Historians have offered a variety of explanations for Pope Innocent III's release of King John from the promise that he made to observe the clauses of Magna Carta. None has won general acceptance. This article proposes an alternative by examining the tenets of the canon law as it was understood in 1215. That examination shows that the law of oaths (De iureiurando) played a central role in canonistic thought of the time. It contained the juristic resources that made it possible for Innocent to release John from the oath that he had taken at Runnymeade.

An intriguing phenomenon of late antique Palestine is the abundance of rural churches located outside village boundaries yet obviously in close contact with them, having been constructed by wealthy local patrons. What led to the establishment of such churches and how did they differ from similar building initiatives within the village boundaries? In answering these questions, this article takes a sociological stance, using Pierre Bourdieu's ‘theory of fields’ (‘champs’) to suggest that such construction was the product of symbolic and economic competition in the ‘field of religious goods’ between the rural ‘lay’ elite and the provincial ecclesiastical hierarchy.

In the De decretis Athanasius claims that Arius ‘copied’ and ‘learned’ from Asterius. This study explores how this could have happened by arguing that in the writing of his Thalia Arius was influenced by Asterius’ Syntagmation. Besides complicating the literary and theological relationship between Arius and Asterius, this reconstruction provides the clearest evidence for the new perspective on Arius which has emerged in recent revisionist scholarship, and which argues that he is best understood as embedded within a theological tradition and as a catalysing participant in its efforts to articulate a theological vision. By dating the Syntagmation to about 322 and the Thalia to about 323 this study also gives qualified support to Rowan Williams's dating of some pre-Nicene events and discredits a recent attempt to position Asterius as having had a formative influence on Arius.

Twentieth-century scholars believed that Arnobius the Younger was an African monk living in Rome. This is untenable. There is now considerable doubt over the authorship of several works ascribed to him by Germain Morin: the Expositiunculae has been proved to date from the early medieval period, but the author of the anti-predestinarian Commentarii in Psalmos, one ‘Arnobius’, is also responsible for writing the mid fifth-century Praedestinatus, an attack on Augustine's predestinarian theology and its champion, Prosper of Aquitaine. The content of these works and related evidence point to Julian of Eclanum as the true author.

This article evaluates ordination lists preserved in bishops’ registers from late medieval England as evidence for the monastic orders, with special reference to religious houses in the diocese of Worcester, from 1300 to 1540. By comparing almost 7,000 ordination records collected from registers from Worcester and neighbouring dioceses with 178 ‘conventual’ lists, it is concluded that over 25 per cent of monks and canons are not named in the extant ordination lists. Over half of these omissions are arguably due to structural gaps in the surviving ordination lists, but other, non-structural factors may also have contributed.

What was the source of authority in the Church in Tudor England? This article traces the use of an ancient symbol of the power of metropolitan archbishops, the woollen pallium, between 1533 and 1603. The later Henrician Church saw this garment as a sign of royal supremacy. Under Mary, however, Archbishop Pole made extravagant claims which led the Elizabethan Church to reject earlier Tudor notions of this symbol. Set against the backdrop of the source of episcopal jurisdiction, this article traces the use of the pallium in England in a Church moving from Roman obedience to a Protestant settlement.

The article explores the theories of Roland of Cremona op (†1259), the first Dominican master of theology in Paris and a practising physician, regarding demonic influence on body and soul. Roland uses contemporary neurological theories of voluntary motion and cognition to explain how precisely demons might move the bodily members of possessed subjects, induce seductive images and implant scientific knowledge. The complex interaction of fields of knowledge demonstrated in his unique theories sheds light on the intellectual climate of the early thirteenth century in general, and of the early Parisian Dominican school in particular.

The Byzantine holy man and cult of saints are often seen as evidence that Christ had become the inaccessible Pantokrator. In this article, such assertions are challenged by a close reading of John of Ephesus’ Lives of eastern saints, where many monks are shown to be very close to Christ, even in references to him as divine. Viewing hagiography as literature of exhortation and example, Christ's proximity to John's monks is seen as available to all Miaphysite Christians. This analysis is also important for investigating the spirituality of the early generations of Miaphysites, painting them as more than polemicists.

This paper (a companion to an article published this Journal lxvii [2016]) considers a twelve-year campaign by some Church of England clergy to discredit Nonconformists as irrational enthusiasts. It began in 1668–9, to discourage concessions to Nonconformists through ‘comprehension’ and to prove the loyalty of men suspected of lukewarm attachment to the Church. Congregationalists responded by accusing the conformists of Socinianism. But Presbyterians were less willing to differ from churchmen, and claimed that orthodox Protestants did not disagree about reason. Any differences were exaggerated for polemical advantage, and the controversy drove conformists and Nonconformists further apart.

Using the example of the Bohemian Franciscan Province, and its Olomouc convent in particular, this paper analyses mendicancy after the Reformation. In the early modern period mendicancy remained an important practice in the Franciscan Order. Apart from its economic function, begging was also an important means of interaction between the friars and the people. It was a complicated exchange of goods and services, which helped the friars to secure their position in society and export elements of their spirituality outside the walls of their convents.

