Interpreting three conversion accounts, Morrison accents the categorical difference between the experience of conversion and written narratives about it. He explains why experience and text can only be related to each other in fictive ways.

The Two Kingdoms treats a major achievement of the Carolingian "Renaissance," Frankish ecclesiology, and the influence of 9th-century ecclesiology upon contemporary political thought. Dr. Morrison focuses particularly on the argument that, in this world, government was divided between the earthly kingdom and the kingdom of the Church.

Originally published in 1964.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions...

Beginning with the conversion of Constantine in 312 and the establishment of the Christian Empire, the book continues through the Middle Ages up to the publication of Gratian's Decretum, the great, systematic book of Church law which transformed the idea of tradition into legal concepts. Throughout this period the hierarchy was called upon to deal with such fundamental questions as the nature of tradition and the extent of its authority, the infallibility of the pope, and the proper role of the laity in defining dogma.

Originally published in 1969.

The Princeton...

Ancient writers distinguished between art and style, arguing that free imitation was a critical strategy that freed artists from servile copying of objects and blind submission to rules of style. In this study Karl F. Morrison explores the far-reaching consequences of this distinction.

Originally published in 1982.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books...

Important trends in contemporary intellectual life celebrate difference, divisiveness, and distinction. Speculative writing increasingly highlights "hermeneutic gaps" between human beings, their histories, and their hopes. In this book Karl Morrison identifies an alternative to this disruption. He explores for the first time the entire legacy of thought revolving around the challenging claim "I am you"--perhaps the most concise possible statement of bonding through empathy. Professor Morrison shows that the hope for thoroughgoing understanding and inclusion in another's world view is...

Karl Morrison discusses historical writing at a turning point in European culture: the so-called Renaissance of the twelfth century. Why do texts considered at that time to be masterpieces seem now to be fragmentary and full of contradictions? Morrison maintains that the answer comes from ideas about art. Viewing histories as artifacts made according to the same aesthetic principles as paintings and theater, he shows that twelfth-century authors and audiences found unity not in what the reason read in a text but in what the imagination read into it: they prized visual over verbal...