Brenda Deen Schildgen is Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis, USA. She is the author of five books, including Power and Prejudice: Reception of the Gospel of Mark (Wayne State University Press, 1999), which was the recipient of a Best Academic Book Choice award, Pagans, Tartars, Jews, and Moslems in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (University of Florida Press, 2001), Dante and the Orient (University of Illinois Press, 2002), and Heritage or Heresy: Destruction and Preservation of Religious Images and Artifacts in Europe (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008). She is also the co-editor of five books, including Other Renaissances (co-edited with Zhou Gang and Sander Gilman, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006).

• Introduction: The Idea of Providential History in Orosius, Augustine, and Dante / Chapter 1: Destined Lands and Chosen Fathers: Virgil and Livy and the Hebrew Bible / Chapter 2: Orosius Defends the Roman Empire: Imperium and Evangelium / Chapter 3: Augustine: Theology of History  / Chapter 4: Dante's Monarchia with and against Augustine / Chapter 5: Dante's Commedia and the Ascent to Incarnational History / Conclusion / Bibliography / Index

"It is a seductive but dangerous  idea to want to sanctify the machinations of political power with the imprimatur of providence. At the heart of Schildgen's study of the providential ideal is her reading of Dante's shift from an imperialist theology, in the vein of an Orosius, in Monarchia to the subtle Augustinianism of the Commedia, his poetic masterwork. Schildgen sets the stage for Dante with the late antique debate within Christianity over the visibility of providence, mainly a story of two different syntheses of two contrasting legacies: one biblical, the other Roman.  She has an extraordinary ability to weave a narrative thread through a thicket of conceptual and historical complexity."-James Wetzel, Augustinian Endowed Chair, Villanova University

Brenda Deen Schildgen is Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis, USA. She is the author of five books, including Power and Prejudice: Reception of the Gospel of Mark (Wayne State University Press, 1999), which was the recipient of a Best Academic Book Choice award, Pagans, Tartars, Jews, and Moslems in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (University of Florida Press, 2001), Dante and the Orient (University of Illinois Press, 2002), and Heritage or Heresy: Destruction and Preservation of Religious Images and Artifacts in Europe (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008). She is also the co-editor of five books, including Other Renaissances (co-edited with Zhou Gang and Sander Gilman, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006).

• Introduction: The Idea of Providential History in Orosius, Augustine, and Dante / Chapter 1: Destined Lands and Chosen Fathers: Virgil and Livy and the Hebrew Bible / Chapter 2: Orosius Defends the Roman Empire: Imperium and Evangelium / Chapter 3: Augustine: Theology of History  / Chapter 4: Dante's Monarchia with and against Augustine / Chapter 5: Dante's Commedia and the Ascent to Incarnational History / Conclusion / Bibliography / Index

"It is a seductive but dangerous  idea to want to sanctify the machinations of political power with the imprimatur of providence. At the heart of Schildgen's study of the providential ideal is her reading of Dante's shift from an imperialist theology, in the vein of an Orosius, in Monarchia to the subtle Augustinianism of the Commedia, his poetic masterwork. Schildgen sets the stage for Dante with the late antique debate within Christianity over the visibility of providence, mainly a story of two different syntheses of two contrasting legacies: one biblical, the other Roman.  She has an extraordinary ability to weave a narrative thread through a thicket of conceptual and historical complexity."-James Wetzel, Augustinian Endowed Chair, Villanova University

Brenda Deen Schildgen is Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis, USA. She is the author of five books, including Power and Prejudice: Reception of the Gospel of Mark (Wayne State University Press, 1999), which was the recipient of a Best Academic Book Choice award, Pagans, Tartars, Jews, and Moslems in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (University of Florida Press, 2001), Dante and the Orient (University of Illinois Press, 2002), and Heritage or Heresy: Destruction and Preservation of Religious Images and Artifacts in Europe (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008). She is also the co-editor of five books, including Other Renaissances (co-edited with Zhou Gang and Sander Gilman, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006).

• Introduction: The Idea of Providential History in Orosius, Augustine, and Dante / Chapter 1: Destined Lands and Chosen Fathers: Virgil and Livy and the Hebrew Bible / Chapter 2: Orosius Defends the Roman Empire: Imperium and Evangelium / Chapter 3: Augustine: Theology of History  / Chapter 4: Dante's Monarchia with and against Augustine / Chapter 5: Dante's Commedia and the Ascent to Incarnational History / Conclusion / Bibliography / Index

"It is a seductive but dangerous  idea to want to sanctify the machinations of political power with the imprimatur of providence. At the heart of Schildgen's study of the providential ideal is her reading of Dante's shift from an imperialist theology, in the vein of an Orosius, in Monarchia to the subtle Augustinianism of the Commedia, his poetic masterwork. Schildgen sets the stage for Dante with the late antique debate within Christianity over the visibility of providence, mainly a story of two different syntheses of two contrasting legacies: one biblical, the other Roman.  She has an extraordinary ability to weave a narrative thread through a thicket of conceptual and historical complexity."-James Wetzel, Augustinian Endowed Chair, Villanova University