Devotional Reading Research Articles

JENNIFER BRYAN. Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England. (The Middle Ages Series.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2008. Pp. 270. $49.95

JENNIFER BRYAN. Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England. (The Middle Ages Series.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2008. Pp. 270. $49.95

:Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England.(The Middle Ages Series.)

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Looking inward: devotional reading and the private self in late medieval England

Looking inward: devotional reading and the private self in late medieval England

Minor Prophets with a Major Message: A Contemporary Introduction to Some of the Minor Prophets

This article is an exploration into the contemporary relevance of the Minor Prophets in the light of Mark Daniel Carroll R's work on Amos and the need to suggest appropriate daily devotional reading for clergy and laity, with a little assistance from a Browning poem and an Indonesian poet's response to the tsunami in 2004.

The Thick Style: Steady Sellers, Textual Aesthetics, and Early Modern Devotional Reading

Research on the early modern book trades has uncovered a set of steadily reprinted devotional titles, a canon whose popularity challenges conventional notions of English and American literary history for the seventeenth century. My essay attends to these steady sellers as they helped structure the literary culture of early New England. The essay demonstrates that the pious conduct books rely on the performative literacies of sight, sound, gesture, and touch, on the sensory effects of literary expression, and on the cross-referencing collation of discrete passages, in a phenomenon I call–drawing on editorial theory and information history–the thickening of devotional textuality. With evidence from the prescriptive literature and its use in personal miscellanies, the essay revalues the aesthetic experience of devout colonists. Further, it examines the book format as a precursor to the modes of nonlinear reading associated with digital texts, and it historicizes such uses of the book format in the light of devotional sensibilities. (MPB)

Education Reforms: Lessons from History

POLICY makers in education have long embraced reform. Unfortunately, education reforms have consistently been plagued by the reformers' lack of knowledge and appreciation of the history of education. Accordingly, the latest reform, touted as a panacea, meets with failure, and the search for the magic elixir begins anew. In The Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education, 1865-1930, Henry Perkinson relates an anecdote about his secretary, who was typing the book's text. She asked him, If the schools can't solve these problems, then who can? Perkinson concluded that her question rested on two basic assumptions shared by most Americans: First, that all social problems are solvable; second, that the schools are the panacea for all social problems. (1) The history of American education is replete with examples of supposed panaceas. Taking the shape of reforms, these well-meaning efforts--often worthy in themselves--have dotted the educational landscape since the time of Horace Mann in the 1830s and 1840s. For example, the common school itself would remove all crime and poverty from American society. Mann described it as the greatest invention ever made by man. (2) The devotional reading of the Bible in schools would result in a virtuous America. Texts such as the McGuffey readers would unfailingly instill the right character in the students. The public school of the early 20th century would make good, loyal Americans out of the children of the immigrants who were then arriving in large numbers. In the mid-20th century, the Life Adjustment curriculum would prepare all American youths for satisfying lives as individuals, family members, and citizens. The infusion of funds into the science and math curricula by the National Defense Education Act would help the U.S. catch with the Soviets in the post-Sputnik era, instill needed academic rigor in the secondary school curriculum, and fittingly challenge our gifted students. (As defined by the federal government, Brahms, Beethoven, Rembrandt, and Da Vinci would not have qualified as gifted.) Potential panaceas grew in number as the 20th century progressed. We were greeted with open education, which would educate the young naturally. Schools would play a central role in the War on Poverty. Accountability, especially in the guise of performance contracting, would make the schools accountable to their constituents. Behavioral objectives would serve as an infallible means of achieving the goals of effective teaching and learning. Such pedagogical movements as modular scheduling would provide the proper organizational pattern for the curriculum. Site-based management would remove the educational problems created by large size. WHY THE SEARCH FOR PANACEAS? The ahistorical nature of our nation, and hence of our schools, undergirds the search for a panacea. As Seymour Sarason has pointed out in The Case for Change, reforms are doomed to failure because we underestimate the complexity of what we are up against and are unable or unwilling to use the cumulative experience humans have acquired over the years. (3) There is also the attraction of that which is novel, which often turns out to be no more than a fad. Compounding this fascination with the novel is our tendency to jump on the bandwagon, giving scant thought before the leap. Add to these reasons the American trait of feeling compelled to get everything done in a hurry; the crusading fervor of the reformers, who seem driven to depict present practices as worthless and their own actions as redeeming; and the tendency of innovators to reduce complicated interactions to one-shot, sure-fire remedies. Schools, as Perkinson pointed out, are limited institutions. Sometimes those involved politically with education fail to recognize the modesty of the school's clout. (4) Thomas Sergiovanni has argued that some policy makers believe that finding the right change strategy promises victory in the national and even the international brain race. …

