Volume 1
edited by Pauline Allen, Raymond Canning and Lawrence Cross, with B. Janelle Caiger
Recent Reviews
… This volume is all but encyclopaedic on the theory and practice of early Christian prayer and spirituality, important for the personal libraries of JECS subscribers, and a must for college and university libraries…
Thomas M. Finn, Journal of Early Christian Studies
…all [of the papers] are, to different degrees, worthy of the public domain and rightly brought into it… The best piece in the book is Andrew Louth’s ‘Dogma and spirituality in St Maximus the Confessor’. He raises the question which any, even amateur, reader of Maximus will certainly ask: what connection, if any, is there between the warmly religious Maximus of the early writings on prayer and the later leather-dry defender of Christological dualism? The essay convinces that there is a connection, indeed that Maximus’ dogma and spirituality cohere. It is well worth reading. Three essays are about approaches to prayer: Hilarion Alfeyev on ‘Prayer in St Isaac of Niniveh’ – an excellent summary, bringing out the physical aspects; Robert Gaston on ‘Attention and decorum in early Christian prayer’, dealing with deportment in prayer; and Joan Barclay Lloyd on ‘The depiction of figures from the Hebrew Scriptures in the art of the Roman catacombs’, an illustrated guide to the pictures. These are all good pieces… Wendy Mayer has a good essay on ‘Monasticism at Antioch and Constantinople in the late fourth century: a case of exclusivity or diversity?’, amongst other things correcting Peter Brown’s exaggerations…
Lionel R. Wickham, Journal of Ecclesiastical History
…The articles in this collective volume deal with manifold and intriguing subjects. Since they are not of an overly specialist character, they will hopefully attract wide attention.
H.G. Schipper, Vigiliae Christianae