bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
‘The Rector presents his compliments’: Worship, Fabric, and Furnishings of the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, 1828-1938
Authors: Dudley Martin
Published: March 2016

For nearly 900 years the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great has functioned as an expression of wider religious moods, movements, and aspirations. Founded in 1123 by Rahere, a courtier of Henry I, at a time when the Augustinian Canons gained a brief ascendancy over older forms of religious life, it represents the last flowering of English Romanesque architecture. The Priory was dissolved by Henry VIII, became a house of Dominicans under Mary, and saw the flames that consumed the Smithfield martyrs. Since Elizabeth’s reign it has been a parish church serving a small and poor but populous area within the City of London but outside the walls. Its history is fairly well documented. Richard Rich lived in the former Lady Chapel. Walter Mildmay worshipped, and was buried, there. John Wesley preached there. Hogarth was baptized there. Parts of the church had been turned over to secular use. There was a blacksmith’s forge in the north transept beyond the bricked-up arch of the crossing and the smoke from the forge often filled the building. A school occupied the north triforium gallery. The Lady Chapel was further divided, and early in the eighteenth century Samuel Palmer, a printer, had his letter foundry there. The young Benjamin Franklin worked there for a year in 172 s and recorded the experience in his autobiography. The church, surrounded by houses, taverns, schools, chapels, stables, and warehouses, was a shadow of its medieval glory; but between 1828 and 1897 it changed internally and externally almost beyond recognition. The process of change continued over the next forty years and indeed continues still. These changes in architecture and furnishings were closely linked to a changed attitude to medieval buildings, to issues of churchmanship, and to liturgical developments.
Holy Land, Holy Lance: Religious Ideas in the Chanson d’Antioche
Authors: Edgington Susan B.
Published: March 2016

Silence, Seigneurs, and hold your peace if you want to hear a glorious song. No jongleur can speak of a higher theme … my song is of the Holy City - may she be praised - where God allowed himself to be tortured and crucified, even suffering the lance and blows and wounds. Jerusalem, such is her name.

The opening laisse of the Old French Chanson d’Antioche, which focuses on the Holy Land as the scene of Christ’s Passion, promises to address the theme of this volume very directly. How far is that promise fulfilled? The purpose of the examination which follows is to look at the image of Jerusalem in the Chanson and the attraction of the Holy Land to the poem’s audience: this will entail a consideration of the ideas of pilgrimage and crusade. Aspects of popular religion – visions and miracles, for example – will be identified. It will be seen that the role played by the clergy in promoting, explaining, and especially participating in the expedition is crucial to the text.
‘Serpent in the Dust: Sparrow on the Housetop’: Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Circle of Pope Innocent III
Authors: Bolton Brenda
Published: March 2016

Shortly after his election on 8 January 1198, one of the earliest duties of the youthful and energetic new pope, Innocent III (1198-1216), was to inform the ecclesiastical and lay rulers of Christendom of his succession following the death of his predecessor, the nonagenarian Celestine III (1191-98). His immediate task, therefore, was to undertake a ‘mail-shot’ of a series of personal letters announcing that he had been so chosen. One recipient of such a missive was Aimery the Monk, Patriarch of Jerusalem (1194/97-1202), who was suffering, together with others, the dire consequences of recent events in the Holy Land. Given these circumstances, Innocent’s letter to Aimery was couched in somewhat mild and unexpectedly innocuous language. All he did was to assure the Patriarch of his papal solicitude and to promise that one of his many future duties as pope would be to attempt a resolution of the Holy Land problem. It would be through God’s help and with fasting, tears, and prayers, that the people of the Holy Land might expect to be freed. Eighteen years later they were still waiting.
Thomas Cook, Holy Land Pilgrims, and the Dawn of the Modern Tourist Industry
Authors: Larsen Timothy
Published: March 2016

During a visit to Palestine in 1853, A P. Stanley, then canon of Canterbury, sent missives to friends as he went along, describing his reactions to the Holy Land. Goldwin Smith, a fellow at University College Oxford, enthused, ‘You have nothing to do but to piece together your letters, cut off their heads and tails, and the book is done.’ Sinai and Palestine (1856) became his most popular work. When the Prince of Wales decided to visit Palestine in 1862 he asked the canon to accompany him: Stanley had been Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford in the late 1850s, and he was the nephew of a peer. Although his position in the social order excelled that of many other Eastern travellers at mid-century, Stanley serves well to evoke the kind of encounters between religiously-minded Britons and the Holy Land which were experienced in the era before modern tourism.
Church Time and Astrological Time in the Waning Middle Ages
Authors: Carey Hilary M.
Published: March 2016

