Cornell University Press: 1150 books
The Secret Within
Hermits, Recluses, and Spiritual Outsiders in Medieval England
Language: English
Release Date: February 7, 2014
Spiritual seekers throughout history have sought illumination through solitary contemplation. In the Christian tradition, medieval England stands out for its remarkable array of hermits, recluses, and spiritual outsiders—from Cuthbert, Godric of Fichale, and Christina of Markyate to Richard Rolle,...
by David Harrington Watt
Language: English
Release Date: May 9, 2017
Language: English
Release Date: May 9, 2017
David Harrington Watt's Antifundamentalism in Modern America gives us a pathbreaking account of the role that the fear of fundamentalism has played—and continues to play—in American culture. Fundamentalism has never been a neutral category of analysis, and Watt scrutinizes the various political...
Faithful Narratives
Historians, Religion, and the Challenge of Objectivity
Language: English
Release Date: January 24, 2014
Historians of religion face complex interpretive issues when examining religious texts, practices, and experiences. Faithful Narratives presents the work of twelve eminent scholars whose research has exemplified compelling strategies for negotiating the difficulties inherent in this increasingly important...
by E. Harris Harbison
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
In The Age of Reformation, first published in 1955, E. Harris Harbison shows why sixteenth-century Europe was ripe for a catharsis. New political and social factors were at work—the growth of the middle classes, the monetary inflation resulting from an influx of gold from the New World, the invention...
Monastic Reform as Process
Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900–1100
Language: English
Release Date: November 15, 2017
The history of monastic institutions in the Middle Ages may at first appear remarkably uniform and predictable. Medieval commentators and modern scholars have observed how monasteries of the tenth to early twelfth centuries experienced long periods of stasis alternating with bursts of rapid development...
Creating Cistercian Nuns
The Women's Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne
Language: English
Release Date: November 22, 2011
In Creating Cistercian Nuns, Anne E. Lester addresses a central issue in the history of the medieval church: the role of women in the rise of the religious reform movement of the thirteenth century. Focusing on the county of Champagne in France, Lester reconstructs the history of the women’s religious...
Sacred Folly
A New History of the Feast of Fools
Language: English
Release Date: May 2, 2011
For centuries, the Feast of Fools has been condemned and occasionally celebrated as a disorderly, even transgressive Christian festival, in which reveling clergy elected a burlesque Lord of Misrule, presided over the divine office wearing animal masks or women’s clothes, sang obscene songs, swung...
Certain Sainthood
Canonization and the Origins of Papal Infallibility in the Medieval Church
Language: English
Release Date: March 21, 2016
The doctrine of papal infallibility is a central tenet of Roman Catholicism, and yet it is frequently misunderstood by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Much of the present-day theological discussion points to the definition of papal infallibility made at Vatican I in 1870, but the origins of the...
To Follow in Their Footsteps
The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages
Language: English
Release Date: September 6, 2012
When the First Crusade ended with the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, jubilant crusaders returned home to Europe bringing with them stories, sacred relics, and other memorabilia, including banners, jewelry, and weapons. In the ensuing decades, the memory of the crusaders' bravery and pious sacrifice...
Kith, Kin, and Neighbors
Communities and Confessions in Seventeenth-Century Wilno
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
In the mid-seventeenth century, Wilno (Vilnius), the second capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was home to Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, Ruthenians, Jews, and Tatars, who worshiped in Catholic, Uniate, Orthodox, Calvinist, and Lutheran churches, one synagogue, and one mosque. Visitors regularly...
Emperor of the World
Charlemagne and the Construction of Imperial Authority, 800–1229
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
Charlemagne never traveled farther east than Italy, but by the mid-tenth century a story had begun to circulate about the friendly alliances that the emperor had forged while visiting Jerusalem and Constantinople. This story gained wide currency throughout the Middle Ages, appearing frequently in...
Princely Brothers and Sisters
The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100–1250
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
In Princely Brothers and Sisters, Jonathan R. Lyon takes a fresh look at sibling networks and the role they played in shaping the practice of politics in the Middle Ages. Focusing on nine of the most prominent aristocratic families in the German kingdom during the Staufen period (1138–1250), Lyon...
Erotic Exchanges
The World of Elite Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century Paris
Language: English
Release Date: December 13, 2013
In Erotic Exchanges, Nina Kushner reveals the complex world of elite prostitution in eighteenth-century Paris—the demimonde—by focusing on the professional mistresses who dominated it. These dames entretenues exchanged sex, company, and sometimes even love for being "kept." Most of these women...
The Manly Art
Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America
Language: English
Release Date: May 2, 2012
"It didn't occur to me until fairly late in the work that I was writing a book about the beginnings of a national celebrity culture. By 1860, a few boxers had become heroes to working-class men, and big fights drew considerable newspaper coverage, most of it quite negative since the whole enterprise...