bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Revisionism, the Reformation and the History of English Catholicism
Authors: Haigh Christopher
Published: March 2011

Twenty years ago, when Patrick McGrath was writing Papists and Puritans, it made sense to present the history of Tudor Catholicism in terms of early decline and later heroic recovery. Our understanding of the sixteenth century was then dominated by two books, which seemed to demonstrate revolutions in religion and government that breached all continuities in ecclesiastical and political history. In A. G. Dickens's The English Reformation, an increasingly sophisticated laity, discontented with the moral laxity and spiritual torpor of the late medieval clergy, was shown to have accepted with enthusiasm the break with Rome and the new doctrines of Protestantism. Gentlemen, lawyers, merchants and artisans responded to the energetic evangelism of the early reformers, and abandoned medieval obscurantism. Secular and ecclesiastical politicians espoused reform for their own calculations of expediency or experience of spirituality, and threw the weight of the state behind the new doctrines, while conservatives lacked the commitment and imagination to resist change.
The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-men 1660–1689: Stillingfleet, Tillotson and 'Hobbism'
Authors: Marshall John
Published: March 2011

When the redoubtable Presbyterian Richard Baxter came to write his engagingly biased autobiography he distinguished three broad categories of conformists to the Restoration Church Settlement of 1662. There were those who had been forced to conform out of need, or had casuistically placed their own meaning on the words of the Subscription; next there were the Latitudinarians, who were ‘mostly Cambridge-men’ and of ‘Universal Principles and free’; and then there were those of the ‘high and swaying Party’ who were ‘desirous to extirpate or destroy the Nonconformists’.
Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085)
Authors: Robinson I. S.
Published: March 2011

On 25 May 1085 Pope Gregory VII died in exile. The ninth centenary of the death of this great pope – ‘the greatest who has ever sat in St. Peter's chair’ Erich Caspar called him in 1924 – provides an obvious pretext for a bibliographical essay. What makes such. an essay a necessary exercise rather than a mere commemorative gesture is the fact that there is not available at present in any language a full-scale biography of Hildebrand–Gregory which reflects the current state of research. There is no doubt that Gregorian studies are flourishing: the colloquium in Salerno in May 1985 will offer an impressive account of research in progress. Over 200 books and articles on different aspects of the life and thought of Hildebrand-Gregory, written in the second half of this century, are listed below. Perhaps it is this sheer wealth of material and opinion which has disheartened potential biographers. The following survey concentrates on Gregorian literature since 1947, the year in which the Salesian and Scriptor of the Vatican Library, Father Giovanni Battista Borino (1881–1966) founded in Rome the journal Studi Gregoriani, which has certainly fulfilled its founder's purpose of stimulating research into the history of the papal reform movement.
A rubb-up for old soares; Jesuits, Jansenists, and the English Secular Clergy, 1705–1715
Authors: Duffy Eamon
Published: March 2011

The year 1688 was for England a religious as well as a political turning-point, and nowhere more so than among the English Roman Catholics. The post-Revolution Church was maintained and led by the same clergy who had flourished under James 11, but in very different circumstances. The hectic triumphalism of the years before 1688 gave way to a period of slow, cautious, and self-consciously a-political consolidation. The change can be seen in the careers of two men, Bonaventure Giffard and John Gother. Giffard had been provocatively consecrated bishop of Madura in the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall in 1688. In the same year he had gone to Oxford, to preside over twelve catholic dons at Magdalen College, intruded in the place of the evicted protestant Fellows. There he had confirmed and sung the mass, while protestant undergraduates stormed and howled outside the chapel windows. The Revolution brought a fourteen-month prison sentence in Newgate, from which he emerged, a chastened man, to oversee the formation and consolidation of congregations and clergy funds and organisations in the Midland District and, after 1702, to take charge of the London District with its mission to the London poor and unchurched.
Some Late-Medieval Eton College Wills
Authors: McHardy A. K.
Published: March 2011

The religion of the people is the foundation of the Church and basic to the study of church history. It is in this belief and in the recognition that where direct expression of religious ideas is lacking any material which may shed light on them must be used, that the following study is offered. The evidence on which it is based is drawn from the archives of Eton College and consists largely of wills drawn up before 1500. They number seventy-three, and they fall into two main groups. The first comprises fourteen wills found among the deeds which came to the college as the result of its acquisition of land and property by the gift either of the founder, Henry VI, or of local benefactors in the early sixteenth century. Three of these wills are of the fourteenth century; the remainder are spread throughout the fifteenth century from 1401 to 1497. Six were made in the diocese of Salisbury: five in New Windsor, one in Cookham (Berks.). The other eight wills in this group are those of residents in Lincoln diocese, three living in Eton and five in Buckinghamshire villages to the north—Iver, Langley, Farnham, Burnham, and High Wycombe. The second group, comprising the remaining fifty-nine wills are contained in the first of the college registers, and were proved before the provosts, who had been granted archidiaconal rights of jurisdiction in the parish of Eton by Thomas Bekynton, archdeacon of Buckingham, in 1443.
Dissent and Toleration: Lord Stanhope's Bill of 1789
Authors: Ditchfield G. M.
Published: March 2011

