The early modern Japanese Church developed syncretistic practices in which Roman Catholicism came to function similarly to Buddhism and Shintō. This study examines the development of such practices, with particular focus on penitential rituals. It argues that certain of these rites were produced in the very early years of the mission through extensive discussions between European priests and Japanese Christians. They were compromises that were both hard-fought and intentional.

The statutes of the Gilbertine order, established by Gilbert of Sempringham in the second half of the twelfth century, underwent modification during the following century as a consequence of two legatine visitations, in 1238 and 1267. This paper examines these new regulations in the context of growing episcopal concern for the internal discipline of nunneries and considers the possible inter-relationships between the ‘self-regulating’ and internally-disciplined Gilbertine order and the synodal legislation of reforming bishops and their episcopal visitation of non-Gilbertine nunneries, particularly in Yorkshire. It suggests that the visitation by Ottobuono Fieschi of the Gilbertines in 1267 and his legatine council of London in 1268 informed the outcomes of both, leading to a convergence of Gilbertine legislation with the wider legislation that applied to all nunneries.

Under the leadership of James the Lord's brother the Christian Church at Jerusalem was probably the most influential of all existing Christian communities. It could boast a system of internal organisation under authoritative resident leaders; it was an important missionary centre, despatching apostles and recalling them, or sending advisors to them when they were in difficulties. Neither the prestige nor the destiny of the Jerusalem Church were the immediate concern of the author of the Acts of the Apostles, and it is Hegesippus who keeps us informed of its progress. The stability of that Church was apparently shattered shortly after the death of James, when the Jews revolted against the Romans and ‘immediately Vespasian attacked them’. We hear no more about the Jerusalem Church directly from Hegesippus until he tells of a meeting convened to elect a successor to James, and Eusebius tells us that this meeting took place after Jerusalem had been taken in A.D. 70.

This essay is an attempt to find out what Winstanley meant by certain terms, using close textual analysis. Extensive work has already been done in locating Winstanley in political, theological and, as far as possible, intellectual terms. This will receive only cursory treatment here. A scholarly tradition can be traced from Bernstein, through Petergorsky and Margaret James to Christopher Hill, which places Winstanley at the beginning of the development of materialist socialism although, it is suggested, his ideas proved to be a false start and went underground for a century or more. This view derives from his later works, especially The Law of Freedom, with its practical design of tilling the land communally, and sees his mysticism either as a cloak for revolutionary aims or as an undeveloped stage in his thought which he later left behind and which is thus of secondary importance. Work has been done, sometimes by the same scholars, to map out the tenets of his religious beliefs in the context of contemporary radical Puritanism, considering whether he was, for instance, a mortalist, a universalist or a millenarian, and how far he was any of these. For such doctrinal identification one can look to W. S. Hudson, the co-operative study of L. Mulligan, J. K. Graham and J. Richards and to Christopher Hill, for all of these have compared and contrasted his beliefs with those of Seekers, Ranters, Fifth Monarchists and Quakers. Hill himself, however, has pointed out the difficulties of placing Winstanley in a particular group because of the fluidity of the borders between one sect and another; sects sharing certain beliefs while differing in others and changing character internally with changing political circumstances.

Boniface VIII probably spent some half a million gold florins on the acquisition of lands for the Caetani. But of that money not a word is said in the Introitus and Exitus volumes, the main account books of the Apostolic Chamber. Where was it accounted for and from whence did it come? The pope had certain special sources of income which would not ordinarily be reckoned in the main account books, and of these, some could properly be termed his fortune as a private person, while others attached to his office as pope. There was the private fortune which he had before he assumed the tiara. There were the incomes of benefices personally reserved to him, gifts made him by prelates and laymen, legacies, sometimes the goods of deceased prelates, and the so-called ‘private visitations’ and ‘secret services’. Later in the fourteenth century many other sources were tapped for the benefit of a secret fund, and all in all the sums which it disposed of were formidable and sometimes enormous. The ends to which the money was directed were as various as the characters and policies of the pontiffs: it was used for nepotistic ends on a princely scale, as a mere convenient subsidiary to the main financial machine, as a war account, as a means of making enormous loans to lay rulers, or simply as a petty cash account. The earliest records of the secret accounts to survive are from the midfifteenth century, but the large sums involved, and its covert but great importance in papal policy in general make the earlier history of this institution as interesting as it is obscure.

The peculiar difficulty of contemporary or near contemporary history is less the privacy of archives than the excess. This is the more true concerning an age like that of Hitler, where the accidents of war, and the seizure of documents, followed by a consuming public interest, especially in Germany, have led some governments to open their archives before they would otherwise have considered it wise. The great collection of State (and other) papers in the Bundesarchiv at Coblenz already affords material for many enquirers for many years. The material for the Church struggle as it lies in archives was surveyed by John Conway, with a delightful description of the extraordinary confusion, and movement of papers hither-and-thither, caused by war and its aftermath. For obvious reasons the West managed to collect the most important papers. But no one should overlook the circumstances that documents and archives lie still inaccessible, or largely inaccessible, in the East. This is not peculiar to the documents of the age of Hitler, for students of the nineteenth century cannot yet gain access to the substantial Russian collections, even when these students hold chairs in the German Democratic Republic or in Poland and even when they work upon some ‘harmless’ and remote theme. The Polish archives are more available but are only beginning to be sorted and published. The Russian academy has much to do before it can make its resources more widely available.

