1st Edition
Eschatology and Christian Nurture Themes in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Religious Life
By Milton McC. Gatch
Copyright 2000
346 Pages
by
Routledge
Professor Gatch opens with three essays providing an overview of the themes of this book: eschatology and the basic education of the laity. Despite an undoubted acceptance of immortality and an active afterlife, Gatch believes that medieval eschatology remained strikingly oriented to the New Testament picture of the apocalypse and the resurrection of the dead. This is explored in studies on... Read more
Contents: Introduction; Some theological reflections on death from the Early Church through the Reformation; Basic Christian education from the decline of catechesis to the rise of the catechisms; The Harrowing of Hell: a liberation motif in medieval theology and devotional literature; The Anglo-Saxon tradition; Perceptions of eternity; Two uses of apocrypha in Old English homilies; Eschatology in the anonymous Old English homilies; The unknowable audience of the Blickling Homilies; The achievement of Ælfric and his colleagues in European perspective; The Office in late Anglo-Saxon monasticism; Noah's raven in Genesis A and the illustrated Old English hexateuch; Miracles in architectural settings: Christ Church Canterbury, and St Clement's, Sandwich in the Old English Vision of Leofric; Piety and liturgy in the Old English Vision of Leofric; Index.
Biography
Milton McC. Gatch
'... a distinguished addition to the Variorum Collected Studies series... The (...) collection has a striking underlying unity and cumulatively makes an eloquent case for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Anglo-Saxon culture and religion.... Throughout, the writing of Gatch is elegant, learned and meticulous in its scholarship. This collection is a reflection of the substantial contribution the author has made to the study of Anglo-Saxon Christianity in its broader contexts...' Notes and Queries
