John Keble and his protégé Charlotte Yonge take ritual time in a seemingly humbler, domestic direction. Rather than using higher time to engage an overarching political project as Wordsworth did with the Revolution, they see the church calendar as sacralizing even the smallest mundane tasks – the trivial round, as Keble calls it. Yet, for Keble, the transfiguration of daily work performed in linear time leads to nothing less than humanity’s deification or theosis, to use the language of the Greek Church Fathers venerated by the Oxford Movement. For Yonge, higher time and the Prayer Book’s liturgies not only reconcile reason and faith but also structure the material work of parish reform – the building of a local school, the repair of a dilapidated neighborhood, the hiring of a responsible priest to replace an absentee one. Through liturgy, therefore, the Tractarians can attend to everyday life while still seeing that life as sharing in the divine.

This chapter focuses on the ‘parting of the ways’ between Judaism and Christianity. The documents show how anti-Jewish writings became central to Christian identity but also indicate real encounters between Christians and Jews and a closer relationship than might be anticipated.

Ælfric, abbot of Eynsham, wrote a number of important works in both Latin and Old English. Here he writes a Latin preface for his first series of forty Catholic homilies in Old English which were intended to be read aloud to the congregation or read privately by the laity. He dedicates the work to Sigeric of Canterbury, explaining that he is basing the homilies on the works of the Church Fathers and more recent Latin theologians from the Continent, and that he believes in the need for Latin works to be translated into English. Ælfric makes use of the modesty topos in his elegant preface.

The Romans adaptation of Greek philosophy was illustrated by the Stoics and Epicureans. The Stoics held that humanity is determined by the fates of nature, while the Epicureans believed that happiness came from seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Plato was revived by Plotinus and dominated Roman philosophy during the early years of Christianity. Both the missionary zeal of early Christians and the tranquility of Roman administration rapidly spread Christianity. The teachings of Jesus were bolstered by defenders, who gave Christianity form and content. St. Augustine successfully reinterpreted Platonic thought within Christian theology, and the consequent influence on psychology continued well beyond. With the fall of the Western empire, intellectual life came to a virtual halt, and only the monastic movement preserved remnants of Greek and Roman civilization. The papacy assumed a leading role in spiritual direction and civil administration. The power shift to the East saw the Byzantine Empire assume a distinctive Greek character. The rise of Islam threatened the survival of Christianity in the Middle East and in North Africa. But, at the same time, much of the Greek heritage of scholarship was preserved and extended in the great academic centers of medieval Islam.

The deployment of the Church Fathers for the definition and defense of “the correct faith” is reflected in a wealth of images, literary and visual, that showcase the divine inspiration of the patristic literature. Similar to what has been observed with regard to authors of biblical books, a select group of fathers was elevated in importance, among whom John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus were preeminent. This hierarchy is evidenced by visual images, indeed far more expressly than in literature.

Theology derives from the Greek word “theologia,” literally discourse about God. For most of the Middle Ages, it referred solely to the study of the divine nature. During the course of the twelfth century, however, the term acquired a more expansive meaning. Under the systematizing and system-building impulse of scholasticism, theology came to refer to the study of almost anything related to God’s activity in creation and salvation. Angels, ethics, last things, and a whole host of other subjects came to fall under its purview. For the anonymous author of the Summa “Antiquitate et tempore” even canon law counted as a form of theology, but many of his contemporaries thought otherwise and, in the end, it was their more restrictive understanding that prevailed. Hostiensis’ (d. 1271) claim that canon law could be called a form of theology because it was of divine rather than human origin, which elicited much criticism from later canonists like Johannes Andreae and Panormitanus, is the exception that proves the rule. The terms “theology” and “canon law” eventually came to refer to distinct – even rival – academic disciplines.