In the early twelfth century, the Byzantine monk James of the monastery of Kokkinobaphou composed six sermons on the early life of the Virgin Mary. Two copies of these sermons, known collectively as the Kokkinobaphos manuscripts, have survived: BN, MS gr. 1208 and BAV, MS gr. 1162. Based on a combination of internal and external evidence, scholars have dated the manuscripts to the second quarter of the twelfth century, and furthermore suggested that their production and decoration was undertaken during the lifespan of James. Both copies bear an extensive and almost identical narrative and typological cycle of illumination, which has been securely connected to the imperial environment of the Byzantine court of the twelfth century and was linked, more tentatively, with the Sevastokratorissa Eirene, a prominent patroness of the court, widow of the Seuastokrator Andronikos, the second son of the Emperor John II Komnenos (1118-43). The miniatures illustrating the text of James are renowned for their artistic quality and their iconographical peculiarities.

In his eyewitness account of the First Crusade, Fulcher of Chartres described the shipwreck and drowning of a boatload of crusaders who were bound for the Holy Land in 1097. After the bodies of the dead were recovered, he explained how ‘they discovered crosses evidently marked on the flesh above the shoulders’. Fulcher supposed this incident to be a miracle, ‘divinely revealed’, and that the marking was a ‘token of faith’ (pignusfidei) bestowed by God upon his servants. It was a sign to the surviving crusaders that God favoured them and would fulfil the promise he had made that ‘the just, though they shall be taken prematurely by death, shall be in peace’ (Wisd. 4, 7).

On at least three occasions during the pontificate of Innocent III, Gerald of Wales—failed bishop, celebrated story-teller, and inveterate and inventive pilgrim, made the journey to Rome.There, having already carried out his preliminary research, he was always eager to examine two of the most outstanding images in Rome at close quarters. These two images—the Uronica at the Lateran and the Veronica at St Peter’s—made such a deep impression upon him that his description and explanation of their importance was to form a central role in his Speculum Ecclesiae, which he wrote on his return home. He clearly saw them as a pair, having similar names and being held in equal reverence, although perhaps their authenticity sprang from different roots. His remarks would have greatly pleased Innocent, for this was precisely the approach which the pope aimed to achieve. He considered it essential that the long and damaging rivalry between the two great basilicas of the Lateran and the Vatican, which had existed for much of the twelfth century, should now be resolved. It was a rivalry which had brought scandal to the papacy and grave detriment to the Church. In thiscontroversy the Lateran had some advantages, both historically—as the cathedral of Rome and hence of the world—and in the popular appeal of its fabulous relics. A brief glance at a contemporary inventory shows the outstanding richness of this collection. Innocent’s aim was not to diminish the Lateran, but instead to raise the status of St Peter’s, so that both became co-equal seats of the pope-bishop of Rome. What Gerald of Wales had written confirmed Innocent’s own reading of the Liber Pontif¡calis, which was to form the basis for his important reform of the liturgy at this time. Nor was his approbation merely directed towards Gerald. It went to all observant pilgrims, particularly that small number of highly significant archbishops and metropolitans who came to Rome to collect their pallia on their appointments. That great show, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, saw almost all of them in attendance. ‘Here was a wonderful opportunity for Innocent to stress the underlying purpose of his artistic patronage, whereby Lateran and Vatican were to achieve coequal status whilst, at the same time, the Church’s real message was being strengthened.

