...David Aers This essay argues that Calvinist versions of God and human redemption cannot be adequately grasped without studying the medieval traditions from which they emerged. Beginning with a close reading of Calvin's extremely violent understanding of the atonement, the essay moves through...

... to be just as civilized as European monarchies in its deployment of a rational mode of social control through violence. © 2011 by Duke University Press 2011 a “A dish fit for the gods”: Mexica Sacrifice in De Bry...

... Burana.96 Not for him the Warburgian God who lurks in detail (“Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail detail was Otto Schumann’s deity. It set him apart from professorial mediocrities who lacked his capacity for micro- scopic analysis. A glance at his apparatus criticus to CB no. 101, matched only by his...

..., that brings a person to the God who has established God as the beatifying end of the human person; and, the virtues that are most conducive to that life with God are, radically, the gift of God, due to divine initiative. Although less immediately obvious, Aquinas’s virtue ethics is also thoroughly...

... experienced God, each other, and the world. Examining metaphor and imagery that adopts features of the natural world, this essay thinks through the implications for twelfth-century people's spiritual lives of the idea that God, through the Incarnation, entered not nature, but creation. In particular...

...Jason Crawford In his last exchange with Cordelia, a failing and ecstatic Lear promises that they together will “take upon ’s the mystery of things / As if we were God’s spies” (5.3.16 – 17). Take upon us : what are the implications of this language? Why not invite Cordelia (in the formulations...

...Jason Crawford Early modern English literary culture was thick with tales of divine judgment. Texts ranging from true-crime pamphlets to Thomas Beard's vast collection The Theatre of God's Judgements (1597) promised to disclose God's work in history, and they found signs of that work in stories...

... as being “atomic.” Into the “atoms” of time the contemplative must fit his will in the work of contemplation, so that each atom of time contains an atom of will. The enfolding of will into time is meant to approximate divine eternity, and, thus, produce a feeling of God. The tool that the Cloud -author...

...Stephen M. Fallon In a famous passage, the Son of God in Paradise Regained dismisses classical philosophers for their ignorance of “how man fell” and for their confidence in human sufficiency to attain virtue. “In themselves,” the Son says dismissively, they “seek virtue.” By putting this argument...

...Constance Furey This essay seeks to understand the assumptions about marriage bequeathed to us by early modern Protestants by exploring the Puritan interest in mandated affection. For Puritans, obligatory love was the foundation for the covenant between believers and God and the reason why...

... ideal to a mental faculty. In the Spiritual Exercises , attention is an experience that is not independent of the spiritual ideal of attending to God but rather a sign and trace of the latter. Boyle sought to relax the strict regime of earlier meditations by offering a new recipe: his reformed program...

... of Christ” killed herself or threatened to do so. Such willful deaths not only contravened basic religious precepts but also reneged on the promise to sacrifice oneself continuously for God, city, and family. Motivations for self-harm ranged from deep despair with convent life to madness and demonic...

... of affective piety does not position “heart knowledge” ( sapientia ) and “head knowledge” ( scientia ) as mutually exclusive. Instead, A Christian Mannes Bileeve fuses reason (“skil”) with affect (“kyndenesse”), generating a reasonable love borne from gratitude for God that arises from knowing the Apostles...

... agreement about the ways and means that God communicated with his people. Copyright © 2018 by Duke University Press 2018 early modern English theology divine revelation mystical experience language of ravishment Holy Spirit...

..., Descartes's Devil (looking suspiciously like his God). The aim of this essay is to give the under-imagined Cartesian demon his due and track the effects of this never-quite-expurgated figure on the coherence of a paradigmatic form of early modern selfhood. Copyright © 2018 by Duke University Press 2018...

...Grace Hamman In A Revelation of Love , Julian of Norwich employs the similitude of Christ as a mother and the Christian as his child to describe and explore the relationship between God and humanity. Theologians, literary critics, and historians alike have studied the theological...

... the arrowhead embedded in Henry’s cheek. It is likely that Henry’s face would have been marked by a scar. Henry V’s battlefield scar would have been read in light of Henry IV’s own scarred face, which was affected by a disease his contemporaries thought to be leprosy. Henry IV’s disfiguration was seen as God’s...

..., Alexander’s father was Nectanabus, a mage and astrologer who seduced Queen Olympias with an astronomy lesson, deceived her by using animal pelts to disguise himself as a god, and then used his magic arts to retard the child’s birth when his astrological calculations indicated the child would be born a hybrid...

... principle necessary to the definition of nature. Whether understood as a broad, vague, and elusive notion, or, on the contrary, as a strong ordering principle, nature supports life and the world. Sometimes it is described as the simple element of matter, sometimes as an entity rivaling God himself. Nature...