bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Darwin’s Church
Authors: White Paul 
Published: March 2016

From the war of nature, from famine and death … endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.(Charles Darwin,On the Origin of Species)Much has been made of the roots of Darwinian theory in the work of Thomas Malthus, who argued for the inevitability of strife, suffering and death following on the scarcity of resources and the tendency of populations to multiply without limit. It has been noted that a Malthusian pessimism about human nature re-emerged in the 1830s, darkening the political discussions surrounding the welfare of the poor, and informing the legislation of the Poor Laws in those crucial years in which Darwin formulated his natural selection theory. Historians have also focussed on the harshness of the social Darwinism that was taken up by theorists later in the century, in contrast to the more optimistic, Lamarckian evolution of Herbert Spencer, Peter Kropotkin and others. Yet in the closing passage ofOrigin of Species, Darwin extended his famous metaphor of the entangled bank, offering a form of redemption through struggle toward higher forms of life.
Material Christianity in the Early Medieval Household
Authors: Smith Julia M. H. 
Published: March 2016

Tu autem cum oraveris, intra in cubiculum tuum, et clauso ostio, ora Patrem tuum in abscondito: et Pater tuus, qui videt in abscondito, reddet tibi. (‘But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door. Pray to your Father in private, and your Father, who sees into concealed places, will reward you’: Matt. 6: 6)Manuscript D.V.3 in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Turin is a fat, late eighth-century volume of martyr narratives. Produced at Soissons, probably in the nunnery of Notre-Dame, it may be no coincidence that eighteen of its forty texts concern female martyrs. A further four address familial groups in which wives or mothers play prominent roles. The earliest Latin version of the passion of St Adrian (BHL3744) is among them: one of many late, ‘novel-esque’ accounts of martyrdom, it is constructed out of clichéd formulae and predictable tropes for post-persecution audiences, like others of its genre. Lacking any historical verisimilitude about the age of persecutions, the passion of Adrian is characteristic of this group of hagiographies in offering valuable insights into domestic Christianity in the age in which it was composed: it brings into sharp focus links between women and material Christianity within the late antique household, the theme this essay pursues into the Carolingian period.
Histories of Heterodoxy: Shifting Approaches to a Millenarian Tradition in Modern Church History
Authors: Lockley Philip 
Published: March 2016

In 1956, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge published a work chronicling a subject billed as ‘an unrecorded chapter of Church history’. The author was an elderly Anglican clergyman, George Balleine. The book wasPast Finding Out: The Tragic Story of Joanna Southcott and her Successors.Before Balleine, the early nineteenth-century figure of Joanna Southcott, and her eventually global religious movement, had garnered scant mainstream attention. The most extensive work was Ronald Matthews’s rudimentary analysis of Southcott and five other ‘English Messiahs’ in a 1936 contribution to the psychology of religion. Southcott had not, in fact, claimed to be a messiah herself; rather, she was the prophet of a coming messiah named ‘Shiloh’. Southcott’s followers (variously labelled ‘Southcottians’, ‘Christian Israelites’ ‘Jezreelites’, among other names) believed that she and certain later figures were inspired by God to signal the imminence of the Christian millennium. Claimants to be the actual Shiloh messiah occasionally featured within this particular tradition of biblical interpretation, inspiration and theodicy. The splinter-prone movement spread through Britain, Australia, New Zealand and North America, and retained a few thousand members in the twentieth century.
‘In Love and Charity with your Neighbours …’: Ecclesiastical Courts and Justices of the Peace in England in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Jacob W. M. 
Published: March 2016

