Writing to Wolsey from Bergen op Zoom in 1527 the English ambassador described the Low Countries as being in grave peril from heresy, ‘for yf ther be tre men that speckes, the tweyn keppis Lutter ys openyon’: it was a pardonable exaggeration. Of Luther's immediate popularity in the Netherlands there can be no doubt. In taverns, private houses and on barges the religious issues of the day were hotly debated; from pulpits the new doctrines were championed or denounced, and in public places posters appeared pillorying the mendicants. The succession of placards forbidding the reading, sale or printing of Luther's writings and the increasingly severe penalties prescribed for attendance at conventicles, for harbouring apostate religious and, above all, for spreading heretical notions tell the same tale. Already by 1525 Luther had become a household name in the Netherlands and a new synonym for heretics ‘Luytrianen’ had entered common speech, displacing the older ‘Valdoysen ende Wijclevisten’.

At the end of the fourth century a theory is found in the works of several writers to the effect that the episcopate and the presbyterate are essentially one order, differentiated only by the presiding function of the bishop and the reservation to him of the right of ordination. In the East this view is expressed in the homilies of St. John Chrysostom on I Timothy where he says:

‘Discoursing of bishops, and having described their character, and the qualities which they ought to possess, and having passed over the order of presbyters, he proceeds to that of deacons. The reason of this omission was, that between presbyters and bishops there was no great difference. Both had undertaken the office of teachers and presidents in the Church, and what he has said concerning bishops is applicable to presbyters. For they are only superior in having the power of ordination, and seem to have no other advantage over presbyters.’

Most Anglican crises, including recent ones, seem to boil down in the end to two linked questions — those of identity and authority. Is the Church of England pre-eminently a national or a catholic Church, a Protestant Church (and if so, of what kind?) or Anglican and sui generis? With which of these types of Church should it align itself? Where lies the famed via media, and which are the extremes to be avoided? And who has the authority to decide: as a national Church, parliament, the government, the monarch personally; as an episcopal Church, the bishops? Or should the clergy in convocations (or, latterly, the General Synod, including representatives of the pious laity) take decisions? Anglican crises have always raised these twin problems of identity and authority. In the mid-eighteenth century — from the end of the 1730s and particularly in the 1740s — the Church of England faced another crisis. The Anglican bishops had to come to terms with the movement known as the ‘evangelical revival’. Principles had to be applied to a new situation. The bishops had to decide how to categorise the new societies (or would they become new churches?) which were springing up all over England.

No one doubts that the treatise on repentance published in 1648 as the sixth book of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is by Hooker, but there has been considerable doubt that 1648 (as I shall call it) belongs in the Laws. Keble pronounced it ‘an entire deviation from its subject’, which should have been the Disciplinarian proposal that the power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction be exercised by congregational lay-elders, while W. Speed Hill concludes his recent detailed discussion of the problems surrounding the posthumous three last books of Hooker's great work by calling on those who would include 1648 in the Laws to argue their case for its inclusion ‘in the face of a substantial body of evidence, internal and external, to the contrary’. The present note is a response on the ‘internal’ side to Professor Hill's call for argument.

Historians accept that the personality of Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset, was of central importance in determining the nature and objectives of his regime from 1547 to 1549. Unfortunately, they disagree about many aspects of that elusive character; it is therefore important to eradicate misapprehensions about Somerset's views from historical discussion. Vain, insensitive and lacking judgement in personal and political relationships, he yet retains the reputation of a politician concerned for the commonweal, whether from the motives of political calculation suggested by Michael Bush or the influence of Christian humanism detected by Brendan Bradshaw. Charlatan or Christian, the reputation of ‘the good duke’ shows astonishing resilience despite the quantities of cold water poured upon it by Sir Geoffrey Elton. To complicate matters, a misleading interpretation of Somerset's views on higher education, a central concern of the ‘commonwealth’ programme, appears to have become the accepted orthodoxy, making it even more difficult to discover Somerset's true character. This paper examines the origins, development and significance of that error and traces it to its source in a preoccupation typical of Tudor Protestantism.

Orthodox criticism of Bishop Reynold Pecok began ten years before he recanted and resigned in 1457–8. It came from a group of consciously orthodox theologians whose views were outraged by Pecok's teaching in sermon, disputation and writings. Long before his trial and recantation, Pecok had offended two important movements: a pastoral movement, deeply committed to preaching, which he outraged by belittling the importance of preaching; and a patristic movement which had grown up in the universities from the 1420s and whose members were now undertaking pastoral work. Pecok's gradually revealed hostility to the Fathers was particularly offensive to his younger opponents. If differences in age thus gave rise to differences of emphasis among Pecok's opponents, so too did differences of academic background. Nevertheless, as learned, consciously orthodox theologians with pastoral interests, they shared a common theological culture. The changes in emphasis found their expression in the course of controversy.

Although Constantine was interested in the Council from a political point of view, and although he evidently got what he wanted from it, he did not simply walk away from Nicaea with the creed and consider the matter at an end. His letters written after the Council are important evidence for his attitude during it.

