The Enthusiast by Jon M. Sweeney

The Enthusiast: How the Best Friend of Francis of Assisi Almost Destroyed What He Started.  The best friend in the title is Elias of Cortona, who was in from the start of the Franciscan movement, an attempt to bring the church back to the people and to the poverty of Christ, to make religious figures more humble and to have them live in Christ's poor footsteps.

This is a biography of St. Francis of Assisi "through the lens of the relationship that most consoled him", with Brother Elias of Cortona.  Elias is called "Francis's friend, confidant, and source of strength."  Elias often played the role of social buffer for iconoclast Francis, and many other traits of the men melded well so that Elias could be called Francis's soul mate.

The reader gets a front row seat for the conflict in the real medieval world between an idealist and a realist, Francis the idealist, Elias the realist.  Today's pilgrims to Assisi know mainly the monuments created by the realist to honor the idealist, even if the basilicas in Assisi are the last things Francis would have wanted built.

Elias could envision the future for Assisi as "the world's pilgrimage destination" to honor the "greatest saint since the apostles".  The first basilica was designed by Elias, and built under his supervision so he could do something special for his late friend, Francis:  "make his name great on earth, as it is now in heaven".

The author set out to show the "complexities of a relationship between two men and shows how it changed their world...how idealism can be undone by the enthusiasm of one devoted follower."  An understanding of fame and the growth of a business along with human psychology informs the author's work.

While a visionary, charismatic person can start a revolution, it is the strong, practical administrator with a sound, realistic vision who guides a revolution through to the established phase.  As a new venture grows, the founder is often pushed aside for a new leader to run the show during the consolidation phase.  The author shows that that applied to Francis's movement, and Elias was the leader who replaced him.

But when a revolution has to do with morality and faith, as in the case of St. Francis's new, modest religious orders, the risk is that the needs of politics and secular society will undermine the original intent of a movement.  In many ways that did happen, and Elias repented of that later in life, and of his own vanity, greed and self-importance.

The reader learns along the way of Francis's childhood and some of the history of the era in which he lived.  Francis's struggle to found an order of poverello brothers, poor brothers living as Christ preached, not as the contemporary church lived, in luxury, is detailed.  This is Francis's story told with a greater focus on the people around him.

The author uses some conjecture and invents dialog to tell his story, attempting to humanize the caricatures that have crept into the history of Francis.  The reader is reminded that real historical people surrounded Francis as he built his movement from the ground up.  This book has a literate yet approachable style, with a strong novelistic feeling.  The overall result is very entertaining.

I enjoyed most the clear view of the types of people who are drawn to a charismatic figure.  True believers are there, as are those who see an opportunity for personal advancement.  Sometimes, as in the case of Elias, those people are one and the same.  The reader is treated to an account of how the central focus of a new movement, like St. Francis, can lose his position when his movement becomes bigger than him.

From the book's description:

Popular historian and award-winning author Jon M. Sweeney relates the untold story of St. Francis’s friendship with Elias of Cortona, the man who helped him build the Franciscan movement.  Sweeney uses the complexities of their relationship in a gripping narrative of how their efforts changed the world and how Elias’s enthusiasm betrayed the ideals of his friend.

Few biographies of St. Francis have examined his complicated relationship with close friend Elias of Cortona.  In The Enthusiast, award-winning author and historian Jon M. Sweeney delves into this little-known partnership that defined and then almost destroyed Francis’s ideals.

Blending history and biography, Sweeney reveals how Francis and Elias rebuilt churches, aided lepers, and entertained as “God’s troubadours” to the delight of everyday people who had grown tired of a remote and tumultuous Church.  At the height of their spiritual renaissance, however, Elias became “the devil” to many of the other friars; they believed him to be a traitor to their ideals.

After Francis’s premature death, the movement fractured.  Scorned by most of the Franciscan leadership, Elias followed a path that would leave him a lonely, broken man.  Sweeney shows how Elias’s undoing was rooted in his attempts to honor his old friend.

This is the book's lovely trailer:

 

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

I review other books by the same author on this site:

- The Complete Francis of Assisi

- When St. Francis Saved the Church

And I review a walking guide of Assisi too, that is FREE!: Assisi Walking Adventure Guide

The Bible Doesn't Say That by Joel M. Hoffman

The author, a highly respected biblical scholar, describes in this book "40 Biblical Mistranslations, Misconceptions, and other Misunderstandings". 

