With the convening and accomplishments of the Second Vatican Council liberal Catholicism seems triumphant in the Catholic Church. Despite continuing controversy over such agonizing problems as birth control, it would appear that the Church has forthrightly and definitely decided to reconcile itself as fully as possible to modern society. From this present perspective, the historian may well need to reexamine certain aspects of the rise of liberal Catholicism and to reassess the work of certain of its pioneers and the frustrating obstacles they encountered. No longer on the defensive, the partisans of liberal Catholicism may want to reclaim those they have ignored or rejected. One curious figure who seldom if ever has been given credit for his role in the emergence of liberal Catholicism is the Abbé Henri Grégoire, priest and politician during the French Revolution and patriarch of the schismatic Constitutional Church.Liberal Catholic historians have tended to shy away from too much attention to this puzzling and perhaps embarrassing figure, leaving him to the attacks of conservative Catholics or the enthusiastic devotion of neo-Jansenist sectarians. Secular liberals who have generally preferred to face a Catholic Church which was unequivocally reactionary have pretended to see Grégoire as an excentric of little significance.

Despite a surfeit of studies recognizing Cotton Mather's support for a range of alchemical and occult practices, historians have yet to integrate these occult activities with Mather's religious and scientific thought as a whole. I argue that we can bring clarity to Mather's engagement with the occult by refracting it through his reverence for Lutheran Pietist Johann Arndt, whose writings, especially Vier bucher vom wahren Christentum (Four Books of True Christianity), offer a key to Mather's employment of hermetic materials in his major works of natural philosophy. Through analysis of The Christian Philosopher and The Angel of Bethesda, as well as Mather's private writings, I suggest that Mather's cosmology was vitalistic in ways not previously acknowledged by historians. This view of creation as dynamic, enchanted, and marked by divine signatures—evidenced most clearly in Mather's concept of the nishmath-chajim—helped Mather reconcile the new science, Puritan covenant theology, and alchemical traditions descending from Paracelsus. By positing a divine, dynamic presence in nature, Mather retained an orthodox view of God as sovereign and transcendent while intimately engaged in a process of cosmic redemption, slowly transmuting the base matter of a fallen creation into a new heaven and new earth.

A good deal of literature has dealt with the relationship between the works of John Wyclif and John Hus. It seems clear now that John Hus did not simply parrot Wyclif as Johann Loserth argued in the nineteenth century, but rather he was the product of a native Bohemian reform movement. He regarded Wyclif as a fellow reformer and was reliant on him for much of his realist philosophy and ecclesiology but was largely independent of Wyclif in matters of dogmatic theology. Concerning the eucharist, for example, Hus clearly accepted the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation rather than Wyclif's remanence.

There are four men whom popular tradition, and the builders of Luther's monument in Worms, have grouped around the figure of the Wittenberg reformer as his greatest forerunners: Peter Waldo, Savonarola, Wyclyf and Hus. Luther himself considered only the last named as a man to whom he was indebted, and with whose teachings he could increasingly identify himself, at least after he wrote that famous letter to Spalatin in February 1520 in which he claimed, half-correctly, that he had always held the whole doctrine of Hus without having even been aware of it. But what, in the consciousness of present historiography, is the relation between the heritage of Hus, the whole vast movement called Hussitism, and the Lutheran reformation?

An excess of partisan feeling has surrounded the study of the Covenanting movement in 17th century Scotland. The issues which led to the Second Reformation, bound so closely as they are with religious feeling, have often prevented historians from exhibiting a reasonable amount of objectivity toward God's New Israel, as the Covenanters were inclined to call Scotland. Consequently the Covenanters have usually been portrayed as either the embodiment of the true faith or as a group of bigoted and conceited fanatics.

John Hales's life during the Marian Exile throws much light on the development of that Puritan group which came back to England in 1558 and helped to found the Elizabethan church in the chaos left from the Roman Catholic reaction of Queen Mary. While Bishop Ponet and John Knox were formulating the political credo of the later Puritan party, Hales was working out his “congregational experiment” in the field of practical politics at Frankfort.

“Are we to permit none but louts and boors to rule when we can do better than that.” With these words, Martin Luther challenged the politicians of his day to educate the young, for, he wrote, it is pleasing to God that princes, lords and councilmen and others in authority be educated and qualified to perform the functions of their offices. It was necessary for those in authority to educate the young, because many parents would not do it, others were incompetent to do so, others did not have the time, and that was not to mention orphans.One of those politicians who responded to Luther's challenge was Philip the Magnanimous of Hesse. In the years 1526 to 1537, Philip organized a territorial system of public education consisting of state Latin grammar schools and a university.

From time to time during the later colonial period individuals or groups in America sought and received advice and political assistance from certain influential friends in England. Who these “friends at Court” were and what their actual relationship was to the colonists and to the British Government has remained obscure. Part of the answer is to be found in the Minutes of the Protestant Dissenting Deputies now deposited in the Library of the City of London at Guildhall. These manuscript volumes contain not only a record of all the colonial matters discussed by the Deputies, they also reveal a hitherto unrecognized influence in the growth of religious liberty in America.

