It has long been a truism that the chantry priest, rather than the monk, friar, or member of a large collegiate church, is the most significant figure if we wish to understand how organised religion affected the lives of most citizens of most medieval English towns. Miss Wood-Legh, in her recently published and long-awaited Perpetual Chantries in Britain, has however been the first to provide a detailed demonstration of the sustained interest taken by founders, prelates, parishioners, and corporate bodies in the effective administration and continued welfare of the perpetual chantry. Miss Wood-Legh justifiably describes her work as the ‘first detailed study in English of the chantry as an institution’ and its publication ought to lead to a long-overdue investigation of the exact social and economic, as well as religious, role of the medieval chantry. The hope expressed by Professor Hamilton Thompson almost sixty years ago, ‘that the student of chantry history may possess a more complete and compact apparatus for his work than is at present within his reach’, has been largely unfulfilled, not least in York itself.

No One would accuse Martin Luther of being philo-Semitic. Even his first, so-called pro-Jewish pamphlet to the Jews is tentative in the extreme and conditional on their accepting Christianity in its purer Protestant form. But even he could not disguise his admiration for the Jews in two areas. The first was sheer survival.

The size of books has always mattered – for manuscript books as well as printed books. It makes a great difference to the fate of its contents and eventual influence whether the page is in a heavy folio or a portable pamphlet. Differences of format affected authority and influence and had a direct bearing on the circulation of ideas, the critical lift-off that could take place when vocalization took the silent word into mouths and minds away from the lettered page. This may seem self-evident, but even so, given the recognized role of the book in the Reformation (or reformations) of the sixteenth century, some reflections on this aspect seem worthwhile. The revelatory quality of the book in this period is here approached first by looking at the role of small lap books, and then by considering the challenge in England to the accepted order of books, when the great lectern book of Scripture was first laid open for general reading in church naves.

On 24 April 1619 the Synod of Dort sat for the 154th, and last, time. Ostensibly summoned to resolve differences between Dutch Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants within a context of Calvinist theology, in reality it pronounced predetermined decrees on unconditional election, a limited atonement, man’s total depravity, the irresistibility of grace, and the perseverance of the elect.

The Synod was national (sometimes, decidedly ‘local’) in nature; yet, because other states—Great Britain, France, Hesse, and the Palatinate among them—sent delegates, it assumed in the eyes of such men as James I and Du Plessis-Mornay an importance equal to that of Trent.

It was accepted in western Europe, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, that there was an obligation upon the military classes, and indeed on Christians generally, to take up arms in defence of the Holy Sepulchre, or to participate in other expeditions authorised by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. War ceased to be, for Christians, a regrettable necessity, and became a virtue, and armies were summoned by the trumpet-blasts of the Prince of Peace. There has been a great deal of work by historians in recent decades on the transformation of earlier Christian ideology, and we now understand much more about the origins of crusading ideas, the discussion of warfare by theologians and canon lawyers, and the profound changes in spirituality which accompanied the rise of militarism. There is however a technical aspect of the subject which is less often considered: the actual methods by which the new ideals were communicated to western society generally. By any standards, it was a remarkably successful exercise in publicity. It was also, in the first instance, very rapid. Urban II announced the expedition to Jerusalem at the Council of Clermont in November 1095, and he fixed the date of departure as 15 August 1096. The summons was heard by groups far wider than the princes and their households, and by Easter 1096 an army led by Peter the Hermit had already arrived in Cologne on its way from northern France. Within a few months, therefore, and well in advance of the papal deadline, the message had spread to all levels of society over a wide geographical area. A system of communication as effective as this deserves our respect and study. It would be a mistake to conclude from the total absence of modern technology that the control of opinion was unimportant in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

In the 1760s the parlement of Paris undertook to destroy the Society of Jesus in the central one-third of France which it controlled, and to use its influence to gain the destruction of the order elsewhere. Its immediate victims were the 1,200 Jesuits resident in 42 colleges and other institutions in its own territory in 1761, but it also claimed authority over any of the other 2,200 French Jesuits who had been born in its territory or might enter it. By this time four French Jesuits in five were priests or future priests whose primary functions were preaching and teaching; the remaining one in five was a temporal coadjutor, often an administrator of property. This ratio prevailed in the groups with whom the parlement dealt. The parlement viewed all Jesuits as enemies and regarded as a Jesuit any man who had ever made vows in that order. Then, as now, members of the Society of Jesus not only made the usual three religious vows but also owed complete obedience to their superior-general in Rome and were bound by the special vow of obedience to the sovereign pontiff taken by the professed of the order. The unique nature of the Jesuit institute was widely understood in France in the 1760s and was a reason for the respect shown to Jesuits by the privileged classes from which many Jesuits came and which they served so well.

