Author: PAXTON, Frederick S.
Title: Christianizing Death. The creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe
Description: Cornell Univerisity Press 1996 In-8°, XIV, 229 pp. Paperback copy. As good as new. ¶ "In this insightful book, Frederick S. Paxton has traced the development of the rituals for the sick, the dying, and the dead in Christianity from their origins in the fourth century through their decisive reorganization in the Carolingian ecclesiastical reform. . . . Few books have so successfully conveyed the concrete nature of the link that existed in the minds of medieval Christians between the kingdom of heaven and that of this world. Paxton traces the replacement, in deathbed rituals, of the original Roman focus on the fate of the soul with Germanic and Celtic concerns with the needs of the dying person. . . . [He] has succeeded in composing an account of these ritual developments that should prove to be standard. In his insistence on the importance of the social historical context . . . he has also provided a model treatment for the history of religious practice." - American Historical Review

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