Urbanization was the child of the industrial revolution. Born in the previous century, urban life rapidly matured in the nineteenth. The growth of industrial centers such as Glasgow placed an unbearable strain on the existing parochial system as people who had been reared in rural ways were thrust into urban situations alien to rural interests. One observer described the movement of the population from country to town as “a flood which swept away all the old relations of urban and rural districts.” The result of this social upheaval was twofold: a widespread attitude of religious disinterest and the appearance of social vices on a large scale. To the staid but wary religious community, urbanization appeared to be the basis of irreligion and moral decadence.

Christian freedom was a major concern for Calvin from the very beginning of his theological career. The very long sixth and final chapter of the first edition of the Institutes is devoted to this question. He opens the chapter by calling this freedom “a matter of prime necessity; … without a knowledge of it consciences dare undertake almost nothing without faltering, often hesitate and draw back, constantly waver and are afraid … unless this freedom be grasped, neither Christ nor gospel truth is rightly known.” From this first edition till the last Calvin continues to talk at length about three aspects of Christian freedom: freedom of the conscience and freedom from the law because of justification by grace alone; freedom of the liberated Christian to obey God's will voluntarily and not out of necessity; and freedom in outward things which are “indifferent,” that is, in themselves neither necessary nor forbidden. For much of this understanding Calvin is deeply indebted to Luther and Melanchthon.

There is a certain irony in the title of Eldon G. Ernst's Moment of Truth for Protestant America, the standard interpretation of the Interchurch World Movement (IWM) of 1919–1920, because this broad and generally perceptive study of the IWM is based primarily upon an elaborate falsification of the historical record. That falsification was perpetrated in a document entitled “History of the Interchurch World Movement” prepared under the direction of Raymond B. Fosdick. Fosdick, who was the lawyer and long-term adviser of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had the document compiled precisely to conceal the real role Rockefeller played in the organization. Research in Rockefeller's papers reveals the truth about his role and thereby illumines a significant aspect of the ecumenical movement and its relationship to wider historical trends. This overlooked aspect from the background of the liberal side of the fundamentalist controversy is particularly pertinent today as tensions mount between those who identify themselves as “liberals” and those who claim to lead a “moral majority” of resurgent conservatism. Perhaps Washington Gladden, the old social gospel advocate, was not entirely wrong when he referred to a Rockefeller contribution as “tainted money,” however idealistic Rockefeller's motives may have been.

Richard Hooker's work seems relevant to two of the major human projects of our time, the search for unity within the Church and the attempt by modern states to establish their rival ideologies in the world. Hooker's fraternal patience with his Puritan opponents has frequently been noted, as well as his courage in daring to suggest publicly in Elizabethan England that even Roman Catholics might be saved. It would seem likely on the face of it that so irenic a figure could contribute much to ecumenical discussion. With regard to the war for the minds and souls of men in which some statesmen regard their countries as now engaged, one would also expect to find material for reflection in Of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a work in which ultimate convictions and values are treated in intimate relation to their possible social embodiment and political enforcement.

In these days, when men's ideas of the functions of rulers and governments are being changed—sometimes overnight—and when new programs and new “ideologies” are proclaimed with bewildering suddenness, students are returning with renewed interest, and with new interests, to the investigation of ancient governments. The nature and significance of the official character of the Roman emperor, and of his heir, the Byzantine emperor, has proved a particularly fruitful field of research in recent years, and our ideas in this domain have been transformed and expanded in significant fashion. We have been shown, for example, how the emperor came to be surrounded by a whole galaxy of attributes and virtues — chief among them Bravery, Clemency, Justice, Sense of Duty, Foresight—which made up his official personality. Constantly illustrated on coins and commemorated in inscriptions, these attributes served to remind the people of the Roman Empire what they might expect from their rulers. The emperor came to be looked upon as the father of his people, the source of all good things, and the fount of all wisdom and law.

Henry Hammond (1605–60), the learned and practical English priest who during the Interregnum did as much as any man and a good deal more than most to reinforce and renew the ideational underpinnings of his Church, is a familiar figure in seventeenth-century Anglican studies. Historians speak of his captaincy of a circle of Anglican divines. One names him the “oracle of the High Church party”; another sees him as the principal transformer of Anglicanism. The Independent John Owen likened him to a clerical Atlas bearing on his shoulders “the whole weight of the episcopal cause.” The scholars just quoted call Hammond a “Laudian” but are uneasy with the label and loath to defend it. He appears in their work as an exemplary High Churchman standing for de jure episcopacy, Prayer-Book piety, the Eucharist, and royal headship of the Church. His intransigent Churchmanship contrasts in some degree with his character and temperament. He comes down to us as “the spokesman of those who would make no concession,” yet Richard Baxter, who thought him “the fons et origo of the prelatical bigotry of his day, wrote that he “took the death of Dr. Hammond … for a very great loss; for his piety and wisdom would sure have hindered much of the violence” of the Restoration.

