In the century following the death of St Francis, the Franciscan order underwent enormously rapid changes. As Franciscans became university masters, inquisitors, royal councillors and bishops, some confronted dilemmas in reconciling their religious vows with the duties of their offices. Yet whereas some friar-bishops and archbishops might have shied away from involving themselves in their churches' finances, Eudes Rigaud, the first Franciscan archbishop of Rouen, made significant investments in landed property, seigneurial rights and rents on behalf of his archdiocese. The Franciscan archbishop's commitment to ecclesiastical reform, evident in his meticulous visitations of his clergy as recorded in his episcopal register, is also visible in his efforts to augment his archdiocese's temporalities.

The Society of Jews and Christians drew on relationships formed before 1918 in urban social work, the suffrage campaign and pacifist organisations. Its career was much less smooth than that of its successor, the Council of Christians and Jews, because Liberal Judaism's founding role largely antagonised the Orthodox Jewish mainstream, and Christian affiliates sometimes failed to observe the agreement not to proselytise. This paper discusses the influence of the Revd James Parkes, and the exceptional circumstances of the rise of Nazism, in changing views on both sides, and also reflects on why historians may have ignored a pioneering initiative.

The history of English Catholic theology between the break with Rome and the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I remains relatively little-known, despite (or perhaps because of) the publication of two recent American studies by P. S. O'Grady and E. A. Macek respectively: Henry VIII and the conforming Catholics, Collegeville, Minn. 1990, and The loyal opposition: Tudor traditionalist polemics, New York 1996. The appearance of a work which proposes to undertake a fresh survey of the whole period must therefore be welcomed.

The intention of this article is to examine the principal features of John Stratford's Winchester episcopal register (Hampshire Record Office, 21M65/A1/5), recently edited for the Surrey Record Society, and hence to consider Stratford's reputation as a diocesan bishop insofar as this is determinable. Frequent absences on royal business, often abroad, are meticulously recorded, necessitating competent ‘central administration’ and a well-qualified and trusted familia. Both of these are in evidence. The impression given is of an efficiently run diocese with a surprising amount of pastoral work, particularly ordinations and visitation of monasteries, being performed by the bishop in person.

Pope Benedict xv's gradual rehabilitation of the French Christian Democrat Marc Sangnier, whose Sillon movement stood condemned for social Modernism, demonstrated his desire to end the excesses of his predecessor's anti-Modernist crusade and to return to the policies of Leo xiii. Sangnier, unofficial emissary of the French republic to the Vatican, helped to prepare for the restoration of diplomatic relations in 1921. Perplexed, like most French Catholics, by papal neutrality on the war, he later campaigned for Franco-German reconciliation, adopting the Vatican critique of the Versailles settlement. Sangnier's pardon, like Benedict's cautious endorsement of the Popolari in Italy, highlights the paradoxical papalism of advanced Social Catholicism.

While historians are familiar with the destruction wrought on the nation's cathedrals during the Civil War, the rather different fate experienced by Westminster Abbey – an important symbolic building that tied together royal and religious authority – has been strangely neglected. This article argues that the Abbey played an important and distinctive role in the religious and cultural politics of the nation during the 1640s and 1650s. It uncovers the Abbey's role in helping to legitimise successive non-monarchical regimes and ultimately explains how efforts to ‘reclaim’ the Abbey at the Restoration formed part of broader efforts to renegotiate and reinterpret the nation's past.

‘Ineffabilis et summi patris’ (1 June 1497), a little-known letter from Alexander VI to Manuel i, king of Portugal (1495–1521), plays an important role in Joel Panzer's The popes and slavery (1996). For Panzer, ‘Ineffabilis’ clarifies the voluntary nature of submission by newly-encountered peoples to Iberian monarchs. A new and complete translation of ‘Ineffabilis’ shows that it is part of a legal tradition wherein voluntary subjection was one mode of enslavement. ‘Ineffabilis’ also reflects Manuel's broader attempt to gain an advantage over Spain in light of Vasco da Gama's impending voyage to India in July 1497.

The Imprensa Evangelica, published between 1864 and 1892 in Brazil by Presbyterian missionaries, furnished Brazilian Evangelical minorities with a means of crafting new religious identities and of asserting their presence in the public arena. Its editors defended the political rights of non-Catholics in the country, took part in religious controversies with Catholic publications in Brazil and Portugal, and intervened in on-going public debates on the separation of Church and State and the abolition of slavery. This article also examines how the periodical's circulation generated new reading practices in Brazil.

