bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Problem of Reform in the Irish Cistercian Monasteries and the Attempted Solution of Stephen of Lexington in 1228
Authors: O'Dwyer B. W.
Published: March 2011

The constitutional reorganisation which accompanied the original Cistercian reform was revolutionary and influenced all forms of religious vocation within the Church. The individual monastery was reinstated as complete and independent in itself, in opposition to the ‘centralisation monarchique’ of Cluny, but each monastery was also part of an order and was under the discipline of the order. The first genuine concept of a religious order had been introduced and many of its details were followed or forced upon all forms of black-monk monasticism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, at the time when the concept itself was being utilised by the Franciscans and the Dominicans. The reform had four general characteristics: the mother house was given pre-eminence within the order; an annual general chapter of all the abbots was established as the supreme legislative body; regular visitations of daughter houses by the abbot of the founding house were a means of supervision; and all of this was combined to form an administrative and disciplinary system capable of securing the fourth characteristic, the unity of observance throughout the order. This was the observance initially followed at Citeaux itself and represented a closer and even literal following of the Rule of St. Benedict, but it was to be secured by a constitutional organisation that drew no inspiration from the Rule. This organisation depended upon a two-fold supervision: horizontally, through the annual general chapter of the abbots of the order, and vertically, through the regular visitations of daughter houses by the abbot of the founding house, or his representative.
The ‘nott conformytye’ of the young John Whitgift
Authors: Collinson Patrick
Published: March 2011

Cambridge University in the early 1570s, according to John Strype, ‘ran now much divided into two factions, whereof the younger sort, which were the majority, was much for innovations, and such were followers of Cartwright's principles; which the graver sort, especially the Heads, laboured to restrain’. It has been pointed out that the differences of age between ‘grave’ conformists and ‘rash’ non-conformists in the Cambridge of Cartwright and Whitgift were not so obvious and extreme as the authorities of the time liked to pretend. John Whitgift as master of Trinity and vice-chancellor was no more than thirty-eight; his opponent, Thomas Cartwright, was perhaps three years younger; and most of Cartwright's supporters were in their late twenties. Yet such seemingly small differences in seniority were not without significance in the hot-house of university politics and religious faction, especially when the ‘seniors’ were themselves such comparatively young men. Only four years before he set himself against the Cambridge Puritans as the very personification of authority and Anglican discipline, Whitgift, as fellow of Peterhouse and Lady Margaret professor of divinity, was openly sympathetic to the party of younger dons who were refusing to wear the surplices and square caps required by their own statutes and the ordinances of the Church.
Protestant Reconciliation in the Exclusion Crisis
Authors: Horwitz H.
Published: March 2011

The triumphal return of Charles II on 29 May 1660 was the prelude to a determination of the restored monarchy's structure rather than its aftermath. The many and vexed problems attendant upon Charles's reinstatement were still to be resolved, for the Declaration of Breda had wisely been confined to generalities. A parliament would be necessary to settle the terms of an indemnity, the ownership of the confiscated lands, the future of the army, and the character of the national Church.
The Monastic Patronage of Bishop Alexander of Lincoln
Authors: Dyson A. G.
Published: March 2011

In a particularly active, if sadly undocumented, period in the history of the English Church, Alexander, third bishop of Lincoln (1123–1148), stands out as a prelate of unusual energy and achievement. Beyond his intermittent involvement in national affairs, he was responsible in the twenty-five years of his episcopate for the establishment of at least nine prebends in the Lincoln chapter; the acquisition of substantial assets for his see—including the right of market and fair in two towns; the setting up of an additional and final, archdeaconry; extensive structural and decorative innovations at his cathedral; the founding of at least one leper hospital; the erection of two, and very probably three, castles; and the establishment of four religious houses. The last of the activities in this impressive curriculum, the founding of the Cistercian houses of Thame and Louth, the Arrouaisian house of Dorchester and the Gilbertine house of Haverholm, all in the brief period 1139–41, represents an achievement approached at that time only by the three foundations of bishop Warelwast of Exeter (1107–37) at Plympton, Launceston and Bodmin. If, moreover, Alexander was not the formal founder of the Gilbertine house of Sempringham some years earlier, it is at least clear that he played a decisive role there, as, indeed, there is good reason for supposing that he made a more positive and critical contribution to the early development of this, the only indigenous English monastic order, than has previously been allowed.
Liberty of Conscience and the Whitehall Debates of 1648–9
Authors: Polizzotto Carolyn
Published: March 2011

