bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Early Years of Netley Abbey
Authors: Meekings C. A. F. , Hunnisett R. F.
Published: March 2011

It was in broken health that Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester (1205–38), returned for the last time to England, about Michaelmas 1236. On 31 October 1236, at Rochester, he made his last testament; this was given royal acceptance and confirmation at Windsor on 4 November, in the presence of some of the executors: Ralph de Nevill, bishop of Chichester (1222–44) and chancellor (1226–44), P. archdeacon of Winchester, Luke des Roches, archdeacon (by 1228–44) of Surrey, and the versatile architect and administrator Mr. Elias de Derham (c. 1167–d. 1245). Bishop Peter rallied, to take some part in national affairs, as well as in his diocese, during die next two years. He died at his episcopal castle of Farnham on 9 June 1238 and his body was buried in his cathedral; but his heart was buried at die Cistercian abbey of Waverley, a few miles soudi-west of Farnham. In 1237 he had petitioned the Cistercian chapter general for leave to have a Cistercian monk and two lay brodiers living with him. This, the heart burial, and the notices accorded him by Waverley's annalist, reflect die private preoccupations of his last years: die founding of Cistercian houses in his native country and in his English diocese. The arrangements, unfinished at his deadi, were left to be completed by his executors, who notified die Order's chapter general at its usual mid-September meeting in 1238, when die investigating commissioners for die new foundations were appointed.
Peterborough Ordinations 1612–1630 and Early Nonconformity
Authors: Nuttall Geoffrey F.
Published: March 2011

The clergy who with a good conscience were unable to conform to the requirements of the Act of Uniformity of 1662 have been the subject of much attention—too much, Professor Dugmore may think. But among them is a group not yet examined, consisting of those who were not affected by one major requirement of the Act: they were already episcopally ordained. ‘At least 420 of the ministers’, i.e. not far short of a quarter of the 1,760 known to have been deprived of their livings, ‘were in full episcopal orders before the Civil War’. Richard Baxter figures among them, and it might be expected that the group as a whole would be like Baxter in being only ‘moderate’ Nonconformists, not opposed to episcopacy in principle; but this was not the case. Their number comprised men of many shades of opinion and practice, including some who had gone so far as to renounce their episcopal ordination for ordination of another kind.
The Spiritual Pilgrimage of the Rev. R. J. Campbell
Authors: Robbins Keith
Published: March 2011

The death of Canon R.J. Campbell on 1 March 1956 did not cause a national stir. There was an obituary the following day in The Times and some comment on subsequent days from friends and associates, but little to indicate that fifty years earlier he had been a substantial public figure. One obscure diarist, who had known Campbell as a young man, felt that ‘the grudging admission…of some academic distinction’ was an inadequate summary of Campbell's life and work. In part, of course, having outlived most of his contemporaries, Campbell was paying the penalty for his longevity. More important, however, was the fact that for decades he had consciously avoided the limelight. ‘No man’ he had written to the novelist Margaret Lane in December 1947 ‘could more carefully avoid publicity than I have done for a generation’. From 1930 to 1946 he had been a residentiary canon and then chancellor of Chichester and before that served as vicar of Holy Trinity, Brighton for six years. It would appear that he possessed an eminently Anglican pedigree. In May 1903, however, a frail, ascetic-looking, prematurely white-haired Campbell had commenced his ministry at the City Temple, the leading Congregational church in London. W. T. Stead's Review of Reviews looked forward to the ‘Renascence of Nonconformity’ under the leadership of this thirty-five-year-old young man. Over seven thousand people attended the services on his first Sunday. Picture postcards of Campbell were soon on sale and later admirers could purchase the R. J. Campbell Birthday Book containing his ‘favourite poetical quotations, portrait and autograph’. There was even A Rosary from the City Temple, described as being threaded from the writings and sermons of R. J. Campbell. The publicity which attended his arrival in London rarely left him for the next dozen years. In September 1915, rumours of Campbell's intention to resign the pastorate and speculation about his subsequent course were thought of sufficient interest to reach the news columns of The Times. His resignation merited a leader in the newspaper and, following his reception into the Church of England in early October, the comments of prominent religious leaders were printed. In 1916 Campbell published A Spiritual Pilgrimage, and a reconsideration of this volume throws interesting light on the cross-currents of Edwardian religious life.
Abbot Desiderius of Montecassino and the Gregorian Papacy
Authors: Loud G. A.
Published: March 2011

