Aquinas and more is having a patristics sale! Get your summer reading today!

Bryn Mawr Classical reviews Bible Manuscripts: 1400 Years of Scribes and Scripture, a “collection of beautifully reproduced leaves from bible manuscripts in the collection of the British Library.”

Also reviewed: Jaclyn L. Maxwell’s Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and his Congregation in Antioch. Here’s a taste:

John Chrysostom was one of the most significant Christian preachers during the period in which Christian orthodoxy was being established in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. Despite the name attributed to him (the golden-mouthed), Chrysostom is more readily remembered for the controversies he encountered with the eastern bishops and the empress Eudoxia following his appointment as Bishop of Constantinople in AD 398. This increasingly troubled period for Chrysostom saw his deposition and recall on a number of occasions before his death in lonely exile in AD 407. These events have tended to overshadow Chrysostom’s career as a priest and preacher in Antioch where his considerable reputation as an eloquent preacher was forged.

Maxwell’s book provides a most welcome focus on Chrysostom as preacher in Antioch and makes a valuable contribution to understanding the interaction between the preacher and his diverse audience in the Syrian metropolis in the 380s and 390s. Her aim is to demonstrate from Chrysostom’s sermons how the preacher’s interaction with his audience at Antioch reflects the attitudes and concerns present in the lives of the Christian laity. It is largely through this method that Maxwell examines the process of Christianization in Antioch in the late fourth century AD and she succeeds well in doing so. The book is well organized and clearly written, fitting of the skill Chrysostom himself developed in communicating with a diverse audience.

Hat tip: Rogue Classicism.

Just got back from the Religious Booksellers Trade Exhibit, where I was a featured author for my beloved publisher Our Sunday Visitor. I was signing copies of Take 5: On the Job Meditations With St. Ignatius, my new devotional, co-authored with Father Kris Stubna. We just got the good news that the book went into its second printing less than two months after it hit the stores! I even met a woman who ordered sixty-four copies on impulse. The cover’s lovely, and that surely helps; but I like to think the book is a good introduction to Ignatian prayer for folks in all lines of work. You can look it up.

OSV was also previewing my upcoming patristic title, Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols. The folks at OSV told me that that book generated quite a bit of buzz at RBTE. In this case, it had to be the cover, because there was nothing else to see (yet). But once they — and you — see the insides, sparks will certainly fly. The book contains hundreds of illustrations by Lea Marie Ravotti — gorgeous reproductions of the artworks of earliest Christianity. I can’t wait to hold that book in my hands. Pre-order now for Christmas gifts!

Several publishers were exhibiting new patristic titles, and of course I walked away with copies. So I’ll be posting reviews in the coming weeks.

This was my third visit to RBTE, my second as a featured author. Last year I signed hundreds of copies of The Resilient Church: The Glory, the Shame, & the Hope for Tomorrow. KVSS Radio recently posted a series of audio interviews on that very book.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review published a review of Kevin Hester’s Eschatology and Pain in St. Gregory the Great: The Christological Synthesis of Gregory’s ‘Morals on the Book of Job’ (Studies in Christian History and Thought).

Gregory the Great stands virtually alone among the early medieval popes in the extent to which we are familiar with not only the events of his pontificate, but also his distinctive personality. As with Augustine of Hippo, scholars have perceived much of the man in the writings, as Gregory’s character, temperament, and concerns are revealed not only in his copious epistles but in his theological works as well. At its heart, Kevin Hester’s Eschatology and Pain in St. Gregory the Great is an attempt to clarify one particular area of the Pope’s personal Christology through a close reading of the Moralia in Iob. Specifically, Hester attempts to show how Gregory’s ideas about redemptive pain and eschatology are “connected, related, and reconciled” through the Pope’s understanding of Christ as iudex (8). Hester’s study strongly reflects the concentrated focus of the doctoral dissertation on which it is based. Readers looking for a more comprehensive introduction to Gregory’s personal theology are advised to consult Carole Straw’s masterful synthesis, whose ideas Hester draws upon in his own work.

I haven’t read this new book, but I do second the recommendation of Carole Straw’s Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection, a book I found illuminating. Hester’s use of Straw makes his own book all the more promising.

Hat tip on the review: Rogue Classicism.

New Testament scholar Darrell Pursiful has posted a very generous review of my book The Fathers of the Church (Expanded Edition).

The Fathers of the Church by Mike Aquilina (Our Sunday Visitor, 2006) is an excellent reader for those wanting exposure to the writings of the early church. Aquilina writes well, but the benefit of most volumes of this nature is when the writer says as little as possible so as to let the primary sources speak for themselves. This is also something Aquilina does well. The book begins with a somewhat lengthy introductory essay dealing with the place of the early church fathers and their overall importance in the church’s theology, worship, and witness. Next comes over 200 pages of primary source material, prefaced by sufficient biographical information for each father to help the reader get her bearings but not so much as to be a distraction.