As an episode in the history of Puritan ideas on liberty of conscience, the importance of the Whitehall Debates has long been acknowledged. Their publication at the end of the last century by Sir Charles Firth, who discovered them among the Clarke MSS., and their republication in the 1930s by A. S. P. Woodhouse, who made extensive additions to the original text, are evidence of their high regard. As Professor Woodhouse saw them, the Debates dealt with one of ‘the most significant issues of Puritan political thought:…the question of religious liberty’. Other historians have attributed even greater value to the Debates, acclaiming them as a major contribution to Puritan thought on this subject. W. K. Jordan, in his monumental study of religious toleration in England, hailed them as ‘momentous’; and, more recently, Christopher Hill has coupled them with the debates concerning James Nayler as ‘the two great set debates on religious toleration’ which survive from the revolutionary period. In view of this long-standing recognition, it is paradoxical that there exists no coherent and comprehensive discussion of the Debates: or rather, of the debate on 14 December 1648, this being the only day for which a detailed account survives. Although the arguments of various speakers have been summarised, no attempt has been made to offer an interpretation of the debate as a whole, on the grounds of the ‘confused and fragmentary’ state of the records.
The Role of the English Parishioner, 1100–1500
Authors: Mason Emma
Published: March 2011

The present-day parishioner, constantly urged to take a more positive role in the life of the local church community, might be surprised to reflect that this onus of responsibility is a comparatively recent development, and that throughout most of the Middle Ages, on the rare occasions when parishioners as such were mentioned at all in the ecclesiastical records, it was virtually in the capacity of property, and often troublesome property at that.
Religion and Magic in Elizabethan Wales: Robert Holland's Dialogue on Witchcraft
Authors: Clark Stuart , Morgan P. T. J.
Published: March 2011

Not much is known about Robert Holland, the only Renaissance demonologist to venture into print in the Welsh language. He was born in 1557 at Conway, the third son of a gentleman, and went eventually to Cambridge and into the Church of England. He took his B.A. at Magdalene in 1577–8, was ordained at Ely two years later and spent the 1580s preaching and schoolmastering in East Anglia. In 1591 he became rector of a crown living at Prendergast, near Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire, and he was subsequently presented to Walwyn's Castle and Robeston West in the same county. As a result of the patronage of John Philipps of Picton, he was also incumbent of the Carmarthenshire parish of Llanddowror from at least 1594 until 1608. He is presumed to have died before the end of James I's reign, probably in 1622.
The Radical Phase of the Oxford Movement
Authors: Griffin John R.
Published: March 2011

Hitherto we have depended on the State, i.e. on the ruling powers in the country—the King and the aristocracy … But these recollec-tions of the past must not engross our minds, or hinder us in looking at things as they are, and as they will be soon, and inquiring what is intended by Providence to take the place of the time-honoured instrument which he has broken (if it is yet to be broken) the regal and aristocratic power, I shall disgust many men when I say, we must look to the people’. (J. H. Newman, British Magazine, 1833).
Jamaican Christian Missions and the Great Slave Rebellion of 1831–2
Authors: Short K. R. M.
Published: March 2011

Late in 1831 a number of Jamaican slaves began a movement of passive resistance in which all work on the island was to be ended on 25 December. By the time that the subsequent chain of events had been played out, perhaps as many as a thousand slaves had died, although the official figures listed 207 killed during the ensuing insurrection and 312 executed in the aftermath. The white colonials immediately turned against the Baptist and Wesleyan missionaries, accusing them of fomenting the rebellion. As a result of this violent and-missionary reaction six Baptist missionaries were jailed, a Wesleyan was tarred, five Wesleyan chapels and ten Baptist chapels were destroyed, while the latter had another four chapels suffering partial destruction.
The Congregation of the Oratory in France in the late Seventeenth Century
Authors: Judge H. G.
Published: March 2011

The history of the Oratory for which Bremond hoped has not yet been written and much of it remains doubtful. André George has recently repeated his own lament that this should be so, especially as a full study ‘éclairerait singulièrement les obscurités dont sʼentourent les origines du XVIIIe siècle…’. An examination of some of the difficulties which overpowered Sainte-Marthe, the fifth Superior General of the Congregation, may enlighten these dark places and perhaps serve both as a modest contribution to the unwritten history and as a detailed illustration of the magisterial thesis of Paul Hazard. A comprehensive history of the intellectual achievements of the Oratory—which would, in these years, include a study of such giants as Quesnel, Simon, Lamy, Male-branche and Thomassin—is plainly impossible within the limits of an article, and attention will therefore be concentrated on the attempts of Sainte-Marthe himself to direct the turbulent life of the Congregation.
Bishop Perry and Lay Representation in Colonial Synods
Authors: de Q. Robin A.
Published: March 2011

The changing situation of the Church of England in the first half of the nineteenth century raised numerous questions, not least of which was the proper place of the laity in Church government. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts followed closely by the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill were tacit admissions that no longer could Hooker's ideal of a co-terminous Church and State be regarded as a reality. But, whilst the majority within the Established Church was quite ready to acknowledge the justice of the 1828–9 parliamentary measures, they were not quite so ready to deal with the legal anomalies of Royal Supremacy over a Church of which not all the queen's subjects were members. If the question was asked before 1829, ‘Where are the laity of the Church represented in deliberations on its temporal welfare?’ it was theoretically possible to answer ‘in parliament, and in particular in the House of Commons’. After 1829 it was no longer possible to maintain this position, even from a theoretical point of view. The renewed and vigorous campaigns for the revival of Convocation which followed in the next thirty years sprang both from a recognition that no longer could parliament be regarded in any sense as a representative voice of the Church of England, and the recognition of the necessity to have a proper and representative expression of opinion on matters relating to the temporalities and spiritualities of the Church.
Episcopacy and a ‘Godly Discipline’, 1641–6
Authors: Lamont W. M.
Published: March 2011

