This article explores the early medieval transformation of a pagan Roman monument, Hadrian's tomb, into a Christian fortress consecrated to St Michael. Ado of Vienne's claim that Boniface IV (608–15) dedicated an elevated chapel to the archangel atop the ‘moles Hadriani’ is challenged and reexamined. The many similarities between Michael's shrine on Monte Gargano and this Roman chapel instead indicate that the angelic devotion spread from Gargano to Rome, sometime in the early eighth century, and that the Lombards were the likely transmitters.

Bede's preoccupations in the later years of his life have recently come under close scrutiny. This article will set out the argument to this point, then explore how the Ecclesiastical history conforms to more general perceptions of Bede's purposes. It will conclude that this work was designed to address just one part of his wider reform agenda, as that pertained to the Northumbrian king of the day, Ceolwulf. To this end, Bede painted a picture of the current situation within the Church which is far more optimistic than that on offer in the Letter to Ecgberht just a few years later. It must be concluded that his specific purposes as regards any particular work, and the audience at which that work was aimed, exercised a considerable influence over his strategy, which varies enormously from one part of his output to another.

When Roman Catholics and Puritans declined to swear the ex officio oath, they cited not only legal but also religious arguments. They appealed to their consciences and noted that Scripture disallowed the taking of the Lord's name in vain and the swearing of oaths against truth, justice or judgement. They then argued that the ex officio oath violated these biblical standards. Such arguments were powerful because they rested on the same theory of oath-taking that buttressed the Elizabethan regime's own use of oaths. The Elizabethan authorities could question the application of this theory, but they could not challenge the theory itself, for to do so would risk undermining the very mechanism that they used to enforce the Elizabethan settlement: oaths.

The nineteenth century witnessed a transition from the ancien régime to the ‘age of mobilisation’, says Charles Taylor, from an organically and hierarchically connected society to a fragmented society based on mass participation, charismatic leaders and organisational tactics. Amid this upheaval the Netherlands Reformed Church faced an unprecedented crisis as it lost its taken-for-granted social status. This essay examines the new legitimation that Abraham Kuyper offered the Church through his Free Church theology, and how various other aspects of his theology, including his baptismal and public theology, developed in conjunction with his ecclesiology. Kuyper's ecclesiology thus offers a case study of problems that ecclesiology in general faced due to the social and cultural shifts of the nineteenth century.

The International Congress on World Evangelization held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in July 1974 was a seminal event in the history of Evangelicalism. This article considers the significance of the congress as an arena for the emergence of challenges from Latin America and Africa to the social and political conservatism that characterised much of the Evangelical movement in the northern hemisphere. These challenges demanded that Christian mission should be defined as a broader process than evangelism alone, and made their mark on the ‘Lausanne Covenant’, a document adopted by the congress which has had normative status among Evangelicals ever since.