Historian George Bernard presents a bold, provocative challenge to our understanding of the late medieval church and the Protestant Reformation.

This magisterial book provides an analysis of the course of Western intellectual history between A.D. 400 and 1400. The book is arranged in two parts: the first surveys the comparative modes of thought and varying success of Byzantine, Latin-Christian, and Muslim cultures, and the second takes the reader from the twelfth-century revival of learning to the high Middle Ages and beyond, the period in...

Which Catholic popes have had the greatest impact on history? Eamon Duffy selects ten profoundly influential popes, from St. Peter to John Paul II, and explores their amazing lives and accomplishments.

This engrossing book encompasses the extraordinary history of the papacy, from its beginnings nearly two thousand years ago to the present day. In this new edition, the final chapter has been expanded to cover the last years of John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI. 

This prize-winning account of the pre-Reformation church recreates lay people’s experience of religion in fifteenth-century England. Eamon Duffy shows that late medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but was a strong and vigorous tradition, and that the Reformation represented a violent rupture from a popular and theologically respectable religious system. For this edition, Duffy h...

Surviving copies of the Book of Hours, the most personal and widely used book of the later Middle Ages, offer precious clues to the lives of their owners and the times in which they lived. Religious historian Eamon Duffy examines these prayer books and the messages and jottings in their margins for insights into an era of great religious and social change.

A controversial reassessment of Mary Tudor’s efforts to eradicate Protestantism and restore Catholicism in mid-sixteenth-century England, written by a leading authority on the history of Christianity.

This authoritative biography of the first Tudor queen reveals in new detail Mary's connections with Spain, her fraught relationships with her father King Henry VIII and half-sister Elizabeth, her religious fervor and how it led to horrible violence, and much more.

This richly illustrated book explores the layers of history found in the cult of the Virgin of Chartres as it developed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

This powerful work explores the parallel disruption of two families—one in seventeenth-century Holland, the other in America today—when a beloved family member converts to another religion.

This powerful work explores the parallel disruption of two families—one in seventeenth-century Holland, the other in America today—when a beloved family member converts to another religion.

This absorbing book takes us back to the busy, colorful world of a Netherlandish Catholic bishop and his flock from 1589–1620. Based upon the recently discovered daybook of Mathius Hovius, the book focuses not only on his life but also on key events and characters of the period. Episodes in the lives of monks, nuns, pilgrims, peasants, saints, and others bring to life the experience of reli...

Based on a treasure trove of letters, this fascinating book tells the history of a seventeenth-century nun in a convent in Leuven and how her complaints—of sexual harassment, fears of demonic possession, alliances among the other sisters against her—led to her banishment from the convent on two occasions. Highly acclaimed when it was first published as a revealing look at female religi...

In the musty archive of a Belgian abbey, historian Craig Harline happened upon a vast collection of documents written in the seventeenth century by people who claimed to have experienced miracles and wonders. Craig Harline recasts these testimonies into engaging vignettes that open a window onto the believers, unbelievers, and religious movements of the Age of Reformation.

Through a fascinating blend of stories and analysis, historian Craig Harline examines Sunday—from its ancient beginnings among the early Christians to brunch and football in America today.  

This intriguing, beautifully illustrated book encompasses 1,000 years of holy relics across Europe, deepening our understanding of the medieval world by revealing how they were used in religion and also in business, politics, and warfare.

This brilliant new portrait of Protestant reformer John Calvin reveals his human complexity, the sources of his convictions, and how he inspired and transformed the sixteenth-century world. The book captures a man at once arrogant, charismatic, unforgiving, generous, and shrewd.

Shedding new light on the final turbulent years of Byzantium, this evocative book explains how the Ottoman Turks conquered the thousand-year empire and reveals the consequences for ordinary Byzantines and their remarkable legacy.

Shedding new light on the final turbulent years of Byzantium, this evocative book explains how the Ottoman Turks conquered the thousand-year empire and reveals the consequences for ordinary Byzantines and their remarkable legacy.

What was it like to participate in the Crusades? This vividly written book recreates for the first time the experience of medieval European crusaders, from the elation of taking up the cross, through years of staggering privation, to the difficult adjustment upon returning home.

