Through the stormy and divided history of religion in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century England runs one constant and unvarying stream—hatred and fear of popery. That ‘gross and cruel superstition’ haunted the protestant imagination. The murderous paranoia of the popish plot was the last occasion on which catholic blood was spilled in the service of the national obsession, but the need to preserve ‘our Country from Papal Tyranny; our Laws, our Estates, our Liberties from Papal Invasion; our Lives from Papal Persecution; and our Souls from Papal Superstition . . .’ continued to exercise men of every shade of churchmanship, and of none. Throughout the early eighteenth century zealous churchmen sought to keep alive ‘the Spirit of Aversion to Popery whereby the Protestant Religion hath been chiefly supported among us’, and publications poured from the press reminding men of the barbarities of the papists, ancient and modern, the fires of Smithfield and the headman’s axe of Thorn. Catholicism was bloody, tyrannical, enslaving, and cant phrases rolled pat from tongue and pen—popery and arbitrary government, popery and wooden shoes. The tradition was universal, as integral a part of the nation’s self-awareness as beer and roast-beef, and equally above reason. There were, observed Daniel Defoe, ‘ten thousand stout fellows that would spend the last drop of their blood against Popery that do not know whether it be a man or a horse’.

One does not have to believe in free trade to recognize that in religion as well as economic life the erosion of a monopoly can provoke an uprush of private enterprise. It must be more than coincidental that two modern ‘church in danger’ crises which accompanied an erosion of Anglican hegemony - the Revolution of 1688 and the constitutional crises of 1828–32 – were followed by bursts of voluntary activity. Clusters of private societies were formed to fill up part of the space vacated by the state, as it withdrew itself further from active support of the establishment. After the Toleration Act perceptive churchmen felt even more acutely the realities of religious pluralism and competition. Anglicanism was now approaching what looked uncomfortably like a market situation; needing to be promoted; actively sold. Despite the political and social advantages still enjoyed by the Church, the confessional state in its plenitude of power had gone, and Anglican pre-eminence had to be preserved by other means. One means was through voluntary societies. The Society for the Reformation of Manners hoped by private prosecutions to exert some of the social controls once more properly exercised by the Church courts. The S.P.G. sought to encourage Anglican piety in the plantations and the S.P.C.K. to extend it at home by promoting charity schools and disseminating godly tracts. It was a task of voluntarism to reassert, as far as possible, what authority remained to a church which, because it could not effectively coerce, had to persuade.

The Empress Judith has been assigned a central role in the reign of Louis the Pious. But the part she has played has been a controversial one. Judith has been stigmatized as a problem, if not the problem, in the reign. In July 817 Louis had made arrangements for the succession in the Ordinatio imperii, which divided the Empire between his three legitimate sons, Lothar, Pippin, and the young Louis: a few months after the death of their mother, Irmengard, in October 818, the forty-year-old Emperor married for a second time. The young Judith gave Louis another son, Charles, born on 13 June 823. A long historiographical tradition has isolated Judith’s political activities on behalf of her son as a cause of strife, provoking, for example, the rebellions against Louis in 830 and 833. And she stands condemned for this as a woman. In the nineteenth century Judith was seen as motivated not by reason but by emotion—blind Mutterliebe—and as having deployed ‘feminine wiles’ to further her ends. In the 1980s the language may have changed, but Judith is still seen in similar terms: Pierre Riche has described her influence over her middle-aged husband as ‘toute-puissante’. This view of Judith is overly dependent upon two sources which are not only hostile to Judith, but also reveal a strong ecclesiastical bias.

The problem I want briefly to focus on concerns the significance of the saint-king in early medieval cosmology: what is his relationship to the sacral king of so many pre-industrial societies? A commonly-accepted view has been that the sacral king was, quite simply, the immediate ancestor of the saint-king. To quote the recent but in some respects old-fashioned work of W. A. Chaney on Anglo-Saxon kingship: ‘The sacral nature of kingship.... would lead the folk to expect God to honour the stirps regia. The recognised form of this in the new religion was sainthood.’ Christianity, so Chaney implies, simply makes a saint out of the sacral king: in essentials, nothing is changed.

