This article aims to reassess current historical judgements on the Czech Utraquist Church during the second century of its existence, from 1517 to 1621. It seeks to outline the special problems which Bohemian Utraquism faced as a religious via media, partly viewed from the comparative perspective of the kindred phenomenon of the post-Reformation Church of England. After a discussion of the historiographic issues, the focus is on the distinctive development of sixteenth-century Utraquism and its relations to English theology and eastern Orthodoxy. The Church's intermediate position between the Church of Rome and the fully reformed Protestant Churches is then explored more systematically through the writings of the authoritative, but neglected, theologian of sixteenth-century Utraquism, Bohuslav Bílejovský.

Choice of place of burial in the Middle Ages was perhaps the most poignant indicator of belief in the efficacy of different sorts of religious intercession. Ariès concluded that the pre-modern response to death was public and communitarian, becoming only latterly private and individualistic. Most recent reconsiderations of notions of death and burial have concentrated on the early modern period. For this period, the distinction made by Ariès between modern, private, individualistic burial practices and earlier public, communitarian rites, has been revised, both in the sense that this change occurred earlier than Ariès would allow and that other influences were at work, in particular the formative consequences of the Reformation. Research into death and burial in the later Middle Ages has tended to confirm the communitarian nature of the rites surrounding death and burial. Burial in the high Middle Ages has been reviewed from a much more pragmatic rather than theoretical perspective, as a consequence of which the wholly communitarian picture depicted by Ariès has hardly been challenged. Presented here, however, is some modification to the Ariès thesis, supported by some very particular evidence, burials of lay persons who were not of patronal status, in religious houses, within the wider context of burial practices in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in England.

In the Scottish General Assembly of 1638 the Covenanters, openly defying Charles I, reformed the kirk to remove what they saw as its corruptions. Bishops and the Court of High Commission were abolished. The Five Articles of Perth (regulating certain points of worship), the 1636 Book of Canons and the hated Prayer Book of 1637 were all condemned.

Recent studies of English Catholicism from the accession of Elizabeth i onwards demonstrate quite clearly the value and necessity of intensive studies of Catholicism at the local level. H. Aveling's detailed studies of Catholicism in the Yorkshire Ridings are excellent examples of the way in which local studies have contributed to a fuller understanding of how and why Catholicism survived in England after the Reformation. The present study of the Catholic laity under Charles i is based upon an investigation of Catholicism in London and eight counties, drawing mainly upon central sources. The counties have been chosen with the object of including as much variety as possible, both in geographical region and in the state of Catholicism in the country as a whole. Not only have counties with a large and, in some cases, flourishing Catholic survival been selected, but counties where Catholics formed a tiny, and even dwindling minority have also been included. If these local studies are a reasonable sample of the country as a whole, in both extent and variety, then they could be regarded as anindication of the national picture.

The Hand-List of Bede Manuscripts by M. L. W. Laistner and H. H. King is not definitive, since it is based partly on the evidence of catalogues and other printed material and not on the manuscripts themselves. However, it provides a useful rough guide. It lists approximately 160 surviving manuscripts of the Historia Ecdesiastica. Laistner constructed a table showing the percentage of the total number copied in each century:

From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, many archbishops in the western Church turned to the papacy to obtain confirmation of supra-metropolitan prerogatives in harmony with the hierarchical principles of the Gregorian Reform. The study of the proofs produced by these primates makes it possible to identify distinct, contrasting encounters between local ecclesiastical structures and the False Decretals, a canonical collection (c. 836–8/c. 847–52) which was widely disseminated in the central Middle Ages. This process reveals the opposition between two types of territorial primacies, based, on the one hand, on kingdoms searching for unity or, on the other, on the civil provinces of the late Roman Empire.

The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the SPCK, has been much discussed as the epitome of Anglican evangelistic zeal and is well known for its dedicated work in the distribution of Christian literature. Whereas the fact that continental Protestants were in regular contact with the SPCK has been noted, few attempts have so far been made to examine SPCK relations with continental Protestants. In fact, the SPCK emerges as more and more concerned with its responsibilities towards its persecuted foreign brethren. Thus it is important to place the SPCK in the context of the Europe-wide Protestant Reformation.

Herbert Thorndike's Of the covenant of grace (1659) was the largest and last substantial word on its subject from a priest of the seventeenth-century English Church. Recasting elements of practical divinity that are commonly associated with evangelical Puritanism, attacking the error of absolute and immediate predestination by decree and shifting stress from baptism to regeneration, Thorndike defended God's honour and majesty by affirming human freedom of choice in the ordo salutis and the moral life. His argument centred in a programme of reciprocal ‘helps’ that unites Arminian synergism with the early modern scholastic concept of scientia media, God's ‘middle knowledge’.

