Tag: christianity

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Confession was therapy sin was diagnosis

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Historian Peter Jones travels through Europe’s archives and libraries to uncover a lost psychology: a world where confession was therapy, sin was diagnosis, and the Seven Deadly Sins served as a man of the human mind. What can Twelfth-century monk teach us about burnout, envy or despair? From the deserts of Egypt to the Vatican Library, from Dante’s Florence to Catherine of Siena’s cell, Jones introduces the thinkers, mystics and rebels who wrestled with the same questions that preoccupy us now: How to live with our flaws, forgive ourselves, and find meaning amid confusion. Medieval lives and landscapes come vividly … Continue reading Confession was therapy sin was diagnosis

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Bitter challenger for the farmer, moneylender and the pimp

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Although the story of ancient Rome is predominantly one of great men with great fortunes, Kim Bowes, professor of Ancient History and archaeology at the Univeristy of Pennsylvania, in Surviving Rome, unearths history of ordinary Romans, who worked with their hands and survived through a combination of grit and grinding labour. Bowes focuses on the tenant farmer Epimachus, Faustilla the moneylender, and the pimp Philokies. She reveals how the economic changes of the period created a set of bitter challenges and opportunistic hustles for everyone from farmers and craftspeople to day laborers and slaves. She finds working people producing a … Continue reading Bitter challenger for the farmer, moneylender and the pimp

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Principles of enjoying a fulfilled and contented life

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Charles Handy, a businessman, a writer, a philanthropist and a philosopher, offers wit and words of wisdom from a lifetime’s thinking on management. He did have even a stroke as he approached the age of 90 dimmed his intellectual curiosity or his immense zest for life. The View from Ninety is written from the vantage point of a contemplative old age and drawing on his articles for The Idler, he shares his thoughts on the big questions with which we all grapple. Drawing in part on his own experience, in part on the wisdom of others, he sets out the … Continue reading Principles of enjoying a fulfilled and contented life

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Roman Woman who broke all rules “a living breathing flesh-and-blood”

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Charismatic Fulvia amassed a degree of military and political power that was unprecedented for a woman in Ancient Rome. Married three times to men who moved in powerful circles, including Marc Anthony, Fulvia was not content to play the usual background role that was expected of wife – instead she challenged the Roman patriarchy and sought to increase her influence in the face of determined opposition. Fulvia is a relative of Julius Caesar, Augustus’s mother-in-law, and a love rival to Cleopatra, She was according to Pultarch, “a woman who took no thought for spinning or housekeeping”, and instead became a … Continue reading Roman Woman who broke all rules “a living breathing flesh-and-blood”

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Declaration of Intent

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Canon Andrew White originally qualified as an Operating Department Practitioner,specialising in Anaesthetics, before his ordination. Now Vicar of St George’s inBaghdad, his work there prompted him to write this moving story, acclaimed by Lord Carey of Clifton as an “inspirational read”. In the foreword, Lord Carey cites Andrew as “one of the most remarkable men I have ever encountered …. With a capacity to love, and be loved”. Additionally to providing a preliminary account of his life, leading up to Baghdad, and the deep questions he has had to work through for answers on his chosen stage, Andrew has provided … Continue reading Declaration of Intent

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Portrait of masculinity

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Booker Prize Finalist Hungarian descent, living in Britain, David Szalay, whose All That Man Is, was shortlisted for the 2016 Booker Prize,  now brings Flesh, where 15-year-old István in Hungary, isolated after moving to a new town. His only friend sets him up to lose his virginity, only find himself too awkward with the girl, and both of them then reject him.  Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon become isolated. Under duress, he begins to help his middle-aged married woman neighbour carry her shopping: she is sexual predator who … Continue reading Portrait of masculinity

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The giant Trauma

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The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the 1789 French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they would prove no match for the forces of the lords, who put down the revolt by slaying somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand peasants in just over two … Continue reading The giant Trauma

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The Culture of encounter

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Hope is the first autobiography in history ever to be published by a Pope. Pope Francis, the first Latin American and the first Jesuit to head the Catholic Church, goes where no pontiffs have not dared, originally intended this book to appear only after his death, but the needs of our times and the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope have moved him to make this precious legacy available now. Written over six years, this complete autobiography starts in the early years of the twentieth century, with Pope Francis’s Italian roots and his ancestors’ courageous migration to Latin America, continuing through … Continue reading The Culture of encounter

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How can be broaden our minds

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Academic philosopher, Simon Critchley explores why Mysticism is about existential ecstasy – an experience of heightening one’s senses and self into a sheer feeling of aliveness and provides a fascinating overview of Christianity’s great outliers. Mystical experiences offers us a practical way to open out thoughts and deepen the sense of our lives, whether through a mainstream connection to God or by taking part in mind-altering experiences. Whether so-called “mystical” experiences are felt to be religious, spiritual aesthetic or something else, people have been trying to report, describe, and make sense of this strange kind of ecstasy for a thousand … Continue reading How can be broaden our minds

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Humanity’s deepest desires, fears and hopes

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MacCulloch notes that for the vast majority of people throughout this history, marriage was a “contract between two men” that is between two fathers. And  that “When church weddings did start appearing, patchily, in the fourth century, the Church did not offer them to all the faithful”. Three categories of marriage emerged: the “Glorious ( imperial elite) , the “middle” ( imperial officers), and the “vile” (everyone else), with the vast majority of unions in the last category having no involvement from the Church at all. He rebukes contemporary Christians for asserting that there is a “Christian understanding of marriage” … Continue reading Humanity’s deepest desires, fears and hopes