It is widely accepted among historians that the House of Lords in the eighteenth century was an obstacle to religious change. Its unfriendly mien appears to be confirmed by the fate of several Quaker tithe bills and Dissenting petitions. Despite the passage of limited relief acts for Roman Catholics and Dissenters in 1778 and 1779 respectively, it was unusual for such legislation to be well received, or even to find a sponsor, in that chamber. Yet, in the summer of 1789 the House of Lords and that House alone witnessed what has been a neglected episode in ecclesiastical and political history. This was the attempt by the third earl Stanhope to amend the law concerning religious toleration. Although admittedly far from an exception to the rule in the way in which it was greeted by the peers, it has received scant notice from modern historians of toleration. Stanhope himself, of course, has become known to the historically minded as one of the celebrated eccentrics of the period; the image of ‘Citizen Stanhope’ the defender of the French Revolution and the ‘minority of one’ is unlikely to be effaced. Accordingly such discussion as there has been of the earl's bill has tended to emphasise Stanhope's personal idiosyncrasies and peculiar brand of aristocratic radicalism rather than the detailed provisions of the measure.
The University of Cologne and the Great Schism
Authors: Swanson R.
Published: March 2011

From 1378 to 1418, the Roman Church was faced with a situation hitherto unprecedented. For the first time in its history, it experienced a schism for which its constitution, as accepted in 1378, could provide no solution: there were two popes, both of whom could claim to have been legally elected. The dissident cardinals who rebelled against Urban vi in July 1378, only three months after they had elected him pope, discovered some legal (although admittedly rather spurious) grounds for denouncing the election and declaring the papacy vacant; a step followed in September by the election of the cardinal Robert of Geneva as rival pope, taking the name of Clement VII.
Laurence Tomson (1539–1608) and Elizabethan Puritanism
Authors: Backus Irena
Published: March 2011

Laurence Tomson is, perhaps, best known for his translation of L'Oiseleur's edition of Beza's Latin New Testament into English. He was also secretary to Walsingham from 1574 and a member of the English ‘Presbyterian’ party.
Anglo-American Patristic Translations 1866–1900
Authors: Pfaff Richard W.
Published: March 2011

Until after World War II there were three principal series of translations by which the Fathers were known to those in the English-speaking world whose ancient languages were inadequate or non-existent: the Library of the Fathers (LF), the Ante-Nicene Christian Library (ANCL), and the Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (NPNF). The LF was the product of the Oxford Movement, with Pusey its guiding spirit; because of the literary importance of some of those involved in it, especially Newman, it has seemed worth a separate study. The other two series, which in a somewhat involved way complement each other, are of primarily historical interest, and may sensibly be considered together.
Winstanley: A Case for the Man as He Said He Was
Authors: Mulligan Lotte , Graham John K. , Richards Judith
Published: March 2011

The publication of Christopher Hill's Winstanley: The Law of Freedom and Other Writings was an exciting event for students of mid-seventeenth-century England. It provides a readily available edition of Winstanley's most important writings. To these Hill offers a compelling introduction which has much to stimulate and interest, but in his interpretation of Winstanley there are also invitations to misunderstanding. Ultimately, Hill's interest in Winstanley arises from his perception of the seventeenth-century writer as ‘modern’ and, if another recent article is any guide, this continues to be the common factor for studies of Winstanley. It is the purpose of this article to argue that this ‘modern’ view of Winstanley misconstrues his intellectual sources and historical significance by minimising the part theology played in his theories of social and moral change. The result of such a view is to misrepresent Winstanley's meaning, and his relationship to his contemporary world.
Traditionalism and Continuity during the Last Century of Anglo-Saxon Monasticism
Authors: Gransden Antonia
Published: March 2011

Those writing at the time, and subsequent historians, have tended to exaggerate the importance of the tenth-century monastic revival and of the reform movement which followed the Norman Conquest. During each period contemporary writers glorified the achievements of the reformation, of which they themselves were products, and belittled or even denigrated the religious life of the preceding era. This was partly because the hallmark of both reformations was the strict enforcement of the Rule of Benedict; the ideal of strict Benedictinism appealed to those writing during the reformations, since they themselves were strict Benedictines, and it has appealed to some historians in our own day. One result has been a tendency to emphasise the influence of continental models so much that it overshadows the importance of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. David Knowles makes continental influence on the tenth-century revival the theme of chapter 1 of hisThe Monastic Order in England.
Saint or Schemer? The 1527 Heresy Trial of Thomas Bilney Reconsidered
Authors: Walker Greg
Published: March 2011

