What is a good education? What is it for? To answer these questions, Stratford Caldecott shines a fresh light on the three arts of language, in a marvelous recasting of the Trivium whereby Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric are explored as Remembering, Thinking, and Communicating. These are the foundational steps every student must take towards conversion of heart and mind, so that a Catholic Faith can be lived out in unabashed pursuit of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Beauty in the Word is a unique contribution to bringing these bountiful aspects of the Real back to the center of learning, where they rightfully belong. If your concern is for the true meaning of education for your children, here is the place to begin.

Those responsible for new initiatives in Catholic schooling have a chance to recreate the inner spirit of education and not just its outer frame. They will not easily find a programme more inspirational than the one presented here. - Aidan Nichols

Stratford Caldecott offers a rare combination of intelligence and profound vision, yet combines this with accessibility and luminous transparency. - Catherine Pickstock

In Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga defines play as the central activity in flourishing societies. He identifies five characteristics of play: it is free; it is not ordinary or real life; it is distinct from ordinary life both as to locality and duration; it creates order; it is connected with no material interest, and from it no profit can be gained.

With cross-cultural examples from the humanities, business, and politics, Huizinga examines play in all its diverse guises--as it relates to language, law, war, knowledge, poetry, myth, philosophy, art, and much more. As he writes, Civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play like a baby detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.

Starting with Plato, Huizinga traces the contribution of man the player through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and early modern world. With an eye for our own times he writes: In American politics play] is even more evident. Long before the two-party system had reduced itself to two gigantic teams whose political differences were hardly discernible to an outsider, electioneering in America had developed into a kind of national sport. With its remarkable historical sweep, Homo Ludens defines play for generations to come.

A fascinating account of 'man the player' and the contribution of play to civilization.--Harper's

A writer with a sharp and powerful intelligence, helped by a gift of expression and exposition which is very rare, Huizinga assembles and interprets one of the most fundamental elements of human culture: the instinct for play. Reading this volume, one suddenly discovers how profoundly the achievements in law, science, poverty, war, philosophy, and in the arts, are nourished by the instinct of play.--Roger Caillois, editor of Diogenes

The Elements of Rhetoric offers a concise, comprehensive course in the rules for making your point stick. With copious examples from such masters of language as Cicero, Augustine, Shakespeare, Erasmus, Lincoln, Dickens, Newman, Chesterton, and Lewis, you will discover the 26 rules of persuasion and learn to apply them. Among the Elements you'll find:

--The three modes of persuasion --How to structure an academic essay --How to spot and avoid logical fallacies --How to compose with literary figures --Practical tips for improving speed in composition --A Study Guide with exercises

This is the essential guide to persuasive writing and speaking, in the tradition of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.

Ryan Topping has produced a guide accessible and useful to those of all ages and experience levels, in the classroom, the political setting, and the pulpit.--Joseph R. Wood, Institute of World Politics

This is a splendid introduction to what you need to know to communicate wisely and well.--Quentin Schultze, Calvin College, author of An Essential Guide to Public Speaking

The Elements of Rhetoric is that rarest of rhetorical treats: a playfully serious and seriously playful summa of the art of communication--classical education at its very best --Raymond F. Hain, Providence College

Leading by example, Topping delivers a handy guide for all of us who rely on the art of persuasion. The Elements of Rhetoric is a gem.--Daniel B. Coupland, Hillsdale College, co-author of Well-Ordered Language: The Curious Child's Guide to Grammar

This is the book I have sought for 35 years. For those like me, for whom public speaking and writing is their stock-in-trade, this book is a must-have daily companion.--Michael C. Gilleran, Business & IP Trial Lawyer & Partner, Burns & Levinson, LLP, Boston, MA

This versatile guide can supplement course material from any discipline in order to help students polish presentations and essays.--ANN MARIE KLEIN, Department of Catholic Studies, University of St. Thomas, MN

Ryan N.S. Topping earned a doctorate in Theology from The University of Oxford and is a Fellow of Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts. He has published several books on education and Christian culture.

Christ, the Life of the Soul is a modern spiritual classic. Drawing upon the Scriptures, the Liturgy, and the Doctors of the Church, Blessed Columba Marmion shows us the path towards freedom from self-bondage and the enlargement of our souls - to realize, with St. Paul, that I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. As Blessed Marmion puts it, Christ is the Alpha and Omega of all sanctity.