On 22 April 1646 the House of Commons formally questioned the jure divino claims put forward by the ministers in the Westminster Assembly. Ostensibly this action represents the climax to one of the most puzzling developments in the Civil War: the triumphant assertion of Erastianism by men who had acquiesced in the passing of theocratic measures in the early part of the Civil War. W. A. Shaw's reading of the situation typifies the general attitude of historians of the period: the resolution of the problem by denying that it is one. His main thesis is that English Puritanism in the period 1641–6 was never really divorced from its historic Erastian associations.
The Revival of an Active Convocation of Canterbury (1852–1855)
Authors: Welch P. J.
Published: March 2011

For well over a hundred years, the convocation of Canterbury presented one of those curiosities which give England so much of her charm. It was summoned to transact business, and, as soon as it met, it was prorogued before it could transact any business at all, apart from the pure formality of agreeing to an address to the sovereign. It remained prorogued until the sovereign dissolved parliament. This state of affairs originated in 1717, when an immediate prorogation precluded the lower house of convocation from censuring the latitudinarian sermons of Hoadly.
A Bibliography of the Works of Johannes Scottus Eriugena
Authors: Sheldon-Williams I. P.
Published: March 2011

This bibliography is part of the preparation of an edition of Eriugena's Periphyseon (De diuisione naturae) for the series, Scriptores latini Hiberniae, published by the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. It supplements the shorter one contained in J. F. Kenney's Sources for the Early History of Ireland, i: Ecclesiastical (New York 1929), and, except in the lists of MSS., does not repeat what is contained there. The letter K against a MS. indicates that it is mentioned by Kenney. Dom Maïeul Cappuyns's study, published in 1933, would have afforded a broader and sounder foundation to build upon, but its bibliographical material, though ample, is not systematically arranged. Kenney supplies the form, Cappuyns the greater part of the matter, the rest of which derives from researches carried out since he wrote.
The First English Delegation to the Council of Basel
Authors: Schofield A. N. E. D.
Published: March 2011

In June 1432 Gerardo Landriani, the bishop of Lodi, visited England as an ambassador of the Council of Basel to address the king and parliament. The assembly in Basel, despite a late start, poor attendance and the threat of war in its immediate neighbourhood, had rebelled against Eugenius IV at the beginning of the year by continuing to meet in defiance of the papal bulls of dissolution. It persisted in its negotiations with the excommunicated Hussites and showed determination to achieve its other declared aims, the reform of the Church and the pacification of Christendom. Landriani found that a papal envoy bearing copies of the bulls of dissolution was also in London; he, nevertheless, succeeded in obtaining promises of English support and a delegation composed partly of Henry VI's ambassadors, partly of delegates of the English clergy, set out for Basel before the close of the year.
The Deaconess Community of St. Andrew
Authors: Joanna Sister
Published: March 2011

The year 1961 witnesses the centenary of the Deaconess Community of St. Andrew, the only Religious Community in the Anglican Church whose full members are both professed Religious and ordained Deaconesses. In 1861, Elizabeth Catherine Ferard, with two like-minded ladies, began to live together under a common rule of life, dedicated to worship and to works of mercy. In July of the following year, the bishop of London ‘set apart’ Miss Ferard as the first deaconess of the English Church. Thus began the Community of Deaconesses, expanding and developing during the ensuing hundred years, but from the beginning maintaining its characteristic two-fold vocation to the Religious Life and to the Order of Deaconesses.
John Cassian
Authors: Munz Peter
Published: March 2011

In this paper I propose to give a description of the thought of John Cassian. There are two recent books on Cassian, one in English by Dr. Owen Chadwick and one in French, by Canon Christiani.I do not mean to go over the ground covered by these works but I have set myself the task of approaching the ideas of Cassian from a special point of view.
Clarendon and the Declaration of Indulgence
Authors: Abernathy George R.
Published: March 2011

The latest monograph on the religious settlement of the Restoration calls attention to the untrustworthiness of Clarendon's account of the Act of Uniformity of 1662 while adopting the customary view, based on Clarendon's Life, that the Lord Chancellor ‘took a leading part in the Parliamentary attack upon the Indulgence’ in February 1663. With only one known exception, historians have relied heavily, and in most cases completely, on either Clarendon or T. H. Lister in ascribing to Clarendon a rôle of complete opposition to the Declaration of Indulgence of 1662 and the motives behind it, and the single exception, W. D. Christie, made only cautious references to some inaccuracies in the Life. Writers have erred in adopting Clarendon's narration of the Declaration and its background, and consequently have misinterpreted his basic policy and his interpretation of the English constitution. Careful study of new material and a re-examination of Clarendon's Life reveal that Clarendon consistently supported comprehension and toleration and that he was not responsible for the failure of the Declaration of Indulgence. It is even possible that the section of the Life so frequently cited in connexion with the Declaration does not even apply to that subject.
Patterns of Religious Worship in 1851
Authors: Inglis K. S.
Published: March 2011