On 8 December 1527 two scholars, Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur, carried penitential faggots at St Paul's Cross as a token of abjuration of heresy. With this act both men formally cleansed their souls and brought about their reconciliation with the Church. Far from being the end of a story, however, this ceremony proved to be the beginning of a controversy which has survived until the present day. For Thomas Bilney subsequently renounced his abjuration and became a significant figure in the early Reformation in England, eventually dying at the stake as a relapsed heretic in 1531. And yet, despite the importance attributed to him as a reformer, Bilney is now, as he was then, an ambiguous figure whose relationship with the Catholic Church and precise beliefs have never been conclusively determined. Many writers have claimed Bilney as a champion of their particular causes or have sought to identify his place in the wider movements of the Reformation. For the Protestant John Foxe he was a martyr, albeit a flawed one, for the reformed faith, who refused to the last to be intimidated into a second abjuration. For Sir Thomas More, in somewhat mischievous mood, he was a Catholic saint brought to realise the error of his ways at the stake and reconciled to the Church with almost his last breath.
From Parish to Palace: Working-Class Influences on Anglican Temperance Movements, 1835–1914
Authors: Olsen Gerald Wayne
Published: March 2011

The history of Anglican temperance movements before the First World War reveals working-class influences on English vicarages (not yet recognised by historians) and a corresponding influence of the lower clergy on the Anglican establishment. A study of Anglican initiatives against drink may help provide missing links between the Biblethumping evangelicalism of wine-drinking William Wilberforce's time and the social gospel era of his grandsons, the clerical teetotallers, Basil and Ernest. After 1855, a significant minority of Anglican clergymen, obsessed with the estrangement of the lower orders from organised religion, accepted teetotalism, often at the urging of labourers. In so doing, they reversed somewhat the proposition enshrined in the evangelical tradition that true moral reform depended on the leadership of the privileged classes and the compliance of their social inferiors. Working-class teetotallers continued to exercise influence in parochial temperance organisations; more ambitiously, low-placed teetotal clergymen attempted, through the Church's teetotal society, to convert the highest Anglican dignitaries to total abstinence.
Dr Samuel Johnson and the Dixie Professorship of Ecclesiastical History
Authors: Chadwick Owen
Published: March 2011

Dr Samuel Johnson, despite his dying exactly a century before this I Dixie Chair was founded, is linked with it individually and in three ways. The first is, that the only time he came to Cambridge he came to see Dr Richard Farmer of Emmanuel College – one of the two or three most celebrated Masters of Emmanuel College. When Johnson came to Cambridge, Farmer was not yet Master, being junior proctor that year, which was March 1765. He and Johnson had a common interest in Shakespeare, and Johnson used Farmer as his informant for some of the lives of the poets. They also had a common quality of both being lovers of London club conversation; and both totally careless of their appearance, so that at times observers could mistake each of them for being half-crazed; and both finding it impossible to get up in the morning.
‘The Times are Fast Approaching’: Bishop Charles Walmesley OSB (1722–1797) as Prophet
Authors: Scott Geoffrey
Published: March 2011

For English Catholics the eighteenth century has justifiably been termed ‘the age of Challoner’, because Richard Challoner, vicar apostolic of the London District between 1758 and 1781, left a distinctive mark on the character of the English Catholic Church through his long period in office at a formative period and through his many popular spiritual books and pamphlets. Challoner's pre-eminence has tended to diminish the stature of all other bishops appointed as vicars apostolic to the four districts in England and Wales during the course of the century. The only other vicar apostolic who came close to Challoner was the Benedictine monk, Charles Walmesley, a near-contemporary and coadjutor in the Western District from 1756 to 1764, when he became vicar apostolic of that district until his death in 1797. Although Walmesley's published works were far fewer than Challoner's, they demonstrated a wider range of interests and a more original mind. For, while Challoner has often been taken as the representative eighteenth-century English Catholic clergyman, the main feature of his mind, a dread of innovation, prevented him from tuning his theology to the new world of eighteenthcentury scientific and philosophical enquiry.
Henry II as a Founder of Monasteries
Authors: Hallam Elizabeth M.
Published: March 2011

Gerald of Wales is primarily responsible for the generally accepted view of Henry II as a founder of monasteries. In hisDe Principis Instructione Liberhe gives an account of the penance imposed on the king at Avranches in 1172 for his part in Becket's murder, and its commutation. Gerald reveals that instead of leading a Crusade to the Holy Land in person, and, we learn from other sources, maintaining two hundred knights there for a year at his own expense, Henry delayed for three years. He thus eventually gained from the pope a commutation to encompass the founding of three monasteries. These were, says Gerald, Waltham, where a group of holy secular canons were replaced with canons regular, Amesbury, where heviolenter intrusitnuns from Fontevrault, and the third was probably Witham where a group of patient and holy men humbly bore hardship and the lack of a roof over their heads. ‘Sed quid attinet humana versutia contra divina consilia?’ asks Gerald. In a long passage he elaborates his theme that the Almighty will not be deceived by such a shamming, paltry, effort.
Dissenting Attitudes to Foreign Relations, Peace and War, 1840–1890
Authors: Summerton N. W.
Published: March 2011

