Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction / Gabriela Signori -- Martyrdom, Violence, and Immortality: The Origins of a Religious Complex / Jan Assmann -- The War of the Hasmoneans / Kai Trampedach -- The Veneration of the Maccabean Brothers in Fourth Century Antioch: Religious Competition, Martyrdom, and Innovation / Johannes Hahn -- The Cult of the Maccabees in the Eastern Orthodox Church / Albrecht Berger -- The Mother and Seven Sons in Late Antique and Medieval Ashkenazi Judaism: Narrative Transformation and Communal Identity / Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski -- The Maccabees and the Battle of Antioch / Elizabeth Lapina -- Hate Preachers and Religious Warriors: Violence in the Libelli de lite of the Late Eleventh Century / Oliver Münsch -- The Maccabees As Role Models in the German Order / Henrike Lähnemann -- The Reception of the Books of the Maccabees in the Hussite Reformation / Pavlína Rychterová and Pavel Soukup -- The Renaissance of the Maccabees: Old Testament Jews, German Humanists, and the Cult of the Saints in Early Modern Cologne / David J. Collins S.J. -- On the Path of the Maccabees? The Rhetoric of ‘Holy War’ in the Sermons and Pamphlets of ‘Puritans’ in the Run-up to the English Civil War (1620–1642) / Andreas Pečar -- “If to Fall, for Laws, Religion, Liberty, We Fall”: Georg Frideric Handel’s Maccabee Oratorios / Daniel Weidner -- The Reception of an Unread Author: Zacharias Werner’s “Mother of the Maccabees” / Gabriel Stoukalov-Pogodin -- Index of Names -- Index of Biblical Citations.

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The message of the old testamentary Maccabees is martial and pernicious as well as already pointed out by Erasmus of Rotterdam. The circumstances in which the Maccabeean literature emerged are complex and have not yet been explored by scholars in all their details; even more complex is the history of its influence, the Wirkungsgeschichte in the sense Hans-Georg Gadamer has given to the term, a history which was to large extent a purely Christian one. The early Christians saw the Maccabees as prototypical martyrs. Later they discovered warrior heroes whose courage was the measure of whoever fought in the name of God or freedom: Saxons, Scots, or citizens of Cologne who rose up against their rulers. This history of influence is the focus of the essays collected in this book, which extend thematically and chronologically from the cult of martyrs in late antiquity to the time of the modern wars of liberation.