bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Conflict Between Queen Elizabeth and Roman Catholicism
Authors: Shires Henry M.
Published: April 2006

During the reign of Mary Tudor, Queen of England from 1553 to 1558, Roman Catholicism became the official religion of the English state; and the English Crown once again recognized the authority of the pope. English Roman Catholics were jubilant while the Protestants believed that all of the gains of the English Reformation had been lost. The religious and even the political future of England was therefore clearly in the hands of Queen Elizabeth when she ascended the throne in 1558. She was subjected to strong pressure from both the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, and for some years the ultimate issue was in doubt. The religious decisions which were made in England during this period were, however, vital for the cause of Protestantism and of extreme significance for Roman Catholicism. Much of the historical writing which describes these crucial events is, naturally enough, the product of Protestant or Roman Catholic apologetic; and the subject is one which has need of calm and reasoned study as well as of ordered presentation.
The Kingdom of God as the Design of Society: An Important Aspect of F. D. Maurice's Theology
Authors: Ranson Guy H.
Published: April 2006

It is being said on every hand that the church is remiss in its moral responsibilities in our time. The church is conspicuous because of its failure to give ethical perspectives either to the world revolution of Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans rising to prominence or to America's revolution of minority groups. There are many to bemoan, however, and few to offer constructive solutions.
Puritan Mysticism and the Development of Liberalism
Authors: Brauer Jerald C.
Published: April 2006

The rise of the liberal spirit in seventeenth-century England is generally equated with the development of Locke's philosophy and the rationalism of English churchmen such as Tillotson, Stillingfleet, and Sharpe. In tracing the emergence of this movement historians of thought have given adequate attention to such factors as the Cambridge Platonists, the earlier Latitudinarians, the impact of Newtonian science, and the general social, political, and economic conditions of the day. One factor has been overlooked. There were certain emphases or characteristics in the mystical element of Puritanism which also appeared later in the rise of the liberal spirit on the English scene. The usual treatment of this phase of the Puritan movement is to grant its fruitfulness in the economic and political spheres, but to consider it a peculiar aberration which is insignificant for subsequent developments in religious thought except for its issue in Quakerism.
Holy Church or Holy Writ: A Dilemma of the Fourteenth Century
Authors: Tavard George H.
Published: April 2006

Students of medieval theology are acquainted with the fact that neither the formative years of the medieval synthesis—say, from the 8th through the 12th century—nor the climax of the Middle Ages— 13th century—conceived of Holy Scripture as being only a set of inspired books, the ‘Canon,’ containing the Revelation committed by Christ to His Church. Rather, the Sacred Scripture—or, as it was also called, the Sacred Page or the Sacred Doctrine—was to the medieval mind wide enough to encompass somehow the works of the Fathers and those of subsequent Doctors. Distinct though these were from the canonical scriptures, they nonetheless were viewed in the same perspective: Holy Writ and the commentaries thereupon formed one uncleft whole which was kept together by the continuity of the Church's life. The apostolic writings were in a way continued by the Fathers' homilies and treatises, and these in turn were prolonged in the early medieval tractates.
Lorenzo Valla's Christianity
Authors: Grimm Harold J.
Published: April 2006

Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457), whose major writings were produced during the second quarter of the fifteenth century, is one of the most disputed figures among the humanists of the Italian Renaissance. His character and work were of such a nature that he aroused the admiration or antipathy of scholars from the beginning of his literary activities to the present day. It is largely because he dared to put into writing the critical ideas entertained, but seldom published, by many of his contemporaries, that he has ever since been considered either a hero or a scoundrel.
The Political Resistance of the Calvinists in France and the Low Countries
Authors: Kingdon Robert M.
Published: April 2006

It seems to me that much can be learned by comparative studies of the histories of the several European countries, and that this is particularly true of their political histories during the sixteenth century. A stimulating start in this direction was made by H. G. Koenigsberger in an article in The Journal of Modern History, titled “The Organization of Revolutionary Parties in France and the Netherlands during the Sixteenth Century.” I would like to propose a further exploration of some of the interesting leads presented by Mr. Koenigsberger. For the present, however, I shall avoid attempting to survey the whole field he opens up for us. I shall limit myself to a study of the revolutionary Calvinist parties, and devote most of my attention to the period of their formation.
The Birth of the Free Church Tradition
Authors: Maclear James Fulton
Published: April 2006