Time, according to medieval theologians and philosophers, was experienced in radically different ways by God and by his creation. Indeed, the obligation to dwell in time, and therefore to have no sure knowledge of what was to come, was seen as one of the primary qualities which marked the post-lapsarian state. When Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of delights, they entered a world afflicted with the changing of the seasons, in which they were obliged to work and consume themselves with the needs of the present day and the still unknown dangers of the next. Medieval concerns about the use and abuse of time were not merely confined to anxiety about the present, or awareness of seized or missed opportunities in the past. The future was equally worrying, in particular the extent to which this part of time was set aside for God alone, or whether it was permissible to seek to know the future, either through revelation and prophecy, or through science. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the scientific claims of astrology to provide a means to explain the outcome of past and future events, circumventing God’s distant authority, became more and more insistent. This paper begins by examining one skirmish in this larger battle over the control of the future.
‘The Bane of Industry’? Popular Evangelicalism and Work in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Walsh John
Published: March 2016

“Work while it is day; the night cometh wherein no man can work’: John Wesley’s liking for John 9.4 will not surprise a modern student of evangelical history. That there was a Weberian elective affinity between Methodism and diligence has become something of a truism among sociologists examining the cluster of values comprising the Protestant ethic and social historians probing the psychological roots of industrialization in England. Thanks to a famous chapter in E. P. Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class, countless students perceive Methodism primarily as an agency of time-work discipline, internalizing a gospel of work in the pre-industrial labourer and recasting him, by way of the fiery mould of a conversion experience, into the submissive factory worker.
From Shooting to Shopping: Randall Davidson’s Attitudes to Work, Rest, and Recreation
Authors: Mews Stuart
Published: March 2016

If Jose Harris was right when she asserted that ‘there was no such thing as a homogeneous Victorian work ethic’ and that a history of work, especially between 1870 and 1914, can only be written on the basis of the reported observations of, and reflections on, the work of individual farms, factories, homes, offices, and workshops, she would find few better sources than the astonishing variety of personal experiences and insights of Randall Davidson (1846-1930), England’s longest-serving Archbishop of Canterbury. Davidson’s early career touched a range of contacts from middle-class urban Edinburgh, to the Lowland small country estate, English public school, and Oxford college; as well as the doctor-dominated private sickroom, smart shooting parties on grouse moors, the staid Lambeth Palace bureaucracy, the tradition-infested Court at Windsor, the arcane Board of the British Museum, and the privileged confines of the House of Lords and West End clubs with their opportunities for strategic socializing and quiet persuasion. At the same time there was a coming to terms with the new consumer society as manifested in the new shopocracy of retail stores like Debenhams. These different worlds imposed their own power-structures, work expectations, and demands on both providers and purchasers. They produced their own stresses and strains which called for mitigation. The huge range of what constituted work was part of the concerns of the socially-alert clergyman in late Victorian Britain, none more so than Randall Davidson, who can be profitably considered as an exponent of, participant in, and observer of the place of work and use of time in his society.
Empress andTheotokos: Gender and Patronage in the Christological Controversy
Authors: Cooper Kate
Published: March 2016

Scholars have long suspected that the Byzantine cult of the Virgin Mary owed its early success to the efforts of the early Byzantine empresses. Among them, it is Aelia Pulcheria,Augustafrom 414 to 453 and herself a professed virgin until her politically-charged marriage in 451, who is best known for having asserted Mary’s right to be known asTheotokos- the one who gave birth to God. Many sources suggest that the Nestorian controversy debated at the Council of Ephesus in 431 arose from an altercation between Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople from 428 to 431, and Pulcheria. On this view, the debate over Christ’s human and divine natures turned on whether Mary had given birth to God the Son, or only to Jesus the man. It was with this in mind that in 1982 Kenneth Holum suggested that by refusing to support the cult of the Virgin asTheotokos, Nestorius had in effect challenged the imperial family’s religious authority in early fifth-century Constantinople.
King Henry III and the Blessed Virgin Mary
Authors: Vincent Nicholas
Published: March 2016

Much has been written of the Marian devotions of King Louis IX of France. Louis, so we are told, would mortify his flesh on the vigils of the four principal feasts of the Virgin. Regular pilgrimages were made by the King to the great Marian shrines of France, most notably those of Chartres and Rocamadour. Day by day, in his own chapel, the King listened to matins, tierce and compline sung with the appropriate offices of Our Lady, and on Tuesdays and Saturdays the Mass itself was dedicated to the Virgin. When the King took communion, which he did on six principal feast-days each year, two of these feasts, the Assumption and the Purification, were those of the Virgin. Rather than listen to ribald or secular songs, Louis preferred the singing of the Ave Maria stella.
Cardinal Cajetan and Fra Ambrosius Catharinus in the Controversy over the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin in Italy, 1515–51
Authors: Preston Patrick
Published: March 2016

The development of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin has a long history. This article deals with a small but important segment of this development, by providing some account of what was at stake and of the main stages by which the contest was fought out, principally within the Dominican Order, between 1515 and 1551.