Considering the age of the Bible texts, and the complications of translation, and the very foreign cultures that produced the Bible, there are many more than 40 items the author could have addressed in his book.  He's picked the ones that come up most often in modern society.

The author also highlights five reasons only linguistic, history and theology scholars should interpret the Bible, not lay persons; these are also the five reasons there are so many mistaken meanings given to biblical passages:

1. Deep ignorance of biblical and Hebrew history, as well as the history of language and the translations of the Bible.

2. Many believe the results of historical accidents and the popular spread of misinterpretations, assuming they are in the Bible.

3. A cultural gap between the people who wrote the Bible and the people reading it today, especially concerning obscure history and language, and the allegorical stories, numerological flourishes, rhetorical tricks, and the poetry of the Bible being taken literally by some modern readers.

4. Meanings obscured by mistranslations and poetic license by translators.

5. Selective quotation and quoting out of context too often used to misrepresent biblical meanings to further a personal agenda, ignoring the many contradictions in the Bible.

Since I've always understood that the Bible is a book of poetry, allegory, philosophy, religious tracts, and some history dressed up with rhetorical flourishes, this book preaches to the choir in my case.  He tries to warn people to not tale the Bible literally since it was never intended to be taken literally.

The scholarly author's heart and mind are in the right place, considering how many arguments in the public debate stem from religious misinterpretations, but I suspect his prose is too dense, to the point of gibberish at times, for the average lay reader.

One thought continued to run through my head as I waded through the forty cases:  the medieval Church was probably right to ban vernacular translations of the Bible, since the translations have led to such bloody strife based on mistranslations and misinterpretations that continue to this day.

I suspect that the author's attempt to contribute intelligent, reasonable and moderate views into public religious and social debates will only end up in the hands of people open to rational thought and scholarly input, and will not get into the hands of people who cherry-pick from the Bible to support views that are biased and mean.

From the book's description:

The Bible Doesn't Say That explores what the Bible meant before it was misinterpreted over the past 2,000 years.  Acclaimed translator and biblical scholar Dr. Joel M. Hoffman walks the reader through dozens of mistranslations, misconceptions, and other misunderstandings about the Bible.

What does the Bible say about violence?  About the Rapture?  About keeping kosher? About marriage and divorce?  Hoffman provides answers to all of these and more, succinctly explaining how so many pivotal biblical answers came to be misunderstood.

In forty short, straightforward chapters, he covers morality, lifestyle, theology, and biblical imagery.

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

Please visit the author's blog-website.

Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds by Peter Adamson

The subtitle of this book is A History of Philosophy without any gaps, Volume 2.  It is the book form of a podcast available on-line.  In the book you will learn about:

• Hellenistic Philosophy,
• Pagan Philosophy in the Roman Empire, and
• (Judeo) Christian Philosophy in the Roman Empire.

The book is divided into those three parts, but has many overlaps.  Included for eager students are Notes, a Bibliography, an Index (in the print edition) and a Further Reading list.

In this volume one meets the Skeptics, Epicurus, Stoics... all sorts of curious characters, including Plotinus, Augustine and Philo of Alexandria, and even Moses of Old Testament (Torah) fame.  The author tries to engage the reader, often using popular culture references or questions.

"Do you like a nice garden?  Do you enjoy the company of friends?  Do you believe the world is made of tiny particles, which you call atoms?  Do you trust the evidence of your senses?  Do you find politics tiresome, and raise a skeptical eyebrow at those who live in fear of God?  If your answer to these questions is "yes", then you might want to consider becoming an Epicurean."

The religious philosophers were concerned with what all philosophers are concerned with:  ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philology, the mind, and even political philosophy such as how society should best be governed. 

A direct line is drawn from Moses to Plato to Aristotle to the Stoics to Neo-Platonism to Judeo-Christian thought.  All those thinkers stress the need to turn away from the pleasure of the body (our animalistic nature) and turn toward virtue and a faithfulness to God (our divine nature).  One must be aware of both our higher and lower natures, and integrate the two as a whole person, self plus soul.