The free church form which much of British and American Protestantism has assumed stems primarily from the shaping of Nonconformity in seventeenth-century England. Yet the uniqueness and significance of this origin have not always been appreciated. These English and American churches have a basis distinct from that of the free churches which arose on the Continent in the nineteenth century. For unlike the latter, the free churches of Nonconformity developed within the fabric of Christian state and society and not out of any fundamental ideological conflict with secularized authority. Again, in England and America the free church form was molded in the unique environment of religious multiplicity which Puritan divisions produced. Consequently, it was as difficult for any religious group to respond to this environment in the classical sectarian pattern as for churchly institutions to maintain pretensions to uniformity—a fact which even church historians, impressed by Troeltsch's church-sect dichotomy, have been slow to recognize. And lastly, in both England and America the free church would seem to have been shaped by certain axioms of Puritan thought and piety. Indeed, this essay seeks to show that Puritanism both produced the problem and suggested the alternatives out of which the final free church concepts emerged.
The Word of God in the Westminster Assembly
Authors: Haller William
Published: April 2006

In December 1641 the Puritan preachers petitioned Parliament to establish regular monthly fast days with prayer and preaching and to call a synod of divines in order to reconstitute the Church. Parliament approved the first proposal at once but delayed adopting the second until a year and a half later. By that time war had begun with the King but, contrary to the assurances put forth by the preachers, the Lord had so far withheld victory from his professed servants, and in June 1643, a royalist plot was exposed in London only just in time to save Parliament from being overthrown by violence. Moved by this with sermons at St. Margaret's by Stephen Marshall and Obadiah Sedgwich and then at last voted to call the long desired Assembly of Divines. This body convened at Westminster on July 1, and a special fast day in honor of the event was held a week later with sermons by Matthew Newcomen and Oliver Bowles.
The American Religious Depression, 1925–1935
Authors: Handy Robert T.
Published: April 2006

“It is too early to assess the impact of the Great Depression upon American Protestantism,” wrote Robert Moats Miller in his recent study of American Protestantism and social issues in the period between the world wars. No doubt it is too early for any overall assessment, yet it is becoming steadily clearer that American religion passed through an important transition in the depression period. If we are to gain a fuller understanding of developments in American Christianity since the 1930's, then serious attention needs to be given to that bleak period. Inasmuch as our understanding of times long past are significantly influenced by our definitions of the present situation, attempts to deal with that particular period of crisis in our recent past may help us more adequately to see the whole story of American religion in fairer perspective. Furthermore, a number of recent dissertations, articles and books have dealt in whole or in part with the period between the wars; they provide guidance for handling the vast array of sources relevant for an understanding of religion in the depression, supply material for at least prcliminary interpretations, and point to the need for further analysis. This paper is one effort to suggest some interpretative guide lines for further exploration into an important topic.
Pobedonostsev's Religious Politics
Authors: Adams Arthur E.
Published: April 2006

Konstantin Pobedonostsev, over-procurator of the holy synod in the Russian Church from 1880 until 1905, occupies an important place in Russia's history. As adviser and confidant of the last tsars, Alexander III and Nicholas II, he left his firm imprint upon imperial policies during years of crisis. As ruler of the church he also played a significant part in religious affairs—a part which has not yet been accurately evaluated. Too often it has been assumed that ardent religious faith guided his conduct of church affairs, and he has been likened to Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, or called the Russian Torquemada. In truth, however, Pobedonostsev was a man of politics; more particularly, a man of Russian politics. His main objective was always the preservation of a strong and powerful Russian state; and in almost every act which at first glance appears to have been determined by religious motives, a more critical study reveals the primacy of his political aims.
The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Early Years of the Society of Jesus
Authors: Lewy Guenter
Published: April 2006

It is generally recognized that the centralized organization and strict discipline of the Jesuits played an important role in the Order's successful agitation against Protestantism during the Counterreformation. It is little known that during this period of great accomplishment the Society went through one of the most serious crises of its 400 years of existence—a rebellion, centered in Spain, against the allegedly dictatorial rule of the general and for a quasi-democratic form of governnient. This movement reveals the intrusion of constitutional ideas into an organization which usually has been held up as the prototype of autocracy and monolithic cohesion.
The Place of the Prayer Book in the Western Liturgical Tradition
Authors: Shepherd Massey H.
Published: April 2006

The theme of this address, in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the First Book of Common Prayer, may be stated in the words of the late Miss Evelyn Underhill:

Anglican worship is a special development of the traditional Christian cultus; and not merely a variant of Continental Protestantism. … It forms, with the Bible or Lectionary, the authorized Missal and Breviary of the English branch of the Catholic Church. Its use is obligatory, and its contents declare in unmistakable terms the adherence of that Church to the great Catholic tradition of Christendom and the general conformity of its worship to the primitive ritual type.
The Word of God in the New Model Army
Authors: Haller William
Published: April 2006

