bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Saint Louis' Involvement with the Friars
Authors: Little Lester K.
Published: April 2006

The literature popular among students at Paris in the 1260's included a series of poems lamenting the ascendant role in society of the new mendicant orders. The Dominicans are so shrewd, said one of these poems, that they control both Paris and Rome, they are both king and apostle. The blame for this state of affairs was being placed squarely on Louis IX. The king favors the mendicants, read a second poem, yet ill-treatrs his knights, as if the friars could do anything useful for the defense of his kingdom.
An Appraisal of Thomas Coke';s Africa Mission, 1976–1811
Authors: Smith Warren Thomas
Published: April 2006

Advancement in contemporary world missions has not come without heart-break, failure, defeat—prior to victory. One dramatic illustration of manifold blunders—and then success—is Thomas Coke's heroic attempt to establish missions in Africa.

Africa was coming more and more to the attention of thinking Englishmen. Abolition of the nefarious slave trade was being seriously discussed in humanitarian circles. The dark and mysterious continent caught Dr. Coke's imagination. In March, 1787, while in Charleston, South Carolina, he noted: “… Since my visit to the islands [West Indies], I have found a peculiar gift for speaking to the Blacks. It seems to be almost irresistible. Who knows but the Lord is preparing me for a visit in some future time to the coast of Africa?”
Walter Rauschenbusch and Education for Reform
Authors: Aiken John R.
Published: April 2006

While it is true that the social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch is more than the religious strain of the progressive movement, there is no doubt that he sought a christianized social order, one in “harmony with the ethical convictions which we identify with Christ.” And he was much concerned with the Kingdom of God, the “growing perfection in the collective life of humanity, in our laws, in the customs of society, in the institutions for education, and of the administration of mercy.”
Sejanus, Pilate, and the Date of the Crucifixion
Authors: Maier Paul L.
Published: April 2006

It seems paradoxical that the event which has divided our reckoning of time into years B.C. and A.D. should itself seem largely undatable. The birth of Christ is variously assigned to the years ranging from 7 to 2 B.C. The terminus ad quem must certainly be the death of Herod the Great, since the king was very much alive during the visit of the Magi in the Christmas story. According to Josephus, Herod died soon after an eclipse of the moon and not long before a Passover. Emil Schürer's chronology of Herod's reign from the accounts of Josephus, which has long been standard, identifies this as the lunar eclipse which took place on the night of March 12/13, 4 B.C., and which would have been visible in Judea. It also occurred one month before the Passover that year. On this basis, the birth of Jesus could not have been later than the spring of 4 B.C., and most likely took place in the winter of 5/4 B.C.
Baur Versus Ritschl on Early Christianty
Authors: Henfer Philip
Published: April 2006

One of the less encouraging consequences deriving from the revival of traditional modes of theology and church life has been the shadow which has fallen over the great historian-theologians of the nineteenth century. It is said that we have superseded the work of these men. This is no doubt true, but it is not at all clear in what sense we have superseded them, or what the world “supersede” might mean in this judgement. To be sure, the student who turns to these nineteenth century figures today finds that their historical judgements are frequently unreliable by current standards (but less so than we might wish!), and that their biases sometimes narrow their historical vision to an almost intolerable extent. But he also finds in their work a seriousness and an earnestness which did not flinch from the great problems which arise when the Christian faith is subjected to historical science. The student finds that most of the issues which they raised are still relevant, mostly still unsolved.
The Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum of 1552 and the Furthering of Discipline in England
Authors: Spalding James C.
Published: April 2006

In November, 1549, at the beginning of the third session of King Edward VI's first parliament, legislation was introduced intending to facilitate the reformation of the ecclesiastical laws of England. In the House of Lords, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and others submitted a bill “touching Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction” which would have given the bishops and their ordinaries the power to excommunicate and to imprison those who were in need of discipline in order to help tidy up what was regarded then to be an immoral and disorderly nation. This bill passed the House of Lords and was sent down to the House of Commons for consideration.
The Russian Bible Society and the Russian Orthodox Church
Authors: Zacek Judith Cohen
Published: April 2006

The historian Presniakov has characterized the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the reign of Alexander I, as “Russia at the crossroads” (Rossiia na rasput'i). No longer content with slavish imitation of Western Europe, Russia now began to develop a culture which would be admired and emulated by the West. Once beyond the fringe of European diplomacy, the Empire now moved to the center of that arena. Shaped by her national traditions, but involved increasingly in continent-wide trends, the Russia of Alexander I was confronted by a varied and complex set of problems, both domestic and foreign, which demanded resolution. The destruction of the Napoleonic threat, the assimilation of subject nationalities, the establishment of efficient techniques and procedures of government, the articulation and implementation of national policies in education and in economic life were among the countless tasks which faced Alexander I and his advisors. Educated Russians of the day heatedly debated the most effective means of solving the myriad dilemmas.
The Reports of the Sicherheitsdienst on the Church and Religious Affairs in Germany, 1939–1944
Authors: Wall Donald D.
Published: April 2006