The development here considered is really sandwiched between two Councils, the Fifth Lateran on the one hand, and Trent on the other, at which the thought of settling a very contentious issue was first entertained and then dismissed. The need for a settlement became apparent in the fifteenth century when the increasing popularity of the doctrine exacerbated the longstanding rivalry between the Franciscans, its principal devotees, and the Dominicans, its traditional opponents. Pope Sixtus IV went some way towards satisfying the Immaculists by the constitution Cum praeexcelsa of 1476, but the constitution Grave nimis of 1483 gave some satisfaction to their opponents, because it explicitly stated that, in the case of this doctrine, the Church had not yet made up its mind.
Offending God: John Foxe and English Protestant Reactions to the Cult of the Virgin Mary
Authors: Freeman Thomas S.
Published: March 2016

On 20 January 1574, at about 7.00 p.m., Alexander Nyndge, one of the sons of William Nyndge, a gentleman of Herringwell, Suffolk, suddenly went into violent paroxysms. Edward Nyndge, Alexander’s brother, intervened. Edward was a Cambridge graduate and a former fellow of Gonville and Caius, and his University education had apparently prepared him for just such an emergency. He immediately declared that Alexander was possessed by an evil spirit and summoned the villagers to come and pray for his brother’s recovery. As the praying continued, Alexander’s convulsions grew worse; a half dozen men had to hold him in his chair. Meanwhile the onlookers were praying extemporaneously. Suddenly someone invoked both God and the Virgin Mary. Edward pounced on this remark and admonished the crowd that such prayers offended God. The evil spirit, in a voice ‘much like Alexanders voice’, chimed in, endorsing the propriety of the prayer. But ‘Edward made answere and said thou lyest, for ther is no other name under Heaven, wherby we may challenge Salvacion, but thonly name of Ihesus Christe’. This point settled, Edward proceeded to organize his brother’s exorcism.
The Virgin Mary in the Reign of Mary Tudor
Authors: Wizeman William
Published: March 2016

Evidence of devotion to the Virgin Mary in the restored Catholic Church of the reign of Mary Tudor survives in numerous religious texts published from 1553 to 1558. These sermons, catechetical texts, primers, and books of devotion and polemic were written to aid the restoration of early modern Catholicism in England after twenty years of religious tumult. By considering how these texts treat devotion to Mary, it is possible to answer two questions. First, was the cult of the saints in Marian England, particularly that of the Virgin, ‘one of [t]he abiding casualties of the preceding reformations’, as Ronald Hutton has argued from the few gilds and pilgrimage centres restored during this period? Secondly, does devotion to the Virgin present any clues as to the nature of the Marian Church? Did it hark back to the Church of the 1520s? Did it embrace much evangelical belief and eschew much traditional religion, as Lucy Wooding argues in her recent monograph? Or was it akin to the Catholic Reformation in Europe? In order to answer these questions, it would be useful to begin by evaluating two texts that possessed semi-official status in the Marian Church, the use and frequent printing of which were encouraged by the likes of Cardinal Pole: Bishop Edmund Bonner of London’s catechetical work, A Profitable Doctryne, and the Wayland Primer, both printed in 1555.
The Immaculate Heart of Mary: Visions for the World
Authors: Boss Sarah Jane
Published: March 2016

In the Catholic Church throughout the world, the cult of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is one of the most widespread forms of modern Marian devotion, expressing a dominant mood within contemporary Catholicism.’ For its devotees, the heart of Mary is almost literally ‘the heart of a heartless world’, and indeed, the image of the world - the globe of the Earth - is central to the cult.
Diversity or Disunity? A Reformation Controversy Over Communion in Both Kinds
Authors: Bagchi David
Published: March 2016

In principle, a distinction has often been made between the Church’s faith and its order, between what is essential to Christianity and the structure required to preserve that essence. In practice, this distinction has never been a clear-cut one, and the ideal of a unity of faith which can tolerate a diversity of rite has rarely been achieved. On the one hand, as Flacius Illyricus reminded Melanchthon in the Adiaphoristic controversy, the external organization, rites, and customs of a church are an organic expression of its beliefs: lex credendi becomes lex orandi. On the other, as Geoffrey Wainwright amongst others has noted, doctrines have frequently been formulated to reflect or to justify existing liturgical practices: lex orandi becomes lex credendi. A matter of order can become a matter of faith, and in the process what was once regarded as legitimate diversity can come to be seen as illegitimate disunity.
Unity, Pluralism, and the Spiritual Market-Place: Interdenominational Competition in the Early American Republic
Authors: Carwardine Richard
Published: March 2016

Following independence, Americans’ sense of the special status of their new nation drew succour not merely from their republican experiment but from the unique character of the nation’s religious life. Even before the Revolution Americans had witnessed an extraordinary proliferation of sects and churches, to a degree unparalleled in any single European state, as ethnic diversity increased and the mid-eighteenth-century revivals split churches and multiplied congregations. The Congregationalist establishment in New England and Anglican power in the middle and southern colonies uneasily confronted energetic dissenting minorities, including Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, English Baptists, and German Lutheran and Reformed groups. After 1776 it took some time to define a new relationship between church and state. Colonial habits of thought persisted and prompted schemes of multiple establishment or government support for religion in general. The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1786 and, five years later, the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution did not succeed wholly in eliminating state authority from the sphere of religion; indeed, residual establishments persisted in Connecticut until 1818 and in Massachusetts until 1833. Yet an important shift was under way towards a ‘voluntary’ system of religious support, in which governmental authority in religion was replaced by increased authority for self-sustaining denominational bodies. After 1790 ecclesiastical institutions grew at an extraordinary pace, shaping the era labelled by historians the ‘Second Great Awakening’. As Jon Butler has reminded us, some 50,000 new churches were built in America between 1780 and 1860, sacralizing the landscape with steeples and graveyards and creating a heterogeneous presence that drew streams of European visitors curious to evaluate the effects of America’s unique experiment in ‘voluntarism’. By 1855 over four million of the country’s twenty-seven million people were members of one of over forty Protestant denominations, most of them recognizable by name as churches with an Old World ancestry but with features which made them distinctively American. Additionally, there were over one million Catholics.
Jewels for Gentlewomen: Religious Books as Artefacts in Late Medieval and Early Modern England
Authors: Walsham Alexandra
Published: March 2016

