Books published by University of Notre Dame Press

Offers rich resources to understand how religion has perceived and addressed different forms of violence, from the political and state violence of the 1970s and 1980s to the drug traffickers and youth gangs of today. The contributors offer fresh insights into contemporary criminal violence and reconsider past interpretations of political violence, liberation theology, and human rights.

Characterizes the history of early modern mysticism as one in which relationships of continuity within transformations occurred. Rather than focus on the departures of the sixteenth-century Reformation from medieval traditions, the essays in this volume explore the survival and transformation of mysticism between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period.

In this groundbreaking study of post-conflict Sierra Leone, Lyn Graybill examines the ways in which both religion and local tradition supported restorative justice initiatives such as the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and village-level Fambul Tok ceremonies. Through her interviews with Christian and Muslim leaders of the Inter-Religious Council, Graybill uncovers a rich trove of perspectives about the meaning of reconciliation, the role of acknowledgment, and the significance of forgiveness. Through an abundance of polling data and her review of traditional practices among the various ethnic groups, Graybill also shows that these perspectives of religious leaders did not at all conflict with the opinions of the local population, whose preferences for restorative justice over retributive justice were compatible with traditional values that prioritized reconciliation over punishment. These local sentiments, however, were at odds with the international community's preference for retributive justice, as embodied in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which ran concurrently with the TRC. Graybill warns that with the dominance of the International Criminal Court in Africa-there are currently eighteen pending cases in eight countries-local preferences may continue to be sidelined in favor of prosecutions. She argues that the international community is risking the loss of its most valuable assets in post-conflict peacebuilding by pushing aside religious and traditional values of reconciliation in favor of Western legal norms.

Modern readers and writers find it natural to contrast the agency of realistic fictional characters to the constrained range of action typical of literary personifications. Yet no commentator before the eighteenth century suggests that prosopopoeia signals a form of reduced agency. Andrew Escobedo argues that premodern writers, including Spenser, Marlowe, and Milton, understood personification as a literary expression of will, an essentially energetic figure that depicted passion or concept transforming into action. As the will emerged as an isolatable faculty in the Christian Middle Ages, it was seen not only as the instrument of human agency but also as perversely independent of other human capacities, for example, intellect and moral character. Renaissance accounts of the will conceived of volition both as the means to self-creation and the faculty by which we lose control of ourselves. After offering a brief history of the will that isolates the distinctive features of the faculty in medieval and Renaissance thought, Escobedo makes his case through an examination of several personified figures in Renaissance literature: Conscience in the Tudor interludes, Despair in Doctor Faustus and book I of The Faerie Queen, Love in books III and IV of The Faerie Queen, and Sin in Paradise Lost. These examples demonstrate that literary personification did not amount to a dim reflection of "e;realistic"e; fictional character, but rather that it provided a literary means to explore the numerous conundrums posed by the premodern notion of the human will. This book will be of great interest to faculty and graduate students interested in medieval studies and Renaissance literature.

Thirteen European and American theologians treat the entire historical development and theological significance of a major Roman Catholic doctrine in The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception published (University of Notre Dame Press, 1958). Edward 0''Connor, C.S.C., has edited the 700-page volume which includes an exhaustive bibliography, a number of documents, and over fifty illustrations. A specialist in mediaeval theology, Father O''Connor notes in the preface that the subject of the Virgin Mary''s Immaculate Conception was first discussed about the year 1100. The doctrine was defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854 after about 75 years of "what was perhaps the most prolonged and passionate debate that has ever been carried on in Catholic theology," O''Connor writes. The importance of any doctrine, however, he emphasizes, "does not lie chiefly in its history, but it its intrinsic significance as truth, and in its rank in the hierarchy of truth, which do not depend on historical contingencies." From this point of view, the Immaculate Conception is of immense importance, O''Connor observes, not only for Mariology, but also for the theology of the Redemption and of the Church. The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception is not merely a collection of miscellaneous essays on the subject. The various chapters deal with all the major aspects of the doctrine and range from "Scripture and the Immaculate Conception" to "The Immaculate Conception in Art."

