Book cover of Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, C. 800 1200

Book description

After initial ambivalence about distinctive garb for its ministers, early Christianity developed both liturgical garments and visible markers of clerical status outside church. From the ninth century, moreover, new converts to the faith beyond the Alps developed a highly ornate style of liturgical attire; church vestments were made of precious…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Clothing the Clergy as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

By exploring how their sumptuous ritual vestments were designed, manufactured, and cared for, Maureen Miller shines powerful new light on the key social transformation of the European middle ages - how the clergy emerged as a distinct and dominant order of society in the eleventh and twelfth centuries - and how the process was shaped by their essential, intimate and contradictory relationships with the women who discharged these tasks.  

From R.I.'s list on the real Middle Ages.

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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