The author shows how to die to sin and live for God, and the primary sources of our spiritual nourishment in the Eucharist and prayer, until the consummation of our adoption in Christ Jesus in the mystical body of Christ. Perhaps Pope Benedict XV said it best: Read this - it is the pure doctrine of the Church ... and singularly conducive to excite and maintain the flame of Divine love in the soul.

He bequeathed to us an authentic treasury of spiritual teaching for the Church of our time. In his writings he teaches a way of holiness, simple and yet demanding, for all the faithful. - Pope John Paul II

The works of Marmion] are outstanding in the accuracy of their doctrine, the clarity of their style, and the depth and richness of their thought. - Pope Pius XII

Abbot Marmion carries us back to a wider and more wholesome tradition, and many will rise up to bless him, as they find in his teaching new strength, and fresh vigor in their striving after God. - Francis Cardinal Bourne

Born in Ireland in 1858, Blessed Columba Marmion became Abbot of Maredsous Abbey, Belgium, and one of the great spiritual masters of the 20th century. His conferences and books have influenced popes, cardinals, priests, monks, and laity alike.

This Tremendous Lover was first published in 1946 and has since become known as a classic of Catholic spirituality and a heartfelt guide to strengthening our relationship with Christ. Author Dom Eugene Boylan introduces us to a love story between God and man, revealing how various aspects of day-to-day life shed light on Christ's all-consuming love. Boylan guides the reader through a series of meditations on how Christ can be found through prayer, humility, the sacraments, and even such mundane acts as reading or conversation. Ultimately, it is only through the abandonment of our will to the will of God that we are saved, for No one can truly love, except Christ loves in him. No one can be truly loved, except Christ be loved in him.

Hellenic Tantra argues that scholarship on later Platonism has been misled by a dualist worldview. The theurgic Platonists in the school of Iamblichus (4th century CE) did not ascend out of their bodies to be united with the gods-as is the common belief-but allowed the gods to descend into their bodies. By comparing embodied deification in theurgy to Tantric traditions of embodied deification, Gregory Shaw allows us to understand the power and charisma of the last Platonic teachers. Hellenic Tantra reveals a living Platonism that has been hidden from us.

Beyond is a Socratic love story, a Platonic dialogue, a Bhagavad Gita of our times: a philosophical quest folded into an epic exploration of the world. Imagine an encounter with unconfused human existence. What does it mean to fall in love with God? Can the Good only adopt the role of a servant, or can it rise to provide a beacon of light ruling us? How often we are caught in the myopic perspective that the material world is all there is! And yet, mathematics and science themselves point to a greater, all-embracing, unchanging reality. This insight suffices to move past selfishness and advance humanity to the next level. Beyond dismantles the artificial borders that have for too long separated genres: here, science confronts philosophy, mathematics engages religion, poetry brings nonfiction to life, time meets infinity. Beyond is sui generis.

Within God is waiting for us as a Lover and a Beloved

Within is a poetic symphony in seven movements. Bridging science, philosophy, and religion, it examines such questions as: Does God exist? What is God? Does mathematics bring us to God? Does evolution bring us to God? In dialogue form, it discusses philosophical ideas drawn from Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, and Leibniz, and also celebrates the great Carmelite Doctors Thérèse of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross. The story unfolds in a limitless library surrounded by a garden of Forms. We encounter a blind librarian, an ocean of Truth, and a cathedral of Infinity. Rising ever higher, the garden scales hills and mountain ranges. The mystery of the library and what it signifies permeates all seven movements. Only at the end will we find a resolution.

Hellenic Tantra argues that scholarship on later Platonism has been misled by a dualist worldview. The theurgic Platonists in the school of Iamblichus (4^th century CE) did not ascend out of their bodies to be united with the gods-as is the common belief-but allowed the gods to descend into their bodies. By comparing embodied deification in theurgy to Tantric traditions of embodied deification, Gregory Shaw allows us to understand the power and charisma of the last Platonic teachers. Hellenic Tantra reveals a living Platonism that has been hidden from us.

