This article analyzes the scant treatment of Muslims in medieval inquisitorial thought, focusing mainly on the late fourteenth-century Aragonese inquisitor Nicolau Eymeric's Directorium inquisitorum (1376). It argues for four contexts in which to understand his engagement with Islam. First, as background, is a longstanding Christian (although not inquisitorial) tradition categorizing Islam as a heresy, with which he did not substantially engage. Second is his own goal to extend inquisitorial authority to new subjects, in which he drew on previous inquisitorial thought about Jews. The third involves conflicts between church officials and the Crown of Aragon about jurisdiction over non-Christian subjects. The fourth centers on the supposition that he did not view Muslims living within Christendom as an especially covert or insidious threat requiring special investigation to uncover, which speaks to how he and other inquisitors viewed their role and the nature of the threats they aimed to counter. In broad terms, this article contributes to our understanding of one important way in which medieval Christianity engaged with other religions. It also provides a basis for understanding later developments in early modern Europe.

In past iterations of ecclesiastical historical writings and teachings, there has not always been sufficient acknowledgment of the encounters between Christians and their religious Others. This article is an exercise in diachronic comparative interreligious encounter: a Muslim-Christian engagement in the eighth century CE and a Jewish-Christian epistolary exchange in the seventeenth century CE. The former took place in Baghdad in the court of a caliph, whereas the latter took place between individuals in London and the Hague, between Baruch Spinoza and Henry Oldenburg. While it might be tempting to highlight the narratives of conversion away from one religion into another—whether from Christianity to Islam, Christianity to Judaism, or vice versa—in current historiography, it also seems that quotidian realities of interreligious exchange often do not lead to such conversions, and yet leave the participants better informed and further enlightened about the practice and pursuit of their own religion. The following two accounts are neither triumphalist nor tragic. Patriarch Timothy and Caliph al-Mahdī's exchange in eighth-century Baghdad shows the degree to which divine identity and Christian apophasis mattered. The letter exchanges between Spinoza and his interlocutors also show the degree to which divine mystery as ontological demarcator for both the doctrine of the Trinity and corresponding Christology, as well as Spinoza's repudiation of both, mattered. Lastly, these two examples of interreligious engagements show a pathway of encounter which does not dismiss or cancel the religious Other.

Scholarly narratives of the development of Christian anti-Jewish thinking in antiquity routinely cite a number of standard, well-known authors: from Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Justin Martyr in earlier centuries to Eusebius, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine in the fourth and early fifth centuries. The anonymous author known as Pseudo-Hegesippus, to whom is attributed a late fourth-century Latin work called On the Destruction of Jerusalem (De Excidio Hierosolymitano), rarely appears in such discussions. This has largely to do with the fact that this text and its author are effectively unknown entities within contemporary scholarship in this area (scholars familiar with Pseudo-Hegesippus tend to be specialists in medieval Latin texts and manuscripts). But “Pseudo-Hegesippus” represents a critical contribution to the mosaic of Christian anti-Jewish discourse in late antiquity. De Excidio's generic identity as a Christian piece of classical historiography makes it a unique form of ancient anti-Jewish propaganda. This genre, tied to De Excidio's probable context of writing—the wake of the emperor Julian's abortive attempt to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple, resurrect a robust Judaism, and remove Christians from public engagement with classical culture—renders De Excidio an important Christian artifact of both anti-Judaism and pro-classicism at the same time. This article situates Pseudo-Hegesippus in a lineage of Christian anti-Jewish historical thinking, argues that De Excidio codifies that discourse in a significant and singular way, frames this contribution in terms of its apparent socio-historical context, and cites De Excidio's later influence and reception as testaments to its rightful place in the history of Christian anti-Judaism, a place that modern scholarship has yet to afford it. As a piece of classical historiography that mirrors not Christian historians—like Eusebius and others—but the historians of the broader “pagan” Greco-Roman world—like Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus—De Excidio leverages a cultural communicative medium particularly well equipped to undergird and fuel the Christian historiographical imagination and its anti-Jewish projections.

