More than any other European city, Baroque Naples was dominated by convents. Behind their imposing facades and highly decorated churches, the convents of Naples housed the daughters of the city's most exclusive families, women who, despite their cloistered existence, were formidable players in the city's power structure. Invisible City vividly portrays the religious world of seventeenth-century Naples, a city of familial and internecine rivalries, of religious devotion and intense urban politics, of towering structures built to house the virgin daughters of the aristocracy. Helen Hills demonstrates how the architecture of the convents and the nuns' bodies they housed existed both in parallel and in opposition to one another. She discusses these women as subjects of enclosure, as religious women, and as art patrons, but also as powerful agents whose influence extended beyond the convent walls. Though often ensconced in convents owing to their families' economic circumstances, many of these young women were able to extend their influence as a result of the role convents played both in urban life and in art patronage. The convents were rich and powerful organizations, riven with feuds and prey to the ambitions of viceregal and elite groups, which their thick walls could not exclude. Even today, Neapolitan convents figure prominently in the city's fabric. In analyzing the architecture of these august institutions, Helen Hills skillfully reads conventual architecture as a metaphor for the body of the aristocratic virgin nun, mapping out the dialectic between flesh and stone.

Invisible City: The Architecture of Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Neapolitan Convents

Religion & Spirituality

Hills, Helen

Christian Books & Bibles

Oxford University Press

AUTUMN LIGHT is the ideal bedside book for the thoughtful reader. It is inspirational without being shallow. Its insightful anecdotes, stories, and fables are sometimes poignant, often humorous, and always thought provoking. The author converses with the reader, sharing her often intimate musings and observations in a direct, frank, and engaging manner.

Autumn Light: Essays in Maturity

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

iUniverse

Spiritual Living: What Matters - and What Doesn't is for the person who wants a more rewarding spiritual life. Written in a lucid, conversational style, the book focuses on issues that really matter, clearing away linguistic and doctrinal stumbling blocks that often prevent spirituality from developing into religion. Pertinent questions after each chapter make this book ideal for discussion groups and spiritual retreats, as well as for the individual. It includes an annotated bibliography. "Without promoting a particular theological agenda, Helen Hills explores a wide range of questions with candor, clarity, and freshness. I heartily recommend this book as a mature starting point for deepening the journey of faith and a resource for discussion groups."Rev. Andrew Foster, Rector, Church of the Ascension, New York, N.Y."Spiritual Living will be helpful not only to spiritual directors, clergy, and faith communities, but also, and perhaps especially for secular souls yearning for affirmation and advice beyond the boundaries of a particular religious tradition."Rev. K. Jeanne Person, Grace Church, Brooklyn, N.Y."Helen Hills leaves room for skeptics to become believers and for believers to be skeptical. Her definition of spirituality is expansive rather than narrow. The book is written in a way that invites the reader into a dialogue with the author."Esther Haskell, Charlemon Federated Church, Charlemont, MA

Spiritual Living: What Matters - and What Doesn't

Self-Help

Personal Transformation

Spiritual Living: What Matters -- and What Doesn't is for the person who wants a more rewarding spiritual life. Written in a lucid, conversational style, the book focuses on issues that really matter, clearing away linguistic and doctrinal stumbling blocks that often prevent spirituality from developing into religion. Pertinent questions after each chapter make this book ideal for discussion groups and spiritual retreats, as well as for the individual. It includes an annotated bibliography.

Spiritual Living: What Matters -- and What Doesn't

Spiritual

This book investigates baroque architecture through the lens of San Gennaro’s miraculously liquefying blood in Naples. This vantage point allows a bracing and thoroughly original rethink of the power of baroque relics and reliquaries. It shows how a focus on miracles produces original interpretations of architecture, sanctity and place which will engage architectural historians everywhere. The matter of the baroque miracle extends into a rigorous engagement with natural history, telluric philosophy, new materialism, theory and philosophy. The study will transform our understanding of baroque art and architecture, sanctity and Naples. Bristling with new archival materials and historical insights, this study lifts the baroque from its previous marginalisation to engage fiercely with materiality and potentiality and thus unleash baroque art and architecture as productive and transformational.