Generations of devout Catholics, including many learned theologians and writers, have derived great spiritual benefits from a careful reading of the private revelations here compiled, those of Ven. Anne Catherine Emmerich and Ven. Mary of Agreda, primarily, along with those of St. Bridget of Sweden and St. Elizabeth of Schoenau. From the birth of Mary to her Coronation in Heaven, this book provides the reader with remarkable insights into the life of Our Lady, and an unmatched depth of understanding of the Holy Family.

What is also shown with utmost clarity is that Mary is a model of the interior life, and an example of perfect submission to the will of God. As we read, writes Dom Prosper Gueranger, our heart slowly takes fire, our soul feels desires for virtue which it had not hitherto experienced, the mysteries of faith appear more luminous to us, bit by bit the world and its hopes vanish, and the longing for the good things of Heaven, which seemed to have been dozing within us, awakens with new fervor.

Theurgy and the Soul is a study of Iamblichus of Syria (ca. 240-325), whose teachings set the final form of pagan spirituality prior to the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Gregory Shaw focuses on the theory and practice of theurgy, a term meaning divine action, the most controversial and significant aspect of Iamblichus's Platonism. Unlike previous Platonists, who stressed the elevated status of the human soul, Iamblichus taught that the soul descends completely into the body and requires the performance of theurgic rites--revealed by the gods--to unite the soul with the One.

Iamblichus was a seminal Platonic philosopher whose views on the soul and the importance of ritual profoundly influenced subsequent thinkers such as Proclus, Damascius, and Dionysius the Areopagite. Iamblichus's vision of a hierarchical cosmos united by divine ritual became the dominant worldview for the entire medieval world, and played an important role in the Renaissance Platonism of Marsilio Ficino. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that he expected a reading of Iamblichus to cause a revival in the churches. Yet, until recently, modern scholars have dismissed him, seeing theurgy as ritual magic or an attempt to manipulate the gods. Shaw, however, shows that theurgy was a subtle and intellectually sophisticated attempt to apply Platonic and Pythagorean teachings to the full expression of human existence in the material world. This new edition includes a foreword by John Milbank and Aaron Riches showing the Christian sacramental implications of Iamblichean theurgy, and a new preface from the author.

Theurgy and the Soul remains the one essential work not only on the mysterious yet influential figure of Iamblichus, but also on the emergence of religious or theurgical Neoplatonism. Shaw presents the reasoning and classical pedigree behind the sometimes obscure doctrines and practices belonging to this often misunderstood school of thought. His analysis reveals it as a dynamic and distinct form of philosophy in its own right, and not the last gasp of Hellenism before the onset of the Middle Ages. --L. MICHAEL HARRINGTON, author of Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism

Gregory Shaw's Theurgy and the Soul is the essential guide for those seeking entry to the experiential dimension of late Neoplatonism. The book is also philosophically sound, but its primary importance lies in bringing alive for sympathetic readers the symbolic and imaginal realities that animated the spiritual practices of Iamblichus and his followers. It reveals Late Antique Platonists clearly as mystical existentialists whose teachings are just as vital now as they were in antiquity. --JOHN BUSSANICH, author of The One and Its Relation to Intellect in Plotinus

This work, the third panel of a triptych dedicated by the author to the notion of illness derived from the patristic and hagiographic texts of the Christian East from the first to the fourteenth centuries, makes an essential contribution to the history of mental illnesses and their therapies in a domain very little studied until now. Confronted by the numerous problems still posed today in understanding these illnesses, their treatment, and their relationship to those who are sick, he shows the importance offered for reflection and current practice by early Christian thought and experience. After indicating how the Fathers understood the psyche and its relationship with body and spirit, the author gives a detailed analysis of the different causes they attribute to mental illness and the various treatments recommended. At the same time he shows how, relying on fundamental Christian values, they manifest a constant solicitude and respect for the sick, and how they are at pains to integrate them into community life and have them participate in their own healing, foreshadowing in this way the needs and aspirations of our own time. The last part discloses the deep significance of one of the strangest and most fascinating forms of asceticism the Christian East has known: 'folly for the sake of Christ', a madness feigned with the goal of attaining a high degree of humility, but also a way well-suited, through a close experience of their condition, to help those who are often among, today as in the past, the most destitute. Jean-Claude Larchet is docteur d s lettres et sciences humaines, docteur en th ologie, and docteur d' tat en philosophie. The author of Th rapeutique des maladies spirituelles (Paris: Editions de l'Ancre, 1991) and The Theology of Illness (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2002), he is a specialist in questions of health, sickness, and healing. He is today one of the foremost St Maximus the Confessor specialists.

