Devotional Reading and the Visual Dynamics of La passion del eterno principe (Burgos, 1493?)

2020 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-494
Author(s):  
Isidro J. Rivera
Keyword(s):  
Devotional Reading

Pole's Piety? The Devotional Reading of Reginald Pole and his Friends

2012 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 458-474
Author(s):  
M. ANNE OVERELL
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identities ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Imitation Of Christ ◽  
Devotional Reading

In this examination of the piety and devotional books of Reginald Pole and his friends, three booklists are compared: Pole's own, and those of Marcantonio Flaminio and Michael Throckmorton. The article also probes their comments and choices about reading and prayer, sacrament and preaching, as well as the observations of contemporaries. Piety in Pole's household was nourished principally by the Bible, the Fathers and the Imitation of Christ, but scriptural commentaries by suspect reformers also became part of their devotional reading, moulding religious identities which were unusual and became dangerous.

Afterword

Chronometres ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 191-196
Author(s):  
Krista Lysack
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Devotional Poetry ◽  
Gift Books ◽  
Reading Materials ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Devotional Reading ◽  
Cheap Print

If we imagine that a Victorian common reader of devotion has accumulated all the devotional books and print that have been the subject of this study we might see, gathered together on a table or shelf, a jumble of things: devotional poetry, family prayer manuals, Sunday-reading books and periodicals, gift books, and daily textbooks. Reading meant for the masses lies alongside serious works, cheap print mingles with expensive gift volumes. Broad Church, Tractarian, and Nonconformist doctrine sit together in easy company. In considering the range of what counted as devotional reading materials for Victorians, I have endeavoured to think beyond generic categories and denominational affiliations. The companionability of these items, their miscellany and assortment, reminds us that they were objects that were handled and re-read by their owners. And even when they were not being read, they remained as materials on display and as available to the next reader who might come along. This was the case with Monica Madden’s only occasionally- (and possibly never-) read copy of Keble in Chapter One. The profusion of religious publishing in the nineteenth century meant that devotional observance could also be a leisurely and a consumerist pursuit. But Elaine Freedgood (2013), who has pointed out how “things … still do not get taken seriously” in literary criticism,...

The Spiritual Home of W. E. Gladstone: Anne Gladstone’s Bible

2014 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 343-353
Author(s):  
David Bebbington
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Alternative Sources ◽  
Devotional Reading

‘Popery is the religion of Cathedrals’, wrote J.W. Cunningham, the evangelical vicar of Harrow in his novel The Velvet Cushion (1815), ‘– Protestantism of houses’. It is a commonplace in the secondary literature that the household was the citadel of the evangelical version of Protestantism in nineteenth-century England. ‘Evangelicalism’, according to a representative comment by Ian Bradley, ‘was above all else the religion of the home.’ The head of the household conducting family prayers was the embodiment of the evangelical spirit. It is not the purpose of this essay to question that received image, but it does suggest that a clearer picture of the religious atmosphere of the evangelical home can be obtained from sources other than the manuals published for the paterfamilias to read to the assembled household. The books of family prayers tell us what was prescribed; but alternative sources show us what was practised. Spiritual journals, reflective meditations and candid correspondence can often be more revealing. Nowhere, however, is the kernel of household piety more evident than in the Bibles that some zealous believers annotated for their own benefit. The study of the Bible, as Edward Bickersteth, a leading evangelical divine, put it in his book A Scripture Help (1816), was ‘a great and important duty’. When members of evangelical families retired to the privacy of their own rooms, they might spend time in devotional reading of the Scriptures and leave a record of their reflections in the margins. Such Bibles, one of which is to be examined here, are treasuries of authentic domestic spirituality. They show something of the heartbeat of evangelical religion.

scholarly journals Sensuous reading in the Legatus divinae pietatis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Landon Reitz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Theories Of Reading ◽  
Devotional Reading

AbstractDevotional practices in the later European Middle Ages were highly somatic, and they utilized the human sensorium to convey, incite, and engender knowledge and experiences of the divine. Reading does not normally stand out as one of the more somatic devotional practices, but as demonstrated by the example of the Legatus divinae pietatis, a devotional text written at the convent of Helfta around the end of the thirteenth century, reading was indeed imagined as a somatic, devotional experience that engaged the senses. In this article, I argue that the Legatus portrays a form of devotional reading that invokes all the senses in an effort to unite the book, the reader, and her community with the divine. Drawing on medieval conceptualizations of the human sensorium and theories of reading, my analyses of the Legatus’s sensual language, evocative imagery, and scenes of reading elucidate the embodied reading practices that the Legatus’s writers portrayed as fundamental to their communal, devotional lives.

Reading at Home

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail Brundin ◽  
Deborah Howard ◽  
Mary Laven
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Household Activity ◽  
Limited Literacy ◽  
Devotional Reading ◽  
Reading At Home ◽  
At Home

For laypeople in the Renaissance, pious reading was supposed to be a daily household activity, to be interwoven into the other demands of domestic life in a pragmatic way. This chapter explores different practices of domestic devotional reading, arguing for an expansion of the category of ‘devotional reading’ to include communal activities in which most participants had limited literacy. An examination of readers’ marks in devotional books allows us to track their reading in an intimate way. Archival sources reveal interactions with books of all kinds. Finally the chapter considers owners and readers of manuscripts before the introduction of printing.

Tendentiousness in Patristic Collections

1948 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-70
Author(s):  
R. P. Casey
Keyword(s):  
John The Baptist ◽  
Devotional Reading ◽  
Consistent Principle

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 Book as Object of Lay Devotion in Late Medieval Transylvania (Fifteenth-Sixteenth Centuries)

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 27-42
Author(s):  
Paula Cotoi ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Religious Text ◽  
Religious Books ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
Reading Culture ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Devotional Reading ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Lay Devotion

"Research on late-medieval religiosity in Central and Western Europe has shown that religious books were not only possessed, but also read, and sometimes even copied or disseminated by laymen. The need for a better definition of the relationship between the laity and the religious text leads to the formulation and intensive discussion of concepts such as devotional reading, culture of religious reading, or vernacular theology. Several examples of works that belonged to late-medieval Transylvanian laymen suggest the opportunity and, at the same time, the need to ask whether similar dynamics of pious behaviour can be discussed in their case. In order to provide a convincing answer, this study proposes an analysis of these books from at least three perspectives: theme, language, formal characteristics. The most interesting information is offered, however, by property notes, which suggest that the devotional potential of the book was not activated by reading, but rather by donation. By offering solutions to the everyday necessities of ecclesiastical institutions, these gifts were designed to ensure personal salvation as well. In order to support this hypothesis, I will also address another category of sources from which mentions regarding this kind of donations can be recovered, i.e. last wills. Keywords: religious books, devotional practices, pious donations, last wills, laity "

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