The Roman Catholic Inquisition was one of the most controversial organizations in human history. Although it has been painted in a negative light, the Inquisition was too broad in scope to define as simply good or bad. It was a period where conflict and bloodshed were inevitable. It was a time where war, famine, plague, and poverty were common factors of human life. From the 1180s to the 1830s, the Inquisition was the judicial arm of the Catholic Church. Created to root out and punish heretics within the Catholic faith, the Inquisition became an institution that would carve its name into history. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Conception of the Inquisition ✓ The Hammer of Witches ✓ The Spanish Inquisition ✓ The Portuguese Inquisition ✓ The Roman Inquisition ✓ Shades of the Inquisition in Modern Society And much more! Throughout its many variations, the Inquisition took hold in France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy and in the process, both hastened and stunted progress in Western society. The Inquisition was as multi-faceted in its failure as it was in its successes. Though it was responsible for the deaths of thousands, it was also responsible for the sparing of thousands more. The Inquisition put to death some of the brightest minds of the time, and yet their brutality quickened the pace of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In short, the Inquisition was many things—easy to define is not one of them. This concise, compressed guidebook reveals the history, failures, and successes of the Roman Catholic Inquisition from its birth to its final death rattle.

    The author presents Luther as a man of his time: a highly educated scholar and teacher and a gifted yet flawed human being driven by an optimistic yet ultimately unrealized vision of "true religion." This bold, insightful account of the life of Martin Luther provides a new perspective on one of the most important religious figures in history, focusing on Luther's entire life, his personal relationships and political motivations, rather than on his theology alone. Relying on the latest research and quoting extensively from Luther's correspondence, Hendrix paints a richly detailed portrait of an extraordinary man who, while devout and courageous, had a dark side as well. No recent biography in English explores as fully the life and work of Martin Luther long before and far beyond the controversial posting of his 95 Theses in 1517, an event that will soon be celebrated as the 500th anniversary of the Reformation."

    The Reformation shattered that unity, and the consequences arestill with us today. In All Things Made New, Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of the New York Times bestseller Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, examines not only the Reformation's impact across Europe, but also the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the special evolution of religion inEngland, revealing how one of the most turbulent, bloody, and transformational events in Western history has shaped modern society.The Reformation may have launched a social revolution, MacCulloch argues, but it was not caused by social and economic forces, or even by a secular idea like nationalism; it sprang from a big idea about death, salvation, and the afterlife. This idea - that salvation was entirely in God's hands andthere was nothing humans could do to alter his decision - ended the Catholic Church's monopoly in Europe and altered the trajectory of the entire future of the West.By turns passionate, funny, meditative, and subversive, All Things Made New takes readers onto fascinating new ground, exploring the original conflicts of the Reformation and cutting through prejudices that continue to distort popular conceptions of a religious divide still with us after fivecenturies. This monumental work, from one of the most distinguished scholars of Christianity writing today, explores the ways in which historians have told the tale of the Reformation, why their interpretations have changed so dramatically over time, and ultimately, how the contested legacy of thisrevolution continues to impact the world today.

    Stephen Nichols's Martin Luther provides both. After an exciting overview of Luther's life and theology, Nichols orients the reader to some of the Reformer's major works: The Bondage of the Will, The Three Treatises, The Small Catechism, and On the Councils and the Church. Luther's ethical writings, table talk, hymns, and sermons also receive due attention. A Select Guide to Books by and about Luther concludes this volume, which displays more than 20 illustrations.

    His words are still frequently quoted in devotions today and his key themes retain a striking contemporary relevance--what is the place of the Church in the world? What is the relation between nature and grace? In Augustine of Hippo, the late Henry Chadwick--a renowned authority on Augustine--describes with clarity and warmth the intellectual development of this key Father of the Church. In his characteristically rigorous yet sympathetic style, Chadwick traces Augustine's intellectual journey from schoolboy and student to Bishop and champion of Christendom in a period of intense political upheaval, providing valuable insight into the progression of Augustine's ideas. With a foreword reflecting on Chadwick's distinctive approach to Augustine by Peter Brown, and a further reading list on Augustine compiled by Gillian Clark, this volume is both an essential assessment of Augustine and a final tribute to one of the great church historians of the twentieth century.