Thomas Traherne (c. 1636-1674) was an English poet, clergyman, theologian, and religious writer. The present volume is his best known work, first published in 1908 after having been rediscovered in manuscript ten years earlier. Perhaps more than any spiritual writer of his age, Traherne is profoundly cognizant of the Glory of the Lord as it abides in Creation. His writing conveys an ardent, almost childlike love of God, and is compared to similar themes in the works of later poets William Blake, Walt Whitman, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. More than this, he frequently expresses his love for the natural world in a way that anticipates by two centuries the Romantic movement. In Traherne's understanding, sin manifests itself primarily as the result of human ingratitude--in turn a result of not properly beholding the Creation--and offers something far more healthy and far more biblical: the gift of transfigured vision. The clandestine Gnosticism that has haunted Christianity since the Apostolic Age--that which whispers the Creation is not our real home--finds no place in Traherne's theology. The cumulative effect of Traherne's work is to convince the reader that the kingdom of heaven is within you. That is, felicity appears when we learn to see the world as it is, as God sees it.Centuries is probably one of Traherne's final works. The name Centuries is not one of his devising, for that title was added to the manuscript following its discovery in 1896-97. Written in five groupings of one hundred relatively brief meditations each, the Centuries are messages of spiritual direction in the tradition of cura animarum, which has long precedent in Christian spirituality going back at least to Evagrios Ponticos (c. 346-399) and Maximos the Confessor (c. 580-662.

The Christian liturgy-and the Roman liturgy in particular-developed and thrived within a tradition of commentary and meditation that was fundamental for its understanding, running parallel with the same way of approaching Scripture. The rationalist influences that led to the decline and eventual rejection of the mystical or spiritual senses of Scripture in favor of a narrowly-conceived literal sense led to a narrowing of liturgy as well, which was reduced to its material parts and their various functions. While in recent decades the importance of the spiritual sense of Scripture has been reclaimed, its liturgical equivalent remains in shadow. The present book addresses this lacuna with an easy-to-understand summary of the traditional approach to the forest of symbols contained in the Roman Mass.

Beowulf is the product of a profoundly religious imagination, but the significance of the poem's Christianity has been downplayed or denied altogether. The Word-Hoard Beowulf is the first translation and popular commentary to take seriously the religious dimension of this venerable text. While generations of students know that Beowulf represents a confluence of Christianity and paganism, this version-informed by J. R. R. Tolkien's theory of language as the repository of myth-opens the hood to track the poem's inner religious workings. It brings to light the essential Old English vocabulary, incorporating into the translation the divine titles used for God, specific names for evil and nonhuman creatures, and the precise language employed for providence and fate, along with terminology for kinship and heroism. Such features are not found in any other modern English translation, including Tolkien's, whose text was never intended for publication. The Word-Hoard Beowulf draws upon Tolkien's ideas and commentaries, however, to render a poem whose metaphysical vision takes front and center, delivering a richly restorative version of this early medieval masterpiece. The text is preceded by an introduction detailing the poem's religious motivations and cultural context, and is accompanied by an expansive commentary. In short, this version allows readers to perceive precisely how in Beowulf (as Tolkien puts it) the new Scripture and the old tradition touched and ignited to produce the earliest English epic.

In The Middle Ages, Dorothy Mills lets medieval chroniclers tell their own tales; poets and troubadours, minstrels and wandering scholars sing their own songs; and serfs describe their hard lot. She combines interesting source material with a scholarly interpretation of important events and of those features that characterized all countries during the Middle Ages: the Church; monks and friars and pilgrims; feudalism and chivalry; the manors and towns; Crusades; students wandering in search of learning; science and magic; poetry and drama; arts and crafts. Dorothy Mills had an uncanny and unique ability to write history that is interesting and at the same time based on sound scholarship. Her direct, engaging approach is valued increasingly by the many parents in our day who are looking for reliable materials for homeschooling or home study, as well as by many private school educators.

Angelico Press has undertaken to reprint the highly-prized six volumes of her historical works as part of its effort to offer texts ideally suited to the needs of a new generation of teachers and students. In a world where the quality of education has so deteriorated, may the reissue of this wonderful historical series shine as a beacon to a new generation of young (and not so young) scholars