Despite current concerns for "family values" and the dissolution of marriages, Amy A. and Leon R. Kass see very little attention being paid to what makes for marital success. They argue there are no longer socially prescribed forms of conduct that help guide young men and women in the direction of matrimony; the very concepts of "wooing" and "courting" seem archaic. Yet they see major discontent with the present situation and detect among their students certain longings-for friendship, for wholeness, for a life that is serious and deep, and for associations that are trustworthy and lasting-longings they do not realize could be largely satisfied by marrying well. Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Courting and Marrying is an anthology of source readings offered as a response to the contemporary cultural silence surrounding love that leads to marriage. It addresses important questions that emerge not from theory, but from practice: Why marry? Is this love? How can I find and win the right one to marry? What about sex? Why a wedding and the promises of marriage? What can married life be like? Using readings taken mainly from classic texts of Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Aquinas, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Austen, Tolstoy, C.S. Lewis, Miss Manners, and many others, this collection challenges our unexamined opinions, expands our sympathies, elevates our gaze. It offers a higher kind of sex education, one that prepares hearts and minds for romance leading to lasting marriage, and introduces us to possibilities open to human beings in everyday life that may be undreamt of in our current philosophizing. This unapologetically pro-marriage anthology is intended to help young people of marriageable age and their parents think about the meaning, purpose, and virtues of marriage and, especially, about finding the right person with whom to make a life.

Teachers, students, composers, performers, and other practitioners of sacred sound will appreciate this volume because, unlike any book currently available on sacred music, it treats the history, development, current practices, composition, and critical views of the liturgical music of both the Jewish and Christian traditions. Contributors trace Jewish music from its place in Hebrew Scriptures through the nineteenth-century Reform movement. Similar accounts of Christian music describe its growth up to the Protestant Reformation, as well as post-Reformation development. Other essays explore liturgical music in contemporary North America by analyzing it against the backdrop of the continuous social change that characterizes our era.

This collection of essays by leading international philosophers considers central themes in the ethics of Danish philosopher Knud Ejler L├╕gstrup (1905-1981). L├╕gstrup was a Lutheran theologian much influenced by phenomenology and by strong currents in Danish culture, to which he himself made important contributions. The essays in What Is Ethically Demanded? K. E. L├╕gstrup''s Philosophy of Moral Life are divided into four sections. The first section deals predominantly with L├╕gstrup''s relation to Kant and, through Kant, the system of morality in general. The second section focuses on how L├╕gstrup stands in connection with Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Levinas. The third section considers issues in the development of L├╕gstrup''s ethics and how it relates to other aspects of his thought. The final section covers certain central themes in L├╕gstrup''s position, particularly his claims about trust and the unfulfillability of the ethical demand. The volume includes a previously untranslated early essay by L├╕gstrup, "The Anthropology of Kant''s Ethics," which defines some of his basic ethical ideas in opposition to Kant''s. The book will appeal to philosophers and theologians with an interest in ethics and the history of philosophy. Contributors: K. E. L├╕gstrup, Svend Andersen, David Bugge, Svein Aage Christoffersen, Stephen Darwall, Peter Dews, Paul Faulkner, Hans Fink, Arne Gr├╕n, Alasdair MacIntyre, Wayne Martin, Kees van Kooten Niekerk, George Pattison, Robert Stern, and Patrick Stokes.

In this book, Curtis Gruenler proposes that the concept of the enigmatic, latent in a wide range of medieval thinking about literature, can help us better understand in medieval terms much of the era's most enduring literature, from the riddles of the Anglo-Saxon bishop Aldhelm to the great vernacular works of Dante, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and, above all, Langland's Piers Plowman. Riddles, rhetoric, and theology-the three fields of meaning of aenigma in medieval Latin-map a way of thinking about reading and writing obscure literature that was widely shared across the Middle Ages. The poetics of enigma links inquiry about language by theologians with theologically ambitious literature. Each sense of enigma brings out an aspect of this poetics. The playfulness of riddling, both oral and literate, was joined to a Christian vision of literature by Aldhelm and the Old English riddles of the Exeter Book. Defined in rhetoric as an obscure allegory, enigma was condemned by classical authorities but resurrected under the influence of Augustine as an aid to contemplation. Its theological significance follows from a favorite biblical verse among medieval theologians, "e;We see now through a mirror in an enigma, then face to face"e; (1 Cor. 13:12). Along with other examples of the poetics of enigma, Piers Plowman can be seen as a culmination of centuries of reflection on the importance of obscure language for knowing and participating in endless mysteries of divinity and humanity and a bridge to the importance of the enigmatic in modern literature. This book will be especially useful for scholars and undergraduate students interested in medieval European literature, literary theory, and contemplative theology.