The volume of literature on theKirchenkampfis expanding at an accelerating rate. Several bibliographical articles have already appeared, the most recent of which is by the Canadian scholar, John S. Conway. Of the 63 titles of books, articles, and collections discussed by Conway, 47 were published in the 1960s. Nearly all studies of theKirchenkampfeither defend or criticize the church in varying degrees. Most of the older accounts, as Conway points out in the introduction to his own comprehensive study, were written by clergymen and historians who actually participated in theKirchenkampf. These scholars selected those facts which demonstrated that the church steadfastly, if not always effectually, opposed National Socialist tyranny in word and deed. The larger volume of Protestant works emphasized the activity of the Confessing Church, while the unaccountably smaller number of Roman Catholic accounts focused upon particular bishops and priests who protested courageously and suffered imprisonment or martyrdom. During the past ten years, however, a small group of mostly younger historians have published works sharply critical of the Roman Catholic Church in particular. These historians, the most prominent of whom are Gordon Zahn, Hans Müller, and Guenter Lewy, assert that the Roman Catholic Church failed to exert the kind of moral and political leadership which might have mitigated the horrors of National Socialism.
The Catholic Relief Act in Ireland, 1778
Authors: Burns Robert E.
Published: April 2006

The Catholic relief act passed by the Irish parliament in 1778 was the first significant breach of that comprehensive system of legal discrimination against Irish Catholics known in the eighteenth century as the Popery laws. The act of 1778 removed virtually all of the legal restrictions respecting the acquisition and free testamentary disposition of landed property imposed on Irish Catholics by the legislators of William III and Anne and formed a powerful precedent for the subsequent acts of 1782 and 1791–93 that repealed discriminatory statutes affecting the Irish Catholic hierarchy, secular clergy, and the Catholic business and professional classes. While most scholars have fully recognized the revolutionary character of this act and have discussed its provisions many times, a mistaken impression that no detailed record of this measure's passage through the Irish house of commons existed has discouraged original research into the complicated set of circumstances surrounding its enactment. Consequently, the relation of the Anglo-American crisis to the cause of Catholic relief, the connection between this particular act and the movement for Irish legislative independence during the later phases of the war for American independence, and the extraordinary arguments and tactics employed by supporters and opponents of the bill in an exclusively Protestant parliament have remained unnoticed.
Jacob Sturm of Strasbourg and the Lutherans at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530
Authors: Brady Thomas A.
Published: April 2006

All through the second half of the year 1529, John the Constant, the Elector of Saxony, played a double game with the Evangelical towns of southwestern Germany. In April of that year at the Diet of Speier, John had led a united Evangelical party in a protest against the recess of the Diet and in an agreement to form a military alliance of all the Evangelical governments in the empire. A few weeks later, John began to regret that he had allied with cities suspected of Zwinglian heresies, a step which could only aggravate his relations with the emperor. John and his advisers searched for the proper instrument by which to win favor from Charles V by abandoning their Zwinglian associates. That instrument was the Schwabach Articles, an uncompromisingly Lutheran statement of doctrine which flatly excluded the disputed Zwinglian interpretation of the sacrament of the Eucharist. John kept the southwestern towns dangling in expectation until the meeting at Smalkalden in December, 1529. There he informed Jacob Sturm of Strasbourg and Bernhard Besserer of Ulm that his conscience forbade him to ally with the southerners so long as they supported the errors of Zwingli. Sturm and Besserer, who now began to understand John's duplicity, announced that their governments would not sign the Schwabach Articles. At the year's end, nothing remained of the solidarity the Evangelical estates had displayed at Speier.
The Origins and Approval of the Malines Conversations
Authors: Lahey R. J.
Published: April 2006

Despite their ultimate breakdown, the Malines Conversations (1921–1926) between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church were an event of momentous significance for the communions engaged in them. They heralded changing times, for Rome a cautious step from ultra-monantism and anti-Modernism towards the “aggiornamento” of John XXIII, and for the Church of England a partial triumph of the new-found desire for church union over older attitudes of “no-popery.” But their real importance can be set in wider perspective: the guarded measure of mutual recognition they introduced marked, in one respect at least, the end to four centuries of schism.
Paradox Lost: Order and Progress in Evangelical Thought of Mid-Nineteenth-Century America
Authors: Wilson Major L.
Published: April 2006

The concept of a cultural whole is a very fruitful idea for the cultural historian. Involved in it is the assumption that a unity of form pervades the entire culture and that each significant part of the culture—religious, political, social, literary, and so forth—participates in and gives expression to this pervasive form. The assumption is clearly one of great practical importance, for it invites the historian to believe that a close study of one part will throw light upon all others. Accordingly, the present study seeks, by special focus on one aspect of evangelical thought, to help elucidate the pervasive liberal outlook of midnineteenth-century America.
The Oxford Movement by the End of the Nineteenth Century: The Anglo-Catholic Clergy
Authors: Munson J. E. B.
Published: April 2006

