Professor Gabriel Le Bras, a great pioneer in the field of historical sociology, has spoken of the early medieval Church in a bizarre but effective metaphor as ‘a dismembered body striving to reunite itself’. The essential task of the hierarchy within each national Church was one of coordination—by means of law, doctrine, and the standardization of worship. In the fragmented world of the barbarian kingdoms, the distinctive feature of each episcopate was its ideology of cohesion, the more ardently propounded when social crisis was particularly acute, as in the seventh-century Visigothic kingdom, or the war-torn West Francia of the 830s and 840s. This ideology was, moreover, often intimately associated with movements of monastic reform. Its influence penetrated down into the rural base of society through episcopal visitations, preaching, and provincial councils. To trace all the elements in these complex processes of interaction and change would encompass that much-needed sociology of the early medieval Church which Max Weber did not live to write and no scholar has yet produced. In this paper, as its title implies, my very limited objective is to isolate and examine certain recurrent phenomena and to point to some hitherto unnoticed connections.

One of the most important intellectual problems which the Church faced in the Middle Ages was to reconcile warfare with the Christian message. But the presence of, and the necessity for, war affected not merely the intellectual attitudes and social message of medieval ecclesiastics. The institutional Church faced obvious practical problems when confronted with external warfare or civil disturbance. On the one hand the ruler might well, indeed usually did, require churches with extensive property and wealth to contribute to the burden of defending the community. On the other hand churches might well, especially if the ruler’s authority was weak, face the need to defend themselves against the aggression of their neighbours. Churches therefore needed a military potential, whether or not the state laid this obligation upon them. Even the Church’s attempts to control warfare, the Peace and Truce of God movements, tended to embroil it in military activity, since exhortation and spiritual sanction often needed the backing of force to convince a recalcitrant laity of the virtues of bridling its internal violence.

As well-known, humour - by juxtaposing like with unlike - can make a serious point, concisely and memorably, and this quip, too, has a serious import. To begin with, the source for this joke was an Oratorian priest As will become clear, this is of more than passing significance - aside, that is, from the fact that their founder, St Philip Neri was well-known for his use of humour to mortify the spirit of his favourite disciples. For my principal concern in this paper is with ecclesiastical erudition (something of an Oratorian speciality during this period) and its relationship to the shape, content, and practice of Christian worship.

Bernardino Ochino was one of the less famous and more unpredictable of the Protestant refugees whom Thomas Cranmer invited to England in 1547. He remained in the limelight throughout Edward VI’s reign, largely because of his writing. A study of the English publication of his works throws some light on the complex interaction between English books and European Protestantism. Collinson’s comment that ‘English theologians were as likely to lean on Bullinger of Zurich, Musculus of Berne or Peter Martyr as on Calvin or Beza’ is important here. In Edward VI’s reign they leant quite confidently on more unsteady props, of whom Ochino was one.

The years 1945–9 were a time of profound political and social transformation for Palestine. Few other periods in its history match these changes, which left no community unaffected. The overwhelming Palestinian-Arab Christian and Muslim community was reduced from a majority to a minority, subject to the rule of a staunchly nationalistic Jewish and Zionist state. The events of 1948–9 were particularly devastating. A large number of Palestinians became refugees, including approximately fifty to seventy per cent of the Palestinian Christian population. Nearly half of the Christian community of Jerusalem had lived and had their businesses in the more modern and developed western sector of the city until Israeli occupation; their property was sequestered after they fled or were compelled to leave. Most of them were forced to seek refuge in the Old City, in monasteries and other Church buildings. Many others were forced to flee elsewhere, some leaving the former Mandate territory altogether.

