Revd Dr Zachary Guiliano

Zack works primarily on collections of sermons and biblical commentaries from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, in particular their place within the intellectual, spiritual, and economic cultures of the eighth through tenth centuries. His historical research has focused strongly on the central place of religious practice in the cultures of the Latin West, and the reception history of biblical texts.

His first monograph, The Homiliary of Paul the Deacon, considered a unique collection of sermons commissioned by Charlemagne, along with 88 of its earliest extant manuscripts, used in cathedrals and monasteries across the Carolingian Empire. The homiliary was a striking example of royal piety and the patronage of scholarship in the eighth and ninth centuries, with a considerable impact on later religious practice and theological writing.

His present research project concerns power and poverty in the Middle Ages, considering how the Gospel of Luke and the thought of its most important medieval interpreter, Bede, affected practices of charity, work, and ownership. He is at work on a book tentatively titled, Bede’s economy: The commentary ‘On Luke’ and its readers in the ‘Temple Society’ of the West. He has also been invited to write a popular level book on the Church’s legacy of ‘mastery’ and its historic possession of lands and people.

Zack is originally from Peoria, Illinois, but has lived in the United Kingdom since 2012.

In Cambridge, he served as assistant curate at St Bene’t’s Church and assistant chaplain at Jesus College. Before that, he worked as an editor and writer while he finished his PhD as a Gates Cambridge Scholar and his training as a priest in the Church of England. In his spare time, he sings regularly in church choirs and plays the trumpet, and enjoys cooking and hospitality.

At the University level, he helps convene the Student Ministry Forum, an interfaith gathering of chaplains, and he is active in the Diocese of Oxford as a member of Diocesan Synod and as a frequent guest preacher in parishes, schools, and chaplaincies.

He is an external consultant for the ERC funded project Patristic Sermons in the Middle Ages, based at Radboud University, Nijmegen, and he serves on the advisory board of Convivium, an initiative focused on connecting local communities with their heritage, the environment, and faith.

Melissa, his wife, is an artist and soprano who trained at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. She is in training as a Feldenkrais practitioner.

Monograph

• The Homiliary of Paul the Deacon: Religious and Cultural Reform in Carolingian Europe, SERMO 16 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021).

Edited Volumes

• Preaching and the Theological Imagination, ed. by Zachary Guiliano and Cameron Partridge, Studies in Episcopal and Anglican Theology 9 (New York, Berlin, and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015)
• The Open Body: Essays in Anglican Ecclesiology, ed. by Zachary Guiliano and Charles Stang, Studies in Episcopal and Anglican Theology 4 (New York, Berlin, and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012)

Peer-reviewed Articles

• ‘The use of Scripture in the histories of Bede,’ The Bible in Ancient Christian Historiography, Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception (Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming).
• ‘Hierarchies of knowledge in the writings of the Venerable Bede’, in Michael Champion (ed.) The Intellectual World of Late Antique Christianity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
• ‘Sustainability’, in Mark Clavier (ed.), A Convivial Church: Global Perspectives on Living Well with God, Creation, and Each Other (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, forthcoming).
• ‘Tangled roots: The legacy of Christian mastery and anti-racism today’, Practical Theology (2022).
• ‘Holy gluttons: Bede and the Carolingians on the pleasures of reading’, in Naama Cohen-Hanegbi and Piroska Nagy (eds.), Pleasure in the Middle Ages. IMR 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 281-308.
• Zachary Guiliano, ‘Patristic allegorical preaching as a mimetic technology’, in Preaching and the Theological Imagination (2014), pp. 77-104.
• Zachary Guiliano and Cameron Partridge, ‘Introduction,’ in Preaching and the Theological Imagination (2014), pp. 1-15.
• Zachary Guiliano, ‘The cross in (Pseudo-) Dionysius: pinnacle and pit of revelation’, in Markus Vinzent (ed.), Studia Patristica 68. Volume 16: From the Fifth Century (Greek Writers) (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), pp. 201-214.
• Zachary Guiliano and Charles Stang, ‘Introduction,’ in The Open Body (2012), pp. 1-16.

Encyclopedia and Selected Reviews

• Review: Hannah Matis, The Song of Songs in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), in Anglican Theological Review (forthcoming).
• ‘Race, Christianity: Medieval Times and Reformation Era,’ in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, forthcoming).
• ‘Adelard of Bath,’ ‘Council of Hatfield (679)’, and ‘Erigena’, in F.L. Cross, E.A. Livingstone, and Andrew Louth (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 4th ed. (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2021).
• Review: Robert Orsi, History and Presence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), in Anglican Theological Review 101:3 (Summer 2019).
• Review: Cyril Hovorun, Scaffolds of the Church: Towards Poststructural Ecclesiology (Eugene, OR and Cambridge, UK: Cascade/James Clark & Co, 2017), in The Living Church (10 Feb 2019).
• Review: Gerald Bray (ed.), The Institution of a Christian Man (Cambridge, UK: James Clark & Co, 2018), at Covenant, the weblog of The Living Church (27 Oct 2018).
• Review: Andrew Rumsey, Parish: An Anglican Theology of Place (London: SCM Press, 2017), in Anvil: Journal of Theology and Mission 34:2 (2018).
• Review: Gerald Bray (ed.), The Books of Homilies: A Critical Edition (London: James Clark & Co, 2016), in The Living Church (8 Sep 2017).
• Review: Giorgio Agamben, Opus Dei: The Archaeology of Duty (San Diego, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), in Networks & Neighbours 3:1 (27 Apr 2015).
• ‘Hincmar of Reims’, Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Volume 11: Halah to Hizquni (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015).
• Review: Scott Cowdell, René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), in The Living Church (6 Apr 2014).
• Zachary Guiliano, Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Volume 9: Field to Gennesaret (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014).
• Review: Jared C. Cramer, Safeguarded by Glory: Michael Ramsey’s Ecclesiology and the Struggles of Contemporary Anglicanism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), Anglican Theological Review 95:1 (Winter 2012), pp. 177-8.
• Zachary Guiliano, Review: D. Jeffrey Bingham (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Early Christian Thought (London & New York: Routledge, 2010), in The Living Church (12 Aug 2012).

Online Projects

• Zachary Guiliano, ‘Reims,’ in Caroline minuscule mapping project. A project of the Network for the Study of Caroline Minuscule. Funded by APICES: Association Paléographique Internationale: Culture, Écriture, Société; and by an Incubator Grant of the Association for Computers and the Humanities. Online:
• Translator, Chapters 14 and 15 in Hildemar of Corbie, Commentary on the Rule of Benedict, ed. by Albrecht Diem et al. (Part of The Hildemar Project. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2013.)

Selected Other Publications

• ‘Why I Wear Black’, at Covenant, the blog of The Living Church magazine (21 June 2021)
• ‘God and the Lived Reality of Humility’, The Living Church magazine (13 February 2019)
• ‘Advent Begins in the Dark’, The Living Church magazine (27 November 2018)
• ‘Eclipsing the Heavens’, at Covenant, the blog of The Living Church magazine (26 June 2017)