The author has more books in the works, and plans to cover in his works all 2500 years of western philosophical thought, without any gaps.

• Pre-Socratics
• Plato and Aristotle
• Hellenistic period philosophers
• Roman era thinkers
• Judeo-Christian thinkers
• Ancient philosophies preserved by Muslims, then Christian monks, leading to
• Byzantine and Renaissance thought and philosophy
• The Enlightenment
• Modern and Post-Modern thought and philosophy

The author aims to educate anyone who wants to know about the history of philosophy, through his podcasts, and with the books.  His style is approachable and knowledgeable.  He lightens the text with humor when possible. 

So if you are interested in learning the history of thoughts on how we should live, and what is the nature of man, truth, language and knowledge, this might be a book for you, together with Book 1 which covers Classical Philosophy, namely Plato and Aristotle.

I've read other philosophy books, and attended university lectures on philosophy, so I have some basis of comparison when judging this book.  To me, it reads like a really fun philosophy professor's lecture notes. 

The professor is modern minded, including two subjects professors of history and philosophy often skip when talking about the ancients:  pervasive slavery and the negligible role of women in the paternalistic societies.  I would have like to have seen more mention of the institutional sadism of the societies in which these philosophers lived, another subject often overlooked.

From the book's description:

Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy without any gaps series of podcasts is one of the most ambitious educational works on the web. It aims to do nothing less than take listeners through the entire history of philosophy 'without any gaps'. It assumes no prior knowledge making it ideal for beginners.  This is the second volume to make these witty, and highly accessible, podcasts available in book form.

Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds offers a tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed. From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in a way that is a pleasure to read.

Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed: from the third century BC to the sixth century AD.

He introduces us to Cynics and Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics, emperors and slaves, and traces the development of Christian and Jewish philosophy and of ancient science.  Chapters are devoted to such major figures as Epicurus, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca,Plotinus, and Augustine.  But in keeping with the motto of the series, the story is told without any gaps, providing an in-depth look at less familiar topics that remains suitable for the general reader.  

For instance, there are chapters on the fascinating but relatively obscure Cyrenaic philosophical school, on pagan philosophical figures like Porphyry and Iamblichus, and extensive coverage of the Greek and Latin Christian Fathers who are at best peripheral in most surveys of ancient philosophy.  A major theme of the book is in fact the competition between pagan and Christian philosophy in this period, and the Jewish tradition also appears in the shape of Philo of Alexandria.

Ancient science is also considered, with chapters on ancient medicine and the interaction between philosophy and astronomy.  Considerable attention is paid also to the wider historical context, for instance by looking at the ascetic movement in Christianity and how it drew on ideas from Hellenic philosophy.  

From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the subtle skepticism of Sextus Empiricus, from the irreverent atheism of the Epicureans to the ambitious metaphysical speculation of Neoplatonism, from the ethical teachings of Marcus Aurelius to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in an accessible and entertaining way.

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

You can visit the History of Philosophy website at King's College London to learn more about the podcasts and about Book 1 and future books.

The Lost World of Byzantium by Jonathan Harris

Byzantium is the name we give to the Eastern Roman Empire, but they called themselves Romans.  They carried on the traditions of the Roman Empire until they were defeated after 1000 years (the book spans from 330 to 1453).  The Byzantine Empire was the Christian Roman Empire.  The author offers not a comprehensive history, but:

a personal journey through the long history of Byzantium

He tries to explain how it managed to last as long as it did during very tumultuous times, and why it seemingly disappeared so completely.  The book reads like a one-sided conversation with someone who loves the Byzantine era and know pretty much all there is to know about it.  The author presents some questions and possible answers, some personalities, and some events that stand out.

To appreciate this book, it is best to have a basic grounding in the Byzantine Empire's history.  Think of this book as a text to accompany an advanced seminar at university, after you've taken all the introductory courses.  The writer adds greater detail to the framework of what you already know, fleshing it out, and sharing his enthusiasm for all things Byzantine.  History is storytelling, and this book is full of stories, and characters.

The starting date set for this Byzantium is the inauguration of Constantinople in the year 330, a city ordered constructed by the Roman Emperor Constantine so he could have a monumental base in the east of the empire, to match Rome in the west.  The ending date used is the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.  