Modern scholarship often attributes to Eusebius of Caesarea (d. circa 340 AD) the view that God's heavenly kingdom had become manifest in the Roman Empire of Constantine the Great. Consequently, Eusebius is deemed significant in the development of Christian eschatological thought as the supposed formulator of a new “realized eschatology” for the Christian Roman Empire. Similarly, he is considered the originator of so-called “Byzantine imperial eschatology”—that is, eschatology designed to justify the existing imperial order under the emperors in Constantinople. Scholars advancing these claims most frequently cite a line from Eusebius's Tricennial Oration in which he identified the accession of the sons of Constantine with the prophesied kingdom of the saints in the Book of Daniel. Further supposed evidence has been adduced in his other writings, especially his Life of Constantine. This article argues that this common interpretation of Eusebius's eschatology is mistaken and has resulted from treating a few passages in isolation while overlooking their rhetorical context. It demonstrates instead that Eusebius adhered to a conventional Christian eschatology centered on the future kingdom of heaven that would accompany the second coming of Christ and further suggests that the concept of “Byzantine imperial eschatology” should be reconsidered.

This article offers an interpretation of the actions of the Franciscan Juan de Albuquerque as bishop of the first Catholic diocese in Asia. The analysis considers the local impacts of the episcopal government and the connectivities of its action, particularly through comparison with similar processes adopted in Spanish America. Based on a wide range of historical sources and cross-referencing them, it investigates how Albuquerque governed in three stages: first, describing the enormous challenges he faced; second, outlining his profile; and third, proposing a reconstruction of his government and the implications it had on the dissemination of Catholicism. The hypothesis raised at the outset is that, in Asia, the Bishop of Goa built a structure that was inspired by the matrix and dynamics of the Portuguese dioceses, which were then adapted to the specificities of the local situation. Accordingly, it is necessary to review the thesis of Charles Boxer, for whom the dynamics of evangelization in the spaces overseen by the Iberian empires from the 16th century onwards were generated essentially by the missionaries from the regular clergy and by the monarchies. By shifting the focus to the actions of a single bishop, the article demonstrates that Albuquerque, the diocesan church he created from scratch, and the secular clergy should not be underestimated.

In matters of eucharistic theology, John Wyclif (d. 1384) is best known for his rejection of the scholastic doctrine of transubstantiation. There were many reasons why Wyclif came to regard this doctrine as fundamentally untenable, such as the impossibility of substantial annihilation and the illogicality of accidents existing apart from subjects, but chief among them was his deep dissatisfaction with the prevailing interpretation of Christ's words, “Hoc est corpus meum,” the words of institution required to confect the sacrament in the Mass. Wyclif insisted that getting this proposition right was essential for a correct understanding of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. This article presents Wyclif's position on this matter within the context of later medieval scholastic discussions in an effort to lend clarity to his larger understanding of eucharistic presence. The article will then trace the reception of Wyclif's ideas to Bohemia at the turn of the fifteenth century, with special attention given to the Prague master Jakoubek of Stříbro. One finds that Wyclif, and then later Jakoubek, developed new and effective means of conceptualizing the conversion of the eucharistic elements, thereby expanding the ways in which one can affirm Christ's presence in the consecrated host and the salvific effects of that presence for faithful communicants.

This essay explores the ongoing debates about the character of early Cistercian monasticism, the dating of early Cistercian documents, and assumptions about the Cistercians’ place in eleventh- and twelfth-century monastic “reform.” It analyzes the Cistercians’ narratives of their foundation in relation to particular moments in the twelfth-century history of the order, drawing on and elaborating recent theories about the dating of these documents. Although the Cistercians often seem the quintessential example of “reformed monasticism,” this essay argues that the earliest Cistercians did not present themselves as reformers but only gradually developed a rhetoric of reform over the course of the twelfth century. Finally, it suggests that reform is less a specific set of changes than it is a rhetorical use of the past that authenticates current practices and affirms that these interpretations of the past must be right and true.

