Linking of Heaven and Earth

Emily Michelson, University of St Andrews, UK, Scott Taylor, Siena College, USA, and Mary Noll Venables, independent scholar, Ireland.

• Contents: Introduction, Emily Michelson, Scott K. Taylor, and Mary Noll Venables; Part I Exploring Boundaries: ’When Heaven hovered close to Earth’: images and miracles in early modern Spain, Alison Weber; An Italian explains the English Reformation (with God’s help), Emily Michelson; The Gadarene demoniac in the English Enlightenment, H.C. Erik Midelfort; Miracles: an inconvenient truth, David D’Andrea. Part II Living One’s Faith: Principalities, powers, and Philosophia Christi: Erasmus on spiritual warfare, Darren Provost; Teresa of Avila: woman with a mission, Jodi Bilinkoff; Responding to God’s anger: Sigismund Evenius and the siege of Magdeburg (1631), Mary Noll Venables; Telling the truth about vocation: the death notices of the Visitandines in Brussels, 1683-1714, Ping-Yuan Wang. Part III The Physicality of Spirituality: Pueblo to Señor: intercession in 16th-century Spain, William A. Christian Jr; ’In my Father’s house there are many mansions’: Heinrich Bullinger on death and the afterlife, Bruce Gordon; Peyote, ever virgin: a case of religious hybridism in Mexico, Martin Nesvig; ’A miserable captivity’ or ’happily redeemed from captivity to liberty’: tobacco addiction and early modern bodies and minds, Scott K. Taylor; ’He flew’: a concluding reflection on the place of eternity and the supernatural in the scholarship of Carlos M.N. Eire, Ronald K. Rittgers; Bibliography; Index.

'... the quality of the essays collected in this volume is high.... scholars will undoubtedly find these essays rewarding.... makes for fascinating reading, and would appeal to anyone interested in Eire’s scholarship.' Renaissance & Reformation '... a lightness of touch, imagination, and the most rigorous scholarship. [Eire] is a unique historian, willing and able successfully to counter the assumptions of modern Western academia about the meaning of religion, the body, and of history itself, and should be studied by anyone hoping to understand any aspect of the early modern period.' Sixteenth Century Journal