bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
John Wyclif and Ecclesia Anglicana
Authors: Tatnall Edith C.
Published: March 2011

Lord Acton believed that there was a dichotomy in English history between the life expressed in the Church and the principle of nationality. It is evident from a study of the writings of John Wyclif (c. 1320–84) that at least one medieval English theologian asserted that a principle of English nationality was fused into the life of the English Church. Regardless of how the next fifty years of scholarship may judge the connexion in medieval Christianity between national traditions and the universal Church, the English aspect of it is important at present. Wyclif provided the original impetus to the Lollard movement. Increasing scholarly attention has been given to Lollardy and its possible influence on the English Reformation. It now seems important to survey systematically the texts of Wyclif's treatises themselves for what light they may shed on the relationship between ecclesiastical and temporal history in the English tradition.
Religion and Education in 1843: Reaction to the ‘Factory Education Bill’
Authors: Ward J. T. , Treble J. H.
Published: March 2011

Sir James Graham's Factory Bill of 1843 has been examined from varied viewpoints by several writers. Partly planned as a legislative antidote to the conditions which had helped to provoke the ‘Plug Plot’ riots of 1842, the measure was important for two reasons: it would both considerably improve earlier textile factory reforms and provide reasonable education for child-workers. On both counts and on all sides it provoked major controversy.
Insight or Incoherence? The Greek Fathers on God and Evil
Authors: Young Frances M.
Published: March 2011

This paper attempts to explore a number of inter-related ideas—inter-related in so far as they are all concerned in one way or another with evil, and God's relationship with it. The belief most characteristic of Christianity is the assurance that redemption from evil has been achieved for mankind in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our first enquiry is concerned with a basic contradiction in the accounts of this belief given in Greek Patristic literature. Secondly, attention will be drawn to the tension between this characteristically Christian affirmation and the efforts of Christian thinkers of the period to produce a rationally-based theodicy—that is, their treatment of the problem of evil as traditionally understood. The conclusion raises the question whether our findings require us to charge the Greek Fathers with incoherence in their theology.
Domestic Visitation: a Chapter in Early Nineteenth Century Evangelism
Authors: Rack H. D.
Published: March 2011

Historians in recent years have shown considerable interest in the alienation from conventional church-going revealed by the Religious Census of 1851, as well as in the efforts of the churches to reach the masses in the second half of the nineteenth century. Less attention has been paid to special means of evangelism before 1850, the impression perhaps being given that despite awareness of the problem of the unchurched, the response to this was narrow and conventional—a matter simply of increasing and rationalising the traditional provision of churches, clergy and parish organisation or their Dissenting equivalents. It is true that Sunday Schools have been noted as devices for capturing and controlling the young; but little attention has been paid to what was probably the most characteristic device during the second quarter of the century for extending religious influences to adults outside the Church— the domestic visitation society. The purpose of the present paper is to attempt a limited inquiry into the circumstances in which these societies began; the different models they followed; and the purposes they pursued.
London's General Body of Protestant Ministers: its Disruption in 1836
Authors: Short K. R. M.
Published: March 2011

As 1829 began an unrequited Ireland remained on the apparent verge of rebellion while parliament, having removed another obstacle to Roman Catholic Emancipation in its revocation of the sacramental clauses of the Test and Corporation Acts (9 Geo. IV, c. 17), faced a nation seemingly unready for papist equality. The memory of the Gordon Riots of 1780 remained, for some as fresh as if they had occurred only the day before. Twelve members of the General Body of Protestant Dissenting Ministers issued a call on 13 January for a special meeting to be held seven days later, to consider if the Independents, Presbyterians and Baptists of the metropolis should add the weight of their opinion to that already mustered in support of the removal of the Roman Catholics' civil disabilities.
The Second English Delegation to the Council of Basel
Authors: Schofield A. N. E. D.
Published: March 2011

The second English delegation to the Council of Basel arrived there in August 1434 and remained until the summer of the following year. Its members, unlike their predecessors in the delegation of 1433, took the oath of incorporation and the brief period of their attendance was virtually the extent of England's official participation in the council. The purpose of this article is to re-examine the episode of the second delegation of which no comprehensive account has appeared since Dr. August Zellfelder published his study of England and the council in 1913.
The Prebendaries' Plot of 1543: a Reconsideration
Authors: Zell Michael L.
Published: March 2011

There are many accounts of the ‘prebendaries' plot’ of 1543 against archbishop Thomas Cranmer. Some view the event as a counterattack against advancing heresy in Canterbury diocese. Others see a ‘papist’ revolt within Cranmer's own household. Nearly all agree that the plot was a wholly clerical enterprise. They have studied the clergy alone, focusing on the prebendaries' and preachers' activities against their ordinary. Recent accounts have stressed the relationship between the prebendaries' plot and the conflict between Cranmer and bishop Stephen Gardiner. That there was factional strife in the royal council, which could easily focus on religious issues, is not in question here. What is lacking, however, in recent accounts is any consideration of the substantial involvement of a number of Kentish gentlemen and royal officials, although their part in the affair was noted in near-contemporary accounts. By following these traces we may enlarge our understanding of the intrigue of 1543 in the context of Reformation politics at the county level.
The Consular Chaplaincies and the Foreign Office under Palmerston, Aberdeen and Malmesbury. Two Case Histories: Rome and Funchal
Authors: Pinnington J. E.
Published: March 2011