To its leaders the Oxford Movement was “the Romance of the nineteenth century” while to its opponents it was nothing less than “disloyalty to Christ and His Truth.” Then, as now, the chief difficulty lay in delineating various characteristics, and this is especially the case with the Anglo-Catholic or “Ritualist” clergy by the end of the Victorian era. The following will be an attempt to place the phenomenon of Anglo-Catholicism, or Ritualism, into its proper historical context while examining more closely its role within the Oxford Movement and especially its tradition of the “slum priest.”
Origen and the Election of Bishops
Authors: Ferguson Everett
Published: April 2006

Origen's fullest statement on the selection of church officers occurs in his Homily in Numbers 13.4. The following is a fairly literal translation of the passage:

At the end of his life he prayed to God that He would provide a leader for the people. What are you doing, O Moses? Are not Gersom and Eleazar your sons? Or if you distrust any one of these, are not the sons of your brother great and distinguished men? Why do you not pray to God for them so that He might appoint them leaders of the people? But the leaders in office of the churches should learn not to designate by testimony nor to deliver the leadership of the churches as an inheritance to those who are related to them by blood or are associated with them by fleshly closeness, but to submit to the choice of God and not to choose that one whom human affection commends but to grant entirely to the judgment of God the choice of a successor. Was not Moses able to choose a ruler for the people by a true judgment and to make choice by a correct and just sentence, to whom God had said, “Choose elders for the people, whom you know to be the elders,” and he chose such in whom immediately God's “spirit rested, and they all prophesied.” who therefore is able to choose a leader of the people unless Moses was able? But he did not do it, did not choose, did not dare it. Why did he not dare? That he would not leave to posterity an example of presumption. But listen to what he says, “Let the Lord, the God of spirits and all flesh, provide a man over this congregation, who shall go out and come in before them and who shall lead them forth and lead them back.” If therefore such a one as Moses gives not his judgment in choosing a leader of the people, in appointing a successor, what man would be he who dares to do so, whether of the people who are always accustomed to be moved by shouts for favor or perhaps excited for money, or of the priests themselves who will there be who would judge himself equal to this task, except only him to whom through prayers and petitions it is revealed by God? And just as God says to Moses, “Take to yourself Joshua the son of Nun, a man who has the spirit in him, and lay your hands upon him; and stand him before Eleazar the priest, and command him in the presence of the whole congregation and commission him from yourself before them; and give your honor to him that the children of Israel may hear him.” You hear obviously the ordination of a leader of the people clearly described, so that there is almost no need of exposition. Here there was held no acclamation of the people, no regard of kinship, no consideration of friendship.… The government of the people is delivered to him whom God chose.
The “Country Life Movement” and the American Churches
Authors: Swanson Merwin
Published: April 2006

The progressive movement in the United States was a complex set of reforms during the first decades of the twentieth century. Progressives like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson focused on the control of the new economic forces in American society by regulating railroad rates or by breaking up large monopolies. Slums, political corruption, and red-light districts troubled the consciences of other progressives such as Jane Addams and Walter Rauschenbusch. These urban progressives believed that an older, rural America produced a sense of community among rural people which mitigated such social problems, and thought that community-oriented settlement houses and churches in the cities could recreate the rural feeling that individuals were a part of their neighborhoods, and urban neighbors then could attack urban problems as a community. Other progressives, such as the anti-vice committees of New York City, wanted laws to recreate the moral standards which social pressures in the old rural communities had maintained informally. The Progressive Era also included a “country life movement” which shared many of its analyses and plans for reform with the urban progressives, but applied them to rural America.
The Origins of Clerical Celibacy in the Western Church
Authors: Frazee Charles A.
Published: April 2006

In the present discussion within the Roman Catholic Church over the requirement of clerical celibacy, the arguments generally center on the ascetical value of the practice. Pope Paul VI speaks of celibacy as a “precious jewel” leading to a life of selflessness for the man who seeks to follow Jesus Christ in the priesthood. When priests themselves talk about the subject, it is often in terms of its symbolic value as a total commitment to the service of the Lord. It is further seen as a practical measure, following Saint Paul's view that the married state frees the ordained minister from the cares of personal family life so that he may devote himself entirely to the concerns of the whole Christian community.
English Reformation: Product of King or Minister?
Authors: Ban Joseph D.
Published: April 2006

