Monastic Book Production in the Middle Ages

Last updated on: November 7, 2022 at 8:35 am By Barbara O'Brien

Monastic book production in the Middle Ages began in Ireland. This is recorded in the book How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. The book tells the story of how Irish Christian monks preserved much of the knowledge and literature of Greek and Roman antiquity after the fall of Rome, thereby saving civilization. The Irish monks did this by copying every manuscript they could find. They didn’t stop at Bibles. They copied Virgil’s Aeneid and the treatises of Cicero and Plato’s... Read more

A Brief History of Christian Nationalism: Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority

Last updated on: November 3, 2022 at 4:23 pm By Barbara O'Brien

This is a continuation of A Brief History of Christian Nationalism that will look at the pivotal role played by Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority organization he founded. The last post traced how political operatives and interest groups over more than a century have gained support for their right-wing causes by linking them to Christianity. And now we’ve reached a point at which many people associate Christianity with right-wing politics. The Christian nationalist movement is the fruit of that... Read more

A Brief History of Christian Nationalism: From the Founders to the Cold War

Last updated on: November 3, 2022 at 11:46 am By Barbara O'Brien

Christian nationalism is much in the news these days, at least in the United States. It may be in other places as well. What is Christian nationalism? Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, co-authors of the book Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2020), define Christian nationalism this way: [W]e mean “Christian nationalism” to describe an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of American civil life with a particular type of Christian... Read more

Presentism in Religious History

Last updated on: October 23, 2022 at 3:13 pm By Barbara O'Brien

Watch out for presentism in religious history. “Presentism” in history is judging the past by the standards of the present. Presentism is criticizing historical figures and events in the light of current knowledge and moral values. It can also refer to cherry picking history to make points about current issues. Presentism gets in the way of understanding history objectively, historians say, although they often disagree about what precisely constitutes presentism. Also, I suspect that presentism alone isn’t the problem. It... Read more

The Evolution of Witches

Last updated on: October 19, 2022 at 10:43 pm By Barbara O'Brien

The last post was on the history of witches and how the European witch was mostly an invention of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Now let’s look more closely at the evolution of witches, especially the classic Hallowe’en witch, in religion and popular culture. Hallowe’en itself definitely has origins in pre-Christian European paganism. It evolved from a Celtic festival that marked the end of harvest and the beginning of winter — Samhain in Ireland, or Calan Gaeaf in... Read more

A History of Witches

Last updated on: February 9, 2023 at 3:58 pm By Barbara O'Brien

Let’s explore the history of witches, the queens of Hallowe’en. Witches inhabit spaces where religion and folklore overlap. The classic Hallowe’en witch, with her black pointed hat and flying broom, is a European creation. But there are myths from around the world about dangerous women with dark magical powers. This suggests a connection with Jungian archetypes. As Carl Jung explained it, The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure—be it a daemon, a human being, or a process—that constantly recurs... Read more

Publishing Jewish Books in 16th Century Venice

Last updated on: October 16, 2022 at 1:32 pm By Barbara O'Brien

This post tells the story of publishing Jewish books in 16th century Venice. What was likely the first commercial publishing company of books in Hebrew began operation in Venice in 1515, and it produced wonderful editions of Hebrew scriptures, including the first printed Talmud. This is the fourth in a series on how printing technology affected the world’s religions. Johannes Gutenberg built the first printing press in Europe and published the first of his famous Bibles in 1452. What is... Read more

The Impact of Printing on Religion: Printing the Quran

Last updated on: November 5, 2022 at 2:40 pm By Barbara O'Brien

This is the third column in a series that explores how the invention of printing has impacted religion. Part One is about the beginnings of printing technology in China and how this supported the spread of Buddhism. Part Two shows how the introduction of the printing press to Europe made the Reformation possible and changed the way European Christians relate to the Bible. This column will look at the history of printing the Quran. The Quran (also spelled Koran or... Read more

The Printing Press and the Reformation

Last updated on: October 12, 2022 at 11:19 am By Barbara O'Brien

This is the second part of a series on how printing technology changed the course of religious history. To read the first part, about the beginnings of print technology in China and how this impacted Buddhism, see The Impact of Printing on Religion: Buddhism in East Asia. This post focuses on the printing press and the Reformation. The impact of printing on religion in Europe was something like a bomb that utterly changed the religious as well as the political... Read more

The Impact of Printing on Religion: Buddhism in East Asia

Last updated on: October 12, 2022 at 11:17 am By Barbara O'Brien

Religion stumbled along for centuries before the invention of printing technology. Before printing was invented, scriptures had to be copied by hand. Sometimes they were memorized and chanted. But then came printing, and Bibles and sutras and sermons and all manner of religious expression could be easily published and mass distributed. But what was the impact of printing on religion? It varied. In Asia, printing tended to support religion. But elsewhere — especially Europe — the introduction of printing technology... Read more