Historians tend to approach books primarily as vehicles for ideas, sources for the thought of the individuals and groups who wrote and read the words on the pages inside. They rarely pause to consider their significance as physical artefacts and items of material culture. This paper brings the format, appearance, and practical function of Bibles, prayer books, and other small devotional works to the very centre of our attention. It suggests that close scrutiny of the diminutive size and artistically crafted covers of some of the copies that survive yields fresh insights into the shape and texture of piety in late medieval and early modern England. The following investigation is heavily indebted to the findings of researchers in the specialized field of the history of bookbinding, a field once light-heartedly described as ‘a humble auxiliary discipline … not entirely useless and undoubtedly innocuous’. Yet, as we shall see, situated against the backdrop of developments in Tudor and Stuart embroidery and jewellery, domestic furnishing and female fashion, decorated bookbindings provide us with a unique and interesting reflection of the values and preoccupations of pre- and post-Reformation society.
Triple-Deckers and Eagle Lecterns: Church Furniture for the Book in Late Medieval and Early Modern England
Authors: Wabuda Susan
Published: March 2016

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me: because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek.’ When Jesus stood up to read these verses from Isaiah at the start of his public ministry, as he began to reveal himself as the Word in the synagogue of Nazareth, the book ‘he had opened’ at the reading desk was one of the Torah scrolls, brought out for him from the Ark of the Law, the imposing reserve which is, from age to age, the most sacred part of any synagogue. Holy Scripture has always been a public book, a treasure for each synagogue, and for the commonwealth of the Christian community sacred as text and object. But the mystical sanctity of the Bible, and holy books in general, has raised a perennial problem. Precious books have usually been hedged round by restrictions to protect them from the profane, even at the cost of obscuring the public approach which is a necessary part of assembled worship. In this episode in the life of Christ, when the listeners grew too ‘filled with wrath’ for him to continue, we meet the deep and recurrent tension between the community’s need to hear the Word, and the conflicting desire to shield its essential sanctity, which accompanied the book from Judaism in transition to the Christian Church.
Dressed in Borrowed Robes: The Making and Marketing of the Louvain Bible (1578)
Authors: Ingram Elizabeth Morley
Published: March 2016

This paper examines the transformation of a Protestant Geneva Bible into a widely used Catholic one. This surprising metamorphosis occurred in two stages: first, the publication in Paris in 1566 of a French Bible for Catholics by René Benoist, a member of the Paris Faculty of Theology; second, the marketing of this Bible as a product of the Louvain Faculty of Theology by the famous Antwerp printer, Christopher Plantin. While the relationship between the Paris and Antwerp editions is known to French specialists, the origin of the Antwerp edition has been (understandably) misdescribed in several English reference works. The relationship between the two editions seems worth rehearsing here for it touches on more general issues of Catholic attitudes towards vernacular Scripture, the migration of texts across confessional lines, and the power of printers.
Some Architectural Aspects of the Role of Manuals in Changes to Anglican Liturgical Practice in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Bettley James
Published: March 2016

The evangelical Francis Close, rector of Cheltenham and Dean of Carlisle, pithily observed in 1844 that ‘Romanism is taught Analytically at Oxford [and] Artistically at Cambridge … it is inculcated theoretically, in tracts, at one University, and it is sculptured, painted, and graven at the other’. The two forces to which he was referring – the Oxford Movement and the Cambridge Camden Society – emerged within a few years of each other, in 1833 and 1839 respectively. Although they were very different in the ways in which they achieved their ends, they were essentially products of the same Zeitgeist, and their influence combined to bring about radical changes to the conduct of church services and church affairs generally within the Church of England. The most significant and fundamental change was the reinstatement of the celebration of Holy Communion as the central act of Christian worship. Like the crucial doctrine of apostolic succession, which was the keystone of Tractarian philosophy, this sacrament provided a direct link with Christ, being a re-enactment of the ceremony which he instituted at the Last Supper. For the service was not simply, as it was for Protestants, a commemoration of that event; it was a renewal of Christ’s sacrifice and was accompanied by a belief in the Real Presence. This is reflected in the terminology used. The Book of Common Prayer calls the service ‘Holy Communion’, which emphasises that part of the service where the people take part and share ‘the Lord’s Supper’. High Churchmen invariably referred to ‘the Holy Eucharist’, ‘Eucharist’ meaning ‘thanksgiving’, thus stressing the sacrificial aspect of the service which might be, in the more advanced ritualist churches, celebrated without the active participation of the congregation, as it had been before the Reformation. Further evidence of this attitude is the use of the word ‘altar’, with its sacrificial overtones, rather than the more domestic ‘Lord’s table’.
Communications Between Cultures: Difficulties in the Design and Distribution of Christian Literature in Nineteenth-Century India
Authors: Shaw Graham W.
Published: March 2016