Of all the churches affected by the Gregorian reform movement few were more notable than the monastery of Montecassino. Not only the latter's own writers but even Pope Gregory vii himself described it as famous throughout Christendom. In southern Italy it was undoubtedly the most important single institution of the Latin Church. Founded by St Benedict in 529, by the eleventh century it was exempt from normal ecclesiastical jurisdiction and was the centre of a franchise free from the obligations of lay society. Under the abbacy of Desiderius of Benevento (1058–87) it enjoyed its golden age of political, intellectual and artistic influence. Its monks filled many south Italian bishoprics, and a number of them were promoted to be cardinals. Three times in sixty years, in 1057, 1087 and 1118, a Cassinese monk attained the see of St Peter. Desiderius himself was elected to succeed Gregory vii in 1087, with the title of Victor iii.
Roncalli in the Second World War: Peace Initiatives, the Greek Famine and the Persecution of the Jews
Authors: Hoffmann Peter
Published: March 2011

Apostolic delegate in Turkey and Greece and archbishop of Messambria from January 1935 to December 1944, Angelo Roncalli was confronted from 1939 to 1944 with extraordinary situations of human suffering. His response to some of the challenges has received little attention. Yet both public and private archives contain materials sufficient to throw considerable light on Roncalli's activities during those years.
Peter the Iberian and his Biographers
Authors: Lang D. M.
Published: March 2011

The career and personality of Peter the Iberian, bishop of Mayuma, near Gaza, present exceptional interest for the history both of the Monophysite movement of the fifth century and of the Georgian Church. At the same time, the hagiographical writings recording his life raise documentary problems of a complex nature.
Bishop William Wake's Primary Visitation of the Diocese of Lincoln, 1706
Authors: Sykes Norman
Published: March 2011

‘At any period of English history from the thirteenth century until a century ago, the records of the great diocese of Lincoln furnish an admirably full illustration of the working of ecclesiastical institutions and administration in the English Church as a whole.’ Of no epoch is this statement of Professor Hamilton Thompson more true than of that which witnessed the tenure of the see of Lincoln by Thomas Tenison, William Wake, and Edmund Gibson. When, therefore, amongst the Wake MSS. at Christ Church, Oxford, I discovered a volume labelled Arch. W. 297. Actorum Episcopal, Tom. I, it was with the eager anticipation of a rich harvest that I opened its pages. At first anticipation was frilly realised; for the first year of Wake's episcopate fills twenty folio pages of careful and detailed entries. But, alas! those thieves of episcopal leisure, the administrative duties of so large a diocese, made as speedy as sudden an end of his diligent resolve to keep a personal diary of his activities. On page 21 the entry Anno Consecrationis Secundo contains only three items and the rest of the volume consists of blank pages.
The Struggle to Create an Anglican Diocese of Birmingham
Authors: Morrish P. S.
Published: March 2011

At about noon on Thursday, 2 March 1905, Charles Gore knocked on the south-west door of St Philip's Birmingham, and, having been admitted, proceeded to be enthroned as the first Anglican bishop of Birmingham. A commemorative booklet described those ceremonies minutely, but only briefly alluded to the prolonged agitation for the creation of the diocese. Apart from passing references and a perceptive analysis, in an earlier pamphlet, of the reasons for the initial failure of the scheme, no substantial secondary literature on the subject exists.
The AmbivalentRalliementofLa Croix
Authors: Arnal Oscar
Published: March 2011

Beyond a doubt, the newspaperLa Croixand its publisher, the Maison de la Bonne Presse, have played a central role in French Catholic journalism for over thirty years. Indeed, it was the leading Catholic press voice of the Third Republic from the Dreyfus Affair to the fall of France. No newspaper of Catholic inspiration could seriously contest its circulation dominance, with the possible exception of the Breton Christian DemocraticL'Ouest-Eclair. However, the impact of this latter daily was limited to western France, and by the time it outdistancedLa Croix's circulation, it had largely abandoned its Catholic or Christian character.La Croix, on the other hand, was known and read throughout France and remained forthrightly Catholic throughout the life of the Third Republic. Its editorial policy was openly papal, and it sought consciously to be the organ of the French Catholic masses.
The ‘Volksreformation’ of Thomas Müntzer in Allstedt and Mühlhausen
Authors: Scott Tom
Published: March 2011

As the fieriest champion of the Radical Reformation Thomas Müntzer remains an enigma. A spate of recent works has greatly increased our knowledge of the development of his theology and of his contribution to the Peasants' War in central Germany, but they have failed to resolve the precise relationship between his theological convictions and his involvement in social revolution. A profusion of Marxist writings, above all from East Germany, has stressed the objective function of his religious radicalism in promoting and legitimating mass rebellion in Saxony and Thuringia at the expense of its subjective intention, whilst the bulk of Western scholarship, in particular Walter Elliger's massive though scarcely definitive biography, has emphasised the primacy of his theological vision, to which social and political concerns were at best subordinate or tangential.
Kierkegaard, the Church and Theology of Golden-Age Denmark
Authors: Plekon Michael
Published: March 2011