Making the Psalter of Christina of Markyate (the St. Albans Psalter)

Making the Psalter of Christina of Markyate (the St. Albans Psalter). MORGAN POWELL. The pictures and texts in the Psalter of Christina of Markyate, best known as the St. Albans Psalter, document a nascent fascination with a woman’s devotional reading and visionary powers in the first half of the twelfth century. They place the book on the threshold of an expansion of religious art and literature that will soon bring a dramatic turn in the relationship between the lay public and the book, between the receiving subject and the (written) Word. Proper assessment of the place of the book and its owner in these developments depends on a detailed understanding of the book’s assembly in relationship to the progress of Christina’s relationship to the Abbey of St. Albans. This article combines detailed study of the codex, full cognizance of the events reported in Christina’s contemporary Vita, and the observations of recent scholarship in order to place study of the book on a new foundation.

The Matter of Identity in Medieval Romance edited by Phillipa Hardman (review)

REVIEWS93 (Kalamazoo, 1995). She supplements the factual evidence provided by the marks and names in the books with a careful consideration of various other historical records, namely, wills and library records. Women, Reading, andPiety is an interesting and compelling study in several parts: in the first and last chapters, Erler provides an overview of English women's devotional reading, moving from institutional libraries and the exchange of books between nuns to the patterns ofwomen's religious reading in the first several decades of printing. At the centre of the book, Erler provides detailed descriptions of the overlapping reading practices, and social histories, ofseven book-owning and bookgiving late medieval English women, whose lives cross boundaries not just of lay and religious life, but also oforthodoxy and heterodoxy. Importantly, Erler's evidence and examples force readers to think across our own persistent historiographie and disciplinary boundaries of late medieval and early modern, manuscript and print, and this is a productive exercise, as her discussion shows. There are, however, some key gaps in the picture Erler provides, and though these gaps are acknowledged and accounted for, their absence is telling. First, Erler is only concerned with the religious books women read, and nothing else, and second, Erler's consideration of reading women lacks examples ofyoung married, or young unmarried but not religious, women. Both are explained by the frequency of a certain kind of record and the paucity of another: for instance, women of a certain age, class, and status (i.e. widows ofsome wealth) made wills, while young married women rarely seem to have done so, or were prohibited from doing so; and in the wills made by devout widows, they consistently chose to leave as testament to their life and memory books ofreligion (regardless ofwhatever else they might have read in their lives). Finally, it is worth noting that since Erler's study is focused on the material history ofbook ownership, her conclusions about women's reading are necessarily limited: questions ofpublic reading (fundamental to both religious and lay households) and the potential dissemination and movement of text-based learning distinct from actual reading ability (what Rebecca Krug has recently called 'literate practices') can not easily be deduced from this evidence. Nevertheless, this is an issue ofscope, not accuracy, and as Erler notes in her epilogue, a desired aim ofthis studywas 'the recovery ofquantifiable information about women's devotional books' (134). Erler has succeeded with this work, and provided her readers with a considered, highly detailed, frequently provocative, and undeniably important contribution to women's literary and social history. JACQUELINE JENKINS University of Calgary PHiLLIPA HARDMAN, ed., TheMatterofIdentity inMedievalRomance. Suffolk, England & Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2003. Pp. xi, 165. isbn: 0-85991-761-4. $70/£40. In The Matter ofIdentity in Medieval Romance, Phillipa Hardman has collected twelve essays originally presented at the seventh biennial Conference on Romance in Medieval England, held in Reading in April 2000. The authors adopt a wide 94ARTHURIANA range ofapproaches to insular texts, manuscripts, poets, and even publishers. Many place insular works within a historical framework and investigate both ties with and differences from continental works, most often Old French romances and Breton lays. The book provides an important body of research unified by geographical more than thematic or generic links. In fact, rather than focusing on medieval romance, as the title suggests, several authors question generic affiliations or investigate genres such as lays, narrative poems, hagiographical and historical works. Hardman suggests, both through the title and in her own introduction, that the essays provide an investigation of the theme 'identity.' She proffers a definition of identity, cleverly suggesting it be considered a 'Matter' in itself (likened to the 'Matters' ofRome, Troy, England etc.). However, her discussion ofthe term and of its potential application to romance becomes so broad that it could, conceivably, be applied to an analysis of almost any work of literature. Though several authors make a conscious 'nod' towards the theme (one feels that they were asked to make their papers 'fit' after being written), most present studies which often only 'obliquely,' as Hardman suggests concerning the paper ofMorgan Dickson, address the 'Matter of Identity.' The twelve essays vary widely in topic...

Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England by Mary C. Erler (review)

92ARTHURIANA Normans may have appropriated Arthur so that his prestige might ensure their possession of the island (p. 100). Donald Maddox, in 'Epreuves et ambiguïté dans Le Bel Inconnu (pp. 67-82), points out that the test of the Fier Baiser initiates a number of'specular encounters,' in which, as readers ofMaddox know, a character's identity, background, and potential are revealed to him. There remain two essays. Delphine Piraprez's 'Chrétien de Troyes, allégoriste malgré lui? Amour et allégorie dans le Roman de la Rose et le Chevalierde h Charrette' (pp. 83-94) suggests that Chrétiens romance invites allegorical interpretations more than does Guillaume de Lorris's poem. Finally, Geert Claassens's study of 'Le narrateur en tant que personnage dans Ie Lanceloet en het Hert met de Witte Voet (Lancelot et le cerfau pied bUnc)' (pp. 19-33) considers both the density and the function ofnarrative interventions in this briefMiddle Dutch romance. One purpose ofthe interventions, according to Claassens, is to harmonize this text with aspects of the Lancelot Compilane, within which it stands. The contents of this book are naturally uneven in quality, and most of the contributions are relatively traditional in approach and methodology (an observation that I do not intend as a condemnation). The volume nevettheless offers several provocative essays ofsignificant interest and importance, and it clearly merits the attention of Arthurians. NORRIS j. lacy Pennsylvania State University Mary c. erler, Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval Engknd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xii, 228. isbn: 0-521-81221-6. $60. Mary C. Erler's important new book, Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval EngUnd, offers as its central theme 'the permeability of female lay and religous culture' at the end of the English Middle Ages (5). In Erler's discussion, this provocative idea extends well beyond the by now widely recognized similarities in female lay and religious devotional expressions to include, for instance, lay women's involvement in enclosed religious communities and the 'social centrality' offemale religious communities in secular life, the imitation ofthe religious life by lay women and the imitation ofsecular domestic arrangements within religious communities, and in particular the liminality represented by the vowess, who simultaneously inhabits both spheres. Taking as her starting point the histories recorded in and by surviving women's books, Erler reveals the intersections oflay and religious culture by identifying several networks ofwomen readers whose lives and connections aptly demonstrate the cultural permeability she posits, but whose relationships and interconnectedness have been previously all but invisible. Erler begins with the actual books themselves, and in doing so, contributes to the existing field of knowledge by providing appendices which list the manuscripts and incunabula owned by women but not included in earlier bibliographic studies: N. R. Ker's MedievalLibraries ofGreat Britain: A List ofSurviving Books 2nd edition (London, 1964) and A. G. Watson's Supplement to the Second Edition (London, 1987), and David Bell's What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries REVIEWS93 (Kalamazoo, 1995). She supplements the factual evidence provided by the marks and names in the books with a careful consideration of various other historical records, namely, wills and library records. Women, Reading, andPiety is an interesting and compelling study in several parts: in the first and last chapters, Erler provides an overview of English women's devotional reading, moving from institutional libraries and the exchange of books between nuns to the patterns ofwomen's religious reading in the first several decades of printing. At the centre of the book, Erler provides detailed descriptions of the overlapping reading practices, and social histories, ofseven book-owning and bookgiving late medieval English women, whose lives cross boundaries not just of lay and religious life, but also oforthodoxy and heterodoxy. Importantly, Erler's evidence and examples force readers to think across our own persistent historiographie and disciplinary boundaries of late medieval and early modern, manuscript and print, and this is a productive exercise, as her discussion shows. There are, however, some key gaps in the picture Erler provides, and though these gaps are acknowledged and accounted for, their absence is telling. First, Erler is only concerned with the...

