In Trade and Romance, Michael Murrin examines the complex relations between the expansion of trade in Asia and the production of heroic romance in Europe from the second half of the thirteenth century through the late seventeenth century. He shows how these tales of romance, ostensibly meant for the aristocracy, were important to the growing mercantile class as a way to gauge their own experiences in traveling to and trading in these exotic locales. Murrin also looks at the role that growing knowledge of geography played in the writing of the creative literature of the period, tracking how accurate, or inaccurate, these writers were in depicting far-flung destinations, from Iran and the Caspian Sea all the way to the Pacific. With reference to an impressive range of major works in several languages—including the works of Marco Polo, Geoffrey Chaucer, Matteo Maria Boiardo, Luís de Camões, Fernão Mendes Pinto, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and more—Murrin tracks numerous accounts by traders and merchants through the literature, first on the Silk Road, beginning in the mid-thirteenth century; then on the water route to India, Japan, and China via the Cape of Good Hope; and, finally, the overland route through Siberia to Beijing. All of these routes, originally used to exchange commodities, quickly became paths to knowledge as well, enabling information to pass, if sometimes vaguely and intermittently, between Europe and the Far East. These new tales of distant shores fired the imagination of Europe and made their way, with surprising accuracy, as Murrin shows, into the poetry of the period.

This collection of theological essays, spiritual meditations, public prayers, and biblical interpretations provides a focus, day by day, for contemplation and reflection. By intention they are offered in media res, in the midst of the cacophony and chaos of life and particularly of academic life. These pages are markings along the journey, on the trail, and thus perhaps signposts for others coming along the same way. To some degree, the collection responds to similar, recent publication of 200-word daily selections from the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The assembly of materials revisits a favorite form of an earlier Dean of Marsh Chapel, Howard Thurman. Thurman easily and regularly captured thought and feeling in an assortment of forms--prayer, sermon, hymn, poem, litany, sermon--and worried very little about repetitions or the jostling inherent in formal variety. Charles River follows after these and similar works, and is offered as a daily resource for those receiving and offering, the divine grace of freedom, acceptance, forgiveness, pardon, and love.

Our churches and our country long for an expression of common hope. Over the last century, venerable voices in affirmation of a common faith and a common ground have been lifted and heard in Boston, such as those of John Dewey and Howard Thurman. The Dean of Marsh Chapel, Robert Allan Hill, has preached on themes related to a common hope since 2006. Hill has lifted the theology of hope, of a common hope, at the marrow of the gospel. We cherish our forebears, who taught about a common faith and preached a common ground. In church and culture today in America, it is the prospect of a lasting, sturdy, shared hope, more purple than either blue or red, for which we hunger. The sermons about a common hope collected here were preached at the Chautauqua Institution in August of 2017.