"The story of Mary has been unduly neglected by students of Old English, but in today's literary-critical context, its gripping and intense narrative raises exciting issues in the study of medieval literature and culture. The text is presented here in an uncluttered manner, with on-page apparatus and facing modern English translation, followed by a concise commentary and a full glossary. A text of the Latin source used by the Old English writer, with facing translation, is also given. The Introduction discusses the origin and transmission of the legend and the distinctive features of the Old English version, paying attention to cultural and political dimensions."--Jacket.
Siren and saint, hedonist and penitent, Mary of Egypt was a woman of extremes. A runaway at the age of twelve, she ventured to Alexandria to begin a life of reckless promiscuity. But a pilgrimage to Jerusalem brought about an inward change that drew the adult Mary into wilderness and solitude. From the monasteries of fifth-century Palestine to medieval Europe, the fame of this Desert Mother gradually spreadby both the written and the spoken word, and through visual art. Lions and Souls is a work of fiction based on ancient accounts of Marys life. Retold for twenty-first-century readers, an enigmatic figure from a remote past is revealed to be surprisingly familiar and relevant.
The twelve essays in this collection advance the contemporary study of the women saints of Anglo-Saxon England by challenging received wisdom and offering alternative methodologies. The work embraces a number of different scholarly approaches, from codicological study to feminist theory. While some contributions are dedicated to the description and reconstruction of female lives of saints and their cults, others explore the broader ideological and cultural investments of the literature. The volume concentrates on four major areas: the female saint in the Old English Martyrology, genre including hagiography and homelitic writing, motherhood and chastity, and differing perspectives on lives of virgin martyrs. The essays reveal how saints' lives that exist on the apparent margins of orthodoxy actually demonstrate a successful literary challenge extending the idea of a holy life.
2022 Catholic Media Association second place award in mysticism From its origins in the fourth and fifth centuries, first in monastic circles and then in wider Christian communities, the story of Mary of Egypt was wildly popular. From early Christianity through the medieval periods, from Egypt to Scandinavia, verse lives in Greek, Latin, and vernacular languages portray her as the model of repentance. Continuously venerated in the liturgy and icons of the Orthodox Churches, she is now seldom known in the West. This modern verse life and the accompanying essay reintroduces St. Mary’s extraordinary life, its theological and spiritual implications, and its remarkable depiction of gender complementarity.
Old English Lives of Saints, a series composed in the 990s by the Benedictine monk Aelfric, portrays an array of saints--including virgin martyrs, kings, soldiers, and bishops--whose examples modeled courageous faith, self-sacrifice, and individual and collective resistance at a turbulent time when England was under severe Viking attack.
"A prostitute become hermit, Mary of Egypt has been held up, especially to monks, as the quintessential example of compunction and conversion. First written down around AD 600, her story was translated, first into Latin by Paul the Deacon in the ninth century, and then into vernacular languages. Three metrical versions of her Life are translated here: that of Flodoard of Reims in the tenth century, Hildebert of Lavardin in the twelfth century, and an anonymous Spanish poet of the thirteenth century." "Although these vernacular versions seem to have been directed in part at monks, they also envisaged a larger audience. For most of her life Mary of Egypt was a pilgrim; her story has travelled from Palestine to Europe, from Greek to Latin to French to Spanish, and from the monastery to the secular world."--BOOK JACKET.
The nature of Christ is a very important subject that caused a serious dissension within the Church in the fifth century, in 451 AD. When the theological dialogue started as an effort towards the unity of churches, the subject had to be discussed. Therefore, our Orthodox Church found it necessary to issue a book which presents its concept in this regard in a language fit for theological dialogues. This subject (the Nature of Christ) was taught by me to the students of the Seminary "St. Mark Theological College" in 1984 in the form of lectures which I delivered to them in St. Bishoy Monastery, Sheheit Desert, as part of the courses of comparative Theology. The lectures were printed merely for the use of the students. The same lectures were afterwards translated into English in Ottawa, Canada, in 1980 and became available in English only for six years... We had to print them in Arabic for the students of the Seminary and its branches and for the benefit of those who are interested in theological studies whether ministers or ordinary individuals.. and whoever has the desire-from other churches to be acquainted with our concept of Christology. The first theological dialogue we attended on this subject was in Vienna, Austria in September 1971 AD convened by the ProOriente Group. In this dialogue we reached a theological formula that was accepted by our Catholic brothers and those in the old Oriental orthodox churches: the Syrians, Arminians, Ethiopians and Indians. It was an important dialogue indeed, for the dissension that occurred in the fifth century had distorted the face of every church before the other.. But now the way is open for a common understanding. Then, there was an official agreement with the Catholic churches after 17 years of differences (since 1988), based on the previous understanding. The agreement was recorded in a concise "Statement" which you will find at the end of this book. There was another dialogue, in more detail, with our brothers in the Byzantine Orthodox Churches in St. Bishoy Monastery, Sheheit Desert in 1989 AD. It was attended by the theologians of twenty Orthodox Churches and was followed by another meeting of the priestly representatives of the Orthodox churches in Chambesy, Geneva, in 1990. Now, seeing it is necessary to make our people acquainted with the details and evidences that prove our concept of the Nature of Christ, and since the Pro-Oriente Group is convening a religious conference for the representatives of all Churches at the end of October 1991 to present to them the Agreed Statement on Christology. And since we were asked to present a paper on the subject and deliver it as a lecture in the conference. Therefore, we proceeded to print the former lectures delivered in the Seminary in 1984 as a book to be presented to the conference and to be available in Arabic and in English for all who are interested. Pope Shenouda III
