Cities of God

The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325

By: Augustine Thompson, O.P.

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Paperback | 15 March 2005

At a Glance

Paperback
520 Pages

Edition Type
New edition

Dimensions(cm)
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.5

Paperback

$114.75

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We know much about the Italian city states&;the &;communes&;&;of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But historians have focused on their political accomplishments to the exclusion of their religious life, going so far as to call them &;purely secular contrivances.&; When religion is considered, the subjects are usually saints, heretics, theologians, and religious leaders, thereby ignoring the vast majority of those who lived in the communes. In Cities of God, Augustine Thompson gives a voice to the forgotten majority&;orthodox lay people and those who ministered to them.

Thompson positions the Italian republics in sacred space and time. He maps their religious geography as it was expressed through political and voluntary associations, ecclesiastical and civil structures, common ritual life, lay saints, and miracle-working shrines. He takes the reader through the rituals and celebrations of the communal year, the people&;s corporate and private experience of God, and the &;liturgy&; of death and remembrance. In the process he challenges a host of stereotypes about &;orthodox&; medieval religion, the Italian city-states, and the role of new religious movements in the world of Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante.

Cities of God is bold, revisionist history in the tradition of Eamon Duffy&;s Stripping of the Altars. Drawing on a wide repertoire of ecclesiastical and secular sources, from city statutes and chronicles to saints&; lives and architecture, Thompson recaptures the religious origins and texture of the Italian republics and allows their inhabitants a spiritual voice that we have never heard before.

Industry Reviews

"Augustine Thompson's Cities of God is a masterful introduction to the vibrant religious culture of the Italian republics in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries." - F. Thomas Luongo, The Medieval Review "This brilliant, innovative, challenging, and often surprising book lays out every conceivable aspect of the religious lives of citizens of the medieval Italian commune. It is also a fascinating exposition of the unexpected ways in which civic communes of central and northern Italy from the late twelfth to the early fourteenth century were indeed 'Cities of God.'" - William Bowsky, History: Reviews of New Books"

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