In Chaucer's portrait of the monk, we are given the image of a lord prior who took the “modern way,” especially in regard to monastic rules.

The rule of good Saint Benet or Saint Maur,

As old and strict, he tended to ignore;…

he let go by the things of yesterday,

and took the modern world's more spacious way…

Must he toil, as Austin bade and till the very soil?

Was he to leave the world upon the shelf?

Let Austin have his labour to himself.

Our knowledge of the life of Justin “the Martyr” depends almost entirely on what he himself tells us, especially in the introduction to the Dialogue with Trypho, where he recounts his journey to the true philosophy, Christianity. It appears that he was born in the late first or early second century at Flavia Neapolis in Samaria into a Greek-speaking family. Although he refers to himself in one passage as a Samaritan by race (Dial. 120.6), this background seems unlikely, since there is no evidence that he was familiar with any Samaritan religious traditions. Rather, it appears that his ancestors were originally Greek or Roman colonists who settled in Flavia Neapolis after its establishment by Vespasian in A.D. 72. In any case, he certainly was not Jewish, for he did not encounter the Jewish scriptures until later in life.

All ideals of Christian perfection, and mysticism is certainly one of these, are forms of response to the presence of God, a presence that is not open, evident, or easily accessible, but that is always in some way mysterious or hidden. When that hidden presence becomes the subject of some form of immediate experience, we can perhaps begin to speak of mysticism in the proper sense of the term. The responses of the subject to immediate divine presence have been discussed theologically in a variety of ways and according to a number of different models. Among them we might list direct contemplation or vision of God, rapture or ecstasy, deification, living in Christ, the birth of the Word in the soul, radical obedience to the directly present will of God, and especially union with God. All of these responses, which have rarely been mutually exclusive, can be called mystical in the sense that they are answers to the immediately experienced divine presence. Therefore, the mysticism of union is just one of the species of a wider and more diverse genus or group.

According to Pope Leo XIII, it could almost be said that Thomas Aquinas “presided” over the deliberations at Lyons (1274) and Florence (1438) when these councils confronted the Greek church.1 This judgment, which would be true at best and in part only for the later council, both enshrines and encourages a misreading of Thomas's short treatise Contra errores Graecorum. In fact, the Contra errores is neither as well informed nor as technically argued as other Latin polemics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is a treatise limited in form and argument, motivated by another, poorer treatise.

“Do you want to see new marvels (monstra)? Do you want to see strange ways of life, to find the sources of virtue or the causes of all evil; to sense the vast emptiness that commonly goes unnoticed?”

Cornelius Grapheus was responsible for this sales promotion. Along with other prefatory material, it introduced Thomas More's Utopia to readers in 1516. More's friend, Erasmus of Rotterdam, had collected endorsement, and either he or Peter Giles had approached Grapheus, then secretary to the municipal government at Antwerp. It is reasonable to assume that Grapheus jumped at the chance to associate his name with the new work. He had published nothing before this time, save for some devotional verse in 1514, yet careers were launched, patrons found, and reputations ennobled by promotional material as well as by the material promoted.

The exact relationship between Lollardy and the sixteenth-century Reformation long has eluded students of English history. Recent detailed studies of Lollard texts have underlined a continuity of belief and polemic.1 One significant difference, however, is the way in which reformers in the two periods used the commonplace saying that images are “laymen's books.” The Lollards, even those who were the most outspoken critics of images, used Gregory the Great's metaphor to support their positions. In the I 530s the English reformers used the commonplace in similar ways, but by the 1540s they had rejected it altogether. The English reformers, however, did more than merely reject Gregory as an authority. Instead of dismissing the old justification of images as a false sophism, as the continental reformers had done in the 1520s, they appropriated the laymen's-book metaphor for their own polemic, turning it against the iconophiles. Furthermore, they developed the metaphor in a new way that provided a positive alternative for the illiterate, arguing that the simple and unlearned read not from the book of art but rather from the natural world around them.