It may confidently be surmised that at all times in history many men and women have sighed for the abatement of systematic and organised violence between or within tribes, empires and states, particularly when personal involvement has seemed likely. Such sentiments must have been common in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even though the combatants in war were relatively few; famine and pestilence, the indirect consequences of conflict, were severe enough to guarantee that. It has been estimated that in the seventeenth century, there were only seven years in which wars were not being fought somewhere in Europe. Calculations for the eighteenth century could be expected to yield similar results. Yet it was only towards the end of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (known to contemporary Englishmen as the Great War) that determined action was taken to establish organised movements for peace. The result was the establishment in 1815 and 1816 of two peace societies in the United States, and of the Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace (commonly described as the Peace Society) in Great Britain. These remained virtually alone until other bodies were formed in Britain and on the Continent in the period after 1867. These in turn contributed to the movements which led to inter-governmental conferences for peace and disarmament in the first decade of the twentieth century and to the formation of the League of Nations after the First World War.
Serpent-Salve, 1643: the Royalism of John Bramhall
Authors: Sanderson John
Published: March 2011

John Bramhall is perhaps best known today for his attempt to catch Hobbes's Leviathan: critical analysis of the work of the philosopher of Malmesbury was, however, but one field of literary endeavour for Bramhall. As befitted an Anglican bishop he also exchanged doctrinal buffets with both puritans and papists, and ardently embraced the royalist cause during the period of the Great Rebellion, suffering arraignment and exile in consequence. His most notable publication in this last connexion was The Serpent-Salve; or a Remedy for the biting of an Asp, which was published in 1643 with the aim of restoring to Englishmen that proper sense of the allegiance of a subject which some of them had so irrationally cast away, thereby plunging themselves (along with their fellow subjects) into what Bramhall called a ‘bottomless gulf of mischief'. An account of his royalism can thus appropriately centre itself upon this document while drawing also upon his other writings (in particular his Fair Warning to Take Heed of the Scottish Discipline of 1649) for additional illustrative material.
The Making of the Civil Registration Act of 1836
Authors: Cullen M. J.
Published: March 2011

The ‘Act for Registering Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England’ of 1836 was a significant Act in at least four respects. First, it may be regarded as marking the foundation of the modern era in vital statistics in England and Wales. By it the General Register Office was created which ever since has proved a major source of both data and analysis concerning the demographic structure of England and Wales. Secondly, the Act was of importance in the process of the growth of government in nineteenth-century Britain. Thirdly, it remedied one of the major grievances of Dissenters by providing a civil, not ecclesiastical, registration of births, deaths, and marriages. Finally, the story of its passage casts much light on the fragility of the unity amongst the Dissenters in the period from 1829 to 1836.
The Source of Hooker's Knowledge of Marsilius of Padua
Authors: Thompson W. D. J. Cargill
Published: March 2011

In the well-known passage in Book VII of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, where Hooker admits to having changed his mind on the subject of the origins of episcopacy, he cites the Defensor Pacis of Marsilius of Padua among a list of marginal references to late-medieval and sixteenthcentury writers who maintained the view, which he states he had once considered ‘a great deal more probable than now I do’, that bishops were not introduced into the Church until after the death of the Apostles. Since the 1930s, when A. P. d'Entrèves, Gottfried Michaelis and C. W. Previté-Orton drew attention to the resemblances between some of Hooker's arguments and those of Marsilius, this passage has frequently been quoted as evidence that Hooker was familiar with the writings of Marsilius and it has been used to support the theory, which has come to be widely held in recent years, that his political ideas were directly influenced by the Defensor Pacis. D'Entrèves, for example, stated on the strength of this reference that ‘Hooker certainly knew the works of Marsilius’ and most subsequent writers on Hooker's political ideas have tended to follow d'Entrèves's lead in assuming that Hooker must have been acquainted with the Defensor Pacis at first hand.
The Movements of the Jerusalem Church During the First Jewish War
Authors: Gray Barbara C.
Published: March 2011

Under the leadership of James the Lord's brother the Christian Church at Jerusalem was probably the most influential of all existing Christian communities. It could boast a system of internal organisation under authoritative resident leaders; it was an important missionary centre, despatching apostles and recalling them, or sending advisors to them when they were in difficulties. Neither the prestige nor the destiny of the Jerusalem Church were the immediate concern of the author of the Acts of the Apostles, and it is Hegesippus who keeps us informed of its progress. The stability of that Church was apparently shattered shortly after the death of James, when the Jews revolted against the Romans and ‘immediately Vespasian attacked them’. We hear no more about the Jerusalem Church directly from Hegesippus until he tells of a meeting convened to elect a successor to James, and Eusebius tells us that this meeting took place after Jerusalem had been taken in A.D. 70.
John Knox and the Covenant Tradition
Authors: Greaves Richard L.
Published: March 2011

