These essays examine papal teaching authority from Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century to the Dominican School of Salamanca in sixteenth-century Spain. Fr. Ulrich Horst, O.P., an internationally renowned authority in historical theology, describes the various debates between the Dominicans and other orders over papal teaching authority, especially whether there should be limits placed on papal authority and, if so, what they might be. Horst reviews in a brief and masterful fashion the teaching of medieval and Catholic Reformation Dominican theologians about the teaching authority of the...

This book surveys the full panorama of ten centuries of Christian monastic life. It moves from the deserts of Egypt and the Frankish monasteries of early medieval Europe to the religious ruptures of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the reforms of the later Middle Ages. Throughout that story the book balances a rich sense of detail with a broader synthetic view. It presents the history of religious life and its orders as a complex braid woven from multiple strands: individual and community, spirit and institution, rule and custom, church and world. The result is a synthesis that places...