‘Out with history,’ Kierkegaard wrote in an 1848 journal entry, ‘in with the situation of contemporaneity’, he continued. ‘This is the criterion: as I judge anything contemporaneously, so am I judged. All this chatter afterwards is an illusion.’ In this entry, as in many others, Kierkegaard put forward his own concept of ‘contemporaneity’, while simultaneously levelling criticism both at the historicist impulse in nineteenth-century philosophy and theology and his contemporaries in Copenhagen. In numerous other entries he condemns his intellectual colleagues for envying his genius, failing to respect his worth and for subjecting him to endless abuse.
The Divjak Letters: New Light on St Augustine's problems, 416–428
Authors: Frend W. H. C.
Published: March 2011

A major manuscript discovery of hitherto unknown letters of Augustine of Hippo is a scholarly event whose importance can hardly be exaggerated. It is as though one of the lost books of Livy had suddenly turned up in palimpsest among medieval manuscripts in a cathedral library. For a discovery in similar circumstances, one has to go back to December 1904 when the learned Rev. Dr Karapet Ter-Merkettshian found an Armenian manuscript of Irenaeus' Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching in the library of the church of the Blessed Virgin at Eriwan in Armenia.
Two Lists of Fifteenth-Century Feasts in the Diocese of Hereford
Authors: Thomson David
Published: March 2011

Manuscript Douce 103 in the Bodleian Library is one. of three manuscripts compiled in the late fifteenth century by a priest of Hereford diocese, the others being MSS Douce 60 and Douce 108. The manuscripts contain elementary grammatical texts such as an English version of Donatus's Ars minor, with rearrangements and expositions of hymns, psalms, canticles and sequences (often using material peculiar to the Hereford Use in this country, and showing a particular interest in St Anne and the Virgin), and copies of John Mirk's Festial and Instructions for Parish Priests. A note in the hand of this compiler on fo. 228v of MS 60 may give some clue as to his identity;
Richard FitzRalph and the Fourteenth-Century Poverty Controversies
Authors: Dawson James Doyne
Published: March 2011

Richard FitzRalph, archbishop of Armagh (c. 1300–60), is a well-known but ill-defined figure in the history of fourteenth-century thought. Two aspects of his writings have chiefly attracted the attention of modern scholars: his theory ofdominiumand grace, and his polemics against the mendicant orders. In the former role, he is considered the source of one of the major doctrines of Wyclif; in the latter, a continuator of the polemic of William of Saint-Amour, and a source of the anti-mendicant sentiment prevalent in English literature in the age of Chaucer.
The Émigré Clergy and the English Church, 1789–1815
Authors: Bellenger Dominic
Published: March 2011

The Established Church in the eighteenth century, although not monolithic in its structure, had evolved a delicate counterpoise in its attitude to the fraught question of the relationship between Church and State. The Church was the protector of public religion and morality and as such was protected by the State with a test law and endowment. William Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, was the chief theoretician of the idea of a mutually satisfactory alliance of ‘the two swords’. The ecclesiastical policy of Georgian England, however, owed less to ideology than to the natural development of the English Church after the break with Rome and under the influence of emerging nationalism. The French Church had developed along similar lines to the English – without losing its Roman connections – and there has been a tendency to blur the distinctions between ‘Anglican’ and ‘Gallican’.
A Reformation Miscellany: Some Recent Books on Luther and the Reformation
Authors: Tonkin John
Published: March 2011

To the mixed relief and regret of the scholarly community, Lutherjahr 1983 is fading into the distance but the tide of writings stimulated by the quincentenary shows little sign of abating. Some of the works here reviewed fall into the category of ‘late pickings’ from the 1983 harvest, including three collections of essays which originated at scholarly conferences or colloquia held specifically to mark the quincentenary.
The Papacy, Poland, Russia and Religious Reform, 1764-8
Authors: Lukowski J. T.
Published: March 2011

The years 1764-8 form a rare unity in Polish history, distinguished by an unprecedented attempt at constitutional and economic reform on a scale not to be repeated for another two decades. The fragile nature of the reforms which accompanied the election, in September 1764, of King Stanislaw August Poniatowski (1764-95) was revealed as early as autumn 1766, when internal opponents, supported by Russia and, to a lesser degree, Prussia, imposed the first serious checks on the reformers and then proceeded to try to secure their total defeat. The tensions between reformers and conservatives, compounded by large-scale Russian military and diplomatic intervention, were to plunge Poland into ungovernability and civil war by March 1768 and to drag it inexorably towards the First Partition.
‘Trying the Spirits’: The Case of the Gloucestershire Clergyman (1831)
Authors: Stunt Timothy C. F.
Published: March 2011