In an earlier article I discussed the general status of Anglican chaplaincies in continental Europe after the defeat of Napoleon and attempted to show how feeble this aspect of the pax britannica really was. Peter Hinchliff s expression ‘The One-Sided Reciprocity’ indeed fits perfectly the position of the Anglican Church abroad in those years. Despite the Royal Patents obtained by bishop Edmund Gibson of London in 1727 and 1728, the authority of the bishop of London was far from being strengthened by the Royal Supremacy: if anything, the Royal Supremacy neutralised episcopal authority. In a situation where some chaplains were appointed by the Foreign Office and others engaged by private bodies (the most notable at this time being the Colonial and Continental Church Society), the bishop of London, as nominal ordinary of Anglican congregations in Europe, could only exercise authority over those clergy who had received their appointments directly from Government, the operation of Government patronage having emasculated all independent episcopal initiative; and these clergy often refused to defer to the bishop unless specifically directed to do so by the Foreign Secretary. ‘As I have no jurisdiction at Ostend’, wrote bishop Charles James Blomfield of a priest who owed his appointment to a private body, ‘my licence holds good only so long as the Congregation, who pay their chaplain, think fit to respect it’.
George Whitefield's ‘Curate’: Gloucestershire Dissent and the Revival
Authors: Nuttall Geoffrey F.
Published: March 2011

Students of the Evangelical Revival may have noted the grateful reference made by George Whitefield to a minister in Gloucester, Thomas Cole, who encouraged him in his youth when he began preaching, and have wished that we knew more of this ‘most venerable dissenting minister’. A few months after Cole's death in 1742, Whitefield tells how he was brought up to ridicule Cole ‘and (with shame I write it) used, when a boy, to run into his meeting-house, and cry,Old Cole! old Cole! old Cole!Being asked once by one of his congregation, what business I would be of? I said, “a minister, but I would take care never to tell stories in the pulpit, like the oldCole”. About twelve years afterwards the old man heard me preach in one of the churches at Gloucester; and on my telling some story to illustrate the subject I was upon, having been informed what I had before said, made this remark to one of his elders, “I find that youngWhitefieldcan now tell stories, as well as oldCole”. Being affected much with my preaching, he was as it were become young again, and used to say, when coming to and returning fromBarn, “These are days of the Son of Man indeed!” nay, he was so animated, and so humbled, that he used to subscribe himselfmy Curate, and went about preaching after me, from place to place’.
Sectarianism versus Ecumenism: the Impact on British Churches of the Missionary Movement to India, c. 1800–1860
Authors: Piggin Stuart
Published: March 2011

In October 1826, an impassioned letter appeared in The Times, written by an outraged correspondent whose house had been entered unceremoniously by two offensive females who demanded first a donation towards the construction of a missionary training college and then a justification of his refusal to subscribe. He fulminated against the triumphalism of voluntary religious societies: ‘It seems “to grow by what it feeds on”’ The first half of the nineteenth century in Britain was certainly an age of ‘evangelical aggression’, and probably the modern missionary movement was making an impression on British society far deeper than it made on such countries as India and Africa, to which missionaries were sent. Missionary enthusiasm appears to have increased lay giving for home missions as well as foreign missions; it probably stimulated interest in home missions and increased the number of candidates for the ministry; it almost certainly provided a fillip to theological education; it reinforced the already existing tendency to express piety in activity rather than quiescence; it helped to bury fatalistic and deterministic theological systems; it appears to have appealed, like the later temperance movement, to all classes of society; and (perhaps related to the last claim) it declared war on denominational bigotry.
Was Montanism a Jewish-Christian Heresy?
Authors: Ford J. Massingberd
Published: March 2011

The origins of the ‘montanist’ heresy are far from clear. This much is known, that it began in Phrygia (or Mysia) and that it must have originated before 172, when Montanus had his visions, and before 179, when the prophetess Maximilla is said to have died. It is also conjectured that ‘Montanism’, a name which does not occur before the fourth century, may have been a title attached to the heresy later, and that the earlier names ‘the New Prophecy’ and the ‘Phrygian or Kataphrygian heresy’ are more exact connotations for the movement. Of the two names I should prefer the first, for ‘the New Prophecy’ does not seem to have been a heresy in its beginnings: doctrinal aberrations came only in the later centuries. In view of these facts it is legitimate to ask whether ‘the New Prophecy’ was a Judeo-Christian group which broke off from the Church and still later became heretical, that is, that the movement existed in essence before the time of Montanus and his ladies but that it was only in his day that it became a separate movement.
Melanchthon, Theologian of Ecumenism
Authors: Meyer Carl S.
Published: March 2011

