In these lively and incisive essays André Vauchez explores the religious beliefs and devotional practices of laypeople in medieval Europe and grapples with some of the most difficult issues in medieval history: the nature of popular devotion, the role of religion in civic life, the sociology of religious attitudes and practices, and the relationship between the intersecting spheres of lay and clerical culture.

Laity in the Middle Ages, The: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices (Professional Services)

History

Vauchez, André

Europe

University of Notre Dame Press

Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti is an interdisciplinary study that explores the role of art within the growth of the cult of civic saints in fourteenth-century Italy. It focuses on three versions of the story of Margherita of Cortona narrated on a panel painting, in her tomb reliefs, and in the extensive fresco cycle that once decorated her burial church and whose design is here attributed to Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. These images present an intriguing contrast with the text of Margherita’s Legenda, compiled by her Franciscan confessor, which primarily portrays the intensity of her spiritual life, her asceticism, and her visions.
The three visual cycles together provide a sequence that demonstrates the changing significance of Margherita for the people of Cortona in the fifty years following her death. The role of that art—predominantly Sienese in workmanship—in shaping medieval perceptions of the saint is also considered. Profuse illustrations, much of them from new photographs specially made for this book, forms integral part of the argument.
Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti introduces an important group of works into the discussion of later medieval art and spirituality and demonstrates the value of visual evidence for our knowledge and understanding of civic religion and religious experience, especially among the laity, in the Italy of the communes.

Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany

Arts & Photography

Cannon, Joanna

History & Criticism

Penn State University Press

First published in France, where it was awarded the Prix Chateaubriand, this masterful new biography of Francis is now available in English

Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Yale University Press

First published in France, where it was awarded the Prix Chateaubriand, this masterful new biography of Francis is now available in English In this towering work, André Vauchez draws on the vast body of scholarship on Francis of Assisi produced over the past forty years as well on as his own expertise in medieval hagiography to tell the most comprehensive and authoritative version of Francis’s life and afterlife published in the past half century. 
After a detailed and yet engaging reconstruction of Francis's life and work, Vauchez focuses on the myriad texts—hagiographies, chronicles, sermons, personal testimonies, etc.—of writers who recorded aspects of Francis's life and movement as they remembered them, and used those remembrances to construct a portrait of Francis relevant to their concerns. We see varying versions of his life reflected in the work of Machiavelli, Luther, Voltaire, German and English romantics, pre-Raphaelites, Italian nationalists, and Mussolini, and discover how peace activists, ecologists, or interreligious dialogists have used his example to promote their various causes. Particularly noteworthy is the attention Vauchez pays to Francis’s own writings, which strangely enough have been largely overlooked by later interpreters.
The product of a lifetime of study, this book reveals a historian at the height of his powers.

Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) has been a doctor of the church since 1970. History recalls that she was outspoken, as well as being a mystic, visionary, and prophet. This is a portrait of a driven women who never ceased giving her life for her faith and the well being of her fellow man. What results is a real life portrait of a woman who experienced monumental crises such as the black plague, the Hundred Year War, internecine fighting in Italy, and papal exile in Avignon. This tertiary Dominican, who did not know how to read or write, became the confidant and critic of the powerful: princes, kings, bishops, and popes.

Catherine of Siena: A Life of Passion and Purpose

Paulist Press

Spirituality of the Medieval West

Reference

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Cistercian Publications

Defining spirituality as 'the dynamic unity between the content of a faith and the way in which it is lived by historically determined human beings', Vauchez steps outside the clerical world usually studied to trace the religious mentality of the laity, the ordinary and often illiterate majority of Christians.

The Spirituality of the Medival West: The Eighth to the Twelfth Century (Cistercian Studies Series) (Volume 145)

L'Ogre historien: Autour de Jacques Le Goff

Literature & Fiction

COLLECTIFS

Augé, Marc

Geremek, Bronisław

Boureau, Alain

PASTOUREAU, Michel

Marin, Louis

SCHMITT, Jean-Claude

Revel, Jacques

Baschet, Jérôme

Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane

Pomian, Krzysztof

Nora, Pierre

Toubert, Pierre

Polo de Beaulieu, Marie Anne

Fabre, Daniel

Guerreau, Alain

Berlioz, Jacques

Bonne, Jean-Claude

Dumayet, Pierre

Genre Fiction

Gallimard]

François d'Assise

FAYARD

APOGEE DE LA PAPAUTE, EXPANSION CHRETIENNE

World

MAME DESCLEE

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vauchez, André. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Vauchez, André