Table of contents

On 29 December, 1170, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was brutally murdered in his own cathedral. News of the event was rapidly disseminated throughout Europe, generating a widespread cult which endured until the reign of Henry VIII in the sixteenth century, and engendering a fascination which has lasted until the present day. The Cult of Thomas Becket: History and Historiography through Eight Centuries contributes to the lengthy debate surrounding the saint by providing a historiographical analysis of the major themes in Becket scholarship, tracing the development of Becket studies from the writings of the twelfth-century biographers to those of scholars of the twenty-first century. The book offers a thorough commentary and analysis which demonstrates how the Canterbury martyr was viewed by writers of previous generations as well as our own, showing how they were influenced by the intellectual trends and political concerns of their eras, and indicating how perceptions of Thomas Becket have changed over time. In addition, several chapters are devoted a discussion of artworks in various media devoted to the saint, as well as liturgies and sermons composed in his honor. Combining a wide historical scope with detailed textual analysis, this book will be of great interest to scholars of medieval religious history, art history, liturgy, sanctity and hagiography.

"The Jesuit review of faith and culture," Nov. 13, 2017-

Sister Saints offers a history of modern Mormon women and argues that we are on the verge of an era in which women are likely to play a greater role in the Mormon church.

This day, I speak to the nations of The Earth, the peoples of The Earth, the tongues of The Earth so they may be aware of what is on the way, so they may be prepared for what is round the corner, so they may have the foresight to see what is just below the horizon of man. I speak to encourage preparation for the tempests of the days, the floodings of the days, the shakings of the days, the deserts of the days, the hunger of the days, the butchery of the days. I speak to man of the days of his coming storm: of his desolation; of his tribulation; of his mourning; of his fleeing; of his starving; of his isolation. I speak to man of the days of his coming storm wherein he will be in need of sanctuary. I speak to My people that they may not be left to wander, that they may not be left unsheltered, that they may not be left to hunger, that they may not be left bereft of the necessities of life. I speak to My people that they may read in wisdom of the quartering of The Earth, of the storm of pestilence which follows on the heels of mourning, of the storm of fire which precedes the storm of butchery— where freewill runs rampant until exhaustion seals a day. For the season which holds the days of thunder approaches as a whirlwind in the clouds.

Three of Olivier Messiaen's later works, La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ, Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité, and Saint François d'Assise, are linked by the fact that the composer refers to and quotes from Thomas Aquinas. The composer's reception of Thomistic texts is one of the principles guiding the interpretations in this study. On the one hand, Messiaen had been pondering Thomas's thoughts on the role of music in the life of a Christian and on music's possible spiritual content all through his professional life; on the other hand, the oratorio, the organ meditations, and the opera are the only works in which Messiaen quotes extensive Thomistic sentences addressing purely theological subject matter. The first aspect, Messiaen's appropriation of or felicitous congruence with the medieval theologian's views on music underlies all analyses as a kind of background fabric. The second aspect, Messiaen's quotations from the Summa theologica and their musical translation, determines segments of a larger discussion that, in the book's three main chapters, attempts to do justice to the compositions as a whole. While Thomas' theological aesthetics appears as a thread woven through a texture in a way that brings it only periodically to the foreground, the statements from Thomas's writings provide essential foundations determining the works' content and its musical rendering. This book is part of Siglind Bruhn's Messiaen Trilogy.