The aim of this paper is to account for the busyness of the ecclesiastical courts in England during the first half of the eighteenth century, and to suggest why, apart from matters of strictly ecclesiastical business, and defamation, matrimonial and probate causes, their business declined during the second half of the century.The ecclesiastical courts in the first part of the century were a popular part of the lowest level of judicial activity in England. That the churchwardens of St Mary’s Beverley paid the ringers 2s.6din 1721 for ringing when ‘the Spiritual Court Men came’ suggests the arrival of the consistory court to conduct business in a town was an occasion of note. Archdeacons’ and consistory courts show evidence of considerable activity in almost every diocese in which research has been undertaken about eighteenth-century church life. The diocese of Ely seems to be the exception, where the evidence for much activity in the courts peters out in 1704.
Discipline and Diversity in the Medieval English Sunday
Authors: Wood Diana 
Published: March 2016

The medieval Church had strict disciplinary rules about how Sunday should be observed, but in England there was considerable diversity in interpreting and honouring them. The medieval English Sunday is a vast and challenging subject, yet despite this, and the controversy excited by the Sunday Trading Act of 1994 which allowed shops to open, it has excited little recent attention.The discipline of Sunday was laid down in the Third Commandment (Exod. 20: 8–11), where Christians were ordered to keep holy the Sabbath day and told ‘In it thou shalt not do any work.’ This was reinforced in canon law, in episcopal mandates, in commentaries, in theological treatises, in sermons, inpastoralia, and in popular literature. The Sunday Christ, the image of Christ surrounded by craftsmen’s tools, which enshrined the idea that Sunday working with such implements crucified him anew, adorned the walls of many late medieval English parish churches. Secular rulers, starting with Wihtred of Kent (695), included Sabbath-keeping in their legislation. Diversity occurred in the varying interpretations of the law on Sunday observance, and in the patchiness of its enforcement. The questions to be addressed here are, firstly, what actually constituted Sunday? Secondly, what were people supposed to do on Sundays, and did they do it? Finally, how well observed was the work prohibition as applied to Sunday trading?
The Oxford Movement as Religious Revival and Resurgence
Authors: Nockles Peter B. 
Published: March 2016

It was ‘one of the most wonderful revivals in church history’, to be compared to the religious revival in the ‘days of Josiah towards the close of the Jewish monarchy’. This extravagant comment referred not to the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century, that paradigm of all religious revivals, but to something which the author, writing in 1912, characterized as ‘the Catholic Revival’.The idea of a revival or resurgence in either the individual soul or the life of the Church as a whole is as old as Christian history. Yet in the vast recent explosion of scholarship on the subject of religious revival, the term itself and whole framework of discussion continues to be applied primarily to Protestant Evangelicalism. While religious resurgence has not been tied to a specific theological or denominational tradition, religious revival (which is often classified in terms of a hierarchy of significance from ‘Awakenings’ downwards) and especially ‘revivalism’ (a term used to describe religious movements of enthusiasm) has tended to become synonymous with Evangelicalism.
The Beginnings of English Sabbatarianism
Authors: Collinson Patrick 
Published: March 2016

This communication summarises the findings of an enquiry into the origins of English Sabbatarianism at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Two aspects of this movement have seemed to merit fresh investigation: the sources of English Sabbatarian notions and the circumstances in which the Sabbath became a major controversial issue in the Church of England, dividing the puritan Nonconformists from the representatives of authority.Sabbatarianism, for the purpose of this discussion, is defined as something more than a certain ethical and social attitude to the use of Sunday: it implies the doctrinal assertion that the fourth commandment is not an obsolete ceremonial law of the Jews but a perpetual, moral law, binding on Christians; in other words, that the Christian observance of Sunday has its basis not in ecclesiastical tradition but in the decalogue.
Reflections on Religious Dissent in North Africa in the Byzantine Period
Authors: Markus R. A. 
Published: March 2016

