Ambrose of Milan’s pastoral project of ‘building up the faith’ (adstruere fidem), evident in his preaching, is exemplified best in his hymns. Relating this project to his suspicions about dialectic, I argue that the hymns aim less to ‘destroy’ through analysis than to ‘construct’ through compelling imagery and a programme of sensitisation. By comparing the presentation of Christ’s miracles in his Expositio on Luke and in his hymn for the Epiphany, ‘Illuminans Altissimus’, I show how Ambrose renders abstract, narrative, and conceptual claims by means of personal, concrete, and actualising exempla that present his congregation with objects for ‘real assent’ (in the words of John Henry Newman). Such an approach distinguishes Ambrose’s hymns from the verse compositions of his Latin-speaking contemporaries, Hilary of Poitiers and Augustine of Hippo.

It is an error to suppose that Latin literature was restricted to a small literate elite; performance before a large public audience (e.g. at a festival or the ludi scaenici) was often the primary form of ‘publication’, prior to the distribution of a written text in a book. Catullus’ poems 62 and 67, both written in dramatic form, were presumably meant for performance; poem 61 is a marriage hymn, sung by two choruses as part of the bride’s procession; poem 63 is a narrative hymn, sung and danced probably at the ludi Megalenses. There are good reasons to believe that poem 64, normally cited as the defining example of an ‘epyllion’ (a genre invented by modern scholarship), was composed as the libretto of an elaborate stage performance. Poems 68a and 68b are entirely separate from each other, addressed to different recipients: 68a is a letter of apology, 68b an elaborate mythic celebration of the poet’s doomed love affair, addressed to Allius but in the hope of reaching a more extensive audience.

The centrality of congregational singing to nonconformist religious practice in Wales since the eighteenth century has afforded hymnody a significant place in scholarly and popular understandings not only of religion in Wales but also of the place of music in Welsh cultural life more broadly. This chapter examines the influence of both the musical practices and repertoire of Welsh nonconformity. Taking the Aber valley in south Wales as a case study, it explores how diverse influences such as industry, demographics, denominational affiliation and theology shaped the development of nonconformist hymnody from the eighteenth century onwards. It considers the extent to which chapels functioned as a focal point for communal activity, and the prominence of music within the activities that took place, especially the cymanfa ganu and revival meetings. In terms of repertoire, it assesses the musical characteristics of a body of tunes that emerged a century or more later than the period in which Welsh hymn writing flourished in the work of Williams Pantycelyn, Ann Griffiths and others. It considers how these tunes and the texts with which they have been paired have influenced perceptions of Welsh musicality and religious identity within and beyond Welsh nonconformity and beyond the borders of Wales.

This section provides the main argument of the book, followed by historical background on the development of doctrine and devotion to the Virgin Mary up to the end of the fifth century and the flourishing of the cult from that period onward. This section is followed by one on literary genre, which attempts to justify the structure and argument of the book as a whole. A section on gender, which takes into account recent approaches to this subject in the Byzantine context, develops a methodology for studying the cult of the Virgin Mary. The Introduction finishes by outlining once again the goal of this study: it is to assess early and middle Byzantine texts on the Byzantine Virgin according to the diverse settings and audiences for which these were intended.

Spiritual training in the Way of Hermes was supposed to culminate in an experience of radical transformation known as rebirth (palingenesis). This process involved a state of mania (divine madness) and an exorcism of daimonic entities, and is analyzed in detail with reference to Corpus Hermeticum XIII.

Having attained rebirth, the pupil’s mind was opened permanently to the universal cosmic consciousness of Gods own imagination. As described in a unique Coptic treatise, s/he could then make a further ascent beyond the cosmos to experience the Ogdoad of universal Life, the Ennead of universal Light, and even glimpse the pēgē, the divine Source of manifestation.

Book X of the Republic does not ban more mimesis than Book III, nor operate with a different concept of mimesis, two claims often made. It surveys the same territory from a higher, more philosophical perspective, illuminating it particularly by reference to the theory of Forms and the psychology of soul parts that were introduced in sections of the Republic subsequent to Book III. Indeed, its arguments are directed to the philosopher, or someone sympathetic to Plato’s philosophy, not to any and every potential reader. Where they go beyond Book III in scope of what is banned is in pronouncing an anathema upon any poetry oriented towards pleasure rather than to what is beneficial, or upon what Socrates refers to as ‘the honeyed Muse’ – leaving only hymns to the gods and encomia of exemplary, heroic citizens. We endanger our souls and our grip on truth if, in watching tragic drama, we allow ourselves to enjoy grieving over suffering, and to some extent to believe, against our better judgment, that ups and downs of fortune are much more significant than they really are. Book X speaks to us from the viewpoint of eternity, from a position of deep spiritual elitism.