The nineteenth century, saw the heyday of Protestant missionary activity in the Indian subcontinent. South Asia – even then with one fifth of the world’s population – was such a magnet for Christian missionaries that it was estimated that one-third of all such ‘labourers in foreign lands’ were operating there. This was despite the deliberate policy of the East India Company to discourage missionary activity in India (used throughout this paper in the old sense of ‘undivided India’) as liable to foment unrest and therefore upset theeconomichealth of the country which from the Company’s perspective was of paramount importance, not itsspiritualwell-being. This antipathy was the reason, for instance, why William Carey and colleagues founded their famous pioneering mission in 1798 not in Calcutta in the Company’s territory but further up the Hooghly river in the tiny settlement of Serampore then under Danish rule.
Dealing With Development: The Protestant Reviews of John Henry Newman’sAn Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845–7
Authors: Sidenvall Erik
Published: March 2016

The greatness of John Henry Newman’sEssay on the Development of Christian Doctrinehas been acknowledged many times since it was first published in 1845. Its international repute was secured by the beginning of the twentieth century; for example, the future Archbishop of Uppsala, Nathan Söderblom, writing on the modernist movement, described it and its author in 1910 as ‘the most significant theological work, written by England’s foremost theologian, and together with Leo XIII, the most important man in the Roman Catholic Church during the last century’. This estimation is confirmed by the impact Newman’s book has had on twentieth-century theology. One recent observer has judged that it is ‘significant, less for its positive arguments … [than] for its method of approach to the whole problem of Christian doctrine in its relation to the New Testament’. In other words, Newman’s book touches on a central topic of modern theology.
Monastic reform and the unification of tenth-century England
Authors: Banton Nicholas
Published: March 2016

A single kingdom of England was created in the tenth century. While the military successes of king Alfred and his son king Edward the Elder had established some authority over all the English kingdoms for the West Saxon kings, their claims could be only tentative. Both kings had governed Wessex during the lifetimes of Aethelred and Aethelflaed, the rulers of Mercia, and Athelstan was probably the first West Saxon king to be crowned king of Mercia at his accession. He had been separately acclaimed king of Mercia and of Wessex, and in a contemporary text he is recorded asRex Angulsaxonum et Mercianorum.The coronation rite used by the early tenth century kings appears to have endowed them with the government of three peoples, the Saxons, the Mercians, and the Northumbrians. A charter of King Eadred at his accession in 946 describes his kingship as a fourfold office representing the Anglo-Saxons, the Northumbrians, the Danes and the Britons.’ Eadwig was separately chosen king in Mercia and in Wessex in 955, and during his reign his brother Edgar ruled Mercia, firstly asregulus,and then as full king.
Italians and others: some quattrocento views of nationality and the church
Authors: Webb Diana M.
Published: March 2016

In his excellent study of medieval Italian society, Hyde makes a thought-provoking comparison of ‘the Italians of the age of Dante’ with the humanists of a later generation. The former he sees as distinguished by ‘a sense of continuity with the past and with other parts of the Catholic world’ from the humanists who ‘concentrated on what was close at hand, digging deep rather than spreading wide, so that their world revolved around central Italy.’ It is not my intention here to dispute this assertion, but to use it to stimulate reflection on the nature of Italian self-awareness in the early renaissance period, in the light of a further contrast between Hyde’s two ages which he does not himself emphasise.
The French exiled clergy in England and national identity, 1790–1815
Authors: Bellenger D. T. J.
Published: March 2016

Revolution confuses nationality. The French Revolution drove from France’s shores many émigrés who carried the conviction that they, rather than the masters of the new order, enshrined the true France. This sentiment was encouraged by the experience of exile which produced an exaggerated consciousness of Frenchness, especially among the clergy.

This paper has two intentions. Firstly it wishes to show how internal and external influences worked on the exiles in England to create a mentality of deep separation. Secondly it wishes to hint at the implications of this separation especially in that highly developed sense of religio-national identity which became so clear a characteristic of the emigration.
Religion and identity in modern British history (Presidential address)
Authors: Robbins Keith
Published: March 2016

