Penny Schine Gold provides a bold analysis of key literary and artistic images of women in the Middle Ages and the relationship between these images and the actual experience of women. She argues that the complex interactions between men and women as expressed in both image and experience reflect a common pattern of ambivalence and contradiction. Thus, women are seen as both helpful and harmful, powerful and submissive, and the actuality of women's experience encompasses women in control and controlled, autonomous and dependent. Vividly recreating the rich texture of medieval life, Gold effectively and eloquently goes beyond a simple equation of social context and representation. In the process. she challenges equally simple judgments of historical periods as being either "good" or "bad" for women. "[The Lady and the Virgin] presents its findings in a form that should attract students as well as their instructors. The careful and controlled use of so many different kinds of sources . . . offers us a valuable medieval case study in the inner-relationship between the segments of society and its ethos or value system."—Joel T. Rosenthal, The History Teacher "Something of a tour de force in an interdisciplinary approach to history."—Jo Ann McNamara, Speculum "[A] well-written, extremely well-researched book. . . . The Lady and the Virgin is useful, readable, and well informed."—R. Howard Bloch, Modern Philology

The devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, based on the story of apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Juan Diego, an Indian neophyte, at the hill of Tepeyac in December 1531, is one of the most important formative religious and national symbols in the history of Mexico. In this first work ever to examine in depth every historical source of the Guadalupe apparitions, Stafford Poole traces the origins and history of the account, and in the process challenges many commonly accepted assumptions and interpretations. Poole finds that, despite common belief, the apparition account was unknown prior to 1648, when it was first published by a Mexican priest. And then, the virgin became the predominant devotion not of the Indians, but of the criollos, who found in the story a legitimization of their own national aspirations and an almost messianic sense of mission and identity. Poole finds no evidence of a contemporary association of the Virgin of Guadalupe with the Mexican goddess Tonantzin, as is frequently assumed, and he rejects the common assertion that the early missionaries consciously substituted Guadalupe for a preconquest deity.

An overlooked aspect of the iconography of the Annunciation investigated - Mary's book.

The words and actions of Mary revealed. In The Little Book of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Fr. Raoul Plus helps us to open the book of the heart of Mary in the simplest yet most vivid ways. We must ponder not only her words, but also the events of her life her attitudes, her actions, and even her silence. By imitating Our Lady, our lives like hers may also come to be full of grace.

For more than twenty years, Maria Paula Acuña has claimed to see the Virgin Mary, once a month, at a place called Our Lady of the Rock in the Mojave Desert of California. Hundreds of men, women, and children follow her into the desert to watch her see what they cannot. While she sees and speaks with the Virgin, onlookers search the skies for signs from heaven, snapping photographs of the sun and sky. Not all of them are convinced that Maria Paula can see the Virgin, yet at each vision event they watch for subtle clues to Mary’s presence, such as the unexpected scent of roses or a cloud in the shape of an angel. The visionary depends on her audience to witness and authenticate her visions, while observers rely on Maria Paula and the Virgin to create a sacred space and moment where they, too, can experience firsthand one of the oldest and most fundamental promises of Christianity: direct contact with the divine. Together, visionary and witnesses negotiate and enact their monthly liturgy of revelations. Our Lady of the Rock, which features text by Lisa M. Bitel and more than sixty photographs by Matt Gainer, shows readers what happens in the Mojave Desert each month and tells us how two thousand years of Christian revelatory tradition prepared Maria Paula and her followers to meet in the desert. Based on six years of observation and interviews, chapters analyze the rituals, iconographies, and physical environment of Our Lady of the Rock. Bitel and Gainer also provide vivid portraits of the pilgrims—who they are, where they come from, and how they practice the traditional Christian discernment of spirits and visions. Our Lady of the Rock follows three pilgrims as they return home with relics and proofs of visions where, out of Maria Paula’s sight, they too have learned to see the Virgin. The book also documents the public response from the Catholic Church and popular news media to Maria Paula and other contemporary visionaries. Throughout, Our Lady of the Rock locates Maria Paula and her followers in the context of recent demographic and cultural shifts in the American Southwest, the astonishing increase in reported apparitions and miracles from around the world, the latest developments in communications and visual technologies, and the never-ending debate among academics, faith leaders, scientists, and citizen observers about sight, perception, reason, and belief.

One Monday morning in April, a middle-aged writer walks into her living room to water the plants and finds a woman standing beside her potted fig tree. Dressed in a navy blue trench coat and white Nikes, the woman introduces herself as "Mary. Mother of God.... You know. Mary." Instead of a golden robe or a crown, she arrives bearing a practical wheeled suitcase. Weary after two thousand years of adoration and petition, Mary is looking for a little R & R. She's asked in for lunch, and decides to stay a week. As the story of their visit unfolds, so does the story of Mary-one of the most complex and powerful female figures of our time-and her changing image in culture, art, history, as well as the thousands of recorded sightings that have placed her everywhere from a privet hedge to the dented bumper of a Camaro. As this Everywoman and Mary become friends, their conversations, both profound and intimate, touch upon Mary's significance and enduring relevance. Told with humor and grace, Our Lady of the Lost and Found is an absorbing tour through Mary's history and a thoughtful meditation on spirituality, our need for faith, and our desire to believe in something larger than ourselves.

Standard histories on the Age of Colonization tell a sad story of the ills inflicted on indigenous peoples by exploitative Western powers. This book offers a realistic corrective. The Spanish conquest of the New World is shown vividly--in its fervor and exuberance, but most importantly, with its central evangelical and civilizing impulse that transformed the Americas from savagery into a central part of Christendom.