This volume examines depictions of Christ in the writings and art of the medieval Dominicans. The multidisciplinary essays provide perspectives on the life and thought of the Order of the Preachers, focusing on the role of Christ within the devotion and imagination of the Order.

Religious historians and historians of spirituality have developed and exploited the broad categories of "Christocentric and Theocentric spirituality" in order to differentiate the religious spirit of the Franciscans and the Dominicans. In addition, the philosophical interests of neo-Scholastic thinkers have curtailed attention to the role of the figure of Christ in the thought of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and other Dominican thinkers. To redress this imbalance, editors Kent Emery, Jr. and Joseph P. Wawrykow present this collection of essays to address the long-neglected depictions of Christ in the writings and art of the medieval Dominicans. Christ among the Medieval Dominicans adopts a genuinely multidisciplinary approach to its topic, bringing together the research of experts in a wide variety of fields. The essays in this volume, written by an acclaimed group of international scholars and presented at the University of Notre Dame Conference in Medieval Studies, provide many perspectives (theology, philosophy, spirituality, institutional and social history, art history, Latin and vernacular literature, and manuscript studies) on the life and thought of the Order of Preachers. The essays focus on the role of Christ within the devotion and imagination of the Order and in effect expose the "state of the question" in studies of this important medieval institution. As a whole, the volume tests commonplace but often unexamined presuppositions of medieval historiography, especially in the history of spirituality and literary criticism. The essays are accompanied by ample visual evidence from paintings, manuscript illustrations and texts, woodcuts, and engravings, complete with generous indices of manuscripts and names.

Righteous Persecution examines the long-controversial involvement of the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, with inquisitions into heresy in medieval Europe. From their origin in the thirteenth century, the Dominicans were devoted to a ministry of preaching, teaching, and pastoral care, to "save souls" particularly tempted by the Christian heresies popular in western Europe. Many persons then, and scholars in our own time, have asked how members of a pastoral order modeled on Christ and the apostles could engage themselves so enthusiastically in the repressive persecution that constituted heresy inquisitions: the arrest, interrogation, torture, punishment, and sometimes execution of those who deviated in belief from Roman Christianity. Drawing on an extraordinarily wide base of ecclesiastical documents, Christine Caldwell Ames recounts how Dominican inquisitors and their supporters crafted and promoted explicitly Christian meanings for their inquisitorial persecution. Inquisitors' conviction that the sin of heresy constituted the graver danger to the Christian soul and to the church at large led to the belief that bringing the individual to repentance—even through the harshest means—was indeed a pious way to carry out their pastoral task. However, the resistance and criticism that inquisition generated in medieval communities also prompted Dominicans to consider further how this new marriage of persecution and holiness was compatible with authoritative Christian texts, exemplars, and traditions. Dominican inquisitors persecuted not despite their faith but rather because of it, as they formed a medieval Christianity that permitted—or demanded—persecution. Righteous Persecution deviates from recent scholarship that has deemphasized religious belief as a motive for inquisition and illuminates a powerful instance of the way Christianity was itself vulnerable in a context of persecution, violence, and intolerance.

Light and Glory offers an engaging comparison of the teachings of seven thirteenth-century theologians -- three Franciscans and four Dominicans -- on the subject of the transfiguration of Christ.

This essay newly interprets the rise of the individual within the Italian peninsula between 1180 and 1300. It follows the historical events and the cultural products that define the period keeping in mind that the creators were conscious of a tangible, real Christ in their midst. For it is the time when Jesus was known to be in the Eucharist as a carnal potentiality, as well as a time when Europeans on Crusade had reached his temporal abode. As Christ as neighbor became a consistent idea, the relationship towards that idea became one of accommodation, making subsequent worship a form of individualism. The later Renaissance was as much a specific reaction to a particular understanding of Christology within the cultural sphere as it was a reawakening of Classical ideals through a new paradigm of European selfhood outside of Christianity. Understood in this way, the Incarnation helped to produce an action based Christianity amenable to the needs of the Roman Church. The later insistence upon text and notions of personal conscience that identifies the Reformation, can now be seen as a true end to the Renaissance Christian praxis which began with the excitement over Christ among them.

An account of Dominican activities in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales from their arrival in 1221 until their dissolution at the Reformation

Examines early modern Spanish contributions to international relations by focusing on ambivalence of natural rights in European colonial expansion to the Americas.