This paper explores the possibilities of assessing the social discourse of monastic groups in early twelfth-century Flanders. Through the examination of a dispute over property given by a dying noblewoman to the priory of Hesdin, it argues that both the way in which the monks and their benefactors dealt with the politics of property transfers and the discourse of the written account of these events may be interpreted, on the one hand as deliberate attempts to force a monastic understanding of property and relations with the laity upon the rural communities around Hesdin. On the other, they may be seen as the reflection of a struggle for power and status involving members of several levels of the lay elite.

This article discusses the propagation of the devotion of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary in the Low Countries around 1500. The central argument is that the secular goal of the promoters of the devotion was to create a large spiritual and emotional community in support of the Burgundian-Habsburg dynasty and its ideology of peace and territorial unity. To this end a whole array of old and new media was exploited. The article analyses the dynamics of this devotional communication and gives special attention to the role of miracles, vernacular theatre and the printing press.

Despite a recent expansion of interest in the social history of death, there has been little scholarly examination of the impact of the Protestant Reformation on perceptions of and discourses about hell. Scholars who have addressed the issue tend to conclude that Protestant and Catholic hells differed little from each other in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. This article undertakes a comparative analysis of printed English-language sources, and finds significant disparities on questions such as the location of hell and the nature of hell-fire. It argues that such divergences were polemically driven, but none the less contributed to the so-called ‘decline of hell’.

The Protestant divine John Dury has long been identified as holding millenarian beliefs. However a closer reading of his apocalyptic commentaries and a more clearly defined use of terms reveals that Dury's apocalyptic beliefs are more complex than previously recognised. This article offers a detailed analysis of his preface to the European millenarian tract Clavis apocalyptica to demonstrate that apocalyptic and millenarian belief in the seventeenth century is in need of a careful reassessment.

The Wesleyan-Holiness Churches that emerged in Australia after the Second Word War encountered considerable opposition from other Evangelicals who distrusted their brand of perfectionism. The explicitly American origin of these Churches was both the cause of their exclusion and at the same time a mechanism for their survival. The emergence of the Holiness denominations in Australia is not an example of American cultural and religious imperialism. Rather it has been a creative partnership between like-minded Evangelical Christians from two modern nations sharing a general cultural and social similarity and a common set of religious convictions.