The advent of the welfare state has been seen by some historians as a decisive blow for British traditions of voluntarism, echoing some of the concerns raised in the lead up to the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS). This article examines the practice of Hospital Sunday in England in the post-war period. In doing so it evidences the effect of the nationalization of the voluntary hospitals in 1948 on the relationships between clergy, their congregations and health care. It argues that much greater attention needs to be paid to the continuities evident in Christian-inspired social action in the NHS in the long 1950s and after. Attending to the role of such Christian social action allows historians both to extend our knowledge of the importance of Christianity to social life in the period and to deepen our understanding of the operation of the welfare state.

Following the Reformation, Catholic families seeking to educate both sons and daughters in their faith faced many challenges. The penal laws proscribed the creation of Catholic schools in England and forbade parents to send children abroad for education. However, such was the determination to provide Catholic schooling that families were prepared to break the laws and meet the expense of fees and travel. The convents established schools for several reasons. For some orders it was part of their religious purpose to educate girls, others saw it as a means of educating future members, and all needed to secure their convents financially and be self-sufficient. Schooling provided varied significantly. This article, drawing mainly on manuscript sources from convents and some of the families with daughters attending convent schools, considers the scope of the provision of girls' education in the ‘exile’ period and offers some preliminary insights into the experience of pupils.

The monastic community at Durham was founded by bishop William of St Calais in 1083. Its arrival from Jarrow and Wearmouth was accompanied by an act of aggression, when the secular clerks previously in residence were presented with the ultimatum of either becoming monks or leaving. All but one chose to leave. This action can be seen as setting the tone for the community’s attitude to the world outside the see. In their historical writings, particularly Symeon’s Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae, written between 1104 and 1109, the Durham monks were self-assertive and defensive.

Can we identify a pre-eminent physical location for the encounter between elite and popular religious mentalities in seventeenth-century England? A once fashionable and almost typological identification of ‘elite’ with the Church, and ‘popular’ with the alehouse, is now qualified or rejected by many historians. But there has been growing scholarly interest in a third, less salubrious, locale: the prison. Here, throughout the century and beyond, convicted felons of usually low social status found themselves the objects of concern and attention from educated ministers, whose declared purpose was to bring them to full and public repentance for their crimes. The transcript of this process is to be found in a particular literary source: the murder pamphlet, at least 350 of which were published in England between 1573 and 1700. The last two decades have witnessed a mini-explosion of murder-pamphlet studies, as historians and literary scholars alike have become aware of the potential of ‘cheap print’ for addressing a range of questions about the culture and politics of early modern England. The social historian James Sharpe has led the way here, in an influential article characterizing penitent declarations from the scaffold in Foucauldian terms, as internalizations of obedience to the state. In a series of studies, Peter Lake has argued that the sensationalist accounts of ‘true crime’ which were the pamphlets’ stock-in-trade also allowed space for the doctrines of providence and predestination, providing Protestant authors with an entry point into the mental world of the people.

The present communication derives from an attempt to make an edition of the list of relics of Reading Abbey to be found in one of the abbey’s cartularies, British Museum MS Egerton 3031, fols 6v–8r. This is a list of no less than 242 relics, a collection which must have been formed between the founding of the abbey in the 1120s and the writing of the cartulary in the 1190s. It can be supplemented by a much shorter list of 24 relics made by the Dissolution commissioner, Dr London, which however only adds one relic not present in the twelfth-century list, a bone of St Osmund of Salisbury, canonised in 1457. If we add the ‘head’ of the apostle Philip, given by king John, and added to the cartulary in a slightly later hand, we can be fairly safe in saying that the abbey acquired all but two of its relics in the first seventy years of its existence, and the list, which is very full and comparatively early as such lists go, has much to tell us of how such collections were made.