The Apophthegmata Patrum (Sayings of the Desert Fathers) offer a compelling literary perspective on the daily lives of early Egyptian monastics. The routine necessities of food and drink played a distinct part in the physical and spiritual survival of these novel monastic communities. When, what, and how much a monk ate could cause celebration or scandal. Every meal was likewise a test. This study has two purposes. First, it situates the Sayings's many references to bread, salt, oil, and fruit within the dietary possibilities of late antique Egypt. Second, and more broadly, this study highlights the place of eating (or not eating) as it relates to particular monastic notions of spiritual wellbeing. Meals were always an arena for acts of heroic asceticism, but they also served as highly charged communal confrontations, a dizzying back and forth of hospitality received or rejected, of honor and shame played out in alimentary paradoxes. In this, the Sayings bear witness to the spiritual politics of eating within Egyptian monastic culture and provide insight into the formation of late antique religious identities, betraying fundamental tensions inherent in other forms of Christian literature.

This essay adds to our knowledge of the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1431–1449) as a complex but significant instance of the many efforts to bring union to the divided Latin West and Byzantine East. In this paper, I explore the role of Augustine as an auctoritas at Ferrara-Florence, examining Juan de Torquemada's Apparatus Super Decretum Florentinum Unionis Graecorum (1441), a programmatic theological treatise written to represent the Latins’ theological perspective as expressed in Laetentur caeli (“Let the heavens rejoice”), the papal bull disseminated by Pope Eugenius IV on July 6, 1439. I argue that Torquemada's use of Augustine corroborates the otherwise circumstantial probability that he composed the Apparatus to explain the theological terms on which Eugenius IV and the Latin papalists declared union with Byzantine Christians and simultaneously to defend the bull against the doubts held among conciliarists and their sympathizers around Europe. Showing how Torquemada used Augustine in this conciliar document also adds greater clarity to the reception of Augustine at the Council of Ferrara-Florence. More specifically, it helps explain the utility of Augustine in Torquemada's attempt to adjudicate the relations between the Latin West and Byzantine East on the one hand and papalist and conciliarist Latins on the other.

Following the English invasion of Scotland in July 1650, ministers and laymen in the Church of Scotland splintered between Protester and Resolutioner factions: The Protesters argued that the Church of Scotland required further moral reformation in order to appease a vengeful God, and the Resolutioners were more content to accept the reintegration of former royalists into places of trust following the civil wars. This article explores the profound ways in which this split fundamentally altered relationships in the unusually well-documented parish of Crichton in Midlothian. Unlike other studies that have emphasized the ways in which the Protesters moved toward a position of separation from the rest of the kirk, this article explores a group of Protesters who sought to actively reform the kirk from within. Godly agitation in parish affairs was characterized by three traits: it was coordinated, remarkably litigious, and disseminated in manuscript libels and petitions rather than print. Ultimately, while this godly elite was adept at agitating for further reformation at the parish level, it did so without seceding from the structures of the national church altogether.

From 1603 until the mid-nineteenth century, weekly bills of mortality were printed and published in London, providing detailed statistics on births, deaths, and plague fatalities for each parish. This article analyzes the currency of the bills and their numbers in English religious thought during and after the four great plague epidemics London experienced in the course of the seventeenth century (1603–1604, 1625–1626, 1636, and 1665–1666). A broad survey of sermons, pamphlets, treatises, poems, and dialogues from these years reveals not only the bills’ ubiquity as an index of divine punishments, but the new kinds of intellectual work made possible by a multiplicity of numbers keyed to times and places. Claims about the moral, doctrinal, and political meanings behind the plague could now be made with an unprecedented specificity and sophistication, seized upon by High Church Anglicans, Puritans, and Dissenters alike. As an episode in the history of empirical theology, the bills’ ecclesiastical reception vindicates theology's central place in the epistemological transformations of the early modern period, as well as the influence of new kinds of empirical data on the parameters of religious thought.