At the close of 1644 the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly found themselves in a difficult position. The preachers had declared that, if they all did the will of the Lord in the church, He would surely bless the efforts of their army in the war against the King. But the church was still unreformed and the King undefeated. They could have peace at the risk of allowing Charles to regain control of the church. They could go on with the war at the cost of permitting religious differences among their own partisans to continue and spread. In other words, nothing could be settled so long as Charles kept the field and the fear of defeat hung over English and Scots, Parliament and Assembly, Presbyterians, Independents, and sectaries alike. The predicament was made to Cromwell's hand. The campaign of 1644, having ended in frustration, he returned to his place in the House of Commons and initiated the maneuvers which led to the reorganization of the army with Fairfax in command but in the event with Cromwell still as its driving force. The result was the victory the Assembly divines had looked for as the sign of God's favor upon their efforts to reform the church but victory on terms which made reform of the church as they conceived it more difficult than ever. For Cromwell's accomplishment in war and politics was due to his gift for drawing upon those very energies of the spirit in himself and others which had been evoked in the people by Puritan preaching but which the ministerial caste was now striving to keep within bounds. He had succeeded in organizing victory not by curbing and containing the Puritan spirit but by giving it free play among the men under his command and by granting scope to its most characteristic modes of expression and organization. Hence the preaching of the Word in the parliamentary army as reconstituted in the New Model had not a little to do with the army's military success.
Religious Denominations as Ethnic Communities: A Regional Case Study
Authors: Smith Timothy L.
Published: April 2006

Recent studies of the history of ethnic groups in America have produced a growing awareness that the relationships between religious institutions and ethnic identity are more complex than was earlier believed. Three factors, it seems to me, are now hindering our efforts to understand these relationships. One is the absence of an alyses of the wide functional differences between congregations and denominations, the two kinds of institutions which serve the religious needs of modern democratic societies. Another is the con centration of most historical research in immigrant religion upon one ethnic group. And the third is the emphasis upon the history of either rural frontiers or large cities. In this paper, I wish to present the results of a study of the religious life of the Lake Superior cop per and iron mining country, a region in which immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe are predominant, yet one in which the newcomers of each nationality were spread widely through small towns and villages.
Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine: a Review Article
Authors: Piepkorn Arthur Carl
Published: April 2006

In spite of the importance of Philip Melanchthon for the subsequent history of both the Lutheran and the Reformed churches, the quantity of theological literature from his pen to be had between hard covers in English is disappointingly small. The fourteen or so items translated into English that survive from the sixteenth century are relatively inaccessible. So are the four or five out of the nineteenth century.
An English Visitor's Comments on The American Religious Scene, 1846
Authors: Ellis John Tracy
Published: April 2006

Few religious thinkers in modern times displayed a keener foresight and perception than John Henry Newman. The extraordinary talent he possessed in that regard rarely showed to better advantage than during Vatican Council II when repeated approbation was expressed in both the formal debates and in the private discussions of the bishops, the periti, and others in attendance at Rome for the theological views that Newman had held—often at the price of grave misunderstanding—a century or more ago. The two particulars which perhaps received more notice than any others were the ideas set forth in his famous essay in The Rambler for July, 1859, “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine,” a new edition of which was published as recently as 1961, and the Essay on the Dcvelopnient of Christian Doctrine, written while Newman was still an Anglican, and which was published in November, 1845, a few weeks after he had been received into the Roman Catholic Church.
Clement of Rome and Moralism
Authors: Nielsen Charles Merritt
Published: April 2006

Clement of Rome has often been judged and found wanting by his Protestant interpreters. His letter is frequently presented as “a good illustration of the break between the New Testament faith and the Apostolic Fathers' lapse into moralism.” (And “moralism,” to put it mildly, is not always a pleasant word in Protestant theological circles.) Rudolf Knopf calls attention to the “rationalen Moralismus des Schreibens.” And Johannes Weiss says that “a strong moralism runs through all its expressions from the first page to the last.” When James Mackinnon gives us examples of Christian moralism in the sub-apostolic period, Clement is of course present in a prominent way, as indeed he is also significantly present when H. E. W. Turner mentions the “tradition of ‘sober moralism’ which was so notable a feature of late first-century and early second-century Christianity.” Moreover, A. C. McGiffert stands in the same tradition of interpretation when he says that for Clement “salvation is to be had only by obeying God and doing his will.” One could of course go on and on citing examples of this kind, but it seems unnecessary to do so, especially in view of the fact that a great many more illustrations are readily available in Thomas F. Torrance's The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers. Not only does Professor Torrance mention numerous scholars who stress the moralism of Clement, but also he himself comes to the conclusion that grace in I Clement appears to be an “enabling power granted to those who are worthy.” Clement “may use the language of election and justification, but the essentially Greek idea of the unqualified freedom of choice is a natural axiom in his thought, and entails a doctrine of ‘works,’ as Paul would have said.”
The Church and The Movement for Congo Reform
Authors: Cline Catherine Ann
Published: April 2006