The abbey of St Augustine was named for Augustine ‘Apostle of the English’, as was its associated parish church, but was governed from its foundation by canons of the rule of St Augustine of Hippo. The two Augustines in the equation were a source of confusion. A reconstruction of the abbey's lost liturgical calendar suggests that the chapter sought to exploit this uncertainty in the matter of the foundation history of their abbey, with the aim of displacing, in the popular mind, the humble ‘English’ saint of the dedication in favour of the ‘Latin’ founder of the canons' rule.

The Reformation simultaneously transformed the identity and role of bishops in the Church of England, and the function of monuments to the dead. This article considers the extent to which tombs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bishops represented a set of episcopal ideals distinct from those conveyed by the monuments of earlier bishops on the one hand and contemporary laity and clergy on the other. It argues that in death bishops were increasingly undifferentiated from other groups such as the gentry in the dress, posture, location and inscriptions of their monuments. As a result of the inherent tension between tradition and reform which surrounded both bishops and tombs, episcopal monuments were unsuccessful as a means of enhancing the status or preserving the memory and teachings of their subjects in the wake of the Reformation.

On 10 October 1216, eight days before his death, King John sent instructions to Walter de Lacy, sheriff of Hereford, by letters patent:

Know that for the sake of God we have conceded to Margaret de Lacy three carucates of land to be assarted and cultivated in our forest of Aconbury, to build there a certain religious house for the souls of William de Braose her father, Matilda her mother and William her brother. And we instruct you to assign those three carucates of land in the aforesaid forest to the same Margaret.

For the historian of King John, this concession indicates that the king was at last prepared to restore to his favour the Braoses and the Lacys, Welsh Marcher lords and barons of Ireland, who had spectacularly fallen from favour in 1208. Yet for the historian of the military orders and of monastic orders in general, it marks the beginning of a relationship between a patron and a religious house which gives a valuable insight into how that relationship could go badly wrong.

This article investigates the development of the use of texts and images in commemorating the regicide of Charles I , from private commemoration among Royalists during the Republic, to its official institution after the Restoration. The article will argue that the Office gave official sanction to an image of the virtuous suffering king which had been in existence even before his execution. The Office also presented a particular view of the king's moral character, the causes of the Civil War and the Restoration which was to become the accepted account expounded in commemorative sermons for the next 150 years. Drawing on Old Testament themes, the Office also aimed to point a political moral used by successive governments, namely that attacks on the established order incurred divine punishment.

This case study of the Alsatian community of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines argues that although negotiating religious differences at the local level was essential to defining community, the political context was essential in setting the framework. Straddling the Lorraine/Alsace border, Sainte-Marie was divided among Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Zwinglians and Anabaptists as well as between French- and German-speakers. After the Thirty Years' War, the changing demographic balance among the confessional groups, especially the immigration of Catholics necessitated a re-evaluation of Catholic/Protestant coexistence. The Peace of Westphalia established a legal framework in the imperial territories based on cuius regio eius religio. France's 1648 annexation of most of Alsace, meant that French centralising authority collided with this seigneurial territorial system. The French crown could not, however, govern without the co-operation of the local authorities: religious groups at Sainte-Marie exploited the resulting ambiguities. In uneasy coexistence Catholics enjoyed royal favour and Protestants had the protection of the local seigneurs. This local outcome mirrored the imperfect process by which the French monarchy imposed itself on the imperial system of Alsace.

The role of Protestantism in the German Democratic Republic (the GDR) has been strongly disputed since the ‘turn’ and reunification of 1989/90. Many of the disagreements derive from different interpretations of the relationship between State, Church and Society in the GDR. This paper first describes the state institutions which formulated and executed church policies for the Communist Party of the GDR (the SED), and then surveys relations between Church and State, offering an explanation for actions and motivations on both sides. The thesis advanced is that the decisive phase of the transformation of a ‘bourgeois’ Church into a ‘Church within socialism’ took place between 1958 and 1978, and that the preceding and subsequent periods merely had the character of ‘past history’ and ‘epilogue’.

A variety of institutions influenced Church–State policies in the GDR. First, at government level, there was until 1957 a department for ecclesiastical affairs controlled by the deputy prime minister ; after that date, there was an official secretary for church affairs, answerable to the chairman of the government (Ministerrat). At party level in the SED, there was a working group for church affairs which was part of the secretariat of the SED's central committee, answerable to the first secretary or the secretary-general of the central committee. The central committee office included a member with specific responsibility for church affairs, generally the second in line after the party chairman. In the Ministry for State Security (MfS), those involved were the head of the so-called ‘main department for social superstructure’, together with a representative of the minister or the minister himself, and the heads of administration in individual ‘Lands’ or districts.