So why did the empire last so long?  The author offers lots of examples of how the Christian faith was a unifying and inspiring force in an empire made up of disparate people spread out over many lands.  The Emperor was the chief defender of the faith.  The Emperors also provided for smooth succession from one emperor to the next, something Western Rome rarely managed.

Other things helped, like having many talented leaders and soldiers, the great wealth which helped when bribing bad guys to behave, a magnificent and intimidating capital city that was amazingly defensible, practical plans for organized integration and resettlement of the inevitable migrants to the safe and wealthy empire, and skillful foreign relations which forged friendships and alliances.  

Interestingly, the author points out that the powerful church and the popular holy men and women played the role of a check & balance institution on the Emperor's powerful military and civic administration.  The church leaders checked excesses, provided social services, and even took on various positions in the State when necessary during times of crisis.

The perceptive reader of history will always find in the past, parallels to the present, which is part of the fun of reading histories, and this book is full of those parallels.  The author doesn't bang you over the head with them, but the very fact that he includes certain stories in the book suggests that he understands the parallels very well.  

The beautiful, literate English style of writing makes the long book a reading pleasure, but the sheer volume of stories and eras and events means it is best to take the book slowly.  Battles, betrayals, theological disputes, invasions, truces, and treaties can become monotonous without a break now and then.  I found the middle section of the book less interesting just for that reason:  I should have taken a break from reading but I didn't!   

A rough summary of the book's contents would be to say that it touches on the most active and known leaders:  Constantine, Justinian, Heraclius, Leo III, Constantine V...  And in the book, you'll get good explanations of:

• why the feudal system developed,
• how the trading city-states of the late middle ages and the early Renaissance shaped the Mediterranean,
• how the texts saved over time by the Byzantines fueled the High Renaissance,
• why the Catholic Church split between Orthodox and Church of Rome,
• the continual threat from military leaders to secular leaders,
• why there is always strain between the cities and the heartland, and
• what the heck icons were really about.

One strong message in the book, as in any book about the past, is that we are all bastard peoples created from massive mixing of genes and cultures.  The era of the nation-state has fueled the false nationalistic belief that we form unique peoples and cultures.  This book show that to be utter nonsense.

Another message that comes across is that much of the present world still behaves and reasons as if the early middle ages never ended.  Western policy makers of today would benefit from reading this book so they could better understand the savage so-called reasoning the crazies of today use to justify their massacres, hatreds and utter barbarism.

The third message, that is very timely, is that the Byzantine Empire survived over 1000 years because they were able to integrate outsiders, to reward them for their efforts, and to harness their skills for the society's good.  That is a not-so subtle message to rich countries today that resist migrants, and marginalize them when they do let them enter the countries.

From the book's description:

For more than a millennium, the Byzantine Empire presided over the juncture between East and West, as well as the transition from the classical to the modern world. Jonathan Harris, a leading scholar of Byzantium, eschews the usual run-through of emperors and battles and instead recounts the empire’s extraordinary history by focusing each chronological chapter on an archetypal figure, family, place, or event.

Harris’s action-packed introduction presents a civilization rich in contrasts, combining orthodox Christianity with paganism, and classical Greek learning with Roman power. Frequently assailed by numerous armies—including those of Islam—Byzantium nonetheless survived and even flourished by dint of its somewhat unorthodox foreign policy and its sumptuous art and architecture, which helped to embed a deep sense of Byzantine identity in its people.

Enormously engaging and utilizing a wealth of sources to cover all major aspects of the empire’s social, political, military, religious, cultural, and artistic history, Harris’s study illuminates the very heart of Byzantine civilization and explores its remarkable and lasting influence on its neighbors and on the modern world.

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

If you are really interested in the Byzantine Empire, but don't wish to spend the 20+ hours needed to read this book, or you wish to have a basic grounding before reading this book, here is a 3 hour video documentary about the Byzantine Empire that you can watch at your leisure.

 

New Testament Basics for Catholics by John Bergsma

New Testament Basics for Catholics is an enthusiastic self-study guide written in a colloquial style.  The intent of the book is to give the reader a basis on which to build more learning.  This book is by the same author who produced Bible Basics for Catholics.

