One of the most pressing needs in the field of medieval biblical studies is for an adequate historical overview of developments in the late Middle Ages. One of the pioneers, the late Beryl Smalley, never fully achieved the intended sequel to her magisterial Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, although her English Friars and Antiquity was an excellent beginning, particularly for the early fourteenth-century English group. Other surveys end with Nicholas of Lyra, skip from the thirteenth century to the Reformation, or give only the most cursory attention to the late medieval period.2 And yet the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were rich in biblical commentaries, and scholars, have long considered a more precise understanding of developments in that period to be essential for an adequate appreciation of the character and significance of biblical commentaries in the early sixteenth century.

As befits an article encouraging reflection, I would like to start with a personal anecdote. I recently heard a paper by a prominent literary scholar, which I thought would be an analysis of his encounter with a text. (I am familiar enough with current literary analysis to know that it would certainly not be an analysis of a text.) It turned out instead to be purely autobiographical. In talking about this later with a friend of mine from the Italian department, he told me that this was a new trend. As he put it: “We used to do Dante's life and works, then with New Criticism we did ‘the work,’ then with New Historicism we did Dante's works in their historical location, then with post-structuralism we did Dante and me, and now we just do me.’

The association of the early Tudors with the elimination of ecclesiastical prerogatives and immunities has achieved a conspicuous respectability. Most attention is lavished justifiably upon Henry VIII, but the plural is stubborn. Henry VII has been paired with his more combative son, and his reign (1485–1509) is commonly credited as an important phase in the evolution of anticlerical prohibitions. Scholars seem convinced that he and his council “attacked” sanctuary and that the privilege's abridgment was something of a rehearsal for the English Reformation. But it is still possible, and not wholly unprecedented, to challenge the familiar view and to ask whether policies appraised as “notable encroachments” were either notable or, in fact, encroachments. After a sketch of the practice of sanctuary and a synoptical review of the thinking that led to sanctuary's destruction, we can return to Henry VII's council and courts and reevaluate earliest Tudor policy as an illustration of certain late medieval transformations of the abiding coalition between crown and church.

The decades between 1850 and 1930 saw traditional understandings of Christianity subjected to rigorous social, intellectual, and theological criticism across the transatlantic world. Unprecedented urban and industrial expansion drew attention to the shortcomings of established models of church organization while traditional Christian beliefs concerning human origins and the authority of Scripture were assailed by new approaches to science and biblical higher criticism. In contradistinction to lower or textual criticism, higher criticism dealt with the development of the biblical text in broad terms. According to James Strahan, professor of Hebrew at Magee College, Derry, from 1915 to 1926, textual criticism aimed “at ascertaining the genuine text and meaning of an author” while higher “or historical, criticism seeks to answer a series of questions affecting the composition, editing and collection of the Sacred Books.” During the nineteenth century, the controversy over the use of higher critical methods focused for the most part upon the Old Testament. In particular, critics dismissed the Mosaic authorship and unity of the Pentateuch, arguing that it was the compilation of a number of early documentary fragments brought together by priests after the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century B.C. This “documentary hypothesis” is most often associated with the German scholar, Julius Wellhausen. Indeed, higher criticism had been fostered in the extensive university system of the various German states, which encouraged original research and the emergence of a professional intellectual elite. It reflected the desire of liberal theologians to adapt the Christian faith to the needs and values of modern culture, particularly natural science and history.

Michael Heyd's description of the period between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as one of transition between orthodoxy and enlightenment has particular application to the theological climate of Geneva, the birthplace of Reformed theology. François LaPlanche refers to this era in Geneva as one of “enlightened or liberal orthodoxy.” He defines such enlightened orthodoxy as a return to the biblical text unencumbered by the controversial language of Reformed scholasticism, with the primary goal of creating a practical form of theology that the average parishioner could understand. One of the most representative theologians of this period and one who was to a great extent responsible for educating an entire generation of “enlightened orthodox” theologians was Louis Tronchin (1629–1705).

