In this dissertation I study the composition and reception of the Acts of Paul. Scholars often work on the assumption that the Acts of Paul was composed as a whole in the mid- to late second century, and on the basis of this assumption, a diverse group of manuscripts and traditions has been attributed to the Acts of Paul and its hypothetical reconstruction. To critique this practice, I study the traditions attributed to the Acts of Paul, using comparative and historical-critical arguments to identify and evaluate its discreet units. I argue that the manuscripts attributed to the Acts of Paul, rather than providing partial attestation to an early whole, may be better explained as evidence that various compositions and collections occurred under the title "Acts of Paul." / The argument has two parts. In the first part, I analyze traditions that circulated both independently and in at least one of the manuscripts with the title "Acts of Paul," considering each tradition separately: the Martyrdom of Paul in chapter 1, 3 Corinthians in chapter 2, and the Acts of Paul and Thekla in chapter 3. Among other methods, I use comparison with different genres to highlight each text's particularities. The function of these chapters is to exhibit the diverse and composite character of Acts of Paul. / The second part discusses attestation to the Acts of Paul. Chapter 4 discusses the earliest manuscripts that use the title " Acts of Paul," introducing additional acts and reconsidering the texts from chapters 1-3. Then chapter 5 asks how the earliest references to the Acts of Paul relate to what may otherwise be inferred from the extant manuscripts. I conclude that at least three distinct narrative sequences used the title "Acts of Paul" and that collections of "Acts of Paul" varied geographically and chronologically.

My dissertation examines the Franciscan engagement with medicinal alchemy between 1250 and 1360. I investigate the works of three generations of Franciscan alchemical and apocalyptic authors: Roger Bacon (ca. 1214/20--ca. 1292), Vitalis of Furno (1260--1327), and John of Rupescissa (ca. 1300--ca. 1366). Working across the disciplines of religious studies and the history of science, I demonstrate that the material process of alchemy inflected Christian conceptions of apocalypse, resurrection, and prophecy. / Radical apocalypticism and religious alchemy share a defining characteristic. Both are concerned with manifesting spiritual truth on the physical plane. In the case of the Apocalypse, evil is neither an idea nor a concept, rather it is personified by Antichrist and his followers. The New Jerusalem was not merely a vehicle for spiritual reflection; it was a promise to the elect. Therefore, those who will be resurrected in body and inhabit the New Jerusalem will manifest heaven writ on earth. Alchemy represented an even more present possibility of literally distilling a heavenly reality. The alchemist's theoretical ability to create a post-resurrection body or to use the substance of heaven to cure every ailment, drive away demons, and bestow courage on enemies of Antichrist not only effaced the separation of heaven and earth, it offered unmediated access to divine power.

Listening to the voices of the American Catholic sister

<p>My dissertation analyzes early Christian representations of Jewish sexuality and explores how early Christian writers attacked opponents by depicting them as subjects of perverse or excessive sexual desires. Beginning with the New Testament, I examine how Paul employed sexual stereotypes to distinguish the community of believers in Christ from the wider Gentile world. In the decades after Paul, Greek writers such as Justin Martyr and the author of the Epistle of Barnabas turned accusations of sexual licentiousness and literalist interpretive practices against the Jews. Origen of Alexandria, moreover, utilized accusations of carnality, fleshliness, and sexual licentiousness to produce Jewish-Christian difference; he drew on dichotomies of "flesh" and "spirit" in Paul's letters to support his argument for the superiority of Christian "spiritual" exegesis over Jewish "carnal" exegesis. Examining the writings of major Christian writers such as Origen and John Chrysostom, I argue that Christian sexual slander against Jews intensified as Christian exegetes endeavored to claim Jewish scripture for Christian use in the third and fourth centuries. My research examines these literary constructions of Jewish sexuality in early Christian writings of Greek Fathers and illuminates how these constructions function in relation to the development of Christian biblical hermeneutics, the formation of Christian practices of self-mastery, and the expansion of Christian imperial power. By exploring how early Christian writers appealed to categories of gender and sexuality to produce Jewish-Christian difference, I aim to contribute to recent scholarship on the variety of strategies by which early Christians negotiated identity and defined Otherness.</p> / Dissertation