There are good reasons for historians’ preferring to write history proceeding from the earlier in time to the later. Why, after all, should they ignore time’s one-way arrow? On occasion, however, it is useful to reverse the normal procedure.The history of North African Christianity, and especially the history of the tradition of dissent in it, is a case in point. The literature of the Donatist schism of the fourth and fifth centuries is comparatively rich. It is tempting, having crystallized an image of Donatism on the strength of it, to find the same image displayed again during the Vandal or the Byzantine period, periods for which our information is very much more fragmentary. The assumption that there is such a continuity may work in either or both of two ways. It may distort the real bearings of scanty material by the concern to fit it into the pattern; also, or alternatively, it may prevent the historian from noticing affinities with movements which seem at first sight to lack the features singled out as a qualification for entry into the pattern.
The Supposed Illiteracy of Archbishop Walter Reynolds
Authors: Wright J. R. 
Published: March 2016

One aspect of the character of Walter Reynolds, archbishop of Canterbury 1314–1327, was darkened by three contemporary chroniclers whose words have been accepted with little question by some historians of more modern times—his supposed illiteracy. The question is this: Did Edward II choose a primate for all England who was seriously defective in learning? Even if literacy in medieval usage meant strictly a knowledge of Latin, was Reynolds illiterate?This notion comes to us originally from the three chronicles most hostile to Reynolds: 1) the Flores Historiarum: ‘vir siquidem laicus et in tantum illiteratus ut nomen proprium declinare penitus ignorabat’; 2) the Vita Edwardi Secundi: ‘simplex clericus et minus competenter litteratus’; and 3) the chronicle of Lanercost: ‘homo quasi illiteratus, et, secundum judicium humanum, tam ratione vitae quam scientiae omni gradu dignitatis indignus.’
The problem of the native clergy in the Portuguese and Spanish Empires from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries
Authors: Boxer C. R. 
Published: March 2016

A learned Jesuit historian of the Japan mission recently observed: ‘The aim of Christian missionary activity in every mission land is to establish the Church. The goal of the foreign missionary is primarily to prepare the ground and lay the foundation of the future Church. What he envisages, therefore, is the idea of a fully matured hierarchy of native-born bishops and priests capable of carrying on the work of the Church without foreign assistance.’Identical sentiments have been voiced by other erudite Jesuit historians of Portuguese India and the Spanish Philippines; but their own well-documented works show very clearly that, however much this was a consummation devoutly to be wished, the road to its achievement was a long and an arduous one. Indeed, at times this objective was actively opposed by those very missionaries who should have been most anxious to attain it. Whatever the theory may have been, in practice the indigenous clergy were apt to be kept in a strictly subordinate condition to the European priests, particularly where these latter were members of the Regular clergy. How this discrimination arose, and the length of time for which it endured, is the theme of this paper.
The history of missions: an academic discipline
Authors: Neill S. C. 
Published: March 2016

Everyone knows that the Christian world mission exists. Not everyone would be prepared to agree that the mission should be regarded as a fit subject for academic study.There is an interesting difference in the manner in which this question has been dealt with in Germany, in the United States, and in Britain.The Germans are the great theorists; it is not surprising that Germany was the first country to develop a full-scale theory of missions and to invent the unpleasing hybrid ‘missiology’. The first plan for academic teaching of missiology came from Karl Graul, director of the Leipzig mission, who in 1864 drew up a plan for such teaching in the university of Erlangen, and had actually delivered an admired introductory lecture on the subject. His early death made impossible the realization of the plans that he had drawn up. The first full-time professor of missions was Gustav Warneck, whose immense Missionslehre began to appear in 1897, the year in which its author was appointed as professor in the old pietistic university of Halle. Warneck the theorist was followed by the historian Julius Richter in Berlin. Richter was a typically German toiler, whose volumes on various regions of the earth are full of minutely accurate information, a little marred by the all too obvious view of the writer that only Germans understand how to carry out the task of mission, and that the British have never done anything but make mistakes in the political as well as in the religious field.
Paulinus of York
Authors: Mayr-Harting H. M. R. E. 
Published: March 2016

