In one of the great purple passages of nineteenth-century English historiography, Thomas Babington Macauley in his review of Leopold von Ranke's History of the Popes declared the papacy to be the western institution most worthy of historical study. Accordingly, historians have devoted innumerable pages to the analysis of papal politics, ideology, finances, and many other areas. However, there are still aspects of the history of the papacy that have been seriously neglected.

The stress of Elizabethan and early Stuart Puritans on the significance of the family as the fundamental spiritual unit of society has led historians to the apparent but perhaps simplistic conclusion that the origins of this doctrine are to be found in Protestant theology. The concomitants of the doctrine—an exaltation of the marriage relationship, a demand for household religious education and discipline and a slight but noteworthy elevation of the position of women within the household—are therefore attributed to Protestantism and particularly to Protestantism of “the hotter sort.” We are told, for example, that “the Reformation, by reducing the authority of the priest in society, simultaneously elevated the authority of lay heads of households” and that the stress on household religious instruction and discipline “was part of the protestant inheritance.”

Recent research on the rôle played by Calvinism in the political and economic development of modern Europe has some resemblance to the mythical fight against the Lernaean hydra. For decades historians have tried to cut off the heads of this theory, and have indeed proved that at many points in modern history Calvinist religion was practised without any of the political and economic consequences which are said to be closely connected with the Calvinist attitude towards life. Yet historians who have studied the growth of the modern world, have ascertained again and again that Calvinist countries or circles reacted in a way different from that of Catholics and Lutherans. Whenever one head of the theory had been cut, two other heads grew at once. What is the reason for this strange failure?

For the American Puritan minister Increase Mather, the battle of Armageddon would be “the most terrible day of battel that ever was.” “Asia is like to be in a flame of war between Israelites and Turks,” he wrote in The Mystery of Israel's Salvation, “[and] Europe between the followers of the Lamb and the followers of the beast.” In the Asian and European spheres of action, or so Mather anticipated, God's Israelite and Protestant armies would “overthrow great Kingdoms, and make Nations desolate, and bring defenced Cities into ruinous heaps.” The inevitable victory would reshape the course of history, for the destruction of Roman Catholic and Ottoman power would be accompanied by the conversion of the Jews and the lost tribes of Israel to Christianity and by their restoration to their ancestral homeland in Palestine. Then would come the birth of the millennium in Jerusalem and the subsequent spread of the kingdom of Jesus Christ throughout Europe, the Middle East, and the rest of the world.

Among the innumerable warriors against legalized racial segregation and discrimination in American society, the iconic Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged as a principal spokesman and symbol of the black freedom struggle. The many marches that he led and the crucial acts of civil disobedience that he spurred during the 1950s and 1960s established him and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as rallying points for civil rights activities in several areas in the American South. King's charisma among African Americans drew from his sermonic rhetoric and its resonance with black audiences. Brad R. Braxton, a scholar of homiletics, observed that King as a black preacher “made the kinds of interpretive moves that historically have been associated with African American Christianity and preaching.” Braxton adds that “for King Scripture was a storybook whose value resided not so much in the historical reconstruction or accuracy of the story in the text, but rather in the evocative images, in the persuasive, encouraging anecdotes of the audacious overcoming of opposition, and in its principles about the sacredness of the human person.” Hence, King's use of this hermeneutical technique with scriptural texts validated him as a spokesman for African Americans. On a spectrum stretching from unlettered slave exhorters in the nineteenth century to sophisticated pulpiteers in the twentieth century, King stood as a quintessential black preacher, prophet, and jeremiad “speaking truth to power” and bringing deliverance to the disinherited.

The year 1988 marked the 100th anniversary of the publication of H. C. Lea's A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. I would like to get the next century off to a good start by renaming his enterprise “A History of the Criminal Prosecution of Heretics in the Middle Ages.” The term inquisition has been widely misunderstood and misused by historians. There are two distinct abuses, one upper-case and the other lower-case.

Numerous competent studies have appeared on Christian apologetics—both Byzantine and Western Medieval—against Islam. A significant gap, however, remains. The Byzantines, of course, first encountered Islam because of the Arab conquest in the second and third quarters of the seventh century. Yet the earliest known Byzantine apologist against Islam is Saint John Damascene in the eighth century. But what initial impression did the Arab conquest and Islam make upon seventh-century Byzantine contemporaries? The seventh-century Byzantine sources on Byzantine reactions to the Arab conquest are scarce, inconveniently located, and insufficiently studied. There is no known individual Byzantine tract of the seventh century devoted specifically to the problem of Islam and/or the Arab conquest. But even though seventh-century sources are relatively rare—on any subject—by a close reading of those which are available one can glean some interesting and, in my opinion, important indications concerning Byzantine reactions to the Arab conquest. Obviously such a major historical event as the loss of Egypt, Palestine and Syria would greatly have impressed the Byzantines and would have caused them to ponder its significance.

Historical narrations of the Gregorian Reform tend to cultivate a certain machismo. The traditional narrative emphasizes a struggle for dominance between two men, Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV, which escalated from epistolary sparring to armed combat and culminated in a dramatic scene in which one man was on his knees before the other at Canossa. Even the newer narratives, such as the late Karl Leyser's “Gregorian Revolution,” while highlighting broad social and religious transformations attendant upon the movement, still privilege a revolutionary cadre, a handful of reformers (all male, of course) gathered around Gregory VII, who artfully channeled the discontents of the masses into a permanent reordering of western society.