If patristic tradition on the subject of wealth and possessions often appears ambivalent in its attitudes, then perhaps one of the reasons for this is that this tradition grows from an exegesis of Gospel teachings on the subject that themselves are far from being straightforward, even though they are immensely forthright. Clement of Alexandria, for example, has frequently been accused of twisting the simple and immediately obvious demand of Jesus: ‘Sell all you have and give to the poor’ (Mark 10.21) and subverting a radical vision of Jesus into a comfortable exhortation that any pious property-owner, bourgeois or aristocratic, could be happy to live with. If the rich young man had understood Christ’s real message, as Clement would have it (not so much to renounce his ownership of goods as to free his heart from attachment to them), then he might not have had such a crisis about following Jesus. Whether or not Clement’s case is, in the end, convincing as an exegesis, it none the less successfully raises all the implicit problems of interpreting the New Testament teachings on wealth in any kind of universalist sense—as teachings that are meant to apply to all, and for all time. And there are, consequently, many dangers in being too ready to dismiss Clement’s allegorism as an anachronistic exegesis, not least the danger of reverting to a different kind of biblical fundamentalism than the one Clement thought he was attacking; for contemporary biblical criticism, as it attempts to separate out the original message of Jesus and the insights of his later disciples, and to locate the original words in their correct historical and sociological milieu, has rightly warned us against over-confidence in our historical interpretations of Gospel material.

It is commonly asserted that in the early years of the twelfth century the medieval papacy was suddenly afflicted with a bad attack of apostolic poverty. The consensus of historical opinion accepts that a pope, Paschal II, who had already distinguished himself by launching crusades against both eastern and western Roman emperors, acted so much out of character that, when forced to deal directly with Henry V over the question of episcopal investiture, he abruptly and to the astonishment of contemporaries ‘decreed the poverty of the whole Church’. It was as if St Peter had hiccoughed, and for a brief instant the Roman church was assailed by self-doubt, tacitly admitting that centuries of criticism of ecclesiastical secularity were justified. The attempt by Paschal to renounce the regalian rights of bishops in February IIII has become regarded by many as the turning point in a process described as weaning the papacy away from strict Gregorian principles, permitting the introduction of a spirit of moderation and compromise which would eventually lead to the Concordat of Worms and ‘the end of the Investiture Contest’.

The text with which this study is concerned is not the text of the canons of the council of Westminster of 1175. It is the text printed long ago by Wilkins from the single manuscript source, Cotton Claudius A IV folios 191v–92, where it has the heading Concilium Ricardi Cantuariensis archiepiscopi. Wilkins gave it the heading Canones condlii . . . and assigned it to 1173, an impossible date, since Richard was not then archbishop. This part of Claudius A IV is a decretal collection, put together from various sources not before, and probably not long after, 1185. Our text, copied as one item in the collection, consists of thirty-seven imperative propositions, all quite short and almost all negative; they all condemn something or forbid something: ‘Christians shall not be usurers’, ‘Lepers shall not in future live among the healthy’, and so on. There is little sign of any attempt at arrangement; related topics may appear more or less widely separated.

‘Rescue us O Lord Pope from barbaric power and subjugation to laymen’ was the cry of despair from the clerics of Grandmont which reached Pope Innocent III about the year 1215. It indicated the growth of the appeal to Rome which took place in the Cannon Law of the twelfth century. Many other examples of an increase in papal authority occurred at this time. The extension of papal jurisdiction is one of two important developments of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Christendom with which this paper will be concerned.

‘Victorian Britain was not only the first urbanising society,’ Michael Wolff has recently reminded us, ‘. . . it was the first “journalising” society,’ also. Recent research, resulting from professor Wolff’s victorian periodicals project, shows that there were upwards of eighteen thousand periodicals of differing title, published during the victorian period. Of course, these periodicals varied greatly both in duration and in influence, but the average ‘run’ of a victorian periodical was about twenty-eight years, and most victorians would have agreed with professor Wolff’s verdict that the magazines were one of the major new characteristics of their age. ‘We look for our monthly and weekly magazines,’ wrote one correspondent to the British Controversialist in 1862, ‘as readily as we look for our daily food.’ ‘Periodical literature,’ agreed another, ‘is essentially an outgrowth of modern times.’ They were both contributing to a debate, in a monthly periodical, on the question, ‘Does the present multiplicity of periodicals retard rather than foster intellectual progress’?