WOMEN'S DEVOTIONAL READING IN LATE-MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE GENDERED READER

WOMEN'S DEVOTIONAL READING IN LATE-MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND THE GENDERED READER

Rethinking Reading: The Novel and Cultural Stratification

Rethinking Reading: The Novel and Cultural StratificationWilliam Ray In the course of the last decade or so we have come to think of the novel no longer just as a reflection or product of social and cultural reality, but as an active instrument in the construction of that reality. Critics as different as Michael McKeon and Nancy Armstrong have accustomed us to take for granted that early fiction played a central role in the articulation and management of subjectivity through the formations of selfhood, ethical régimes, and models of sociality it disseminated.1 Yet within this general rethinking of fiction as an agent of historical change, far less attention has been devoted to the ways in which it might have altered the practices of reading through which novels operate. A shift from "intensive" devotional reading to "extensive" literary reading has been proposed to account for the way in which reading evolved more generally; but few have questioned how the protocols and assumptions of fiction reading in particular might have changed in concert with the novel's circulation of new models of the self.2 By and large we assume that eighteenth and nineteenth-century novels operate primarily 1 Michael McKeon, Origins ofthe English Novel 1600-1740 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). This article was completed during a Fellowship at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina which was funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities, both of which organizations I would like to thank for their generous support. 2 Exceptions to this tendency include John Bender's study of the narrativization of authority in Imagining the Penitentiary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Claude Labrosse's analysis of reading in Rousseau, Lire au xvme siècle: La Nouvelle Héloïse et ses lecteurs (Paris: Editions du CNRS and Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1985); and Dorothea von Miicke's study of literary pedagogy, Virtue and the Veil of Illusion: Generic Innovation and the PedaEIGHTEENTH -CENTURY FICTION, Volume 10, Number 2, January 1998 152 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION by depicting behaviour with which readers identify. Fictional narratives amend and reconfigure subjectivity by providing characters the reader can imitate or sympathize with—or be repelled by. There is of course historical justification for this assumption, since that is precisely the mechanism which most eighteenth-century authors advance in defence of their works. Yet it seems inconsistent to assume that the genre of the novel could reconfigure subjectivity in any substantial way without simultaneously changing the way people related to cultural artifacts such as novels. Moreover, given the vigour with which the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras deployed culture as a political instrument , we might assume a significant evolution in the way people related to cultural institutions in general, including the novel.3 Quite independently of such arguments, the substantial formal differences that, in the French tradition especially, separate the eighteenth-century novel from its nineteenth-century counterpart would seem to entail a wholesale revision of reading protocols. Anonymous third-person narration, free indirect discourse, a preponderance of material description, forms of irony that render the author's attitude towards the protagonists undecidable— all of these clearly require different assumptions and operations on the part of the reader than do first-person or epistolary accounts claiming to represent a real person's exemplary experience.4 I will argue here that new paradigms of reading did indeed develop in conjunction with the reconfiguration of subjectivity, and I will outline the emergence of one such paradigm in the works of an author who gogical Project in Eighteenth-Century Literature (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1991). Robert Darnton, "Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity," in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 215-56, challenges the shift to extensive reading and suggests some general ways in which the novel changes the way people respond to texts. For the difference between intensive and extensive reading see Rolf Engelsing, Der Bürgerals Leser: Lesergeschichte in Deutschland 1500-1800 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1974). For other approaches to this...