In early 1642 a Scottish army under the command of Robert Munroe arrived in Ulster as part of a scheme to defeat the native Irish rebellion which had begun late in the previous year. The conquest was not to be purely a military one. As a contemporary historian of Presbyterianism, Patrick Adair, observed ‘it is certain God made that army instrumental for bringing church governments, according to His own institutions, to Ireland … and for spreading the covenants’. The form of church government was that of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and in June 1642 the chaplains and officers established the first presbytery in Ireland at Carrickfergus. Sub-presbyteries, or meetings, were created for Antrim, Down and the Route, in north Antrim in 1654, for the Laggan in east Donegal in 1657, and for Tyrone in 1659. Within these units the Church was divided into geographical parishes each with its own minister. This establishment of a parallel structure rivalling that of the Anglican Church, but without the king at its head, is what has been termed the ‘presbyterian revolution’.It supported the Presbyterian claim to be ‘the Church of Ireland’, a claim which was to bring it into conflict with the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the late seventeenth century. In order to further underpin this claim the reformed church began to move out of its Ulster base by the 1670s. The Laggan presbytery ordained William Cock and William Liston for work in Clonmel and Waterford in 1673 and was active in Tipperary, Longford, and Sligo by 1676. Its advice to some Dublin ministers was to form themselves into a group who were ‘subject to the meeting in the north’. The presbytery of Tyrone also supplied Dublin.

In the spring of 1267 Abbot Philip of Clairvaux, visiting the Cistercian abbey of Herkenrode in the diocese of Liège, was informed of the exceptionally holy conduct of a woman living a few miles away, in the village of Spalbeek. Philip went to see her and was greatly impressed, for, as he wrote upon his return to Clairvaux,

It seems fitting to begin with a tribute to the late Henry Chadwick, whose thorough, even-handed, and ever readable work contributed much to our understanding of the theme of sanctity in the early Church. In particular, his address at a conference on ‘The Byzantine Saint’ held in Birmingham in 1980 exemplified his capacity to identify and constructively pursue the broad issues at stake. In speaking of the early saints and the content of their lives, Chadwick explains, ‘we are tempted either to tell the stories of their mortifications and then, as was said of Lytton Strachey, ostentatiously refrain from laughing, or we go in search of trendy non-religious explanations of the social needs that created them’. He goes on to acknowledge, as most would, the importance of sociological interpretations and their potential for the study of sanctity, but warns that ‘a stripping away of their religious motivation will leave the historian with a distorted picture’. It is along this route of keeping the religious or theological motivations and presuppositions of sanctity in mind, that the present essay will proceed. It focuses on the neglected concept of μετάνoια or ‘repentance’ (lit. a ‘change of mind’) which dominates much of the ascetic theology of the early Christian East, particularly as expounded by the influential fifth-century theologian Mark the Monk (or ‘the Hermit’ / ‘the Ascetic’).

A Certificate From Northamptonshire, published anonymously in 1641, proclaimed that the current attacks being made on the bishops had a secret purpose behind them: the abolition of the requirement to pay tithe, whether to cleric or layman. ‘If the bishops and their courts were overthrown’, so the author claimed, the people would be freed from paying tithes, ‘which is the secret thing which our common free holders and grand jury-men do so much aim at’. The writer’s claims concerning the motives which led men to demand the abolition of episcopacy may have had some truth in them, but he was to be proved wrong about the consequences of such abolition; as, indeed, a better informed observer pondering the extent of lay involvement in the ownership of tithes might have been able to predict. Despite several close calls and a variety of imaginative proposals for abolition or reform, tithes remained and survived the demise of bishops, deans, and ecclesiastical courts, standing alongside glebe as one of the twin pillars of the maintenance of the parochial ministry.

Any discussion of the conciliar assemblies and decisions of the Church is likely to consider things from the centre—to enumerate those present, to distinguish the issues, arguments, and protagonists, and to emphasize the final decisions. Perhaps, indeed, to over-emphasize them, for there is a tendency to assume that what was decreed at Rome was rapidly implemented in the provinces. Often, of course, this was the case, and the speed with which the decisions of the Third Lateran Council were disseminated is striking testimony to the ability of the twelfth-century Papacy to publicize its policies. The Papacy developed rapidly, however, in the middle years of the twelfth century, and it is dangerous to assume that what was true of the pontificate of Alexander III can also be applied to that of Innocent II. It may therefore be useful to look closely at a major provincial dispute from the first half of the twelfth century, and to attempt to determine how decisively regional practice was affected by papal decrees in one particular instance.

