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Self-Help From the Middle Ages

byPeter Jones

How to Live with the Seven Deadly Sins

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Embark on an extraordinary journey through the labyrinth of medieval wisdom and contemporary introspection with Self-Help From the Middle Ages.

While Peter Jones was a history professor in Siberia, struggling through a relentless winter, he found himself wondering whether the Middle Ages had a treatment for depression. He discovered that, even more than today, medieval culture was obsessed with self-help.

At the centre of this were the Seven Deadly Sins; not vices, as we know them now, but building blocks for a medieval map of the mind. Through the lives of monks and mystics, artists and philosophers, Jones demonstrates how these ‘sins’ were used as tools for improving the self – and why trying it their way might change our lives.

From Lucifer's iridescent footwear, to supermarket shopping in Vladimir Putin's Siberia, this is a unique and delightful book: part personal memoir, part investigation of the very idea of sin, part magical mystery tour through some of the world's greater medieval book collections. I can think of nothing else quite like it. Written by an acknowledged expert, yet with the thrill of a treasure hunt, it blows the cobwebs off centuries in which, however virtuous those in pursuit of goodness, the Devil always had the best tunes.
Nick Vincent

About Peter Jones

Peter Jones received a PhD in Medieval History from New York University in 2014. He has taught for thirteen years at universities including University College London, NYU, the University of Toronto, and Complutense University of Madrid (where he is currently a Marie Curie fellow). For four years he taught at the School of Advanced Studies at the University of Tyumen in Siberia, where he was Chair of History. He has received research fellowships from the Warburg Institute, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the University of Notre Dame, and Brown University, as well as Marie Curie. His first book, Laughter & Power in the Twelfth Century was published by OUP in 2019.
Details
  • Imprint: Hutchinson Heinemann
  • ISBN: 9781529154863
  • Length: 352 pages
  • Price: £20.00
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