‘Raptus’, the abduction of women in order to marry them, was seen as a serious problem in Carolingian Francia. This article examines the only Frankish text that provides a theological justification for condemning raptus, Hincmar of Rheims's De coercendo et exstirpando raptu viduarum, puellarum ac sanctimonialium. It shows the difficulties that Hincmar found in providing a coherent theological argument against a practice normally condemned for its social and familial disruption. In particular, it suggests that Hincmar was worried that laymen, who had been encouraged by Carolingian reformers to study the Bible, might use Old Testament precedents to justify raptus.

Leo Tolstoy was one of the most prolific religious figures of his time. Yet his religious thought and its influence have seldom been explored by church historians. Drawing upon themes within his literature, non-fiction and previously unconsidered primary sources, this paper considers Tolstoy's religious position in relation to other similar nineteenth-century religious movements. It exposes Tolstoy's links with British Unitarians and also considers Tolstoy's influence upon the founder of Britain's first interfaith organisation, the World Congress of Faiths. It is argued that Tolstoy provides a paradigmatic example by which to examine the relationship between the legacy of the Enlightenment and changing attitudes towards non-Christian religions.

The role of Scottish Churches in the decision not to include Scotland in the 1967 Sexual Offences Act requires scrutiny. This article examines the role of the Church of Scotland, and other Churches, in debates regarding homosexuality in the years following publication of the Wolfenden Report. It argues that although Scotland's Churches appeared steadfast in their determination to prevent homosexual law reform during the 1950s and 1960s, there was much ambivalence, contradiction and debate and that, in fact, Scotland's two main Churches played a significant role in the development of Scotland's foremost homosexual rights organisation, the Scottish Minorities Group.

Porphyry and Eusebius, antagonistic witnesses, agree that one of Origcn’s early tutors was called Ammonius. This was also the name of the tutor of Origen’s younger contemporary Plot in us, and it. has long been the fashion to argue or assume that they were pupils of the same man. Heinrich Dörrie perhaps remains alone in his view that the two men called Ammonius were distinct, a view for which I shall argue in this article, though not entirely on Döme’s grounds. In the first part I shall present the available evidence, and in the second use it to defend Döme’s position against its detractors; in the third part I shall argue that the confusion of the two began in the early Christian centuries, through a mixture of knowledge and pardonable ignorance, and finally I shall advance another candidate, whose credentials for the position of Origen’s tutor have not been adequately examined in modern discussion.

This essay challenges the criticism usually levelled at the early Fathers prior to Augustine for not articulating a view of justification by faith that corresponded with Pauline Christianity as reflected in the formulas of the sixteenth-century reformers. Not only is such a view anachronistic and tends to assume that there was (or is) a uniform definition of justification, but there is evidence that Latin theology before Augustine promulgated the tenets of unmerited grace and the necessity of righteousness that come only through justifying faith. In particular, the Matthew commentary of Hilary of Poitiers explicitly formulates a biblical theology of ‘fides sola iustificat’, and probably contributed to a revival of interest in the Pauline Epistles by the end of the fourth and early fifth centuries.

The movement which we call the twelfth century Renaissance included a revival of Latin classics and Roman Law, the rediscovery of much Greek and Arabic science and philosophy, the development of Romanesque architecture into Gothic, and the writing of history of greater quantity and improved quality. John of Salisbury, archbishop Theobald's curial clerk, who died in 1180 as bishop of Chartres, is generally regarded as England's most finished product of this movement, but a generation before him William, monk of Malmesbury, already displayed many of its characteristics. A polymath whose interests included history and hagiography, law and the classics, archeology and architecture, he had however none of John's cosmopolitanism or contact with the great men of his day, he had little acquaintance with science or philosophy and contributed nothing to the development of theology. A monk all his life, he was representative of the scholarly Benedìctine researcher (he was almost halfway in time between St. Bede and Mabillon), but he was also outstanding because he had the genius and the wide range of interests which were shared by few.

Bishop Reginald Pecock (c. 1390–1461) is remembered for vernacular works formulated to combat Lollardy using reason, not the force of ecclesiastical authority. He argued that Scripture's teachings are true not because they are in Scripture, but because they are evident to unassisted reason. While scholars have explored his arguments in ecclesiastical and historical context, little analysis exists of the scholastic background to Pecock's conception of the relation of reason to faith. This article suggests that Pecock's arguments are grounded in the thought of Aquinas and Scotus, and illustrates how his understanding of reason's capabilities directs his conception of the authority of Scripture and church tradition.

Those writing at the time, and subsequent historians, have tended to exaggerate the importance of the tenth-century monastic revival and of the reform movement which followed the Norman Conquest. During each period contemporary writers glorified the achievements of the reformation, of which they themselves were products, and belittled or even denigrated the religious life of the preceding era. This was partly because the hallmark of both reformations was the strict enforcement of the Rule of Benedict; the ideal of strict Benedictinism appealed to those writing during the reformations, since they themselves were strict Benedictines, and it has appealed to some historians in our own day. One result has been a tendency to emphasise the influence of continental models so much that it overshadows the importance of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. David Knowles makes continental influence on the tenth-century revival the theme of chapter 1 of his The Monastic Order in England.

