When she inadvertently becomes the master of an ancient cursed head of Menander the Magus-the Master of All Desires-she suddenly has the power to grant any wish, at a steep price.Queen Catherine de Medici is trying to obtain the power of the Master in order to get rid of her husband's mistress. But she does not understand that the Master is malic itself, twisting the wishes that he grants to bring destruction.But only Nostradamus knows that evil befalls all who wish upon this accursed object. Can he stop these determined women before they unwittingly destroy the entire kingdom of France?

    All of the great ones are here: Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Dante and Chaucer from the High Middle Ages; Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and John Donne from the Reformation; English and American Romantics such as Browning and Whittier; late nineteenth-century mystics like Dickenson and Hopkins, as well the great converts of that period like Newman and Chesterton; and, T. S. Eliot speaking out of and into our own times. A conscious attempt was made to meet both the standards of academia and the tastes and sensibilities of the faithful. The selections are arranged chronologically to serve also as a history of verse. Brief biographical and anecdotal introductions reveal the varied relationships of the poets with each other and with the trials and tribulations of their day. This magnificent collection is essential for all poetry lovers for those who respond to the beauty of the written word penned in the service of spiritual truth. Joseph Pearce is the celebrated author of the literary biographies Tolkien: Man and Myth, The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church, Literary Converts, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton and Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc.

    To root out these heretics, the courts of the Inquisition published checklists of koshering practices and "grilled" the servants, neighbors, and even the children of those suspected of practicing their religion at home. From these testimonies and other primary sources, Gitlitz & Davidson have drawn a fascinating, award-winning picture of this precarious sense of Jewish identity and have re-created these recipes, which combine Christian & Islamic traditions in cooking lamb, beef, fish, eggplant, chickpeas, and greens and use seasonings such as saffron, mace, ginger, and cinnamon. The recipes, and the accompanying stories of the people who created them, promise to delight the adventurous palate and give insights into the foundations of modern Sephardic cuisine.

    In this text, Leonard Barkan tells the cultural story of the emergence into the daylight of the artworks of antiquity that had lain beneath Roman ground for more than a thousand years.

    The 16 lavish costumes include royal armor and elegant gowns, all accurately rendered and with informative notes.

    Romantic, chaotic, and terrifying, Catherine Parr's life unfolded like a romance novel. Wed at 17 to the grandson of a confirmed lunatic then widowed at 20, Catherine chose a Yorkshire lord twice her age as her second husband. Caught up in the turbulent terrors of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, she was captured by northern rebels, held hostage, and suffered violence at their hands. Fleeing to the south shortly afterward, Catherine took refuge in the household of the Princess Mary and in the arms of the king's brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Seymour. Her employment in Mary's household brought her to the attention of Mary's father, the unpredictable Henry VIII. Desperately in love with Seymour, Catherine was forced into marriage with a king whose passion for her could not be hidden and who was determined to make her his queen.

    As beautiful and authoritative as the preceding volume, Durer to Veronese examines the finest works of such artists as Holbein, Raphael, Cranach, Titian, Gossaert, and Bronzino -- creators of some of the most important masterpieces of the sixteenth century.The authors look closely at a variety of types of painting -- including large altarpieces, small domestic, devotional images, diplomatic gifts, furniture decorations, and both intimate and full-length portraits -- as well as frescoes, drawings, and prints. They provide fascinating insights into the meanings of individual pictures and into the purposes they were originally intended to serve, and they explore the social position of the artist in the 1500s. In addition, the book provides the fullest and most up-to-date account yet made of the procedures, practices, and materials these artists employed.

    Ulinka Rublack draws on court records to examine the lives of shrewd cutpurses, quarreling artisan wives, and soldiers' concubines, and explores women's experiences of communities and courtship, marriage, the family, and the law.

    Now she holds us spellbound with the story of a woman whose future depends on a betrayal that happened five hundred years before…Jillian Fitzgerald, whose grand house had sixty rooms, grew up together with Frankie Maguire, the kennel keeper’s son, in Northern Ireland. That she was rich and he was poor did not daunt their dreams of someday marrying. But Jillian was headed for a privileged life and the university. Frankie, drawn into the nationalist cause, faced a charge of murder and the dark walls of a jail cell.With their lives torn apart, there seemed no chance for Jillian and Frankie. But the heart owns knowledge to which the mind is not privy. Generations before, an Irish princess, Eleanor “Nell” Fitzgerald, her family killed, her life in jeopardy, her beloved torn from her arms, was preparing to reach out to another woman who shared her heritage… a woman in another century. Now from the court of Henry VIII to the violent streets of modern Belfast, Nell and Jillian will become two souls joined in one courageous battle to prove that neither prison bars nor the hands of time can stop the power of love…

    In one sense, this story begins in 591 A.D., when the Irish monk Columbanus and his followers traveled to France, where they ultimately founded monasteries at Annegray, Luxeuil, Fontaine, Breganz, and Bobbio and helped set the stage for the Carolingian Renaissance. In a real sense, however, it was the Celtic heritage of the early Irish emigres--which survived the Roman conquest and the barbarian invasions--that made the Irish so sought after and influential among the courts of Europe. Messrs. Culligan and Cherici examine the Celtic heritage at considerable length at the outset of the volume before turning their attention to the other principal variable that influenced the Irish exodus, the English repression of the Irish in the late Middle Ages and again in the 1600s. Many of these Irish, who possessed a variety of skills, would enter the mainstream of a number of European societies, some of them becoming leaders in their respective fields. The authors devote separate chapters to the areas of Europe where the Irish had the most effect, which are roughly equivalent to the present-day nations of France, Spain, Portugal, and Austria, as well as discuss the Irish influence upon Eastern and Central Europe and the Papal States. Assembled after fifteen years of study in primary and secondary sources here and abroad and featuring interviews with descendants of Irish emigres and others in the know, The Wandering Irish in Europe fills an important gap in our knowledge of a great people and their impact beyond their borders.

    Essays explore the artistic developments that occurred in the intervening nine decades, with a focus on the spread of ideas from the Italian Renaissance to northern Europe. Through trade, the migration of artists, and the circulation of artworks, new intellectual and aesthetic standards seeped into local artists' work, resulting in the glorious images reproduced in this volume.

    Forerunner of many later attempts at establishing "Utopias" both in theory and in practice.

    An astute businesswoman, she succeeded in amassing extensive estates and commensurate wealth. This volume presents a record of the contents of her three houses.

    By concentrating on the era’s paintings and its historical archives, Dean explores how the festival celebrated the victory of the Christian God over sin and death, the triumph of Christian orthodoxy over the imperial Inka patron (the Sun), and Spain’s conquest of Peruvian society. As Dean clearly illustrates, the central rite of the festival—the taking of the Eucharist—symbolized both the acceptance of Christ and the power of the colonizers over the colonized. The most remarkable of Andean celebrants were those who appeared costumed as the vanquished Inka kings of Peru’s pagan past. Despite the subjugation of the indigenous population, Dean shows how these and other Andean nobles used the occasion of Corpus Christi as an opportunity to construct new identities through tinkuy, a native term used to describe the conjoining of opposites. By mediating the chasms between the Andean region and Europe, pagans and Christians, and the past and the present, these Andean elites negotiated a new sense of themselves. Dean moves beyond the colonial period to examine how these hybrid forms of Inka identity are still evident in the festive life of modern Cuzco. Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ offers the first in-depth analysis of the culture and paintings of colonial Cuzco. This volume will be welcomed by historians of Peruvian culture, art, and politics. It will also interest those engaged in performance studies, religion, and postcolonial and Latin American studies.