Richard Greenham, rector from 1570 to 1591 at Dry Dayton Church outside of Cambridge, England, once preached a sermon based on I Thessalonians 5:19 (“Quench not the spirit”). Not one to let the brevity of a biblical text limit his own exegesis, Greenham offered up a sermon of nearly seven thousand words that likely took the better part of an hour to deliver. At the heart of Greenham's message was the proposition, “Whether that man which hath once tasted of the spirite may loose it, and have it quenched in him.” Greenham was a leading light among “the godly,” a group of mostly Cambridge- and Oxford-educated Protestant clergy who, working within the boundaries of the institutional Church, sustained a significant evangelical effort in England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These reformers embraced with some fervor a theology grounded in the veracity of election and reprobation, and worked to instill a like enthusiasm in the general population. In particular, the godly's message focused on how an individual might identify the marks of divine election and gain assurance of salvation.

Prior to Protestant reforms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholic clerics frequently preached about the necessity of confessing one's sins to a priest through the sacrament of penance. After the passage of laws in the 1570s making it a criminal offense to be a Catholic priest in England, Catholics residing in Protestant England possessed limited opportunities to make confession to a priest. Many laypersons feared for their souls. This article examines literature written by English Catholic clerics to comfort such laypersons. These authors re-interpreted traditional Catholic understandings of how sacramental penance delivers grace to allow English Catholics to confess when priests were not present. These authors—clerics themselves—used the printed word to stand in for the usual parish priest to whom a Catholic would confess. They legitimized their efforts by appealing to the church's modus operandi of allowing alternative means to receive grace in cases of extreme emergency. Although suggestions to confess without a priest's mediation sound similar to Protestant views on penitence, these authors' prescriptions differ from Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican, and post-Tridentine Catholic positions on penance in the Reformation era. Diverse understandings of penitence lay at the heart of confessional divisions, and this article sheds new light on heretofore unexamined English Catholic contributions to these debates, broadening scholars' conceptions of what it meant to be Catholic in Reformation England and Europe.

In a letter from Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in the middle of the third century, written while he was in hiding during the Decian persecution to the imprisoned confessors in Carthage, there is mention of two crowns, two colors and two flowers. The letter can be dated to the middle of April 250. Cyprian wanted to console those in prison that they would not be failures if they failed to be martyred. Those who were not martyred could receive equal renown through their confession as those who were martyred. As much as martyrdom was highly prized among African Christians, Cyprian wanted to assure the imprisoned confessors that it was not the only way to please God. In the past (ante), in a time undoubtedly before persecution, one could be clad in white for good works, just as now one could be clad in crimson for martyrdom. For those who were not going to die a martyr's death and win the crimson crown for suffering or the flower of warfare, Cyprian seemed to say that the confession of their faith could now be counted as a good work for which the reward was the white crown or the flower of peace.

Reforming efforts at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the challenges of Protestantism, the rise of national states, and the reassessment of just war doctrine, had initiated a moment of crisis for crusading by the mid-sixteenth century. Indeed, historians have described these trends as signaling the end of the movement. This article explores the theoretical underpinnings deployed by an elite group of Spanish theologians and churchmen in May of 1567 to shore up their monarch's claim to a lucrative version of the crusade indulgence granted by popes since the fifteenth century. By rehearsing traditional arguments, eschewing those they saw as obsolete, and deploying new ones, these theorists expose the remarkable adaptability of crusading. The integrity of papally sanctioned holy war against the enemies of the faith collapsed in later centuries with the rise of international law and recognition of permanent divisions within the respublica Christiana. Yet, the ability of sixteenth-century Spanish theorists to recast ideology in the face of shifting intellectual, cultural, and social tides indicates the continuing viability of crusading during a period of inchoateness.

English Roman Catholic reactions to the issues presented by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) were as varied as the elements which made up the English Catholic community itself. Any reading of the Catholic periodical press in England during the years immediately after Darwin's epochal publication will bear this out. These reactions ranged from a simple reaffirmation of childhood formulations of the account of creation in “Genesis,” to rather disingenuous allegorical reinterpretations of the meaning of what “Moses”—and Darwin—had said.

Historians have neglected a seventeenth-century hero whose actions and words laid the groundwork for America's democratic diversity and religious toleration—at least that is the theme of a best-selling history of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, the predecessor of New York. This courageous but forgotten lawyer, Adriaen van der Donck, went out from Holland in 1641 as a young man to serve as “schout” (chief judicial officer, both sheriff and prosecutor) of Rensselaerwyck, then moved to New Amsterdam where he eventually became the spokesman of colonists irked by the arbitrary highhandedness of the Director General, Petrus Stuyvesant. Van der Donck is now proclaimed to have ensured that Dutch religious toleration became the basic assumption and pattern that evolved into modern American religious pluralism. The great popularity of this recent revelation ensures that thousands of people, from general readers to professional historians whose specialty lies elsewhere, now believe that religious toleration in America originated in New Amsterdam/ New York, where Dutch customs of toleration contrasted with the theocratic tendencies of English colonies. Is this claim true? In my opinion—no. Should historians pay attention to journalistic jingoism? Perhaps—because unexamined assumptions affect topics treated more seriously. What, then, can be said about the fabled Dutch tradition of toleration and its contribution to the discussion of religious freedom in America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?