Despite the energy devoted by American and Western European church historians and theologians to the question of the ordination of women in early Christianity and in the (western) medieval Christian Church, these scholars have shown comparatively little interest toward the female diaconate in the Byzantine Church, even when comparative analysis could potentially help elucidate questions regarding the theology and practice of women's ordinations in the West. Most of the research on the female diaconate in the Byzantine Church has occurred in Mediterranean academic circles, usually within the field of Byzantine studies, or in the Eastern Orthodox theological community; sometimes the examination of the female diaconate in the Byzantine Church has been part of a broader examination of women's liturgical ministries.

During its long history Roman society absorbed innumerable changes without losing its sense of continuity. The present study examines this process of change and continuity in one social and religious epithet of womanly virtue. It concentrates on the history of univira, an epithet that appears in Latin literature and funerary inscriptions from early pagan to Christian Rome.

The fate of Fundamentalism in historiography has been worse than its lot in history. The whirlwind of the twenties, after twisting through the denominations, ended by tearing even the name to shreds. Who were the Fundamentalists? Few today will use the name, and there seems to be no unity among those that do.

“Judged by the reception it met at the hands of those in power, both in Church and State, equally in Roman Catholic and in Protestant countries, the Anabaptist movement was one of the most tragic in the history of Christianity; but, judged by the principles, which were put into play by the men who bore this reproachful nickname, it must be pronounced one of the most momentous and significant undertakings in man's eventful religious struggle after the truth. It gathered up the gains of earlier movements, it is the spiritual soil out of which all nonconformist sects have sprung, and it is the first plain announcement in modern history of a programme for a new type of Christian society which the modern world, especially in America and England, has been slowly realizing—an absolutely free and independent religious society, and a State in which every man counts as a man, and has his share in shaping both Church and State.”

Just after the turn of the nineteenth century, the Rev. Samuel Miller, then a Presbyterian minister in New York but soon to become a professor of ecclesiastical history at the newly-founded Princeton Theological Seminary, published his ambitious Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century. He remarks in due course that “it would be improper to pass in silence the celebrated IMMANUEL KANT, Professor at Koeningsberg, in Prussia.” He then goes on to comment on the “extravagant panegyrics” of Kant's disciples, but having heard “that the acutest understanding cannot tolerably comprehend [this profound and extensive system] by less than a twelve-month's study,” he satisfied himself with a brief second-hand report. The incident might be considered an accurate commentary on the state of “Continental influence on American Christian thought” in 1803.

The past ten years have seen great strides in our understanding of the many forces at work in Counter-Reformation Spain. Historians and hispanists have demonstrated clearly that the Spanish religious landscape was complex and have elucidated several problems of interpretation. How readily did Spanish monarchs, religious leaders, and laity follow the decrees of the Council of Trent? How influential was the Spanish Inquisition in enforcing religious beliefs and behaviors? In what ways did religious reform involve assumptions about gender and differing religious roles for men and women? Finally, and more to my point, how did men and women respond to such assumptions and roles?

In an essay of the early 1920s, the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner offered alternative phrasings for the Protestant liberalism against which his generation was in revolt: one could speak of “the evolutionistic optimism of world-betterment,” or simply of “Christian Americanism.”

Whenever Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, stood before newly baptized Christians on Easter week, his task seemed straightforward: to explain the meaning of the initiations they had recently undergone. His explanations, however, were peppered with dialogue, as he thought aloud about the impression these rites had made on the new converts. He recounted the previous days' events in these words: “You went, you washed, you came to the altar, you began to see what you had not seen before.” This promise of novel sights, however, could not dispel the neophytes' lingering doubts. Aloud, he imagined their questions: “Is this that great mystery which the eye has not seen nor the ear heard … ? I see waters which I used to see daily; are these able to cleanse me?” Ambrose wondered if the baptism lacked sufficient majesty, such that a catechumen might ask, “‘Is this all?’” Ambrose already knew what he would reply, “Yes, this is all, truly all.” Baptism, the rite often timed to coincide with Easter, might disappoint as much as it inspired awe.

Readers of the New Testament could be excused for thinking that there is little consistency in the manner in which miracles are represented in the Gospels. Those events typically identified as miracles are variously described as “signs” (semeia), “wonders” (terata), “mighty works” (dunameis), and, on occasion, simply “works” (erga). The absence of a distinct terminology for the miraculous suggests that the authors of the Gospels were not working with a formal conception of “miracle”—at least not in that Humean sense of a “contravention of the laws of nature,” familiar to modern readers. Neither is there a consistent position on the evidentiary role of these events. In the synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—Jesus performs miracles on account of the faith of his audience. In John's Gospel, however, it is the performance of miracles that elicits faith. Even in the fourth Gospel, moreover, the role of miracles as signs of Christ's divinity is not straightforward. Thus those who demand a miracle are castigated: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” Finally, signs and wonders do not provide unambiguous evidence of the sanctity of the miracle worker or of the truth of their teachings. Accordingly, the faithful were warned (in the synoptic Gospels at least) that “false Christs and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders [in order] to deceive.”