The political turmoil which characterised the decade from 1825 to 1835 is interestingly reflected in a religious crisis, as a result of which Established Church and traditional nonconformity alike were found by seceders to be spiritually wanting. Millenarian and charismatic movements are often, in part, an expression of social uncertainty. Any analysis of such movements as the Plymouth Brethren or the self-styled ‘Catholic Apostolic Church’ must take into account their social milieu which, at that time, included a great deal of political agitation - for causes like Roman Catholic Emancipation, parliamentary reform, currency reform and nascent socialism - as well as anxiety arising from the outbreak of cholera and social unrest, with several European revolutions in the background. It may not be entirely fortuitous that, when Edward Irving was expelled from his church in Regent Square in 1832, his congregation (not without some misgivings) met for a while in Robert Owen's socialist Rotunda in the Gray's Inn Road.
The Ideal of the Bishop and the Venetian Patriciate: c. 1430–c. 1630
Authors: Logan Oliver
Published: March 2011

Venetian religious literature of the Renaissance period presents an amorphous picture to the historian; there were few recurrent preoccupations among Venetian religious writers and they used a wide variety of theological styles. The topic of theofficium episcopi, the bishop's duties and rule of life, did however recur with some frequency. There was, indeed, a considerable volume of literature on this subject in Catholic Europe as a whole between the Conciliar era and the post-Tridentine period. The best known, almost the only widely known Italian example of the genre is the work of a Venetian: theDe officio episcopiof Gasparo Contarini. Other Venetian writings on this theme have been barely studied, however, although in some cases they are subtler and more redolent of spirituality, if less explicit, than Contarini's work. It may well be that Venetians, over a period of a century and a half, made a particularly important contribution to the genre and since the Venetian patriciate produced a large number of bishops (the major bishoprics of the Venetian Terraferma were normally held by Venetian nobles) this would not be altogether surprising. It should be said, however, that even in this genre of religious literature it is difficult to point to a specifically Venetian tradition or to any particular continuity of themes; to take the case of Gasparo Contarini, a search for the Venetian antecedents of his ideas yields rather sparse fruits.
Wilfrid Ward and his Life of Newman
Authors: Gilley Sheridan
Published: March 2011

The most subtle nineteenth century analysis of religious conviction was the work of John Henry Newman; but who would analyse Newman himself? The simplest, most brilliant and wicked interpretation was that of Henri Bremond, for whom the ‘mystery of Newman’ was an all-devouring ‘autocentrism’ and self centredness, evidenced in an impassioned sense of self-identity and intensified by a twofold conviction of the reality of God and of the unreality of the visible world. Bremond's proof text was Newman's account of his Calvinist conversion, ‘confirming me in my mistrust of material phenomena, and making me rest in die thought of two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator’. ‘Myself and my Creator’—here, thought Bremond, was an appalling glimpse of Newman's egotism, die secret of a spirit alien to other men, for whom ‘every individual soul is a closed world’. Here was the making of that touchy hypersensitive melancholic, ‘the solitary by choice’, who ‘by confining his universe to two beings, his Creator and himself, made forever that void at the very bottom of his heart’.
Howel Harris and ‘The Grand Table’: A Note on Religion and Politics 1744–50
Authors: Nuttall Geoffrey F.
Published: March 2011

In the 1740s, despite personal and doctrinal disagreements, the leaders of the Revival were still at one. Between old Dissent and new Methodism suspicions were not absent but were absorbed in a common enterprise. Wales had not yet gone its separate path. The Wesleys, Whitefield, Doddridge and Howel Harris (1714–72), whom some of his countrymen consider the greatest Welshman of his age, were all actively in touch. One form of co-operation was in visits to Lady Huntingdon at her home in Chelsea. Here Whitefield, Doddridge and Harris took turns in preaching before a circle of the countess'ss noble friends. These they hoped to win for the Revival. They also hoped to gain a wider religious, and even political, influence for themselves.
From Polemic to Sobriety: Thomas Müntzer in Recent Research
Authors: Scott Tom
Published: March 2011

As the quincentenary of Miintzer's birth looms ominously in 1989, the manufactories of research are already working overtime. After the spate of publications on the Peasants' War in 1975 a lull in production set in, with the market subsequently depressed by severe competition from the Luther anniversary in 1983. Now the Müntzer industry has once again picked up, but the models coming off the production line bear little resemblance to the crude and garish stereotypes of yesteryear. At last a saner image of Müntzer is being shaped by means of the tools of sounder source editions, greater theological insight and a firmer chronology of life and work. In this enterprise scholars from the English-speaking world, to whom Müntzer has often seemed an incomprehensible figure on the margins of the Reformation, are taking full and vigorous part. Their contribution is assessed at the conclusion of this review, which concentrates perforce on the most significant German publications of the last two decades.
Can We Count the ‘Godly’ and the ‘Conformable’ in the Seventeenth Century?
Authors: Spufford Margaret
Published: March 2011