According to Thomas Aquinas, a miracle had to surpass the whole of the created nature, which meant the visible and corporeal, as well as the invisible and incorporeal nature. Prospero Lambertini (1675–1758), the future Pope Benedict XIV, when he was promoter of the faith, noticed that it was impossible to distinguish a cure that occurred beyond the boundaries of incorporeal and invisible nature (the whole nature) from one that exceeded just corporeal and visible nature. The issue was of utmost importance since it risked delegitimizing the whole system of miracle verification. Consequently, Lambertini, in the fourth book of his magnum opus De servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione (On the Beatification of the Servants of God and the Canonization of the Blessed, 1734–1738), developed a new classification of miracles, which included the works of angels, with the aim of solving the problem. Furthermore, to counteract Spinoza's denial of miracles, he claimed that miracles were not contrary to the laws of nature.

While much has been written on Benjamin Franklin's view of religion, less has been written on his Christian theology. This article first situates Franklin as an important figure in the religious Enlightenment, connecting his own view of philosophy to his teachings on Christian revelation. Providing historical context on the subscription debates, it then gives a comprehensive treatment of Franklin's Christian theology in the 1735 Hemphill affair. New scholarship on Franklin's transatlantic sources confirms that, far from attempting to undermine Christianity, he appealed to popular European writers in an attempt to bend it to reasonable ends. Moreover, Franklin's own views on church polity and liturgy developed over time. As he rose from a middling artisan to political power, he saw both the need for religious appeals and the threat that competing sects posed to political unity. His focus shifted from religious freedoms in private associations to institutionalizing elements of Christian teachings in education, charity, commerce, and defense. His experiences with rigid Presbyterian orthodoxy and chaotic New Light enthusiasm also awakened him to the need for more reasonable forms of worship, and he set to the task of experimenting with Christian liturgies to achieve both the tranquility of parishioners’ minds and social unity.

This article situates George Whitefield's accounting controversies of the 1740s in the local public accounting cultures of colonial America. It argues that Whitefield developed a novel “commercial theology” and funding strategy for his Georgia orphanage that he believed would allow God to shape every aspect of the institution. While Whitefield's published financial accounts initially provoked little commentary, his critics began to use accounting as an “impartial” tool to disprove the minister's theology. The bold theological claims and lack of institutional oversight embedded in Whitefield's accounts violated the norms of public accounting, and his critics stated that an independent audit was the only way to clear the minister's name. The audit worked, and the combination of Whitefield's experience managing a transatlantic institution and his accounting controversies caused the minister to change his commercial theology. This article uses Whitefield's accounting controversies to make two overarching arguments. First, it argues that religious institutions were key parts of the local public accounting systems that shaped the development of financial ethics in colonial America. Second, it argues that financial accounts both shaped and reflected the religious assumptions of the bookkeepers who produced them.

This article examines British and American Christian apologists’ reinterpretation of the biblical account of the Canaanite conquest in response to concerns about natural rights and ethical behavior that emerged from the English Enlightenment. Because of Enlightenment-era assumptions about universal rights, a new debate emerged in Britain and America in the eighteenth century about whether the divine order for the biblical Israelites to slaughter the Canaanites was morally right. The article argues that intellectually minded Christians’ appropriation of Enlightenment values to reframe their interpretation of the biblical narrative (often in response to skeptical attacks from writers classified as deists) demonstrates that in the English-speaking world, Enlightenment rationalism and Christian orthodoxy frequently reinforced each other and were not opposing forces. Though many orthodox Christians repudiated traditional Calvinist interpretations of the biblical Canaanite conquest, they defended the authority of the biblical narrative by drawing on Enlightenment-era assumptions about natural rights to provide justifications for what some skeptics considered morally objectionable divine orders in the Bible. By doing so, they set the framework for the continued synthesis of natural rights and rationality with a biblically centered Protestantism in the early nineteenth-century English-speaking world and especially in the United States.