‘The Church of England’ declared a leading article in The Times on 8 July 1980 ‘is the British national church’. Such a novel declaration produced apoplexy at the presidential breakfast-table. My topic is an impossibly wide one, only tackled previously, in his distinctive fashion, by Dr Daniel Jenkins. I cannot hope to cover every aspect of it. That apparently innocent sentence in the newspaper does, however, provide me with my text. Its context was an article concerning itself with the possibility that the Prince of Wales might marry a Roman Catholic. Not even a president of the Ecclesiastical History Society can offer comment as to probabilities in this matter and, like The Times, we are only concerned with principles. Concluding, perhaps not surprisingly, that it would seem intolerable to the ‘broad public’ that an excellent heir to the throne should be excluded because of his wife’s religion it added that ‘any sensible person’ would hope that the matter would not be raised. There were still what it called ‘anti-Catholic prejudices’ among a relatively small minority in England and Wales, a rather larger minority in Scotland and a considerable proportion of the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. A constitutional issue ‘which would bring all these birds flapping down out of the rafters’ was not desirable.
The Council of London of 1342
Authors: Bolton Brenda
Published: March 2016

Now that the statutes formerly ascribed to Winchelsey and Reynolds have been shown to derive from other sources, those of John Stratford, issued after the Second Council of London (1342), are seen to stand out as the most significant body of provincial legislation in the later Middle Ages. Their relative importance is enhanced by the paucity of such legislation in this period in comparison with the considerable volume produced in the course of the thirteenth century.

On investigation, Stratford’s constitutions appear significant in the corpus of medieval ‘administrative’ canon law. Not only do they show signs of the friction existing between the lay and ecclesiastical jurisdictions and experienced both by Pecham and Winchelsey, but also of the recurring clerical concerns, frailties of conduct, and malpractices of church courts and officials alike. Provincial legislation springs partly from local imperfections, and partly from more general circumstances. Political considerations may have been critical in the decision to issue constitutions. There is justification, therefore, for first examining the political context in which these constitutions arose.
Assembly and Association in Dissent, 1689-1831
Authors: Nuttall Geoffrey F.
Published: March 2016

Probably the oldest existing institution of its kind in present-day Dissent, though now but a shadow of its former self, is that which has long gone under the name of ‘The Exeter Assembly’. This body, composed of ministers only, and in the main of ministers of Presbyterian congregations in the county of Devon, first met at Tiverton on 17 and 18 March 1691, with fifteen ministers present. The inaugural meeting was followed by regular meetings held twice a year, usually in May and September. Save for three short breaks (1717-21, 1728-33, and 1753-63), the Assembly’s minutes, or for the years 1691-1717 a contemporary copy transcribed by the Assembly’s scribe and published in 1963 by the Devon and Cornwall Record Society, have been preserved for the whole period from 1691 to the present time.
Laymen in synod: an aspect of the beginnings of synodical government in South Africa
Authors: Hinchliff Peter
Published: March 2016

Even quite eminent Tractarians tended to think that, however impossible things might be in the Church of England, the colonies provided the sort of field where they could create the kind of Church in which they really believed. That Church would follow patristic patterns, of course, would be free from the nexus of establishment, and would be governed by synods. As regards South Africa they nourished particularly high hopes. Robert Gray, the first Bishop of Cape Town, was campaigning for synodical government, the creation of ecclesiastical courts to replace the Erastian Privy Council, and to check and outlaw the heresy of Bishop Colenso. It looked so very much as though this were a situation—heresiarchs and councils locked in battle—straight out of the pages of early church history. So when Gray lost his case against Colenso in the Privy Council in 1855, Dr Pusey wrote in a letter to the Churchman, ‘It is no loss to us that it is discovered that the Queen had no power to give the temporal powers which the former legal advisers of the Crown thought she could.. .The Church in South Africa, then, is free.’
‘Change4Life Smart Swaps’: quasi-experimental evaluation of a natural experiment
Authors: Wrieden Wendy L , Levy Louis B
Published: March 2016

Objective

To evaluate the impact on food purchasing behaviour of the ‘Change4Life Smart Swaps’ campaign to encourage families to make small changes to lower-fat or lower-sugar versions of commonly eaten foods and drinks.

Design

Quasi-experimental study comparing the proportion of swaps made by an intervention group (267 families who had signed up to the ‘Smart Swaps’ campaign promoted through various media, including television and radio advertising in early 2014) and a comparison group (135 families resident in Wales, signed up for ‘Change4Life’ materials, but not directly exposed to the ‘Smart Swaps’ campaign). During weeks 1, 2 and 3 of the campaign participants were asked to record their purchases of dairy products, carbonated drinks and breakfast cereals, using a mobile phone app questionnaire, when making a purchase within the category.

Setting

England and Wales.

Subjects

Families registered with ‘Change4Life’.

Results

In weeks 2 and 3 a significantly higher percentage of the intervention group had made ‘smart swaps’ than the comparison group. After week 3, 58 % of participants had swapped to a lower-fat dairy product compared with 26 % of the comparison group (P<0·001), 32 % of the intervention group had purchased a lower-sugar drink compared with 19 % of the comparison group (P=0·01), and 24 % had made a change to a lower-sugar cereal compared with 12 % of the comparison group (P=0·009).