In Modern Arabic Poetry, Waed Athamneh addresses enduring questions raised from the 1950s to the present as she investigates the impact of past and contemporary Middle Eastern politics on its poetry. Focusing on the works of three prominent poets, Iraqi E Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati (1926-1999), Egyptian Ahmad E Abd al-MuE ti Hijazi (b. 1935), and Palestinian Mahmud Darwish (1941-2008), Athamneh argues that political changes in the modern Arab world-including the 1967 war and the fall of Nasserism, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and, in Hijazi's case, the 2011 Arab Uprising and its aftermath-inspired transitions and new directions in these poets' works. Enhanced by Athamneh's original translations of a number of the Arabic texts discussed, as well as translations published previously, Modern Arabic Poetry brings these poets fully into the purview of contemporary literary, political, and critical discourse. It argues that their individual responses to political changes proceed in three distinct directions: the metapoetic, in which the poet disengages from the poetry of political commitment to find inspiration in artistic (self-)exploration; the recommitted, in which new political revolutions inspire the poet to resume writing and publishing poetry; and the humanist, in which the poet comes to terms of coexistence with permanent or unresolved conflict.

The saints are good company. They are the heroes of the faith who blazed new and creative paths to holiness; they are the witnesses whose testimonies echo throughout the ages in the memory of the Church. Most Christians, and particularly Catholics, are likely to have their own favorite saints, those who inspire and "e;speak"e; to believers as they pray and struggle through the challenges of their own lives. Leonard DeLorenzo's book addresses the idea of the communion of saints, rather than individual saints, with the conviction that what makes the saints holy and what forms them into a communion is one and the same. Work of Love investigates the issue of communication within the communio sanctorum and the fullness of Christian hope in the face of the meaning-or meaninglessness-of death. In an effort to revitalize a theological topic that for much of Catholic history has been an indelible part of the Catholic imaginary, DeLorenzo invokes the ideas of not only many theological figures (Rahner, Ratzinger, Balthasar, and de Lubac, among others) but also historians, philosophers (notably Heidegger and Nietzsche), and literary figures (Rilke and Dante) to create a rich tableau. By working across several disciplines, DeLorenzo argues for a vigorous renewal in the Christian imagination of the theological concept of the communion of saints. He concludes that the embodied witness of the saints themselves, as well as the liturgical and devotional movements of the Church at prayer, testifies to the central importance of the communion of saints as the eschatological hope and fulfillment of the promises of Christ.

In Beyond the Inquisition, originally published in an Italian edition in 2007, Giorgio Caravale offers a fresh perspective on sixteenth-century Italian religious history and the religious crisis that swept across Europe during that period. Through an intellectual biography of Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1484-1553), Caravale rethinks the problems resulting from the diffusion of Protestant doctrines in Renaissance Italy and the Catholic opposition to their advance. At the same time, Caravale calls for a new conception of the Counter-Reformation, demonstrating that during the first half of the sixteenth century there were many alternatives to the inquisitorial model that ultimately prevailed. Lancellotto Politi, the jurist from Siena who entered the Dominican order in 1517 under the name of Ambrogio Catarino, started his career as an anti-Lutheran controversialist, shared friendships with the Italian Spirituals, and was frequently in conflict with his own order. The main stages of his career are all illustrated with a rich array of previously published and unpublished documentation. Caravale's thorough analysis of Politi's works, actions, and relationships significantly alters the traditional image of an intransigent heretic hunter and an author of fierce anti-Lutheran tirades. In the same way, the reconstruction of his role as a papal theologian and as a bishop in the first phase of the Council and the reinterpretation of his battle against the Spanish theologian Domingo de Soto and scholasticism reestablish the image of a Counter-Reformation that was different from the one that triumphed in Trent, the image of an alternative that was viable but never came close to being implemented.

Of Form & Gather marks the dazzling debut of Felicia Zamora, whose poems concern themselves with probing questions, not facile answers. Where does the self reside? What forms do we, as human beings, inhabit as we experience the world around us? Echoing the collection's provocative title, final judge Edwin Torres writes: "e;Zamora has crafted a work that celebrates form as human evolution-the poem's breath, the poet's body-passing over time in a landscape thirsty for passage."e; Privileging journey over destination, Zamora's poems spur the reader to immerse herself in linguistic soundscapes where the physicality of the poems themselves is, in no small part, the point: poems that challenge us to navigate the word/world as both humans and things. Edwin Torres continues: "e;This is quietly revolutionary work. . . . A living palimpsest to newly awaken our social engagement."e; With the publication of this volume, the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, now in its seventh edition, emphatically makes good on its aim to nurture the various paths that Latino/a poetry is taking in the twenty-first century.

This collection spans both the medieval and early modern period, describing the developments and day-to-day realities of relations between Jews, Muslims and Christians in Spain from the 9th to the 16th centuries. The essays discuss the historiography and the issues raised by the constantly shifting balance of ethnoreligious power, intellectual contact between cultures and social identity throughout the Iberian peninsula.