The Restoration was a victory for the governing classes, a victory for social stability and discipline. Dissent, the gentry argued, led to republicanism and social disintegration: Anglicanism and the monarchy meant order. Yet despite the ease with which Charles it returned in 1660 and the relative lack of bloodshed which accompanied his restoration, it was by no means certain that the settlement would be anything more than transitory. God, in his infinite and impenetrable

Historians have offered a variety of explanations for Pope Innocent III's release of King John from the promise that he made to observe the clauses of Magna Carta. None has won general acceptance. This article proposes an alternative by examining the tenets of the canon law as it was understood in 1215. That examination shows that the law of oaths (De iureiurando) played a central role in canonistic thought of the time. It contained the juristic resources that made it possible for Innocent to release John from the oath that he had taken at Runnymeade.

The role of women in heresy has long been a matter for observation and comment. It must be attributed to historians' lack of interest, rather than lack, of evidence, that the Lollards have until now escaped analysis on this front. There are certainly grounds for supposing that they, like Cathars and Waldensians, derived a large measure of support from members of the female sex. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as earlier, unorthodoxy offered women outlets for religious activity that were not to be found in the established church.— But, while the sources can tell us a good deal about women participating in the Lollard movement as learners, readers and expounders of the gospel and other vernacular texts, the question of whether they ever advanced to the point of acting as priests is less easily answered. We know, indeed, very little about Lollard rites of any kind, and this makes it all the more worth while exploring fully what evidence we have. This little is enough to show that at one formative stage at least in Lollard development, claims were being advanced for women as capable of priesthood.

Hobbes's eschatology in Leviathan is one of the most striking aspects of this classic work and has received considerable scholarly attention. Nevertheless, its scriptural interpretation has rarely been examined. This article closely analyses Hobbes's scriptural case for two aspects of eschatology: the doctrine of mortalism and the terrestrial kingdom of God. It shows that, to a large extent, Hobbes's biblical exegesis for these two eschatological issues was preceded by that of his contemporaries, including Richard Overton and John Archer. It is likely, in particular, that the scriptural interpretation for Hobbes's mortalism was directly indebted to Overton's Mans mortalitie.

According to the Rule of St. Benedict the powers of an abbot, who stands in the place of Christ, are virtually absolute. It is true that the Rule has general injunctions for an abbot's good behaviour. He must always be mindful of the words of the apostle, ‘ye have received the spirit of the adoption of children, in which we cry Abba, Father’. He should study to be loved not feared, and the Rule states that he ‘should not harass the flock committed to him, nor exercise his power in an arbitrary, unjust way, but should always remember that for all his decisions and acts he must render account to God’. Nevertheless, there are no sanctions to enforce this code of conduct. In the abbot's hands lies the ultimate control of the administration. The Rule specifies that the abbot is to appoint the prior, and that the cellarer is bound by his commands.

The coronation of Edward VII at the beginning of this century was an unfamiliar scene in Westminster Abbey after the long rule of Victoria, and it elicited a spate of scholarly investigations into those ancient ceremonies. As one of the minor fruits of this renewed interest, a controversy was carried on concerning the ceremonial of the coronation of Elizabeth I on 15 January 1559. Three questions occupied the centre of the stage: Who celebrated the mass: Owen Oglethorpe, the bishop who anointed and crowned her, or George Carew, the priest whom she had made dean of the Chapel Royal? Were the consecrated elements elevated during the canon of the mass? Did Elizabeth withdraw during the consecration to the chapel of St. Edward behind the high altar?

It is surprising to find that Friends were included within the terms of the Toleration Act. The political situation they faced in 1689 was distinctly unpromising. They not only continued to experience the hostility and prejudice that they had suffered since their earliest days, but they were seriously compromised by the close identification of William Penn with the discredited Catholic policies of James II. An examination of the debates in parliament on the Toleration Bill reveals that Friends were by no means certain of being included in the act. Yet their acceptance of the terms they were offered is also surprising in view of their objection to any compromise with the state over matters of religious conscience, an objection which led to their refusal to seek licences under Charles II's Declaration of Indulgence in 1672. Moreover, a number of recent studies have identified the continued insistence of many provincial Friends, particularly in the rigorous heartland of Quakerism in the north–west, upon the strict maintenance of their testimonies, and indeed a redefining of those testimonies partly in response to the growing compromises with the state made by the Quaker leadership.

Thomas Cyrcetur belonged to the second generation of anti-Wycliffite theologians. He must have been born c. 1376, and was a Fellow of Merton College in 1395 or 1396 and until at least 1401. He had graduated BD by December 1417, and probably left the university for residence in Somerset about 1418/19. The immediate Wycliffite threat had thus passed by the time of his Oxford career, and he was not involved in scholastic polemic against Wyclif. On the other hand, he was little influenced by the new orthodox outlook which developed in the universities and in London from the 1420s onwards. He had left Oxford by the time of the publication of Dr Thomas Walden's (alias Netter's) Doctrinale antiquitatum ecclesie, with its new patristic approach to combating heresy, and he shows no sign of acquaintance with that work, although it achieved immediate success. He had long ceased to reside in the university, and was of advanced years, by the time of the opposition to Bishop Pecock in the 1440s and 1450s, which was led by a group of theologians, many from Cambridge but including some Oxford men, whose approach appears also to have been patristic as well as consciously orthodox, and whose best-known member is Thomas Gascoigne. Cyrcetur's approach to theology remained conservative, but it was also pastoral. Even before he graduated BD he took an interest in pastoral work.