In 1966 Keith Thomas wrote an article in the Times Literary Supplement which laid down the axiom, ‘All historical propositions relating to the behaviour of large groups, for example… religious activity, are susceptible of treatment in this [statistical] way, and indeed permit of no other.’ Social historians have increasingly adopted this approach ever since. It has obviously great merits: I am sometimes afraid, indeed, that the principle is in some ways not being carried far enough, and that only the letter, and not the law, is being implemented. For instance, in my own field, individual village studies, often of high quality, are produced. But their authors frequently omit to indicate the nature of the agricultural and marketing region in which their community lies, and therefore fail to establish either its probable social structure or its ‘normality’ or ‘abnormality’ within its area. Quantified studies of great complexity and considerable value are therefore produced; but this value is diminished by the total ignorance of the reader, and sometimes it seems of the author, of the ‘typicality’ of the example.
Sir Robert Malory, Prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England (1432–1439/40)
Authors: Field P. J. C.
Published: March 2011

Whatever his personal failings and those of his Order, the prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, more than any other man in England in the late Middle Ages, stood for the political standards that were most respected, if not most often acted upon, by his fellow-countrymen. He was also one of die great magnates of the kingdom, given power, money, and access to the king by his rich priory based at Clerkenwell, the five preceptories his office entitled him to, and his places in the upper house of parliament and die royal council. What use the priors made of their office and how they lived up to the ideals they were supposed to embody were, therefore, matters of consequence at the time. The surviving records, though not abundant, seem sufficient to provide partial answers to these questions for at least some priors; but no such attempt has yet been published.
Prophecy and Popular Literature in Eighteenth-Century England
Authors: Valenze Deborah M.
Published: March 2011

Until recently, chapbooks lay in the domain of Victorian antiquarians and bibliographers. Few persons have ever taken them seriously. Not even their original owners could mention them without showing embarrassment and adding that they had abandoned the pamphlets for more respectable reading. A half-century later, Victorian collectors called them ‘quaint’ and ‘peculiar’. Successive generations of historians failed in trying to date them and determine patterns of production and distribution. Present-day scholars no longer apologise for neglecting them. Despite this abuse, chapbooks stubbornly survive, their bad bindings preserved by poor cataloguing.
The Protestant Underground Congregations of Mary's Reign
Authors: Martin J. W.
Published: March 2011

In contrast to the extensive research devoted to the Marian exiles, little detailed attention has been paid by modern historians to the Englishmen who simply tried to continue Protestant worship during 1553–8 within the country. Yet developments in these years provide unusual insights into mid-Tudor Protestantism at its grass roots, particularly into what remained after the Edwardian Church of England had suddenly had the power of the state not merely removed from its support but actively turned against it. Not surprisingly, the change from Edward to Mary is referred to in contemporary Protestant tracts in something of the tone used toward an inexplicable natural disaster like an outbreak of the plague, for Mary's measures to return England to Roman Catholicism were indeed radical in their impact. Among other things, most of the Protestant hierarchy was soon in prison or in exile, and men and women intent on continuing the communal worship of the Edwardian Church were in effect cast into the same boat with religious groups like the Freewillers which that Church had previously repressed. Legally, all of them were now religious separatists – that is, persons who persistently conducted worship apart from the established Church – and any gatherings for Protestant worship were mere conventicles – that is, periodic meetings of self-selected persons worshipping without the participation of an authorised cleric.
Richard Baxter's Preaching Ministry: its History and Texts
Authors: Keeble N. H.
Published: March 2011

Richard Baxter (1615–91) was possessed of that all-embracing curiosity, indefatigable energy and tenacious idealism which, as Reformation and Renaissance passed into the sober Augustan certainties of the Enlightenment, became ever rarer among Englishmen. His many-sidedness is reflected in the very different kinds of interest his career attracts. The ecclesiastical historian meets in Baxter both puritanism's most committed apologist and its most idiosyncratic representative, a man who, involved in every doctrinal controversy and every negotiation or conference convened to discuss a national church settlement, was to have a lasting influence on English Dissent. His participation in these debates is, however, more than a chapter in the history of later puritanism: it contributed to the development of seventeenth-century rationalism and liberalism and shows suggestive affinities with the thought of the Cambridge Platonists. There is, furthermore, contemporary relevance in Baxter's conception of ‘mere Christianity’: ‘the first exponent of Ecumenism in England’, he promoted ecclesiastical reconciliation, both practically, in the Worcestershire Association, and theologically, in the attempt of such treatises as Richard Baxter's Catholick Theologie (1675) to harmonise Calvinism and Arminianism.
Pressure-Group Politics and the Church of England: the Church Defence Institution 1859–1896
Authors: Roberts M. J. D.
Published: March 2011

The latter half of the nineteenth century was a time of political mobilisation for religious organisations. This is a well-established fact in the case of English nonconformity – not quite such a well-established fact in the case of the Established Church. My concern in this paper is to trace the response of the Church of England to the extension of electoral politics, a response chiefly evidenced in the work of the Church Institution. This body, founded in 1859 and reconstructed as the Church Defence Institution in 1871, survived until 1896 as the most important independent pressure group acting on behalf of the Established Church in English politics.
The Luther Quincentennial
Authors: Edwards M. U.
Published: March 2011

