The Potato Eaters - Newman, Richard

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Biographie:
This book looks at the life and work of Saint Benedict through the history of sixth-century Italy, throwing fresh light on Benedict's Rule and Pope Gregory the Great's Life of Benedict (his second Dialogue). Commentaries on the Rule concentrate-quite naturally-on Benedict's spirituality but rarely take into account modern historical scholarship on the period.Though often thought of as a medieval figure, Saint Benedict was, in fact, a Roman. During the first half of his adult life he lived in an Italy that was peaceful and the Roman social and political order essentially intact, even though under the ruled of a Gothic king. Benedict's community inherited much from this late-Roman cultural background and from the eclectic intellectual atmosphere of the time. During the last years of his life the Roman order finally collapsed-thanks to Justinian's invasion of Italy, an epidemic of plague and exceptionally poor harvests ? posing new challenges for the community at Monte Cassino.During Benedict's lifetime the Church was torn by disputed papal elections, a serious theological dispute between Rome and the eastern provinces and tensions between central administration and the initiatives of local congregations and Christian laymen such as Benedict himself. These developments affected Benedict and his community in various ways, some very directly.By approaching Benedict in this way, a more fully rounded picture of the saint emerges-a man who was practical as well as holy. This book will be invaluable for all those concerned with the Benedictine tradition-monastic communities and their oblates particularly, but also to anyone interested Western Monasticism and the early history of the Church....

Sommaire:
Amsterdam in 1950 was a country moving out of the German occupation - a City bent on rooting out the collaborators of the war to mitigate some of the guilt of the past in the treatment of their Jews. Ruth is a refugee from Auschwitz having lost her family, her home and, almost, her reason. But, she is intelligent, and when she befriends a youth from a tugboat who also suffers from mental illness there is a remarkable meeting of minds, as both suffer from fear: one of the past and one of the future. The story tells of their road to rebuilding their lives, finding happiness again among the bustling harbour but, a place also where, through her loyalty to her new friends Ruth becomes entangled with the traffic in Dutch collaborators fleeing the country....