The early Wycliffite William Swinderby expressed some strong criticisms of excommunication. He was alarmed that churchman thought that it was their power, rather than God's power, that consigned a soul to hell. The rhetoric of sentences of excommunication in this period was indeed intended to frighten offenders into compliance with ecclesiastical judgements, but the theory and practice of excommunication was in fact far less simple that the Wycliffite criticism of it allowed. This article examines Swinderby's attitude towards ecclesiastical sanctions in light of Wyclif's own ideas, and the theory and practice of excommunication in the late medieval Church. Swinderby's links with early Wycliffism are elucidated and the relationship between Wycliffism and the Church is looked at in a new light.

The Calvinistic Confession of Faith written by the patriarch of Constantinople, Cyril Loukaris, is considered to be the most important product and at the same time the manifesto of the attempted union of the Protestant and Orthodox Churches. Presenting evidence which has been neglected in previous research, this article aims to revise this communis opinio by demonstrating that the book that was actually meant to become the theological foundation for the envisaged union was in fact the Ecclesiarum Belgicarum Confessio, a bilingual (Latin and Greek) publication (1623, 1627, 1648) containing the Βelgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and several canons of the Synod of Dordrecht.

It has long been a favourite theme of ecclesiastical historians, particularly in Germany, that the separation of cathedral chapter from episcopal estates was an important step in the development of ecclesiastical administration, not least because it assisted cathedral chapters to become independent and powerful electoral colleges. It was shown by Gerhard Kallen in the 1920s and, more recently and in greater detail, by Rudolf Schieffer, how this separation of estates, which took a long time to be effected, began with grants made to the cathedral ‘for the use of the brothers’ or with grants for more specific purposes, usually of a liturgical nature. This paper looks at a closely related issue, the splitting up of the estates held by the chapter. This division was to some extent inherent from early on, because of the conditions attached to certain benefactions, but it increased throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The way the chapter's revenues were organised had important consequences for the cohesion of the chapter as a community and also for the way in which clerical preferment operated. This can be very clearly demonstrated by a comparative study of the ways in which German and English cathedrals managed their property in the twelfth century. Since the differences between the German and the English systems are so striking the two will be considered in turn, and a comparison will also be made of the control which German and English clerks had over their personal property, which deserves attention not least because the dividing line between personal and chapter property was sometimes a fine one.

The episcopate of John Morton has received little attention from historians, possibly because it falls in time between the traditional interests of medievalists and of reformation specialists. Previous treatments, notably that of dean Hook in his Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury and the biography by Woodhouse, published in 1895 and heavily reliant on Hook, have concentrated on Morton's political role as ‘foster father of the Tudors’, and while Professor Claude Jenkins provided an excellent survey of the Canterbury register, he was more concerned with the evidence which it provides for die condition of the Church in die late fifteenth century than widi the archbishop himself. The purpose of this paper is to outline the salient characteristics of the episcopate and to examine the ecclesiastical policies pursued by Morton. Two qualifications must immediately be added. First, despite the wealth of material in the archiepiscopal register, supplemented by the records of the cathedral priory, there is almost nothing of a personal nature, and as always it is more difficult to estimate the character or sentiments of a fifteenth-century bishop than of his twelfth-century counterpart Secondly, it has been remarked how a hard and fresh look has upgraded the reputation of Hubert Walter, ‘that old model of secular prelacy’.

The disagreement between Thomas More and William Tyndale has often been deplored. It has been felt that the controversy failed to bring out the best in More as a writer – that he became bitter, bullying and, worst of all, tedious. Alistair Fox, in his recent book on More, while rightly assigning an important place to the controversial works, writes of them, on the whole, with distaste, finding ‘a pattern of progressive deterioration; dialogue gives way to debellation, self-control yields to loss of proportion and perspective, candour is replaced by dishonesty, and charity is displaced by violence’. More's latest biographer, Richard Marius, finds ‘ferocity and deadly dullness’ in More's polemic, ‘monumental self-righteousness and viciousness’ in Tyndale's. Other modern readers have agreed; C. S. Lewis, in particular, pointed to the tragic irony of such a lengthy quarrel between two men who shared many intellectual assumptions and were to have strangely similar fates. It is true that the opponents have much in common, true also that the scolding of scholars is no longer regarded as first-class intellectual entertainment. And the reader, while admitting the importance of the long-distance debate in the Renaissance as a means of clarifying and disseminating ideas, misses, in More's writings against Tyndale, the pleasing courtesy of his Letter to Martin Dorp in defence of Erasmus and, more acutely perhaps, the ability to compress and control his subject which gives his earlier polemical letters their attractive blend of lightness and earnestness.