Conclusions

In the short term a national campaign to change purchase habits towards healthier products may have some merit but the sustainability of change requires further investigation.
Design and Evaluation Process of a Personal and Motive-Based Competencies Questionnaire in Spanish-Speaking Contexts
Authors: Batista-Foguet Joan , Sipahi-Dantas Alaide , Guillén Laura , Martínez Arias Rosario , Serlavós Ricard
Published: March 2016

Most questionnaires used for managerial purposes have been developed in Anglo-Saxon countries and then adapted for other cultures. However, this process is controversial. This paper fills the gap for more culturally sensitive assessment instruments in the specific field of human resources while also addressing the methodological issues that scientists and practitioners face in the development of questionnaires. First, we present the development process of a Personal and Motive-based competencies questionnaire targeted to Spanish-speaking countries. Second, we address the validation process by guiding the reader through testing the questionnaire construct validity. We performed two studies: a first study with 274 experts and practitioners of competency development and a definitive study with 482 members of the general public. Our results support a model of nineteen competencies grouped into four higher-order factors. To assure valid construct comparisons we have tested the factorial invariance of gender and work experience. Subsequent analysis have found that women self-rate themselves significantly higher than men on only two of the nineteen competencies, empathy (p < .001) and service orientation (p < .05). The effect of work experience was significant in twelve competencies (p < .001), in which less experienced workers self-rate higher than experienced workers. Finally, we derive theoretical and practical implications.
Controlled Motivational Orientation and Prejudice
Authors: Fousiani Kyriaki , Dimitropoulou Panayiota , Michaelides Michalis
Published: March 2016

Abstract. This research investigates the effect of controlled versus autonomous motivation on intergroup relations. Two studies were conducted: Study 1 (N = 152 Greek Cypriot undergraduate students) showed that controlled motivational orientation, measured as a personality variable, was related to more prejudicial beliefs toward outgroups, lower intrinsic motives for contact, less desire for contact, and less actual contact with outgroups. Study 2 (N = 93 Greek Cypriot undergraduate students) experimentally replicated the findings of Study 1, revealing that controlled motivation, manipulated as a social/situational variable, was related to a higher level of prejudice toward outgroups, less intrinsic motives for contact with outgroups, and less desire for contact with outgroups. Most importantly, these relationships were mediated by dehumanization (i.e., denial of uniquely human traits) of the outgroup. The findings highlight the role of interpersonal control as an important factor determining the quality of intergroup relations.
Phase 2 multicentre trial investigating intermittent and continuous dosing schedules of the poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor rucaparib in germline BRCA mutation carriers with advanced ovarian and breast cancer
Authors: Drew Yvette , Ledermann Jonathan , Hall Geoff , Rea Daniel , Glasspool Ros , Highley Martin , Jayson Gordon , Sludden Julieann , Murray James , Jamieson David , Halford Sarah , Acton Gary , Backholer Zoe , Mangano Raffaella , Boddy Alan , Curtin Nicola , Plummer Ruth
Published: March 2016

Background:

Rucaparib is an orally available potent selective small-molecule inhibitor of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) 1 and 2. Rucaparib induces synthetic lethality in cancer cells defective in the homologous recombination repair pathway including BRCA-1/2. We investigated the efficacy and safety of single-agent rucaparib in germline (g) BRCA mutation carriers with advanced breast and ovarian cancers.

Methods:

Phase II, open-label, multicentre trial of rucaparib in proven BRCA-1/2 mutation carriers with advanced breast and or ovarian cancer, WHO PS 0–1 and normal organ function. Intravenous (i.v.) and subsequently oral rucaparib were assessed, using a range of dosing schedules, to determine the safety, tolerability, dose-limiting toxic effects and pharmacodynamic (PD) and pharmacokinetic (PK) profiles.

Results:

Rucaparib was well tolerated in patients up to doses of 480 mg per day and is a potent inhibitor of PARP, with sustained inhibition ⩾24 h after single doses. The i.v. rucaparib (intermittent dosing schedule) resulted in an objective response rate (ORR) of only 2% but with 41% (18 out of 44) patients achieved stable disease for ⩾12 weeks and 3 patients maintaining disease stabilisation for >52 weeks. The ORR for oral rucaparib (across all six dose levels) was 15%. In the oral cohorts, 81% (22 out of 27) of the patients had ovarian cancer and 12 out of 13, who were dosed continuously, achieved RECIST complete response/partial response (CR/PR) or stable disease (SD) ⩾12 weeks, with a median duration of response of 179 days (range 84–567 days).

Conclusions:

Rucaparib is well tolerated and results in high levels of PARP inhibition in surrogate tissues even at the lowest dose levels. Rucaparib is active in gBRCA-mutant ovarian cancer and this activity correlates with platinum-free interval. The key lessons learned from this study is that continuous rucaparib dosing is required for optimal response, the recommended phase 2 dose (RP2D) for continuous oral scheduling has not been established and requires further exploration and, thirdly, the use of a PD biomarker to evaluate dose–response has its limitations.
Human eosinophil activin A synthesis and mRNA stabilization are induced by the combination of IL‐3 plus TNF
Authors: Kelly Elizabeth A , Esnault Stephane , Johnson Sean H , Liu Lin Ying , Malter James S , Burnham Mandy E , Jarjour Nizar N
Published: March 2016