When Christian missionaries returned to the Congo in the nineteenth century, all traces of the promising Portuguese missionary effort of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries had been obliterated. The Kingdom of the Congo which had produced several generations of Christian Kings, thousands of converts, even an African clergy and an African Bishop, had been literally swept away by the European slave trade. The Church had paid a heavy price for its failure to restrain the greed of the faithful, and one would scarcely expect to find the error repeated. Furthermore, the intervening centuries had produced in Europe a growth of humanitarian sentiment which had sensitized the Christian conscience to the suffering of the oppressed; indeed this concern for the temporal welfare of the African had been an important factor in the outburst of nineteenth century missionary activity. Yet when this second encounter of European and African produced in the Congo Free State a form of exploitation which rivalled the first in its brutality, dedicated Catholic missionaries and zealous Catholic prelates staunchly defended the regime against the attacks of reformers. The explanation of this melancholy episode appears to lie in the fact that sectarian interest, national loyalty, and an overwhelming faith in the benefits of Europeanization were allowed to obscure the essential facts.
Wyclifism as Ideology of Revolution
Authors: Kaminsky Howard
Published: April 2006

The student of Wyclif's work soon learns that communion with the master is only one of his rewards, and that it is well worth his while to cultivate an acquaintance with the editors, whose prefaces are not only filled with useful information but often adorned with bits of wisdom, expressions of devotion to the cause, and other items of a more poignant character. It is interesting, for example, to speculate about the identity of Reginald Lane Poole's slovenly copyist, whose faults are so devastatingly exposed in the preface to De dominio divino. And it is more than interesting to learn, from Rudolf Buddensieg's preface to the Polemical Works, that in 1880 the Delegates of the Oxford University Press refused to publish them; one may agree with Buddensieg that as of that date England was ungratefully remiss in her debt to “the memory of one of her greatest men.” Fortunately the Wycliff Society was formed in 1882 to remedy the lack, and in the short space of thirty years managed to publish almost all of the religio-political works, in about twenty-five volumes, and a number of the philosophical works as well. The collaboration between English and German scholars that made this success possible is amply attested in the prefaces, even down to the inevitable German claim, based to be sure on fact, that they had done the bigger share. Just as well, perhaps, if Buddensieg was right when he judged that “to edit mediaeval texts critically is work not very familiar to English scholars.”
Key Concepts in Caspar von Schwenckfeld's Thought: Regeneration and the New Life
Authors: Furcha E. J.
Published: April 2006

Any one looking at Schwenckfeld through the spectacles of a historian who approaches the age of the sixteenth century Reformation with a neatly devised system will find his thought rather confusing. The strange Silesian nobleman wrote voluminous pamphlets on theology without ever aspiring to be a theologian; he preached widely and served as pastor to his adherents without ever claiming to be a clergyman (Predikant).He insisted that his expositions were in keeping with the best and most catholic of Christian thought, yet one finds it next to impossible to delineate his theology within a “system.” He was involved in too many arguments and pursued too many theological interests to allow every one of his utterances a fitting place within a well-structured theological system.
Freedom Upheld: the Civil Liberties Stance ofThe Christian CenturyBetween the Wars
Authors: Hefley J. Theodore
Published: April 2006

Across the landscape of liberal journalism which flourished between the two world wars,The Christian Centurystands out as a salient eminence. Conveniently identified as a non-denominational magazine of religious thought, theCenturyalso maintained a lively interest in the problems of civil liberties, political theory, constitutional change, the tactics of parties, the place of leadership in politics, and the problems of state and local administration. It was awake to many of the evils of American society since its thinking lay in the main stream of the muckraking-progressive tradition. Finally, it was interested, especially in the thirties, in policies and candidates. Indeed during the depression decade it became as much a political and social journal as a religious one.
Two Roads to the Puritan Millennium: William Erbury and Vavasor Powell
Authors: Cohen Alfred
Published: April 2006

By about 1650, the seventeenth century Puritan search for the New Jerusalem led many an English enthusiast to the conviction that the millennial Kingdom of Christ was at hand. This current in Puritan thought had been gaining force since Thomas Brightman wrote his exegesis onRevelationat the beginning of the century. With the coming of the civil war, the trickle begun by Brightman (and taken up by a few others before 1642) soon developed into a major stream. John Archer, Robert Maton, Jeremiah Burroughes, and William Bridge, to name but some, penned works that increased interest and heightened expectation in the subject during the decade of the forties. The infection even caught John Milton who briefly seemed convinced that the great millennial age was imminent.
The Taxing of the Clergy in Eighteenth-Century France
Authors: Ravitch Norman
Published: April 2006