Modern scholarship on John Knox has tended to ignore his development of the covenant concept and his place in the covenant tradition. This is especially surprising because of the significance of the covenant idea for seventeenth-century Scottish history. The covenant, moreover, became a basic theme of English and American Puritan thought in the century following Knox's death. During the early years of the formulation of the covenant concept in English Puritanism, Knox was a revered figure. Following his various preaching activities in Edwardian England and his association with English exiles on the Continent during Mary's reign, he continued to maintain his interest in and contact with English Protestants, even while playing a major role in the establishment of the Reformed faith in Scotland. In 1568–9, for example, he was called upon to give advice respecting the question of separation from the Church of England. It is, thus, quite possible that his views on the covenant influenced English Puritan thought, as well as the thought of the Scottish Protestants. A study of Knox's views on the covenant is also important because of the place of the covenant in the development of his position on the legitimacy of active rebellion against tyrannical, idolatrous sovereigns. Finally, an examination of Knox's covenant thought is significant because it reveals that he was not as dependent on John Calvin as has been commonly supposed.
An Elizabethan Contact with Greece
Authors: Vickers Michael
Published: March 2011

Among the papers of Patrick Young preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford is a copy of a translation into Greek of a licence granted by Elizabeth I in 1597 for the collection of alms towards the ransom of the sons of the murdered metropolitan of Thessaloniki.

The document is remarkable for several reasons: it is an early example of English sympathy for Greeks suffering under Turkish oppression: it includes the only account, so far as one can tell, of the execution of the metropolitan, and it is also of interest as an example of an Elizabethan licence to collect alms for charitable purposes.
The Radical Party in the Kirk, 1637–45
Authors: Stevenson David
Published: March 2011

In the Scottish General Assembly of 1638 the Covenanters, openly defying Charles I, reformed the kirk to remove what they saw as its corruptions. Bishops and the Court of High Commission were abolished. The Five Articles of Perth (regulating certain points of worship), the 1636 Book of Canons and the hated Prayer Book of 1637 were all condemned.
Cassian, Contemplation and the Coenobitic Life
Authors: Rousseau Philip
Published: March 2011

Cassian was not a systematic writer; or, perhaps to be more just, he was not afraid to allow his ideas to develop, and even change. He suffers, therefore, more than some at the hands of historians of spirituality. It is temptingly easy to present him as the instigator of a twotier system: of an asceticism that distinguished contemplation from the ‘practical’ eradication of vice, or the régime of the hermit from that of the coenobite; and that distinguished them as activities of greater and lesser merit, raising the contemplation of the hermit above the more preoccupied discipline of community life. Those who think of Cassian in these terms have also to face the fact that most western ascetics, in the centuries that followed, came together in groups to conquer sin; and yet they thought Cassian (as did Benedict) in some sense their master. Indeed, there are signs that Cassian himself witnessed the growing popularity of the coenobitic life. Given this apparent contrast, therefore, between his supposed interpretation of the spiritual life and the relentless development of communal asceticism, many feel impelled to regard him as a remote perfectionist, or at best—where signs of resignation to community life appear—as a weary and reluctant realist.
The Promotion of John Buckingham to the See of Lincoln
Authors: McHardy A. K.
Published: March 2011

Despite royal favour the promotion of leading king's clerks to the episcopal bench in fourteenth-century England was not always easily accomplished. The difficulties which Edward in encountered when trying to secure the see of Winchester for William of Wickham are well known. Several years earlier John Buckingham, Wickham's predecessor as keeper of the privy seal, had also met with opposition which threatened to bar his path to a bishopric, despite the fact that his early ecclesiastical career had given no cause for papal offence.
Marian Exiles and Cambridge Puritanism: James Pilkington's ‘Halfe a Score’
Authors: Bauckham Richard
Published: March 2011

The importance of the influence of returned Marian exiles on the origins of Elizabethan Puritanism has been widely recognised. The majority of the exiles, even those who had been ‘Coxians’ in the Frankfort disputes, were men who from the outset regarded the Elizabethan Settlement as a compromise, a mere step on the road to full reformation. Both in Parliament and in the Lower House of Convocation in 1563 small but determined and vociferous groups of exiles pressed for and carried others with them in support of radical reforming measures. The vestiarian controversy marked a turning-point, for it threw up the problems of priorities and obedience to the magistrate in a peculiarly stark form. In the need to resolve these problems many of the exiles found themselves committed, with greater or less reluctance, to an ‘establishment’ position and parted company with the younger radicals who became the leaders of Presbyterian Puritanism in the 1570s. But it was nevertheless from the exiles that the Puritans had first learned to treat the English Church as only imperfectly reformed and the work of rooting out popery as a work which had scarcely begun.
The University of St. Andrews and the Great Schism, 1410–1419
Authors: Swanson R.
Published: March 2011