The Byzantines took more kindly than the westerners of the middle ages to their eccentrics of the spiritual life. They never lost sight of the true meaning of the word monachos — a solitary, a man who lives alone with God. The ultimate and deepest purpose of the monastic life was, as Saint Basil himself had declared, the ‘salvation of one’s own soul’. The way of the monachos was a lonely one. For the many who were called it was perhaps only bearable in the gregarious circumstance of a community, a koinobion or coenobitic monastery; and Saint Basil believed that they were right. But in the Byzantine world it was always accepted that there would be a chosen few for whom even the koinobion was too gregarious. For them the communal monastery would be the primary school of askesis from which they would one day graduate to the harder and more rarefied discipline of an asketerion, a small group of monks living in a lavra or a skete under the supervision of a spiritual father.

The Reformation in the Low Countries fascinates both church historians and general historians. Religious change and political revolution went hand in hand. The history of the Reformation is an integral part of the history of the birth of the Dutch nation. Although well-researched, its attraction is renewed with each successive historiographical fashion.

In this paper I would like to explore theories of disease and practices of healing in late medieval and early modern Europe, and to focus on two diseases, leprosy and plague. Much of the discussion will be based on Italian evidence since in this period, and especially in the sixteenth century, Italy was in the forefront of European medicine. Physicians were more numerous in Italy than in most European countries, and available not only in cities, but in small towns and rural communities. But disease and healing were not the exclusive concern of the medical profession. The church had not forgotten that healing had theological overtones. Equally there were the governments of the Italian states deeply committed to legislation for public health and to the control of epidemics.

The Spacious Firmament on high
And all the blue aetherial sky
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great original proclaim.
Th’ unwearied sun from day to day
Doth his Creator’s power display
And publishes to ev’ry land
The work of an Almighty hand.
What though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball;
What though no real voice nor sound
Mid all their radiant orbs be found:
In reason’s ear they all rejoice
And utter forth a glorious voice
For ever singing as they shine
‘The hand that made us is Divine’.

Despite its pre-Copernican cosmology, Addison’s well-known paraphrase of the nineteenth psalm perfectly expresses a whole religious world picture, the essence of that rational apologetic for Christianity which was evolved in England in the second half of the seventeenth century. For this school of thought the beauty, elegance and order of the universe were the chief evidences of the existence, wisdom and benevolence of God. Behind that serene conviction, however, lay a great unease. The world of law which Newton so wonderfully displayed to an admiring age was purchased at the cost of an increasingly remote deity.

‘Cas III Aristarque, Abbé de qualité, et d’unmérite distingué, il sollicite un Evêché, désirant de servir utilement l’Eglise. R. Il ne peut désirer l’Episcopat dans la vue d’être élevé à une si haute dignité, sans se rendre coupable d’ambition ou de présomption; il ne peut le désirer dans le dessein d’être honoré et respecté, ou de devenir riche sans se rendre coupable d’ambition ou d’avarice. Ajoutons que ce n’est point assez d’avoir une intention pure pour pouvoir désirer sans péché l’Episcopat; il faut avoir toutes les vertus que l’Apôtre demande dans un Evêque’.

The writings of the Early Church concerning childhood are not extensive, but in the works of a number of Eastern Christian authors of the second to fourth centuries it is possible to discern some ideas about childhood which raise important problems of Christian theology and theological anthropology. The theological problem is that of the question posed for theodicy by the sufferings and deaths of infants. It is harder to give a brief definition of the anthropological problem, but it is important to do so because to define the problem as the Eastern Fathers saw it is also to identify the set of conceptual tools—the anthropological paradigm—which they used to answer it. These are not, naturally, the concepts of modern anthropology and psychology. Applied to patristic thought, these terms usually refer to speculations about the composition and functioning of the human person or the human soul which belong to a discourse which is recognizably philosophical and metaphysical—by which is meant that it is (though influenced by other sources, such as the Bible) the discourse of a tradition descending ultimately from the anthropological terminology of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Patristic anthropology seeks to account for the history and experiences of the human person as a created being—fhe experience of sin and mortality in the present life, but also of eternal salvation and advancement to perfection in the image of God.

