Bringing the skills of a literary historian to the subject, Brian Moloney considers the genesis of Saint Francis of Assisi's Canticle of Brother Sun to show how it works as a carefully composed work of art. The study examines the saint's life and times, the structure of the poem, the features of its style, and the range of its possible meanings.

Franciscans and the Elixir of Life makes new connections between alchemy, ritual life, apocalypticism, and the particular commitment of the Franciscan Order to the natural world.

Bringing the skills of a literary historian to the subject, Brian Moloney considers the genesis of Saint Francis of Assisi's Canticle of Brother Sun to show how it works as a carefully composed work of art. The study examines the saint's life and times, the structure of the poem, the features of its style, and the range of its possible meanings.

This timely book brings together the stories of St Francis - his preaching to birds, rejection of wealth, caring for lepers, befriending animals and living simply, his poetry and hymnody in praise of creation that is still sung today - and the influential writings and examples of inspiring Franciscans who have followed him such as Clare, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus and Angela of Foligno, and draws them into conversation with contemporary concerns for our planet. It gathers 800 years of accumulated wisdom and practical examples of how Franciscans have found ways to live at home and at peace with creation. It explores that long tradition and experience to ask what lessons can be drawn for today to challenge and enable readers to re-visit their own relationship with creation.

This timely book brings together the stories of St Francis – his preaching to birds, rejection of wealth, caring for lepers, befriending animals and living simply, his poetry and hymnody in praise of creation that is still sung today – and the influential writings and examples of inspiring Franciscans who have followed him such as Clare, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus and Angela of Foligno, and draws them into conversation with contemporary concerns for our planet. It gathers 800 years of accumulated wisdom and practical examples of how Franciscans have found ways to live at home and at peace with creation. It explores that long tradition and experience to ask what lessons can be drawn for today to challenge and enable readers to re-visit their own relationship with creation.

Illness and Authority is the first monograph-length study to examine a well-known medieval saint from the perspective of disability studies.

The Italian Renaissance was a period of intense cultural transformations when the ancient world was being rediscovered and a New World had been literally discovered. Between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries, traditional beliefs were being challenged as people across the Italian Peninsula explored new ways of thinking about religion, politics, and society and introduced startling innovations in the arts. This book contains more than hundred selections of primary sources—the historian’s raw material in the form of memoirs, letters, treatises, sermons, stories, poems, drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Here are eyewitness accounts of cold-blooded murders, lavish court pageants, the Sack of Rome, and the Black Death; first views of Michelangelo’s Sistine frescoes and glimpses of the surface of the moon through Galileo’s telescope. These sources bring the reader into direct contact with the creators of the great Renaissance works of art, literature, philosophy, and science, as well as lesser-known people, who in their own words express emotions of love, loss, and spiritual yearning. Selected to accompany and supplement A Short History of Renaissance Italy, the primary sources in this book make it an ideal course reader for students of history or art history. Yet this volume can be equally read well on its own; each selection is clearly introduced, annotated, and provided with references for further reading. These sources reach out to an audience beyond the classroom—the general reader, or the traveler to Italy—anyone curious to learn more about the Italian Renaissance will find themselves swept into conversation with these vibrant voices from the past.