Blessing the World : Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion

by Rivard, Derek A.

• ISBN13: 9780813215457
• ISBN10: 0813215455
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-12-01
• Publisher: Catholic Univ of Amer Pr
• More Book Details

Summary

"In this book, Derek A. Rivard studies liturgical blessing and its role in the religious life of Christians during the central and later Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the blessings of the Franco-Roman liturgical tradition from the tenth to late thirteenth centuries. Through a careful and extensive study of more than ninety such blessings, many of them translated for the first time and accessible to a readership beyond specialists in medieval liturgy, the author argues that medieval blessings were composed as a direct response to the needs, anxieties, beliefs, and fears of the laity, and therefore these texts represent a rich and largely untapped source for the study of lay piety and of ritual in medieval Europe."--BOOK JACKET.