Between 1712 and 1715, the Convocation of the Church of England attempted to replace the existing informal orders used for the consecration of churches, chapels, and churchyards with a single uniform rite. While these efforts have been associated with the erection of the Fifty New Churches to provide for the populous and expanding suburbs of London and Westminster, the discussions actually arose out of the political divisions between the bishops and the Lower House of Convocation. The efforts to establish an official order of consecration was also a response to the changed ecclesiastical climate that followed the Toleration Act of 1689, which allowed for the registration of Dissenter chapels. The Established Church found its religious hegemony threatened and the particular status of its places of worship, achieved through consecration, challenged. The church responded to the criticism of their existing forms of consecration by reforming the liturgy as well as demonstrating the historical and legal basis for the practice. The sermons preached at the consecration or reopening of these churches provided a further opportunity for the clergy to justify the ceremony as well as to draw comparisons between these churches and Dissenting meetinghouses.

British coronations from 1761 to 1838 have conventionally been dismissed as tawdry pageants with little religious significance. The study of these ceremonies has also been impeded by the dominance of historiographical frameworks characterizing the later Georgian period as an era of political secularization. Drawing upon many neglected sources, this article challenges such presuppositions by situating the Anglican clergy in the foreground of coronations and exploring the ways in which these events were perceived to retain a religious and political significance. The discussion encompasses theoretical understandings of coronations and the practical tensions between church and state exposed by them.

This article considers the existence of a distinctive form of fundamentalism in the northern-Irish province of Ulster. It does so by examining the Protestant minorities that grew significantly in the decades after the Ulster revival of 1859. These evangelical others are important because their members were more likely to have fundamentalist tendencies than those who belonged to the main Protestant churches. The existing scholarship on fundamentalism in Northern Ireland focuses on Ian Paisley (1926–2014), who was a life-long adversary of Irish republican separatism and a self-identified fundamentalist. Yet, the focus on Paisley draws attention away from the potential origin of fundamentalism in the early twentieth century that is associated with religious revival in the early 1920s and the heresy trial of a “modernist” Presbyterian professor in 1927. George Marsden's classic study defined fundamentalism as an American phenomenon, yet, with Paisley and developments in the 1920s in mind, he noted that “Ulster appears to be an exception.”1 To what extent was that true? Was there a constituency of potential fundamentalists in the north of Ireland in the early twentieth century? If there was, did the social and political circumstances of the region and period produce a distinctive Ulster variety of fundamentalism?

This article investigates the extent to which the theology and structure of marriage within the German Moravian Church functioned to connect and grow the Church as an international network across the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century. Specifically, it argues that Moravian conceptions of marriage facilitated intentional international partnerships that led to the relocation and migration of many European women as Moravian missionaries throughout the eighteenth century. In some instances, early Moravians lived in sex-segregated communal housing and viewed sexual intercourse as a sacred unification with Christ, free of human desire. Part of the Moravian impetus to be “everywhere at home” required preventing individual congregational differences in order to create a larger international community. If the Church aimed to view all brothers and sisters as productive bodies to serve the growth of the community, then these bodies needed to be interchangeable and unrooted to a specific space. The premeditated practice of intermarriage between congregations meant that there were not individual groups that practiced the Moravian faith, but rather a singular global church family. Based on an analysis of Moravian missionary women's memoirs, this article begins to delve into the social and geographic mobility available to these eighteenth-century women through a nonnormative marital structure.

It is often assumed, particularly by outsiders, that the conflict in Northern Ireland—known euphemistically as “the Troubles”—in which some 3,600 people lost their lives, was an atavistic throwback to Europe's religious wars of earlier centuries. In 1979, by which time some 2,000 people had already been killed in the Troubles, Pope John Paul II proposed to pay a visit to Ireland and perhaps to cross the border into Ulster's sectarian cockpit. The idea provoked outrage from some Ulster Protestants and high anxiety for the British, concerned that the Pope might inadvertently inflame the situation or embarrass the British by raising difficult issues. But there were hopes, too, that an unequivocal condemnation of violence by the head of the Catholic Church might help to bring the conflict to an end. This article, based on extensive research in diplomatic archives, reveals deep divisions within the Catholic Church on the Irish question and points to the power and limitations of the British diplomatic reach into the Vatican. It reveals also, however, the powerlessness of prayer and pleadings in the face of terrorist violence.