Last year the world celebrated Martin Luther's quincentennial birthday anniversary with postage stamps, parties and publications. Scholars had been gearing up for the quincentennial for some years and began filling bookstores with quincentennial biographies and monographs in 1980 or 1981.1 Their production was impressive, yet in an odd way relatively little new ground was broken. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of Luther biography.
The Funeral Ceremonies of the Polish Kings from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries
Authors: Borkowska Urszula
Published: March 2011

Coronations, grand royal entrances and the ceremonies of royal burials were public manifestations of the ‘sacra maiestas regia’. The Polish ceremonies had close parallels in other European monarchies, and also their own special features. The rites formed a symbolic drama with social and political overtones; they were needed to preserve order in the human community. Recent studies in this region have brought interesting results, especially when seen in a long perspective of time and with due contemplation of the mentality and attitudes behind the outward show.
A Defence of Non-Residence in the Later Fifteenth Century: Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga and Mantuan Clergy
Authors: Chambers D. S.
Published: March 2011

Was non-residence in benefices necessarily an abuse? It was an old problem, usually linked with pluralities, and even if the Councils of Constance and Basel had done nothing about it, non-residence had been denounced by Gerson, by Panormitanus and by Denys the Carthusian; it remained a live issue in the later fifteenth century. An interesting discussion of the subject emerges from the correspondence of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga (1444–83) with his father and brother, successive rulers of Mantua. It raises points of wider importance than the particular matters at stake and throws some light upon relations between the Italian powers and the papacy over Church appointments; in Italy there was no Pragmatic Sanction, and appointments would often depend upon official request and more or less informal ways and means of accommodation with the Roman court. It is, however, not only about appointment to, and absenteeism from, major benefices, but also minor ones. In the absence of any general treatment in depth of the subject, these documents contribute some specific and important evidence about practical problems and attitudes in Italian ecclesiastical life. Resentment in the small Lombard principality of Mantua towards non-resident ‘foreigners’ and papal reservations, professions of concern about pastoral standards and the social standing of the local clergy are among other themes which emerge; not least remarkable is that the cardinal's viewpoint as revealed in the correspondence was sometimes distinctly different from that of the lay rulers, in spite of his being their close relative and top-level agent in the papal court.
Josias Nicholls and Religious Radicalism, 1553–1639
Authors: Clark Peter
Published: March 2011

One of the more interesting personalities in the puritan party of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was the Kentish minister Josias Nicholls (1553–1639). In The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (1967) Professor P. Collinson notes Nicholls's importance on a number of occasions, paying particular attention to his tract The Plea of the Innocent (1602), which Collinson sees as exemplifying many of the attitudes and aspirations of the moderate wing of the party. A number of other works also mention Nicholls briefly and record the bare bones of his career, including his opposition to Whitgift in 1584 and his deprivation in 1602. But Nicholls remains a shadowy figure and the full significance of his contribution to the godly cause unclear.
Some Observations on a Papal Privilege of 1120 for the Archbishops of York
Authors: Cheney Mary
Published: March 2011

The privilege Caritatis Bonum (JL 6831), addressed to Archbishop Tliurstan of York and his successors, was issued on 11 March 1120. By this privilege, Pope Calixtus 11 forbade the archbishops of Canterbury to demand a profession of obedience from the archbishops of York and the archbishops ol York to make any such profession. The object ol this paper is to consider the importance of the privilege and to examine (and reject) suggestions that the known text was forged or interpolated; in the course of this examination we shall consider an abbreviated text in a Rouen manuscript, which has been treated as a separate document of an earlier date. We shall also consider the brief account given twice over by Hugh the Chantor in slightly different terms, of the scene at the papal court when the privilege was brought before the pope for subscription, both because such accounts are rare, and because this account throws some light on the curious fact that one of the cardinals who subscribed was not at the curia at the appropriate time. No attempt will be made to tell yet again the story of the conflict between the two English archbishops, but it will be necessary to examine in detail some of the evidence relating to events in the winter of 1119-20. Some small amount of repetition has been unavoidable, as different aspects of the matter are considered in turn.
English Cathedral Choirs in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Barrett Philip
Published: March 2011

An important feature of the ecclesiastical history of the Church of England since the Reformation has been the unique and precious tradition of a choir of men and boys singing daily choral services in the cathedrals of this country. There have been several studies of this tradition and the music written for cathedral services, but there has not yet been a full account of cathedral choirs in the last century. There have been useful brief surveys by Owen Chadwick and Bernarr Rainbow, but these have been only parts of larger works whose main emphasis is elsewhere. Plenty of material exists, however, and the contemporary conditions which led S. S. Wesley to write his polemical pamphlet A Few Words on Cathedral Music in 1849 demand detailed investigation.
India and Missionary Motives, c. 1850–1900
Authors: Oddie G. A.
Published: March 2011

