If, as Chesterton claimed, the devil's greatest triumph was convincing the modern world that he does not exist, Jeffrey Burton Russell means to rob him of his victory. Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages is both a scholarly assessment of the development of diabology in the Middle Ages and an impassioned plea to the 20th century to recognize and acknowledge the existence of real, objective evil. The third in a series of works tracing the history of the devil from his Judeo-Christian roots, it represents a formidable undertaking: the devil's history is integrally related to the problem of evil, which is in turn at the heart of Western religious thought. Each of the volumes on Satan comprises, in essence, a judicious and able tour of Christian theology from the villain's point of view.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Browse our Bookshelf Favorites store for big savings on popular fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and more. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
More About the Author
Customer Reviews
On the plus side this is the historical period where Russell is an expert so you would expect it to be the strongest of the three volumes. On the minus side, in this volume, as with the others, one is constantly uneasy that the historical perspective is being underpinned by the author's own belief in a literal fallen heavenly being, and too often it is not clear whether the focus is medieval society or metaphysics.
Incidentally, anyone buying this book because of the word 'Lucifer' in the title will be disappointed that Russell does not address how the specific concept of 'Lucifer' developed from Origen and Augustine onwards. Neither here, nor in the previous volume 'Satan', does Dr Russell deal in any depth with the process by which a name which for the first 4 centuries of Christianity was used as a title of Christ (because the Latin word Lucifer appears in the Latin Vulgate as Peter's "day star"), to the point that early Christians used to name their children Lucifer (eg Bishop Lucifer of Cagliari), suddenly by the 5th and 6th centuries was being used as a title for a fallen angel (based on Isaiah 14:12 being reapplied).
The best thus far! Don't give up yet, only one books to go!!
- Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics) by John Milton on page 202, page 275, and Back Matter
- The Mystical Theology of St. Dionysius on page 30, page 286, and Back Matter
- Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (Cornell Paperbacks) by Jeffrey Burton Russell in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Back Matter
- Satan: The Early Christian Tradition by Jeffrey Burton Russell in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Back Matter
- The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought (California Studies in the History of Art, 14) by Ruth Mellinkoff on page 192, page 211, and Back Matter
See all 100 books this book cites
- The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code by Lynn Picknett on 4 pages
- Averting Demons: The Protecting Power of Medieval Visual Motifs and Themes by Ruth W. Mellinkoff on 4 pages
- Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World by Jeffrey Burton Russell in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Back Matter
- Folklore, Myths, and Legends by Donna Rosenberg in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance by John Boswell on page 394, page 418, and Back Matter
See all 80 books citing this book
|
|
