St Martin of Tours is one of Christianity’s major saints and his significance reaches far beyond the powerful radiance of his iconic act of charity. While the saint and his cult have been researched comprehensively in Germany and France, his cult in the British Isles proves to be fairly unexplored. Andre Mertens closes this gap for Anglo-Saxon England by editing all the age’s surviving texts on the saint, including a commentary and translations. Moreover, Mertens looks beyond the horizon of the surviving body of literary relics and dedicates an introductory study to an analysis of the saint’s cult in Anglo-Saxon England and his significance for Anglo-Saxon culture.
St Martin of Tours is one of Christianity's major saints and his significance reaches far beyond the powerful radiance of his iconic act of charity. While the saint and his cult have been researched comprehensively in Germany and France, his cult in the British Isles proves to be fairly unexplored. Andre Mertens closes this gap for Anglo-Saxon England by editing all the age's surviving texts on the saint, including a commentary and translations. Moreover, Mertens looks beyond the horizon of the surviving body of literary relics and dedicates an introductory study to an analysis of the saint's cult in Anglo-Saxon England and his significance for Anglo-Saxon culture. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.
What role do the church fathers play in the life of a modern Christian? How do they define the experience of holiness? And how can they help us appreciate our current culture while maintaining our traditional values? Wondrous in His Saints posits answers to these and other crucial questions while drawing upon the Eastern Orthodox patristic tradition from Late Antiquity to the early modern era. Its chapters vary in scope, theme, and content, focusing especially on the church fathers' insights into intimate aspects of the spiritual life (including prayer, repentance, and love), as well as their engagement with the artistic and scientific achievements of their wider contexts. Exploring the lives and writings of numerous titans of Orthodoxy (including St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Maximus the Confessor, and St. Gregory Palamas), as well as lesser-known figures (such as St. Guthlac of Crowland and the Chinese Martyrs of the Boxer Rebellion), the author brings to the fore its egalitarian nature; the fact that deification has never been restricted to any time, place, social class, or clerical rank according to the church fathers, but always attainable for men and women seeking communion with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Saint Martin of Tours was the third bishop of Tours. He has become one of the most familiar and recognizable Christian saints in Western tradition. A native of Pannonia, he converted to Christianity at a young age. He served in the Roman cavalry in Gaul, but left military service at some point prior to 361, when he embraced Trinitarianism and became a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers, establishing the monastery at Ligugé. He was consecrated as Bishop of Caesarodunum (Tours) in 371. As bishop, he was active in the suppression of the remnants of Gallo-Roman religion, but he opposed the violent persecution of the Priscillianist sect of ascetics.
"Greenfield and Robinson state in their preface that they have sought to include every book, monograph, article, note, and review published on Old English literature since the invention of printing. They have come as close to doing so as two descendants of Adam possibly can, undeterred by the trouble at Babel. (By my count, thirty different languages are represented in the bibliography, sixteen of them frequently.) Rarely has any bibliography in any other discipline equalled the thoroughness and accuracy of this one. It is a contribution for which Greenfield and Robinson will long receive from their colleagues that measure of gratitude reserved for Old English scholarship's most bounteous treasure-givers."--Carl T. Berkhout"What astonishes is how well [Greenfield and Robinson] have succeeded in what they set out to do, how uniformly excellent their volume is in all its profusion of information and detail. . . . The Bibliography will bring scholars that peculiar joy in complex intellectual work done well that only they know; it will be immensely useful, virtually indispensable--if not a vade mecum because of its size . . . then at least an enchiridion with which they will fight their battles on behalf of Beowulf and Brunanburb and the Blickling Homilies."--The Old English Newsletter"[A] volume long needed, [the Bibliography] will now become an indispensable reference work for every student of Old English literature from the beginner to the acknowledged authority."--British Book News
When Christianity spread from its Mediterranean base into the Germanic and Celtic north, it initiated profound changes, particularly in kinship relations and sexual mores. Joseph H. Lynch traces the introduction and assimilation of the concept of spiritual kinship into Anglo-Saxon England. Covering the years 597 to 1066, he shows how this notion unsettled and in time altered the structures of the society.In early Germanic societies, kinship was a major organizing principle. Spiritual kinship of various kinds began to take hold among the Anglo-Saxons with the arrival of Christian missionaries from Rome in the seventh century. Lynch discusses in detail sponsorship at baptism, confirmation, and other rituals in which an individual other than a biological parent presented someone, often an infant, for initiation into Christianity. After the ceremony, the sponsor was regarded as the child's spiritual parent or godparent, whose role complemented that of the natural mother and father, with whom the sponsor had become a "coparent." He describes the difficulties posed by the incest taboo, which included a ban on marriage between spiritual kin. Lynch's work reveals how Anglo-Saxons, though never accepting the sexual taboos that were so prominent in the Frankish, Roman, and Byzantine churches, did create new forms of spiritual kinship. Unusual in its focus and scope, this book illuminates an integral element in the religious, social, and diplomatic life of Anglo-Saxon England. It also contributes to our understanding of the ways in which Christianization reshaped societal relations and moral attitudes.