This book, New Testament Basics for Catholics, is a teaching guide for a self-guided study course, to use alongside a Bible, with the chapters and verses provided along the way.  Through the course of the book, the author links the Bible texts to Catholic traditions such as:

• The organization of the Church
• Mass
• Prayers
• Religious Orders
• Charity
• Priests and Deacons
• Sacraments 

Because the Bible is not just a religious text, this book is not just a religious course, despite taking a strict Catholic dogmatic line.  The Bible is also literature, history and philosophy.  This book attempts to touch on those points too, to some extent, but I would have enjoyed more of that.

The author has selected this approach to this basic introduction to the New Testament:

I have found that by focusing on just four authors, one can get a fairly good grasp of the New Testament.  Between them, these four authors wrote around 90 percent of the New Testament.  They are Matthew, Luke, Paul, and John.

All the lessons in the book are tied together with a common theme:  Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.  Under that umbrella, the lessons take place, returning to the theme at the end.  The author makes excellent use of memory techniques such as that, together with concise overviews, and working from broad strokes down to details.

Part of the book is a summary of the Old Testament, covering the six major covenants of God with the Jewish people.  This is necessary, since the New Testament accepts Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish prophesy of a Messiah.

God will send a Son of David who will build a better temple and restore the Kingdom of Israel.

The Catholic view is explained, that the Catholic Church, founded by Jesus Christ's disciples, and headed first by Peter, is the imperfect Kingdom of Heaven on earth that will exist until the Final Judgment comes, and that the Popes were given by Jesus, via Peter, the right to determine Catholic dogma.

The book is clearly written for a U.S. American Catholic audience, which was why I found it odd that the author used at times the term Christian in the misnomer sense utilized by U.S. American Protestants to refer only to Protestants, to the inexplicable exclusion of Orthodox and Catholic Christians.  Actually, I found it more than odd.  I found it disappointing.

The author is very knowledgeable but he presents his erudition in a folksy manner, using popular culture references and humor to bring home his meanings.  The humor was not to my taste, but it may lighten the reading for some readers.  I found the inclusion of definitions of words together with a pronunciation guide to be condescending, but, again, some readers may appreciate that. 

See if you like this description from the book of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and Mary, the mother of Jesus:

Elizabeth was a wine, cheese, and 'Grey Poupon' Lady who finds her pregnant teenage "Big Mac" cousin from the north on her doorstep.

I didn't like it.

The beginning of the book seems to use a tone that is non-religious, just presenting the history of the Bible, but that non-religious, scholarly tone disappears at a certain point.

God arranged the circumstances of Jesus's birth...

Then come the arguments that are not specifically about the Bible, but are refutations, using Biblical texts, of points of view of living secular liberal philosophers and conservative Protestant theologians.  I feel those are out of place in this book, which is said to be about the Bible and the Catholic interpretation of it.  Just present that, then let the reader think for himself, is my view.

That is the same reason I dislike the parts of the book that lapse into interpreting the Bible in terms of present day life, which often stretch to fit the author's very dogmatic point of view.  He preaches to the Catholic reader:

We have to relearn what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom.

Jesus did not want to produce 'Cafeteria Catholics', those who pick and choose what they will obey among his teachings...and those of his Church.

While the explanations of the writings of Matthew, Luke, Paul and John are fascinating, I kept wanting to tell the writer to "teach, not preach".  I feel all those preaching bits would be better presented in a separate book that interprets the Bible for modern living, and relates it to the lives of modern Catholics in the United States. 

He could even include in his other book all the arguments from this one about why Protestantism is invalid, arguments which I found out of place in a book meant for Catholic readers, who don't need converting.

The jabs at the legitimacy of Protestant faiths, and other faiths, felt mean-spirited and out of place in this book.  I can only guess that the author's own conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism created the famous convert with extreme conviction, so much so that he chose to validate his decision in this book.

I also don't like when the Biblical scholar author veers from scholasticism into suppositions and pure gut guesses about the history referenced in the Bible.  The author even tries to explain away Biblical discrepancies.  Why?  The Bible was written by many people over much time, then translated into other languages.  It would be odd if there weren't any discrepancies.