On Easter Sunday, 1475, the dead body of a two-year-old boy named Simon was found in the cellar of a Jewish family’s house in Trent, Italy. Town magistrates arrested eighteen Jewish men and one Jewish woman on the charge of ritual murder--the killing of a Christian child in order to use his blood in Jewish religious rites. In this engrossing book, R. Po-chia Hsia reconstructs the events of this tr...

This extraordinary work is the first biography in a generation of one of the world's most important scientists, Robert Boyle—a pioneer of the modern experimental method, the champion of a novel mechanical view of nature, and a penetrating thinker regarding philosophical and theological issues related to science.

By analyzing the parallel battles over faith and reason in the nineteenth century and ours, scholar Christopher Lane makes a case for the benefits of religious uncertainty.

By analyzing the parallel battles over faith and reason in the nineteenth century and ours, scholar Christopher Lane makes a case for the benefits of religious uncertainty.

This spirited retelling of the lives and works of Cranach, the artist, and Luther, the reformer, recognizes for the first time how their combined successes gave birth to modern German art and the Protestant Reformation.

This spirited retelling of the lives and works of Cranach, the artist, and Luther, the reformer, recognizes for the first time how their combined successes gave birth to modern German art and the Protestant Reformation.

The Second Crusade (1145-1149) was an extraordinarily bold, but largely unsuccessful, attempt to defeat “unbelievers” in the Holy Land, Iberia, and northeastern Europe. This definitive book casts new light on the origins, planning, and execution of the Second Crusade, uncovering its profound impact on both Europe and the Middle East.

This sweeping, global history explores how the Virgin Mary, scarcely mentioned in the Gospels, rose to become our most prominent female figure. The book is groundbreaking in scope, encompassing sixteen centuries and a wealth of historical sources and visual materials from Christian cultures around the world.

One of the most highly regarded works of intellectual history of the past decade, Jesus Through the Centuries is an original and compelling study of the impact of Jesus on cultural, political, social, and economic history. Noted historian and theologian Jaroslav Pelikan reveals how the image of Jesus created by each successive epoch—from rabbi in the first century to liberator in the ninete...

This beautiful volume is adapted from Jaroslav Pelikan's classic work Jesus Through the Centuries. In this wise, informative, and sumptuously illustrated book, Pelikan discusses how each age created Jesus in its own image, discovering in his life and teachings the answers to fundamental questions of human existence and destiny.

Jaroslav Pelikan, world-renowned historian and author of the best-selling Jesus Through the Centuries and many other books, examines all of Christian history and culture to create the most complete portrait of the Virgin Mary ever written. Pelikan assesses the ways Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims, artists, musicians, and writers, and men and women everywhere have depicted, venerat...

This book uncovers the little-known story of the Panacea Society, a post-World War I utopian community of remarkable English women led by Octavia, whom they believed was the daughter of God.

This important book offers the first comprehensive history of religious dualism, the doctrine that cosmos and man are constant battlegrounds for the forces of good and evil and their supernatural protagonists. Yuri Stoyanov traces crucial stages in the evolution of dualism from its early expression in late Egyptian religion and the revelations of Zoroaster to the revival of the “Great Heresy” in m...

One of the most controversial religious figures of his time, John Henry Newman (1801-1890) split rancorously from the Church of England and converted to Roman Catholicism. In this provocative reappraisal of Newman and the Tractarian movement that he led, Frank Turner challenges previous understandings not only of the man but also of the religious and intellectual life in Victorian England. 

This deeply considered new biography of the visionary Dominican provides the first truly satisfying account of Savonarola, his charismatic vision, and his fate as a failed prophet.

Drawing on painstaking analysis and paleographic reconstruction of archeological and literary sources, Anders Winroth presents a radically new interpretation of the conversion of Scandinavia from paganism to Christianity in the early Middle Ages.

The most authoritative biography of Francis of Assisi in more than a generation, this book brings the medieval saint to life and explores the abundance of writings by contemporaries who set down their memories of him.

OTHER SECTIONS IN OUR RELIGION 2011 CATALOG: