When it first appeared in Germany, Gottfried Arnold's History of heretics (1699) was a publishing sensation, immediately causing a stir due to its radical reinterpretation of the Christian past. Numerous scholars wrote against it, but the most determined was the Orthodox Lutheran Ernst Salomon Cyprian, who considered the central thesis of the work – that the history of the Christian Church was a history of decline – a deliberate attack on the principles of Lutheran belief. In Cyprian's view, Arnold's reading of the past was shaped by a cast of personal faith which not only rewrote the Protestant narrative of Christian history, but threatened the very fabric of Lutheran belief.

The two works of Rodulfus Glaber, the Histories and the Life of St William, have always been held to be of special importance because of the supposed Cluniac origins of this writer. Glaber is commonly referred to as a Cluniac monk, as can be seen from the title of an important modern series of articles about him, while Delaruelle's famous essay about Cluny and Holy War leans heavily upon his ‘Cluniac connections’. The lack of literary sources about the history of Cluny in the reign of Odilo accounts in part for the extensive use of his Histories by the numerous corps of historians of Cluny. By contrast the Life has been somewhat neglected, and indeed the literature on St William of Dijon in English is very limited. It is important, therefore, to discover in what sense, if any, Glaber can be called a Cluniac.

On 23 January 295 a young recruit named Maximilian, a Christian by religion and twenty-one years old, appeared in court before Dion, proconsul of Africa, in the town of Theveste in Numidia. He was accused of refusing a summons to serve in the Roman army. Maximilian was accompanied to court by his father, Fabius Victor, described in the record as a temonarius, i.e. ‘an agent who collected the temo, or tax levied for the outfitting of military recruits’; the latter was obliged to present his son for army service if he could not find another suitable recruit. Maximilian, although pressed by the proconsul to submit himself to the formalities leading to induction into the army, stubbornly resisted and was finally sentenced to death. His execution followed immediately.

While historians are familiar with the destruction wrought on the nation's cathedrals during the Civil War, the rather different fate experienced by Westminster Abbey – an important symbolic building that tied together royal and religious authority – has been strangely neglected. This article argues that the Abbey played an important and distinctive role in the religious and cultural politics of the nation during the 1640s and 1650s. It uncovers the Abbey's role in helping to legitimise successive non-monarchical regimes and ultimately explains how efforts to ‘reclaim’ the Abbey at the Restoration formed part of broader efforts to renegotiate and reinterpret the nation's past.

During the early modern age the appointment of Maltese bishops involved conflicts in the management of ecclesiastical patronage, jurisdictional issues and international diplomacy. The procedure for appointment, established by Charles v in 1530 when he granted Malta to the Order of St John, was the result of a compromise: safeguarding rights of royal patronage without undermining the independence of an international military order. It is important, however, to underline the reforming activity conducted by bishops appointed in such political ways, especially through the application of some institutions provided by the Council of Trent, such as diocesan synods.

What is a photisterion? Translators usually render the Greek word phōtistērion (site of illumination) as ‘baptistery’ (site of immersion in water). This article reopens the study of phōtistēria, arguing that being ‘immersed’ or ‘illuminated’ evokes different senses of the concomitant meaning of the sites and rites of initiation. It situates late ancient phōtistēria from epigraphic and literary sources in their theological and liturgical contexts. The evidence from Galilee, Syria, Jordan and Cyprus corroborates the idea that many Christians of late antiquity preferred ‘illumination’ to express the composite rite of initiation in a phōtistērion, within which ‘baptism’ was one part.

The Imprensa Evangelica, published between 1864 and 1892 in Brazil by Presbyterian missionaries, furnished Brazilian Evangelical minorities with a means of crafting new religious identities and of asserting their presence in the public arena. Its editors defended the political rights of non-Catholics in the country, took part in religious controversies with Catholic publications in Brazil and Portugal, and intervened in on-going public debates on the separation of Church and State and the abolition of slavery. This article also examines how the periodical's circulation generated new reading practices in Brazil.

This article examines how the Castilian conquest of Granada and the conversion of its inhabitants to Christianity affected the Catholic Church; specifically, it analyses the role played by parish churches as recipients and administrators of religious donations, first from Muslims and later from converts. This study shows that the Church was not the only beneficiary of the donations it received, since these gifts were part of a strategy on the part of converts to be accepted as legal members of Castilian society and on the part of the Crown in its campaign for the unity of the kingdom.

The Great Western Schism divided Latin Christendom along national lines, but it began in 1378 not as a conflict between two national factions of cardinals in the conclave, but in two successive elections by the same college of cardinals, none dissenting. Each of the two new popes had the same usual claim to canonical legitimacy, but since each election was flawed in its circumstances and procedure, each pope could and did condemn and excommunicate his rival. Investigating the activities of the two leading bureaucrats of the Roman Curia, the archbishops who headed its two most powerful ministries, the Chancery and Camera, this paper explores an alternative interpretation of the two elections. According to this narrative, there were two extraordinary interventions in the succession to Pope Gregory xi: the disorderly papal election of 9 April 1378 was captured by one papal minister, the deputy director of the papal Chancery, Bartolomeo Prignano, archbishop of Bari; the second election, of 20 September, which began the Great Western Schism, was a counter-coup managed by the minister in charge of the Camera Apostolica, the chamberlain Pierre de Cros, archbishop of Arles.

The concile national of 1811 was one of the greatest flashpoints in the struggle that pitted the Napoleonic Empire against the papacy. This episode, which deserves to be situated within more recent historiographical trends, reveals much about the nature of Napoleonic imperialism and the Church's distrust for the power of the state. This article puts forward the view that the failure of the concile national was not strategic but tactical. Several bishops were frustrated with the pope's recalcitrance over episcopal investiture and fearful of schism. But their initial openness to neo-conciliarism turned to hostility when confronted with the state's intolerance.

Professor L. A. Stone, writing on the ‘educational revolution’ of the period 1560–1640, came to the conclusion that one of the ‘most striking characteristics of the English Puritans was their belief in the value of education as a weapon against the three great evils of Ignorance, Prophaneness and Idleness’. He found that a significant number of puritan gentry and merchants supported the ‘teaching of the three R's and religion to the many, and Latin and religion to the few’ through the many scholarships and foundations that appear in this period. One may, however, question Stone's contention that the Puritans' educational motives were tied to the inculcation of obedience to the established social and political order. It is more than likely that, by spreading the Word of God, defeating what he calls the aesthetic and emotional attractions of the counter-reformation, and establishing a truly protestant nation, Puritans sought to educate a breed of reformed men dedicated to the coming of the Kingdom of God in their own lifetime. This, conceivably, was what was meant by a genuinely learned and protestant society.

The chronicle of Robert the Monk is a well-known source for the First Crusade and the most copied First Crusade narrative in the Middle Ages. Though the number of copies decreased after the twelfth century, it increased in the fifteenth, with most of these later copies either being preserved in German-speaking lands or originating from there. It is possible that a First Crusade narrative was needed in fifteenth-century German-speaking lands because of their proximity to the struggle against the Ottomans, and the chronicle of Robert the Monk was the only one widely available for copying.

This article examines the development of Protestant thought in early Elizabethan England by analysing James Pilkington's 1560 commentary on the Old Testament book of Aggeus (Haggai). Pilkington's commentary contained ideas about the Church and its reform that had deep affinities with radical Marian Protestant thought about purity, separation and resistance to ungodly monarchs. The way in which Pilkington transformed these ideas in a time of Protestant political ascendancy provides valuable insights into the nature and development of English Puritanism.