If after many years of scholarship and controversy, the French Revolution is to be seen, with Georges Lefebvre, as preeminently the revolution of equality, and its most important achievement the substitution of a bourgeois and individualistic social order for the former aristocratic and corporatist one, the nature of eighteenth-century corporate or “constituted bodies” becomes a major area for research. There are many questions which the historian would like to ask about these aristocratic institutions, but generally these questions fall into two groups: the relationship of these bodies to society as a whole, and their inner cohesiveness. By examining the taxation of the clergy in eighteenth-century France, we investigate the chief temporal characteristic of the ecclesiastical estate and are in a position to evaluate both its relationship to French society as a whole and its internal strengths and weaknesses.
Nicholas of Cusa vs. Sigmund of Habsburg: an Attempt at Post-Conciliar Church Reform
Authors: Tillinghast Pardon E.
Published: April 2006

During the past decade, interest has been steadily growing in Nicholas of Cusa, but recent research has been more devoted to his ideas than to his life. As a mature and very successful man, he displayed a curious mixture of ability and obtuseness, utter and selfless devotion to the highest ideals and extreme pettiness. This paper will deal with his period as Bishop of Brixen, from his arrival in the diocese in 1452 to his departure in 1460. It was an episcopate undertaken with high hopes of far-reaching church reform, and almost everything in it went wrong. I shall try to show just what it was that went awry.
Recent Historiography of the Protestant Churches in America
Authors: Carter Paul A.
Published: April 2006

Thirty-five years ago Lewis Vander Velde criticized his fellow historians for not having written more on the American churches. He charged that lay historians, “whose point of view is detached and objective,” had left the study of organized religion in the United States to “clergymen whose primary interest is religious” American historians recognized “the importance of the Church in colonial times,” but they had “too frequently assumed that its influence as a force in public affairs disappeared with the American Revolution”—even though the nation's recent experience with Prohibition ought to have taught them otherwise:

Writers in an age when the Church is on the defensive fail to realize that the transformation which has put it in this position is much more a product of the last seventy years [i.e., 1862–1932] than of the previous seventy [i.e, presumably, 1792–1862]. In the time of our grandfathers, the Church was still a strong factor in the life of the nation; an institution led by intellectual giants, attended regularly by a large portion of the people, it exerted an important influence upon American life. … In 1860 politics and the Church still offered the greatest professional opportunities, and … in consequence the best minds were to be found there.
The Abbatial Election at Citeaux in 1625
Authors: Lekai Louis J.
Published: April 2006

The sixteenth century was a crucial period in the history of French monasticism. In addition to the causes of a general decline throughout Europe, in France two peculiar developments precipitated a nearly fatal collapse of monastic establishments. One was the commendatory system that spread over the whole country following the Concordat of Bologna in 1516. Royally appointed commendatory abbots, whose only concern was the collection of their share of monastic income, contributed much to the moral and material decline of the institutions supposedly under their care. The other and even more devastating calamity was the series of religious and civil wars during the second half of the century that resulted in the pillage and partial or total destruction of hundreds of monasteries.
The Organization of a Mediaeval Cathedral Community: The Chapter of Valencia (1238–1280)
Authors: Burns R. Ignatius
Published: April 2006

In recent years, more and more American readers have been entering the delightful world of Anthony Trollope's novels—the world of Barchester Towers, of the intrepid Archdeacon Grantly, of the absentee prebendary Doctor Vesey Stanhope and the over-burdened vicar of Puddingdale, Mr. Quiverful. Such a reader often finds himself confused, as he is intrigued, by the commnual background of that world, the cathedral chapter. Historians indeed, who have read considerably in mediaeval secular history, have remained puzzled as to the precise nature of the cathedral chapter. Travelling abroad, one is struck by its continuance as an institution, by its colorful robes and insignia, and by the liturgical splendor of its worship at the great continental cathedrals. Even here at home, at the chancery of Archbishop Mitty or in the cathedral of Bishop Pike, one can find at least vestiges of this institution.
Huntington's Quadrilateral—A Critical Study
Authors: Woolverton John F.
Published: April 2006

Over one hundred years have passed since the conception in 1865 of what became known as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. This statement of Episcopalian, ecumenical principles was conceived by William R. Huntington (1838–1909), acknowledged leader of the denomination's House of Deputies, liturgical scholar, and “first presbyter” of his generation.1 Huntington was inspired by the national disunity of the Civil War years and by the reunion of the states in 1865 to seek some means of uniting the country's churches. At the same time he recognized that the Episcopal church stood in need reform if it were to serve in any way whatever as an agent of reconciliation. The result was the famous Quadrilateral. Its author designed his proposal both as a statement of “the true Anglican position” and as a basis for church unity, soon to be expressed, it was hoped, in a comprehensive, national church for America.
Interpretations of Pietism in the Research of Contemporary German Church Historians
Authors: Weigelt Horst
Published: April 2006