Who was the prime mover in the English Reformation? Was it the sovereign, Henry VIII? Or was his minister, Thomas Cromwell, the originating force? According to G. R. Elton, Cromwell was the architect of English reform who spelled out the concept of national sovereignty, established royal supremacy over the church, set the locus of national sovereignty in Parliament, consolidated the national territory and reformed the central administration of government. Thus, Elton has credited Cromwell with the decisive role in creating the ecclesiastical revolution. J. J. Scarisbrick has sharply challenged Elton's thesis. His biography of Henry VIII, published in 1968, is a major contribution to the study of Tudor history. There Scarisbrick demonstrates that the king was committed to ecclesiastical reform well before Cromwell appeared on the political scene. Hence, there emerges a sharp conflict between two modern scholars regarding the role of Henry VIII in originating the reform of the English church.
English Civil War Politics and the Religious Settlement
Authors: Kaplan Lawrence
Published: April 2006

One of the more active historical controversies centers around the precise relationship of religion to politics during the period of the English Civil War. While all historians recognize the crucial role played by Puritans in the rebellion against Charles I, the extent to which religious considerations influenced political activity within the Long Parliament remains open to question. A major reason for the dispute is that terms used by contemporaries tend to be misleading. Thus, the two parties which are said to have dominated the Long Parliament during the 1640s are known by descriptive names (“the Presbyterians” and “the Independents”) that the bear little resemblance to their actual platforms.
The Failure of the Anglican-Prussian Ecumenical Effort of 1710–1714
Authors: Levis R. Barry
Published: April 2006

In 1710 Archbishop John Sharp of York of the Church of England and Daniel Ernst Jablonski of Prussia began a dialogue hoping for the possible union of their respective churches. They wanted to bring about a junction of the Reformed and Lutheran churches in Prussia through the adoption of the Anglican liturgy and episcopal polity and an organic union between this Prussian church and the Church of England, perhaps including other Protestant churches as well. The progress of this effort surprised even the men most dedicated to it, and it appeared likely that they could forge an association within a short time. Yet, in the end these churchmen were disappointed and their negotiations came to naught. The reasons, however, were not religious in nature; indeed, there seemed to be no religious impediment to the effort at all. Although the ministers of both Queen Anne and King Frederick expressed interest in the discussions, political considerations relating to the English exertions to end the war of Spanish Succession led to the failure.
Bishops and Puritans in Early Jacobean England: A Perspective on Methodology
Authors: Kalu Ogbu U.
Published: April 2006

King James I's reign was a landmark in the history of the Anglican Church. His religious settlement included the codification of the canons which gave definition and cohesion to the church and reformed her adminstrative machinery. But this touched off a pamphlet war as puritan propaganda sought to force a reappraisal of the settlement. They alleged that bishops harassed and deprived hard-working, conscientious, loyal clergymen who merely rejected the ceremonies. The bishops employed young apologists to discredit the opposition and plead for conformity. They claimed that only thirty to sixty puritan clerics were deprived.
John Wyclif and Hussite Theology 1415–1436
Authors: Cook William R.
Published: April 2006

A good deal of literature has dealt with the relationship between the works of John Wyclif and John Hus. It seems clear now that John Hus did not simply parrot Wyclif as Johann Loserth argued in the nineteenth century, but rather he was the product of a native Bohemian reform movement. He regarded Wyclif as a fellow reformer and was reliant on him for much of his realist philosophy and ecclesiology but was largely independent of Wyclif in matters of dogmatic theology. Concerning the eucharist, for example, Hus clearly accepted the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation rather than Wyclif's remanence.
Newman and the Tradition concerning the Papal Antichrist
Authors: Misner Paul
Published: April 2006

In the successive waves of “No Popery” which ebbed and flowed until the middle of the nineteenth century in British public life, the role played by the oldfashioned identification of the pope of the Roman Catholic Church with Antichrist is not easily discernible. Yet its presence is undeniable, though rarely on the surface or on the lips of those who, in the ordinary sense, “made history.” A study of the background and setting of John Henry Newman's thought on the papacy and the Antichrist has led me to uncover a neglected field of popularandcultured Antichrist thinking which helps to account for the persistence of “No Popery” sentiment in Christian history after its demise had been prematurely announced by more than one reasonable and enlightened politician.
The Idea of Pilgrimage in the Experience of Ignatius Loyola
Authors: Olin John C.
Published: April 2006

The idea of pilgrimage occupies an important place in the life and thought of Ignatius Loyola. In the autobiography which he dictated to a colleague late in his life he refers to himself throughout as “the pilgrim.” He actually went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and describes in detail his long and difficult journey. His biographers too often use the term and imagery of pilgrimage when they write about his early years, yet the notion of pilgrimage in his life has never been explored to any extent; nor has its significance, I believe, been sufficiently taken into account. In this article I should like to focus on this theme and indicate what I consider to be its role and importance in his religious experience.
What was the Iconoclastic Controversy About?
Authors: Henry Patrick
Published: April 2006

“Altogether, the Iconoclast controversy is in the grip of a crisis of over-explanation.” Since in his recent article Peter Brown is himself offering an explanation, we need to ask whether he has relaxed one grip only to fasten on another. Brown's analysis is characteristically brilliant. With a few deft strokes he outlines where scholarship is and what culs-de-sac it has got itself into, and he focuses attention on aspects of the evidence that have been insufficiently appreciated. Brown is peculiarly sersitive to the nature of religion, and as a result his article is an excellent account of the complex dynamics of religion in early Byzantium.
History: Sacred and Secular
Authors: Spitz Lewis W.
Published: April 2006