I’m honored. Read on.

Amy Welborn‘s new book, Mary and the Christian Life: Scriptural Reflections on the First Disciple, is out. And I must say (as I said on the back cover):

Profound yet simple — and impossible to put down — this book draws God’s children into the life of our mother. All the doctrine is there, and all the history, but it’s borne along by stories from the lives of the saints and sketches from the Church’s many traditions of worship and art, music and poetry. This is a family album for Christians to treasure. Buy a copy for yourself and one for lending. You’ll want to discuss every chapter with a friend.

I like a book that leans on the Fathers.

Got an email yesterday from a visitor who helps to lead “an ecumenical Patristics books club.” He was trying to put together a program that used primary texts — “actual works (not commentaries)” — well translated, affordable, and easily bought in quantity. I had to ponder this a bit. The simplest route, of course, would be to use The Fathers of the Church, Expanded Edition and The Mass of the Early Christians, both of which include sample texts from a wide range of patristic authors. (Anne Fremantle’s A Treasury of Early Christianity used to serve this purpose, but it’s long out of print.)

But this inquirer wanted something meatier than the short, representative excerpts my books had to offer. He asked if I thought Jurgens’ Faith of the Early Fathers: Three-Volume Set might do. Jurgens is indeed a good reference work — a collection of excerpts, usefully indexed by dogmatic subject. But it makes for dull reading by itself. I think it would be a disappointment for members who are obviously motivated to read deeply in individual works — who want to get to know the ancient authors.

After scanning the shelves a little bit last night, it seemed to me that the Penguin Classics presented the best way to do something programmatic. Consider these four titles for starters.

Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers (ed. Andrew Louth)

Eusebius: The History of the Church: From Christ to Constantine (ed. Andrew Louth)

Early Christian Lives

St. Augustine: Confessions (tr. R.S. Pine-Coffin)

These four could keep a group well occupied for at least a year (if not two or three). What’s more, they present an excellent overview of the historical challenges and dogmatic disputes of the first four centuries — and in a fairly painless way, with stories rather than treatises (though all the dogma’s in there).

Once the group got through that list, it could go back in time and work through some more challenging material, again all readily available and quite readable (though just a bit more pricey) in the Classics of Western Spirituality and HarperCollins Spiritual Classics series:

Origen: An Exortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, and Selected Works

Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns

Gregory of Nyssa: The Life of Moses

Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter

Pseudo Dionysius: The Complete Works

Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings

John Cassian: Conferences

Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings

That’s the best way I’ve found to be programmatic with readable, affordable, available texts. What do you think?

While I was in Rome, I got the following query from Ryan McDermott, “Medievalist-in-training.” Can anyone help him?

I just received the two volumes of Priscilla Throop’s translation of Isidore’s Etymologies. From a brief once-over, it looks like a very impressive piece of scholarship. I’ll still probably have to quote from the recent Cambridge translation, since that will probably take on the status of definitive edition, but for a reading copy, this is great. And I actually think only copies affordable to grad students should be the standard works to quote from–provided, of course, the editing and translation are up to snuff.

Here’s a question for the blogosphere: who is Priscilla Throop? Who would engage in a labor of love like this, with no hope of profit, and without the usual academic incentives for such thankless tasks? And who is the handsome man in the small picture on the back cover of the Isidore translations? It’s definitely not Isidore! (Could it be Patrick Stewart??)

Bryn Mawr Classical Review reviews Father Brian Daley’s Gregory of Nazianzus (in the Routledge Early Church Fathers Series).

This volume on Gregory of Nazianzus by Brian E. Daley, S.J., contains a well-balanced combination of scholarly reflections on Gregory’s life and works along with original translations that give the reader a direct appreciation of Gregory’s writings within the context of the man of faith behind them. Some readers may be familiar with Daley’s previous works such as The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge University Press, 1991; Hendrickson, 2003) and On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), or his studies on ancient Christology, Trinitarian theology and eschatology. Daley is a life-long patristic scholar whose knowledge of this field results in an insightful and clear study of an important early Christian figure. Readers who want an introduction to Gregory will find this book very useful and those looking for more detail will appreciate the many references provided. The sections complement each other very well and progress smoothly from one to the other. They are also organized in such a way as to be able to be read individually. This book appears in Routledge’s “The Early Church Fathers” series and follows its format, providing both an introduction and translations of the original texts. It is divided into five parts: 1) Introduction, 2) Orations, 3) Poems, 4) Letters, and 5) Gregory’s Will….

Hat tip: Rogue Classicism.

Utter Muttering has posted a very kind review of my book The Mass of the Early Christians.