Eosinophils contribute to immune regulation and wound healing/fibrosis in various diseases, including asthma. Growing appreciation for the role of activin A in such processes led us to hypothesize that eosinophils are a source of this transforming growth factor‐ß superfamily member. Tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNF) induces activin A by other cell types and is often present at the site of allergic inflammation along with the eosinophil‐activating common ß (ßc) chain‐signaling cytokines (interleukin (IL)‐5, IL‐3, granulocyte‐macrophages colony‐stimulating factor (GM‐CSF)). Previously, we established that the combination of TNF plus a ßc chain‐signaling cytokine synergistically induces eosinophil synthesis of the remodeling enzyme matrix metalloproteinase‐9. Therefore, eosinophils were stimulated ex vivo by these cytokines and in vivo through an allergen‐induced airway inflammatory response. In contrast to IL‐5+TNF or GM‐CSF+TNF, the combination of IL‐3+TNF synergistically induced activin A synthesis and release by human blood eosinophils. IL‐3+TNF enhanced activin A mRNA stability, which required sustained signaling of pathways downstream of p38 and extracellular signal–regulated kinase mitogen‐activated protein kinases. In vivo, following segmental airway allergen challenge of subjects with mild allergic asthma, activin A mRNA was upregulated in airway eosinophils compared with circulating eosinophils, and ex vivo, circulating eosinophils tended to release more activin A in response to IL‐3+TNF. These data provide evidence that eosinophils release activin A and that this function is enhanced when eosinophils are present in an allergen‐induced inflammatory environment. Moreover, these data provide the first evidence for posttranscriptional control of activin A mRNA. We propose that an environment rich in IL‐3+TNF will lead to eosinophil–derived activin A, which has an important role in regulating inflammation and/or fibrosis.
Diversity and oceanic distribution of the Parmales (Bolidophyceae), a picoplanktonic group closely related to diatoms
Authors: Ichinomiya Mutsuo , dos Santos Adriana Lopes , Gourvil Priscillia , Yoshikawa Shinya , Kamiya Mitsunobu , Ohki Kaori , Audic Stéphane , de Vargas Colomban , Noël Mary-Hélène , Vaulot Daniel , Kuwata Akira
Published: March 2016

Bolidomonas is a genus of picoplanktonic flagellated algae that is closely related to diatoms. Triparma laevis, a species belonging to the Parmales, which are small cells with a siliceous covering, has been shown to form a monophyletic group with Bolidomonas. We isolated several novel strains of Bolidophyceae that have permitted further exploration of the diversity of this group using nuclear, plastidial and mitochondrial genes. The resulting phylogenetic data led us to formally emend the taxonomy of this group to include the Parmales within the Bolidophyceae, to combine Bolidomonas within Triparma and to define a novel species, Triparma eleuthera sp. nov. The global distribution of Bolidophyceae was then assessed using environmental sequences available in public databases, as well as a large 18S rRNA V9 metabarcode data set from the Tara Oceans expedition. Bolidophyceans appear ubiquitous throughout the sampled oceans but always constitute a minor component of the phytoplankton community, corresponding to at most ~4% of the metabarcodes from photosynthetic groups (excluding dinoflagellates). They are ~10 times more abundant in the small size fraction (0.8–5 μm) than in larger size fractions. T. eleuthera sp. nov. constitutes the most abundant and most widespread operational taxonomic unit (OTU) followed by T. pacifica, T. mediterranea and the T. laevis clade. The T. mediterranea OTU is characteristic of Mediterranean Sea surface waters and the T. laevis clade OTU is most prevalent in colder waters, in particular off Antarctica.
Defining the microbial transcriptional response to colitis through integrated host and microbiome profiling
Authors: Ilott Nicholas Edward , Bollrath Julia , Danne Camille , Schiering Chris , Shale Matthew , Adelmann Krista , Krausgruber Thomas , Heger Andreas , Sims David , Powrie Fiona
Published: March 2016

The gut microbiome is significantly altered in inflammatory bowel diseases, but the basis of these changes is not well understood. We have combined metagenomic and metatranscriptomic profiling of the gut microbiome to assess modifications to both bacterial community structure and transcriptional activity in a mouse model of colitis. By using transcriptomic analysis of colonic tissue and luminal RNA derived from the host, we have also characterised how host transcription relates to the microbial transcriptional response in inflammation. In colitis, increased abundance and transcription of diverse microbial gene families involved in responses to nutrient deprivation, antimicrobial peptide production and oxidative stress support an adaptation of multiple commensal genera to withstand a diverse set of environmental stressors in the inflammatory environment. These data are supported by a transcriptional signature of activated macrophages and granulocytes in the gut lumen during colitis, a signature that includes the transcription of the key antimicrobial genes S100a8 and S100a9 (calprotectin). Genes involved in microbial resistance to oxidative stress, including Dps/ferritin, Fe-dependent peroxidase and glutathione S-transferase were identified as changing to a greater extent at the level of transcription than would be predicted by DNA abundance changes, implicating a role for increased oxygen tension and/or host-derived reactive oxygen species in driving transcriptional changes in commensal microbes.