Jacob Burckhardt somewhat naively recorded that when he first came to the University of Berlin to study history, his eyes opened wide with astonishment at the first lectures he heard by Leopold von Ranke, Gustav Droysen and Philipp August Böckh. He realized that the same thing had befallen him as befell the knight Don Quixote, for he had loved his science on hearsay and suddenly here it was appearing before him in gigantic proportions and he had to lower his eyes. The occasion of delivering a presidential address to an august society of scholars, following on the podium historians of great distinction, and speaking on a topic of such magnitude is an equally humbling experience.
Providence as Mystery, Providence as Revelation: Puritan and Anglican Modifications of John Calvin's Doctrine of Providence
Authors: VanderMolen Ronald J.
Published: April 2006

Acceptance of providence, the belief that an ultimate being determines the course of events, has always created problems for moralists and advocates of free will, and for obivous reasons. If any events has been foreordained, how can hemans be free? If all is determined, why should humans try to do what is right? Aside from the philosophical questions raised by a belief in provedence, however, scholars such as the distinguished economists Jacob Viner have begun to examine the doctrine of providence from the point of view of its broad ideological and social impact. Though Professor Viner modestly claimed that his study of providence was simply an intellectual history pursued for its own sake, he demonstrated many of the doctrine's implications for early modern thought and social structures. Similar emphasis on the significance of the early modern idea of providence is also found in Keith Thomas'Religion and the Decline of Magic.
Prelude To ‘Americanism’: The New York Accademia and Clerical Radicalism in the Late Nineteenth Century
Authors: Curran Robert Emmett
Published: April 2006

The Americanist crisis in the last decade of the nineteenth century climaxed the attempt of a group of liberal prelates and their associates to adapt Roman Catholicism to democratic institutions and values. Almost twenty years ago Robert Cross put this complex movement within the context of a growing American Catholic liberalism in the postbellum period. The full dimensions of that liberalism are still coming into focus as archival materials and unpublished sources become more available to the historian. The recent discovery of a remarkable association of New York priests shows another facet of the Americanist controversy that better enables us to appreciate the peculiar lines that the episcopal struggle assumed.
The Marquis de Marsay: A Quietist in ‘Philadelphia’
Authors: Rowell Geoffrey
Published: April 2006

Charles Hector de St. Georges, Marquis de Marsay (1688–1753), lived for the greater part of his life in the small and obscure principality of Wittgenstein in the upper Eder valley between the Rhineland and Hesse-Kassel. In his earlier years he was a disciple of the Flemish mystic, Antoinette Bourignon, and later came under the influence of the works of Madame Guyon. In Wittgenstein he attempted to put their teachings into practice by following an ascetic pattern of life. He attracted a number of followers, not only from the sectarian groups which had taken refuge in Wittgenstein, but also farther afield, notably in Switzerland, which he visited on a number of occasions. The fact that he was known in Britain to John Wesley and William Law, as well as by the group of mystically inclined gentry in north-east Scotland, is an indication of the contacts that existed between pietistic groups in different parts of Europe. The details of Marsay's life are not without interest is a considered attempt to practice the quietist spirituality of Madame Guyon in a Protestant context.
The Laurentian Schism: East and West in the Roman Church
Authors: Moorhead John
Published: April 2006

In 498, four days after the death of Pope Anastasius II, two men were elected and consecrated bishop of Rome on the one day, the deacon Symmachus and the archpriest Laurentius. Fighting broke out between their supporters and the dispute was referred to Theodoric, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, who declared that Symmachus was to be pope. A synod held in 499 accepted him as pope and passed legislation on church government; it awarded to Laurentius the see of Nuceria. But trouble soon broke out again when Symmachus was accused of improper relations with women, squandering church property and celebrating Easter on the wrong date. While on his way to Ravenna, where Theodoric had summoned him to give an account of himself, he became convinced that he was being framed, and returned secretly to Rome by night without completing his journey. Theodoric reacted by appointing Bishop Peter of Altinum as visitor of the Roman see, but this became a further source of controversy. At some stage Laurentius returned to Rome. Rioting broke out again, with clergy being killed and Symmachus himself being attacked on one occasion. Two more synods failed to pacify in the city or put an end to the schism. This only came years later, in 507 or 508, when Theodoric ordered Festus, Laurentius' noble patron, to hand over the churches of Rome, which had been held by Laurentius, to Symmachus. Laurentius retired to Festus' estates, leaving Symmachus to preside over a reasonably peaceful and united church until his death in 514.
Erasmus' Paraphrase of the Gospel of John
Authors: Rabil Albert
Published: April 2006