In 1851 an official census of religious worship was held in Great Britain for the first and last time. Alongside the ordinary decennial census, parliament sought information about attendance at public worship on a given Sunday, about the number of sittings available in churches and chapels, and about certain other matters. Because the result could be interpreted as showing that half the nation were Nonconformists, parliamentary defenders of the Establishment resisted any proposal to repeat a census of this sort. Every ten years from 1860 to 1910, they recommended instead a census of religious profession, by which the Church of England would certainly appear to be comparatively stronger. On these occasions nonconformist members of parliament invariably said that they would have a census of attendance or none at all. Consequently, since 1851 no official information about the religious preferences of the population has ever been collected. Its very uniqueness is one reason for coaxing out of the 1851 census of religious worship all the evidence it can yield. It is a richer quarry than its comparative neglect by social and ecclesiastical historians might suggest. The purpose of this article is to discuss how reliable it is as a source and what it reveals about religious practice in large English towns.
The Coronation Oath and the Church of England
Authors: Berry C. L.
Published: March 2011

The first part of the Oath ‘ministered’ by the archbishop of Canterbury at the coronation of king George V in 1910, as at previous coronations, was the question:

‘Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the People of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Dominions belonging thereto, according to the Statutes in Parliament agreed upon, and the respective Laws and Customs of the same ?’
The Diocesan Rite of the Archdiocese of Braga
Authors: Williams H. Fulford
Published: March 2011

In its Liturgy the Roman Church has always insisted on ‘Uniformity’, but even today there are a few local exceptions. One of the most interesting of these, the rite of the archdiocese of Braga, in the northwest of Portugal, has attracted very little external interest, but it has many points that repay study.
An Ecclesiasticall Seminarie and College General of Learning and Religion, Planted and Established at Ripon
Authors: Bussby Frederick
Published: March 2011

Sixteenth century England saw a good deal of discontent with the education provided by the universities. Not only churchmen but also statesmen and schoolmasters felt the need for something more than the courses then provided. Cranmer first suggested (1540) the need for a nursery: ‘in every cathedral there should be provision made for readers of divinity, and of Greek and Hebrew; and a great number of students, to be exercised in the daily worship of God, and trained up in study and devotion’. Sir Humphrey Gilbert (1539?–83) outlined a scheme for Queene Elizabethes Achademy which was to educate her ‘Maiestes Wardes and others the youth of nobility and gentlemen’. The universities were unable at that time to do this work, Gilbert maintained, and special training was needed for those laymen who looked forward in due time to sharing in the government of their country. And for schoolmasters, Mulcaster made a like proposal (1580): ‘He that will not allow of this careful provision for such a seminary of masters, is most unworthy either to have a good master himself, or hereafter to have a good one for his. Why should not teachers be well provided for, to continue their whole life in the school, as divines, lawyers, physicians do in their several professions’. In 1556 cardinal Pole invented the word ‘seminary’ which has had such a powerful influence in educational history. It was adopted at the seventh session of the Council of Trent in 1563 when the Council devoted itself, with great success, to the provision of diocesan seminaries throughout the Roman Church. Thirtysix seminaries were founded by 1626.
The Influence of Thomas Haweis on John Newton
Authors: Wood A. Skevington
Published: March 2011

One chapter of John Newton's life has been consistently overlooked by his biographers. It concerns his friendship with Thomas Haweis, the Evangelical whose importance students of eighteenth century English Church History are now beginning to realise. The influence of Whitefield, of Wesley, of Grimshaw upon Newton in his early and formative years has been amply recognised. The name of Haweis scarcely appears at all. Neither Richard Cecil, who continued Newton's own Authentic Narrative and also provided the prefatory memoir to his collected works, nor Josiah Bull, who in 1868 compiled what has remained the standard biography for more than three-quarters of a century, pay any real attention to Haweis. Nor does Bernard Martin's recent full-length portrait repair the omission. There are, it is true, several references to Haweis (though the index does not even succeed in spelling his name correctly), but no indications that the author is aware of the important rôle he played.
A Tractate about the Council of Florence attributed to George Amiroutzes
Authors: Gill Joseph
Published: March 2011