    Through vividly detailed parish records kept from 1520 to 1574 by Sir Christopher Trychay, the garrulous priest of Morebath, we see how a tiny Catholic community rebelled, was punished, and reluctantly accepted Protestantism under the demands of the Elizabethan state."Significant and striking."-Peter Ackroyd, The Times (London); "A vivid piece of microhistory . . . a rich and often witty portrait."-Alexandra Walsham, History; "This book is a gem: small, colourful, many-faceted."-Lucy Wooding, Reviews in History; "Stories like the one Duffy skillfully tells here, for historian and general reader alike . . . bear remembering." -Paul Lewis, New York Times Book Review Author Biography: Eamon Duffy is professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge and president of Magdalene College. His previous books include The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580, and Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, both published by Yale University Press. Winner of the Hawthornden Prize for Literature.Synopsis taken from the inside-front jacket:In the fifty years between 1530 and 1580, England moved from being one of the most lavishly Catholic countries in Europe to being a Protestant nation, a land of whitewashed churches and anti-papal preaching. What was the impact of this religious change in the countryside? And how did country people feel about the revolutionary upheavals that transformed their mental and material worlds under Henry VIII and his three children.In this book a reformation historian takes us inside the mind and heart of Morebath, a remote and tiny sheep farming village where thirty-three families worked the difficult land on the southern edge of Exmoor. The bulk of Morebath’s conventional archives have long since vanished. But from 1520 to 1574, through nearly all the drama of the English Reformation, Morebath’s only priest, Sir Christopher Trychay, kept the parish accounts on behalf of the churchwardens. Opinionated, eccentric, and talkative, Sir Christopher filled these vivid scripts for parish meetings with the names and doings of his parishioners. Through his eyes we catch a rare glimpse of the life and pre-reformation piety of a sixteenth-century English village.The book offers a unique window into a rural word in crisis as the reformation progressed. Sir Christopher Trychay’s accounts provide direct evidence of the motives which drove hitherto law-abiding West-country communities to participate in the doomed Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549 – a siege that ended in bloody defeat and a wave of executions. Its church bells confiscated and silenced, Morebath shared in the punishment imposed on all the towns and villages of Devon and Cornwall. Sir Christopher documents the changes in the community reluctantly Protestant, no longer focussed on the religious life of the parish, and increasingly preoccupied with the secular demands of the Elizabethan state, the equipping of armies, and the payment of taxes. Morebath’s priest, garrulous to the end of his days, describes a rural world irrevocably altered, and enables us to hear the voices of his villagers after four hundred years of silence.”

    Based on the latest scholarship and richly illustrated, it is the most authoritative and accessible chronicle of the Jewish experience available. Michael Brenner tells a dramatic story of change and migration deeply rooted in tradition, taking readers from the mythic wanderings of Moses to the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust; from the Babylonian exile to the founding of the modern state of Israel; and from the Sephardic communities under medieval Islam to the shtetls of eastern Europe and the Hasidic enclaves of modern-day Brooklyn. The book is full of fascinating personal stories of exodus and return, from that told about Abraham, who brought his newfound faith into Canaan, to that of Holocaust survivor Esther Barkai, who lived on a kibbutz established on a German estate seized from the Nazi Julius Streicher as she awaited resettlement in Israel. Describing the events and people that have shaped Jewish history, and highlighting the important contributions Jews have made to the arts, politics, religion, and science, A Short History of the Jews is a compelling blend of storytelling and scholarship that brings the Jewish past marvelously to life.