He really stretches it when he cites archaeology to support Biblical events with a tone that is deceptively confident when the links are really not that clear-cut.  The parts that seeks to affirm Catholic dogma on issues such as marriage and divorce feel stretched as well, with the author making leaps in logic and interpretation that just don't hold up under greater scrutiny of the Biblical texts. 

He even lectures the reader on how to dress and act in daily life with the reasoning:  "Our lifestyle should encourage our fellow Christians in their faith."  Maybe, but when I read a book that says it will teach me about the New Testament, I don't expect to be told how to dress and behave.

I'll leave you with a list of the seven gifts delivered by the Holy Spirit, in the hope that they will bless all of you who have been kind enough to read to the end of my review:

1. Wisdom
2. Understanding
3. Counsel
4. Fortitude
5. Knowledge
6. Piety
7. Fear of the Lord

From the book's description:

Award-winning author and theology professor John Bergsma follows up his popular Bible Basics for Catholics—which has sold more than 60,000 copies—with a more in-depth look at the New Testament.  Using simple illustrations and the same clear, conversational style that characterized his earlier book, Bergsma introduces four of the most important writers in the New Testament:  Matthew, Luke, Paul, and John.

With humor and simple illustrations, Bergsma focuses on Matthew, Luke, Paul, and John, whose writings comprise about 90 percent of the New Testament.  

The gospel of Matthew, written for Jewish Christians, illuminates the life and teachings of Christ as the long-promised Messiah.

In Luke's gospel, readers will delve into the infancy and Triduum narratives, as well as the Acts of the Apostles and the life of the early Church.

This leads the reader to discover St. Paul and his first and arguably greatest theological treatise:  Romans.

Finally, “the beloved apostle” St. John draws us in to the unsurpassed beauty of the fourth gospel, as well as the most mysterious book of the New Testament:  the book of Revelation.  

A concluding chapter offers suggestions for further study.

Intended as an introductory work for those who are new to scripture study, this New Testament book does not aspire to be a comprehensive guide to all twenty-seven books of the New Testament, but is intended to lay the foundation for a lifetime of scripture reading.

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

If you're interested, here is a lesson by the author that was made to accompany his earlier book about the whole Bible.

Tales of Grace by Luigi Santucci

Reflections on the Joyful Mysteries is the subtitle of Tales of Grace.  This needs some explanation for non-Catholics and many Catholics alike, since it refers to the recitation of the Rosary, which is a series of standard prayers said in a certain order, guided by rosary beads, to help a person meditate to find solace from emotional pain or the discomfort that comes from the repentance of their sins.

As the informative website How to Pray the Rosary states:

The purpose of the Rosary is to help keep in memory certain principal events or mysteries in the history of our salvation, and to thank and praise God for them.

The author wrote this book to represents his meditative imaginings while saying the Rosary and reflecting on five of twenty biblical events Catholics are taught to reflect upon while saying the Rosary.

In his case, the author/narrator thought about the five events that are called the Joyful Mysteries.  The How to Pray the Rosary website has this page with more detail about each of the Joyful Mysteries.  Here is a link to an on-line reference that quotes the Biblical sources for each of the Joyful Mysteries, The Holy Rosary. This site offers rosary prayers in many different languages, along with inspiration and lots of information.

The Joyful Mysteries:

1. The Annunciation
2. The Visitation
3. The Nativity
4. The Presentation
5. The Finding of Jesus at the Temple

The Italian author of this book was also a poet, and his prose often reads like prose poetry written in a stream of consciousness style following the meanderings of his mind while meditating through prayer.  The translation is faithful to the original, keeping the author's fresh, intelligent narrative voice.

Just to be clear, saying the Rosary is a form of meditation through prayer.  During the recitation of the prayers, the supplicant is encouraged to imagine himself in the scene of the mystery or a similar scene, in order to feel closer to the Holy Family.  That is just what the author does in the chapters of Tales of Grace, which are named for the Joyful Mysteries.

The reader of this book can share the author's imaginings as he says the Rosary, and thus get a feeling of greater closeness to the scriptural events.  The reader can also enjoy the author's creative associations linking the past to the present, which offer some intelligent reflections on how we celebrate our faith today.

