This text, the Questions concerning Aristotle's On Animals [Quaestiones super de animalibus], recovered only at the beginning of the twentieth century and never before translated in its entirety, represents Conrad of Austria's report on a series of disputed questions that Albert the Great addressed in Cologne ca. 1258.

Chapter 4: That this sacrament causes communion in the sufferings of the mystical body -- Chapter 5: That this sacrament causes material assistance in works of mercy -- Chapter 6: That this sacrament makes common all that is ours of both spiritual and material things -- Chapter 7: That this sacrament causes the truest communion of the divine and the human -- Distinction Five: Sacrifice -- Chapter 1: About the authority and antiquity of this sacrifice -- Chapter 2: About the holiness of this sacrifice -- Chapter 3: About the acceptableness of this sacrifice -- Chapter 4: About the truth of this sacrifice -- Distinction Six: Sacrament -- Tractate 1: About the institution of this sacrament -- Chapter 1: About the reason for the institution of this sacrament -- Chapter 2: About the necessity for the institution of this sacrament -- Chapter 3: About the time of the institution of this sacrament -- Chapter 4: About the mode of the institution of this sacrament -- Tractate 2: About the matter and form of this sacrament -- Chapter 1: About the matter of this sacrament -- Chapter 2: About the form of the sacrament over the bread -- Chapter 3: About the form that is spoken over the wine -- Chapter 4: About things following both forms -- Tractate 3: What in this sacrament is the sacrament alone, and what are the reality and the sacrament, and what is the reality without the sacrament? -- Chapter 1 -- Tractate 4: In which the rite of this sacrament is treated -- Chapter 1: About the rite of this sacrament on Christ's part -- Chapter 2: About the rite of this sacrament on the minister's part -- Chapter 3: About the rite of this sacrament on the recipient's part -- III. Indices -- General Index -- Index of Holy Scripture

Kingdoms, Empires, and Domains explores the history of the idea that there is more to the living world than plants and animals. Progressing chronologically through philosophical, religious, literary, and other pre-scientific traditions, leading molecular systematist Mark A. Ragan traces how transgressive creatures such as sponges, corals, algae, fungi, and diverse microscopic beings have been described, categorized, and understood throughout history. The book also explores how the concept of a "third kingdom of life" evolved within the fields of scientific botany and zoology, and continues to evolve up to the present day.

Peter the Venerable's extensive literary legacy includes poems, a large epistolary collection, and polemical treatises. The first of his four major polemics targeted a Christian heresy, the Petrobrussians (Against the Petrobrusians); the rest took aim at Jews and Saracens. Catholic University of America Press has published his Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews. This present volume will make available in their entirety Peter the Venerable's twin polemics against Islam - A Summary of the entire heresy of the Saracens and Against the sect of the Saracens - as well as related correspondence. These works resulted from a sustained engagement with Islam begun during Peter's journey to Spain in 1142-43. There the abbot commissioned a translation of sources from the Arabic, the so-called Toledan Collection, that include the Letter of a Saracen with a Christian Response (from the Apology of [Ps.] Al-Kindi ); Fables of the Saracens (a potpourri of Islamic hadith traditions); and Robert of Ketton's first Latin translation of the whole of the Qur'an. Thanks to Peter's efforts, from the second half of the twelfth century Christians could acquire a far better understanding of the teachings of Islam, and Peter may rightly be viewed as the initiator of Islamic studies in the West.

This book provides an exploration of the historical conditions that gradually defined subordinating symbols and conflictual values in social relations between the sexes. It reveals how snakes and the gelid eyes of Medusa—the archetypical snake-woman—have reverberated across the visual arts and written sources throughout the ages in association with negative emotions: fear, anger, scorn and shame. The outcomes and implications of the disturbing correlation between the dangerous female gaze, the malignitas of the snake and the lethal power of menstruation that have been woven through the fabric of the Western imaginary are analysed here. This analysis reveals an intriguing history of female reptilian hybrids—from the pleasing Minoan snake goddesses to the depressing Gorgon, Echidna, Amazons, Eve, Melusine, Basilisk, Poison-Damsel, Catoblepas and Sadako/Samara—and gives the reader an opportunity to explore things that never happened but have always been.

Aquinas on Beauty explores the nature and role of beauty in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Beginning with a standard definition of beauty provided by Aquinas, it explores each of the components of that definition. The result is a comprehensive account of Aquinas’s formal view on the subject, supplemented by an exploration into Aquinas’s commentary on Dionysius’s Divine Names, including a comparison of his views with those of both Dionysius and those of Aquinas’s mentor, Albert the Great. The book also highlights the tight connection in Aquinas’s thought between aesthetics and ethics, and illustrates how Aquinas preserves what is best about aesthetic traditions preceding him, and anticipates what is best about aesthetic traditions that would follow, marrying objective and subjective aesthetic intuitions and charting a kind of via media between the common extremes.

Imagine if men and women could contribute equally to serving and leading the Church. How much stronger and healthier the kingdom of God might be? This book explores what healthy partnerships can look like through Biblical exploration and practical insights from different contexts and how we can overcome barriers of tradition or misunderstanding that hinders us.