The dead are the silent majority in the Church’s history – as they are, indeed, in humanity’s. The life after death is a matter of faith and conjecture more than tried and tested certainty, predicated on a soul which survives the death of the body. That raises issues about the nature and structure of the afterlife, its pains and delights. For the late medieval Church, the afterlife raised particular concerns and anxieties, its complex division into heaven, hell, and purgatory promising a future which had to be planned for. Strategies for eternity were a major force in religious practice, with death as the threshold to something unknown until experienced.

In the late fourth and early fifth centuries Augustine of Hippo preached a number of sermons at the annual celebrations of martyr festivals. These festivals commemorated the martyr’s ‘birthday’: the day of the martyr’s death on earth and entrance into the eternal life of heaven. They were popular occasions, drawing in larger and more diverse crowds than ordinary services, and attracting a certain air of festivity and merriment in North Africa. Martyr festivals provided the ideal location for the discussion of the afterlife: eschatological hopes had long given meaning to martyrdom, exposing the order permeating chaos, pointing towards beauty amid human suffering, and revealing death as the gateway to true life.

During a Christmas convention at Gahini mission station in Rwanda in 1933, a large number of people publicly confessed their sins, resolved to turn from their present beliefs and embraced the Christian Faith. From then on, missionaries of the Ruanda Mission wrote enthusiastically to their supporters in Britain of people flocking into churches in South-West Uganda and Rwanda, of ‘changed lives’, of emotional confessions followed by ‘tremendous joy’, and of the spontaneous forming of fellowship groups and mission teams. Ugandans working at Gahini saw an opportunity for ‘waking’ the sleeping Anglican Church in Buganda and elsewhere which had, they believed, lost its fervour. Following in the tradition of the evangelists of the 1880s and 1890s they travelled vast distances to share their message of repentance and forgiveness with others. This was the beginning of the East African Revival, long prayed for by Ruanda missionaries and the Ugandans who worked alongside them. Max Warren, General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, writing in 1954 when the Revival was still pulsating through East Africa, perceived the revival phenomenon as ‘a reaffirmation of theology, a resuscitation of worship and a reviving of conscience … for the church’. All three were in evidence from the early years of the East African Revival, but perhaps the most dramatic change was the form taken by the ‘resuscitation of worship’.

England was a rich prize for William the Conqueror to have won at the battle of Hastings. His conquest was followed by a major redistribution of the wealth of his new kingdom. By the end of his reign, a tenurial revolution had swept through the lay landholding community, leaving only a handful of Anglo-Saxons as tenants-in-chief. The Church had undergone considerable changes of personnel; only one bishopric was still in English hands (Worcester), and of the greater Benedictine houses only Bath and Ramsey were still ruled by English abbots. Domesday Book, the great survey of England made in 1086, although difficult to interpret, provides much information to enable an examination of ecclesiastical wealth, its nature, and its distribution, in the late eleventh century.

The natural world offered Renaissance men and women an abundance of raw materials which could be used to protect and to heal. Healers and wise women used particularly potent plants, gemstones and animal parts, in conjunction with magical ritual and Christian prayer, as preventative and cure. Pertaining largely to an oral and unlettered culture, much of this natural lore has been lost. Fortunately, the Renaissance demand for vernacular translations of classical works brought about a revived interest in botany, whilst cheap print and a wider reading public fostered the proliferation of a new genre of self-help manuals and books of secrets, and it is within these works that some of the oral traditions have been captured in ink. Whilst it may be true that many of the new authors of the Renaissance used print to disparage and demystify many of these popular beliefs, it is often only through the disapproving lens of the vernacular manual that we are able to catch glimpses of folk beliefs in practice. This paper will examine one such tradition: the use of the Rose of Jericho as birthing aid.