This article examines the political thought of the twelfth-century papacy, considering how popes of this era responded to the establishment of the kingdoms of Jerusalem, Sicily and Portugal. It compares the intellectual strategies used by popes to justify why these three polities were kingdoms rather than any other type of political unit. It is suggested that, to make their cases, popes advanced a range of arguments, many of which echoed the political ideas of Gregory VII. The article concludes by linking its findings to the wider question of how the twelfth-century papacy responded to the expansion of Latin Christendom.

This article investigates the involvement of Edward II in the negotiations that led to John XXII's election on 7 August 1316 after a two-year papal vacancy between 1314 and 1316. The main source for this analysis is a dossier of sixteen diplomatic documents, found among the Chancery records in The National Archives in London. The article concludes that Edward II tried to exploit the papal vacancy as a means to re-establish his international profile and seek support abroad in order to face opposition at home, thus ensuring a place for the English Crown within the European political milieu.

The distinction between ‘Lithuanians’ and ‘foreigners’ made by the law of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with regard to eligibility for senior offices was less clear in practice. The protracted dispute, between 1591 and 1600, over the royal nomination of a ‘Pole’ as bishop of Vilna, has traditionally been presented as an expression of Lithuanian particularism after the 1569 union between Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. Using neglected capitular sources, this article re-examines the crucial, but underappreciated role played by the Vilna cathedral chapter in this cause célèbre. The motives for the chapter's opposition to the royal nominee cast doubt on the allegedly overwhelming importance of the defence of Lithuanian ‘sovereignty’. Instead, the case demonstrates the significance of material interests in the actions of early modern ecclesiastical corporations.

The essay argues that a text first printed in English in 1651 must date from about 1610, and that it preserves a first-hand account of previously unsuspected theological discussions, arranged by Archbishop Whitgift in late 1595, that eventuated in the Lambeth Articles. The doctrinal positions advanced in these discussions – and in the several written responses to the Articles that Whitgift also solicited – clarify the archbishop's handling of this early predestinarian controversy but also complicate in fundamental ways the received picture of the late Elizabethan doctrinal landscape.

The 1661 Savoy Conference has generally been seen as a failure for which Richard Baxter is principally to blame. While it is true that he must share in the responsibility, it should be shared more widely. This article argues that the failure at the Savoy was the end result of tactical errors made a year earlier by the wider Presbyterian leadership who then left Baxter to shoulder the blame alone; and that the restored bishops never had any intention of offering any meaningful concessions at the Savoy.

The experience of young male Dinka refugees during Sudan's second civil war (1983–2005) illustrates the connections between religious change, violence and displacement. Many of the ‘unaccompanied minors’ who fled to camps in Ethiopia and then Kenya moved decisively towards Christianity in the years during which they were displaced. Key variables were the connection between education and Christianity, the need for new structures of community, and the way in which the Church offered a way to make sense of the destruction of civil war. As the war ended, many former refugees returned to their home regions as Christian evangelists, leading to further religious change. Their case parallels other mass conversion movements in African Christian history but takes place in a post-colonial context of civil war.

The history of a sect can scarcely avoid dancing with sectarianism. Even if the sect has vanished from the earth, it is difficult not to become either a defender or a critic, and when there are controversies still living, history cannot help but feed them and feed off them. The only certain way to avoid this is to retreat inside the sect entirely, becoming part of a world where it is the only and obvious subject of interest. And so the histories of religious minorities easily become self-referential ghettoes, where formidable expertise is built up while basic questions about how the subject is framed are left unasked.