For Gregory of Nazianzus, then, Christmas Day is to be experienced as a celebration of the history of the universe and as a living recognition of the transformative epiphany of Jesus Christ, an epiphany that changes how time is lived and perceived by the Christian faithful. Gregory wants to redefine how time is counted, recounted, experienced. Ambrose of Milan at around the same time, over in the West, is rather more modest in his vision. At least at first sight. His hymns are designedly simple and easily memorable in form, though, like William Blake’s lyrics, they are far from simple in their linguistic depth and significance – and they proved extraordinarily influential in the invention of Christian time as well as of the Christian hymnic tradition. These hymns are to be sung by a congregation, and there are reports not just of people singing lustily and of the hymns spreading across Italy, but also of annoyance by Ambrose’s opponents at their success in inculcating particular doctrinal views in the singers. Hymns, that is, are to work not by a preacher telling his audience what to think but by a congregation’s absorption of ideas through repeated performance, by the pleasure of singing.

This section provides the main argument of the book, followed by historical background on the development of doctrine and devotion to the Virgin Mary up to the end of the fifth century and the flourishing of the cult from that period onward. This section is followed by one on literary genre, which attempts to justify the structure and argument of the book as a whole. A section on gender, which takes into account recent approaches to this subject in the Byzantine context, develops a methodology for studying the cult of the Virgin Mary. The Introduction finishes by outlining once again the goal of this study: it is to assess early and middle Byzantine texts on the Byzantine Virgin according to the diverse settings and audiences for which these were intended.

The tropes of bondage that pervade Emily Dickinson’s lyric poems were significant to contemporary American accounts of the lyric and its relation to individual liberty. Dickinson is often held up as the paradigmatic lyric poet: reclusive, but unbounded in her imagination; pure voice, speaking on the other side of the door. Dickinson herself returns endlessly to tropes of the prison, chains and bonds. At times she even expresses a sadistic delight in imagining the torture of others. The chapter argues that, given the convulsions of her time and her family’s direct political engagements with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Fugitive Slave Act and the Civil War, it is surprising that slavery is almost entirely absent from Dickinson’s poetry. The chapter reflects on the tropes of incarceration or bondage in Dickinson’s poetics, to consider what the missing slave means for the model of lyric that she has come to represent.

The first chapter is concerned with the roles of Hyperborea in hymns and sanctuaries. It brings together fragments of Archaic and Classical material related to the great sanctuaries of Apollo at Didyma, Delphi and Delos and explores the uses of the distant North in the positioning of all three sites. It looks at how the interaction of ritual and commemoration could instrumentalise boreal remoteness to frame divine presence in sanctuaries that claimed a certain centrality. The first, introductory section of that chapter revisits the themes of divine arrival and absence through the lenses of cosmography. The second section is focused on an inscribed bone tablet from the northern Black Sea, an object consecrated to Apollo of Didyma. The third section, focused on the traces of Alcaeus' hymn to Apollo, analyses the poem's story of Apollo's arrival to Delphi from Hyperborea as a cosmographic document. The fourth and final section of the first chapter looks at the Delian record through the traces of Olen's hymn to Eileithyia, and the important cultic presence of the Hyperborean Maidens on the island. With that hymnic material, this chapter aims to explore the challenges and illustrate the significance of studying cosmography through cult and place.

This chapter argues that William Cowper aligned various faiths against atheism and the moral degeneration that, in his mind, atheism necessarily produced. Examining poems from all phases of Cowper’s career – including his 1782 moral satires, the Olney Hymns (1779), The Task (1785), and “The Castaway” (1799; 1803) – I elucidate his belief that, unlike insensible atheists, Christians should extend their sympathy to all parts of God’s creation: to the Indians oppressed by British colonialism, to the poor inhabitants of the British countryside, even to the hares Cowper kept as pets in Olney. The only figure unworthy of such sympathy in Cowper’s thinking was the atheist. Thus, for Cowper, non-Christians from abroad were excusable, and even respectable, as long as they believed in a deity and did their best with the portion of divine light they had been granted. Cowper rejected all faiths but evangelical Christianity as false, yet he aspired to a form of sociability that was available to all theists. Although there were clear limits to Cowper’s ecumenical impulses, they reveal the imaginative multifaith alliances eighteenth-century atheism was capable of engendering.

This essay explores the content and themes of the Homeric Hymns, which celebrate the origins and deeds of the Greek gods and goddesses.

Examines the role of music in religious worship and pastoral care on the fighting fronts. It will show how the singing of hymns was a central feature of several organizations’ work in drawing men towards their religious services and pastoral care, and of how they were deployed in times of great stress. It will show how many of the voluntary-aid organisations combined their own brands of practical Christian philanthropy and pastoral care to servicemen as a ‘counter-attraction’ to keep men away from less salubrious pursuits, as well as to educate and civilize servicemen and labourers fighting for Britain