Around 1184, Alan de Lille composed a sermon addressed to Europe's knights (Ad milites) as part of a treatise on the art of preaching (Ars praedicandi). In it, Alan condemned the felonious and violent behavior of Western warriors and reproached them for their mistreatment of the poor and the Church—the very groups that knights ought to protect in an ideal Christian society. According to Alan, such actions must cease and knightly behavior must be reformed. Using scriptural precedent, he encouraged knights to consider their spiritual welfare by articulating a difference between internal and external military service. Knights, if they wish to be soldiers of God, must wield both temporal and spiritual arms: the former to protect the Church and their homelands, the latter to combat the enemies of their souls. Balance between the two was essential since external service (earthly combat) was empty and meaningless without its internal counterpart (spiritual combat). By ensuring the proper equilibrium, knights could fulfill their assigned role in the world while actively working to ensure their own salvation.

The student of Wyclif's work soon learns that communion with the master is only one of his rewards, and that it is well worth his while to cultivate an acquaintance with the editors, whose prefaces are not only filled with useful information but often adorned with bits of wisdom, expressions of devotion to the cause, and other items of a more poignant character. It is interesting, for example, to speculate about the identity of Reginald Lane Poole's slovenly copyist, whose faults are so devastatingly exposed in the preface to De dominio divino. And it is more than interesting to learn, from Rudolf Buddensieg's preface to the Polemical Works, that in 1880 the Delegates of the Oxford University Press refused to publish them; one may agree with Buddensieg that as of that date England was ungratefully remiss in her debt to “the memory of one of her greatest men.” Fortunately the Wycliff Society was formed in 1882 to remedy the lack, and in the short space of thirty years managed to publish almost all of the religio-political works, in about twenty-five volumes, and a number of the philosophical works as well. The collaboration between English and German scholars that made this success possible is amply attested in the prefaces, even down to the inevitable German claim, based to be sure on fact, that they had done the bigger share. Just as well, perhaps, if Buddensieg was right when he judged that “to edit mediaeval texts critically is work not very familiar to English scholars.”

Thus far we have considered all the learned ladies of whom we have any knowledge. But as the light of the sun shines above all the stars and with its bright splendor dulls the sparkling starlight, so the learned light of these other ladies stands, as it were, in the shadow because of the great luster of the incomparable young lady Anna Maria van Schurman.

Joh. van Beverwijck, Van de

Uitnementheyt des Vrouwelichen Geslachts (1643)

The centennial of the Azusa Street revivals of 1906 provides us with convenient poles for charting shifts in the landscape of Christian spiritual healing practices during the past century. Alongside unprecedented achievements in medical science, nearly 80 percent of Americans report believing that God supernaturally heals people in answer to prayer. Individuals who need healing, even after trying the best medical cures, readily transgress ecclesiastical, physical, and social boundaries in their quest for health and wholeness. The promise of a tangible experience of divine power, moreover, presents an attractive alternative to seekers disillusioned with what they perceive as the callous materialism of medical science and the religious legalism of traditional Christian churches. This essay calls for new narratives of sacred space that map the ways that pentecostal and charismatic healing practices have proliferated, diversified, and sacralized a growing number and variety of physical, social, and linguistic spaces in the past hundred years. At the turn of the twentieth century, modernist epistemological assumptions that privileged reason over experience encouraged fine intellectual distinctions between the sacred and the secular. In esteeming bodily experience as more trustworthy than disembodied doctrine and in resisting linguistic binaries as culturally constructed, postmodern epistemologies have multiplied the number and range of places available to be endowed with sacred meanings. I argue that boundaries between the sacred and the secular are dissolving at the same time that new boundaries are being established, privileging particular places and defining a new relationship among the United States, the Americas, and the world.