On 22 February 1546 Martin Luther's body was laid to rest in the church at Wittenberg. Fourteen years and two months later Philip Melanchthon was interred at his side. In the funeral oration at the bier of Luther, Melanchthon included a prayer. It reads (in John Bale's translation, printed already in 1546):

‘We thanke the omnipotent God, the eternal father of our lorde Jesus Christ, the onlye founder of thy true churche, togeyther with thy sonne vnto the coeternal, our lorde Jesus Christ, and the holye ghostye, wyse, good, mercyfull, rythouse, true, myghtye, and most liberall, that thu gatheryst vnto that sonne of thyne the promised herytage out of mankynde, and vpholdest the true mynysterye of thy Gospell, specyallye now that thu hast restored yt vnto vs by thy faythfull seruauvt Luther. The we most hartelye desyre, that from hens fourth thu wystaue to preserue and gouerne that true congregacyon of thyne, and that thu firmelye plante in vs the most sure doctyrne, lyke as Esaias desyered vnto hys dyscyples, and lighten our myndes with thy most holye sprete, that we maye both ryghtlye call vpon the, and also leade a godlye conuersacyon. Amen’.
The Organisation of the Particular Baptists, 1644–1660
Authors: White B. R.
Published: March 2011

In this Journal Dr. G. F. Nuttall has reviewed the records which he re-discovered of the Baptist Western Association 1653–8. Meanwhile, unknown to him, a MS. had come into the hands of Dr. E. A. Payne which reported the proceedings of a similar association centred in Berkshire for the period 1652–60 and which he deposited in the Angus Library at Regent's Park College, Oxford, where it has lain unused for some years past. Since, either in MS. or in print, there are now known to exist the records for five similar organisations during the period of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, namely, the two already mentioned, together with those in Wales, the English Midlands and Ireland, the time seems appropriate for a study of the organisation of the Particular Baptists during this period in Britain as a whole. Whilst there are no similar records extant for the London congregations there is clear evidence, as it is hoped to show in this paper, that the churches of the capital did associate and that they initiated and fostered closer relations between themselves and those of the provinces.
Edward Gee and the Matter of Authority
Authors: Smart Ian Michael
Published: March 2011

Edward Gee, rector at Eccleston, near Chorley in Lancashire, from 1643 until 1660, was born in 1612 or 1613, at Banbury (Oxon.). During the years following the reorganisation of the Church in Lancashire along Presbyterian lines in 1646, he achieved recognition as a leading member of the clergy in that county. In 1650 he was said to possess the parsonage-house and glebe at Eccleston, with tithes and a water cornmill. Although he had agreed with the parliamentary cause in the Civil War, he opposed the more revolutionary changes carried out in 1648 and 1649, years in which the House of Commons was purged by the army, king Charles I executed, and the monarchy and the House of Lords abolished. The decision of the new republican Commonwealth regime to exact a promise of allegiance, known as the Engagement (first, in 1649 from a number of important Englishmen, and then in 1650 from all adult males in England) provoked a major pamphlet debate. This Engagement Controversy was the occasion of a lengdiy and detailed exchange of opinions and interpretations concerning the whole problem of how the subject should in conscience behave with respect to a drastic change of government, or, as many would have it, a usurpation of civil authority.
The Enforcement of Reaction, 1553–1558
Authors: Loades D. M.
Published: March 2011

The religious settlement of 1553–4 rested no less upon the royal authority than its predecessor, or that which followed in 1559. Like the Elizabethan establishment it was the result of political compromise. To base a persecuting regime upon compromise was, as Elizabeth realised, both illogical and dangerous, but Mary's convictions did not allow her to acknowledge, or enable her to understand the foundations upon which her Church was built.
The Nature of the Early Debate about Christ's Human Soul
Authors: Wiles Maurice F.
Published: March 2011

The New Testament writers, we are constantly being reminded, were not in the stricter sense of the word theologians. We all know what that reminder means and it is one of no small value. It would be disastrous, however, were we to allow it to suggest to us that the Christian writers of the ensuing centuries were men of an entirely different species, whose natural habitat was the study and whose primary characteristic was disinterested reflexion on theological topics. Their teaching, too, can only be rightly understood in the light of the particular concerns and pressures of the moment, which impinged upon them. The importance of this approach to the study of the Fathers is particularly well exemplified by the early history of the question whether or not Christ possessed a human soul.
A View of Archbishop Lanfranc
Authors: Barlow Frank
Published: March 2011

Lanfranc was born at Pavia early in the eleventh century, became a monk of Bee in Normandy about 1041, was promoted prior three years later, and was appointed abbot of Caen in 1063 and archbishop of Canterbury in 1070. He died in William Rufus's reign in 1089. He had three distinct careers, first as a wandering scholar, second as a cloistered monk, and finally as a prelate. One obstacle to viewing Lanfranc as a whole is the nature and form of the sources for his life. And I propose in this paper first to look briefly at the sources, then to comment on the various phases of his curriculum vitae and, in conclusion, to make a few rash observations on his character and manners.
Social and Economic Theories and Pastoral Concerns of a Victorian Archbishop
Authors: Dell Robert S.
Published: March 2011