George Amiroutzes, commonly called the Philosopher for his wide learning, was a native of Trebizond. In 1437 he accompanied John VIII Palaeologus, emperor of Constantinople, to Italy to the Council of Ferrara-Florence as one of the three erudite laymen (the others were George Scholarius and George Gemistus ‘Pletho’) that the emperor took with him to advise him on the difficult theological questions there to be discussed. As the events unfolded division arose in the ranks of the Greeks. First, in Ferrara, there was the question as to what should be the subject of the opening discussion—the addition of the Filioque to the Creed, or the doctrine of the Filioque. Bessarion, metropolitan of Nicaea (later cardinal) and Scholarius (later the patriarch Gennadius) wanted to start with the latter as the more fundamental; Mark Eugenicus, metropolitan of Ephesus, and Gemistus preferred the former and their opinion prevailed. Amiroutzes agreed with Bessarion and Scholarius. In Florence, where the subject of debate was the doctrine of the Filioque, the rift between the two parties was more serious. It was a rift mainly between the leaders, for the majority of the Greek bishops, of a lower intellectual standard, was content to follow. For union the protagonists were Bessarion, Isidore, metropolitan of Kiev and of all Russia, Gregory, the imperial confessor, and Dorotheus, metropolitan of Mitylene. Against union, Mark of Ephesus stood almost alone but indomitable. George Amiroutzes was a staunch supporter of the unionists, who in several of the private conferences of the Greeks bitterly attacked Eugenicus and who gave a written vote in decisive and clear terms in favour of the orthodoxy of the Latin doctrine on the Procession of the Holy Spirit. The decree of union of the Latin and the Greek Churches was promulgated in solemn session on 6 July 1439. It bears the signatures of the emperor, of all the Greek prelates but two (Eugenicus and Isaias of Stauropolis), of five deacons of the Great Church and of several monks. The three ‘philosophers’ did not sign because they were laymen. As is well known, after their return to Constantinople most of the Greek prelates, under the influence of Mark Eugenicus and of popular sentiment, repented of their adherence.
Spanish and English Religious Poetry of the Seventeenth Century
Authors: Wilson Edward M.
Published: March 2011

A bout four hundred years ago John Knox wrote as follows in his Comfortable Epistle to Christ's afflicted Church: ‘Let Wynchester, and his cruel counsell, devise and study till hys wits faile, howe the kyngdom of his father, the Antichrist of Rome, may prosper: And let him and them drink the bloudde of Goddes sainctes till they be droncke, and theyr bellyes burst, yet shall they never provide long in their attemptes. Their counsailes and determinacions shalbe like the dreame of a hungry or thyrstie man, who in his slepe dreameth that he is eatinge or drinckinge; but after he is awaked, his pain continueth, and his soule is unpacient and nothinge eased. Even so shall these tyrantes, after their profounde counsayles, long devices and assured determinations, understand and know that the hope of ypocrites shal be frustrate; that a kingdome begunne with tyranny and bloudde, can neither be stable nor permanent; but that the glorie, the riches, and manteiners of the same, shalbe as strawe in the flame of fyre. Altogether with a blaste they shal be consumed in such sorte, that their palaces shal be a heape of stones, their congregations shal be desolate; and such as do depend upon their helpe, shalfal into destruction and ignominie with them.’
Deacons, Deaconesses and the Minor Orders in the Patristic Period
Authors: Davies J. G.
Published: March 2011

Writers in the early centuries of the Christian era were accustomed to employ the term διάκονος with either the masculine or the feminine definite article. In the former case it is to be translated ‘deacon’ and in the latter ‘female deacon’ or ‘deaconess’. This usage suggests a close relationship, if not an identity, between the diaconate and the order of deaconesses and it is the purpose of this Note to explore this subject, beginning with the vexed question of the obscure origin of this order for women.
The So-called Anonymous of York
Authors: Nineham Ruth
Published: March 2011

GH. Williams and N. F. Cantor have both attempted in recent years to solve the problem of the authorship of the anonymous treatises of MS. C.C.C.415 and E. H. Kantorowicz has mapped out a place for him in the history of the development of political theory. The thirty-four tracts of this manuscript, with their variety of subject matter and lines of approach, including theocratic kingship, Gelasian political theory, neo-Donatism, bitter anti-Gregorianism and a nostalgia for the purity of the primitive church, present a fascinating puzzle in the history of Anglo-Norman Church-State relations. They have been considered by some to represent the earliest sparks of Wycliffism in England, and even to one writer the first indications of the peculiar ethos of the Anglican Communion.
The Beginnings of Puritan Covenant Theology
Authors: Møller Jens G.
Published: March 2011

The present interest in Puritanism has brought forth a large number of remarkable works dealing with the history of Puritanism as well as with puritan thought. Naturally enough, puritan covenant theology has also come in for treatment in many recent studies. However, English and American scholars have as a rule failed to contribute a satisfactory discussion of the idea of the covenant in puritan theologians. One principal reason for this failure is to be found in the fact that many of these scholars are primarily interested in sociology and less in theology. Another reason stems from the tendency to isolate the Puritans in England and New England from their English background as well as from their Continental forerunners and contemporaries. Interpretations which thus tend to neglect both theology and history necessarily lead to grave misunderstandings in the presentation of puritan covenant theology. The wellknown work of Perry Miller is typical in many respects. Miller presents his interpretation of the covenant in book IV under the general heading: Sociology! Although he seems to be aware of the existence of earlier covenant theology he tends to regard William Perkins as the inventor of the puritan concept of the covenant. In Miller's understanding covenant theology means essentially the puritan theologians' counter-action to tendencies within their own camp, viz., Arminianism and Antinomianism. This might be true for the period about 1650, but only then. Finally Miller regards covenant theology as implying a departure from essential Calvinism. This is also true to a certain extent but calls for a much more careful analysis than Miller's.
Dissenting Churches in Kent before 1700
Authors: Nuttall Geoffrey F.
Published: March 2011