Of the many testimonials to the importance of the role assumed by the European universities in the political and ecclesiastical machinations which accompanied attempts to find a solution to the problems created by the elections of the rival popes Urban VI and Clement VII in 1378, there is none more striking than the tract written by Boniface Ferrer (brother of the saint) in 1411, after the Council of Pisa in 1409 had declared both the then rivals deposed, and had replaced them by Alexander v. This tract, intended as a defence of the Avignonese claimant, Benedict XIII is an extremely bitter attack on the academics of the day, both individually and generally. Several of them are singled out for criticism, especially those who had taken a major part in producing the conciliarist viewpoint. Thus, Simon de Cramaud, patriarch of Alexandria and acting president of the Council of Pisa for most of its sessions, is twice called an heresiarch. Many of the other major thinkers of the day have their integrity attacked, notably Pierre d'Ailly, bishop of Cambrai, and Baldus de Ubaldis, one of the major lawyers of the period.
The Law of Patronage in Early Modern England
Authors: O'Day Rosemary
Published: March 2011

The calibre of the early Elizabethan clergy left much to be desired and much criticism was levelled by contemporaries and near contemporaries at the bishops for their failure to check the flow of insufficient ministers into benefices. While historians have acknowledged the existence of legal obstacles in the way of a firm episcopal policy in this regard, and have come gradually to realise some of the profound implications of the patronage system, no one has charted in detail the law of patronage which so hampered hierarchical attempts to raise the standard of the parochial clergy.
Zwinglian Synods in Eastern Switzerland, 1529–1531
Authors: Potter G. R.
Published: March 2011

Little attention seems to have been given by Zwingli's biographers to the Reformer's pastoral activities between the end of the Marburg Conference (October 1529) and his own death two years later. This may be because the critical edition of his writings in the Corpus Reformatorum, started in 1905, has not yet covered the two final years. Koehler long ago stressed the preponderance of political interests in Zwingli's thought and activities during these twenty-eight months between the two Kappel wars—‘die dämonische Macht der Politik’ as he called it—and the recent work of Hauswirth, Fabian and Haas has followed this clue effectively.
Augustine Baker (1575–1641) and the English Mystical Tradition
Authors: Lunn David
Published: March 2011

The importance of Augustine Baker in the history of English devotional literature has long been recognised, but there has always been a major handicap to any proper understanding of him—the fact that most of his works have not been published, except in a onevolume digest, entitled Sancta Sophia, which one of his disciples, Serenus Cressy, produced in 1657. Thus Baker has recently been the subject of a full-scale monograph, which, though otherwise scholarly and accurate enough, suffers from the fact that the author has not consulted the Baker MSS., and has, therefore, together with almost every other expert in this field of study, begun and ended his work without knowing whether Cressy's digest truly reproduces his master's voice. What follows is an attempt to answer this hitherto unanswered question by reconstructing the circumstances of the book's publication and by comparing it with some of the MSS. But first, some definitions.
A Collection of Anglo-Norman Councils
Authors: Brett Martin
Published: March 2011

The purpose of this article is first to give some account of a short collection of Anglo-Norman councils of the eleventh century, then to suggest that one of these councils, hitherto unknown, represents the canons of a council held by archbishop Lanfranc in 1072, and lastly to offer a tentative explanation of why the whole collection came to be put together.
Inventing ‘The Good Duke’ of Somerset
Authors: Parry G.J.R.
Published: March 2011

Historians accept that the personality of Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset, was of central importance in determining the nature and objectives of his regime from 1547 to 1549. Unfortunately, they disagree about many aspects of that elusive character; it is therefore important to eradicate misapprehensions about Somerset's views from historical discussion. Vain, insensitive and lacking judgement in personal and political relationships, he yet retains the reputation of a politician concerned for the commonweal, whether from the motives of political calculation suggested by Michael Bush or the influence of Christian humanism detected by Brendan Bradshaw. Charlatan or Christian, the reputation of ‘the good duke’ shows astonishing resilience despite the quantities of cold water poured upon it by Sir Geoffrey Elton. To complicate matters, a misleading interpretation of Somerset's views on higher education, a central concern of the ‘commonwealth’ programme, appears to have become the accepted orthodoxy, making it even more difficult to discover Somerset's true character. This paper examines the origins, development and significance of that error and traces it to its source in a preoccupation typical of Tudor Protestantism.
The Growth of the Secular Clergy and the Development of Educational Institutions in the Diocese of Novara (1563–1772)
Authors: Deutscher Thomas
Published: March 2011

The Counter-Reformation initiated a long period of growth in the numbers of the secular and religious clergy of Catholic Europe. Mario Rosa has observed that in Italy the clerical population reached its peak in the first half of the eighteenth century, when Montesquieu described the peninsula as a ‘monk's paradise’, and that it declined thereafter as reformist governments attempted to curb the religious orders and restrict new ordinations to the priesthood. According to Rosa, in the early eighteenth century the Italian Church had a ‘plethora’ of poorly trained priests who lived on the meagre sums provided by their patrimony and sought to improve their lot by obtaining benefices and endowments. In spite of the efforts of the hierarchy to improve clerical education, Rosa continues, Italian seminaries lacked adequate resources to train the great numbers of clerics.Rosa's observations about the expanding ecclesiastical population before the mid-eighteenth century are borne out by statistical evidence to be found in the archive of the northern diocese of Novara, where numbers of secular or diocesan priests tripled between the early seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the composition of the Novarese priests and to test the applicability of Rosa's observations about the economic status and education of the Italian clergy to the diocese of Novara.
From Expectation to Militance: Reformers and Babylon in the First Two Years of the Long Parliament
Authors: Christianson Paul
Published: March 2011