There has been little substantial textual work on Erasmus' paraphrases of the New Testament. This study of the paraphrase of the Gospel of John, by examining the changes in the various editions, the use of patristic commentaries, and the characteristic emphases of the text itself, attempts to further our understanding of his work on the New Testament. I shall discuss first the composition of the paraphrases insofar as this relates to Erasmus' self-consciousness about the project of writing paraphrases of the New Testament.
An Attempt at Systematic Reconstruction in the Theology of Thomas Chalmers
Authors: Rice Daniel F.
Published: April 2006

According to William Hanna “it had for many years been the highest object of [Thomas Chalmers'] literary and professional ambition to leave behind him a complete body of Divinity containing the fruits of his maturest reflections, both on the credentials and contents of the Christian Revelation.” Thus in 1845, after the epochal events of the Scottish Disruption had been put behind him, Chalmers undertook the project of writing his Institutes of Theology which were published in 1849, two years after his death. In approaching the systematic problem Chalmers felt that he was contravening “the order of every system and every text-book in theology that we are yet acquainted with” and proposing a radically altered arrangement of topics ”from that in which Calvin and Turretin, Pictetus and Vitringa have delivered them.” Chalmers' assumption that a continuity exists between Calvin and the theological systems of the seventeenth century need not detain us except to point out that Chalmers merely reflects a tradition, uniformly established until recent times, in which theology as “system” was projected retrospectively from its formulation in seventeenth-century thought back onto the theological work of the Reformation.
Archbishop Ebbo of Reims (816–835): A Study in the Carolingian Empire and Church
Authors: McKeon Peter R.
Published: April 2006

It is almost a commonplace that the ideology and circumstances of the Carolingian empire made possible assertion by the Frankish episcopacy of an increasingly active role in the government of ninth-century Frankish Europe. Restoration of the ecclesiastical hierarchy begun in the mid-eighth century by Pepin the Short and completed under his son, the emperor Charles, resulted in the establishment of a class of able men whose common interests were closely bound up with preservation and extension of the imperial structure; in the reign of Charles' successors this group came to be involved more and more prominently in the workings of the empire, as events in the forty years following Charles' death necessitated rapid reinterpretation of that entity. In that process no member of the hierarchy played a more ubiquitous part than did Ebbo, archbishop of Reims from 816 until his deposition nineteen years later. Loyal to the principles of imperial rule while at the same time betrayer of the friendship and fealty owed his monarch, Ebbo was scholar, builder, missionary, high public official, rebel and outcast during a career inextricably bound up with the course and transmutations of the empire. In the range of his activities and influence almost a paradigm of those opportunities and tasks open to the Carolingian episcopate, his history is in no small measure that of the empire itself and of the church with which in the ninth century that empire was conceived to be coextensive, even identical. It is those two histories and their interrelations that form the subject of the present paper.
Apologia for an American Catholicism: The Petition and Report of the National Catholic Welfare Council to Pius XI, April 25, 1922
Authors: McKeown Elizabeth
Published: April 2006

The article that follows is a discussion of a document of some importance in American Catholic history, one that has not yet received consideration by historians. The Petition and Report of the National Catholic Welfare Council to Pius XI of April 25, 1922, is a protest by American bishops against a decree of suppression issued by the Consistorial Congregation of the Vatican, the effect of which would have been to destroy the newly organized Welfare Council.
The Social Class of the Cappadocian Fathers
Authors: Kopecek Thomas A.
Published: April 2006

Although the past two decades have shown signs of scholarly interest in the social history of fourth- and fifth-century Christianity, especially among British scholars, much remains to be done before a synthetic reconstruction will be justified. Among the tasks to be completed is the determination of the social class backgrounds of the later empire's Christian clergy. For if these backgrounds can be established, it will be possible to investigate how extensively they influenced the clerics' thought and action. Unfortunately, the determination of social origins in antiquity is not always a straightforward enterprise. This is particularly true in the case of the Cappadocian Fathers, whose social class membership is the topic of the present essay.
Religious Orthodoxy, Dissent and Suppression in Venice in the 1540s
Authors: Santosuosso Antonio
Published: April 2006

In his bookVenice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation(Berkely, 1968), William J. Bouwsma claims that the confrontation between Rome and Venice in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was based on two different views of the world. He sees Rome as the embodiment of the authoritarianism and intolerance of the Counter Reformation and Venice as the last representative of Renaissance republicanism. Bouwsma maintains that the struggle which reached a point of crisis during the interdict of 1606-1607 was a logical development of an inborn ideological conflict between Venice and Rome. His thesis, however, does not fit the facts for the 1540s, which were a crucial decade in Venetian history since these years witnessed the acceptance of the Roman Inquisition and the first attempt to adopt an Index of Forbidden Books. During this period, Rome and Venice disagreed not on what should be implemented or rejected, but on who should have the responsibility and weaponry to enforce it. When there was a confrontation between them, it was caused by reasons of state—the political needs of two governments sharing a common border and having different political interests in Italy and/or in Europe.
John Chrysostom and theSubintroductae
Authors: Clark Elizabeth A.
Published: April 2006