After the Revolution, Thomas Jones, an embittered loyalist exile, identified the culprits he deemed responsible for the rebellion in New York: the Whig “triumvirate” of Presbyterians—William Livingston, William Smith, and John Morin Scott. Jones averred that in the Independent Reflector (1752–53) and Watch Tower (1754–55), which they authored, “the established Church was abused, Monarchy derided, Episcopacy reprobated, and republicanism held up, as the best existing form of government.” The three wrote “with a rancor, a malevolence, and an acrimony, not to be equaled but by the descendants of those presbyterian and repulblican fanatics, whose ancestors had in the preceding century brought their Sovereign to the block, subverted the best constitution in the world, and upon its ruins erected presbyterianism, republicanism, and hypocrisy.”

On New Year's Day 1971 Pasadena, California, basked in its standard smog-tinged sunshine as well over a million people lined the route for the annual Tournament of Roses Parade. That year's grand marshal was America's “Protestant Pope,” evangelist Billy Graham. Consistently voted among America's most admired men and a highly visible spiritual counselor and friend of Richard Nixon, Graham may well have been at the zenith of his national influence. But, as he entered into the gala festivities surrounding the Tournament of Roses, Graham claimed that he was of two minds. Despite the “fanfare, the flag-waving,” Graham wrote later that year, “I have seldom had such mixed emotions as I had that day in Pasadena.” For he claimed he knew “that decadence had settled in. As I savored the grandeur of this great nation I also sensed its sickness.” As the elements of the parade headed down the boulevard, Graham and his wife Ruth waved to the smiling crowds while he, as he said, “watch[ed] the horizon for a cloud of impending revival to restore [America's] spiritual greatness.”

Tertullian is widely regarded as having originated the expression Credo quia absurdum (est) (I believe because it is absurd) and the phrase often appears in contemporary polemics about the rationality of religious belief. Patristic scholars have long pointed out that Tertullian never said this or meant anything like it. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the circumstances in which this specific phrase came into existence and why, in spite of its dubious provenance, it continues to be regarded by many as a legitimate characterization of religious faith. This paper shows how Tertullian's original expression—“It is certain, because impossible”—was first misrepresented and modified in the early modern period. In seventeenth century England a “credo” version—I believe because it is impossible—became the common form of Tertullian's maxim. A further modification, building on the first, was effected by the Enlightenment philosophe Voltaire, who added the “absurdity condition” and gave us the modern version of the paradox: I believe because it is absurd. These modifications played a significant role in Enlightenment representations of religion as irrational, and signal the beginning of a new understanding of faith as an epistemic vice. This doubtful maxim continues to play a role in debates about the cognitive status of religious faith, and its failure to succumb to the historical evidence against it is owing to its ongoing rhetorical usefulness in such debates.

It is commonly said that the two live movements in European and American Christianity during the eighteenth century were rationalism and pietism. Both were rooted in the seventeenth century. And commonly their differences, which were real, are stressed to the point of making them appear to have been completely separate and even mutually exclusive developments. This obscures the fact that in origin they were but obverse sides of a single movement which gathered enough power and momentum during the eighteenth century to sweep in religious freedom and separation of church and state over the opposition of the great bulk of traditional orthodoxy in the churches.

Three major Protestant missionary organizations—the Company for the ropagation of the Gospel in New England (the NEC, founded 1649), the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG, founded 1701), and the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK, founded 1709)—all played significant roles in Christianizing and civilizing the inhabitants of British North America. The New England Company had the longest history and is the oldest Protestant missionary organization. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent no fewer than three hundred missionaries to America between 1701 and 1783. While the NEC and the SPG have received scholarly attention, the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge has been virtually ignored.

From a historian's point of view, the Catholic diocesan clergy in the United States look rather like forgotten men. As a group, they have never figured prominently in the scholarly literature. American Catholic history may have had an emphatically clerical bias as late as the 1950s, but the focus then was mainly on the chancery. The parish clergy were almost as neglected as the famously docile laity. The laity have moved in recent years to the forefront of Catholic historical consciousness, and won for themselves a less docile image in the process. But priests have not enjoyed equivalent attention—indeed, in the eyes of at least some practitioners, priests are today mildly suspect as subjects of research. We do not, after all, want a return to the bad old days of “clerical” history. The predictable consequence is a major hole in our church-historical knowledge. Despite the new vitality in American Catholic historical scholarship, we know very little about the history of diocesan priests in the United States—who they were, how they lived and worked, what they thought about their ministry or the people they served.

