By Steven H. Lonsdale (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) In private and in public life, the ancient Greeks danced to express divine adoration and human festivity. They danced at feasts and choral competitions, at weddings and funerals, in observance of the cycles of both nature and human existence. Formal and informal dances marked the rhythms of life … Continued
By Loring M. Danforth (NHC Fellow, 1986–87) “If the Saint calls you, if you have an open road, then you don’t feel the fire as if it were your enemy,” says one of the participants in the Anastenaria. This compelling work evokes and contrasts two forms of firewalking and religious healing: first, the Anastenaria, a … Continued
Edited by F. S. Naiden (NHC Fellow, 2010–11) and Christopher A. Faraone The interpretation of animal sacrifice, now considered the most important ancient Greek and Roman religious ritual, has long been dominated by the views of Walter Burkert, the late J.-P. Vernant, and Marcel Detienne. No penetrating and general critique of their views has appeared … Continued
By Luis Nicolau Parés (NHC Fellow, 2010–11) This book examines religious practices on the former Slave Coast in West Africa, corresponding to the extent where the Republic of Benin is today. In this small stretch of coast, a significant part of the Africans who arrived in slavery in Brazil, particularly in Bahia, embarked. The work privileges the … Continued
By Caroline Bruzelius (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) Friars transformed the relationship of the church to laymen by taking religion outside to public and domestic spaces. Mendicant commitment to apostolic poverty bound friars to donors in an exchange of donations in return for intercessory prayers and burial: association with friars was believed to reduce the suffering of … Continued
By Richard Seaford (NHC Fellow, 1992–93) This is an exciting and entirely new synthesis, combining anthropology, political and social history, and a close reading of central Greek texts, to account for two of the most significant hallmarks in Homeric epic and Athenian tragedy: the representation of ritual, and codes of reciprocity. Both genres are pervaded … Continued
By Richard C. Trexler (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) In Reliving Golgotha, Richard Trexler brings an important new perspective to religious spectacle in an engrossing exploration of the annual passion play at Iztapalapa, the largest and poorest borough of Mexico City. After tracing the history of European passion theater, Trexler examines the process by which representations of the passion were … Continued
By Edward Muir (NHC Fellow, 1992–93) The comprehensive 2005 study of rituals in early modern Europe argues that between about 1400 and 1700 a revolution in ritual theory took place that utterly transformed concepts about time, the body, and the presence of spiritual forces in the world. Edward Muir draws on extensive historical research to … Continued
By F. S. Naiden (NHC Fellow, 2010–11) Animal sacrifice has been critical to the study of ancient Mediterranean religions since the nineteenth century. Recently, two theories have dominated the subject of sacrifice: the psychological and ethological approach of Walter Burkert and the sociological and cultural approach of Jean-Pierre Vernant and Marcel Detienne. These writers have … Continued
By Leon R. Kass (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) What is the full meaning of eating? What does it reveal about the soul? What is the meaning of human omnivorousness and the myriad customs that refine human eating, transforming animal feeding into human dining? This book examines the phenomena of eating, natural and cultural – from metabolism, … Continued