Time and again theologians of various schools have tried to place Pietism into a framework of theological and intellectual history. It is here impossible to pay tribute to every interpretation; this study will consider only the most important interpretations of the last century.1
The Ecclesiastical Historian in the Service of Clio
Authors: Ellis John Tracy
Published: April 2006

Even the most ardent devotee of ecclesiastical history cannot realistically claim for his special interest a major role in Clio's fraternity in this age of high secularization. Yet it may be said, I believe, that the role is growing rather than diminishing for historians generally as they assess the value of scientific and professional works such as those of the Fliche and Martin series, The Christian Centuries edited by Louis J. Rogier, Roger Aubert, and David Knowles, the successive volumes ofConcilium.Theology in The Age of Renewaldevoted to ecclesiastical history, and the projected Oxford History of the Christian Church under the guiding hand of Owen Chadwick. And parenthetically at the outset I should like to make it clear that while most of the materials used in this paper are related to the Roman Catholic Church simply because of my greater familiarity with her story, I use the term ‘Christian Church’ in the broadest possible sense to embrace the Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox communions, as well as that of the Church to which I owe my personal faith and allegiance.
Papal Justice in France Around the Time of Pope Innocent III
Authors: Moore John C.
Published: April 2006

Around the time of Innocent III (1198–1216), the appetite for justice was providing the popes with an opportunity to expand their authority. The popes responded to the need and to the opportunity primarily by encouraging appeals to the papal court, where the cases were commonly delegated to clergymen near the origin of the case, clergymen who acted as papal judges delegate. The use of this procedure expanded rapidly in the second half of the twelfth century and was especially encouraged by Innocent himself. The need and the opportunity were there, but how good was the response? The purpose of this article is to see how and how well papal justice worked in France around the time of Innocent III and, in the process, to compare it with alternative forms of judicial procedure available at the time.
Religion and the Wyatt Rebellion of 1554
Authors: Thorp Malcolm R.
Published: April 2006

In his book Two Tudor Conspiracies, D. M. Loades challenged the traditional view among historians that the Wyatt rebellion was influenced by Protestant concerns over the Catholic policies of Mary Tudor. In Loades' account of the event, religion played no prominent part; the conspirators were secular and anti-clerical, but otherwise their religious convictions remain “shadowy.” Loades contends that apart from William Thomas, the well-known Protestant enthusiast, “all had conformed without protest under Edward, and those still alive were to do so again under Elizabeth, but throughout the period of the rebellion and trials which followed it, all protested their loyalty to the Catholic Church.” The real reasons for the revolt, he asserts, were secular and political—namely, fear of foreign domination through the Queen's intended marriage to Philip of Spain.
The 1933 German Protestant Church Elections: Machtpolitik or Accommodation?
Authors: Baranowski Shelley
Published: April 2006

On 23 July 1933, the pro-Nazi German Christian movement won a stunning victory in the elections for representatives to local parish councils of the German Evangelical Church. In many areas, especially north and eastern Germany where the National Socialist party itself was strongest, the German Christians attracted as much as 75 percent of the vote. The Old Prussian Union church, which embraced most of the political unit of Prussia, felt the effects most profoundly. Upon filling the higher synods after the parish elections, the German Christians were the majority in seven of eight provincial representative bodies. Only the provincial synod in Westphalia retained a non-German Christian majority. Yet this resulted less from a lack of a strong German Christian following in the parishes than from an intentionally undemocratic filtering system that protected higher synods from the Nazi sympathizers.
Wilford Woodruff and the Changing Nature of Mormon Religious Experience
Authors: Alexander Thomas G.
Published: April 2006

Though historians of religion in the United States have long recognized the importance of Mormonism, scholarly studies such as those by Mario De Pillis, Marvin Hill, and Louis Reinwand have only begun to explain the church's meaning and attraction. As a recent scholar of American religious history has argued,

the exact significance of this great story persistently escapes definition.…One cannot even be sure if the object of our consideration is a sect, a mystery cult, a new religion, a church, a people, a nation, or an American subculture; indeed, at different times and places it is all of these.…[The Mormons] remain people apart.…Their inner intellectual and spiritual problems cannot easily be shared with others.
The Portrayal of Christianity in the History Textbooks of Nazi Germany
Authors: Blackburn Gilmer W.
Published: April 2006