Sir James Graham's Factory Bill of 1843 has been examined from varied viewpoints by several writers. Partly planned as a legislative antidote to the conditions which had helped to provoke the ‘Plug Plot’ riots of 1842, the measure was important for two reasons: it would both considerably improve earlier textile factory reforms and provide reasonable education for child-workers. On both counts and on all sides it provoked major controversy.

In modern Christological thinking, the tendency is to start with an affirmation of the real humanity of Christ. We recognise with everincreasing realism that the man, Jesus, lived a life open to historical investigation, a life which was circumscribed within the limitations of a normal human psychology and its contemporary environment. This being our pre-supposition, we tend to approve the Antiochene school for its realistic exegesis of New Testament texts referring to the human weakness, progress, experience, finite knowledge, temptation and conflict of the Christ. Correspondingly, we criticise the Alexandrian Fathers for their unnatural exegesis, based, we instinctively feel, upon a form of docetism, however sophisticated. How justifiable is this attitude? It is not the purpose of this paper to minimise the difficulties involved in the Alexandrian position, but the following suggestions may lead to a more sympathetic view of Alexandrian thinking.

The cultural and historical location of the concept of ςιαςοϰή in second century claims about the apostolic succession has been widely debated. In England, under the influence of Ehrhardt, the term is generally taken to be used by analogy with the sacerdotal succession of Jewish high priests, and to derive from the influence of James the Just on Jewish Christianity. In Germany, on the other hand, following Campenhausen, ςιαςοϰή has been understood in terms of continuity of doctrine, in which references to James in the sources are regarded as pure legend constructed to make the point of such continuity in a picturesque way. Both Ehrhardt and Campenhausen, and their respective followers, regard the ςιαςοχή of teachers in the literature of the Hellenistic philosophical schools as quite incidental, without any close relation to the Christian usage. In this article I will argue the contrary, that there are in fact integral connections between the Hellenistic literature of the philosophical successions, and the development of the idea of the apostolic succession in the late second century, where perhaps the true origin of the Christian concept is to be found.

‘As one that honoureth and loveth his most excellent Majesty with all my heart’, wrote Archbishop Hutton to Cecil from Bishop-thorpe in December 1604, ‘I wish less wasting of the Trasure of the Realm, and more Moderation in the lawful exercise of Hunting; both that poor Men's Corn may be less spoiled, and other his Majesty's subjects more spared.’ At the time James I was again in the field, as he had been for much of 1604, complementing his natural propensity for settling the principles of a policy and leaving its working out to his ministers with an addiction to strenuous exercise for his health's sake. He had already allowed delay among his more reluctant bishops in carrying through the series of concessions granted to the puritan clergy at the Hampton Court conference; and as the expiry of the period of grace before the full enforcement of the new canons drew nearer, he made it clear that he did not expect to be troubled with whatever detailed problems might arise. They were his bishops’ responsibility. In Bancroft he seemed to have found the primate he need to succeed Whitgift. Not only would Bancroft enhance the prospects of stability within the state by bringing a sense of discipline and order to the Church, but he had the energy and determination to take charge of ecclesiastical administration for months at a time. For these reasons above all the Calvinist James had overcome his reservations about Bancroft's views on iure divino episcopacy. As the guiding hand in convocation behind the revised and more fully explained canons, Bancroft was undoubtedly best fitted, by experience as well as temperament, to take charge of the efforts to enforce them. By the time he died late in 1610, after a hard struggle to ‘reconstruct’ the English Church, only a minority of its dioceses had not lost clergy through deprivation from their livings, mostly for inconformity and most of them in the southern province; countless others had been suspended. So closely has Bancroft been associated with the efforts to obtain obedience to the new canons, especially to the articles in canon 36 referring to the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty Nine Articles, that debate about his impact on the Church, both in the parliamentary skirmishing at the time and among commentators since, has commonly used as a measure the number of clergy he is supposed to have dispossessed, whether the 300 his puritan critics claimed, the 60 or so he himself once asserted and which R. G. Usher subsequently endorsed, or the 80 to 90 finally established by S. B. Babbage. The case for or against him has always tended to be built on numbers rather than on any assessment of the degree of responsibility he had for what happened. James, although clearly not open to direct attack in parliament, has in any case seemed a peripheral figure, expressing anger and alarm when signs of opposition to conformity came his way, but in no sense providing continuous direction of his bishops’ efforts. Before he departed once more for the countryside in mid-November, he had settled with Bancroft the manner in which the new canons were to be introduced, quietly permitting additional time beyond the deadline at the end of November for all but the most notoriously inconformable clergy in the hope of edging the rest fairly quickly towards full conformity and, where appropriate, subscription to the new terms ‘willingly and ex animo’.