The first bishop of York in Anglo-Saxon history is a shadowy figure and, to some historians, not an altogether impressive one, but a conference devoted mainly to the ecclesiastical province of York perhaps provides an opportune moment to consider afresh one or two of the more interesting aspects of his career. We might discuss first what exactly Paulinus was about in his efforts to convert Edwin of Northumbria.Paulinus was one of the monks of Augustine of Canterbury and he was sent north with Ethelburga of Kent, who was a Christian, when she married the pagan King Edwin—in 625 according to Bede. Edwin promised to think about taking his bride’s religion, but to bring him finally to the point of accepting Christianity in 628 proved, despite all Paulinus’s powers of preaching and prophecy, to be a Herculean labour.
Who Compiled the Sixteenth-Century Patristic Handbook Unio Dissidentium?
Authors: Peters Robert 
Published: March 2016

The purpose of this paper is to raise a problem of more than antiquarian interest in Reformation literary history. The Unio Dissidentium is a collection of passages from the Bible together with nearly 550 quotations, many of them quite lengthy, from the Fathers. This latter feature gives to the book much of its interest, as well as a place in the patristic revival begun by the classical humanists and brought to a high level of development by the work of such men as Erasmus and Beatus Rhenanus.So far as can with certainty be stated, the first part of Unio Dissidentium was published by the Antwerp printer, Martin de Keyser, in March 1527. The ten sections into which it is divided contain passages supporting the compiler’s theology on such current theological issues as original sin, infant baptism, predestination, the nature and function of law, grace and merit, faith and works, and human ordinances. Later that same year the same printer published the second part, dealing with the value of the Word of God, penitence, brotherly correction, fasting, prayer, indulgences, the Eucharist, ecclesiastical constitutions, the vocation of all Christians to be priests, kings, and prophets, and antichrist. To the editions printed in and after 1531 a further three sections were added, the first two of which are on expensive funerals and the flight and persecution of Christians, respectively, while the third is the tract of Pseudo-Augustine, De Essentia Divinitatis.
Puritanism: the Problem of Definition
Authors: Hall Basil 
Published: March 2016

There are those ready to admire the Puritans almost for the very name (as did Spurgeon), and there are others who like Sir Andrew Aguecheek when confronted with ‘a kind of Puritan’ are ready ‘to beat him like a dog’ (as did Macaulay): but may we not with Sir Toby say to both these groups, ‘For being a Puritan? Thine exquisite reason?’—for Sir Toby, even in his cups, saw the need apparently to distinguish and define.The problem of Puritanism is to define what it was and who the Puritans were—a fact often recognised but leading to little change in the treatment of the subject which is nearly always regarded as a comprehensive but homogeneous entity. Three examples may suffice to show what difficulties may arise for those who, seeking instruction, go to the most respected authors. First, A. S. P. Woodhouse, in Puritanism and Liberty, writes that ‘Puritanism is an entity’ capable of being extended to cover ‘the varied forces generated by the Protestant Reformation and given their opportunity by the revolt against the Crown and the Church in the first half of the seventeenth century.’ However, it is also possible to describe the Puritans as ‘the more conservative,’ ‘the strictly calvinistic,’ who ‘followed the Genevan pattern in Church and State’ and were ‘synonymous with Presbyterians.’ But, ‘the cleavage between the Presbyterians and sectaries is marked,’ yet this division leaves ‘the problem of the centre party, the Independents.’ Following Troeltsch one can speak of ‘a Puritan church type and a Puritan sect type, the ideal of the holy community is true of all the Puritan groups.’ Finally, ‘it is not necessary to posit a unity but there is continuity in Puritan thought.’ Here, as elsewhere, as soon as a statement is made a qualification of it, if not a contradiction of it, becomes necessary.
Piety and impiety in thirteenth-century italy
Authors: Murray Alexander 
Published: March 2016