Despite the great attention which the puritan movement has received, many historians have been reluctant to afford religion a major role as an immediate precipitant of the English civil war. There has been a tendency to settle the matter by quoting Oliver Cromwell's statement: ‘Religion was not the thing at first contested for …’, although he put forth this interpretation more than a decade after the event. Recently attention has been focused upon the early 1640s as a period in which puritans became highly militant; at the same time, the key to this aggressiveness has been provided by a series of studies of the hitherto neglected apocalyptic ideas of English protestants. Dr. Burrell has shown a close relationship between apocalyptic thought and the outbreak of the Scottish rebellion, while other scholars have indicated that such a connexion existed at the start of the English civil war. This article will attempt to chart the development of puritan militance by examining the apocalyptic interpretations put forward by prominent English reformers during the crucial period which began with the opening of the Long Parliament on 3 November 1640 and ended with the first great battle of the civil war at Edgehill on 23 October 1642. The importance of religion in the outbreak of that conflict should thereby be demonstrated.
A Greek Démarche on the Eve of the Council of Florence
Authors: Ullmann Walter
Published: March 2011

Despite the superabundance of material available for the historical preliminaries and the progress of the Council of Ferrara-Florence, there is a source which to all intents and purposes has been neglected and has, therefore, remained outside the purview of the historiography concerning this critical Council. In more than one respect this source sheds significant light on the attitudes, mechanics and state of mind of at least some Greek sections and their aspirations in the matter of the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. The source is not an official document but, as we shall presently see, a memorandum or, to use Foreign Office jargon, a minute by a highly placed official who was not either in his private or public capacity in any way involved in the matter reported. The memorandum demands attention on several counts. It records an unexpected approach on the part of some Greeks to the duke of Milan shortly before Eugenius IV decided to transfer the Council from Ferrara to Florence. The record reveals, like a flashlight, how much diplomatic activity was going on in the corridors of power, in the couloirs, in the backrooms safely removed from the gaze of the public, of the annalists, official shorthand writers, and the forerunners of the modern journalists and of the media, that is to say, the diarists, eavesdroppers and reporters appointed by the various European courts at the seat of the Council. This memorandum or minute is the only source that informs posterity of an abortive, but nonetheless very symptomatic approach intended to settle the question of the union by radical means. Above all, the memorandum faithfully reflects the age-old Byzantine ideology which reached back into the somewhat hazy ancient Roman period and which had matured over more than a millennium that manifestly linkedNea Romawith Roman antiquity. The core and tenor of this approach associates historical continuity with historical Roman law, a combination that had served as the very ingredient, nay, as theanimathat gave birth to, and shaped the future of, the Church in Byzantine realms.
The Associates and Familia of William Gray and his use of patronage while bishop of Ely (1454–78)
Authors: Haines Roy M.
Published: March 2011

While working on a more general assessment of William Gray's tenure of the see of Ely, I was struck by the amount of incidental information in his register relating to his associates, the officers of his spiritual and temporal administrations and the men who benefited from his patronage.
Word and Spirit in Exile (1542–61): the Biblical Writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli
Authors: Anderson Marvin W.
Published: March 2011

Dr. Philip McNair of Cambridge has written the definitive account of Pietro Martire Vermigli in Italy. After fleeing from Lucca (1542), Vermigli began his exile at Strasburg (1542–7), continued on to Oxford (1547–56) and ended a brilliant theological career at Zürich (1556–62). This scholar who so deeply impressed John Calvin merits serious attention. Recent articles point to Vermigli's influence on theBook of Common Prayer. It is time to add a preliminary study of his biblical exegesis to the scant secondary literature on Vermigli's theology. Here lies the fascination Vermigli held for both Calvin and Cranmer.
Protestants as Pirates, Slavers, and Protomissionaries: Sierra Leone 1568 and 1582
Authors: Hair P. E. H.
Published: March 2011

The great bay of the Sierra Leone estuary is a show-piece of tropical scenic beauty, and the nineteenth-century hymn-writer may well have been alluding to it when he spoke wistfully of the land where ‘every prospect pleases…’ Four centuries before that, the first visitors from Europe compared the wild peaked hills on the south side of the estuary, as they crackled with thunder in the summer storms, to the proud mane of a roaring African lion; and they gave Sierra Leone (originally Serra Lyoa, ‘The Leonine Hills’) its name. On the north side of the estuary, long golden beaches are still today backed only by mop-headed palms and by slow-rising smoke from hut- or bush-fires. The estuary runs from the Atlantic to the east, and its throat closes round a score of islets: seen from the entrance channel, they reminded a seventeenth-century French captain of ‘hay-stacks on a distant field’.
George Browne, First Reformation Archbishop of Dublin, 1536–1554
Authors: Bradshaw Brendan
Published: March 2011

