On the altar : a history of sacrifice from the sacred to the secular / Jonathan Sheehan.
| Author/creator | Sheehan, Jonathan, 1969- author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2026. |
| Description | ix, 581 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | List of Illustrations -- Introduction. Christianity and the secular imagination: toward a history of sacrifice -- Part I. In the beginning -- Chapter 1. In the archives of ancient sacrifice: pagans, Hebrews, and Christians -- Part II. Sacrifice and the deep time of Christianity, ca. 1450-1580 -- Chapter 2. From the thesaurus to the archive: sacrifice and the practice of theology -- Chapter 3. Sacrifice abandoned, sacrifice redeemed: polemics in the Christian archives -- Chapter 4. Polycarp's bones: proving the martyrs of the sixteenth century -- Part III. The heteronomy of Christianity, ca. 1580-1685 -- Chapter 5. The way of the negative: antiquarianism and the system of sacrifice -- Chapter 6. Gods of paste: anthropology and the sacrifices of New Spain -- Chapter 7. Kings and martyrs: sacrifice and the seventeenth-century political imagination -- Chapter 8. The anthropology of the atonement: sacrifice and the ceremonial law in the seventeenth century -- Part IV. Sacrifice ad Saeculum, ca. 1685-ca. 1915 -- =g Chapter 9. The Enlightenment: secular experiments in the sacrificial imagination -- Chapter 10. The deaths of Cato: citizens, kings, and the republic of Enlightenment sacrifice -- Chapter 11. The heteronomy of the secular: sacrifice and the European sciences of man -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index. |
| Abstract | How Christianity both abolished and absorbed sacrifice. From the beginning, sacrifice lived a double life in Christianity, both abandoned and essential. Christ's death on the cross was the sacrifice to end all sacrifice, eclipsing the temple sacrifices of Judaism and paganism. And yet at the center of the lived faith was the repetition of sacrifice: the offering of Christ's body, the sacrifices of ancient patriarchs, and the sacrifices of martyrs woven through liturgy, theology, and popular devotion. But this double life collapsed in the Reformation. Quarreling heirs to Christian truth discovered that the sacrifices they once called Christian might be nothing of the sort. To build their new faiths--to discover the truth of Christian sacrifice--they turned to the past, learning from Christianity as it was how Christianity ought to be. In On the Altar, Jonathan Sheehan offers a new account of sacrifice both sacred and secular. His story is in part a history of the Christian imagination across the centuries of the Reformation, when new martyrs and holy warriors fought for the truth of their sacrifices, when the empire of New World sacrifice was recruited to settle Christian conflicts, and when the sacrifices of the ancient Hebrews were weaponized for orthodoxy. But it is a history of the secular imagination as well, as the vast archive of Christian sacrifice was dispersed and applied to things that humans make, their religions, politics, and societies. With On the Altar, Sheehan reveals a new history of both Christianity and the secular world in which we still live. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | ebook version : 9780691279534 |
| ISBN | 9780691190884 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0691190887 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | (PDF ebook) |
| Standard identifier# | CIPO000317121 |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joyner | New Books | BT265.3 .S54 2026 | ✔ Available | Want This? |