Everyone is familiar with the notion of an ‘Age of Faith’. It is the idea that, at some time in the past, everyone believed what religious authority told them to believe. In this paper I propose to test the truth of this idea, in one period, and one region.I have chosen thirteenth-century Italy. The Middle Ages stand, par excellence, as the Age of Faith; and the thirteenth century, late enough not to starve us of evidence, was still early enough to be safely medieval. Italy, too, chooses itself: its documents, and its debates, yield the historian a clearer picture than he would get elsewhere. Whether Italy was typical of latin Christendom is a question that would call, not for another paper, but for another conference. But hints of her position will appear in the course of our enquiry. Some sources singled her out, some did not – giving an assurance, between them, that any difference between Italy and the rest was a difference between shades of grey.Italy, then, in the thirteenth century, is our field; and we shall be enquiring in it not, now, about kinds of belief, but about degrees of it. How far were our predecessors, in the time and place chosen, in the modern sense ‘religious’?
Society, theodicy and the origins of heresy: towards a reassessment of the medieval evidence
Authors: Nelson Janet L. 
Published: March 2016

I shall not be presenting in this communication the fruits of any original research: my aim will be simply to put together some of the results of recent work by others, and on that basis to offer a little contribution to ‘the great seven-storey library’ which professor Le Bras hopes will one day ‘be devoted to studies of the structure and whole life of every religion at every moment of its history’.It is best to begin with some explanation of my title: much of the debate on the origins of heresy has centred on the question of whether or not it represented a ‘social problem’. Thus when Grundmann asks if social questions were at the root of heresy, he means, was heresy the expression of material deprivation on the part of the unprivileged? This sort of connection has of course been made by historians usually stigmatised as Marxist (though Marx himself would, I think, have disowned some of their crude anachronisms); Werner, for example, explains heresy as a protest movement against the economic and social exploitation of the feudal system.
Popular piety and the records of the unestablished churches 1460–1660
Authors: Cross Claire 
Published: March 2016

John foxe in his long account of ‘the grievous affliction of good men and women in the diocese of Lincoln’, based on Lincoln episcopal records for 1521, gave over a quarter of a page to the Colins family of Ginge, near West Hendred in Berkshire. At a time of wholesale detection of lollards, when episcopal officials had succeeded in getting neighbour to inform against neighbour, John Edmunds revealed what he knew about Richard Colins, Alice, his wife, and their daughter, Joan.This Richard Colins, as he was a great doer among these good men, so was he much complained upon by divers. . . for bringing with him a book called The King of Beeme [Bohemia] into their company, and did read thereof a great part unto them in this Edmunds’ house of Burford.This Alice likewise was a famous woman among them, and had a good memory, and could recite much of the scriptures, and other good books. And therefore when any conventicle of these men did meet at Burford, commonly she was sent for to recite unto them die declaration of the Ten Commandments, and the epistles of Peter and James.This Joan also, following her father’s and mother’s steps, was noted for that she had learned with her father and mother, the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Works of Mercy, the Five Wits Bodily and Ghostly, the Eight Blessings, and five chapters of St James’s epistle.
The English Clergy and the Hundred Years War
Authors: McHardy A. K. 
Published: March 2016

The Contribution made by the Church to the English war effort during the Hundred Years War was immense. It is the purpose of this paper to describe the forms which this contribution took, and then to offer some reflections on it.The most important clerical contribution to the war was financial: the taxes voted by the clergy in their two convocations and collected by themselves for the benefit of the crown. These corresponded to the lay subsidies voted in parliament. Normally such taxes were tenths of clerical income as it had been assessed, about 1291, for the benefit of the papacy. No new assessment of clerical wealth was made in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, but during the decade 1371 to 1381 a series of experimental taxes was levied from clergy and laity alike. These experiments, culminating in the notorious poll tax of 1380–1 which provoked open rebellion, were not repeated. But in the fifteenth century successive governments tried to tap the wealth of the chantry and stipendiary chaplains through a series of taxes of the poll tax type. Unlike the fourteenth-century poll taxes these measures were imposed at infrequent intervals (in 1406, 1419, 1430, 1436, 1449), but, like them, were abandoned because they failed to bring in the hoped-for revenue.