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Cy-près doctrine, which allows the purpose of a failing or impractical charitable gift to be changed, has been understood since the eighteenth century as a medieval canon law principle, derived from Roman law, to rescue souls by making good their last charitable intentions. The Uses of the Dead offers an alternate origin story for this judicial power, grounded in modern, secular concerns.

Posthumous gifts, which required no sacrifice during life, were in fact broadly understood by canon lawyers and medieval donors themselves to have at best a very limited relationship to salvation. As a consequence, for much of the Middle Ages the preferred method for resolving impossible or impractical gifts was to try to reach a consensus among all of the interested parties to the gift, including the donor's heirs and the recipients, with the mediation of the local bishop.

When cy-près emerged in the seventeenth century, it cut a charitable gift o from return to the donor's estate in the event of failure. It also gave the interested parties to the gift (heirs, beneficiaries, or trustees) little authority over resolutions to problematic gifts, which were now considered primarily in relationship to the donor's intent—even as the intent was ultimately honored only in its breach. The Uses of the Dead shows how cy-près developed out of controversies over church property, particularly monastic property, and whether it might be legally turned over to fund education, poor relief, or national defense.

Renaissance humanists hoped to make better, more prudent uses of property; the Reformation sought to correct superstitious abuses of property and ultimately tended to prevent donors' heirs from recovering secularized ecclesiastical gifts; and the early modern state attempted to centralize poor relief and charitable efforts under a more rational, centralized supervision. These three factors combined to replace an older equitable ideal with a new equitable rule—one whose use has rapidly expanded in the modern era to allow assorted approximations and judicial redistributions of property.

They Sought a Land, originally published in 1997, is the study of the rise and decline of a group of pioneers from the Carolinas who came to the Arkansas River Valley in the mid nineteenth century. Pisgah, as their settlement came to be known, drew five hundred pioneers from 1840 to 1870, forming a community bound by blood, friendship, and a strong Calvinist heritage.

Pisgah grew and prospered, developing increasingly successful farming practices, landholding patterns, and trading strategies. But the Civil War took a heavy toll, taking workers away from farms, subjecting those left on the home front to deprivation and violence, and creating division in the community. By 1870, the people of Pisgah had dispersed into Arkansas’s larger developing society.

Absorbing to read and rich with colorful detail, They Sought a Land is an important story of the westward expansion of the United States and the settling of the American South during the nineteenth century.

Thomas Aquinas and Medieval Canon Law bridges, for the first time, two worlds of scholarship that have never been explored in book-length form and investigates an under-researched area in Thomistic studies, namely the question of how Thomas Aquinas engaged the ecclesiastical law and jurisprudence of his day. Neither historians of medieval canon law nor experts on Thomas's thought have previously paid much attention to the canon law tradition as a source for Thomas's work and an influence on his thought. But, as this volume shows, his consideration of mendicant life, law, justice, oaths, penance, clerical orders, the Eucharist, baptism, property, commerce, marriage and more reveal engagement with key canon law texts and concepts and with the jurisprudence of major canonists. The book uncovers how Aquinas encountered canonical regulations and jurisprudence as a Dominican, an educator in both theology and pastoral care, and a participant in the secular-mendicant controversy. In his life, education, community, and his way of thought, Thomas Aquinas could not avoid and necessarily encountered and dealt with the canonical tradition. He did so in a distinctive way, working as he did with his theological and philosophical source material to craft his own great synthesis. What this volume shows, if nothing else, is that the canon law tradition should be taken into consideration when assessing Thomas's synthetic thought. Following the editors' introduction, thirteen scholarly contributions and an epilogue explore Aquinas's interaction with medieval canon law through four major themes: Dominican Matters; Foundations Matters of Faith, Truth, and Law; Moral Matters; and Sacramental Matters. Approximately half the contributors are specialists from the field of medieval canon law, and half are grounded in Thomistic tradition. The result is a unique and scholarly contribution to two major research areas that may open avenues for similar studies of other key figures in the scholastic tradition.

Rethinking what it means to be Baptist through four centuries of debate, belief, and identity.Normal0falsefalsefalseMicrosoftInternetExplorer4 

Through a Glass Darkly is a collection of essays by scholars who argue that Baptists are frequently misrepresented, by outsiders as well as insiders, as members of an unchanging monolithic sect. In contemporary discussions of religious denominations, it is often fashionable and easy to make bold claims regarding the history, beliefs, and practices of certain groups. Select versions of Baptist history have been used to vindicate incomplete or inaccurate assertions, attitudes, and features of Baptist life and thought. Historical figures quickly become saints, and overarching value systems can minimize the unsavory realities that would contribute to a truer interpretation of Baptist life.

The essays in this volume use the term Baptist in the broadest sense to refer to those Christians who identify themselves as Baptists and who baptize by immersion as a non-sacramental church rite. Over the past four hundred years, Baptists have grown from a persecuted minority to a significant portion of America’s religious population. They have produced their fair share of controversies and colorful characters that have, in turn, contributed to a multifaceted history.

But what does it mean to be a “real Baptist”? Some look to historical figures as heroic exemplars of Baptist core values. Others consider cultural, social, or political issues to be guideposts for Baptist identity. Through a Glass Darkly dives deeper into history for answers, revealing a more complete version of the expansive and nuanced history of one of America’s most influential religious groups.

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Contributors:

James P. Byrd / John G. Crowley / Edward R. Crowther / Christopher H. Evans / Elizabeth H. Flowers / Curtis W. Freeman / Barry G. Hankins / Paul Harvey / Bill J. Leonard / James A. Patterson / Jewel L. Spangler / Alan Scot Willis

The first scholarly treatment of the strategies employed by the New Christian Right in redefining religious freedom in the courtroom.

Trumping Religion provides a detailed analysis of the five major public-interest law firms that have litigated religion cases in the federal courts between 1980 and 2000. Allied with several highly vocal, evangelical ministries, such as those of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robinson, these legal organizations argue that religious expression is a form of protected speech and thereby gain a greater latitude of interpretation in the courts. The long-term agenda of the New Christian Right as illuminated by this study is to shape church-state jurisprudence in a way that permits free course for the Christian gospel.

Steven P. Brown presents his research and conclusions from a balanced viewpoint. In filling a distinct void in the literature, this book will be of considerable interest to political scientists, legal scholars, law schools and seminaries, and anyone concerned with the intersection of religion and judicial politics.

Following the formation of the kingdom of Italy in 1860, the new Italian government, led by its King, Victor Emmanuel II, turned its attention to the city it intended to make its capital, the Eternal City, Caput Mundi, Rome. One major obstacle stood in their path, the Papal States, under the leadership of Pius IX and under the protection of French soldiers sent by Emperor Napoleon III. For the Italian nationalist leader Giuseppe Garibaldi, a ferocious anticlerical who had an uneasy alliance with the monarchial Italian government, the Papacy would no longer be allowed to hold back Italy's progress into the modern world. As French commitments to preserve the independence of the Vatican waned, it increasingly fell to one of the most remarkable military units in the history of modern Europe to protect the center of Western Christendom. This unit was the Papal Zouaves, soldiers and officers from all over the world drawn by their Catholic faith to fight on behalf of the Pope against an Italian government which was ruthless in enforcing its authority. They came from as near as Switzerland and Belgium and as far away as Canada and China. This is the memoir of one of the, and Englishmen named Joseph Powell. His story is a chronicle of one of the most tragic clashes of church and state, and how ancient institutions fought to protect their existence against the ruthless waves of modernity.