John Bird Sumner (1780–1862) established his reputation as an author whilst he was still a young Fellow at Eton, and it was as a reward for his writings that he was appointed in 1820 to a canonry at Durham by bishop Shute Barrington. In 1826 his younger brother, Charles Sumner, was appointed to the bishopric of Llandaff, together with the deanery of St. Paul's, and in the following year was translated to the more lucrative and socially desirable see of Winchester, where he remained until 1869. Charles Sumner's sudden rise from being assistant curate of Highclere, near Newbury, to private chaplain at Carlton House and Royal Librarian, was due to the favourable impression he made on George IV when he was introduced by the Conyngham family, then prominent at Court. In 1828 John Sumner was given the arduous diocese of Chester by the duke of Wellington. It is doubtful whether he would have been thought of for a bishopric without the advocacy of his brother, but he proved to be a vigorous pastoral bishop.
Bishop Ermenfrid of Sion and the Penitential Ordinance following the Battle of Hastings
Authors: Cowdrey H. E. J.
Published: March 2011

Bishop Ermenfrid of Sion is chiefly familiar to English historians on account of his brief but important intervention in the Anglo-Norman kingdom in the year 1070. However, he occupied his see for more than thirty years during a momentous period of ecclesiastical and political history. Little evidence about him survives, and it has never been fully assembled and discussed; yet it is enough to give more than passing interest to the course of his career and to the details of his activities. This is especially true of Anglo-Norman affairs, Ermenfrid's part in which needs to be explained and subjected to a detailed examination. But, more generally, the wider evidence about him deserves to be brought into the picture, for it sheds light on some of the factors which governed men's minds and loyalties in the second half of the eleventh century.
Lord Acton and the First Vatican Council
Authors: Conzemius J. V.
Published: March 2011

During the First Vatican Council Lord Acton stayed in Rome as a private observer and sent to his friends Gladstone and Döllinger lengthy reports on the proceedings of the Council. Some of his letters to Döllinger were published in the prominent liberal newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung under the pseudonym ‘Quirinus’. These sensational reports, which are said to have won to the Allgemeine the considerable number of ten thousand new subscribers, were published afterwards in a single volume. An English translation by H. N. Oxenham appeared in 1870 from Rivingtons. The importance of the Quirinus letters, of which Döllinger was the main contributor, lies in the fact that they were the most detailed and best informed reports on the Council's proceedings. Though journalistic in style and approach they were qualitatively far beyond average since both contributors, Acton and Döllinger, were trained historians of international respectability. Since the publication of Acton's private correspondence with Döllinger it has been possible to distinguish more clearly in the Quirinus letters between journalism and historical fact. We will deal in what follows with Lord Acton's contribution to these letters in order to reach a better understanding of his interpretation of infallibility.
The Origin and Date of the ‘Sator’ Word-Square
Authors: Atkinson Donald
Published: March 2011

The recent extensive article on this subject by the distinguished French Scholar Dr. Jérome Carcopino provides an opportunity to return to a subject which I have already discussed in a paper published shortly before the War. Since its publication fresh evidence has come to light which may be thought to bear upon the subject, and various explanations of the origin of the square have been put forward which seem to invite comment. The exhaustive article of Fr. de Jerphanion, which is largely summarized by Carcopino, makes necessary only the briefest sketch of the development of our knowledge of the square. In its later form (beginning with Sator, fig. 2) it can be traced in a more or less complete form from the sixth century to modern times over an area extending from France to Ethiopia, Nubia, and even to South America, where its prophylactic virtues were accepted in the nineteenth century. The discovery of its earlier form (beginning with Rotas, fig. 1) incised on Roman wall-piaster at Cirencester in 1868 caused little interest, and it remained almost exclusively a matter for the medievalist for many years. In 1926 it was observed by Grosser that twenty-one of the letters of the square were made up of the word ‘Paternoster’ twice over (but necessarily arranged as a cross since the N, the middle letter, appears only once) and that the remaining four letters are two A's and two O's (fig. 4).
John Saltmarsh: New Model Army Chaplain
Authors: Solt Leo F.
Published: March 2011

When Richard Baxter arrived in the camp of the victorious New Model Army shortly after the battle of Naseby in June 1645, he was greatly distressed by the religious and political heterodoxies that found expression through the ‘few proud, self-conceited, hotheaded Sectaries’ who had become Cromwell's ‘Favourites’. He observed that these men held ‘vehement Disputes’ in behalf of ‘Liberty of Conscience’, the doctrine that the civil magistrate should have nothing to do with matters of religion. Furthermore, he noticed that they also talked of ‘State Democracy’ and ‘Church Democracy’ as well as ‘about Free-grace and Free-will, and all the Points of Antinomianism and Arminianism’. In other words, in Baxter's mind those men who were attacking the orthodox Calvinistic doctrines of predestination and election were the very same men who were demanding additional political liberties. A single test case may be framed of the compatibility and nurturing effect (each upon the other) of these two tendencies by an examination of the writings of the New Model Army chaplain, John Saltmarsh.
The Education Bill of 1906 and the Decline of Political Nonconformity
Authors: Richards Noel J.
Published: March 2011