This study is an analysis of Zhiyi's interpretation of the concept of "dhyana" in his Shi chanboluomi cidi famen (An Exposition of Methods to Achieve the Stages of Meditative Perfection, hereafter, The Stages of Meditative Perfection). In the studies of Chinese Buddhism, dhyana , translated into Chinese "chan," is commonly associated with the Chan school (Chan zong ) developed in China in the seventh and the eighth century. In Zhiyi's The Stages of Meditative Perfection, however, dhyana is generally understood as the Four Dhyanas. In the "Four Dhyanas" chapter of The Stages of Meditative Perfection, Zhiyi specifically defines dhyana as "zhilin (dhyana factors)" and "gongde tsonglin (an array of meritorious qualities)." The Stages of Meditative Perfection is Zhiyi's systemization of the various dhyana methods practiced by Chinese Buddhists from the second to the sixth centuries A.D. A general sketch of The Stages of Meditative Perfection is made in the first three chapters of this study. In the first chapter I make a brief textual review and discuss some general features of this text. In chapter two, I discuss some of the important terms related to meditation practices used inThe Stages of Meditative Perfection. The third chapter is an analysis of some of Zhiyi's dhyana classification systems that appear in the first five chapters of The Stages of Meditative Perfection , which comprises Zhiyi's theoretical systemization of Dhyana-paramita . Among Zhiyi's discussion of the actual practice of the fifteen dhyana methods discussed in the sixth and seventh chapters of The Stages of Meditative Perfection, two dhyana practices, the Four Dhyanas and the Tongming guan (The Contemplation Leading to [Six] Supernormal Powers and [Three Illuminating] Insights) are the most crucial for our understanding of Zhiyi's concept of dhyana. Therefore, these two dhyana practices are selected as the subject of detailed analysis. Four aspects of Zhiyi's interpretation of dhyana will be examined in my analysis: Zhiyi's definitions of dhyana, his concepts of "Mundane Dhyana" and "Supramundane Dhyana," the role of intellect and physiology in the meditative states in Zhiyi's interpretation of dhyana, and Zhiyi's method of synthesizing practice and doctrine in his interpretation of dhyana.

The growth and distribution of the Latter Day Saint Church between 1840 and 1860 is an aspect of Welsh history and geography which has received little attention. Studies of Mormonism in Wales have tended to focus on the general history of the church, or on spirituality and eschatology, with only little reference to the society in which it developed. This study examines Mormonism in Wales as part of a radical Christian movement which arose among the working class of Britain. This movement developed alongside the radical movement in Britain, and is typified by Christian Chartism. Radical Christianity can be characterized as anti-clerical, anti-creedal, Arminian, and, sometimes chiliastic. It was marked by the view that Christianity and communism were compatible, and that Christianity, rather than being a passive means of coping with social conditions, could provide a powerful ideology with which to bolster secular attempts at reform. As a means of establishing the radical nature of Mormonism and the basis of its appeal to a portion of the Welsh proletariat, Mormonism is examined in its American context. The social climate in which its doctrines originated is discussed, with reference to the characteristics of radical Christianity noted above. These include: doctrines concerning the priesthood; salvation; the United Order, which provided the basis of Mormon communism; and the progression of men to godhood. Finally, Mormonism is examined in relation to Nonconformity, to Welsh society in general, and to a growing radical, national identity among the Welsh. The distribution of Mormon congregations is discussed in relation to denominationalism throughout Wales, with the purpose of explaining a primarily urban-industrial distribution, concentrated in the valleys of Monmouthshire and eastern Glamorgan. The thesis concludes with a review of methods of diffusion, followed by a discussion of reasons for Mormonism's decline in the 1850s and 1860s.

This dissertation considers the relationship between religious policy and liberal reform in Italy after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 by examining how the royal and civic administrations in the newly restored kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont grappled with the enforcement of religious policies governing the Jewish corporate community in the 1820s. It argues that modern state formation in Restoration Piedmont was the product of struggles between the state and various corporate interests over the direction and enforcement of Jewish policies designed to expropriate Jewish-owned properties. The failure to implement Jewish policies, including among other laws, prohibitions against property ownership and enforced ghettoization, resulted in as series of legislative debates that eventually culminated in Jewish emancipation by 1848. First, this study considers negotiations between the papacy and the Savoyard state over the forced sale of Jewish-owned property and the secularization of formerly ecclesiastical properties. Related issues discussed include debates surrounding the forced baptism and kidnapping of Jewish children in Genoa, revealing ways in which the church attempted to assert its power in the neo-absolutist state. Second, this dissertation examines processes involved in state-directed ghettoization, demonstrating that "ghetto" policies served as a means to expand Jewish real estate investment in Piedmont rather than confine and restrict Jewish business activities. Jewish family firms emerge as allies of the state as revealed in a case study of the Jewish silk manufacturing firm of David Levi e figli. Evidence relating to the study Jewish-Christian relations in Piedmont include debates over the hiring of female Christian servants in the ghetto and Christian tenants leasing from Jewish landlords suggest that the revival of ancien regime Jewish laws were inapplicable. In the end, by exploring specific patterns within the Jewish legal appeal process and debates that ensued, these research findings provide a new way of modelling the constitutional and institutional transformations that emerged in the Savoyard state as it struggled to establish hegemony in the decades following French Imperial rule.

