bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
‘Jesuits in Disguise’? Ritualist Confessors and their Critics in the 1870s
Authors: Yates Nigel
Published: March 2011

The public controversy over ritualism in the Church of England reached its peak in the 1870s, with the passing of the Public Worship Regulation Act and the attempts, eventually abandoned through use of the episcopal veto, to prosecute ritualist clergy for the use of technically illegal ceremonial ornaments or vestments. One other related subject that caused a similar degree of controversy at the time, though it has been less well remembered since, was the emphasis within ritualist circles on auricular or sacramental confession. The subject of auricular confession, made privately to a priest, was one of the most explosive religious issues, both morally and theologically, of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
A New Version of a Mid-sixteenth century Vernacular Tract on the Eucharist: A Document of the Early Edwardian Reformation?
Authors: Selwyn D. G.
Published: March 2011

The document presented here makes available a hitherto unknown version of an anonymous vernacular tract dating from the middle years of the sixteenth century. The only known version of the tract until now — extant in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge — was first published by Dr P. N. Brooks in an appendix to his monograph on Thomas Cranmer's eucharistic doctrine (1965).Beyond placing it in the ‘mid-sixteenth century’, Brooks did not attempt t 0 attribute it to an author or indicate its precise historical context beyond suggesting that it provided a ‘valuable period example of the Lutheran understanding of the eucharistic presence’ such as was favoured by Richard Cheyney (bishop of Gloucester, 1562-79) and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in the period between abandoning transubstantiation and embracing a version of the Reformed doctrine. The longer version of the tract which has since come to light in the Bodleian would seem to call for some reassessment of that estimate. For while consistent with a Lutheran doctrine of the eucharistic presence, the Bodleian version concludes with sections on eucharistic adoration and oblation (not found in the Corpus MS). This suggests a closer affinity with the position championed by opponents of the religious changes in the reign of Edward VI, or at least an attempt at a doctrinal consensus between those of the ‘old’ persuasion and those of the ‘new’.
‘For Children in Yeeres and Children in Understanding‘: The Emergence of the English Catechism under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts
Authors: Green Ian
Published: March 2011

When Immanuel Bourne published his larger catechism in 1646, he prefaced it with an unusually full account of the history of catechising. He was not the first author of the period to trace the practice back to the examples of religious instruction in both Old and New Testaments, or to cite the works of Pantaenus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen as proof of the existence of religious education in the early Church. Nor was he alone in praising the efforts of those continental reformers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries who thought they had revived the characteristic form of instruction of the early Church after centuries of neglect, though it may be added that Bourne's list of contemporary European catechists was longer and more cosmopolitan than others'.
‘Sheep in Wolves' Clothing’: the Letters of Consentius to Augustine
Authors: Dam Raymond Van
Published: March 2011

The correspondence of Augustine that Johannes Divjak recently discovered and then edited in CSEL lxxxviii has provided new grist for the scholarly mills of commentary and exegesis. One of these letters (Ep. 11*), sent to Augustine from Consentius, a learned Christian living on one of the Balearic Islands, has been hailed as an important source about ‘the Priscillianist cause’ and ‘secret Priscillianists’ in northern Spain during the early fifth century. In fact, the information in this letter is more teasingly inexplicit. Consentius had composed some anti-Priscillianist writings, but only on the basis of second- and third-hand sources. Fronto, a monk in northern Spain, then apparently used these writings in order to pose as a heretic and discover other heretics who included, he claimed, some local clerics; but once accused of heresy, his opponents insisted upon, and finally ‘proved’, their orthodox Catholicism. And although in his deposition about his heresy-hunt Fronto never once mentioned Priscillianism, Consentius nevertheless glossed the whole affair as one involving Priscillianism when he included a copy of Fronto's deposition in his letter to Augustine.
The Gospel of Reformation: the Origins of the Great Puritan Migration
Authors: Zakai Avihu
Published: March 2011

They [the Puritans] drew in a sea of matter, by applying all things unto their own company, which are any where spoken concerning divine favours and benefits bestowed upon the old commonwealth of Israel: concluding that as Israel was delivered out of Egypt, so they spiritually out of the Egypt of this world's servile thraldom unto sin and superstition; as Israel was to root out the idolatrous nations, and to plant instead of them a people which feared God; so the same Lord's good will and pleasure was now, that these new Israelites should under the conduct of other Joshuas, Samsons and Gideons, perform a work no less miraculous in casting out violently the wicked from the earth, and establishing the kingdom of Christ with perfect liberty.
Prelude to the Great Persecution: The Propaganda War
Authors: Frend W. H. C.
Published: March 2011