When physical affections are destroyed and tyrannical desire extinguished, then no hindrance will any longer stand in the way of men and women being together, because all evil suspicion will be cleared away and all who have entered the kingdom of heaven can maintain the way of life of the angels and spiritual powers, through the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory, honor, and dominion from age to age. Amen.1
The Jew in Seventeenth-Century Protestant Thought
Authors: Healey Robert M.
Published: April 2006

In his pamphlet entitled From the First to the Last of the Just, Jean-Paul Lichtenberg concludes a brief history of Jewish-Christian relations with a list of five periods to each of which he assigns a particular quality of anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism. Of the third period, 1096–1520, marked by the Crusades, the Ghetto and the Inquisition, Lichtenberg remarks,

“the pogroms, the massacres and the persecutions perpetrated on the Jews by Christian hands are the manifestation of a Christian anti-Semitism of the people, fed by harsh and comtemptuous preaching. Doctrinal anti-Judaism had filtered down to the masses and given birth to anti-Semitism. The end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance brought about no changes in this situation. Relations between Christians and Jews are already poisoned and only the coming of the (French) Revolution will bring a change in the situation [emphasis added]. One may qualify the Christian anti-Semitism which prevails during this period as an anti-Semitism of passion based upon religion or, again, as an anti-Semitism of intolerance.”
Abraham Lincoln and American Civil Religion: A Reinterpretation
Authors: Endy Melvin B.
Published: April 2006

A period of consensus in American religious historiography has ended, but students of American religion representing a variety of perspectives have recently come to regard Abraham Lincoln, once a subject of great dispute among religionists, as one of the most important and profound of America's theologians and religious leaders, if not the religious center of American history. It is primarily as a spokesman for and symbol of a religious interpretation of American destiny that Lincoln has been placed at this pinnacle, and he has had an especially prominent place in the recent discussion of American civil religion.
Lady Inger and Her Family: Norway's Exemplar of Mixed Motives in the Reformation
Authors: Christopherson K. E.
Published: April 2006

No woman played the main role in the sixteenth-century Reformation in any country. But in Norway's Reformation Lady Inger of Austraat and two of her sons-in-law, Vincens Lunge and Nils Lykke, stand out as central and dramatic figures. Yet since Norway is a land that was then a backwater eddy in history, this Reformation tends to be overlooked. Thus historians have not recognized Lady Inger's important role.
“Episcopae”: Bishops' Wives Viewed in Sixth-Century Gaul
Authors: Brennan Brian
Published: April 2006

The sixth-century Gallic episcopacy contained within its ranks three distinct groups of men. The first group comprised those who had come to the episcopacy from a monastic background; the tradition of the monk-bishop, nurtured in the fifth century by the monastery of Lérins, was still strong, particularly in southern Gaul. The second group consisted of men who, although celibate, were not monks. The third group was composed of married clerics who at the time of ordination had taken a vow of sexual continence. Since source material for this period is comparatively scanty and many bishops are little more than names to us, we have no means by which to establish the proportion of men in the Gallic episcopacy who fit in this third category.1 The most we can say is that the married bishop was a familiar figure in the Merovingian church.
A Heroine Without Heroics: The Little Flower of Jesus and Her Times
Authors: Pope Barbara Corrado
Published: April 2006

Pope Pius X called Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) “the greatest saint of modern times.“ For anyone who grew up in the pre-Vatican II church, she was the most popular model of virtue. Her “little way of spiritual childhood” showed Catholics how each of them could practice their faith and gain salvation. The “Little Flower of Jesus” was, above all, a saint for the ordinary person, a heroine without heroics, a mystic who did not soar but through her language brought God and her relationship to him down to earth.
The Immigrants and Their Gods: A New Perspective in American Religious History
Authors: Dolan Jay P.
Published: April 2006

Twenty years ago Jerald Brauer wrote an essay on the writing of American church history entitled, “Changing Perspectives on Religion in America.” In this essay he noted that “change in perspective marks the writing of the history of religion in America.” After discussing the work of Robert Baird and William Warren Sweet, the two historians whose perspectives most influenced the writing of American church history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively, Brauer then directed his attention to a third and new perspective. This new perspective had developed in the post-World War II era and was the result of the work of Sidney E. Mead, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Winthrop S. Hudson, and others. Brauer described the new perspective by pointing out how it differed from the work of Sweet. It was clear to Brauer, however, that no one historian or school of historians had yet emerged whose perspective was able to dominate the landscape in the manner that Baird and Sweet had. There really was no new single perspective, but a variety of approaches and interpretations. In other words, in the late 1960s the discipline of American church history was in a state of flux, and “a number of young historians” were, in Brauer's words, “anxious to develop a new perspective through which to view the development and nature of Christianity in America.”
The Peace Testimony of the Early Plymouth Brethren
Authors: Brock Peter
Published: April 2006