Out of an approximate total of four hundred, the number of livings in Kent from which clergy are known to have been ejected under the Act for Confirming and Restoring of Ministers of 13 September 1660 and the Act for the Uniformity of Public Prayers of 19 May 1662 is sixty-five. For comparative purposes it may be observed that the number of Kentish benefices known to have been under sequestration during the period between 1643 and 1660 was one hundred and twenty, i.e. almost double. These figures follow fairly closely the pattern for England in general: the proportion of sequestrations (30 per cent.) is almost identical, the proportion of ejections a little lower in Kent (16 per cent.) than in the country as a whole. Since thirty-six parishes in Kent were affected by both sequestration and ejection, the number of parishes unaffected by either was even larger than is suggested at first sight by the figures given above. Dr. Whiteman's conclusion from her consideration of the statistics for sequestrations throughout the country would certainly seem to be true of the situation in Kent: ‘continuity was much greater … than used to be thought’.
The Administration of the Archdeaconry of St. Albans, 1580–1625
Authors: Peters Robert
Published: March 2011

Included in the considerable corpus of records of the archdeaconry of St. Albans, hitherto almost entirely neglected by historians, are 106 letters relating to the years 1580–1625 written by the bishop of London (within whose diocese the archdeaconry lay) or, in the case of six of them, his chancellor, to the archdeacon or his official. The letters contain instructions to be put into effect within the archdeaconry, which, at this time, consisted of 26 parishes—22 in Hertfordshire and a group of four parishes in the neighbouring county of Buckinghamshire. Doubtless, similar letters were addressed to other archdeacons of the diocese at the same time, but it is believed that those relating to this archdeaconry are the only copies still extant. Eighty-nine of these letters were written between 1580 and 1608; the remainder cover the years 1609–1625. As some of the draft replies of the archdeacon or his official have also survived, it is possible in these instances to trace from them, and from the unusually complete sequence of Act Books of the archdeacon's court and other records, the action which was taken in response to the instructions contained in these letters and, thus, to some extent, to reconstruct a picture of the administration of the archdeaconry which complements that revealed by the visitation records. In addition, some of these letters throw a revealing light on the wider aspects of Elizabethan and Jacobean administration, of Canterbury, then through the bishop of the diocese, to the archdeacon and from him and his officers through the apparitor to the incumbents and laity of the archdeaconry.
St. Oswald and the Tenth Century Reformation
Authors: John Eric
Published: March 2011

St. Oswald's part in the English revival of Benedictine monasticism usually known as the tenth century reformation was the subject of a classical study by the late Dr. Armitage Robinson, whose conclusions have gained very wide acceptance. Dr. Robinson was mainly interested in the part St. Oswald played in the conversion of Worcester cathedral into a fully Benedictine community. He drew a sharp distinction between the conduct of St. Æthelwold at Winchester and that of Oswald at Worcester.Accepting the usual opinion that Æthelwold expelled clerks from Winchester by violence and replaced them with monks, he argued that Oswald on the contrary was a gentle man who preferred to convert the Worcester community to monasticism gradually and made no expulsions. In his argument Dr. Robinson found himself greatly handicapped by the paucity of information in the few narrative sources relevant to the tenth century which were reasonably contemporary. He found himself forced to take into consideration post-Conquest hagiography and to discriminate within the conflicting details of late traditions. In spite of the poor character of the narrative evidence he thought, and he has carried most later scholars with him in this, that he could supply the defects of his narrative sources by what was mainly a statistical study of the witness-lists to the many charters issued in Oswald's name during his pontificate. It is upon his calculations that Dr. Robinson's theory in the end rests. It will be argued in this paper that the late traditions are of little value and that the witnesslists of Oswald's charters do not quite bear the weight Dr. Robinson put upon them. A rather different view of Oswald's pontificate will be suggested and by taking into account some allegedly contemporary evidence which Dr. Robinson, on reasonable grounds, ignored, some wider considerations relating to the establishment of the monks will be offered.
Henry VIII Burns Luther's Books, 12 May 1521
Authors: Meyer Carl S.
Published: March 2011

Luther's name was unknown in England on that 31 October 1517 when he posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Relatively soon, however, after this momentous event it would be widely known in London.
The Changing Theory and Practice of Irish Pilgrimage
Authors: Hughes Kathleen
Published: March 2011

