex union, recreational drugs, environmental awareness, abortion and terrorism. Finally, overviews of sectarian pagan ethics (Shinto, Santeria, Heathenism, Druidry, Romuva, Slavic, Kemeticism, Classical and Wicca) provide both the general and pagan reader with an understanding of the provocative range and differentiation of pagan ethical thought. The book approaches the Western ethical tradition as an historical development and a continuing dialogue. The novelty of this approach lies in its consideration of paganism as a legitimate voice of religious spirituality rather than a satanic aberration or ridiculous childish behavior. The book is aimed at both the contemporary Western pagan and anyone with an interest in the moral dilemmas of our times and the desire to engage in the global ethical discussion. Among the more important features of the book are its presentation of a re-evaluation of idolatry, the notion of the virtue value, the richness of the pagan tradition, and the expansion of Western ethics beyond its Christian heritage.
Author: J. Warren Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195369939
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Warren Smith examines the neglected biblical, liturgical and theological foundations of Ambrose's thought on ethics. Earlier studies have found little that was distinctively Christian in Ambrose's image of the virtuous person. Smith shows that, although like the pagans he emphasized moderation, courage, justice, and prudence, for Ambrose these characteristics were shaped by the church's beliefs about God's salvific economy.