While a number of historians have focused attention on the development of Protestant missionary thought and activity in India during the nineteenth century, comparatively little is known about the social background, education and motives of the missionary candidates eventually selected for service in that part of ‘the mission field’. Who were these men and why did they go? What pressures and motives lay behind the continued expansion of missionary activity in India during this period?
The Present Stage of the ‘Kirchenkampf’ Enquiry
Authors: Chadwick Owen
Published: March 2011

The peculiar difficulty of contemporary or near contemporary history is less the privacy of archives than the excess. This is the more true concerning an age like that of Hitler, where the accidents of war, and the seizure of documents, followed by a consuming public interest, especially in Germany, have led some governments to open their archives before they would otherwise have considered it wise. The great collection of State (and other) papers in the Bundesarchiv at Coblenz already affords material for many enquirers for many years. The material for the Church struggle as it lies in archives was surveyed by John Conway, with a delightful description of the extraordinary confusion, and movement of papers hither-and-thither, caused by war and its aftermath. For obvious reasons the West managed to collect the most important papers. But no one should overlook the circumstances that documents and archives lie still inaccessible, or largely inaccessible, in the East. This is not peculiar to the documents of the age of Hitler, for students of the nineteenth century cannot yet gain access to the substantial Russian collections, even when these students hold chairs in the German Democratic Republic or in Poland and even when they work upon some ‘harmless’ and remote theme. The Polish archives are more available but are only beginning to be sorted and published. The Russian academy has much to do before it can make its resources more widely available.
Nomads and Christianity in the Middle Ages
Authors: Frend W. H. C.
Published: March 2011

Why did Christianity decline relatively to Islam in wide areas of the Mediterranean world during the European Middle Ages? The problem has deserved more attention than it has received from historians, for the pattern is not a consistent one and the decline where it took place, cannot be explained on the grounds of Moslem military superiority alone. The first generation of Moslem conquerors that so decisively defeated the Byzantine armies were plunderers who sought booty and revenge for past wrongs suffered at the hands of the Byzantine authorities or simply from the agricultural and urban populations of the east Roman frontier provinces. Confronted with undreamed of success, they had little idea of establishing either civil government or settling in the areas they had conquered. They had little desire also to convert their new Christian subjects, for that would diminish the flow of tribute exacted in exchange for protection. Yet as time went on, Christianity in the eastern Mediterranean showed none of the survival and recuperative power that characterised the Orthodox Church in the Balkans during the five centuries of Ottoman occupation from 1390–1912. Of the areas overrun by successive Moslem invaders down to 1400 only Spain, Sicily and Crete re-emerged as Christian territories.
County and Urban Dioceses: nineteenth-century discussion on Ecclesiastical Geography
Authors: Morrish P. S.
Published: March 2011

In February 1917 the Geographical Journal published a paper by C. B. Fawcett in which he analysed some principles which might underlie any successful division of England into those larger administrative areas which a new concept of devolution in government would require. His paper became a small book, The Provinces of England, which was published in 1919. Both the paper and the book are now regarded as classics in the English literature of this particular field of geographical studies. Ecclesiastical areas and the boundaries containing them are susceptible to a similar analysis and, prompted by the need for additional dioceses to meet pastoral problems arising from the growth and redistribution of the population, Anglican churchmen had been attempting such analyses many decades before the appearance of Fawcett's paper.
St Gregory and the Enigma of the Dialogues; A Response to Paul Meyvaert
Authors: Clark Francis
Published: March 2011

Dispute about the authenticity of the Dialogues attributed to St Gregory the Great is not new. As long ago as 1551, when the New Learning had given birth to the critical study of texts, the Protestant humanist scholar Huldreich Coccius first challenged the traditional ascription of that work to Gregory, on the grounds that it differed from all the other works of the great pope and doctor, ‘in character, style of expression, seriousness and purpose’. There followed more than two centuries of controversy on this subject, coloured by confessional antagonism, with strong opinions expressed on both sides. The Benedictine scholars, Van Haeften, Mabillon, Ceillier and others, were particularly affronted by the challenge to the patristic authority of the Dialogues, which seemed also to be a challenge to their monastic loyalties. All that is known of the person and life of St Benedict, patriarch of Western monasticism, comes from the vivid biography presented in that book, and the book is generally acknowledged to have been a principal factor in the triumph of the Regula Benedicti as the general rule of monastic observance in medieval Europe.
The Council of State and the Clergy During the Reign of Louis XIV: An Aspect of the Growth of French Absolutism
Authors: Dent Cynthia A.
Published: March 2011