The study of history in National Socialist Germany served a demolition function. Students were taught to recognize threats to their way of life, all of which were subsumed under Jewish internationalism and included Christianity, Marxism, democracy, liberalism and modernity. The history written by the Nazis undergirded an ersatz religion whose central theme was the German people's faltering attempts to obey the divine will of a racial deity. A major priority of Nazi educators was the liberation of the fierce Germanic instincts which more than a thousand years of foreign influence had repressed; and in their estimation, Christianity bore a major responsibility for blunting the expression of that Germanic spirit. The new German schools would help create a militarized society which would both purge the national spirit and promote the high-tension ethos which accepted war as a normal condition in a life of struggle.
The Origin of the Monophysite Church in Syria and Mesopotamia
Authors: Vööbus Arthur
Published: April 2006

The earliest extant sources of Syrian Christianity reveal a powerful spirit of self-consciousness for independence. This desire is imprinted on every page of the historical records. That which stands at the very forefront of Tatian's thought is profoundly instructive for our purposes: it is his dislike, nay more his hatred, fore everything bearing a Greek or Roman label. This spirit shows itself in whatever direction we look. Syrian gnosis is the least hellenized of all. The pattern of Christian life carries its own attributes of sovereignty in every respect. Autonomy is the hallmark of the early Syrian conception of the church. Theological thought travels along quite independent lines in accord with that genius—even in the works of Aphrahat written decades after the Council of Nicea.
Did the English Presbyterians Become Unitarian?
Authors: Richey Russell E.
Published: April 2006

Among the problems posed to one interested in Unitarianism is to explain why it was that Unitarianism evolved out of Presbyterianism in England while it emerged out of Congregationalism in the United States. The problem of the origins of Unitarianism is in this way fashioned into denominational questions. Why did English Presbyterianism become Unitarian? What explains the appearance of Unitarianism in New England Congregationalism? The purpose of this essay is to examine the denominational understanding of the genesis of English Unitarianism.
Myron C. Taylor's Mission to the Vatican 1940–1950
Authors: Conway John S.
Published: April 2006

The mission of Myron C. Taylor, personal representative of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman to Pope Pius XII, remains a strange anomaly in the history of the foreign relations of the United States. Ever since 1867, when an act of Congress terminated diplomatic relations between the republic and the world's oldest diplomatic entity, the United States had been unrepresented at the Vatican City. The short-lived attempt to reconstitute some form of permanent and effective diplomatic presence was born in controversy and lasted only from 1940 to 1950 during the incumbency of the single appointee. When on Taylor's resignation President Truman attempted to appoint a popular second world war general to the post, the outcry in the United States was so heated that the nomination had to be withdrawn and the venture abandoned. What went wrong? Was the storm of protest merely a result of religious bigotry on the part of American Protestantism? Or had Taylor's conduct of his mission been such as to evoke these outraged feelings? Certain episodes of the diplomatic negotiations between the United States and the Vatican have already been published, for example, the polite exchange of courtesies collected and introduced by Taylor himself, Wartime Correspondence between President Roosevelt and Pope Pius XII. Some more controversial matters, such as the question of the advisability of bombing Rome, were outlined from the American point of view in the Foreign Relations of the United States. Not until the Vatican's recent decision to publish some of its papers from the pontificate of Pius XII, or more particularly until the opening of Taylor's own papers in 1973, has it been possible to study in more detail the curious entanglement of theological, diplomatic and political considerations which governed the United States' relations with the Vatican, and encompassed Taylor's mission from beginning to end.
Ultramontanism and Dupanloup: The Compromise of 1865
Authors: O'Connell Marvin R.
Published: April 2006

It is often asserted that the aggrandizement of the papacy during the nineteenth century reached its height with the definition of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council in 1870. A case can be made, however, for the view that that definition, with its careful delimitations, was in fact a kind of anticlimax, that the ultramontane high tide really had been reached, and checked, five years before with the issuance of theSyllabus of Errorsand the fateful intervention of Bishop Dupanloup of Orleans.
“Like Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver”: The Portrait of Wisdom in Jonathan Edwards's Commentary on the Book of Proverbs
Authors: Stein Stephen J.
Published: April 2006

In 1710 the English biblical commentator Matthew Henry declared that no book was more “serviceable” for the “right ordering” of human behavior than the biblical book of Proverbs. According to him, that scriptural collection of precepts and maxims comprised “a complete body of divine ethics, politics, and economics” which exposed vice and recommended virtue. The book of Proverbs provided “rules” governing “every relation and condition.” Henry noted that Proverbs was written for the use of all persons, but especially for the simple, the ignorant, and the young. Youth is the time of learning, he stated, the age of instruction and impressions.
Baptist Noel Turner's “Intelligence of John Bull”: An Allegorical Satire on the Subscription Controversy
Authors: Köster Patricia
Published: April 2006