The early years of the twentieth century prior to the outbreak of World War I have been described as a period in which the Liberal Party was in a state of decline. One significant aspect of this decline was the deterioration of what in the late nineteenth century has been labelled as political nonconformity. Gladstone's statement that Nonconformists supplied the backbone of British Liberalism perhaps best symbolises the political significance of this group for the vitality of the Liberal Party.
Anselm of Besate and Some North-Italian Scholars of the Eleventh Century
Authors: Cowdrey H. E. J.
Published: March 2011

Scholarly life in eleventh-century Italy comes to the notice of English historians chiefly in connexion with Lanfranc of Pavia, who (in a striking phrase of Dom David Knowles) ‘sought a career and found a vocation north of the Alps’, and with Anselm of Aosta, who succeeded him as prior of Bee and as archbishop of Canterbury. About their early education we know but little. However, the pattern of their lives—an education in north Italy, then travel to distant lands, and the eventual discovery there of an employment or vocation which would scarcely have been possible at home—was not untypical. I shall seek to describe the kind of north-Italian scholarly circles in which Lanfranc, in particular, grew up, with a view to illustrating how scholars were educated, their later careers, and their place in the history of medieval learning, culture and society. Thus we may hope to learn something about the Italian background of the two great Norman archbishops of Canterbury and, more generally, about the ecclesiastical life of north Italy which the Gregorian Reform would soon in such large measure sweep away.
Simon Fish, William Tyndale, and Sir Thomas More's ‘Lutheran Conspiracy’
Authors: Haas Steven W.
Published: March 2011

As Sir Thomas More reflected upon the religious atmosphere during the first months of 1528, he could not conceal his dismay that the situation was steadily deteriorating. Indeed, he thought the popular orthodoxy so weak that any ‘senseless clown’ could gain wide support for an attack on the Church. Within the year, Simon Fish's Supplication of the Beggars had made More a prophet, forcing the busy new chancellor of England to reply to Fish with The Supplycacyon of soulys. Historians have hesitated to label Fish senseless or a clown, for the tremendous impact of his short tract upon Henry vm and the English Reformation is generally recognised. While it is manifest that the Supplication was a rabble-rousing piece of anti-clericalism, perhaps another measure should be taken of Fish before closing off the subject of his significance from discussion. Specifically, if evidence should place Fish and his writings within that group identified with William Tyndale, more credence would be lent to chancellor More's repeated assertions that a number of ‘evangelicall brethren’ existed to propagate Tyndale's beliefs.
Bishop Compton and the Revolution of 1688
Authors: Hosford David H.
Published: March 2011

Recently the revolution of 1688 has again become a fashionable topic. Renewed research and reinterpretation have provided valuable new insights into the role of William of Orange as well as the larger European setting of the event. The danger exists, however, that the pendulum of historical interpretation will swing too far in discounting the significance of the domestic scene. While much of the glory and simplicity of the traditional Whig approach have evaporated under close scrutiny, the fact still remains that the movement against James n was basically English in origin. In this connexion the need clearly emerges for reexamination and further investigation into the part played by those prominent in promoting the conspiracy. The point is nicely illustrated by the case of Henry Compton, bishop of London, whose importance to the revolutionary cause in the last few months before Torbay has never been fully appreciated.
British and German High Churchmen in the Struggle against Hitler
Authors: Bentley James
Published: March 2011

The struggle of the Confessing Church', wrote Otto Dibelius, ‘was a struggle of theologians, backed by a very small group of courageous laymen’. The importance of Karl Barth among these theologians was soon recognised. Even today in England and Germany many write almost as if Barth had been the sole theological resource of Hitler's protestant opponents: ‘It was he who nerved the Confessing Church in Germany to resist the attempts of the Nazis to corrupt the Christian witness, and who was driven into exile for doing so’. This is an exaggeration. My purpose here is to draw attention to the Catholic or high church movement in this same struggle. The theological ideas of this movement can be shown to have influenced, directly or indirectly, a considerable number of the protestants who opposed Hitler.
Work and Festa Ferianda in Medieval England
Authors: Harvey Barbara
Published: March 2011

Much work that is absolutely essential for the continuance and progress of an ordered society has a severely limited attraction for those who perform it. How, nevertheless, men and women were persuaded to work regularly or at all in the Middle Ages has provided one of the central themes in the study of the period, for this is what we study in the institutions of slavery, serfdom and villeinage—all three were ways and means of persuading reluctant workers to work. But these were also means of escape from toil, and it is with one of these, the custom of abstaining from many habitual forms of work on church festivals, that this essay is concerned.
The Coronation of Elizabeth I
Authors: Haugaard William P.
Published: March 2011

The coronation of Edward VII at the beginning of this century was an unfamiliar scene in Westminster Abbey after the long rule of Victoria, and it elicited a spate of scholarly investigations into those ancient ceremonies. As one of the minor fruits of this renewed interest, a controversy was carried on concerning the ceremonial of the coronation of Elizabeth I on 15 January 1559. Three questions occupied the centre of the stage: Who celebrated the mass: Owen Oglethorpe, the bishop who anointed and crowned her, or George Carew, the priest whom she had made dean of the Chapel Royal? Were the consecrated elements elevated during the canon of the mass? Did Elizabeth withdraw during the consecration to the chapel of St. Edward behind the high altar?
Religious Changes in Liverpool in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Walker R. B.
Published: March 2011