An eminent reformation historian of the present day has complained that histories of the Tudor period have concentrated on ‘too few and too untypical figures’. The observation is most apposite with regard to the opening phases of the English reformation. Reformation figures of more ordinary metal have been neglected as a result of a preoccupation with the few whose lives, and deaths also in some cases, were more spectacular. Furthermore, and for the same reason, even those who were not consigned to oblivion have been frequently misrepresented. To some extent the subject of this study, George Browne, claims the attention of the modern research worker on both counts.
Anglican-Danish Relations from the American to the Icelandic Consecration Proposals (1784–1866)
Authors: Pinnington J. E.
Published: March 2011

Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries the Church of England and the Nordic Churches had by no means uncommon contacts, which extended, on at least one occasion, in the correspondence between the Reverend Edward Lye and Carl Jasper Benzelius, to matters specifically ecumenical. From the Restoration period there was a Scandinavian presence in London, which was graced with a remarkable degree of religious freedom virtually amounting to ‘most favoured nation’ treatment, and the contemporaneous English commercial colonies at Elsinor and Gothenburg enabled some members, at least, of the Anglican Church to observe their Scandinavian counterparts in their native habitat. Yet, notwithstanding these apparent advantages, Anglicans, on the whole, remained more ignorant of the Episcopal Churches of Northern Europe than of the Dutch, French and Swiss Reformed Churches, and the one cross-influence which there was in this period, through bishop Jacob Serenius of Strängäs, was apparently so superficial that nothing of significance could be built upon it. Part of the reason was, no doubt, that Scandinavia and Iceland were outside the normal itinerary of the Grand Tour and also outside the main channels of eighteenth-century British diplomacy. This being so, the peculiar external characteristics of Lutheranism, particularly its northerly variety, were likely to baffle and deter those rare Englishmen who came face to face with it.
Eusebius of Caesarea and the Testimonium Flavianum (Josephus, Antiquities, XVIII. 63f.)
Authors: Wallace-Hadrill D. S.
Published: March 2011

The case against the authenticity of the Testimonium was put succinctly by Benedict Niese, ‘nam scriptus est a Christiano, male cohaeret cum insequentibus, dicendi genus a Josepho alienus, ab antiquissimis scriptoribus Christianis, imprimis Origine, non agnoscitur, abest ab argumentis libri XVIII, non exstat in Bello Judaico, neque ulla est causa cur necessarium putemus'. Scholarly opinion has long been divided over the matter, but it is safe to say that the arguments against authenticity outweigh those that would retain the passage as Josephan. Niese's points, that the passage interrupts a series of notices of Jewish risings and revolts and that Origen appears to have known Josephus only as hostile to Christianity, can be supplemented by the difficulty of attributing apparently Christian sentiments to a writer who in his last work, Contra Apionem, was very plainly proud to be a Jew. But if the passage is an interpolation, the further question is posed, whether it was inserted into the text of Josephus as a complete unit or whether it is the result of a process of minor alterations by many hands over many years. Here again there is divergence of opinion, but since 1930 it has been difficult to maintain the simple view of a single interpolation by one man at one time. Robert Eisler's attack upon this simple view was made possible by the publication of a thirteenth-century Slavonic version of Josephus initiated by A. Berendts, who in an earlier work had traced the Christian interpolations in Josephus back to the first century. Eisler's general contention, that the authentically Josephan basis of the passage constituted a hostile notice of Christianity and that this had, been altered in many particulars by various hands to show the opposite of what Josephus had written, was cautiously defended by Thackeray, the doyen of English-speaking Josephan scholars, in his Hilda Stich Strook lectures at the Jewish Institute of Religion.
Lord Howick and Colonial Church Establishment
Authors: Burroughs Peter
Published: March 2011

Because the Church of England traditionally formed part of the British constitution, Englishmen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often discussed the importance of extending the Established Church to settlements overseas. Yet nothing constructive was done in North America before the Revolution to complete the constitution of the colonial Church or reinforce its special position as the partner of the civil government. There were no bishops in America, and the remote bishop of London was left to supervise as best he could an institution that enjoyed few privileges and displayed an inveterate tendency towards independence. After the American Revolution, however, imperial administrators and colonial churchmen appreciated the need to buttress and reinvigorate the Church of England in British North America. In official circles at least, the loss of the Thirteen Colonies was attributed to the growth of a democratic spirit which a debilitated Church had been powerless to check. British administrators consequently agreed that the dangerous development of republicanism and religious dissent might be thwarted in the remaining colonies by strengthening the position of the Church as the ally of government in the task of preserving colonial loyalty.