The Great Western Schism divided Latin Christendom along national lines, but it began in 1378 not as a conflict between two national factions of cardinals in the conclave, but in two successive elections by the same college of cardinals, none dissenting. Each of the two new popes had the same usual claim to canonical legitimacy, but since each election was flawed in its circumstances and procedure, each pope could and did condemn and excommunicate his rival. Investigating the activities of the two leading bureaucrats of the Roman Curia, the archbishops who headed its two most powerful ministries, the Chancery and Camera, this paper explores an alternative interpretation of the two elections. According to this narrative, there were two extraordinary interventions in the succession to Pope Gregory xi: the disorderly papal election of 9 April 1378 was captured by one papal minister, the deputy director of the papal Chancery, Bartolomeo Prignano, archbishop of Bari; the second election, of 20 September, which began the Great Western Schism, was a counter-coup managed by the minister in charge of the Camera Apostolica, the chamberlain Pierre de Cros, archbishop of Arles.

This article examines the ceremonial reception of papal legates in the early Middle Ages. It offers a precise, distinctive and normative portrait of their ritualised practice well before the existence of written canonical rules and procedures. The customs, principles, gestures and symbols conditioning legatine activities in this historical era became necessary pre-conditions to political communication, interaction and exchange. Their expression and representation, it is argued, help to explain the manifestation of Roman authority in distant Christian provinces, its varied meaning to contemporaries and the formative rules of political governance and diplomacy.

In this study evidence is brought forth from large treasuries of scholastic manuscripts at Hereford and Lincoln that challenges R. M. Thomson's assessment of the importance of those collections during the High Middle Ages. As it turns out, as early as the twelfth century those libraries contained copies of the most important works in the developing Parisian theological curriculum, and the earliest copies of those works may reside in these and other English cathedral libraries. Manuscripts preserving early versions of the Sentences are especially interesting, since they make it possible to study the evolution of Peter Lombard's thought during his lifetime.

Faced with the problem of ministering to the pastoral needs of a rapidly expanding Catholic population, the restored English hierarchy naturally turned its attention to the training of candidates for the priesthood. The immediate problem after 1850 was to devise a constitution for the three existing colleges or seminaries, and it is to this issue that historians have given most attention. Of greater importance, however, were the ideals and standards which the bishops laid down to guide those who were running the colleges, for here they were setting a pattern of training which determined what was to happen for almost a century. In general terms, they advocated a training which isolated the seminarians from contemporary developments in secular education and which was marked by a deep suspicion of the world; it reflected a very narrow view of theology, and was partly responsible for the failure to develop a commitment to continuing study after ordination in many of the clergy. The present article investigates some of these issues by examining the decrees of the provincial synods of Westminster and the situation in the new diocese of Liverpool under its energetic second bishop, Alexander Goss.

Scholarship by Barbara Harris, James Daybell and others has recently highlighted the role played by elite women as custodians of dynastic memory in early modern England. The Dissolution of the Monasteries interrupted the commemorative process and constituted a threat to the mausoleums of the elite. Moving or rebuilding tombs represented, to some extent, a decision to remake or even to rewrite the family's history, a process which it is often assumed was at this time controlled by men. This article, however, through the example of the Howard family, demonstrates that women were equally involved; it investigates why this was so and the mechanics of the processs.

The principal aim of this article is to analyse the rise of a Latin American Catholic identity during the mid- to late nineteenth century. It examines the institutionalisation of this collective project via the foundation of the Latin American College in Rome in 1858 and the initiatives that led to the Latin American Plenary Council in 1899. This article also explores how this collective religious identity was imagined and how its limits were drawn. In doing so a new insight into how religions contributed to the imagining and defining of geographical spaces is offered.

The Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU) was founded in 1877 and split from the wider body, the Student Christian Movement, in 1910. Although CICCU's prospects were bleak, it survived the interwar period and in the late 1930s began to grow. After 1945 CICCU developed into a highly effective force within Cambridge University. It sustained its membership in the 1960s, when many other student Christian groups were in decline. CICCU's growth was the product of a matrix of factors, including attachment to evangelical doctrine and adaptation to cultural change. Its survival and growth has significantly influenced Christianity in Britain and beyond.

During his pontificate, Pius xi (1922–39) vigorously promoted the ‘export’ of the Italian model of Catholic Action to the rest of the Church as the organisational blueprint for Catholic lay activism, particularly in the battle against atheistic Communism. He was assisted by Mgr, later Cardinal, Giuseppe Pizzardo, the head of Italian Catholic Action. The successes and failures of this campaign are tracked through documents available since the opening of the files of the apostolic nunciatures and delegations and the Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs section of the Secretariat of State for Pius xi's pontificate in the Vatican Archives.

Cyprian's baptism is usually placed in 245–6, two to four years before he became bishop. The early treatise Ad Donatum is thus taken as a witness to the neophyte's spiritual ‘transition’. This article challenges this common biographical narrative. A date just before Cyprian's ordination in 248/9 fits the evidence better than 246. As comparison with Ad Quirinum suggests, the winsome portrait of Cyprian the true convert that Ad Donatum paints might have done more than exhort neophytes to zealous spirituality: it may also have been meant to silence the presbyters whom Pontius’ Vita and Cyprian himself portray as critics of his ordination.