André Vauchez - Böcker

In these lively and incisive essays André Vauchez explores the religious beliefs and devotional practices of laypeople in medieval Europe and grapples with some of the most difficult issues in medieval history: the nature of popular devotion, the role of religion in civic life, the sociology of religious attitudes and practices, and the relationship between the intersecting spheres of lay and clerical culture.

In these lively and incisive essays André Vauchez explores the religious beliefs and devotional practices of laypeople in medieval Europe and grapples with some of the most difficult issues in medieval history: the nature of popular devotion, the role of religion in civic life, the sociology of religious attitudes and practices, and the relationship between the intersecting spheres of lay and clerical culture.

First published in France, where it was awarded the Prix Chateaubriand, this masterful new biography of Francis is now available in EnglishIn this towering work, André Vauchez draws on the vast body of scholarship on Francis of Assisi produced over the past forty years as well on as his own expertise in medieval hagiography to tell the most comprehensive and authoritative version of Francis’s life and afterlife published in the past half century. After a detailed and yet engaging reconstruction of Francis's life and work, Vauchez focuses on the myriad texts—hagiographies, chronicles, sermons, personal testimonies, etc.—of writers who recorded aspects of Francis's life and movement as they remembered them, and used those remembrances to construct a portrait of Francis relevant to their concerns. We see varying versions of his life reflected in the work of Machiavelli, Luther, Voltaire, German and English romantics, pre-Raphaelites, Italian nationalists, and Mussolini, and discover how peace activists, ecologists, or interreligious dialogists have used his example to promote their various causes. Particularly noteworthy is the attention Vauchez pays to Francis’s own writings, which strangely enough have been largely overlooked by later interpreters.The product of a lifetime of study, this book reveals a historian at the height of his powers.

Defining spirituality as 'the dynamic unity between the content of a faith and the way in which it is lived by historically determined human beings', Vauchez steps outside the clerical world usually studied to trace the religious mentality of the laity, the ordinary and often illiterate majority of Christians.

In Shrines, Relics, and Saints,the eminent medievalist André Vauchez explores the evolution of spaces in Christianity – chapels, monasteries, holy wells, grottos, and other holy places – that are considered sacred because they house the relics of a saint or because they preserve the memory of an appearance by a saint, angel, or the Virgin Mary. From famous sanctuaries that still attract multitudes of pilgrims – in Jerusalem, Rome, Tours, Assisi, and Compostela – to local shrines in villages, towns, and wild places across the continent, these sanctuaries were frequented by pilgrims in search of miraculous healings of body and soul. Together, they formed a network comprising new forms of sacredness and spiritual practice. A masterwork in the history of Christianity, Shrines, Relics, and Saints traces pilgrimage routes to major sanctuaries, follows saints' relics as they were transferred from East to West, and examines the Church's ambiguous and sometimes antagonistic relationship to sites of popular worship.

In Shrines, Relics, and Saints,the eminent medievalist André Vauchez explores the evolution of spaces in Christianity – chapels, monasteries, holy wells, grottos, and other holy places – that are considered sacred because they house the relics of a saint or because they preserve the memory of an appearance by a saint, angel, or the Virgin Mary. From famous sanctuaries that still attract multitudes of pilgrims – in Jerusalem, Rome, Tours, Assisi, and Compostela – to local shrines in villages, towns, and wild places across the continent, these sanctuaries were frequented by pilgrims in search of miraculous healings of body and soul. Together, they formed a network comprising new forms of sacredness and spiritual practice. A masterwork in the history of Christianity, Shrines, Relics, and Saints traces pilgrimage routes to major sanctuaries, follows saints' relics as they were transferred from East to West, and examines the Church's ambiguous and sometimes antagonistic relationship to sites of popular worship.