Professional assassin Evangeline (Lina) Heart is back in this holiday short story in her quest to discover the next relic she needs to unlock the gates of Hell and release her fiancé’s soul. Who she doesn’t expect to get in her way (yet, once again) is her new sidekick, thief for hire to the wealthy and eclectic, Clay Wellers. As Clay enlists Lina in what at first appears to be a simple heist of a famous painting, they encounter more than they bargained for. They soon discover that this holiday season things are about to take an unexpected turn.
The Thirty Pieces of Silver: Coin Relics in Medieval and Modern Europe discusses many interconnected topics relating to the most perfidious monetary transaction in history: the betrayal of Jesus by Judas for thirty pieces of silver. According to medieval legend, these coins had existed since the time of Abraham’s father and had been used in many transactions recorded in the Bible. This book documents fifty specimens of coins which were venerated as holy relics in medieval and modern churches and monasteries of Europe, from Valencia to Uppsala. Most of these relics are ancient Greek silver coins in origin mounted in precious reliquaries or used for the distribution of their wax imprints believed to have healing powers. Drawing from a wide range of historical sources, from hagiography to numismatics, this book will appeal to students and academics researching Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern History, Theology, as well as all those interested in the function of relics throughout Christendom. The Thirty Pieces of Silver is a study that invites meditation on the highly symbolic and powerful role of money through coins which were the price, value, and measure of Christ and which, despite being the most abject objects, managed to become relics.
Scripture speaks of miracles wrought through relics: a dead man was raised when Elisha’s bones touched him, and the clothing of Jesus and His apostles healed the sick. In the early Church, Masses were celebrated over the bones of the martyrs, and phials of their blood have effected countless miracles. Direct successors of the Apostles themselves speak of venerating relics; Church Fathers encourage it; throughout the ages of Catholic legacy, relics of the saints are always present. The Church takes diligent care in preserving and documenting the authenticity of her relics. Best-selling author Joan Carroll Cruz takes full advantage of these resources. With painstaking research, she exposes the details behind hundreds of the Church’s most famous and beloved relics. She covers 38 second-class relicsof our Lord and Lady, such as the Holy Grail and Our Lady’s Veil, and relics of all sorts from 75 favorite saints, such as St. Mary Magdalene, St. Agnes, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Maria Goretti, and many more! Relics is a unique collection of years of dedicated research about the lives of the saints and the mementos they left behind, to remind us of their presence and intercession for us.
In this fascinating historical and cultural biography, Peter Stanford deconstructs that most vilified of Bible characters: Judas Iscariot, who famously betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Beginning with the gospel accounts, Stanford explores two thousand years of cultural and theological history to investigate how the very name Judas came to be synonymous with betrayal and, ultimately, human evil. But as Stanford points out, there has long been a counter–current of thought that suggests that Judas might in fact have been victim of a terrible injustice: central to Jesus' mission was his death and resurrection, and for there to have been a death, there had to be a betrayal. This thankless role fell to Judas; should we in fact be grateful to him for his role in the divine drama of salvation? "You'll have to decide," as Bob Dylan sang in the sixties, "Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side." An essential but doomed character in the Passion narrative, and thus the entire story of Christianity, Judas and the betrayal he symbolizes continue to play out in much larger cultural histories, speaking to our deepest fears about friendship, betrayal, and the problem of evil.
Ancient language expert Dr. Clotile Lejeune is happily living a quiet life in Seattle when her world is profoundly shaken. After she learns that her estranged father has been murdered, Cloe must travel with her son, J. E., back to her Louisiana hometown to unlock the mysteries of a two-thousand-year-old oil jar her father has left in her care-a jar inscribed with the name Judas Iscariot. Anxious to find her father's killer and dispel her own personal demons, Cloe has no idea that what she is about to uncover has the potential to set the international religious community on fire. With the help of a mysterious cleric, her son, and a letter from her father, Cloe soon realizes the African oil jar her father picked up during the war may be the most important relic discovered in centuries. But it is only the beginning. Across the globe, a billionaire arms merchant is leaving a trail of bodies in his wake in his pursuit of the jar and its contents. In this religious thriller, the race for answers takes a language professor on a dangerous quest across three continents in order to discover the identity of Judas Iscariot. Now only time will tell if Cloe can find out what the past is reaching out to tell her-before it is too late.
The hunt is on for the apocryphal Gospel of Judas in the thriller that Lisa Scottoline says "you won't be able to put down," from celebrated New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi
“As far as historical, Vatican-connected occult thrillers go, this is a fun one, with the various timelines balanced to play off each other with verve.” —Kirkus Reviews When a World War II bomber is excavated fifty years after disappearing during a secret mission, the pilot’s granddaughter, Liz Hannah, hires Wyatt Rook to investigate. A lawyer, historian, and detective, Rook is well-suited to follow a trail of clues that will take him from Germany, where he confronts the Third Reich’s dark history, to another site just outside of Jerusalem shrouded in sinister shadows: the crucifixion of Christ. What Rook uncovers is a web of religious mystery surrounding a cryptic secret that, if deciphered, could destroy the very foundation of Christianity: the question of how Jesus escaped from his tomb. Using paintings and maps as clues, Rook steps deeper into a world where his enemy is none other than a modern Crusader, the Legionary of Christ, who will stop at nothing to keep the Judas puzzle—one of the most vulnerable mysteries of the Bible—from being solved. A Fangoria Book of the Month “If you want a series of mysteries better than the puzzles in The Da Vinci Code, Crucified is your book. Slade has all the hot buttons punched.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto) “There are twists aplenty, scenes of gruesome torture and murder (with Inquisition tools, of course), and a series of small mysteries leading up to the larger mystery at the center of the book. It leaves one wanting more.” —Quill & Quire “A walloping murder mystery that cuts throats and shows no quarter. Ambitiously dark, sophisticated, and complex. Enjoy.” —Fangoria
St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes, is the most popular saint of the American Catholic laity, particularly among women. This fascinating book describes how the cult of St. Jude originated in 1929, traces the rise in Jude's popularity over the next decades, and investigates the circumstances that led so many Catholic women to feel hopeless and to turn to St. Jude for help. Robert A. Orsi tells us that the women who were drawn to St. Jude--daughters and granddaughters of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and Ireland--were the first generations of Catholic women to make lives for themselves outside of their ethnic enclaves. Orsi explores the ambitions and dilemmas of these women as they dealt with the pressures of the Depression and the Second World War, made modern marriages for themselves, entered the workplace, took care of relatives in their old neighborhoods, and raised children in circumstances very different from those of their mothers and grandmothers. Drawing on testimonies written in the periodicals devoted to St. Jude and on interviews with women who felt their lives were changed by St. Jude's intervention, Orsi shows how devotion to St. Jude enabled these women to negotiate their way amid the conflicting expectations of their two cultures--American and Catholic.
This fascinating study reconstructs the tradition of the Legend of the True Cross in text and image, from its tentative beginnings in 4th-century Jerusalem to the culminating expression of its multi-layered cosmic content in 14th and 15th-century monumental cycles in Germany and Italy.