The victory of Christianity in the last years of Constantine's was graphically described by Eusebius of Caesarea in hisLife of Constantine. Clearly in Phoenicia, where he had excellent sources of reign information, the heart had gone out of the old religion. Every class in the community was prepared to accept Christianity and even to deride the deities that once they had held in awe. The victory there and ultimately over nearly the whole empire was so decisive that one is inclined to forget the tremendous struggle for the hearts and allegiances of the provincials that preceded it. Though in retrospect one might agree with von Harnack's view that even without Constantine's conversion Christianity would have triumphed, this was not how it appeared to most contemporaries. Down to the time of his victory over Licinius (September 324), Constantine seems to have aimed only at securing for Christianity the legal equality with the traditional cults, as envisaged by the Edict of Milan. The Council of Nicaea, however, summoned by the emperor in 325, proved to be decisive both for the establishment of orthodoxy and the victory of Christianity itself. Thenceforth, the history of the empire would also be the history of the Church.
Politics and Piety in the Household of Lady Margaret Beaufort
Authors: Underwood Malcolm G.
Published: March 2011

The sermon which John Fisher preached at the month's mind of Lady Margaret Beaufort, on 29 July 1509, compared her with Martha, traditionally the woman of action and counterpart of Mary, the woman of contemplation. The virtues he stressed, in addition to nobility of character and lineage, were those of good order: the disciplining of Lady Margaret's body and manner of life through prayer and abstinence, her hospitality and charitable dealings with her neigh-bours. The bishop saw discipline also as the mark of her household: statutes for its government were read four times a year, her servants well cared for, her almsfolk regularly supported. Whenever factions arose among her servants she applied herself with great skill to keeping the peace and finding a solution to controversy. Fisher's account has recently been compared by Retha Warnicke with other memories of her household recorded by Henry Parker, Lord Morley. The same elements are found in both descriptions, but Morley complements Fisher's portrait of charity and able household management with a spectacle of splendid conviviality worthy of the great ladies of the past, Queen Elfleda and Matilda, wife of Henry 1. Morley's memories of the household he entered in the early 1490s are not all contemporary with Fisher's who did not become Lady Margaret's confessor until 1498 or later, and the bishop allocates more of her day to religious observance. But whether her piety grew more exacting and intense in her last decade, or was simply more closely observed by her confessor, she remained until her death the centre of a network of patronage and influence in which she took an active part. Her household was a society with many facets, defined not merely by the austere and charitable practices of its head, but by her importance as a tenant-in-chief of the Crown and mother of the king. It was the combination of all these elements that placed her so high in contemporary estimation. This article explores the life of her household not only as the home of works of charity and a pattern of worship whose special feature was devotion to the Name of Jesus, but also as a centre of justice and regional influence and as a source of support for the activities of the Crown.
The Secularisation of Castilian Episcopal Office Under the Habsburgs, c. 1516–1700
Authors: Rawlings H. E.
Published: March 2011

The Spanish Church of the Golden Age has been much discussed but little studied. Certainly, its professional structure and internal administration are much less well understood than those of secular government. This paper seeks to correct some of the imbalance by applying to the 540 members of the Castilian episcopacy who served under Habsburg leadership the prosopographical techniques which in recent years have advanced our understanding of the State. But before doing so it might be useful to describe the structure of the episcopacy and the principles and procedures which governed appointments to it.
From Augustine to Gregory the Great: an Evaluation of the Emergence of the Doctrine of Purgatory
Authors: Atwell R. R.
Published: March 2011

‘Almost everything in him has its roots in Augustine and yet almost nothing is genuinely Augustinian.’ The words are those of Reinhold Seeberg and the subject of the appraisal Gregory the Great (540–90). It is an observation that has a particular validity when applied to Gregory's adaptation of Augustine's material in his doctrine of Purgatory, which is the subject of this article. In his thought about life after death, Gregory adopted Augustine's theological framework at almost every point. Dogmatic questions such as: ‘At or after death, do the redeemed people of God, other than martyrs, need purification to make them fit for the love and presence of their holy Creator and Judge?’; ‘Does prayer for the dead relate to this growth?’; or ‘Is the life-to-come static?’; and ‘How should St Paul's more obscure statements in his First Letter to the Corinthians concerning salvation “yet so as by fire” be interpreted?’ were questions that Augustine had himself inherited and explored with diligence and real coherence. In large measure, Gregory was content to adopt Augustine's solutions. But in matters of detail Gregory departed from his great forebear, and then, significantly, it was to ‘firm-up’ some of Augustine's more cautious pronouncements particularly about the possibility of purgative suffering in the afterlife. In the celebrated phrase of B. J. Kidd, Gregory ‘erected speculation into a certainty’.
The Owl and the Nightingaleand Papal Theories of Marriage
Authors: Coleman Janet
Published: March 2011