Over the last two decades, the American academy has engaged in a wide-ranging discourse on faith and learning, religion and higher education, and Christianity and the academy. Eastern Orthodox Christians, however, have rarely participated in these conversations. The contributors to this volume aim to reverse this trend by offering original insights from Orthodox Christian perspectives.

This is a richly illustrated volume relating a series of events held in the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's tercentennial in 2012. The book includes essays from world-renowned scholars on Jean-Jacques Rousseau; five chapters by photojournalists, which include fifty-four photographs from Egypt, India, Macedonia, Mexico, and Nigeria; and notes by youthful visitors to the exhibit.

In Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance, Walter Wadiak traces the evolution of the medieval English romance from its thirteenth-century origins to 1500, and from a genre that affirmed aristocratic identity to one that appealed more broadly to an array of late medieval communities. Essential to this literary evolution is the concept and practice of "e;noble"e; gift-giving, which binds together knights and commoners in ways that both echo and displace the notorious violence of many of these stories. Wadiak begins with the assumption that "e;romance"e; names a particular kind of chivalric fantasy to which violence is central, just as violence was instrumental to the formation and identity of the medieval warrior aristocracy. A traditional view is that the violence of romance stories is an expression of aristocratic privilege wielded by a military caste in its relations with one another as well as with those lower on the social scale. In this sense, violence is the aristocratic gift that underwrites and reaffirms the feudal power of a privileged group, with the noble gift performing the symbolic violence on which romance depends in order to present itself as both a coded threat and an expression of chivalric values. Well-known examples of romance in Middle English, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Chaucer's Knight's Tale, are considered alongside more "e;popular"e; examples of the genre to demonstrate a surprising continuity of function across a range of social contexts. Wadiak charts a trajectory from violence aimed directly at securing feudal domination to the subtler and more diffuse modes of coercion that later English romances explore. Ultimately, this is a book about the ways in which romance lives on as an idea, even as the genre itself begins to lose ground at the close of the Middle Ages.

What is a public intellectual? Where are they to be found? What accounts for the lament today that public intellectuals are either few in number or, worse, irrelevant? While there is a small literature on the role of public intellectuals, it is organized around various thinkers rather than focusing on different countries or the unique opportunities and challenges inherent in varied disciplines or professions. In Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena, Michael C. Desch has gathered a group of contributors to offer a timely and far-reaching reassessment of the role of public intellectuals in a variety of Western and non-Western settings. The contributors delineate the centrality of historical consciousness, philosophical self-understanding, and ethical imperatives for any intelligentsia who presume to speak the truth to power. The first section provides in-depth studies of the role of public intellectuals in a variety of countries or regions, including the United States, Latin America, China, and the Islamic world. The essays in the second section take up the question of why public intellectuals vary so widely across different disciplines. These chapters chronicle changes in the disciplines of philosophy and economics, changes that "e;have combined to dethrone the former and elevate the latter as the preeminent homes of public intellectuals in the academy."e; Also included are chapters that consider the evolving roles of the natural scientist, the former diplomat, and the blogger as public intellectuals. The final section provides concluding perspectives about the duties of public intellectuals in the twenty-first century.

With extraordinary elegance and philosophic power, Frithjof Bergmann presents a genuine rethinking of freedom. By changing the focus from outside to inside the person, Bergmann shows how freedom can be a reality in self-growth, parenting, education, and in shaping a society that stimulates rather than stunts the self.

On March 14, 1948, Douglas Hyde handed in his resignation as the news editor of the London Daily Worker and wrote "e;the end"e; to twenty years of his life as a member of the Communist Party. A week later, in a written statement, Hyde announced that he had renounced Communism and, with his wife and children, was joining the Catholic Church. The long pilgrimage from Communism to Christ carried Douglas Hyde from complete commitment to Marxism, to a questioning uneasiness about Soviet Russia's glaring contradictions of ideology and action, to a final rejection of the Party. In Dedication and Leadership, he advances the theory that although the goals and aims of Communism are antithetical to human dignity and the rights of the individual, there is much to be learned from communist methods, cadres and psychological motivation. Hyde describes the Communist mechanics of instilling dedication, the first prerequisite for leadership. Here is the complete rationale of party technique: how to stimulate the willingness to sacrifice; the advisibility of making big demands to insure a big response; the inspirational indoctrination; and the subtle conversion methods. In this small book, so large with implications, Douglas Hyde comments on both Communist and Catholic potential and their lack of maximum effectiveness. He advocates positive Catholic action, not just a negative anti-Communism, and he points out that the guidelines are now down for a decisive choice between total Communism and a total Christianity. Here is a realistic approach to an acute problem uncolored by emotional propaganda, and here is a realistic answer on how to inspire dedication for leadership.