The article is based on the case study of Sr Asklipiodata, a Jewish convert to Christianity, who became a member of the monastic community in one of Kiev's Orthodox convents in the second half of the eighteenth century. It explores the ways in which the non-communal way of life in Eastern Orthodox convents impacted both upon the praxis of monastic existence within the convent walls, and relations with the secular world without. Parallel to this consideration of a lasting centrality of property ownership in Orthodox female monasticism, the article addresses the largely neglected question of Jewish assimilation in the Russian Empire prior to the Partitions of Poland (1772–93), which brought the sizeable Jewish population of the Commonwealth's eastern borderlands into close contact with the Russian state.

Amid the great Protestant martyrologies of the mid-sixteenth century, Heinrich Pantaleon's Martyrvm historia (1563) has been comparatively overlooked. This article argues that Pantaleon's martyrology acted as a capstone to the narrative framework of Protestant suffering and resistance. Pantaleon's command of vernacular languages gave him access to a wider range of material than other martyrologists, material which his Latin text made accessible to learned readers across Europe. This article also examines the collaboration between Pantaleon and John Foxe, which directly inspired Pantaleon's martyrology and enabled Foxe to give a cohesive, trans-European account of Protestant martyrs in his Acts and monuments.

In seventeenth-century France, secular law favoured parents’ authority in children's choices of marriage, religion or the clerical state, despite Catholic theology and canon law favouring individual freedom. Negotiating this tension led many clerical writers – in advice on choosing a state of life found in devotional treatises, sermons and catechisms – to reconcile parental involvement with vocational liberty. Believing that the right choice of a state was virtually necessary for salvation, they urged parents and children to cooperate in discerning and accepting God's call. Amid conflicts with French law and culture, pastoral persuasion helped to forge an enduringly influential strain in modern Catholicism.

The Presbyterian Review (1831–48) was one of the most important sources for Evangelical thought within the Church of Scotland before the Disruption of 1843, and for Free Church opinion after the schism. However, its views concerning slavery have yet to be subjected to critical evaluation by historians. Initially, it reflected the radicalism of the Evangelical leader, Andrew Thomson, especially in its demand for the immediate, uncompensated abolition of West Indian slavery. It also used slavery as part of its polemics against High Church Anglicans and Tractarians over the legacy of William Wilberforce and in its disputes with the Scottish Voluntaries. Subsequently, during the ‘Send back the money’ controversy, its position moved closer to the moderation of Thomas Chalmers.

Although largely overlooked by historians, the worldwide Anglican Communion proved to be a major force in mobilising support for the Allied cause throughout the First World War. This article examines the wartime career of Bishop Charles Henry Brent, a Canadian-born bishop of America's Protestant Episcopal Church, who is usually remembered as a missionary, an ecumenist, and as a campaigner against the international opium trade. This article revisits Brent's wartime career, illustrating his three-fold significance as a contemporary symbol of Episcopalian power and influence in the United States, as an epitome of Episcopalian Anglophilia, and as a morale-boosting presence in wartime Britain.

From 1759 to 1773 rulers throughout Europe deemed the Society of Jesus highly dangerous and began moving against it. This article, however, rather than focussing on Jesuit failings, uncovers an alternative story of the popularity enjoyed by the Lazarists, appointed to be the Jesuits’ successors in many important locations. The Lazarists’ ethos and behaviour provided attractive contrasts to the Jesuits, first winning the patronage of European elites in the pre-suppression era. Yet replacing the Jesuits was tricky, imposing novel demands on the Lazarists’ resources. More ominously, the forces which brought down the Jesuits had not gone into full slumber, seriously endangering the Lazarist succession.

This article studies the Christian movement that occurred amongst the Luba of Katanga, Belgian Congo, from about 1915 to 1950, paying particular attention to how it was received by different social categories and mediated by local religious enthusiasts. The notion of conversion is examined across two generations with reference to ageing, revival and reprise via a case study of the Congo Evangelistic Mission (CEM), a Pentecostal faith body. The paper shows how the CEM's literary and pneumatic practices were understood both in terms of ruptures with what had gone before and through establishing continuities with pre-existing culture, particularly the search for social harmony.

Joseph Milner's ‘History of the Church of Christ’ (1794–1809) was the most popular English-language church history for half a century, yet it remains misunderstood by many historians. This paper argues that Milner's Evangelical interpretation of church history subverted Protestant historiographical norms. By prioritising conversion over doctrinal precision, and celebrating the piety of select medieval Catholics, Milner undermined the historical narratives that undergirded Protestant exceptionalism. As national religious identities became increasingly contested in the 1820s and 1830s, this subversive edge was blunted by publishers who edited the ‘History’ to be less favourable toward pre-Reformation Christianity.

The Holy See's involvement in interwar multilateralism is rarely acknowledged, largely due to its exclusion from the Versailles settlement and resulting institutions. Using new archival findings, this article reevaluates the Vatican's role in the contestation and construction of this new order, focusing on the League's International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. Unofficially acting as Vatican intermediaries, a number of League officials quietly promoted Catholic visions of internationalism from within this body. The activities of these individuals provided an alternative method for promoting the Holy See's interests within the emergent international order, in conscious competition with more dominant secular conceptions of internationalism.

The Imprensa Evangelica, published between 1864 and 1892 in Brazil by Presbyterian missionaries, furnished Brazilian Evangelical minorities with a means of crafting new religious identities and of asserting their presence in the public arena. Its editors defended the political rights of non-Catholics in the country, took part in religious controversies with Catholic publications in Brazil and Portugal, and intervened in on-going public debates on the separation of Church and State and the abolition of slavery. This article also examines how the periodical's circulation generated new reading practices in Brazil.