The matter of miracles: Neapolitan baroque architecture and sanctity (Rethinking Art's Histories)

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Manchester University Press

Juxtaposing artistic and musical representations of the emotions with medical, philosophical and scientific texts in Western culture between the Renaissance and the twentieth century, the essays collected in this volume explore the ways in which emotions have been variously conceived, configured, represented and harnessed in relation to broader discourses of control, excess and refinement. Since the essays explore the interstices between disciplines (e.g. music and medicine, history of art and philosophy) and thereby disrupt established frameworks within the histories of art, music and medicine, traditional narrative accounts are challenged. Here larger historical forces come into perspective, as these papers suggest how both artistic and scientific representations of the emotions have been put to use in political, social and religious struggles, at a variety of different levels.

Representing Emotions: New Connections in the Histories of Art, Music and Medicine

History

Routledge

Reflections on her life at 82 by the author of Still Riding at 80 and Aging Well.

my life at 82

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Haleys

Juxtaposing artistic and musical representations of the emotions with medical, philosophical and scientific texts in Western culture between the Renaissance and the twentieth century, the essays collected in this volume explore the ways in which emotions have been variously conceived, configured, represented and harnessed in relation to broader discourses of control, excess and refinement. Since the essays explore the interstices between disciplines (e.g. music and medicine, history of art and philosophy) and thereby disrupt established frameworks within the histories of art, music and medicine, traditional narrative accounts are challenged. Here larger historical forces come into perspective, as these papers suggest how both artistic and scientific representations of the emotions have been put to use in political, social and religious struggles, at a variety of different levels.

Early modern Naples has been characterized as a marginal, wild and exotic place on the fringes of the European world, and as such an appropriate target of attempts, by Catholic missionaries and others, to ’civilize’ the city. Historiographically bypassed in favour of Venice, Florence and Rome, Naples is frequently seen as emblematic of the cultural and political decline in the Italian peninsula and as epitomizing the problems of southern Italy. Yet, as this volume makes plain, such views blind us to some of its most extraordinary qualities, and limit our understanding, not only of one of the world's great capital cities, but also of the wider social, cultural and political dynamics of early modern Europe. As the centre of Spanish colonial power within Europe during the vicerealty, and with a population second only to Paris in early modern Europe, Naples is a city that deserves serious study. Further, as a Habsburg dominion, it offers vital points of comparison with non-European sites which were subject to European colonialism. While European colonization outside Europe has received intense scholarly attention, its cultural impact and representation within Europe remain under-explored. Too much has been taken for granted. Too few questions have been posed. In the sphere of the visual arts, investigation reveals that Neapolitan urbanism, architecture, painting and sculpture were of the highest quality during this period, while differing significantly from those of other Italian cities. For long ignored or treated as the subaltern sister of Rome, this urban treasure house is only now receiving the attention from scholars that it has so long deserved. This volume addresses the central paradoxes operating in early modern Italian scholarship. It seeks to illuminate both the historiographical pressures that have marginalized Naples and to showcase important new developments in Neapolitan cultural history and art history. Those developments showcased here include bot

New Approaches to Naples c.1500-c.1800: The Power of Place

World Literature

With candor and insight, the author analyzes firsthand decriptions of the experience of aging discovered in selected writings, personal interviews, and her work as counselor and companion to individuals over eighty. She provides a summary of the challenges and special joys of aging, plus practical suggestions for living spiritually and fully in one's later years.

Aging Well: Exploring the Land of Our Later Years

Parenting & Relationships

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hills, Helen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hills, Helen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hills, Helen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Invisible City: The Architecture of Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Neapolitan Convents

Autumn Light: Essays in Maturity

Spiritual Living: What Matters - and What Doesn't

Spiritual Living: What Matters -- and What Doesn't

The matter of miracles: Neapolitan baroque architecture and sanctity (Rethinking Art's Histories)

Representing Emotions: New Connections in the Histories of Art, Music and Medicine

my life at 82

Representing Emotions: New Connections in the Histories of Art, Music and Medicine

New Approaches to Naples c.1500-c.1800: The Power of Place

Aging Well: Exploring the Land of Our Later Years