The Subscription Controversy of the 1770s, often called the Clerical Petition Controversy to distinguish it from other subscription controversies, was just one aspect of the prolonged struggle between liberals, or Latitudinarians, and conservatives within the Anglican church, and it soon was connected with the similar struggle within the Dissenting denominations. There are no full-length modern studies of the Subscription Controversy, but books dealing with various aspects of eighteenth-century religious history often mention it.1
Some Hungarian Theologians in the Late Renaissance
Authors: Kosztolnyik Z. J.
Published: April 2006

In the latter half of the fifteenth century, during the reign of Matthias Corvinus (1458–1490), and in the early sixteenth century, some Hungarian churchmen enhanced religious scholarship in their own country and abroad by their preaching and writing. The writings of these men exemplify the development in Hungary of support for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. These men also spoke out against the moral and spiritual deficiencies of the court. The activities and writings of these theologians pose a challenge to the chronicler of literature and of intellectual and religious history.
The Failure of John XXII's Policy toward France and England: Reasons and Outcomes, 1316–1334
Authors: Menache Sophia
Published: April 2006

Political success is measured according to the accomplishment of the goals determined by politicians. This definition poses a challenge to historians, for political aims often are ambiguous, and our knowledge of them incomplete. This problem becomes more acute with regard to the history of the papacy, whose asserted aims on the one hand, and its real policy on the other, often were characterized by inner contradictions.
Books-for-Laymen: The Demise of a Commonplace
Authors: Nichols Ann Eljenholm
Published: April 2006

The exact relationship between Lollardy and the sixteenth-century Reformation long has eluded students of English history. Recent detailed studies of Lollard texts have underlined a continuity of belief and polemic.1 One significant difference, however, is the way in which reformers in the two periods used the commonplace saying that images are “laymen's books.” The Lollards, even those who were the most outspoken critics of images, used Gregory the Great's metaphor to support their positions. In the I 530s the English reformers used the commonplace in similar ways, but by the 1540s they had rejected it altogether. The English reformers, however, did more than merely reject Gregory as an authority. Instead of dismissing the old justification of images as a false sophism, as the continental reformers had done in the 1520s, they appropriated the laymen's-book metaphor for their own polemic, turning it against the iconophiles. Furthermore, they developed the metaphor in a new way that provided a positive alternative for the illiterate, arguing that the simple and unlearned read not from the book of art but rather from the natural world around them.
Context and Meaning: Roman Catholic Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America
Authors: Taves Ann
Published: April 2006

A French visitor to a nineteenth-century Irish Catholic parish in the United States described the scene as follows: Behold them, when the sanctuary bell announces the moment of consecration; they raise their hands, they extend their arms in the form of a cross, they pray and sigh aloud; at times some leave their pew and prostrate themselves in the aisle, in order to assume a more suppliant and adoring attitude. … If you wait until the end of mass, you will be further edified. You will see them approach as near as possible to the high altar, before which they bow profoundly, making several genuflections, and frequently remain for a moment almost prostrate to the ground. From here they go to kneel at the altar of the Blessed Virgin, then before that of St. Joseph. Then follows a last and touching station before the body of the dead Christ which the Italians call the pietá; they pray here for a few moments, and respectfully press their lips to the five wounds of the Saviour. At the door of the church they take holy water, sign themselves with it repeatedly, and sprinkle their faces with it; then turning to the tabernacle they make a last genuflection, as if to bid farewell to our Lord, and finally withdraw.
On The Origin Of Theses: An Exploration of Horace Bushnell's Rejection of Darwinism
Authors: Thigpen Thomas Paul
Published: April 2006

Horace Bushnell's children knew him as a tender, playful father whose after-dinner romps and continual courtesy warmed the memories of their early family life. But his daughter, Mary, once told of a curious and glaring exception to his habit of fun and kindness at home. “The sight of a doll or [toy] monkey was abhorrent to him,” she remembered, “and he could not restrain his expression of the disgust thus awakened…Woe to the doll which lay in his path!”
Review Article:“Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience”
Authors: Hudson Winthrop S.
Published: April 2006

The publication of a major reference work in any field of interest is always a welcome event. The three-volume Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience: Studies of Traditions and Movements, edited by Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988), is no exception. It is welcome for the authoritative up-to-date information it supplies, and it is doubly welcome for its new conception in design, format, and scope. Unlike many encyclopedias, it is not an alphabetical compendium of many brief entries dealing with narrowly defined topics or very specific items. Instead, this new encyclopedia is composed of 106 essays (mostly fourteen to sixteen large double-column pages in length, with some as long as twenty-eight pages) ranging over a broad spectrum of themes, traditions, movements, and preoccupations of“the American religious experience.” Little is neglected. While the volumes are not arranged for ready reference use, provision is made for this aspect of more convetional encyclopedias by an unusually good index which helps one locate information on a wide variety of subject matter, both past and present. The focus on the broad aspects of religion in America more than compensates for the absence of any readily available alphabetized items of information.