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Devotion to the crucified Christ is one of the most familiar yet disconcerting artifacts of medieval European civilization. How and why did the images of the dying God-man and his grieving mother achieve such prominence, inspiring unparalleled religious creativity and emotional artistry even as they ...

Devotion to the crucified Christ is one of the most familiar yet disconcerting artifacts of medieval European civilization. How and why did the images of the dying God-man and his grieving mother achieve such prominence, inspiring unparalleled religious creativity and emotional artistry even as they fostered such imitative extremes as celibacy, crusade, and self-flagellation? Magisterial in style and comprehensive in scope, From Judgment to Passion is the first systematic attempt to explain the origins and initial development of European devotion to Christ in his suffering humanity and Mary in her compassionate grief. Rachel Fulton examines liturgical performance, doctrine, private prayer, scriptural exegesis, and art in order to illuminate and explain the powerful desire shared by medieval women and men to identify with the crucified Christ and his mother. The book begins with the Carolingian campaign to convert the newly conquered pagan Saxons, in particular with the effort to explain for these new converts the mystery of the Eucharist, the miraculous presence of Christ's body at the Mass. Moving on to the early eleventh century, when Christ's failure to return on the millennium of his Passion (A.D. 1033) necessitated for believers a radical revision of Christian history, Fulton examines the novel liturgies and devotions that arose amid this apocalyptic disappointment. The book turns finally to the twelfth century when, in the wake of the capture of Jerusalem in the First Crusade, there occurred the full flowering of a new, more emotional sensibility of faith, epitomized by the eroticism of the Marian exegesis of the Song of Songs and by the artistic and architectural innovations we have come to think of as quintessentially high medieval. In addition to its concern with explaining devotional change, From Judgment to Passion presses a second, crucial question: How is it possible for modern historians to understand not only the social and cultural functions but also the experience of faith -- the impulsive engagement with the emotions, sometimes ineffable, of prayer and devotion? The answer, magnificently exemplified throughout this book's narrative, lies in imaginative empathy, the same incorporation of self into story that lay at the heart of the medieval effort to identify with Christ and Mary in their love and pain.

Catholics and Protestants have, since the earliest days of the Reformation, held markedly different views about the Virgin Mary. In Reforming Mary Beth Kreitzer examines the development of Lutheran views on this subject as expressed in 16th-century Lutheran published sermons, starting with the ...

Catholics and Protestants have, since the earliest days of the Reformation, held markedly different views about the Virgin Mary. In Reforming Mary Beth Kreitzer examines the development of Lutheran views on this subject as expressed in 16th-century Lutheran published sermons, starting with the earliest of Luther's own Reformation sermons. She shows that from the beginning Lutherans rejected much of the theology and piety that surrounded Mary in Catholicism, especially her status as heavenly queen and intercessor with Christ. They affirmed those orthodox teachings about Mary that related to Christ (the Virgin's role as Theotokos, the virgin birth) and by extension Mary's purity, or perpetual virginity. As time went on Lutheran preachers showed less interest in Mary as a topic and by the later part of the century showed an increasingly harsh and critical view of her. These later sermons reveal a new willingness, in opposition to received tradition, to impute sin to Mary. Kreitzer attributes this changed attitude to the increasing distance of Lutherans from their Catholic roots, the logical results of theological changes in the Reformation, and a perception of an increased threat of re-catholicization. Finally, she shows, Mary was pressed into service by preachers who endeavored to instruct the laity in both what to believe and how to live, making a causal connection between being a good Christian and being a good citizen of society. In this context, Mary was used as a role model and was often promoted as an exemplar for females in ways that served to constrain and domesticate women, placing them more firmly under male authority. But despite the attempts by preachers to domesticate and mold her, Kreitzer argues, the Lutheran Mary remains a complex and paradoxical figure.