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Approaching “Lived Religion” from Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages

Fragments of Experience

Approaching “Lived Religion” from Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages cover

Approaching “Lived Religion” from Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages

Fragments of Experience

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Pre-order. Available 15 Oct 2026
£61.20 RRP £76.50 Website price saving £15.30 (20%)

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Description

This edited volume brings together renowned specialists from History, Medieval Studies, Religious Studies, Archaeology and Art History to critically examine the topic of religious experience and so-called “lived religion” from Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages. With papers on Judaism, Christianity and Islam in this period, the volume is the first of its kind to consider this question in the early medieval era from a comparative perspective, drawing from a wide variety of theoretical literatures and multiple approaches, including performance theory, history of emotions, eco-criticism, queer phenomenology, history of experience and new materialism culture, to name just a few.

Recovering a historical community's religious experiences is a delicate, oftentimes difficult task. This is particularly true of religious experiences from Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages (c. 300–1100 C.E.), where the number and quality of sources for religious communities increase (compared to classical antiquity) yet have not reached the fevered pitch of the so-called High Middle Ages.

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

1: Introduction, or, Framing Our “Fragments”, Lauren Mancia and Brian P. Sowers

Unit One: Methods
2: You Had to Be There: Approaching Medieval Monastic Religious Experience Through the Lens of Twentieth-Century Performance Art, Lauren Mancia
3: Lived Religion as Material Religion, David Morgan
4: The Gardens of Hermits, Virginia Burrus

Unit Two: Material Experiences
5: “Abba has begun to make money from the beer business”: Beer, Lived Religion, and Changing Rabbinic Law for Financial Benefit, Jordan D. Rosenblum
6: 23 Linen Tablecloths: Textile Use in Churches in Egypt, Jennifer Ball
7: Hunting Infidels: Jihad, Crusade, and Sovereignty in Two Ivory Caskets from Medieval Iberia, Abigail Krasner Balbale

Unit Three: Communal Experiences
8: Sensing Love and Death: Jews, Cemeteries, and Lived Religion in Late Antiquity, Karen B. Stern
9: The Habits of Prayer of Medieval Religious Women in the Leominster Prayerbook, Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis
10: You Are Where You Eat: An Affective Archaeology of Monastic Refectories, Camille Leon Angelo

Unit Four: Individual Experiences
11: Fakhr al-Din al-Razi on the Varieties of Extraordinary Experiences, Bilal Ibrahim
12: Fragmented Magic and Counter-Magic or Lived Devotion to Saints Justina and Cyprian, Brian P. Sowers
13: The Consolation of Einhard, Andrew J. Romig

Afterword: What Did They Do, What Did They Think, What Did They Feel? An Afterword to Approaching “Lived Religion” from Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages, Amy Hollywood


Notes
Bibliography
Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 15 Oct 2026
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Pages 256
ISBN 9781350569850
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 21 bw illus
Series sera tela: Studies in Late Antique Literature and Its Reception
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Lauren Mancia

Lauren Mancia is Associate Professor of History at…

Anthology Editor

Brian P. Sowers

Brian P. Sowers is Associate Professor of Classics…

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