The Broad Church movement, of which “muscular Christianity” was one of the most influential expressions, represented a type of liberalism within the Church of England. Benjamin Jowett claimed that the name “Broad Church” was first proposed in his hearing by Arthur Hugh Clough and that it had become a familiar term in circles at Oxford a few years before 1850. In July 1850, A. P. Stanley, writing on the Gorham controversy in the Edinburgh Review, said that the Church of England was “by the very conditions of its being, not High or Low, but Broad.” The term “Broad Church”, however only began to be used generally from October 1853, when an unsigned article by W. J. Conybeare, entitled “Church Parties,” appeared, also in the Edinburgh Review. F. D. Maurice believed that Conybeare invented the name.

In 498, four days after the death of Pope Anastasius II, two men were elected and consecrated bishop of Rome on the one day, the deacon Symmachus and the archpriest Laurentius. Fighting broke out between their supporters and the dispute was referred to Theodoric, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, who declared that Symmachus was to be pope. A synod held in 499 accepted him as pope and passed legislation on church government; it awarded to Laurentius the see of Nuceria. But trouble soon broke out again when Symmachus was accused of improper relations with women, squandering church property and celebrating Easter on the wrong date. While on his way to Ravenna, where Theodoric had summoned him to give an account of himself, he became convinced that he was being framed, and returned secretly to Rome by night without completing his journey. Theodoric reacted by appointing Bishop Peter of Altinum as visitor of the Roman see, but this became a further source of controversy. At some stage Laurentius returned to Rome. Rioting broke out again, with clergy being killed and Symmachus himself being attacked on one occasion. Two more synods failed to pacify in the city or put an end to the schism. This only came years later, in 507 or 508, when Theodoric ordered Festus, Laurentius' noble patron, to hand over the churches of Rome, which had been held by Laurentius, to Symmachus. Laurentius retired to Festus' estates, leaving Symmachus to preside over a reasonably peaceful and united church until his death in 514.

The idea and the ideal of religious poverty exerted a powerful force throughout the Middle Ages. “Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff,” Christ had commanded his apostles. He had sternly warned, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for someone who is rich to enter into the kingdom of God.” And he had instructed one of the faithful, who had asked what he needed to do to live the most holy sort of life, “if you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give your money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Beginning with these biblical injunctions, voluntary poverty, the casting off of wealth and worldly goods for the sake of Christ, dominated much of medieval religious thought. The desire for a more perfect poverty impelled devout men and women to new heights of piety, while disgust with the material wealth of the church fueled reform movements and more radical heresies alike. Often, as so clearly illustrated by the case of the Spiritual Franciscans and fraticelli in the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the lines separating devout believer from condemned heretic shifted and even reversed themselves entirely depending on how one understood the religious call to poverty. Moreover, the Christian ideal of poverty interacted powerfully with and helped to shape many major economic, social, and cultural trends in medieval Europe. As Lester Little demonstrated over two decades ago, for example, developing ideals of religious poverty were deeply intermeshed with the revitalizing European economy of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries and did much to shape the emerging urban spirituality of that period.

In 1710 Archbishop John Sharp of York of the Church of England and Daniel Ernst Jablonski of Prussia began a dialogue hoping for the possible union of their respective churches. They wanted to bring about a junction of the Reformed and Lutheran churches in Prussia through the adoption of the Anglican liturgy and episcopal polity and an organic union between this Prussian church and the Church of England, perhaps including other Protestant churches as well. The progress of this effort surprised even the men most dedicated to it, and it appeared likely that they could forge an association within a short time. Yet, in the end these churchmen were disappointed and their negotiations came to naught. The reasons, however, were not religious in nature; indeed, there seemed to be no religious impediment to the effort at all. Although the ministers of both Queen Anne and King Frederick expressed interest in the discussions, political considerations relating to the English exertions to end the war of Spanish Succession led to the failure.