Woman and Home: the Domestic Setting of Late Medieval Spirituality

‘From the earliest days of Christianity, the domestic community has served as a unit of worship’. In the later medieval period, the home certainly played an important part in the religious observances of many laypeople. By the fifteenth century in England, chapels in private houses were increasingly common, even if they were simply small rooms adapted for the purpose. The practice of informal prayer and private devotional reading did not require special accommodation. We know that individuals prayed in their bedrooms, while Italian women were encouraged to have a bedroom image of the Virgin and to conduct themselves properly in her presence. Italian preachers also thought that children should join in holy play-acting at home, and that they should set up and decorate toy altars. The garden, too, could furnish a setting for the spiritual life. Agnes Paston gives us a haunting glimpse of the life and death of a pious layman in 1453:

The Therapeutic Use of Devotional Reading in Working With the Aging

Devotional reading is defined as a form of bibliotherapy which has as its foci the ultimate concerns of the individual and which offers assistance in processing and reflecting on these ultimate concerns from primarily an inward orientation. Three principles to be utilized in assisting the elderly in their spiritual reading projects are outlined; and a proceptive counter transference-like condition is observed which may be an especially troublesome factor for workers immersed in a scientific system frequently immune to the worldviews of persons who find devotional reading a meaningful process.

Theological Investigations: Volume XVI by Karl Rahner, S. J., and: The Acting Person by Karol Wojtyla

BOOK REVIEWS Theological Investigations: Volume XVI. By KARL RABNER, S. J. New York: The Seabury Press, 1979. Pp. xii + Q75, with index. $14.95. The Acting Person. By KAROL WoJTYLA. Boston: D. Reidel, 1979. Pp. xxiii + 367, with index. By reviewing these two books together we should be able to compare the anthropologies of Karol Wojtyla and Karl Rahner. Clearly, The Acting Person is an essay in philosophical anthropology. While the most recent volume of Rahner's Theological Investigations is more diversified in scope, the human person remains sufficiently in the forefront to found a comparative essay. Given the probably greater familiarity of the reader with the thought of Rahner, I shall use Wojtyla's book as the point of departure and give it a lengthier treatment. Discussing each author in turn will help to provide a brief overview of their works as a basis for a presentation of their views on human transcendence and freedom. In this way we can achieve a sharper focus. The simple devout soul who stumbles into a religious book store and, moved by the impressive cover picture of His Holiness in full regalia, purchases The Acting Person for devotional reading will find his or her perseverance sorely tried. This is a difficult volume. The prose as translated from Polish is turgid and makes for laborious reading. To read this book once is to read it twice; one must continually reread what one has just read. But such writing is not peculiar to philosophers. And the depth of analysis is remarkable. Wojtyla's understanding of man is comprehensive and detailed. At times repetitious, he seldom veers from his chosen theme. Wojtyla begins with methodology. The focus is upon experience, and the approach is in the line of phenomenological realism. The author claims that his work is consistent with traditional philosophy, which he identifies as Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy (p. xiii) . Yet his presentation is a rethinking and recasting of the tradition, not denying it, " but supplementing it in an attempt to rethink it to the end " (p. Q66) . In this rethinking he especially acknowledges the influence of Max Scheler's Wertethik. Wojtyla seeks by his phenomenological approach to explain what experience and intuition provide. Part One is entitled " Consciousness and Efficacy ". The focus is on the person as revealed through conscious action. The various dynamisms are considered along with the proper efficacy of the human person. In Part Two we find " The Transcendence of the Person in the Action ". Here the structure of freedom is considered in relationship to the problem of the will and the cognition of truth and value as it leads to choice and decision. 472 BOOK REVIEWS 473 Throughout, the complexity is underlined. The study turns to freedom as manifested in self-determination, then to the possibility of fulfillment, and the role of conscience and responsibility. Part Three moves to the complement of transcendence, namely " The Integration of the Person in the Action ". Here, the person's subjectivity as manifested through the body is considered, with an extensive treatment of the emotions. Part Four is entitled "Participation", and turns to the problem of Intersubjectivity and social being. But what is the purpose of this book? It is of course to " exfoliate the complexity of man". Yet the aim seems to be more than analytical. Granted that throughout the volume the author concentrates upon the dynamic interaction and unity of the person and action, these are seen as leading to the true and authentic attainment of freedom and fulfillment. The becoming of the person through genuine freedom and the fulfillment gained through action appear as a guiding thread through this discourse on man. To grasp Wojtyla's idea of freedom and how is it related to transcendence and action much groundwork is needed. Wojtyla thoroughly analyzes action. Action discloses the person; better, the person is manifested through action. The author firmly renounces a static human nature as grounding human acts. The dynamic nature of man is thoroughly accepted. Contrasting this contemporary approach with a more traditional philosophy of man, the Polish philosopher notes that for the latter man's nature is rational, he is a person in virtue of reason, and his rationality...