Passover and Easter constitute for Jews and Christians respectively two of the most important religious festivals of the year. This volume concentrates on the origins and early developments of the two feasts and how established celebration practices have changed over recent years.

This book explores the role of emotions and affections in the Christian tradition from historical and theological perspectives, especially related to the work of the Holy Spirit. Although historians and scholars from a range of traditions-including Wesleyan, Pentecostal, and Pietist-have engaged these issues, there has yet to be a sustained examination of the role of emotions and affectivity across the Christian tradition. By retrieving the complex discussion about affectivity in Christian tradition and bringing its many voices into dialogue within a contemporary ecumenical context, the contributors also point toward a number of new research trajectories. The essays underscore the need to understand the shift in Western views of emotion that began in the late eighteenth century. They also explore in detail the vocabulary of affectivity as it has developed in the Christian tradition. As part of this development, the contributors reveal the importance of pneumatology in Western as well as Eastern Christianity, calling into question the idea of a pneumatological deficit advanced by some constructive theologians and addressing the relationship between affectivity and the pedagogical strategies that enable persons to cooperate with the work of grace in the soul. Finally, several essays explore the relationship between the erotic, the ecstatic, and affectivity in religious belief. This volume will interest scholars and students of historical theology, of emotions in theology, and of Christian renewal or charismatic movements.

Debates about the existence of God persist but remain at an impasse between opposing answers. God at the Crossroads of Worldviews reframes the debate from a new perspective, characterizing the way these positions have been defined and defended not as wrong, per se, but rather as odd or awkward. Paul Chung begins with a general survey of the philosophical debate regarding the existence of God, particularly as the first cause, and how this involves a bewildering array of often-incommensurable positions that differ on the meaning of key concepts, criteria of justification, and even on where to start the discussion. According to Chung, these positions are in fact arguments both from and against larger, more comprehensive intellectual positions, which in turn comprise a set of rival "e;worldviews."e; Moreover, there is no neutral rationality completely independent of these worldviews and capable of resolving complex intellectual questions, such as that of the existence of God. Building from Alasdair MacIntyre's writings on rival intellectual traditions, Chung proposes that to argue about God, we must first stand at the "e;crossroads"e; of the different intellectual journeys of the particular rival worldviews in the debate, and that the "e;discovery"e; of such a crossroad itself constitutes an argument about the existence of God. Chung argues that this is what Thomas Aquinas accomplished in his Five Ways, which are often misunderstood as simple "e;proofs."e; From such crossroads, the debate may proceed toward a more fruitful exploration of the question of God's existence. Chung sketches out one such crossroad by suggesting ways in which Christianity and scientific naturalism can begin a mutual dialogue from a different direction. God at the Crossroads of Worldviews will be read by philosophers of religion, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and theologians and general readers interested in the new atheism debates.

Eucharist is a detailed history of the Christian Eucharistic formularies. Bouyer gives a thorough analysis of the Jewish meal prayers, the berakoth, to which he traces the origins of the eucharistic rite, and ends with the recent addition of new eucharistic prayers to the Roman rite. He also includes the history of the various forms of the early Christian liturgies, of the Byzantine, Gallican, and Mozarabic Eucharists, of the changes introduced during the Reformation, and of developments in the Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed traditions.

The Required Work Service Law, or Service du Travail Obligatoire, was passed in 1943 by the Vichy government of France under German occupation. Passage of the law confirmed the French government's willing collaboration in providing the Nazi regime with French manpower to replace German workers sent to fight in the war. The result was the deportation of 600,000 young Frenchmen to Germany, where they worked under the harshest conditions. Elie Poulard was one of the Frenchmen forced into labor by the Vichy government. Translated by his brother Jean V. Poulard, Elie's memoir vividly captures the lives of a largely unrecognized group of people who suffered under the Nazis. He describes in great detail his ordeal at different work sites in the Ruhr region, the horrors that he witnessed, and the few Germans who were good to him. Through this account of one eyewitness on the ground, we gain a vivid picture of Allied bombing in the western part of Germany and its contribution to the gradual collapse and capitulation of Germany at the end of the war. Throughout his ordeal, Elie's Catholic faith, good humor, and perseverance sustained him. Little has been published in French or English about the use of foreign workers by the Nazi regime and their fate. The Poulards' book makes an important contribution to the historiography of World War II, with its firsthand account of what foreign workers endured when they were sent to Nazi Germany. The memoir concludes with an explanation of the ongoing controversy in France over the opposition to the title Deporte du Travail, which those who experienced this forced deportation, like Elie, gave themselves after the war.