The study of local history can contribute much to the understanding of religious changes in the nineteenth century, for, as Professor Asa Briggs has shown, each provincial city of Victorian England had its own distinguishing class structure and manner of life. Nonconformity was strong in Birmingham and Sheffield, towns of the steel and iron industry which was largely in the hands of small masters; Manchester with its cotton mills, its large proletariat and Irish immigrants, its wealthy employers and cosmopolitan merchants, was a very different society, marked not only by a dominant Dissent but also by a strong Roman Catholicism. Although Liverpool resembled Manchester in its wide class differences and its large number of Irish poor, it was a commercial rather than an industrial city. Moreover, unlike Manchester, it was an ancient incorporated borough and the activity of the town council in building churches in the eighteenth century during a period of great population growth (from about 10,000 in 1700 to 77,000 in 1801) appears to have been one factor in stemming the tide of Dissent, which was noticeably weaker in Liverpool than in the other three cities referred to above. In the nineteenth century the main religious issue at Liverpool was not Dissent versus the Establishment, but conflict between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Chartism, so powerful in other cities, appears to have taken second place to the sectarian conflict at Liverpool.
The Emperor Antoninus Pius and the Christians
Authors: Keresztes Paul
Published: March 2011

After Nero, significantly, instituted the persecution of the Christians and after Domitian's rule, during which some notable cases of anti-Christian persecutions occurred in Rome as well as in proconsular Asia, Trajan's rule produced some scattered persecutions in the Greek East of the empire, of which the best known are the case of Ignatius of Antioch and the one in which Pliny the Younger was regretfully involved in Bithynia. The persecutions quite obviously got out of hand in Asia at about the time when Hadrian's administration replaced Trajan's, as is well illustrated by the correspondence of Serenius Granianus (Q. Licinius Silvanus Granianus), a governor of Asia, the emperor Hadrian, and Minucius (Minicius) Fundanus, Granianus's successor.
A Reconsideration of Alexandrian Christology
Authors: Young Frances M.
Published: March 2011

In modern Christological thinking, the tendency is to start with an affirmation of the real humanity of Christ. We recognise with everincreasing realism that the man, Jesus, lived a life open to historical investigation, a life which was circumscribed within the limitations of a normal human psychology and its contemporary environment. This being our pre-supposition, we tend to approve the Antiochene school for its realistic exegesis of New Testament texts referring to the human weakness, progress, experience, finite knowledge, temptation and conflict of the Christ. Correspondingly, we criticise the Alexandrian Fathers for their unnatural exegesis, based, we instinctively feel, upon a form of docetism, however sophisticated. How justifiable is this attitude? It is not the purpose of this paper to minimise the difficulties involved in the Alexandrian position, but the following suggestions may lead to a more sympathetic view of Alexandrian thinking.
A Question of Conscience: the Church and the ‘Conscience Clause’, 1860–70
Authors: Marcham A. J.
Published: March 2011

In one passage of his A Chapter of Autobiography (1868), Gladstone looked back thirty years to the time when he had published The State in its Relations with the Church. Then he had ‘believed that the Church of England, through the medium of a regenerated clergy and an intelligent and attached laity, would not only hold her ground, but would even in great part probably revive the love and allegiance both of the masses who were wholly falling away from religious observances, and of those large and powerful nonconforming bodies’. Yet, within a dozen years of 1838 ‘at least a moiety of the most gifted sons, whom Oxford had reared for the service of the Church of England, would be hurling at her head the hottest bolts of the Vatican; that, with their deviation on the one side, there would arise a not less convulsive rationalistic movement on the other. Since that time, the Church of England may be said to have bled in every pore; and at this hour it seems occasionally to quiver to its very base’.
‘The Rudiments of Faith and Religion’: Religious Controversy at Oxford, 1860–1865
Authors: Roach John
Published: March 2011

The link between religion, politics and education forms one of the major themes of Victorian history. Until the end of the 1820s only Churchmen had full political rights in England, and long after that time Dissenters were stern opponents of such Anglican privileges as the claim to levy church rates. Church of England feeling contributed greatly to Tory strength. Dissenters were prominent among Liberals and Radicals. As the State came to take a greater share in the control of education, sectarian bitterness was one of the main obstacles to official measures, because almost any plan for State intervention was bound to cut across some religious interest. In elementary education men like G. A. Denison resisted State policy in the name of the traditional teaching authority of the Church. In higher education there were forty years of debate and controversy before the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were finally freed from religious tests in 1871.
Iconoclasm at Rickmansworth, 1522: Troubles of Churchwardens
Authors: Aston Margaret
Published: March 2011