Among the many fruits of the evangelical piety within British Protestantism was the movement of renewal which crystallized around the end of the 1820s into the sect usually known as the Plymouth Brethren (or Christian Brethren as they now prefer). Brethren have “remained fairly small numerically… but [with] a theological influence much larger than [their] membership would indicate.” It is hard to say exactly when the group first appeared; its period of gestation lasted several years. At the outset “the founders … had no programme, manifesto or creed.” The sect originated among a group of earnest seekers centered first in Dublin and later in Plymouth, where at the beginning of the 1830s they began to take on the form of an organized movement. It soon had followers throughout the British Isles, and a few adherents were gathered in France, Germany, and Switzerland. Though eventually the Brethren became a predominantly lower middle-class body, the leaders of the first stage of the movement were drawn almost exclusively from the upper ranks of society: Anglican clergymen, Oxford dons, lawyers, doctors, sons of country families or wealthy merchants, and even a future peer of the realm. They were then all young men in their twenties or early thirties, nearly all of them well educated and several of them excellent classical or biblical scholars.
The Schools of Christian Doctrine in Sixteenth-Century Italy
Authors: Grendler Paul F.
Published: April 2006

The Schools of Christian Doctrine taught the fundamentals of Catholicism, and reading and writing, to a very large number of boys and girls in sixteenth-century Italy. Numerous laymen and laywomen gave up their holiday leisure in order to teach in these schools. The Schools of Christian Doctrine were a significant feature of the Catholic Reformation, a broad movement of Catholic renewal that began before 1517 and whose major initiatives were not necessarily responses to the Protestant Reformation. New religious orders, missionary activity, the founding of institutions to care for the sick, poor, and homeless, and a general effort to teach and preach to the laity more effectively characterized the Catholic Reformation. Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, and others provided leadership and were canonized in later centuries. Scholars have given all of the above a good deal of attention, but probably only specialists are aware of the Schools of Christian Doctrine.
The Laity in the Church: Slovaks and the Catholic Church in pre-World War I Pittsburgh
Authors: Alexander June Granatir
Published: April 2006

In April 1895, the Pittsburgh Catholic, the official diocesan newspaper, proudly reported: the “progress” of Catholicism “is conspicuously marked in this diocese by the steady increase of churches to accom[m]odate the faithful”.This glowing assessment was prompted by news that the city's first Slovak Catholic church, Saint Elizabeth's, had been organized. Saint Elizabeth's came into existence because Slovak lay Catholics had taken it upon themselves to found a national church. If the diocese defined “progress” as an increase in the number of churches, Pittsburgh's Slovak immigrants certainly contributed to that progress during the next decade. By 1909, lay-initiated movements had led to the formation of three more Slovak Catholic churches in Pittsburgh.
Between Americanism and Modernism: John Zahm and Theistic Evolution
Authors: Appleby R. Scott
Published: April 2006

“Romanism and Evolution. Remarkable Advance. No Special Creation.” “Father Zahm on the Six Days of Creation.” “Father Zahm on Inspiration.” “Father Zahm Honored with a Private Audience by His Holiness.”1 During the final decade of the nineteenth century religious periodicals and secular newspapers alike chronicled the growing fascination of the American Catholic community with the public debate over the latest theories regarding the evolution of species. One figure in particular, John Augustine Zahm, a Holy Cross priest and professor of chemistry and physics in the University of Notre Dame, captured many of the headlines and captivated Catholic audiences with his sophisticated, clear expositions of the various theories in the post-Darwinian controversies and with his repeated assurances that the idea of evolution, properly understood, posed no obstacle to the faith of the individual Catholic.
Independent Baptists: From Sectarian Minority to ‘Moral Majority’
Authors: Leonard Bill J.
Published: April 2006

Raymond W. Barber, Baptist pastor and president of the Baptist World Fellowship, wrote in 1982, “Fundamentalists have moved out of the storefront buildings on back alleys into beautiful sanctuaries fronting the freeways and boulevards that dissect the nation's biggest cities. No longer do fundamentalists operate from the closet of inferiority, but from the parlor of influence, affecting the spiritual and cultural life of America. The so-called “splinter-group” of yesterday has become a special vanguard of the truth whose influence is evidenced from the courthouse to the White House.”1
The Charismatic Intellectual: Origen's Understanding of Religious Leadership
Authors: Trigg Joseph W.
Published: April 2006

Origen's vocabulary is quite definitely that of an intellectual; it owes little to daily life or to the vernacular of his time.… He seems …to manufacture his own language, often hermetic, abstract, or difficult to understand, the language of a man concerned above all with ideas, somewhat cut off from the real world, and constitutionally separated from concrete realities. Are we wrong in attaching a particular significance to the fact, so characteristic of his passionate idealism as well as of his introversion, that he made himself a eunuch ?