Imagination and the Spirit: Essays in Literature and the Christian Faith (review)

Reviewed by: Imagination and the Spirit: Essays in Literature and the Christian Faith Ian Campbell (bio) Imagination and the Spirit: Essays in Literature and the Christian Faith presented to Clyde S. Kilby. Edited by Charles Huttar. (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., $9.95). Two personalities overshadow this Festschrift anthology of essays: one is that of an inspiring scholar and teacher at Wheaton College, the other that of a great humane scholar and writer at Oxford, now no longer living. To Clyde Kilby, the teaching of English and the chairmanship of a growing and energetic English department in Illinois have been the major part of his life. Scholar, teacher, inspiring friend, "a faithful servant of the Lord Jesus Christ" (pp. 476-477), Clyde Kilby's influence is obvious throughout the pages of this anthology. Typically, Glenn Sadler (who contributes a perceptive and much-needed essay on "The Fantastic Imagination in George Macdonald") was first introduced to the work of Macdonald, not through lecture or seminar, but through devotional reading prefacing Kilby's class. Kilby's personality is one half of the background to Imagination and the Spirit; the other half is the personality of C. S. Lewis. Kilby was a long-term admirer of Lewis' writing while the Oxford scholar was still alive: "Many evangelical students whom Kilby guided [End Page 240] through the structure of Lewis' thought found the same vivification of the fabric of Christian ideas" (p. 472). His interest in Lewis' work had three important results. One was the meeting between the two men in Oxford, which led to a lively correspondence. The second was a useful interchange of material and unfinished projects, in which the handicap of Lewis' failing health was partly overcome by help from Illinois. The third, and perhaps the most important in the long term, was the continuing work of the establishment in the library of Wheaton College of an archive of C. S. Lewis manuscripts and correspondence. Imagination and the Spirit will certainly contribute to the reader's awareness of a Christian tradition, and the writer's place in a Christian society; yet a sense of the boundaries of the imagination and the capabilities of the human spirit in exploring these boundaries stands behind the scholarship of these pages. Specifically, one may turn to the section on "Inklings and Ancestors," to the essays on Wordsworth and MacDonald, to two important essays by Alice Hadfield and Marjorie Wright on the fiction of Lewis and Williams, and to two equally important but specialized essays on Lewis by Walter Hooper and Corbin Carnell. For too long regarded loosely and at half-acquaintance as a writer of science fiction and the amusing if unintelligible Screwtape Letters, Lewis is revealed in these essays as an important writer of allegory and fantasy. His works yield richly to the scholarly investigation they receive—a true liberation of the imagination as of the spirit. This liberation is perhaps the theme which will most attract those who teach children's literature. The writer's vision of reality is transformed in writing for children into a form of critical meaning: sometimes the meaning may be all but concealed, sometimes re-interpreted in a way which could be described as ". . . a poet's artistic diary of youthful dreams"—Glenn Sadler's description of Macdonald's Phantastes (p. 220). The artistic diary, like all diaries, will select what is recorded, and this makes all the more valuable the biographical insights which we can receive into MacDonald's life and its effect on the world of his art. Professor Sadler combines information on MacDonald's youth, and the influence of Scottish scenery, with an investigation of the debt MacDonald owed to the German romantics—a linking of the "blue hills" of his birthplace and the impossible dreams of the Märchen which emerge transfored in Phantastes, "an imaginative journey into MacDonald's poetic unconsciousness" (p. 222). To perform such a journey, to illuminate the artist's vision, somehow to relate the world of fantasy to the reader's experience, must surely be the responsibility of those who teach "Children's Literature." More material on C. S. Lewis is available in this collection, in a context which...

