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“Spiritual grammar” is a term coined to identify a genre of religious literature that until now has not been recognized as such. The salient characteristic of this genre is that it makes constant references to the grammatical structures of language as a metaphor for how the self is structurally embedded in spiritual reality. In Spiritual Grammar, two medieval religious texts serve as the main examples of this genre, namely, The Grammar of Hearts (Naḥw al-qulūb) by the great Sufi shaykh and Islamic scholar ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī (d. 1074) and Moralized Grammar (Donatus moralizatus) by Christian theologian Jean Gerson (d. 1429), chancellor of the University of Paris. By violating what Jacques Derrida called “the law of genre,” Qushayrī and Gerson used the genre of “spiritual grammar” to engender saintly subjects. Grammar thus provides the two masters with a fresh way of explaining spiritual reality to their pupils and disciplining the souls of their readers. Moreover, comparative theological study of this “queer” genre of religious literature makes possible the construction of a theology of grammar that sees the human person and spiritual reality in new ways. Recent preoccupation with the interconnections among the linguistic and spiritual dimensions of the human condition ensures the relevance of “spiritual grammar” for us today.

Ecclesiastical Knights is a spirituality study of the three military orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcántara in León-Castile from the twelfth to the early fourteenth centuries. It explores the fundamental problem of the military orders: how the seemingly incongruous traditions of knighthood and monasticism were combined into a single way of life. Ecclesiastical Knights rejects the term “warrior monks” as inaccurate and misleading, and proposes the alternative “ecclesiastical knighthood.” According to this model, the military brethren sought to consecrate the exercise of arms in service of the Church by taking religious vows and appropriating those aspects of the monastic tradition that served their mission. While the Templars were the pioneers of this way of life, pious knights in Iberia followed their example, responding to local circumstances and needs, and taking advantage of the support of civil and ecclesiastical powers, to form their own communities. Ecclesiastical Knights offers three perspectives on how the Iberian orders lived: from the standpoint of their internal organization, devotion, and discipline; from the standpoint of their mission to fight, care for the sick, and ransom captives; and from the standpoint of their relations with one another and the friendships they sought to establish through formal pacts of cooperation. The evidence reveals communities of men and women for whom the exercise of charity was the coordinating ideal behind their various activities, and who made a crucial contribution to the ultimate success of Reconquest and crusade in Iberia. Their hybrid way of life made the military orders the greatest of those who fought, and the least of those who prayed, in the European Middle Ages.

This book is a study of the intellectual culture of the women’s monasteries of the Main Valley during the eighth century, with a particular focus on Karlburg and Kitzingen. It is based on an analysis of the manuscripts produced and used by the women religious, beginning in the middle decades of the century, when the arrival of the “Anglo-Saxon missionaries to Germany” (including Boniface of Mainz and his “beloved,” Leoba of Tauberbischofsheim) inaugurated book production in the region. The content of the women’s books was overwhelmingly gender-egalitarian and frequently feminist, that is, resistant to patriarchal ideas. Female intellectuals preferentially selected for reproduction and transmission texts that supported their own aspirations to dignity and authority in the ecclesiastical landscape of the Carolingian realm. Furthermore, the scribe-authors of Karlburg and Kitzingen actively intervened in the texts they transmitted to modify them (when necessary) in a more feminist direction, combined pre-existent texts in innovative ways, and composed a number of entirely new texts in order to produce powerfully feminist visions of Christian history and Christian theology. At Kitzingen, a talented theologian-artist also produced illuminations that enhanced the meaning of the texts, in one case (a crucifixion miniature illustrating the Pauline Epistles) also in a markedly feminist way. Religious Women also provides many glimpses into non-gendered aspects of monastic culture during the eighth century, such as the importance of the practice of devotional penance.

The Jesuit Relations, written by new world Jesuit missionaries from 1632 to 1673 back to their Superior in France, have long been a remarkable source of both historical knowledge and spiritual inspiration. They provide rich information about Jesuit piety and missionary initiatives, Ignatian spirituality, the Old World patrons who financed the venture, women's role as collaborators in the Jesuit project, and the early history of contact between Europeans and Native Americans in what was to become the northeastern United States and Canada. The Jesuits approached the task of converting the native peoples, and the formidable obstacles it implied, in a flexible manner. One of their central values was inculturation, the idea of coming in by their door, to quote a favorite saying of Ignatius, via a creative process of syncretism that blended aspects of native belief with aspects of Christian faith, in order to facilitate understanding and acceptance. The Relations thus abound with examples of the Jesuits' thoughtfully trying to make sense of native- and female-difference, rather than eliding it. The complete text of the Jesuit Relations runs to 73 volumes. This book makes selections from the Relations, some of which have never before appeared in print in English. These selections are chosen for their informative nature and for how they illustrate central tenets of Ignatian spirituality. Rather than provide close translations from 17th-century French that might sound stilted to modern ears, this book offers free translations that provide the substance of the Relations in an idiom immediately accessible to 21st-century readers of English. An introduction sets out the basic history of the Jesuit missions in New France and provides insight into the Ignatian tradition and how it informs the composition of the Relations. The volume is illustrated with early woodcuts, depicting scenes from Ignatius's life, moments in the history of the Jesuit missions, Jesuit efforts to master the native languages, and general devotional scenes.

This book contains fifteen chapters, five of which appear here for the first time, as the most significant of the more than seventy essays the book's author has written over the course of a long career. The author is known for his development of a Thomistic personalism. To be a person, according to Saint Thomas, is to take conscious self-possession of one's own being, to be master of oneself. But our incarnate mode of being human involves living in a body whose life unfolds across time, and is inevitably dispersed across time. If we wish to know fully who we are, we need to assimilate and integrate this dispersal, so that our lives become a coherent story. In addition to the existentialist thought of Etienne Gilson and others, the book draws on the Neo-Platonic dimension of participation. Existence as act and participation has been the central pillars of his metaphysical thought, especially in its unique manifestation in the human person. The chapters here cover a wide range of philosophical, ethical, religious, and aesthetic topics. Through them sounds a very personal voice, one that has inspired generations of students and scholars.