Gregory IX is rarely associated with the affairs of the Holy Land. In fact, he is most widely known for initiating the conflict between imperial and papal authority which was to occupy European society for most of the thirteenth century. After all, the conflict with Emperor Frederick II had been among the defining features of Gregory’s pontificate. In September 1227, barely six months into office, he excommunicated Frederick, and in 1241 he died after a failed attempt to try Frederick before a general council. Consequently, the period of concord between 1230, when peace was made with Frederick in the Treaty of San Germano, and March 1239, when the Emperor was excommunicated for a second time, has been described as an interlude, a breathing space, allowing both Frederick and Gregory to muster the means and arguments for their final show-down.

Since a countless multitude of misshapen spirits, far and wide, was being tortured in this alternation of misery as far as I could see and without any interval of respite, I began to think that this might be Hell, of whose intolerable torments I had often heard tell. But my guide who went before me answered my thoughts, ‘Do not believe it,’ he said, ‘this is not Hell as you think.’ … As he led me on in open light … [we came to] a very broad and pleasant plain … [where] there were innumerable bands of men in white robes, and many companies of happy people sat around; as he led me through the midst of the troops of joyful inhabitants, I began to think that this might perhaps be the kingdom of Heaven of which I had often heard tell. But he answered my thoughts: ‘No,’ he said, ‘this is not the kingdom of Heaven as you imagine.’

The Magdalene Asylums were penitentiaries for ‘fallen’ women. A high percentage of such women had been involved in sex trade in some form; others were betrayed fiancées, unmarried partners or women with drinking problems. This article explores the Magdalene Asylums’ education as a tool for reforming the inmates into women reflecting the managers’ ideals of femininity and Christian virtue in nineteenth-century Scotland. The reports of these institutions describe their aims, quoting selected letters of former inmates, their parents and new employers. They give us an insight into how these Christian philanthropists imagined and applied educational programme for this group of women and girls. The two main areas of the asylums’ education were religious teaching and instruction in a range of skills necessary for becoming a servant or a factory worker. Those who could not read and write also received basic literacy lessons. Magdalene Asylums in nineteenth-century Scotland offer a rich case study of a context in which education had a very narrow meaning and served a precisely defined purpose. They provided a broad spectrum of skills, although never at a comprehensive level. The article explores the managers’ intentions and ideals by analysing the language they used to talk about ‘successfully reformed’ women.

Explicating John Donne's ‘doubt wisely’, this essay argues for the theological and psychological sophistication of Richard Hooker's distinction of wise from unwise doubt and shows why this led him to support compulsory adherence to the Church of England. Framed by consideration of how his ideas were adopted by Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (1643), it explores Hooker's thinking on what is certain in itself and where we can properly doubt. If true, the revealed character of God and the consequent acknowledgement of God as faithful to his elect, is true by necessity, or definition, and may be held with certainty of adherence: whatever my emotional state, adhering is proof that I have not denied my faith and am therefore sincere in my profession. It is wise to doubt the absolute importance of issues such as the right definition of Christ's presence in the sacrament, the God-given character of any specific Church order, and assumptions about the spiritual state of any other baptized person. We cannot, however, be doubtful about the Church to which allegiance is commanded by law. For Hooker, legal enforcement of conformity is a pastoral good: it enables the unsure to establish a practice likely to offer them some anchorage for fluctuating convictions and ‘affections’.

Manuscript D.V.3 in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Turin is a fat, late eighth-century volume of martyr narratives. Produced at Soissons, probably in the nunnery of Notre-Dame, it may be no coincidence that eighteen of its forty texts concern female martyrs. A further four address familial groups in which wives or mothers play prominent roles. The earliest Latin version of the passion of St Adrian (BHL 3744) is among them: one of many late, ‘novel-esque’ accounts of martyrdom, it is constructed out of clichéd formulae and predictable tropes for post-persecution audiences, like others of its genre. Lacking any historical verisimilitude about the age of persecutions, the passion of Adrian is characteristic of this group of hagiographies in offering valuable insights into domestic Christianity in the age in which it was composed: it brings into sharp focus links between women and material Christianity within the late antique household, the theme this essay pursues into the Carolingian period.