Following in the tradition of Montesquieu and Gibbon, Wolfgang Liebeschuetz has recently again argued that one of the two most revolutionary aspects of Christianity in its history since Constantine has proved to be religious intolerance. The Byzantine state certainly made many efforts to enforce orthodoxy, and the question arises whether Byzantium was therefore a ‘persecuting society’, to use the now-familiar formulation of R. I. Moore. In a telling aside, Paul Magdalino asked in the course of an important discussion of eleventh- and twelfth-century Byzantium whether it became ‘even more of a persecuting society than before’ (my italics). Another strand of scholarship however has seen a contrast in this respect between western and eastern Europe, and several recent authors have argued for a comparative degree of toleration in Byzantium, or at least for a limitation on the possibilities of real repression. However this desire to find a degree of toleration and religious freedom in earlier societies clearly derives from our own contemporary concerns, and despite recent attempts to claim the Emperor Constantine as the defender of religious toleration, I agree with those who argue that it is misguided to look for an active conception of religious toleration in this period. This paper starts from the position that Constantine himself, and successive emperors after him, inherited an existing assumption that religious conformity was the business of the state, and looks at some of the less obvious ways by which the Byzantine state attempted to promote and enforce orthodoxy.

It was the example of some visiting parochial clergy that first inspired the young Wynfrith, later the missionary Boniface, to adopt the religious life. According to his hagiographer Willibald

Shortly after 1290 an anonymous Alsace Dominican set down in writing what he thought had changed since about 1200. The range and variety of the themes and details in his account of changes between 1200 and 1290 are extraordinary. One did not yet have iron-wheeled carts, he wrote, nor that sort of plaster which is called cementum. The buildings of Strasbourg and Basel were mean, small-windowed, with little light, and there was no bridge across the Rhine. Now, on the other hand, the masters of mechanical arts have achieved much. His changes include newly imported breeds of poultry, differences in clothes, and much emphasis on expansion: the little towns of today did not yet exist. There were as yet few merchants. Now, there are many, as well as many surgeons and physicians. The picture of learning and books of 1200 included a Paris which was already flourishing, and lots of law books, though they were difficult to buy, presumably because books were more expensive. Since then many books have been compiled—and he lists many of the major Dominican works, including the libri naturales of Albert the Great.

Robert Bellarmine put it with his customary clarity and forcefulness when he wrote:

It was in recognition of this pressing reality that Rome—principally via the agency of die Sacred Congregation of Rites and Ceremonies—sought to put its house in order. It did so in two main ways: on the one hand, it relaunched official saint-making—the year of the congregation’s foundation (1588) saw the first official canonization after a hiatus of over half a century. Hand in hand with this went the tightening up of canonization procedure which was to culminate in a papal bull of 1634 that remained the final word on the subject until well into this century. On the other hand, regional churches were required to submit their local saints’ offices to Rome for approval. In addition, die authentication, translation, and display of relics became subject tounprecedented regulation.

Probably one of the most emotive words in our ethical and religious languages, ‘martyrdom’ poses the historian with a complex array of powerful images and awesome actions. Its very naturalness, as a grounding moment through which religions and radical movements are substantiated and made public, raises serious problems of perspective, empathy, judgement: studying martyrdom brings us in touch with some of the most admirable and some of the most repugnant and saddening aspects in human behaviour. Religions, parties, and nations claim martyrs as unambiguous signs of virtue, truth, and moral justification, and thus render martyrdom seemingly obvious. Painful, yes, but admirable; chilling, but satisfying, since in it men and women turn into gods, become myth-makers, and lend legitimation to whoever may claim them. So martyrdom—its discussion, definition, the claim to its virtue and beauty—is always open to appropriation, to competition, to contestation.