I have to mention something that makes this 135 page pocket-sized paperback truly special, the 19 evocative full-color prints of icon art by contemporary artist George Kordis.  The icons depict people from the Old and New Testaments, and events from the New Testament, and Mary and Jesus, all with a modern take on classic iconic art form.  Here is one of the images from the book so you can see what I mean:

I enjoyed this intelligent, creative book very much, and I hope the faithful among you might enjoy it too, or consider giving it as a gift to a faithful friend or family member who enjoys imaginative prose.  This very attractive book would make a beautiful gift. 

Below, I give an idea of what's in the book, hoping it will help anyone who reads it, or who is considering reading it, or who is considering giving it as a gift to someone.  The typesetting of the book, published by Paraclete Press, a small publishing house that has a catalog full of exquisite religious texts, is exceptionally attractive.  Here is a sample:

Joyful Mystery #1 - The Annunciation - The angel Gabriel announces to Mary in Mary's home in Nazareth that she will bear Jesus.

The first chapter of Tales of Grace is headed Loreto, which is a town in Italy where the purported House of Mary is located.  I'm talking about the actual house where Mary, the mother of Jesus, grew up, lived in when married and after her son's death, and where the apostles set up a church to say mass after Jesus was Risen and the new faith was born.

It is also the location of the actual Biblical annunciation, for the many faithful who make pilgrimages to it each year.  For more about Santuario Loreto, you can visit their website, but briefly, either archangels brought the house out of the Holy Land which was overrun by Muslims who were destroying many Catholic shrines, or a crusader named Angelos moved the house to keep it safe from destruction.

The narrator, while saying his Rosary and reflecting on the Annunciation, imagines he is at the House of Mary where the annunciation took place, on Easter Sunday taking a tour of the sanctuary.  He imagines that he manages to remain in the house after the tour group leaves, so he can say a Hail Mary prayer alone by the altar that is in the house.

His prayer calls forth an archangel who chides him for forgetting to do his penance after confession that morning.  They agree that the man can say a Hail Mary instead.  The narrator, however, takes a moment to ruminate on what life as an angel must be like.  Then he asks the angel to explain how the House of Mary came to be in Loreto, which the angel does.

I thought the most lovely moment of the ruminations were when the narrator decides that the use in much of the world of the Vatican's year-counting, beginning at the year estimated to be of the year the Christ child was born, is in itself a form of reverence, even if so many people are no longer among the faithful.

...more and more humans forget you (or live as if they have forgotten you), but keep counting the years since your first coming...so you are with us on every page, in every human interaction.

Joyful Mystery #2 - The Visitation - Mary goes to visit her much older cousin Elizabeth who is pregnant with John the Baptist in a town south of Jerusalem, Ein Karim.

The longest chapter in Tales of Grace is the one recounting the narrator's ruminations while saying his Rosary and contemplating Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth before both women have their children.  He manages to place himself in the story in the person of a stable boy who is hired to milk the animals for Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah.

There are some fun Italian references in this chapter such as when the author describes Elizabeth as a béchamel, the sticky white cheese sauce used in many Italian dishes.  Elizabeth is:

...the irreplaceable béchamel that holds together all the neighborhood's "casseroles":  engagements, dressings for the dead, bridal trousseaus, sprained ankles, and so on.

Within this chapter we hear Elizabeth's story of her late pregnancy with a child who will become John the Baptist.  We also hear Zechariah's story of how he doubted the archangel who told him he would be a father, and for his punishment for his disbelief was made mute during the pregnancy.

Mary's holiness among women is stressed in this chapter.  Women in general, too, are praised highly in this chapter, being seen as more faithful than men, and having the force in them to create and nurture life, which the author calls a:

mysterious state of collaboration with the Creator of all beings

There are other lovely turns of phrase in this chapter, one of my favorite being:

their hearts burn like roasted chestnuts

The second half of the chapter is from the point of view of the stable boy, who instinctively worships Mary, who teaches him a lesson about men and women and their tendency for deceit.

Joyful Mystery #3 - The Nativity - The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

The chapter in which the narrator is saying the Rosary and ruminating on the birth of Jesus is the chapter in which the author infuses the most critique, albeit gentle critique, of his fellow Christians.  It is hard to argue with the author when he reflects that we too often celebrate the birth of Jesus by gorging ourselves and giving and expecting expensive gifts.