    The Didache is an early handbook of an anonymous Christian community, likely written before some of the New Testament books were written. It spells out a way of life for Jesus-followers that includes instruction on how to treat one another, how to practice the Eucharist, and how to take in wandering prophets. In The Teaching of the Twelve, Jones unpacks the ancient document, and he traces the life of a small house church in Missouri that is trying to live according to its precepts. Readers will find The Teaching of the Twelve inspirational and challenging, and they will discover a unique window into the life of the very earliest followers of Jesus the Christ. A new, contemporary English translation of the Didache is included.

    During this period western Christianity underwent the most dramatic changes in its entire history. From Iceland to Transylvania, from the Baltic to the Pyrenees, the Reformation divided churches and communities into 'Catholic' and 'Protestant', and created varying regional and national traditions. The new Protestant creed rejected traditional measures of piety--vows, penances, pardons, and masses--in favor of sermons and catechisms, and an everyday morality of diligence, neighborly charity, and prayer. In the process, it involved many of Europe's people for the first time in a political movement inspired by an ideology and nourished by mass communication. Using the most recent research, Cameron provides a thematic and narrative synthesis of the events and ideas of the Reformation. He examines its social and religious background, its teachers and their message, and explores its impact on contemporary society.

    Contains 361 readings, drawn from 233 different sources, spread throughout the 2,000 years of Christian history.Exceptionally user-friendly: every reading is accompanied its own introduction, commentary, and study questions.Now includes increased representation of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and women writers.A new section provides a "bird's-eye" view of the historical development of Christian theology, allowing users to locate a reading against its historical context.Additional lecturer resources are available at the accompanying website: www.blackwellpublishing.com/mcgrath.

    Once a woman joins the cloister and makes final vows, she is almost never seen and her voice is not heard; her story is essentially nonexistent in the historical record and collective, public history. From interviews conducted over six years, Abbie Reese tells the stories of the Poor Clare Colettine Order, a cloistered contemplative order at the Corpus Christi Monastery in Rockford, Illinois. Seldom leaving their 25,000-square-foot gated enclosure, members of this community embrace an extreme version of poverty and anonymity - a separation that enables them to withdraw from the world to devote their lives to prayer. This removal, they contend, allows them to have a greater impact on humanity than if they maintained direct contact with loved ones and strangers. Dedicated to God explores individual and cultural identity through oral history interviews with several generations of nuns, focusing on the origins and life stories of the women who have chosen to become members of one of the strictest religious orders. But the narrative is also one of a collective memory and struggle against extinction and modernity, a determination to create community within the framework of ancient rules. The author's stunning photographs of their dual worlds, religious and quotidian, add texture to the narrative. This artistic and ethnographic work highlights the countercultural values and dedication of individuals who, at incredible personal cost, live for love of God and humanity, out of faith in what cannot be seen, and with the belief that they will be rewarded in the afterlife.

    George Knights gives the history of the Seventh day Adventist church .

    This translation of Luther's treatise brings alive the social, historical, and ecclesial context of Luther's treatise.

    . . intellectual and religious history of late medieval and Reformation Europe.”—Christianity Today"A learned, humane, and expressive book."—Gerald Strauss, Renaissance Quarterly The seeds of the swift and sweeping religious movement that reshaped European thought in the 1500s were sown in the late Middle Ages. In this book, Steven Ozment traces the growth and dissemination of dissenting intellectual trends through three centuries to their explosive burgeoning in the Reformations—both Protestant and Catholic—of the sixteenth century. He elucidates with great clarity the complex philosophical and theological issues that inspired antagonistic schools, traditions, and movements from Aquinas to Calvin. This masterly synthesis of the intellectual and religious history of the period illuminates the impact of late medieval ideas on early modern society.

    It focuses squarely on the inherent irrationality of religion, and reveals its utter irreconcilability with science. Offering several "reconciliation theories" to people of faith, it forces every reader to make a choice.Contents The Reason Revolution in historical context Questioning belief Reasons for skepticism Secular humanism as an alternative worldview Political implications of atheism The collapse of religion Hopeful predictions Reconciliation theories Comments by clergyCall to action