There is still a remarkable book to be written about a phenomenon as yet little recognised or understood: the sudden appearance in England of a serious and scholarly interest in religious experience as a subject worthy of study in itself, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Possibly the two best-known landmarks of the movement were William James’s Gifford Lectures and dean Inge’s Christian Mysticism, which popularised mystical theology beyond the circles to which it had been for the most part confined, within the roman catholic church. Dean Inge had many harsh words for the popish mysticism associated with monasticism, and pervaded by an easy familiarity with the ‘supernatural suspensions of physical law’ of roman catholic hagiography. He passed these strictures on French and Belgian treatises and seminary textbooks, but he might have found materials as outrageous in English, in the writings of the mid-nineteenth century ultramontanes who had striven to reproduce in native dress the religious forms of Italy, France and Spain, and to recreate in England a foreign and professedly ‘supernatural’ culture which accepted mystical experience as an ordinary fact of life.

In the course of the past century the centre of gravity of the Christian world has shifted completely. Europe, once the centre, is now at best an outpost on the fringe of the Christian world, some would say an outpost likely to be overwhelmed. The great majority of Christians, and the overwhelming majority of practising Christians are, and are clearly going to be, Africans, Americans or Asians. And of these, the most startling expansion—the greatest Christian expansion since what were for Europe the Middle Ages—has been in Africa, where Christians have been increasing in geometrical progression, doubling their numbers every twelve years or so, for over a century. The greater part of African Church history, however, has still to be written. Hagiography we have in abundance, and hagiography, like mythology, is a valid literary genre; but (again like mythology) it is a poetic, not a scholarly category. Of missionary history we have a little, though very little in proportion to the vast resources which the missionary society archives supply; but missionary history is only one specialized part of African Church history; by far the greater part of African Christian life and African Christian expansion goes on, and has long gone on, without the presence, let alone the superintendence, of the European missionary.

Throughout the modern period Catholic and Orthodox Christians alike have taken it for granted that forgiveness for sins committed after baptism is obtained first and foremost through confession to a priest and absolution by a priest, the humility of confession plus the power of the sacrament being deemed the most effective remedy for human weakness. Other elements in overcoming sin, such as regular religious observance and the avoidance of the occasions of sin, were not forgotten, but were put in second place. The falling away from sacramental confession in the Catholic Church today is doubtless a complex phenomenon, but one reason for the decline is the widespread perception that this remedy does not work, that a penitential discipline that places so heavy a reliance on the power of priestly absolution, without adequate attention to the other aspects of repentance and forgiveness, is ineffectual. It also represents what is arguably an impoverished and clericalized Catholicism. The aim of this paper is to explore those elements of penitential practice in the early middle ages that belong to a tradition at once richer and more flexible.

On 27 February 380, the emperor Theodosius – newly elevated the previous year to take control of the East amid the political and military turmoil unleashed by the debacle at Adrianople -addressed an edict from his current headquarters at Thessalonica to the people of Constantinople. The text famously proclaimed the religion to be followed by ‘all the peoples’ who fell under his rule as that handed down at Rome from the apostle Peter, now maintained by the pontifex Damasus and bishop Peter of Alexandria, ‘that is,… we should believe in the single godhead of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and holy trinity’. Those who subscribed to this doctrine, Theodosius ordered, were to ‘embrace the name of Catholic Christians’, while all the rest were branded heretics, whose places of assembly were denied the name of churches, and who would be smitten ‘first by divine vengeance, and afterwards by the retribution of our own punishment, which we shall enact in accordance with the judgement of Heaven’.

Around 1200, the Church of St Cuthbert in Durham produced an illustrated copy of Bede’s Life of St Cuthbert. Opulently decorated with illustrations rich in colour and gold, this book crowned a century that had seen Cuthbert’s church grow in power and stability. After the seventh-century Northumbrian golden age, centuries of upheaval had characterized the Cuthbertine church: it changed immensely in location and religious observance, moving across Northumbria and adapting the community to suit difficult situations. By contrast, the twelfth century saw the building of the imposing Durham cathedral and castle, and the ornamentation of the church with many riches. The church was led by a sequence of very influential bishops and a thriving monastic community. This power and prosperity of the Durham church was marked at the start and end of the twelfth century with great manifestations of Cuthbert’s cult. An illustrated Life of Cuthbert was produced in the early years of the century; in 1104 Cuthbert’s body was translated into its current position in the cathedral and found to be just as incorrupt as it had been in 698, eleven years after his death; several hagiographical works on the cult and church were produced during this century; and its end was marked with the beautifully illustrated Bedan Life. Cult and church were intrinsically linked, and provided the basis upon which Durham’s twelfth-century power was built – a power which was to continue into the ensuing centuries.

