Although scholars regularly take note of Jesus’ anger and violence in some scenes of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, most attempt to explain them away. Since the text was copied by and circulated among early Christians, they reason, ancient readers must not have found them as shocking and offensive as modern readers. Based on contemporaneous discussions of anger, I argue instead that early Christian audiences would have been equally uncomfortable with stories of a short-tempered and vengeful young Jesus. In fact, I suggest that these stories were likely composed by opponents of Christianity who wished to undermine Jesus’ character and authority by presenting a compromised portrait of his youth. By absorbing critiques of Jesus into their own literature, however, Christian redactors were able to manage embarrassing stories about the boy Jesus and ultimately regain control of his image.

Francis of Assisi's reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is widely held to be the first documented account of an individual miraculously and physically receiving the wounds of Christ. The appearance of this miracle, however, in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—“I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body”—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since the early Middle Ages. These works posited that clerics bore metaphorical and sometimes physical wounds (stigmata) as marks of persecution, while spreading the teaching of Christ in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, the meaning of Galatians 6:17 had been appropriated by bishops and priests as a sign or mark of Christ that they received invisibly at their ordination, and sometimes visibly upon their death. In the eleventh century, Peter Damian articulated a stigmatic spirituality that saw the ideal priest, monk, and nun as bearers of Christ's wounds, a status achieved through the swearing of vows and the practice of severe penance. By the early twelfth century, crusaders were said to bear the marks of the Passion in death and even sometimes as they entered into battle. By the early thirteenth century, “bearing the stigmata” was a pious superlative appropriated by a few devout members of the laity who interpreted Galatian 6:17 in a most literal manner. Thus, this article considers how the conception of “bearing the stigmata” developed in medieval Europe from its treatment in early Latin patristic commentaries to its visceral portrayal by the laity in the thirteenth century.

Martin Luther regarded music as a crucial instrument to communicate the Gospel and the Reformation message. From the outset of his Reformation, a distinctive Lutheran musical tradition was fostered in electoral Saxony, its dependent territories and neighboring principalities. A review of contemporary records from the second decade of the sixteenth century to the turn of the seventeenth century enables the assessment of the role music played as an educational and theological tool in the life of Lutheran communities: the School Ordinances of electoral Saxony and neighboring principalities show the incorporation of music as a key curricular requirement in Lutheran education, while the Statutes of Lutheran choirs [Kantoreien] illustrate how theologians, educators and musicians closely worked together to shape Lutheran communities centred on music-making, in order to reform worship, further the Reformation message and to create community cohesion.

Prior to Protestant reforms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholic clerics frequently preached about the necessity of confessing one's sins to a priest through the sacrament of penance. After the passage of laws in the 1570s making it a criminal offense to be a Catholic priest in England, Catholics residing in Protestant England possessed limited opportunities to make confession to a priest. Many laypersons feared for their souls. This article examines literature written by English Catholic clerics to comfort such laypersons. These authors re-interpreted traditional Catholic understandings of how sacramental penance delivers grace to allow English Catholics to confess when priests were not present. These authors—clerics themselves—used the printed word to stand in for the usual parish priest to whom a Catholic would confess. They legitimized their efforts by appealing to the church's modus operandi of allowing alternative means to receive grace in cases of extreme emergency. Although suggestions to confess without a priest's mediation sound similar to Protestant views on penitence, these authors' prescriptions differ from Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican, and post-Tridentine Catholic positions on penance in the Reformation era. Diverse understandings of penitence lay at the heart of confessional divisions, and this article sheds new light on heretofore unexamined English Catholic contributions to these debates, broadening scholars' conceptions of what it meant to be Catholic in Reformation England and Europe.

The Christian History, a revivalist newspaper edited by the Boston minister Thomas Prince, is perhaps the most important cultural artifact of eighteenth-century revivalism in New England. It provides source material for countless studies, and more recently served as an exemplar of how revival participants constructed a “Great Awakening.” This essay undertakes a close historical, textual, and quantitative analysis of this two-volume periodical. It reveals complex divisions among revival supporters and surprising alignments among those who disagreed over revivalism. Attitudes toward the social order were a key factor. The Christian History was central to the construction of the “Great Awakening,” (a process shaped both by social power and contingencies), but failed to promote moderate revival activity as intended. Ironically, the newspaper designed by Prince to unite the Congregationalist establishment only contributed further to existing controversies.