Why were so many religious images and objects broken and damaged in the course of the Reformation? Margaret Aston's magisterial new book charts the conflicting imperatives of destruction and rebuilding throughout the English Reformation from the desecration of images, rails and screens to bells, organs and stained glass windows. She explores the motivations of those who smashed images of the crucifixion in stained glass windows and who pulled down crosses and defaced symbols of the Trinity. She shows that destruction was part of a methodology of religious revolution designed to change people as well as places and to forge in the long term new generations of new believers. Beyond blanked walls and whited windows were beliefs and minds impregnated by new modes of religious learning. Idol-breaking with its emphasis on the treacheries of images fundamentally transformed not only Anglican ways of worship but also of seeing, hearing and remembering.

Recover the Eucharist for church and ministry.

This book is the first collection of its kind, an anthology of classic and cutting-edge writings in the rapidly emerging field of literary ecology. Exploring the relationship between literature and the physical environment, literary ecology is the study of the ways that writing - from novels and folktales to U.S. government reports and corporate advertisements - both reflects and influences our interactions with the natural world.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.

Tomb Painting and Identity in Ancient Thebes, 1419-1372 BCE examines the style, iconography, and symbolism of painting in all extant private Theban tomb chapels decorated during the reigns of Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III. The book studies the ways in which pictorial imagery functioned on behalf of the dead in the afterlife, presented their identity to the living, and revealed underlying religious developments with important societal implications. Various aspects of the pre-Amarna Theban tomb are explored, from the tomb's purpose as a creative and commemorative vehicle for the deceased to the placement and functional properties of its imagery. The book also discusses the different styles of painting in the chapels of state and religious officials and how these styles reveal workshop organization and "patronage" practices in Thebes. The majority of the book is dedicated to the iconography of the functioning image in the tomb chapel, its reception, and its purpose as a bridge between what was represented and what was signified, between the mundane and the sacred, and between the living and the dead. Particular attention is paid to the iconography on the "western" back walls of the transverse hall in T-shaped tomb chapels, walls that held aesthetic, cultic, and symbolic significance to the ancient Egyptians. On these walls as well as the northern or southern long wall in rectangular tomb chapels, iconography and text commemorated the deceased's personal and professional identity, projected this identity into the hereafter, and contained key components for the tomb owner's rebirth. The eternal well-being of the deceased was secured through the iconography of gift giving that also mirrored religious trends that permeated society. Tomb Painting and Identity in Ancient Thebes, 1419-1372 BCE addresses Theban tomb painting and its underlying creative and commemorative properties as a medium of regeneration, preservation, and display on behalf of the tomb owner and the world of which he was a part.