How far does the great religious controversy of the fifth century centred on the mystery of the Incarnation reflect popular religious ideas of the east Roman world? It is well known that factors that had little to do with theological speculation, such as the rivalry for prestige and leadership between Constantinople and Alexandria, played a large part in bringing the controversy between rival concepts of christology to their climax in the twenty years that separate the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. More discussion, perhaps, is needed concerning the contribution of articulate public opinion to the course of events, and in particular, to the persistence of the opposition to the Chalcedonian definition after 451.

In his fascinating paper, Professor Momigliano drew to our attention the degree to which the aristocracy of the late Roman Empire accepted within its religious ethos beliefs and practices which we would be inclined to label as ‘popular’. In doing so, he raised the recurrent problem of cultural diffusion. How far, in a given period, were intellectuals willing to accept as normative the piety of the simple faithful? Conversely, how far did the more critical attitudes of scholars influence popular devotion? These are permanent questions which we may ask of the history of the church, but perhaps the problem was never so acute as in the medieval church. Its intelligentsia (the humanists of the twelfth century, the philosophers of the thirteenth) had received a long and exacting formal education. The ordinary faithful, conversely, were illiterate, cut off, we might think, from the very sources of christian spirituality, for they could neither read the Scriptures nor follow the latin liturgy. Critics of the medieval church have been inclined to see two religions rather than one: a philosophical, indeed over-rational, religion of the intelligentsia, and a set of popular superstitions. A valuable piece of evidence in assessing the truth of this estimate is to be found in the first book of the treatise on The Relics of the Saints written in about 1120 by Guibert abbot of Nogent. Its significance lies, not only in the useful information which it contains about popular practice, but in the fact that it was an attempt to assess it, made by one of the more learned and attractive men of the time. Although Guibert made little direct impact on the history of the age, he was in close sympathy with many of the leaders of the twelfth-century Renaissance, and was a fine scholar in his own right.

Augustine’s view of the saeculum continues to be contested ground; his textual and terminological ambiguities, his own intellectual developments, and possible contradictions have fed contrasting interpretations. Understanding Augustine’s view of the saeculum — that which exists as part of the created order, which is neither in itself sacred and identified with a specifically Christian status nor profane reflecting antichristian or pagan institutions and mores — is obviously critical to unravelling his political theology, which has largely been the focus of discussions since the magisterial work of R. A. Markus in 1970, but it has another purpose too. It contributes to a chapter in the history of science by clarifying the evolution of a view of the natural world which would influence medieval and early modern developments.

Somewhere around the 620s, there began to appear in the Byzantine world references to works allegedly by Dionysius the Areopagite, that is, the judge of the court of the Areopagus converted by Paul the apostle according to the account in Acts 17. The corpus of works consisted of two works, on the heavenly and earthly church respectively, the Celestial Hierarchy and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; a treatise called the Divine Names; a short treatise called the Mystical Theology; and ten letters, addressed to various people, arranged hierarchically, from a monk called Gaius, through lesser clergy, bishops (or ‘hierarchs’) such as Polycarp and Titus, to the apostle John. Although they were initially cited by Monophysite theologians who rejected the Council of Chalcedon, there was little resistance to the acceptance of this body of texts; gradually in the course of the sixth century these works came to be regarded as genuinely belonging to the apostolic period.

Religious Dissent was shaped by the law. The Act of Uniformity (1662) set out the terms of conformity, and those who could not accept those terms risked prosecution. A great many were convicted under the earlier Elizabethan and Jacobean recusancy statutes, but new laws, such as the Conventicle Acts (1664, 1670) and the Five Mile Act (1665), were also passed. Anthony Fletcher's essay, published in 1984, remains almost the only study of enforcement, in which he argued that the impact of the penal laws on Dissent has been exaggerated because the Conventicle Acts were not systematically enforced. A range of contemporary accounts will be used to suggest that their impact was greater than has been appreciated because of the enforcement of other statutes and the harassment of ejected ministers and their supporters.