This dissertation analyzes the manuscripts and incunabula of the Processus Sathane, a fourteenth-century text frequently attributed to the famed Italian jurist, Bartolo of Sassoferrato, which portrays Mary as humanity's advocate before the court of Christ, defending humankind against Satan's lawsuit to recover possession of the human species. It concludes that the Urtext is not the version most popular in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but an older version, which dates to the first half of the fourteenth century and was itself translated into low-Norman verse in the mid-fourteenth century; and that the text usually attributed to Bartolo is a fifteenth-century redaction. This work then examines why the original Processus Sathane may have been revised, examining both precursors and progeny of the text to demonstrate how its imagery is part of a larger tendency for metaphor to reify, by charting the transposition of this trope from theological type to legal exemplar to popular exempla. In particular, this dissertation reviews the theological background pertinent to the use of Satan's suit as a vehicle for discussing divine justice and mercy in the redemption, and discusses two direct predecessors of the Processus Sathane. It then provides an extended precis of the Processus Sathane itself, analyzing how the image of Satan's suit, reappropriated by the legal profession, serves the classroom as a sample of courtroom technique; but concludes that the Processus, to make legal sense, necessarily presupposes that humanity is sui juris and the possession neither of Satan nor Christ. It proceeds to locate the text in the history of European drama and comic literature, advancing reasons for the popularity outside theological and legal circles of the text and Mary's breast-baring forensic antics. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of why the Processus and its progeny ultimately lost popularity or were suppressed; and why the vivid imagery was discarded, though like metaphor generally, it survived through reappropriation in new guises.

My dissertation is a compilation, contextualization, and analysis of thirty-five Stuart women's diaries. My introduction clarifies differences between Puritan and Anglican diaries, provides an overview of the roles of women in the diarist movement, and considers the benefits and consequences of participation in this movement. I also review central issues and texts in relevant scholarship. Chapter one, "The Early Stuart Period," chronicles generic origins of Stuart diaries and examines three lifewriters. "The Civil War and Interregnum" focuses on texts that foreground the horrors of that era, such as aggression by soldiers, spousal arrest, and forced marriage. War diarists deployed God and religion in an attempt to make sense of the chaos and perceived injustice that characterized their wartime experience. "Contexts, Conventions, and Communities" explores the cultural agendas which fueled the diarist movement. I engage with Mary Rich as a model diarist whose self-representation is shaped by clerical mandates and models. During Cromwell's reign, Puritans published diary manuals designed to teach the received method of spiritual journal-keeping, and Rich follows the directions therein. Her texts adhere to sectarian conventions, and she writes in the context of a diary community consisting of clerics, friends, and relatives. "Youth, Marriage, and Motherhood" surveys themes central to diarists writing in the Restoration era. Diarists are outspoken on the topic of marriage, and they are extremely emotive on the subject of their children's deaths. I examine the narrative strategies available to mothers attempting to negotiate their grief within culturally prescribed boundaries. "The Diary Elegy" considers the phenomenon whereby clerics published excerpts from the diaries of deceased Protestants as a means of establishing the piety of these elegized subjects. "Reflections on the Sacred: A Study of Mystical Diaries" situates the journals of the nonconformist Jane Lead and her disciple Ann Bathurst in a mystical tradition. In "The Late Stuart Period," a more secular style of diary gained popularity. However, religious persecution ensured that the spiritual diary--a relatively private form of worship--remained important. My annotated index of diarists includes manuscript and publication details, biographical information, and sample diary entries for each diarist in this study.

My dissertation explores the episcopal dimensions of power as exercised by one of the more polemical figures in Mexico's colonial past, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza. Known to historians as the seventeenth-century bishop-viceroy who challenged the political, economic, and social standing of the Society of Jesus, Palafox also instituted broad ecclesiastical reforms that transformed the local spirituality of Indians and Spaniards into a new Tridentine Catholicism. While I examine the institutional sources of Palafox's episcopal power, namely the decrees of the Council of Trent, I conceive of my dissertation as a cultural history of Church power and authority in the daily lives of Indians and Spaniards in colonial Mexico. Bishop Palafox wielded his crozier, or shepherd's staff, to activate conciliar reforms in the Diocese of Puebla, an exercise that influenced the ways in which the laity experienced the sacramental and the profane. Moreover, I analyze the broad range of cultural changes that illuminate both the extraordinary and routine dimensions of Palafox's pastoral sentiment, such as daily prayer life, episcopal visitation, seminary education, overhauling the material conditions of parish churches, jurisdictional conflicts with the monastic orders and the Society of Jesus, as well as the bishop's efforts to harness the financial and human resources of the diocese to construct the material symbol of his office, the Cathedral of Puebla. Finally, I assess the bishop's capacity to structure the broader political and material contexts of Catholic culture in Mexico.