With Italy at its centre, but encompassing the whole of Renaissance Europe, this evocative history challenges some of the popularly-held views on the Renaissance period. In particular, whilst always acknowledging the brilliance and exhuberance of Renaissance culture, Robin Kirkpatrick draws equal attention to the strangeness and often unresolved tensions that lay beneath the surface of that culture.Insisting on a European rather than purely Italian viewpoint, he embraces Renaissance thinking and culture in all its diversity: from Northern thinkers such as Cusanus, Luther and Calvin, to the...

Dante, Mercy, and the Beauty of the Human Person is a pilgrimage to rediscover the spiritual and humanizing benefit of the Commedia. Treating each cantica of the poem, this volume offers profound meditations on the intertwined themes of memory, prayer, sainthood, the irony of sin, theological and literary aesthetics, and desire, all while consistently reflecting upon the key themes of mercy and beauty in the revelation of the human person within the drama of divine love. ""This thoughtful collection of essays convincingly demonstrates that that the Divine Comedy has something to say to a...