The creative, highly imaginative satire the author creates is centered on a Christmas banquet attended by a strange assortment of guests who include gluttons from history, the three Magi, and others involved in Jesus's birth, life and death.  Pilot, Harod, and Judas, for example, are there, each with telling details attached to them.

Many at the feast, just like at modern Christmas feasts, don't know what the holiday is about.  The author states, ironically, their view that:

...Jesus Christ is a man who came in the world to let us have a big feast at Christmas.

There is much about the banquet scene that is reminiscent of Absurdist Theatre, which was very popular at the time Tales of Grace was written.  When the stable boy disguises himself as a Roman soldier, he witnesses the banquet, then goes to warn the Holy Family that Harod is about to launch the Massacre of the Innocents.

The absurdist story then merges with the narrator's childhood, reversing back to when he was a baby, and he imagines that he is like the baby Jesus, suckled at the breast of Mary.  He shows in that one swift sequence how Jesus was born as a human child to a human mother, just as the narrator and all of us were.  The difference is that Jesus is also divine, and Mary is holy.

Joyful Mystery #4 - The Presentation - Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to be blessed in the temple in Jerusalem, where they heard a prophesy by Simeon about Jesus's future.

I found this chapter, the briefest, the most poignant.  The protagonist the narrator imagines while saying his Rosary and reflecting on this mystery is a church sacristan, a man who assists the priest in the sacristy to prepare for communal masses and other sacraments, someone you could say is comparable to Simeon.

The man loves churches not just for their communal nature and art.  He values them because they are home to rituals that are salves for our souls, and as such churches are the closest to heaven as we can get on this earth.

The sacristan especially loves the churches of Rome, so many of which are linked to the fathers of the church and the earliest martyrs, giving them extra weight.

...you, churches of Rome, with your breadth reproducing the archetypal breath of God.

The touchingly devout man has a kind heart, which leads to a miraculous encounter in his church at the end of the chapter.

Joyful Mystery #5 - The Finding of Jesus at the Temple - When Jesus was 12 years old, and the Holy Family took their yearly trip to Jerusalem for Passover, Jesus went to discuss theology with the priests in the temple.

The man saying the Rosary contemplates Jesus teaching the rabbis in the temple of Jerusalem, and that leads him to imagine a comparable situation today.

Since one doesn't discuss dogma and church practices in churches these days, the narrator returns to discuss these things with his old professors, all priests, at his Catholic boarding school.

He, like Jesus, is the outsider, the upstart who dares to contradict his elders.  Like Jesus, the narrator presses for a religion that is closer to the people, one stressing the joy of faith rather than the horrors of damnation.  The joys of salvation are matched, the author/narrator stresses, by the joys of being faithful.  He tells the priests:

Grace is about finding more pleasure in avoiding sin than committing it.

The priests are not open to this message, preferring to lament the state of the church and put the blame firmly on the fallen Catholics.  Interestingly, Evangelical Protestants have gained many followers in Latin America just for their stress on joyfulness in their services and their communities.  One could say the author foretold this.

The chapter, the last in the book, ends when the narrator finishes saying his Rosary while reflecting on the five Joyful Mysteries.

Paraclete Press provides this About the Author information for the late Luigi Santucci, a renowned Catholic author from Milan, Italy, the author of Tales of Grace.

Luigi Santucci (1918-99) was one of the most important Italian writers and poets of the twentieth century. He worked at the Catholic University of Milan until 1944, when Santucci took refuge in Switzerland because of his opposition to the fascist regime.

Actively involved in the Italian Resistance, he was one of the co-founders of the underground newspaper L’Uomo, with poet David Maria Turoldo.

Among his books translated into English are Meeting Jesus – A New Way to Christ  (Herder & Herder, 1971), one of the most original treatments of the life of Christ written in the twentieth century, and Orfeo in Paradise (Knopf, 1969).

From the book's description:

This compelling and charming book employs story and whimsy, with delicate, lyrical touches, so that readers can experience in new light the joyful mysteries of the Rosary.

Translated for the first time into English, the great Italian writer's poetic, original vision helps readers rediscover the tenderness and beauty in the miracle of Jesus’s birth and childhood, beginning with his conception, and concluding with his adolescence.

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, the author of the crime-romance novel THE HAGUE, a traditional murder mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.