The Schempp-Murray Decision on School Prayers and Bible Reading

In what is by any standard an historic decision, the Supreme Court on June 17, 1963 ruled unconstitutional, by a vote of 8 to 1, the practice of devotional Bible reading and the recitation of the Lord's Prayer in the public schools. At the same time, and on the basis of this decision, the Court vacated and sent back for re consideration a Florida Supreme Court decision which, while it outlawed the use of public school buildings for after-hour Bible instruction and the presentation of Christmas, Chanukah, and Easter programs in public schools, refused to declare unconstitu tional the reading of the Bible, the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, the holding of religious baccalaureate services, the questioning of public school children on their religious affiliation, and the inclu sion of religious activities as a criterion in evaluating public school teachers for advancement and increments.

Light From the Ancient Past. The Archeological Background of Judaism and Christianity

A photograph, map, or diagram illustrates the text for every site described in this pilgrimage to Palestine, beginning with places connected with John the Baptist and proceeding to Bethlehem and Nazareth, Samaria and Galilee, Jerash, Caesarea, Jericho, the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem, and Emmaus. Each entry concludes with a brief bibliography of pertinent literature. Professor Finegan's knowledge of Christian theology and history plus his command of the archeology and topography of the Holy Land make his book an authoritative guide, a book for study and reference, and a volume for devotional reading. Originally published in 1969. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Tendentiousness in Patristic Collections

The problem of judging the dogmatic tendency of mixed patristic corpora is often a delicate one. As I have pointed out elsewhere such collections appear often to have been made up for general theological or devotional reading and were probably valued more for the variety of their contents than for any consistent principle of selection. This point is strikingly confirmed by an anecdote in John Moschus's Pratum spirituale c. 46 (P. G. 87, 3, col. 2900):We once approached Father Kyriakos, a priest of the Laura of Kalamon on the holy Jordan. And he related to us,“Once I saw in my sleep a woman of honorable appearance and dressed in purple and with her two venerable and worthy men, standing outside my cell. And I assumed that the woman was Our Lady the Mother of God and that the two men with her were John the Divine and John the Baptist. Therefore, leaving my cell I invited them to enter and pray in my cell. But she did not consent. I stayed therefore a while beseeching her and saying, ‘Let not the humble man be turned away and put to confusion’ (Ps. 74:21) etc. And when she saw me pressing my request, she answered me severely saying, ‘You have my enemy in your cell and how do you expect me to enter?’ And saying this, she departed.

The Prayer of Jesus

The liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church is known and appreciated by the Catholic West. Less known are its non-liturgical devotions. One such devotion, ‘the prayer of Jesus,’ has for centuries been encouraged in the Eastern Church, though, leaving the freedom of choice in spiritual ways to her faithful, she never imposed it or ascribed to it any particular merits (a practice unknown to the East). With this proviso the Prayer can be compared with the Rosary in the West; and as its roots go back to the early, undivided Church, it could be claimed by the West no less than by the East.‘Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.’ This invocation has behind it volumes of spiritual writings and centuries of ascetico-mystical tradition. It is known as ‘the art or mental prayer.’Many seem to have built their whole spiritual life on the prayer of Jesus, though it cannot be regarded as detached from the rest of the Christian life: Bible reading, sacramental grace, practice of the Commandments and theological virtues. In monasteries it was combined with special ascetical practices. Beginners in the use of the prayer abstained from devotional reading in order to concentrate, and the prayer replaced private psalmody in the cell, outside the services. Some kept it as a unique rule. It was repeated with beads several thousand times and was accompanied by prostrations. This acted as the first ascetical exercise of the will in obedience to the rule imposed by one’s spiritual father, teaching also control over the body.

“Ut Co-operatores simus.”

“Ut Co-operatores simus.”