Asceticism is in no way specifically Christian. It runs from the Pythagoreans to Pachomius, from Sufi mysticism and Buddhist withdrawal to Greenham Common and the protesters of modern western society. But within the Christian tradition asceticism has played so substantial a role, at times beset by controversy, that it seems right for an Ecclesiastical History Society to concentrate on the phenomenon and its consequences. The ascetic life is no doubt understood only from within by those who are or have been monks and nuns; and that is the case with a relatively small proportion of our Society’s members, who are usually the object of an affectionate but silent envy in those of us who have to work away in university arts faculties harassed by cuts and committees in an unsympathetic world, where government policy seems like piecemeal demolition by explosive and where a rotten botanist seems to be more valued than a first-rate historian. Admittedly, in the second half of the 20th century the cloister has been having its problems too. But it is a matter for reflection that, in the case of contemplative orders, there is no evidence in the decline of vocations.

The titles of Ecclesiastical History Society conferences have sometimes presented the Church as part of a pair that carries more than a hint of contradiction: the Church and War; the Church and Wealth. Well now: the Church and Childhood? Ecclesiastical Historians and Childhood? I can’t help recalling Heloise’s rhetorical question: ‘What harmony can there be between pupils and nursemaids, desks and cradles?’ Last year we reminded ourselves that the blood of the martyrs is the life of the Church: this year and, more fortunately placed than Heloise, I’m confident that we’ll show the multifarious ways in which flesh-and-blood children have been part of that life. ‘The Church’ is shorthand: not only do we have to speak of many churches, but of many varieties of ecclesiastical attitude, of conflicts of ecclesiastical interest, of juxtapositions and negotiations between clerical and lay (for parents, too, are members of the Church), and, in all the above, of change. Equally subject to change and variety is the other element in this year’s pair. Although the stages of a child’s development are biological, physiological, perhaps psychological givens, and genetically programmed, childhood itself is a construct, culturally determined. As historians, it’s our job to historicize it: identify the phases and modes and variations in its construction, its adaptation, and its lived experience.

The Greek word skandalon means a stumbling-block, an offence. As such it is used frequently in the Septuagint and the new testament. In Byzantine texts at least from the eleventh century the word is employed as a collective noun to denote the many obstacles that stood in the way of union between the Greek and Latin churches. In the thirteenth century, however, it is often qualified by the phrase ‘relating to or concerning the pope’—τò κατά τòν πάπαν σκάνδαλον. It was as if the pope or the papacy had come to be identified as the cause or agent of the stumbling-block that lay in the path of understanding. This is the ‘papal scandal’ that I have in mind.

The First Crusade was an important episode in the history of martyrdom. While some of the crusaders were martyrs in the old style, giving up their lives rather than renounce Christ, the expedition established in the consciousness of Western Europeans the idea of a new route to the status of martyr, which could be earned by those who fell in battle against the unbeliever, righting for Christ and for his people. From this time onwards crusading preachers regularly offered the stole of martyrdom to those who served in Palestine, Spain, and elsewhere, in the war against the Muslims. It is not surprising that recent historians, in particular Jonathan Riley-Smith, John Cowdrey, and Jean Flori, have given close attention to the establishment of this new model of martyr in the closing years of the eleventh century. It may seem that there is little more to add on the subject, but the development is so significant in the context of our present conference that it may be worth while to return to this well-trodden battlefield. What I want to do in this paper is to examine the foundation of this new style of martyrdom in the thinking of earlier centuries, and then to look once more at its impact upon the early stages of the Crusade itself.

‘Church, Society and Politics’ is a theme of great importance, and for most of the history of the church christians have been aware of the distinction between these three areas of human activity. They have differed about their relationship, and in particular about the extent to which political action and social order ought to be controlled directly by the christian ethic, but it has been widely recognised that the conduct of government, for example, was a field which had its own special requirements and expertise, in which God’s personal intervention would be neither expected nor welcomed. ‘Aid from heaven’, went one nineteenth-century comment, ‘aid from heaven you may have by saying your prayers, but no angel will come to name the junior lords of the Treasury’.

