Black Saints In Early Modern Global Catholicism

This is the untold story of how black saints - and the slaves who venerated them - transformed the early modern church. It speaks to race, the Atlantic slave trade, and global Christianity, and provides new ways of thinking about blackness, holiness, and cultural authority.

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Spanish and Portuguese monarchs launched global campaigns for territory and trade. This process spurred two efforts that reshaped the world: missions to spread Christianity to the four corners of the globe, and the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. These efforts joined in unexpected ways to give rise to black saints. Erin Kathleen Rowe presents the untold story of how black saints - and the slaves who venerated them - transformed the early modern church. By exploring race, the Atlantic slave trade, and global Christianity, she provides new ways of thinking about blackness, holiness, and cultural authority. Rowe transforms our understanding of global devotional patterns and their effects on early modern societies by looking at previously unstudied sculptures and paintings of black saints, examining the impact of black lay communities, and analysing controversies unfolding in the church about race, moral potential, enslavement, and salvation.

In early seventeenth-century Spain, the Castilian parliament voted to elevate the newly beatified Teresa of Avila to co-patron saint of Spain alongside the traditional patron, Santiago. Saint and Nation examines Spanish devotion to the cult of saints and the controversy over national patron sainthood to provide an original account of the diverse ways in which the early modern nation was expressed and experienced by monarch and town, center and periphery. By analyzing the dynamic interplay of local and extra-local, royal authority and nation, tradition and modernity, church and state, and masculine and feminine within the co-patronage debate, Erin Rowe reconstructs the sophisticated balance of plural identities that emerged in Castile during a central period of crisis and change in the Spanish world.

This fast-paced survey of Western civilization’s transition from the Middle Ages to modernity brings that tumultuous period vividly to life. Carlos Eire, popular professor and gifted writer, chronicles the two-hundred-year era of the Renaissance and Reformation with particular attention to issues that persist as concerns in the present day. Eire connects the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in new and profound ways, and he demonstrates convincingly that this crucial turning point in history not only affected people long gone, but continues to shape our world and define who we are today. The book focuses on the vast changes that took place in Western civilization between 1450 and 1650, from Gutenberg’s printing press and the subsequent revolution in the spread of ideas to the close of the Thirty Years’ War. Eire devotes equal attention to the various Protestant traditions and churches as well as to Catholicism, skepticism, and secularism, and he takes into account the expansion of European culture and religion into other lands, particularly the Americas and Asia. He also underscores how changes in religion transformed the Western secular world. A book created with students and nonspecialists in mind, Reformations is an inspiring, provocative volume for any reader who is curious about the role of ideas and beliefs in history.

This Handbook re-examines the concept of early modern history in a European and global context. The term 'early modern' has been familiar, especially in Anglophone scholarship, for four decades and is securely established in teaching, research, and scholarly publishing. More recently, however, the unity implied in the notion has fragmented, while the usefulness and even the validity of the term, and the historical periodisation which it incorporates, have been questioned. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750 provides an account of the development of the subject during the past half-century, but primarily offers an integrated and comprehensive survey of present knowledge, together with some suggestions as to how the field is developing. It aims both to interrogate the notion of 'early modernity' itself and to survey early modern Europe as an established field of study. The overriding aim will be to establish that 'early modern' is not simply a chronological label but possesses a substantive integrity. Volume I examines 'Peoples and Place', assessing structural factors such as climate, printing and the revolution in information, social and economic developments, and religion, including chapters on Orthodoxy, Judaism and Islam.

Explores how, in the Americas, people of African birth or descent found spiritual and social empowerment in the orbit of the Church. Draws connections between Afro-Catholic festivals and their precedents in the early modern Christian kingdom of Kongo.

This book treats Rome, the arts and religious culture in Italy in the century or so after the Council of Trent. In that era, clerical bureaucrats may have sought to impose control and uniformity, but nine original essays in this volume demonstrate continuing vitality of a wide range of creative artistic production. The book is illustrated with more than 50 reproductions. Part I and II explore themes of Italian Artists as Saints and Sinners, and Arts of Sanctity, Suffering, and Sensuality in Italy. Part III, Italy and Beyond: Rome and Global Catholic Culture, acknowledges world-wide dimensions of early modern Catholicism. From Rome to Eternity elucidates the rich and multifaceted character of Catholicism in Italy, ca. 1550-1650. Papal Rome spoke, but even as Italian Catholics listened, they themselves also spoke, and wrote, sang, acted, painted. Contributors include: Michael A. Zampelli, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Fiora A. Bassanese, Peter Burke, James Clifton, Sheldon Grossman, Pamela Jones, Robert L. Kendrick, David M. Stone, and Thomas Worcester.

One of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the Year Winner of the Christopher Award Winner of the Catholic Press Association Book Award WITTY, WRYLY HONEST, AND ALWAYS ORIGINAL, My Life with the Saints is James Martin’s story of how his life has been shaped by some surprising friends—the saints of the Catholic Church. In his modern classic memoir, Martin introduces us to saints throughout history—from St. Peter to Dorothy Day, St. Francis of Assisi to Mother Teresa—and chronicles his lifelong friendships with them. Filled with fascinating tales, Martin’s funny, vibrant, and stirring book invites readers to discover how saints guide us throughout our earthly journeys and how they help each of us find holiness in our own lives. Featuring a new chapter from Martin, this tenth-anniversary edition of the best-selling memoir updates readers about his life over the past ten years. In that time, he has been a New York Times best-selling author, official chaplain of The Colbert Report, and a welcome presence in the media whenever there’s a breaking Catholic news story. But he has always remained recognizably himself. John L. Allen, Jr., the acclaimed Catholic journalist, contributes a foreword that shows how Martin has become one of the wisest and most insightful voices of this era. “An outstanding and often hilarious memoir.” —Publishers Weekly“One of the best spiritual memoirs in years.” —Robert Ellsberg“Remarkably engaging.” —U.S. Catholic“Martin’s final word is as Jungian as it is Catholic: God does not want us to be Mother Teresa or Dorothy Day. God wants us to be most fully ourselves.” —The Washington Post Book World