-
Robert Louis Wilken
Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by judith herrin princeton university press, 440 pages, $29.95 In Handel’s opera Tamerlano , the principal characters are Tamerlane; the brutal Mongol chieftain Bajazet; an Ottoman Sultan and his daughter Asteria; and Andronico, the Byzantine . . . . Continue Reading »
Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations by martin goodman knopf, 624 pages, $35 When I first saw the title of this book, I thought of Tertullian’s famous question: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? But Goodman did not have Tertullian in mind when he chose his title. He was . . . . Continue Reading »
Allegory fell on hard times in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although the charm of beloved works of English literature such as Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress lies in the imaginative use of allegory, biblical scholars banished the term from their vocabulary. . . . . Continue Reading »
At Fordham University, while I was teaching there in the late 1960s, it was said that most students were sons and daughters of firemen, policemen, or sanitation workers. That was probably an exaggeration, but not by much. Few parents were themselves college graduates, and the typical student was . . . . Continue Reading »
The Mysticism of Saint Augustine: Rereading the Confessions by John Peter Kenney Routledge, 160 pages, $115. FOR MANY, AUGUSTINE’S City of God seems a more difficult book than the Confessions . It is very long, and its architectonic structure demands that one hold in mind ideas from earlier . . . . Continue Reading »
The passage quoted by Pope Benedict XVI in his speech at the University of Regensburg that caused an uproar in the Muslim world was written by Manuel II Palaeologus, Byzantine emperor from 1391 to 1425. The "empire" over which he presided consisted of the city of Constantinople, a tiny . . . . Continue Reading »
Pelikan roamed freely and confidently over the whole history of Christian thought—and that history was never simply history for . . . . Continue Reading »
Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine by robert dodaro cambridge university press, 262 pages, $75 In the year 412 Augustine received from the pagan pro-consul of Africa a series of questions about the Incarnation and other Christian teachings. The topics arose out of regular . . . . Continue Reading »
When St. Augustine abandoned the teaching of rhetoric in Milan to enroll for baptism, he asked St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, what to read in the Scriptures “to make me readier and fitter to receive so great a grace”? Ambrose told him to read the prophet Isaiah. Augustine took his advice, . . . . Continue Reading »
Faith of Our Fathers: Reflections on Catholic Tradition by Eamon Duffy Continuum. 187 pp. $16.95 Faith of our Fathers is a spirited defense of Catholic ritual, discipline, and communal observance”of the ways in which the collective wisdom of Christian tradition is passed on from one . . . . Continue Reading »
influential
journal of
religion and
public life Subscribe Latest Issue Support First Things