Bynum argues that Christ's blood as both object and symbol was central to late medieval art, literature, and religious life. As cult object, blood provided a focus of theological debate about the nature of matter, body, and God and an occasion for Jewish persecution; as motif, blood became a central symbol in popular devotion.

The Arma Christi, the cluster of objects associated with Christ’s Passion, was one of the most familiar iconographic devices of European medieval and early modern culture. From the weapons used to torment and sacrifice the body of Christ sprang a reliquary tradition that produced active and contemplative devotional practices, complex literary narratives, intense lyric poems, striking visual images, and innovative architectural ornament. This collection displays the fascinating range of intellectual possibilities generated by representations of these medieval ’objects,’ and through the interdisciplinary collaboration of its contributors produces a fresh view of the multiple intersections of the spiritual and the material in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It also includes a new and authoritative critical edition of the Middle English Arma Christi poem known as ’O Vernicle’ that takes account of all twenty surviving manuscripts. The book opens with a substantial introduction that surveys previous scholarship and situates the Arma in their historical and aesthetic contexts. The ten essays that follow explore representative examples of the instruments of the Passion across a broad swath of history, from some of their earliest formulations in late antiquity to their reformulations in early modern Europe. Together, they offer the first large-scale attempt to understand the arma Christi as a unique cultural phenomenon of its own, one that resonated across centuries in multiple languages, genres, and media. The collection directs particular attention to this array of implements as an example of the potency afforded material objects in medieval and early modern culture, from the glittering nails of the Old English poem Elene to the coins of the Middle English poem ’Sir Penny,’ from garments and dice on Irish tomb sculptures to lanterns and ladders in Hieronymus Bosch’s panel painting of St. Christopher, and from the altar of the Sistine Chapel to the printed prayer books of the Reformation.

A consideration of the metaphor of water in religious literature, especially in relation to women.

This book investigates baroque architecture through the lens of San Gennaro’s miraculously liquefying blood in Naples. This vantage point allows a bracing and thoroughly original rethink of the power of baroque relics and reliquaries. It shows how a focus on miracles produces original interpretations of architecture, sanctity and place which will engage architectural historians everywhere. The matter of the baroque miracle extends into a rigorous engagement with natural history, telluric philosophy, new materialism, theory and philosophy. The study will transform our understanding of baroque art and architecture, sanctity and Naples. Bristling with new archival materials and historical insights, this study lifts the baroque from its previous marginalisation to engage fiercely with materiality and potentiality and thus unleash baroque art and architecture as productive and transformational.

There is no short cut to reach God. The best way to reach out to him is by petition, prayer, praises and thanksgiving. This book is loaded with all these, majoring in Praises and Thanksgiving. Praises and thanksgiving are spiritual stimulants and catalysts that arrest God’s attention to us. Praises open great doors we least expect. It draws hands of God down to uplift us. God makes us his instrument of worship, we are designed to worship him. It is our DNA. Through such worship, we participate in the worship of heaven. We join the angels around the throne of God as we worship and participate here on earth. This book teaches us how to be hot in praises and vomit thanksgiving like rain. The book teaches how to open our heart to God and silence afflictions of life. The Lord blesses us every day with life and expect us to pay back in praises and thanksgiving. Without the air we breathe, we are dead. This means, God stops spirit of death to afflict us. The Lord expects our mouth full of testimonies. This is what thanksgiving and Praises entails. This book shall open your eyes to usefulness of praise and thanksgiving as you reap the followings: - Thanking God will become a natural thing in you and you shall make it a duty to fulfil every day. This book will make you fulfil the wonderful purpose of God for your life. With this book, Satan won’t have the final say in your life, God will do it. The love of God for you will explode and you will ask yourself; How did this wonder happen in my life. With this book you will experience amazing grace of God. God will establish his sovereignty upon you, Satan cannot challenge. You will enjoy the fruitfulness of God’s hand upon you every day. Praising God with thanksgiving open great doors we least expect to us. You will experience the perfect timing of God upon your life. You will thank God to live long in good health and be saved in the Lord. Brethren, in every little thing, thank God. It is sad when there is nothing for which we feel grateful to God, but it is serious when there is something and we fail to show gratitude. Praise God and give thanks always!

This collection presents an innovative series of essays about the medieval culture of Feud and Violence. Featuring both prominent senior and younger scholars from the United States and Europe, the contributions offer various methods and points of view in their analyses. All, however, are indebted in some way to the work of Stephen D. White on legal culture, politics, and violence. White's work has frequently emphasized the importance of careful, closely focused readings of medieval sources as well as the need to take account of practice in relation to indigenous normative statements. His work has thus made historians of medieval political culture keenly aware of the ways in which various rhetorical strategies could be deployed in disputes in order to gain moral or material advantage. Beginning with an essay by the editors introducing the contributions and discussing their relationships to Stephen White's work, to the themes of the volume, to each other, and to medieval and legal studies in general, the remainder of the volume is divided into three thematic sections. The first section contains papers whose linking themes are violence and feud, the second section explores medieval legal culture and feudalism; whilst the final section consists of essays that are models of the type of inquiry pioneered by White.

A unique study of lectionaries and graphic design as a site of biblical reception How artists portrayed the Bible in large canvas paintings is frequently the subject of scholarly exploration, yet the presentation of biblical texts in contemporary graphic designs has been largely ignored. In this book Amanda Dillon engages multimodal analysis, a method of semiotic discourse, to explore how visual composition, texture, color, directionality, framing, angle, representations, and interactions produce potential meanings for biblical graphic designs. Dillon focuses on the artworks of two American graphic designers—the woodcuts designed by Meinrad Craighead for the Roman Catholic Sunday Missal and Nicholas Markell’s illustrations for the worship books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—to present the merits of multimodal analysis for biblical reception history.