One night in the early 1520s, probably in the first half of 1522, the church of St Mary's, Rickmansworth, was badly damaged by arson. Iconoclasts deliberately set fire to all the images, to the reserved sacrament on the high altar, to the ornaments and jewels in the vestry, and to the rood and organs in the rood loft. The incendiaries made sure of their blaze by wrapping tow around the rood and pushing tow and banner staves through the bars of the chancel to act as fire-lighters. Their conflagration was also assisted by the large amount (280 pounds) of candle wax in the rood loft. At the same time, the offenders broke open the font and scattered the holy water. As a result of these actions, the chancel and vestry of the church were either severely damaged or destroyed.
In Search of the Godly Magistrate in Reformation Scotland
Authors: Brown K. M.
Published: March 2011

The godly magistrate was an essential figure in the progress of the Protestant Reformation throughout Europe, and Scotland with its very powerful nobility was no exception. Prophetic preachers, discontented lairds, cosmopolitan merchants, and English troops all contributed to Protestant success in 1560, but there can be little doubt that it was the Lords of the Congregation themselves, the nobility, who made the Reformation happen. Furthermore, only by harnessing lordship to Protestantism could John Knox and his colleagues ensure that the fortuitous circumstances which provided the protesters with their opportunity in 1560– the fusing of patriotic and religious ideals – could be built on to ensure the future of a reformed kirk. The godly magistrate provided that combination of theological truth and practical reality which could translate the ideas of the new Church's clerical leaders into practice, particularly in the context of a hostile Crown.
Aspects of the Episcopate of John Carpenter, Bishop of Worcester 1444–1476
Authors: Haines Roy M.
Published: March 2011

The methods of appointment to English sees in the later Middle Ages are not of a kind to give assurance that the men chosen as bishops would be concerned to exercise pastoral care and give undivided attention to the daily routine of diocesan administration. This is not to deny that from time to time men so concerned did reach the Episcopal bench, but their numbers are small indeed, and seldom was the length of an episcopate such as to enable even the most assiduous bishop to make a significant impact on the remoter areas of dioceses too extensive for the available means of travel and communication. But to Worcester in the last month of 1443 was provided John Carpenter, who was to rule the see for some thirty-two years, whose absences from it, though frequent, were of relatively brief duration, and who seems to have entertained a deep personal concern for its affairs and the spiritual and temporal welfare of its people. The very bulk of his register—in two volumes—one substantial the other only less so—serves to provide a detailed prospect of diocesan activity in the middle years of the fifteenth century.
The Newly Discovered Gnostic ‘Epistle to Rheginos’ on the Resurrection: I
Authors: Van Unnik W. C.
Published: March 2011

It is my great privilege and pleasure to direct your attention to and to discuss with you in these lectures anew, hitherto completely unknown Christian text, probably dating from the second century, Gnostic in origin and contents, dealing with the great and important doctrine of the Resurrection.
The Baptist Missionaries of Serampore and the Government of India, 1792–1813
Authors: Potts E. Daniel
Published: March 2011

Prior to 1813 the Honourable East India Company, in whose hands was vested the government of British India, exercised a monopoly over Britain's trade to that territory. As a result, persons not connected with the Company were legally required to obtain a licence from its Board of Directors in London. The passage by the British Parliament in 1813 of an Act to extend the Charter of the Company for a further twenty years wrought many changes: in addition to depriving the Company of its trade monopoly, the Charter contained a clause declaring it to be the duty of Britain to ‘promote the interest and happiness’ of the people of India by taking ‘such measures … as may tend to the introduction … of useful knowledge, and of religious and moral improvement’ —among other ways, by granting licences to missionaries so that they could assist in the work ‘of accomplishing those benevolent designs’.
The Constitutional Significance of Constantine the Great's Settlement
Authors: Ullmann Walter
Published: March 2011

Among the topics of Constantine's governmental measures affecting the Church there is one which has received little or no attention in modern scholarship. And yet this topic would seem at least as important as the numerous disquisitions relative to his motivations, sincerity, honesty of purpose and similar questions which have virtually suffocated modern Constantinean research. The problem which would appear to demand an exhaustive analysis, is so much conditioned by the ramifications of antecedent history as well as by the constitutional development that on this occasion I can do no more than tentatively indicate its extent and scope.
Fasciculi Zizaniorum I
Authors: Crompton James
Published: March 2011

Fasciculi Zizaniorum. has become the bible of ‘Wycliffite’ and early protestant studies. The best known collection of materials relating to John Wyclif and his heresies, and roughly contemporary with what is described, it is the most important single source for the history of John Wyclif. The full title—Fasciculi Zizaniorum magistri Johannis Wycliff cum Tritico—is derived from the description which precedes the opening narrative in the MS. A great deal more is included in the MS. than this title would at first sight suggest. The collection also contains much about the heresies of the Oxford followers of Wyclif, about his leading opponents and the cases of many early Lollards. It also includes the Latin text of the two statutes against Lollards, De Haeretico Comburendo of 1401 and the Leicester Statute of 1414. To these Lollard materials are added the proceedings of the Council of Constance against Wyclif, John Hus and Jerome of Prague, and summaries of condemnation of heresies made by the Church before Wyclif's day, beginning with those condemned at Oxford and Paris in the thirteenth century. The other works are mostly concerned with the age-long controversies over Apostolic Poverty and the Mendicant Orders: a selection from the writings of archbishop Fitzralph of Armagh; the proceedings against the Irish Cistercian, Henry Crump, in 1392; the Protectorium Pauperis of the Carmelite, Richard Maidstone; the Defence of the Carmelite Order written in 1374 by Richard Hornby. The last two works in the MS., a sermon by John Hornby and the well known treatise against Wyclif's Trialogus by the Franciscan, William Woodford, are incomplete.
Blomfield and Peel: a Study in Co-operation between Church and State, 1841–1846
Authors: Welch P. J.
Published: March 2011