A number of scholars have pointed recently to Ecclesiastes 9:1 as the epitome of medieval and late medieval spirituality: “No one knows whether he is worthy of God's love or hatred.”1 The quest for assurance of salvation constituted a major pastoral problem in the Middle Ages. It is no surprise, therefore, that catechetical handbooks as well as handbooks of spiritual theology offer signs by which one can gain some indication whether one is in the grace of God or not.

Historians and biographers of George Abbot traditionally have viewed King James's appointment of the forty-eight year old bishop of London to the archbishopric of Canterbury on 4 March 1611 as both unexpected and unpopular. Although Fuller conceived him to be “of a more fatherly presence than those who might have been his fathers for age in the Church of England,” there was a significant body of opinion that held he was unfit for such an important post for two major reasons.

When William Ames (1576–1633) chose not to wear a surplice while preaching at a Cambridge University chapel, he embodied the Reformation spirit of defiance toward the symbols of ecclesiastical and educational authority. This action and subsequent signs of dissent within the Church of England earned Ames a life of exile in the Netherlands. Yet in serving as a professor at the Universities of Leiden and Franeker, the Puritan scholar perfected methods of instruction that would establish him as an authority among those similarly committed to learning the revealed will of God and investigating the structure and operation of the human mind.

“Romanism and Evolution. Remarkable Advance. No Special Creation.” “Father Zahm on the Six Days of Creation.” “Father Zahm on Inspiration.” “Father Zahm Honored with a Private Audience by His Holiness.”1 During the final decade of the nineteenth century religious periodicals and secular newspapers alike chronicled the growing fascination of the American Catholic community with the public debate over the latest theories regarding the evolution of species. One figure in particular, John Augustine Zahm, a Holy Cross priest and professor of chemistry and physics in the University of Notre Dame, captured many of the headlines and captivated Catholic audiences with his sophisticated, clear expositions of the various theories in the post-Darwinian controversies and with his repeated assurances that the idea of evolution, properly understood, posed no obstacle to the faith of the individual Catholic.

Medieval civilization was centered on theology. Theology inspired its arts, and theology shaped its research in science, law, medicine, and philosophy. The dancers at the court of the queen of sciences were mostly male, and one wonders what their female contemporaries thought or knew of the theological issues that were fundamental to the culture of the period. By the end of the Middle Ages it is probable that there was a high literacy rate among women of the middle and upper classes. Although it is unlikely that these women remained ignorant of the major debates that enlivened the conversations of educated men, evidence of their participation in theological endeavors is scant. Since women were excluded from the universities and formal training in the techniques of scholastic argument, it was virtually impossible for them to develop careers as professional thinkers.

The Practice of Piety by Lewis Bayly was one of the most famous treatises ever penned by a Puritan. This devotional manual went through numerous editions and was translated into six languages, including into German by Philip Jacob Spener. Piety is the term that best expresses Puritan religiousness. Spirituality was a term seldom employed by Puritans, and when used it never referred to their essential religiousness. Today spirituality is used as a description of all forms of piety, though originally it referred to a particular kind of piety, namely that which developed out of monasticism. Roman Catholic spirituality, whether lay or clerical, has been shaped by the massive presence of monasticism. But Protestant piety has been shaped by the massive absence of that monastic ideal. Hence, the term piety will be used in an effort to delineate Puritan religiousness.

In a review published in 1849, Ephraim Peabody observed that “America has the mournful honor of adding a new department to the literature of civilization,—the autobiographies of escaped slaves.” As Peabody went on to point out, “these narratives show how it [slavery] looks as seen from the side of the slave. They contain the victim's account of the workings of this great institution.” As such, they have proved an invaluable resource for examining the religious life of Afro-Americans under slavery. Yet despite the fact that Peabody and others recognized “the peculiar hardships to which the female slave [was] subjected” during the nineteenth century, few recent studies of slavery have paid attention to differences in gender and none, to my knowledge, have explored the impact to gender differences on the religious life of slaves.

