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Challenging the perception of Christianity as a unified and European religion before the sixteenth century, this series interrogates the traditional chronological, geographical, social and institutional boundaries of premodern Christianity. Books in this series seek to rebuild the lived experiences and religious worlds of understudied people as well as landmark disputes and iconic figures by recovering underappreciated vernacular sources, situating localized problems and mundane practices within broader social contexts and addressing questions framed by contemporary theoretical and methodological conversations. Christianities Before Modernity embraces an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, publishing on history, literature, music, theater, classics, folklore, art history, archaeology, religious studies, philosophy, gender studies, anthropology, sociology, and other areas. Grounded in original sources and informed by ongoing disciplinary disputes, this series demonstrates how premodern Christians comprised diverse and conflicted communities embedded in a religiously diverse world.
The series' Advisory Board comprises:
From triumphant accounts of conversion to emotional stories of martyrdom and persecution, European writings on Christianity in Japan showed a high level of interest in what was happening on the other side of the world. With the five national seclusion decrees of the 1630s, the Dutch became the only European country allowed to trade with Japan, under very restricted conditions. Back in Europe, Imagining Christian Japan argues that the isolated country still attracted attention, even if the publications were uncertain about basic facts or were presenting outdated information. As the book demonstrates, in the nineteenth century, religion formed a major component of Western interest in gaining access to Japan – Protestant and Catholic missionaries viewed Japan as crying out for the continuation of the work that had been interrupted by the anti-Christian persecutions. Providing context for European perceptions, Imagining Christian Japan also leverages the rich tradition of Japanese nanban art depicting Western merchants and missionaries, works by Japanese Christians, and Tokugawa-era texts on Christianity and Japanese culture.
As vernacular writers of late medieval England navigated the difficulties of composing orthodox texts, both religious and otherwise, they encountered a limited lexicon. As a consequence, English works of this era are innovative and creative in their use of vocabulary. The Language of Heresy in Late Medieval English Literature examines the way in which these writers complemented seemingly straightforward terms, like heretic, with a range of synonyms that complicated the definitions of both those words and orthodoxy itself. This text proposes four specific terms that become synonymous with heretic in the parlance of medieval English writers of the 14th and 15th centuries: jangler, Jew, Saracen, and witch. These four labels are especially important insofar as they represent the way in which medieval Christianity appropriated and subverted the marginalized identities of women, illiterate laity, Jews, and Muslims to promote an image of unity despite constantly-shifting reality.
This volume explores how Greek and Latin authors across the Mediterranean and Europe deployed related texts to form monastic communities in different veins. Using the Apophthegmata Patrum as an exemplar, Zachary B. Smith argues that late antique, early medieval, and Byzantine authors selectively utilized monastic sayings texts to form their particular monastic worlds. By translating, editing, systematizing, and elaborating on these sayings, the authors formed their communities in specific ways. Early Byzantines marshalled the sayings to form ascetic subjects through contemplating the sayings, with less reference to monastic systems. In systematizing the original alphabetic collection, an anonymous editor turned the sayings into an encyclopedia that deemphasized individual contemplation, and instead emphasized the role of the master. In Europe, translating the sayings into Latin, systematizing them in Latin, making "midrashim," and distilling them into rules furthered this process of using the sayings as tools for institutional formation in the medieval period.