InEnglish and American Studies in German, summaries of theses and monographs, a supplement to Anglia, 1983, there is a notice of Hans Sauer's edition of the Middle English poem theOwl and the Nightingalewith a German translation. Sauer stresses ‘that no completely satisfactory interpretation of this fascinating poem has been suggested so far. At best, only some of the aspects of O & N are covered by the various allegorical explanations or by reading it as a burlesque-satirical poem - these interpretations by no means explain its significance as a whole.’ The present paper suggests that a knowledge of the papacy's changing attitude t o marriage in the twelfth century, as expressed in the development of canon law, as well as in the deliberations of English provincial synods, goes far to illuminating the scope and purpose of this Middle English satire/burlesque.
Religious Societies and the Origins of Methodism
Authors: Rack Henry D.
Published: March 2011

Even the darkest accounts of the eighteenth-century Church of England have generally singled out the religious societies of (various sorts as a bright spark in the gathering Latitudinarian gloom. They included: private devotional groups (‘the religious societies’); the Societies for the Reformation of Manners (referred to here as ‘the SRMs’); the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG); and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), which also supported charity schools. Taken together, these activities seem to add up to a considerable movement of religious renewal. The devotional religious societies are of particular interest because of their problematical relationship to the origins of the evangelical revival and of Methodism in particular. The present paper is mainly concerned with this question.
Eusebius on the True Cross
Authors: Drake H. A.
Published: March 2011

According to a beloved and now generally disbelieved story, the Cross upon which Jesus suffered was discovered some three hundred years after the event by the saintly Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, Rome's first Christian emperor. For centuries, this story enjoyed the greatest vogue, blossoming into a full-blown Legend of the Cross which traced its genealogy all the way back to the Garden of Eden. With the waning of the Middle Ages, however, came new criteria for evidence, and with them a scholarly predisposition to dismiss the discovery, as well as the legend, as pure bunkum. Put together all the pieces of the True Cross, it became common to say, and one could float a fine freighter.
Stephen of Ramlah and the Christian Kerygma in Arabic in Ninth-Century Palestine
Authors: Griffith S. H.
Published: March 2011

In the period of time between the Islamic conquest and the coming of the crusaders to Palestine in 1099, Christian pilgrims from East and West continued to visit the Holy Land, and particularly Jerusalem, by the licence of the Islamic government. Among the western visitors during this period at least half a dozen of them published accounts of their journeys. However, these accounts tell one virtually nothing about the life of the local Church, beyond the occasional list of shrines, churches, monasteries and the number of personnel assigned to them. As one modern scholar has remarked, ‘In the Patriarchate of Jerusalem the indigenous element is always half-hidden behind the crowds of pilgrims of every nationality…In the Holy City the resident aliens often outnumbered the Christian natives of Jerusalem, but in Palestine taken as a whole, the Syrians must always have been a majority.’
A Benedictine Scholar and Greek Patristic Thought in pre- Tridentine Italy: a Monastic Commentary of 1538 on Chrysostom
Authors: Collett Barry
Published: March 2011

There are several questions yet to be answered in the period of Italian religious history leading up to the Council of Trent. One particularly intriguing question is the part played by the Benedictine Congregation of Santa Giustina of Padua, generally known as the Cassinese Congregation. Historians have often observed some of these monks flitting like shadows around the fires of controversy, but what they were actually doing has remained obscure. They had connections with Contarini, Pole, Sadoleto and other spirituali; they gave hospitality to Pier Paolo Vergerio, bishop of Capodistria, before he fled into the Protestant camp; amongst them were many humanist educated biblical scholars, some of whom publicly expounded St Paul; the Congregation's chief spokesman at the Council of Trent was shouted down for what were taken to be his Lutheran sentiments; another monk was the prime author of the tract Il Beneficio di Cristo, later revised by Marcantonio Flaminio and published in 1543 with lengthy extracts from the 1539 edition of Calvin's Institutes woven into its text. It is not surprising that several historians, in common with a number of contemporary observers, have suggested that some of these Benedictines were strongly influenced by Reformation thought.
Influences on the Thought of Alan of Tewkesbury
Authors: Harris M. A.
Published: March 2011

Towards the end of the twelfth century an increasing number of the men entering Benedictine monasteries in England had already received a training in the secular schools. At Bury St Edmunds, for instance, there were at least five magistri in the community by 1183. This led to a certain amount of tension there, and Bury's chronicler, Jocelin of Brakelond, records the fierce dispute that arose when Abbot Hugh died between those who wanted a scholar as his successor and those who did not. One monk said, ‘God forbid that a dumb image should be set up in the Church of St Edmund, where it is known that there are many men of learning’, while another felt such strong antipathy that he prayed, ‘From all good clerks, O Lord, deliver us.’ Jocelin himself, ‘being a young man’ at the time, as he said, ‘would not agree to any man being made abbot unless he knew something of dialectic and could distinguish between false argument and true’. In the event, the man chosen was a scholar, the sub-sacrist, Master Samson.
The Costs of Pew-renting: Church Management, Church-going and Social Class in Nineteenth-century Glasgow
Authors: Brown Callum G.
Published: March 2011