Historians of ancien régime France frequently pay tribute to the statebuilding capacities of that most talented and successful architect of absolute monarchy, Louis XIV. And it has long been recognised that, of the many institutions either created or inherited by the French Crown which were wont to claim a share in the handling of the daily affairs of the realm, the Council of State became, during the personal rule of Louis XIV, the chief vehicle for dispensing the royal will. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of matters dealt with by the Council has tended to discourage historians from making it the object of intensive study. More important is the fact that the machinery of Council after 1661 reflected two apparently contradictory tendencies: the peculiar personal and informal nature of Louis XIV's government, and the incipient formalism and bureaucratisation which were to become dominant factors in the government of late eighteenth-century France. The consequent flexibility and complexity of the system have certainly been important characteristics which have so far precluded a full and detailed explanation of the forms and functions of the Council and, more generally, its overall significance in the administration of absolute government.
The Significance of the Council of Trent
Authors: Wright A. D.
Published: March 2011

The emotive associations of the epithet Tridentine reveal confusion over the Council of Trent, which has continued from the seventeenth century to the present day. The complaints of Sarpi, the attacks of Leibnitz, the apologia of Bossuet, the abuse of Protestants, and the recriminations of modern Catholics all reveal different views of the Council's nature, its intentions and its achievements. Implicit in all views, however, is the concept of a Council which had lasting effects.
Revival and reform in Mary Tudor's Church: a question of money
Authors: Pogson R. H.
Published: March 2011

In explaining the failure of Mary Tudor's plans for Catholic revival during her reign, it is customary to dwell on her manifold errors of judgment. No one can deny her ardent desire to restore the love for Rome among her subjects—she declared that her people's souls meant more to her than ten kingdoms; but she is remembered for burning heretics and thus providing English Protestantism with much-needed martyrs and respectability, rather than for inspiring Counter-Reformation zeal. The most obvious reason for this failure was Mary's early death, which left her little time for long-term policies; but in addition emphasis must be placed on her misunderstanding of her subjects' prejudices and confusion after the schism. She disgusted the strong Henrician national feeling by marrying a foreigner and delighting openly in her Spanish blood; she showed no sympathy for the financial worries of influential subjects who had obtained monastic property and had no wish to surrender it; she instigated a persecution which aroused distaste even in minds accustomed to sixteenth century suffering and punishment; and she embarked on an unpopular war and lost Calais disastrously. Moreover, she reposed greatest trust in Reginald Pole, the papal legate, another leader who failed to comprehend the bitterness of English xenophobia and the strength of anticlericalism and heresy. Pole assumed that anti-Roman sentiments were the shortlived results of schismatic sin and would fade with the orderly restoration of Roman rule; and so he did not even begin to build a militant organisation which could have tried to resist Elizabethan Protestantism. It is an impressive catalogue of mistakes.
Lord John Russell and the Prelude to The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, 1846–51
Authors: Machin G. I. T.
Published: March 2011

A politicalvolte faceis always likely to compel attention, especially when performed by a leading politician who thereby seems to reverse his lifelong attitude. So it was in the case of Lord John Russell's hostility to the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales and his adoption of legislation against it. His actions brought him no profit but rather helped to weaken his position. For the Ecclesiastical Titles bill, while it may have been intended as a hopeful introduction to a firmer political existence, appears instead as the culmination of a long decline. Russell never succeeded in recapturing the fulfilment of the years 1828–32, when he played a central part in carrying great constitutional changes which vindicated his principles of religious and civil liberty. After this he witnessed the great reforms being carried by others; as his latest biographer states, ‘Peel had run off with the credit for the free trade policy, Palmerston for the conduct of foreign affairs, Disraeli for the second Reform Act, and Gladstone for the policy of justice to Ireland…’. Moreover, he removed some of the glory of his liberal attainments by writing the Durham Letter and adopting the Ecclesiastical Titles bill—though Russell disagreed with such an opinion, since he denied that it was illiberal to resist ‘papal aggression’. Behaviour so intriguing as Russell's in 1850–1 has naturally been the subject of a good deal of inquiry and comment, but further examination may help to show the comparative importance of factors which contributed to the Prime Minister's motives.
The Church in Fifth-Century Gaul: Evidence from Sidonius Apollinaris
Authors: Hanson R. P. C.
Published: March 2011

There are several reasons why the study of the works of Sidonius Apollinaris should be of particular interest to ecclesiastical historians. He represents in a peculiar way the end of the old régime, under which Christianity had taken root and had begun to spread, and the beginning of the new period which we call the Middle Ages. He was a devoted admirer of the Roman imperial system, a devotee of the Muses of Roman poetry and prose, but also, in the second part of his life, a bishop of the Christian Church. He was born about 430, when the emperor Valentinian III, who could be reasonably represented as the scion of a legitimate dynasty, was apparently in secure possession of the imperial throne. He died about 480, bishop of a see in a barbarian kingdom, a few years after the last Roman puppet-emperor had been dethroned. He has left us not only poems and panegyrics but also letters dealing, among other things, with the day-to-day problems of his see. His contribution to our knowledge of the Gallic Church of the mid-fifth-century—a dark period by any standard of measurement—must be of great value, and perhaps a fresh survey of certain aspects of it may not be unfruitful.