This article looks at a largely neglected aspect of nineteenth- and twentieth-century religio-political activism and public doctrine, the conservative politics of premillennialist Protestantism. It approaches this subject through a case study of the doctrines and activities of the Catholic Apostolic Church, a relatively small premillennialist and Pentecostal faith-community extant from the 1830s through to the mid-twentieth century. The translation of these doctrines into Conservative party politics by Henry Drummond MP and by the seventh and eighth dukes of Northumberland is given especial attention.

This article discusses the relationship between Church and society in Aberdeen and Glasgow, c. 1800–c. 2000, with specific reference to levels of church attendance and membership, alongside the social and gender composition of church membership. Despite contrasts in economic development, both cities experienced a sharp decline in levels of church attendance. However, this decline was partly offset by an expanding membership in suburban areas such as Bearsden and Cults. The article confirms previous analyses of religion and social class, but further reinforces more recent research which highlights the important role of women in the Church.

This paper is concerned widi the puritan in office. It sets out to deal with an incident that took place in the university of Cambridge in 1589, and, in analysing that incident, to examine the tensions and ambiguities inherent in the position of the puritan divine (and here I mean both presbyterians and ‘fellow-travellers’) involved in the traditional administrative and jurisdictional hierarchies of the university. At first sight the affair in question appears to be little more than another clash between two young dons, with precisian proclivities, and the university authorities. Its significance for the study of establishment or moderate puritanism lies in the fact that by 1589 those university authorities included in their ranks men like Laurence Chaderton, Master of Emmanuel, William Whitaker, newly installed as Master of St John's and Roger Goad, Provost of Kings, all of whom were noted for their puritan sympathies. It was in 1589, of course, that Whitgift's final attack on the classis movement really got under way. Here, then, we have the interesting spectacle of erstwhile puritans (one of whom, Chaderton, was an avowed presbyterian) being called upon, in their capacity as university administrators, to support, or at least not to oppose or obstruct, a new hardline anti-precisian policy which was totally at variance with their own principles and sympathies.

This article examines the representation of women and femininity in Archbishop William of Tyre's Chronicon. It considers how his text was shaped by contemporary Western ideas of gender, and how this impacted upon his presentation of women, especially Queen Melisende of Jerusalem and three Antiochene princesses, Alice, Constance and Sybil. It argues that, in doing so, we can raise important questions regarding his use for empirical reconstruction by revealing the nuanced ways in which, in pursuit of broader narrative goals, he utilised gender as a tool to both praise and discredit.

This paper examines the process of radicalisation of Monsignor Ivan Illich during the 1960s, having as its setting Cuernavaca, Mexico – a creative, fluid space where Illich was in contact with Bishop Méndez Arceo, Erich Fromm and Gregorio Lemercier. Illich's writings and the reports from the centres led by him are placed here in context, and it is argued that his encounter with psychoanalysis in Cuernavaca shaped his critique of the Church as an institution. The radicalisation of his concept of the Church reached a high point with the publication of ‘The seamy side of charity’ and ‘The vanishing clergyman’, both in 1967.

‘D'une manière générate, on peut dire que les littératures chrétiennes de l'Orient sont largement tributaires de la littérature grecque.’ This statement of the late Paul Peeters concerning oriental hagiographical literature may equally well be applied to that of the Slavs. At the same time it does not in any way detract from the merits of original Slavonic hagiography to admit its debt to the Byzantine influences which it preserved and enriched. The principal channels by which these influences were transmitted were Slavonic translations of Greek works, mainly ecclesiastical, which were made from the late ninth century onwards. Among these translated works, which formed the nucleus of early Slavonic literature, were the most important Byzantine hagiographical compilations and ascetical treatises produced between the fifth and seventh centuries: the Apophthegmata Patrum; the Ἀνδρν γων ββλος (=The Book of Holy Men); the Lausiac History of Palladius; the Historia Monachorum; the Historia Religiosa of Theodoret of Cyrus; the Pratum Spirituale of John Moschus; and the Scala Paradisi of St. John Climacus. There is also evidence that the Paraenesis of Ephrem the Syrian was translated, and at least one treatise by, or attributed to, Evagrius, as well as the Latin Dialogues of Gregory the Great, this last from its Greek version.

At the end of the eighth century Alcuin of York adapted an Augustinian catechetical programme for missionary use among the Avars of central Europe. This article explores how and why Alcuin went about adapting Augustine's plan, focusing on the place of his effort in the early medieval tradition. Special emphasis is placed on the idea of ‘innovative deference’ whereby Alcuin distinguished his work from that of his predecessors while consciously preserving a Christian tradition. The article also considers the importance of adaptation to the Carolingian world, including the influence of Alcuin's programme upon other Carolingian thinkers.

The Pseudo-Clementines contain a lengthy debate about astrology that stands in some literary relationship to Bardaisan's writings. Connections with earlier works are important, but the Recognitions' fourth-century Syrian context – much neglected by earlier scholarship – reveals why it devotes such a large amount of narrative space to a dialogue about astrology, fate and free will. This article argues that such material is more than just a remnant of the past carelessly appropriated by the Pseudo-Clementines. Astrology plays a crucial role in the Recognitions' polemical agenda, which reflects a complex rivalry between several groups in fourth-century Syria.