The letting of pews was virtually a universal practice in the churches of nineteenth-century Britain. Although letting and private ownership of seats were well known before the 1700s and have continued in the present century, the renting of fixed seats for use during divine service reached its height in the Victorian period. Worshippers paid anything from one shilling to thirty shillings or more to reserve a seat for one person for a year. It thus became a considerable expense to accommodate a large family. By its ubiquity it is clear that the practice was accepted by church-goers as a facet of ecclesiastical life and was accepted by church authorities as a necessary feature of congregational management. But the fact that the system was generally introduced and operated at the discretion of individual congregations or their owners and patrons, with little or no interference from denominational authorities, has meant that comparatively meagre attention has been paid to how it worked in practice and to what its effects were on congregational life.
The Gnostic-Manichaean Tradition in Roman North Africa
Authors: Frend W. H. C.
Published: March 2011

Throughout its history one may detect three principle tendencies at work in the African Church. First, and probably the strongest, was the traditional Cyprianic and Donatist view of Christianity. This was a Biblical religion, rejecting the culture and society of the surrounding pagan world and exalting the qualities of the prophet and the martyr. Its ideas can be traced in unbroken sequence through the Montanists of Tertullian's time and the confessor party during the primacy of Cyprian down to the Donatists themselves. This religion interpreted the ideas of the majority of the North Africans at least as late as the first decades of the fifth century, and in particular it appealed to the labouring population of Numidia for whom it provided means of voicing hostility to the Roman taxes and Roman institutions.
The Promotion of William of Wickham to the see of Winchester
Authors: Highfield J. R. L.
Published: March 2011

None of the episcopal appointments in the reign of Edward III was more difficult for the king to secure than that of William of Wickham to the see of Winchester. Edward III was never keener for the promotion of a favourite clerk. The pope rarely agreed with more reluctance to a royal choice.
Latins and Greeks in Debate over Purgatory, 1230–1439
Authors: Ombres Robert
Published: March 2011

By the 1230s Latins and Greeks were riot short of issues for debate or polemic, but the topic of purgatory did have a novel feel about it. The doctrine seems to emerge on the common agenda fairly suddenly, finding no place, for example, in the wide-ranging list of 104 points of divergence drawn up by the Byzantine prelate, Constantine Stilbès, in the wake of the cruel sack of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204. The subject did, however, establish itself as a hardy perennial, and it is proposed to trace its main ramifications up to the death of Emperor Michael viii in 1282, and then to concentrate on the Council of Ferrara–Florence (1438–9). Without a doubt the debates and the constant attempts at reunion were not conducted in isolation from wider cultural, political and military considerations, the kind of considerations that in 1400 would lead the Byzantine emperor to journey as far as England. But here the emphasis will fall on the theological aspects. Moreover, there were also in play forces of inertia, ignorance and mutual incomprehension difficult to assess rationally. The thirteenth-century friar, Humbert of Romans O.P., in discussing what would make for reunion with the Greeks noted how a schism might be continued simply because it had existed for a long time, just like the feud between Guelf and Ghibelline.
Proctors acting for English Petitioners in the Chancery of the Avignon Popes (1305–1378)
Authors: Zutshi P. N. R.
Published: March 2011

An increasing number of men wanted, or needed, to transact business at the papal curia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The contemporaneous development of the papal administration – partly responding to and partly encouraging the growth of business – made its transaction a more elaborate affair for those engaged in it. In a sense, the office of proctor came to the rescue of men faced with the greater frequency and complexity of business at the curia.
The Transubstantiation of Myth: towards a New Popular History of Nineteenth-Century Catholicism in England
Authors: Connolly Gerard
Published: March 2011

Derek Holmes, proposing a fresh investigation of the history of Catholics in nineteenth-century England, largely by reference to a tiny group of national clerical leaders, has justified his approach by arguing that it is impossible to imagine the development of English Catholicism without them. This seems a strange apology with which to introduce the history of so numerous and diverse a community. Is it to be assumed that that same community has little or no life apart, or that it had little significance except as backdrop to the drama of episcopal politics? This objection is particularly apropos of nineteenth-century Catholicism, which came to enjoy an enormous following in circumstances that appear to bear but a marginal relationship to the activity of the elite. In short, there is surely a popular dimension here, independent of figurehead biography, which is possibly best captured in the nineteenth-century legend of English Catholic history.
The Significance of the Regal Consecration of Edgar in 973
Authors: Jones Adrienne
Published: March 2011

