Benedicta Ward
Ashgate Variorum
Hardback
320
1992
This book is concerned with the concepts of Christian holiness and spirituality from Late Antiquity through to the Middle Ages. The first group of articles focuses on the Desert Fathers the following ones examine key figures in the monastic history of the medieval West dealing above all with England and with Bede and Anselm of Canterbury. Throughout Benedicta Ward's aim has been to find an approach that makes full sense of Christian writings notably the hagiography miracles and all. This should not be seen she argues simply as biography nor as a quarry for information on social history valuable though it may be for those purposes. The primary object of these Lives - as of the people about whom they were written - was religious to neglect this meaning is to risk fundamentally misunderstanding these texts.
Ashgate Variorum
Hardback
320
1992
This book is concerned with the concepts of Christian holiness and spirituality from Late Antiquity through to the Middle Ages. The first group of articles focuses on the Desert Fathers the following ones examine key figures in the monastic history of the medieval West dealing above all with England and with Bede and Anselm of Canterbury. Throughout Benedicta Ward's aim has been to find an approach that makes full sense of Christian writings notably the hagiography miracles and all. This should not be seen she argues simply as biography nor as a quarry for information on social history valuable though it may be for those purposes. The primary object of these Lives - as of the people about whom they were written - was religious to neglect this meaning is to risk fundamentally misunderstanding these texts.