University Of Pennsylvania Press Inc : 784 books
The Queen's Hand
Power and Authority in the Reign of Berenguela of Castile
Language: English
Release Date: August 16, 2012
Her name is undoubtedly less familiar than that of her grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, or that of her famous conqueror son, Fernando III, yet during her lifetime, Berenguela of Castile (1180-1246) was one of the most powerful women in Europe. As queen-consort of Alfonso IX of León, she acquired...
Isabel the Queen
Life and Times
Language: English
Release Date: November 10, 2015
Queen Isabel of Castile is perhaps best known for her patronage of Christopher Columbus and for the religious zeal that led to the Spanish Inquisition, the waging of holy war, and the expulsion of Jews and Muslims across the Iberian peninsula. In this sweeping biography, newly revised and annotated...
Death by Effigy
A Case from the Mexican Inquisition
Language: English
Release Date: September 5, 2012
On July 21, 1578, the Mexican town of Tecamachalco awoke to news of a scandal. A doll-like effigy hung from the door of the town's church. Its two-faced head had black chicken feathers instead of hair. Each mouth had a tongue sewn onto it, one with a forked end, the other with a gag tied around it....
The Sex Lives of Saints
An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography
Language: English
Release Date: August 3, 2010
Has a repressive morality been the primary contribution of Christianity to the history of sexuality? The ascetic concerns that pervade ancient Christian texts would seem to support such a common assumption. Focusing on hagiographical literature, Virginia Burrus pursues a fresh path of interpretation,...
Thorns in the Flesh
Illness and Sanctity in Late Ancient Christianity
Language: English
Release Date: September 6, 2012
The literature of late ancient Christianity is rich both in saints who lead lives of almost Edenic health and in saints who court and endure horrifying diseases. In such narratives, health and illness might signify the sanctity of the ascetic, or invite consideration of a broader theology of illness....
Getting Out
Historical Perspectives on Leaving Iraq
Language: English
Release Date: July 6, 2011
Eventually every conqueror, every imperial power, every occupying army gets out. Why do they decide to leave? And how do political and military leaders manage withdrawal? Do they take with them those who might be at risk if left behind? What are the immediate consequences of departure? For Michael...
by Urs App
Language: English
Release Date: June 6, 2011
Language: English
Release Date: June 6, 2011
Modern Orientalism is not a brainchild of nineteenth-century European imperialists and colonialists, but, as Urs App demonstrates, was born in the eighteenth century after a very long gestation period defined less by economic or political motives than by religious ideology.
Based on sources...
Taming Lust
Crimes Against Nature in the Early Republic
Language: English
Release Date: January 6, 2014
In 1796, as revolutionary fervor waned and the Age of Reason took hold, an eighty-five-year-old Massachusetts doctor was convicted of bestiality and sentenced to hang. Three years later and seventy miles away, an eighty-three-year-old Connecticut farmer was convicted of the same crime and sentenced...
City of Saints
Rebuilding Rome in the Early Middle Ages
Language: English
Release Date: February 23, 2018
It was far from inevitable that Rome would emerge as the spiritual center of Western Christianity in the early Middle Ages. After the move of the Empire's capital to Constantinople in the fourth century and the Gothic Wars in the sixth century, Rome was gradually depleted physically, economically,...
Righteous Persecution
Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages
Language: English
Release Date: May 22, 2013
Righteous Persecution examines the long-controversial involvement of the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, with inquisitions into heresy in medieval Europe. From their origin in the thirteenth century, the Dominicans were devoted to a ministry of preaching, teaching, and pastoral care, to "save...
God's Country
Christian Zionism in America
Language: English
Release Date: February 2, 2018
The United States is Israel's closest ally in the world. The fact is undeniable, and undeniably controversial, not least because it so often inspires conspiracy theorizing among those who refuse to believe that the special relationship serves America's strategic interests or places the United States...
Barbarian Tides
The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire
Language: English
Release Date: January 1, 2011
The Migration Age is still envisioned as an onrush of expansionary "Germans" pouring unwanted into the Roman Empire and subjecting it to pressures so great that its western parts collapsed under the weight. Further developing the themes set forth in his classic Barbarians and Romans, Walter...
The Roman Inquisition
Trying Galileo
Language: English
Release Date: March 3, 2015
Few legal events loom as large in early modern history as the trial of Galileo. Frequently cast as a heroic scientist martyred to religion or as a scapegoat of papal politics, Galileo undoubtedly stood at a watershed moment in the political maneuvering of a powerful church. But to fully understand...
The Capture of Constantinople
The "Hystoria Constantinopolitana" of Gunther of Pairis
Language: English
Release Date: November 24, 2010
The armies of the Fourth Crusade that left Western Europe at the beginning of the thirteenth century never reached the Holy Land to fight the Infidel; they stopped instead at Byzantium and sacked that capital of eastern Christendom. Much of what we know today of those events comes from contemporary...