As befits its importance in the nineteenth century, British nonconformity has attracted a lot of attention from scholars. Eminent personalities and denominational development or doctrine tend to dominate the earlier writing, while another long-established genre which is still producing fruitful work has been the analysis of the impact of nonconformity in society at large, for example in national or local politics, trade unionism, and education.

Jane M'Neil died a “glorious death” in 1814 when she was just twelve years old. Perfectly composed during her last illness, she spoke warmly of her attachment to her Methodist class leader and calmly informed visiting neighbors that soon she would be laid in the graveyard. Her biographer recalled that when the local preacher came to pray with her, “the joys of the upper world [seemed] to have been manifested… She was thrown into ecstasies of joy; she shouted the praises of the Redeemer aloud.” Her mother's unregenerate prejudices against religious shouting were removed. Her physician, a non-Christian, “was melted into tears, and gave vent to the loudest exclamations of grief” when Jane exhorted him to flee to “the good physician of souls.” Squire M'Neil, her proud and haughty father, struggled with deep conviction of sin after her death and became converted, influencing many in the neighborhood to seek religion.1

On 20 May 1939 General Francisco Franco attended the solemn Te Deum service held at the royal church of Santa Barbara to celebrate the triumph of nationalist over republican Spain. Surrounded by the symbols of Spain's Catholic past, including the standard used by Don Juan of Austria at Lepanto, the general presented his “sword of victory” to Cardinal Gomá, archbishop of Toledo and primate of the Spanish church.1 The ceremony symbolized the close ties between church and state formed by three years of civil war. The new regime had given proof of its commitment to the church even before the conflict had ended, and the clergy now looked forward to the implementation of a full range of measures in education, culture, and the regulation of public morality, measures that had last been seen in Spain over a century before.2

Those individuals who seek to apply moral principles to their consideration of the affairs of nations of which they lack direct knowledge may expect to encounter certain difficulties. They may have no means of obtaining indisputable answers to questions even of a factual nature, and they may find it impossible adequately to weigh the contradictory claims of various factions. Moreover, if a religious or other close bond exists with one of the parties to a conflict, it might be tempting to subscribe to the justice of that group's struggle.

The number of those who remember hearing the voice of Father Charles E. Coughlin on the radio on Sunday afternoons in the 1930s and 1940s is dwindling. Those who do recall generally respond with adulation or disdain. Coughlin, like his contemporary Franklin D. Roosevelt, was either loved and admired or held in a kind of contempt. In the past, writers reflected on Coughlin chiefly from a political or socio-cultural point of view. My goal in researching “the radio priest,” however, has been to explore the theological roots of the anti-Semitism (more properly anti-Judaism), which became a dominant note in his speeches and writings, particularly in the year 1938 and thereafter.

Science and religion both constitute vital dimensions of experience, but people differ in their views on proper relations between the two. In modern times, when science increasingly dominates the outlook of society, many regard science and religion as incompatible and strive to maintain them in watertight compartments. In 1972, for example, the National Academy of Sciences, responding to a demand that creationism be given equal time with the theory of evolution in biology classrooms and textbooks, adopted a resolution stating that “religion and science are … separate and mutually exclusive realms of human thought whose presentation in the same context leads to misunderstanding of both scientific theory and religious belief.” The battle over creationism continues, with the National Academy of Sciences and orthodox religious groups both insisting on the incompatibility of the two spheres.

Raymond W. Barber, Baptist pastor and president of the Baptist World Fellowship, wrote in 1982, “Fundamentalists have moved out of the storefront buildings on back alleys into beautiful sanctuaries fronting the freeways and boulevards that dissect the nation's biggest cities. No longer do fundamentalists operate from the closet of inferiority, but from the parlor of influence, affecting the spiritual and cultural life of America. The so-called “splinter-group” of yesterday has become a special vanguard of the truth whose influence is evidenced from the courthouse to the White House.”1