Cimke: 17th century

The Book of Saints

During times of division and realignment, God’s Holy Spirit raises up leaders, thinkers, and mentors to guide the body of Christ. This is especially true during the turbulent years of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Book of Saints: The Reforming Era is a rich sampling from the writings of monastics, ministers, and mystics who found themselves in times of unrelenting change but who became godly beacons of light. In these devotional readings, discover priceless insights for the church today from those whose words have been tested for centuries.

Dancing Queen : Marie De Médicis’ Ballets at the Court of Henri IV

Under glittering lights in the Louvre palace, the French court ballets danced by Queen Marie de Médicis prior to Henri IV’s assassination in 1610 attracted thousands of spectators ranging from pickpockets to ambassadors from across Europe. Drawing on newly discovered primary sources as well as theories and methodologies derived from literary studies, political history, musicology, dance studies, and women’s and gender studies, Dancing Queen traces how Marie’s ballets authorized her incipient political authority through innovative verbal and visual imagery, avant-garde musical developments, and ceremonial arrangements of objects and bodies in space.

Satan and Salem : The Witch-Hunt Crisis of 1692

The result of a perfect storm of factors that culminated in a great moral catastrophe, the Salem witch trials of 1692 took a breathtaking toll on the young English colony of Massachusetts. Over 150 people were imprisoned, and nineteen men and women, including a minister, were executed by hanging. The colonial government, which was responsible for initiating the trials, eventually repudiated the entire affair as a great’delusion of the Devil.’In Satan and Salem, Benjamin Ray looks beyond single-factor interpretations to offer a far more nuanced view of why the Salem witch-hunt spiraled out of control. Rather than assigning blame to a single perpetrator, Ray assembles portraits of several major characters, each of whom had complex motives for accusing his or her neighbors.