A single kingdom of England was created in the tenth century. While the military successes of king Alfred and his son king Edward the Elder had established some authority over all the English kingdoms for the West Saxon kings, their claims could be only tentative. Both kings had governed Wessex during the lifetimes of Aethelred and Aethelflaed, the rulers of Mercia, and Athelstan was probably the first West Saxon king to be crowned king of Mercia at his accession. He had been separately acclaimed king of Mercia and of Wessex, and in a contemporary text he is recorded as Rex Angulsaxonum et Mercianorum. The coronation rite used by the early tenth century kings appears to have endowed them with the government of three peoples, the Saxons, the Mercians, and the Northumbrians. A charter of King Eadred at his accession in 946 describes his kingship as a fourfold office representing the Anglo-Saxons, the Northumbrians, the Danes and the Britons.’ Eadwig was separately chosen king in Mercia and in Wessex in 955, and during his reign his brother Edgar ruled Mercia, firstly as regulus, and then as full king.

The universities at Oxford and Cambridge constituted two of the principal foci for the forces favouring renewal in sixteenth-century England. The towering personalities of John Fisher and Erasmus of Rotterdam set the goal of loosening the bonds of the traditional pedagogy and curriculum. The establishment of new foundations such as, at Cambridge, Christ College and, even more immediately, St John’s College and, at Oxford, Corpus Christi College and Cardinal College provided an institutional framework for the new learning. So, too, did the provisions for new ‘professorships’—the term will be used for the moment.

Manifestations of popular religion both in conscious and less conscious opposition to the official hierarchical church were frequent by the early thirteenth century. Such movements, generated by a new and exciting interpretation of apostolic life among the laity, often expressed particular social and economic needs. This evangelical awakening emphasised urban and fraternal Christianity and was welcomed by those in the towns who were untouched by the ministrations of the local clergy. Strong religious sentiment led them to practise a literal and christocentric piety through corporeal works of mercy and personal experience of poverty. Real spiritual devotion was no longer confined to monastic-enclosed communities but was centred on the domestic family unit, in which women too played a valuable rôle. Yet this spontaneous expression of lay piety represented a threat which could not be ignored. It was also a challenge which Innocent III met, during the seventeen years of his pontificate, by attempting to harness the untapped reserve of religious enthusiasm and vitality and to divert it into an orthodox channel which affected not merely acknowledged heretics but many of his own clergy.

‘It is one thing for the mother of a family to teach the household by I word and example, but quite another for her, teaching certain useless things, to interfere with bishops or anyone in ecclesiastical orders, or even in a public synod.’ Thus the Libri Carolini, in the 790s, in its continuing attack on the Byzantine empress Irene, defined the proper role for the Frankish woman in doctrinal and educational matters. Dhuoda, wife of Bernard of Septimania, is by this definition an exemplar of Carolingian thought. She explicitly states that she wrote the Liber manualis, addressed to her son William, a hostage at the court of Charles the Bald, because she was unable to educate him in the godly life by her words and deeds. For his sake, then, she committed to writing, in the early 840s, what she would have taught him in person.

The motives of individuals are necessarily conditioned by the expectations of society. Some walks of life are recognised as demanding a high degree of self-sacrifice and noble motivation, as being (in modern terms) vocations. Others are careers worthy of esteem, and yet others are condemned, so that it is supposed that no ethically minded person would engage in them. As the social structure changes there is an adaptation in the pattern of esteem, and an interesting example of this process is provided by the new thinking about knighthood which emerged in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. So much has been written about chivalry that a broad review of the subject is out of the question in this paper, but it may be of interest to re-examine it in the light of this theme. An appropriate starting-point is provided by a passage from the history of the first crusade written about 1110 by Guibert of Nogent: