Mary and the Art of Prayer

This book is the product of massive and original scholarship....the book requires an almost total rethinking of how we look on Mary today, this in the light of how medieval Christians understood her. * Homiletic and Pastoral Review * Given both its size and unique methodology, Mary and the Art of Prayer will challenge its readers to reconsider how they interpret the categories of 'medieval', 'imagination' and 'devotion'. -- Rebekah Lamb * Catholic Herald * Mary and the Art of Prayer is packed with information and insight, inviting the reader not just to examine medieval devotion to Mary but to experience that devotion. Medieval Christians had a rich and ancient tradition of devotion to the Lady of the Jerusalem temple. The reader is deftly drawn into the candle-lit Middle Ages, to read the Scriptures as the faithful read them, and to pray with them, not just to examine their practice of prayer. Based on many years of research, Mary and the Art of Prayer offers a huge collection of devotional material, all translated into English. Much of this is little known outside specialist circles. This book is a labor of love, written with real understanding. -- Margaret Barker, author of <i>The Great Angel</i> and <i>The Mother of the Lord</i> Mary and the Art of Prayer brings medieval Marian devotions before the readers' eyes and elucidates the profound meanings in and spiritual preparations for serving the Virgin-Holy Wisdom, Queen of Heaven, and Container of Creation-through observance of her Hours. Rachel Fulton Brown's historical imagination is informed by brilliant scholarship, and her evocative prose rests easily beside citations of beauteous psalms. -- Georgiana Donavin, author of <i>Scribit Mater: Mary and the Language Arts in the Literature of Medieval England</i> Deliberately (and often delightfully) provocative, Rachel Fulton Brown's book takes on Hilda Graef's classic Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion (1963 65) as its sparring partner. Fulton Brown highlights thirteenth-century Mariological writings that Graef treats only briefly and dismissively: Conrad of Saxony's Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis, Richard of Saint-Laurent's De Laudibus Sanctae Mariae, and the famous Mariale Super Missus Est (until 1952, attributed to Albert the Great). Countering Graef's criticisms of these works as questionable, popular, unhealthy, and manifesting signs of decadence, Fulton Brown endeavors mightily to recover them as reflective of the theological vitality of an age deeply inspired by the Wisdom tradition of the Bible and by the prayer life of the faithful. -- Ann Astell, author of <i>Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages</i> This volume is a stunning accomplishment-beautifully written, scholarly, and inspiring. Using medieval sources, it gives a detailed presentation of how the man or woman of the late Middle Ages may have read a book of hours. The resonances and allusions of each word and image are teased out so that the modern reader is able to engage the ancient devotion from, as it were, the inside. Both secular scholars and theologians will find their work enriched by reading Mary and the Art of Prayer. It leads the reader into the world of late medieval religious practice and sets an excellent example of method for future research. -- Sarah Jane Boss, director of the Centre for Marian Studies, author of <i>The Spirit of Mary</i>