Exploration of one of the most important aspects of the Christian religion, looking at examples from 312 to the present day.
The signs, wonders, and miracles by which God was believed to communicate with his people on earth provide the focus for this wide-ranging volume. Beginning with a re-consideration of Constantine's vision in 312 and ending with a discussion of the place of miracles in the making of twentieth-century Spanish identity, these essays explore the manifestations of divine power in the conversion of the ancient world to Christianity, in medieval saints' lives and Byzantine hagiography, in the Crusades, and in the early modern and modern periods. A surprising feature of this collection is its demonstration that the miraculous continued in its importance to Christian communities from Reformation Europe forward into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taken together these essays eschew any simple secularisation thesis and highlight the persistence of the role of divine power in how men and women interpreted the world around them. Contributors include W. H. C. Frend, Bernard Hamilton, Michael Goodich, Brenda Bolton, Jaime Lara, Alexandra Walsham, Hartmut Lehmann, and Grant Wacker.
