New Books in Christian Studies
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
When will I die? What is the sex of my unborn child? Which of two rivals will win a duel? As today, people in the later Middle Ages approached their uncertainties about the future, from the serious to the mundane, in a variety of ways. One of the most commonly surviving prognostic methods in medieval manuscripts is onomancy: the branch of divination that predicts the future from calculations based on the numbers that correlate to the letters of personal names. However, despite its ubiquity, it has been relatively little studied.
Onomantic Divination in Late Medieval Britain: Questioning Life, Predicting Death (York Medieval Press, 2024) by Dr. Joanne Edge analyses the intellectual and physical contexts of onomantic texts in some 65 manuscripts of British provenance between around 1150 and 1500, focusing on its two main varieties It demonstrates that onomancies were copied, owned and used by a people from a wide range of literate society in late medieval England: medical practitioners; the gentry and aristocracy; university scholars; and monks. And it seeks to answer the question of why a divinatory device, condemned in canon law as "Pythagorean necromancy", enjoyed such popularity in mainstream books of religion, medicine, and scholasticism.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies
Rachel Williams, "Tabernacles in the Wilderness: The US Christian Commission on the Civil War Battlefront" (Kent State UP, 2024)
Jihye Lee, "A Jewish Apocalyptic Framework of Eschatology in the Epistle to the Hebrews" (T&T Clark, 2021)
Denva Gallant, "Illuminating the Vitae Patrum: The Lives of Desert Saints in Fourteenth-Century Italy" (Penn State UP, 2024)
Matthew Goldmark, "Forms of Relation: Composing Kinship in Colonial Spanish America" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
Jeremy Schipper, "Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt That Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial" (Princeton UP, 2022)
Frederick Klaits et al., "Pentecostal Insight in a Segregated US City: Designs for Vitality" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Peter Hill, "Prophet of Reason: Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle East" (Oneworld Academic, 2024)
Pinky Hota, "The Violence of Recognition: Adivasi Indigeneity and Anti-Dalitness in India" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)
Hank Willenbrink, "Performing for the Don: Theatres of Faith in the Age of Trump" (Routledge, 2024)
Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: A Lecture by Anthony Grafton
Genji Yasuhira, "Catholic Survival in the Dutch Republic: Agency in Coexistence and the Public Sphere in Utrecht, 1620-1672" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
Wise as Serpents, Gentle as Doves (with Dorcas Oyelade and Kailea Barte)
Nathaniel Gray Sutanto and Cory Brock, "T&T Clark Handbook of Neo-Calvinism" (T&T Clark, 2023)
Carlos M. N. Eire, "They Flew: A History of the Impossible" (Yale UP, 2023)
Robert D. Heaton, "The Shepherd of Hermas As Scriptura Non Grata: From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
Cory C. Brock and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, "Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction" (Lexham Press, 2023)
Gale L. Kenny, "Christian Imperial Feminism: White Protestant Women and the Consecration of Empire" (NYU Press, 2024)
Timothy Morton, "Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Bronagh Ann McShane, "Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530-1700: Suppression, Migration and Reintegration" (Boydell & Brewer, 2022)
Catherine Michael Chin, "Life: The Natural History of an Early Christian Universe" (U California Press, 2024)
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
New Books in Philosophy
New Books in Sociology
New Books in Psychoanalysis
New Books in Anthropology
New Books in African American Studies