A no ser por el Clero, y en especial por el Episcopado español’, declared Vicente de Lafuente a century ago, ‘España sería un pais sin historia, pues la historia sin escribir no es historia’. Lafuente himself was a layman—though it did not always show—with conventional views regarding the ‘democratic tyranny’ of his age which a spell as rector of Madrid university during the student and other troubles of the mid-1870s served only to reinforce. He found it odd that he rather than an ecclesiastic should have written the first ecclesiastical history of Spain. A committee of churchmen had been formed in Rome for the purpose in 1747, but it is too soon to report on the outcome of that venture. Lafuente’s history, though more than a century old, is still the only full-scale work of its kind by a Spaniard—’and since that time there is not a single chronicle that I can discover; though (like John of Salisbury in his day) I have found in church archives notes of memorable events which could be of help to any future writers who may appear’. In presenting some of these notes here, in the context of the theme of this conference, I find myself altogether less daunted by the notion of nationalism, which a self–respecting medievalist is expected fastidiously to eschew, than by the problem of how to evaluate the testimony of so many witnesses, clerical and lay, medieval and modern.

Nineteenth-century North American religious history is filled with divinely inspired people who received and recorded new revelations. This article presents Joseph Smith Jr and Ralph Waldo Emerson as charismatic prophets who promoted the idea of continuing revelation. Drawing on Max Weber's concept of charismatic authority, it will contrast their forms of new sacred writing with one another to show how both had experienced encounters with the divine. The second part will then explore how different conceptualizations of revelation led to opposing concepts of religious authority, with consequences for the possibility of institution-building processes. While Smith would reify revelation in hierarchy, Emerson eventually promoted extreme spiritual individualization by rejecting the idea of an exclusive institution as the centre of revelatory authority.

An episode unique to the late ninth-century Life of Gregory the Great by John the Deacon reports a famine that occurred in the year of Gregory’s death; a hostile party blamed the lavish generosity of the late pope for Rome’s suffering. The fury of the people was roused and they set out to burn Gregory’s books. However, the deacon Peter, Gregory’s familiarissimus, intervened to dissuade them, telling the people that Gregory’s works were directly inspired by God. As proof he asked God to take his life, and promptly dropped dead. This episode is not found in the earlier accounts of Gregory’s life: the brief account in the mid seventh-century Liber pontificalis, the early eighth-century Life by an anonymous monk of Whitby, and the mid eighth-century account by Paul the Deacon. Doubtful as John the Deacon’s account of the exchange between Peter and the mob may be, it does tell us something about the status of Gregory and his works in the mid 870s, when Pope John VIII commissioned the new hagiography. Gregory the Great became one of the most widely read authors of the Middle Ages, and even in his lifetime some of his works were eagerly sought after. With his popularity and influence Gregory not only added to the body of Christian literature, but also made a lasting contribution to the debate over what kinds of works it was appropriate for Christians to read. This essay will survey his works and discuss his ideas on reading and literature, and on the establishment of a Christian literary canon. The influence of Gregory’s works and ideas will be examined in relation to one particular medieval nation - Anglo-Saxon England. As the instigator of the Anglo-Saxon mission, Gregory enjoyed a great reputation as an author in Anglo-Saxon England, where his ideas on literature and society had a lasting impact.

In the spring of 1802, the Roman catacombs of Priscilla were the scene of excavations in search of Christian antiquities and martyrs’ bodies. Excavations of this kind had been going on in Rome since the late sixteenth century, though they had been temporarily interrupted during the occupation by French revolutionary troops in the last years of the eighteenth century. On 25 May, the fossores, or diggers, who worked under the authority of a religious dignitary, the Custodian of the Relics, hit on an elaborate tomb. The profuse symbols on the slab were (erroneously) believed to indicate martyrdom: arrows, an anchor and a lash for the instruments of torture, a luxuriant palm for the martyr’s eventual triumph and reward in heaven. From the garbled inscription ‘LUMENA PAX TECUM FI’, the name of Filumena, or Philomena, could be deduced.