In the history of medieval regal and imperial anointing the consecration of Edgar as king of the Angles and Saxons in 973 deserves very special attention. For the ceremony, performed seventeen years after Edgar's succession to the throne of Mercia and fourteen years after he had become king of Wessex, was apparently without precedent either in biblical or medieval times. How are we to make sense of a consecration which by its very nature should inaugurate the reign and constitute the king, and which now took place more than a decade and a half after Edgar had been firmly in power? If we consider the consecration against the background of contemporary continental customs then the magnitude of the problem emerges in all its clarity, for by the late tenth century inaugural anointing had assumed its place at the opening of the reigns of most of the kings of western Europe. Regal consecration had been customary among the Franks for well over a century and for nearly as long in Burgundy; there is evidence that anointing took place from an early date in the small Christian kingdoms of Spain, and finally, after the consecration of Otto 1 in 936, inaugural anointing also became established in the German kingdom. In each case the Old Testament provided the pattern for the anointings: it was the pouring on of the holy oil which worked the regeneration of the prince in virum alium (1 Kings x.6), giving him a new heart (1 Kings x.9) and thereby constituting him as ruler over God's people (1 Kings x.1). Henceforth the spirit of God was with the king (1 Kings x.8) and as the christus Domini he enjoyed divine sanction and protection (1 Kings xxiv.7).
Early Norman Monastic Visitations: a Neglected Record
Authors: Cheney C. R.
Published: March 2011

Among students of medieval monasticism the province of Rouen has long been famous for a unique record: the archiepiscopal register (Paris, B.N.MS lat. 1245) commonly called the Regestrum visitationum or Journal des visites pastorales of Archbishop Odo Rigaldi, or Eudes Rigaud, which extends from 1248 to 1269. Published first by Theodose Bonnin in 1852, during the past sixty years it has been translated into English, reprinted in Latin and much commented upon.
The Authorship of ‘Leicester's Commonwealth’
Authors: Holmes Peter
Published: March 2011

The authorship of The copy of a letter written by a Master of Art of Cambridge, or ‘Leicester's Commonwealth’ as it became known, was successfully kept secret when it appeared in 1584. It was common policy for Catholic writers to publish their books anonymously during this period, especially political works, but with one as libellous and seditious as ‘Leicester's Commonwealth’ it was necessary to take every precaution to conceal theidentity of the author. The Earl of Leicester, grossly insulted in the pamphlet, tried hard to find out in France – where the book was known to have been printed – who had written it, and it was reported that he had sent an assassin to the continent to deal with the author. When the book first came to light in London, Walsingham confidently ascribed it – ‘the most malicious written thing that ever was penned sithence the beginning of the world’ – to Thomas Morgan, an agent of Mary Stuart in France, assisted by three other Catholic exiles, Lord Paget, Charles Arundell and William Tresham, but this was no more than a guess and did not convince Leicester. It was not until fifteen years later that the authorship of'Leicester's Commonwealth’ again aroused interest, when a group of English Catholic writers known as the Appellants began to ascribe it to their enemy, the Jesuit Robert Persons. Persons refused to acknowledge authorship, but it was generally accepted that the book was his, and when in 1641 it was republished by a Protestant it was clearly ascribed to the Jesuit. Less certainty was entertained by later historians, but the difficulty remained: if Persons had not written the book, who had? This problem was solved in 1957 in an article by the Jesuit historian, Leo Hicks, who, developing an idea of his older colleague, J. H. Pollen, ascribed the book to a Catholic exile named Charles Arundell and denied that Persons had played any part in its composition. This ascription has been unanimously accepted by later scholars. I wish in this brief paper to question Fr Hicks's findings and to argue that Persons played the major part in the compilation of the book.
The Roman Catholic Church and the Nineteenth-Century Irish Diaspora
Authors: Gilley Sheridan
Published: March 2011

Quite the most remarkable achievement of nineteenth-century Ireland was the creation of an international Catholic Church throughout the Celtic diaspora in the British Empire and North America. A true Irish empire beyond the seas, it was often compared in Hibernian self-congratulation to the monastic missions of the Dark Ages and was served by an Irish clergy and a host of religious orders who fostered a distinctively ‘ethnic’ or Irish Catholic expatriate culture, while often showing the higher values of the Catholic spiritual life. It is remarkable that there is no scholarly modern study of this international community now in process of dissolution, for it has given an incalculable strength to twentieth-century Roman Catholicism. Something of its dimensions and importance can, however, be glimpsed from a growing body of historical writing about Irish Catholicism in England and Scotland, the United States and Australia, as well as in Ireland itself. The American Republic and the white settler areas of the British Empire were to Irish Catholics what the Roman Empire had been to Jews and Christians, the alien organisms by which a faith was carried to the far corners of the earth. As a matter of institutional and ecclesiastical history, the subject is one in which the new nations were divided into dioceses and parishes, and provided with churches, convents, colleges, seminaries and schools. This was, moreover, achieved by no easy process, but in spite of endemic conflict within Irish Catholic communities, who were also opposed by Roman Catholics of other national traditions, by the expanding Protestant Churches and by a hostile Protestant or secular state.
Juvenile Holiness: Catholic Revivalism among Children in Victorian Britain
Authors: Sharp John
Published: March 2011

Studies of revivalism, from Calvin Colton's explanation of the ‘classic’ American experience to John Kent's recent unsympathetic work, have highlighted the use of children as instruments of adult conversion and have illustrated the way in which revivalism sought to influence the whole of domestic life by confirming the sect's alienation from wider society. Equally, children were evangelised in their own right, an important fact to remember in view of the large numbers who died before they reached late adolescence. Although it may strike us as precocious, Victorian children were considered the possessors of an instinctive religious sense, which revivalism sought to harness and develop. The notion of the ‘child-leader’, which was the mainstay of much religious literature throughout the nineteenth century and, propagated by the Sunday schools, was embedded in the growing revivalist ideology, grew out of an ambivalent attitude towards children. Against the older, theological assertion of the depravity of all human beings, there emerged in the late eighteenth century a ‘softer’, more sentimental attitude, which depicted children in particular as potential recipients and bearers of grace. The roots of this attitude lay as much in the theological tradition as in a reaction against it on the part of those who rejected any idea of the aboriginal sinfulness of children and stressed instead their essential innocence.
Clerical Recruitment in the Diocese of York, 1340–1530: Data and Commentary
Authors: Moran Jo Ann Hoeppner
Published: March 2011

Ordination registers have been unduly neglected by historians, and the bibliography ofworks dealing with them is scant. Nevertheless, they are our most valuable source for documenting the recruitment of clergy, both secular and regular, while they also provide indirect evidence for demographic, religious and educational trends. The data assembled in the graphs and tables below, extracted from the archiepiscopal archives of York, detail the total surviving ordination records from England's largest diocese during the period from just before the first outbreak of bubonic plague to the beginning of the Reformation.
Preaching to the Laity in Fifteenth-Century Germany: Johannes Nider's ‘Harps’
Authors: Dahmus John
Published: March 2011

Bernd Moeller concludes in his often-quoted study of late medieval German piety that ‘one could dare to call the late fifteenth century in Germany one of the most churchly-minded and devout periods of the Middle Ages’. In his review of Moeller's work, W. D.J. Cargill Thompson points out that the ‘profound conservatism’ of this religiosity, which included devotion to the mass, veneration of saints and their relics, and the reading of vast amounts of religious literature, poses a problem for our understanding of the causes of the Reformation. How does one reconcile this traditional churchliness with the ‘remarkable suddenness’ of its collapse after 1520? One would have expected greater resistance to Lutheran ideas than actually occurred.
The Authorities and Early Restoration Quakerism
Authors: Reay Barry
Published: March 2011

The Restoration was a victory for the governing classes, a victory for social stability and discipline. Dissent, the gentry argued, led to republicanism and social disintegration: Anglicanism and the monarchy meant order. Yet despite the ease with which Charles it returned in 1660 and the relative lack of bloodshed which accompanied his restoration, it was by no means certain that the settlement would be anything more than transitory. God, in his infinite and impenetrable
Thomas Goodwin and the Debate on Church Government
Authors: Walker David
Published: March 2011

When the Westminster Assembly convened in 1643, English puritans were confident that their effort to reform the government and liturgy of the Church of England would at last be completed. Their expectations were not fulfilled. In the early sessions of the Assembly the ‘dissenting brethren’, a group of clerical Independents led by Thomas Goodwin, opposed the establishment of a national Church on a Presbyterian model. The Independents claimed to be as orthodox as the other members of the Assembly in matters of doctrine, but they could find in scripture no ground for synods exercising the authority of excommunication. So deep was the dissension they created that, in spite of all Presbyterian attempts at reconciliation, spiritual harmony was not restored to the puritan crusade.
Agobard and Amalarius: a Comparison
Authors: Cabaniss Allen
Published: March 2011

The rich diversity of thought and life in the ninth-century church may be illustrated by an inquiry concerning two dignitaries of the empire of Louis the Pious, Agobard of Lyons (769–840) and Amalarius of Metz (c. 780–c. 850). These two clerics, whose lives were virtually contemporaneous but whose careers crossed only once, during the interval 834–838, were almost as different as it is possible for two men to be; so different indeed that any contact they might have with each other would inevitably be sharply antagonistic. The single point at which their lives did meet was in effect an intellectual duel.
The English Evangelicals and the Pilgrim Tax in India, 1800–1862
Authors: Ingham Kenneth
Published: March 2011

The East India Company's accession to political and administrative responsibility in India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was greatly complicated by the simultaneous development of the evangelical movement in England with its missionary agents overseas. India was one of the first areas of British expansion to feel the pressure of evangelical influence upon the conduct of its government. South Africa was to take its turn soon afterwards, and in both cases the younger Charles Grant played an important part, through his tenure of the offices of President of the Board of Control and Colonial Secretary.
Swedish Research in Ecclesiastical History during the Last Decade
Authors: Normann Carl-E.
Published: March 2011

Research work in Swedish Church History of the Vasa period, (1523–1654), i.e. the period of the reformation and early orthodoxy, carried on during the two decades from 1918 to 1938, was exhaustively reviewed by Hjalmar Holmquist in ‘Forschungen zur Kirchengeschichte Schwedens in der Wasazeit (1523–1654). Sammelbericht über die Epoche 1918–1938’ (Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, ed. G. Ritter, No. 36, Leipzig 1939). Swedish research in Church History for the period 1914–20 is listed by G. Krüger in his article ‘Literature on Church History in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland and the Scandinavian Countries, 1914–1920’ in the Harvard Theological Review, xiv. (1921), xv. (1922), xvii. (1924), and xviii. (1925). The list of literature for Sweden was contributed by H. Pleijel of Lund.
Religious Instruction for Children and Adolescents in the Early English Reformation
Authors: Tudor Philippa
Published: March 2011

In an article published inPast and Presentsome years ago, Professor Strauss drew attention to an area of activity that early sixteenth-century reformers considered to be of vital importance - evangelical effort amongst the young. The overwhelming impression left by this article and by a subsequent full-scale study of the indoctrination of the young in the German Reformation is that – in Professor Strauss's terms – failure, not success, was the dominant note.
Perugia and Post-Tridentine Church Reform
Authors: Black Christopher
Published: March 2011

There were tears of joy and rounds of applause among the prelates who closed the Council of the Church in Trent Cathedral in December 1563. The 226 signatories to the final decrees and the many other attendant theologians and canon lawyers who had served on sub-committees no doubt had mixed emotions at this conclusion: pride in what had been achieved; relief that the bitter arguments which had characterised many of the final sessions were now ended; thankfulness that, with whatever haste, they had finally agreed on a package of legislation for the sick pope to sign, in case his death would mean that the work was lost or had to be redone; hope and expectation – at least among the genuine reformers – that they could now go out into the world knowing what they had to defend against heretics, and that they had rules – whatever the omissions – to guide their reform of the Church and its members. The sick pope recovered; by June 1564 he had ratified the canons and decrees produced by the Council since its opening in December 1545 and ordered their printing and circulation to diocesan bishops for implementation.
Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland: Une Question Mal Posée
Authors: Canny Nicholas
Published: March 2011

The question of why the Reformation failed to win any significant number of adherents from among the native population in Ireland has, since the nineteenth century, been posed frequently by historians and, until very recently, the question has been accepted as valid and the answers provided have generally been considered plausible. That the problem of the Reformation in Ireland should be approached in this way is at least a concession by scholars that Irish history is a part of European history and that Irish society has always been influenced to some degree by general European movements. Historical practice has unfortunately not conformed with appearance, and historians have lost sight of the broad comparative perspective implied in the question and, as a consequence, have shirked the fundamental issue of whether or not a reform movement developed within Ireland, or whether the necessary conditions for such a development existed. Instead, the problem has been pondered almost exclusively within the context of the Reformation in England with die result that historians, while appearing to be embarked upon a general discussion of the pre-conditions for reformation, have in fact confined their attention to the much more specific issue of why measures which in a relatively short time produced a solidly Protestant society in England failed to achieve anything like the same result in Ireland.
Alexander Nicoll and the Study of German Biblical Criticism in Early Nineteenth-Century Oxford
Authors: Speller John L.
Published: March 2011

History has not been kind to Alexander Nicoll, a brilliant oriental scholar who is now a forgotten figure, partly because he died before he could achieve the fame he deserved, and partly because his work in the 1820s was soon to be overshadowed by the turmoil of the Oxford Movement of the 1830s and 1840s. Even Dr E. B. Pusey, a pupil of Nicoll's, and his successor as Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, seems to have forgotten the quiet but scholarly way in which Nicholl had worked to combat the liberalism of the German biblical critics. Furthermore, much of what Nicoll said about written Aramaic sources underlying the Synoptic Gospels would be considered by many present day New Testament scholars to have been mistaken; most modern biblical scholars favour the view that Mark's Gospel was written first and used as a source by Matthew and Luke, although there is still considerable disagreement about the explanation of those passages which occur in both Matthew and Luke but not Mark. Even though he may have been mistaken, however, Nicoll was an important figure in the Oxford of the 1820s in so far as he was grappling with the problems posed by the biblical critics at a time when hardly anyone in Oxford—even the Oriel Noetics like Whately and Davison—was doing so, and it is perhaps time to question the commonly held assumption that the Oriel Noetics, together with Newman, Keble and Pusey, held the monopoly of the best theological scholarship in the Oxford of the early nineteenth century.
Abbatial Vacancies and the DividedMensain Medieval England
Authors: Howell Margaret
Published: March 2011

It is widely accepted that the separation of property between abbot and monks in the great English Benedictine abbeys may largely be blamed upon William Rufus. The hypothesis is a coherent one. Rufus asserted, ‘brutally and unjustly’, a claim to hold and enjoy the revenues of abbeys of royal patronage when the abbot died. A firm separation of property, with the development of the obedientiary system as its counterpart, has been seen as arising and hardening in response to the pressures of royal custody in vacancies. Separation, it is said, came about ‘on a grand scale’ in the reign of Henry i immediately following the spoliation of vacant abbeys by his brother, until by the mid-twelfth century the system of separated portions was ‘firmly and completely established in all the great houses’. When the properties were divided the abbot would support himself and his household of knights, officials and servants from his portion and those properties alone would fall under the control of royal officers during a vacancy.
Politics and Heresy in Italy: Anti-Heretical Crusades, Orders and Confraternities, 1200–1500
Authors: Housley N. J.
Published: March 2011

One of the most important weapons in the armoury of the Church during its struggle with heresy in the later Middle Ages was the militant and outward-looking piety of the lay faithful. There were two main ways in which the Church could employ the religious zeal of the laity in the defence of the faith, especially during the critical battle with catharism in the thirteenth century. One was the issue of crusade indulgences and privileges to all who took up arms in, or otherwise contributed to, the struggle against the heretics and their protectors (in technical terms, their fautors). The crusading army which such a move could create was a powerful and relatively inexpensive instrument, but it had its disadvantages. The crusade against the Albigensians showed that it was very difficult to control in the field, while that against the Hussites demonstrated that its failure had serious effects on the enthusiasm of the faithful. The second way of employing lay piety was the establishment of permanent religious organisations, orders and confraternities, which would be at the service of the papal inquisition against heresy. In contrast to the temporary legal obligation of thecrucesignatus, membership of such an organisation expressed a permanent commitment to the defence of the faith, a commitment rewarded onlyin articulo mortisby the grant of the plenary indulgence. My intention here is to examine some political aspects of both the use of the crusade indulgence, together with its associated privileges, and the functioning of anti-heretical orders and confraternities in Italy, mainly in the thirteenth century. Events in Italy deserve study for two reasons.
The Crown, the Papacy and the Reform of the Old Orders in Early Seventeenth-Century France
Authors: Bergin J. A.
Published: March 2011

In reviewing the historiography of the Catholic reform in seventeenthcentury France, one cannot but be struck by the scant attention devoted to the old monastic orders. At a superficial level, this may well be because there are few genuine successes to record or because the numerous failures of attempted reforms make up a particularly depressing and unedifying tale. It is obvious that the more recently founded congregations, both male and female, proved to be more sensitive to the needs of the age and better equipped to deal with them; it was they who succeeded in attracting most of the religious elite who sought entry into the religious life out of a sense of vocation. The rapid growth of the Jesuits, Capucins, Oratorians, Lazarists and Eduists among the male societies, and of the Ursulines, Carmelites and Visitandines among the female are proof enough of that. But this of itself does not demonstrate that the older, monastic orders were not suited to the spiritual or pastoral needs of the age. Indeed, there is abundant evidence to show that, if reformed, they could act as centres for religious revival and attract outstanding individuals. The earliest stirrings of the Catholic reform in the 1590s and 1600s were closely connected to houses of old orders like the Benedictines and the Carmelites; many of the forty new religious houses founded in Paris between 1600 and 1640 belonged to the old orders. As for the inability of the old orders to attract recruits of a high quality, one need but point to the Maurists, Port Royal and the Cistercian strict observance.
Bede as Historian: The Evidence from his Observations on the Life of the First Christian Community at Jerusalem
Authors: Olsen Glenn
Published: March 2011

Bede's historical interests frequently manifested themselves in his exegetical writings. In the case to be studied here, his references to Acts ii. 42–7 and iv. 32–7 and related passages, verses which describe the first Christian community at Jerusalem immediately after Pentecost, Bede broke new ground in trying to picture for himself the life of the first Christians, while accepting the traditional monastic reading of these passages almost without question. Alongside, and conflicting with the well-established view of the first Christian community as one distinguished by perfect love and monastic abandonment of the world, there was in Bede's mind a second, more historically minded, tendency to see the primitive Church as having passed through stages of development, and to try to imagine the historical circumstances in which the ideals of Acts ii. 42–7 and iv. 32–7 had been expressed.