‘I know’, says St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, ‘that if this earthly I tent of mine is taken down, I get a home from God made by no human hands, eternal in the heavens. It makes me sigh, indeed, this longing to be under cover of my heavenly habitation … to have my mortal element absorbed by life…. I know that while I reside in the body I am away from the Lord….’ St. Paul is considering the body as a flimsy tent, which may at any moment be taken down, and St. Columbanus takes up this passage in his eighth sermon on the essential instability, the transitory nature of earthly life. Here and elsewhere he speaks of life as a roadway, where Christians must travel in perpetual pilgrimage as guests of the world (hospites mundi), content with a sort of travelling allowance. The same spirit of detachment and urgency infuses much of the hagiographical literature: “Leave thy fatherland for my sake, and get thee out’, ‘This is not the place of thy resurrection’, or the wandering scholar to Brigid when she asks him to stay a while with her, ‘O nun, I have no leisure, for the gates of heaven are open now, and I fear they may be shut against me’.
Stephen of Lexington and Cistercian University Studies in the Thirteenth Century
Authors: Lawrence C. H.
Published: March 2011

‘On my side are St. Benedict and the whole of antiquity’, wrote Rancé to Mabillon in February 1693, ‘and what is called study has only been instituted when discipline has been lax’. However one may sympathise with his great adversary, it can hardly be denied that, at least so far as the Cistercian order was concerned, Rancé was historically justified. The transmission of new ideas depended on freedom of movement and this was not compatible with the monastic vow of stability. It was this, rather than any ingrained conservatism, that made the monastic orders so slow to adapt themselves to the new learning of the cathedral schools and the rising universities. The Cistercians in particular were seemingly committed by their founders to being, Like St. Benedict, scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus. It was the vocation of Cîteaux to recall men to the primitive observance of the Rule in which the essential tasks of the monk were liturgical prayer and manual labour. There was to be no school in the cloister. The only instruction provided for in the early consuetudines was training in the chant. The making of books, save by permission of the general chapter, was expressly forbidden.
The Episcopal Visitation: Its Limits and Limitations in Elizabethan London
Authors: Owen Gareth
Published: March 2011

The efficiency of the visitatorial machinery of the Elizabethan Church has long been a subject of speculation among ecclesiastical historians. The establishment of a permanent High Commission court suggested to Professor Usher the failure of the existing system. B. L. Woodcock, on the other hand, compared it favourably with what he called the ‘comparative insignificance’ of late-medieval visitations. Professor Kennedy, a specialist in episcopal articles and injunctions, concluded that ‘… visitations were carried out with something approaching efficiency’. These varying assessments can be tested by regional studies of the actual operations of diocesan visitations. Sufficient material appertaining to the London area survives to allow an examination of the system in the light of various tests of efficiency.
The Manuscripts of the Vargas-Granvelle Correspondence, 1551–2
Authors: Evennett H. O.
Published: March 2011

Ever since the final years of the seventeenth century one of the most important sources for the history of the second period of the Council of Trent—still the least well documented of the three—has been the correspondence of Francisco Vargas, Pedro Malvenda, Manrique de Lara, bishop of Orense and other Spaniards at the Council, with the emperor Charles V's chief minister Antoine Perrenot, bishop of Arras, the future cardinal Granvelle. Vargas was one of the most distinguished Spanish lawyers and diplomatists of his day, combining a hatred of Protestantism with a highly critical attitude towards the Papacy. He attended the Council in 1551–2 as legal adviser to Charles's three ambassadors, of whom the chief was Don Francisco de Toledo, and being a procurator fiscal was usually referred to as ‘the fiscal’. Malvenda was a theologian of eminence sent by the emperor. Vargas, Malvenda and the bishop of Orense kept up a correspondence with Granvelle which was not shown to Toledo. The letters of all three correspondents were highly critical—to put it at its lowest—of the way in which the Council was conducted by the Papal Legate presiding, cardinal Marcello Crescentius. The legate is represented as a narrow-minded and intransigent ecclesiastic, a puppet of Rome, infuriating everyone with whom he had to deal by blocking all attempts at serious reform, denying freedom of speech to the bishops, sabotaging the attendance of German protestant representatives and attempting to insert into the doctrinal decrees passages containing inflated concepts of papal supremacy over bishops and councils.
A Register of Boniface VIII's Chamberlain, Theoderic of Orvieto
Authors: Waley D. P.
Published: March 2011

No. 273 in the Vatican Archive series of Instrumenta Miscellanea is the surviving fragment of a register of letters despatched by Boniface VIII's camerarius, Theoderic of Orvieto. The register is on paper and consists of eleven folios, of which the last four are blank. The first three of the seven folios used have been badly damaged by damp in consequence of which all but two of the first twelve letters in the register are illegible in parts. The fragmentary nature of the register in the form in which it has survived is proved by the fact that it begins and finishes in the middle of a letter. Including these two truncated letters, it contains twenty-eight letters. The earliest legible date of writing is 3 January 1297 and the latest is 17 July 1297, but in some cases no date is given and in others the full date is not legible. Since the letters are not registered in chronological order it is evident that, as with the contemporary registers of papal letters, they were not always copied into the register—or at least not into the register in the form in which it has survived—at the time when they were drawn up in the chamberlain's chancery. Several of the letters (nos. 15, 17 and 23) mention the fact that the chamberlain has caused a copy of the letter to be registered.
Chapter Administration and Archives at Windsor
Authors: Bond Maurice F.
Published: March 2011