The return to office of Peel and the Conservatives in 1841 was reassuring to the Church. On the whole, Melbourne had been less objectionable than the bishops had expected. But the Whigs had by no means lived down the suspicion with which Churchmen naturally regarded a party so strongly supported by Dissenters; and, although there were men unfriendly to the bishops in the Tory ranks, Peel was a far more skilful disciplinarian than Melbourne, if only because he took more pains.
The First Two Years of the Emperor Theodosius I
Authors: Ehrhardt Arnold
Published: March 2011

There have been of late two important books dealing with Theodosius and the Christian Church—one by W. Ensslin and the other by N. Q. King. To a large extent these two authors are agreed that the emperor from the time when he was called by Gratian, the senior Augustus, after the catastrophic defeat of Valens at Hadrianople in 378, where the Roman army of the Balkans together with its emperor was annihilated, gave most of his time and mind to the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in the East. King (op. cit., 18) makes the point that upon a man like Theodosius, brought up as a devout Western Catholic, the enormous change of fortune which took him from voluntary exile to the imperial throne, must have left a profound religious impression: Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles.
The Judicial Activities of the General Chapters: I
Authors: Sayers Jane
Published: March 2011

Within the papacy's jurisdiction of Western Christendom, the general chapter of each religious order replaced the Curia Romana, as the central legislative and judicial assembly. The text of the Promulgatio Chartae Charitatis elaborates this right of self-government and compares the hierarchy of the Cistercian order with that of the Roman Church:

‘… sicut Christus Ecclesiam suam condidit sub Romano Pontifice, per quatuor Patriarchas, Archiepiscopos multos, sed plures ad hue Episcopos regendam; sic Cisterciensis ordo sub abbate Cistercii supremo capite, pro Episcopis abbates filios habeat, pro Archiepiscopis abbates quos patres vocant, pro Patriarchis primos illos quatuor, per quos in charitate radicatus, ac mutuis inter se officiis devinctus, sine alius interventu regeretur …’.
The Origins of the Parish Mission in England and the Early Passionist Apostolate, 1840–1850
Authors: Charles Conrad
Published: March 2011

The history of the Parish Mission in England begins with a petition addressed to pope Gregory XVI by Monsignor Wiseman at the end of January 1840.

In this document, Mgr. Wiseman expressed his belief that the situation in England gave well-founded hopes for the rapid propagation of the Roman Catholic faith, so long as favourable circumstances were seconded by energetic measures. He said that his own journeys throughout England, the opinion of the Vicars Apostolic, of the clergy and of the people, had confirmed him in his conviction that an Institute of missionary priests would be most efficacious, even necessary, if this rapid growth of Catholicism was to become a reality.
The Canterbury Edition of the Answers of Pope Gregory I to St. Augustine
Authors: Deanesly Margaret , Grosjean Paul
Published: March 2011

During the war, many learned books published on the continent missed notice in England, among them one which advanced the study of the Responsiones supposedly sent by pope Gregory I in answer to the queries of St. Augustine: Responsiones included by Bede in his Historia Ecclesiastica (i. xxvii). This unnoticed book, entitled Die Quellen zur Angelsachsenmission Gregors des Grossen: eine historiographische Studie, by Suso Brechter, Münster, 1941 (Beiträge zur Geschichte des altem Mönchtums und des Benediktinerordens, Heft 22), was not reviewed in the English Historical Review nor (so far as the present writers know) in other periodicals. There is no copy of it in the British Museum nor the Cambridge University Library, and, though the Bodleian has a copy, it was, up till August 1956, uncut.
Parochial Curates in Elizabethan London
Authors: Owen H. Gareth
Published: March 2011

As in other spheres of historical activity, the modern ecclesiastical historian has tended to examine traditional interpretations of the state of the Elizabethan Church in the light of detailed studies of clerical conditions within limited areas. The local approach has cast into the melting pot many well-established historical assumptions. No longer is it reasonable to condemn the intellectual attainments of the Elizabethan clergy in the terms employed by W. P. M. Kennedy as recently as 1914. The wide fluctuations in standards between dioceses—and even between different archdeaconries within the same diocese—have shown the decisive factors to be essentially local: the distribution of patronage, the proportion of impropriated livings, proximity to London or to a university. A definitive picture of clerical standards and qualifications will not be forthcoming until a representative number of dioceses have undergone this type of analysis.