St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle has, from its foundation, been closely associated with the Sovereigns of England, and, through the Order of the Garter, with many of their most distinguished servants. Yet the history of the Chapel has seldom received treatment in any detail by church historians; as an exempt peculiar it has doubtless seemed too far removed from the main currents of ecclesiastical life. St. George's Chapel, however, has led, in whatever isolation from its province, a life of its own that has been of particularly marked vigour in the realms of music and theology. The members of the college serving St. George's, moreover, have had a direct influence on the life of the nation, whether as ministers of the crown or prominent civil servants, as royal tutors, or as personal advisers to the Sovereign. St. George's Chapel, in fact, may have played a far greater part in the life of both Church and State than has as yet been generally realised, and within the last twenty years a group of local historians has undertaken studies in the records of the Chapel, the interim conclusions of which already go some distance towards substantiating such a claim.
The Prayer Book in Convocation, November 1661
Authors: Cuming G. J.
Published: March 2011

A previous article traced the formulation of the proposals for Prayer Book revision made by bishops Wren and Cosin in the years 1660–1. These proposals were entered in the ‘Durham Book’ (DB), and reached their final form in ‘Sancroft's Fair Copy’ (FC). In November 1661 the proposals were laid before Convocation, and, as amended in debate, were entered by Sancroft in the ‘Convocation Book’ (CB), a folio Prayer Book of 1636, the text of which differs in only a few particulars from the familiar ‘1662 Prayer Book’. A MS. copy of the complete text as revised was prepared concurrently in order to be subscribed by all members of Convocation. This was subsequently attached to the Act of Uniformity (1662), and is known as the ‘Annexed Book’ (AB). The course of the discussions which intervened between FC and CB remains obscure; the Convocation records are disappointingly sketchy, and there is very little external evidence. From what there is of the latter, and from analysis of the changes made, however, it is possible to discover the authorship of some of the alterations and additions, to identify the most influential figures in the discussions, and to recover a few proposals which failed to secure acceptance.
The Festival of Encaenia Ecclesiae in the Ancient Church with special reference to Palestine and Syria
Authors: Black Matthew
Published: March 2011

Strictly speaking, there is only one festival of encaenia in the ancient Church reported by our ancient or modern authorities on the subject, the feast of the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, instituted on 13 September 335 to mark the tricennalia of the emperor Constantine, and described for us by Eusebius in his Life of Constantine. The rebuilding of churches after the persecution under Diocletian, and a similar encaenia of the Church of Tyre are even more fully recorded in the tenth Book of the History. Both dedications were accompanied by a long panegyric of the emperor, delivered by Eusebius himself, extolling Constantine as a second Solomon, and were the occasion for similar festive addresses and theological discourses from other visiting ecclesiastical dignitaries: but, apart from the magnificence of the occasion, the public banquets, the vast concourse of delegates from every part of the Christian world (Eusebius seems to be as anxious as Luke in his account of Pentecost in Acts ii. to emphasise the ecumenical character of the occasion), there is nothing unexpected in any of the rites or ceremonies performed at the encaenia; in addition to the celebration of the Eucharist, they consisted for the most part of prayers for the general peace, for the Church of God and for the emperor, Scripture readings, singing of psalms, and the lavish distribution of alms.
Eusebius and Ordination
Authors: Ferguson Everett
Published: March 2011

The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius employs a variety of expressions in describing the episcopal successions of the important churches. Some of these are theologically colourless, as the forms of λαμβάνειν to declare that one has ‘received’ the episcopate, or often the ‘ministry’ (λειτουργία), of a given church. Other formulae are related to the most important motifs associated with ordination in the ancient Church.
English Influence on the Church at Odense in the Early Middle Ages
Authors: King Peter
Published: March 2011

A round 960 king Harald Bluetooth ‘made the Danes Christians’. But for another hundred years outsiders would have found the Danish Church provincial and backward. Until the end of the eleventh century Denmark had no cathedral schools and few of its native clergy were learned men. There were no influential monasteries until 1089 and, therefore, no party in the Church to counteract the influence of the married clergy and champion the ideas of reform favoured by the Roman Curia. It was not until 1054 that king Sven Estridsøn divided his kingdom into nine bishoprics and the ecclesiastical map of the kingdom began to assume its medieval shape. It took even longer for these bishoprics to acquire adequate endowments. The churches of Denmark were so poor that simony was often a necessity. Finally, Denmark had no metropolitan authority of its own until the beginning of the twelfth century. Throughout the eleventh century its bishops owed obedience to the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen and the efforts of Sven Estridsøn to establish a native archbishopric were unsuccessful.