Showing papers in "Church History in 1973"

The Social Class of the Cappadocian Fathers

Abstract: Although the past two decades have shown signs of scholarly interest in the social history of fourth- and fifth-century Christianity, especially among British scholars, much remains to be done before a synthetic reconstruction will be justified. Among the tasks to be completed is the determination of the social class backgrounds of the later empire's Christian clergy. For if these backgrounds can be established, it will be possible to investigate how extensively they influenced the clerics' thought and action. Unfortunately, the determination of social origins in antiquity is not always a straightforward enterprise. This is particularly true in the case of the Cappadocian Fathers, whose social class membership is the topic of the present essay.

African Civilizations in the New World . By Roger Bastide. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. vi + 232 pp. $12.50.

Abstract: he, in turn, considers) aware of the will-to-power or "ethnic ethic" which willynilly motivates them all and by the standards of which the "responsibleness" of each may be judged. Washington thus tries to ground his own methodology in the experience he seeks to interpret. In the process, moreover, he deals constructively with both African rootage and white influence. His approach seems to fit the economic and political circumstances of blacks as well as to make sense of the henotheism, particularism, moral absolutism and popular appeal of various religious groups. Though Washington's style is often tedious and his logic sometimes labored (for example, his distinction between "cult" and "cult"), the reader who stays with him will be rewarded. In developing and supporting his provocative thesis with historical, sociological and theological analysis he contributes suggestively to the explication of the meaning of blackness and of black religion in American life.

Newman and the Tradition concerning the Papal Antichrist

Abstract: In the successive waves of “No Popery” which ebbed and flowed until the middle of the nineteenth century in British public life, the role played by the oldfashioned identification of the pope of the Roman Catholic Church with Antichrist is not easily discernible. Yet its presence is undeniable, though rarely on the surface or on the lips of those who, in the ordinary sense, “made history.” A study of the background and setting of John Henry Newman's thought on the papacy and the Antichrist has led me to uncover a neglected field of popular and cultured Antichrist thinking which helps to account for the persistence of “No Popery” sentiment in Christian history after its demise had been prematurely announced by more than one reasonable and enlightened politician.

George Whitefield on Slavery: Some New Evidence

Abstract: George Whitefield's racial views pose an enigma for the historian, for he has been closely identified with both the rise of humanitarian ideals and the defense of slavery. In the middle of the eighteenth century as he traveled up and down the American seaboard electrifying the English colonists with his preaching, Whitefield showed a special concern for the plight of the slaves in America. Despite this concern, a nagging fear of insurgency by the blacks gripped him and shaped his reflections about the institution of slavery.

Religious Orthodoxy, Dissent and Suppression in Venice in the 1540s

Abstract: In his book Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkely, 1968), William J. Bouwsma claims that the confrontation between Rome and Venice in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was based on two different views of the world. He sees Rome as the embodiment of the authoritarianism and intolerance of the Counter Reformation and Venice as the last representative of Renaissance republicanism. Bouwsma maintains that the struggle which reached a point of crisis during the interdict of 1606-1607 was a logical development of an inborn ideological conflict between Venice and Rome. His thesis, however, does not fit the facts for the 1540s, which were a crucial decade in Venetian history since these years witnessed the acceptance of the Roman Inquisition and the first attempt to adopt an Index of Forbidden Books. During this period, Rome and Venice disagreed not on what should be implemented or rejected, but on who should have the responsibility and weaponry to enforce it. When there was a confrontation between them, it was caused by reasons of state—the political needs of two governments sharing a common border and having different political interests in Italy and/or in Europe.

The Purchase of Paradise: Gift Giving and the Aristocracy, 1307–1485 . By Joel T. Rosenthal. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972. xiv + 169 pp. $8.50.

Abstract: In this first volume of a series to be published on English villagers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Professor DeWindt studies the people of the Ramsey Abbey manor of Holywell-cum-Needingworth in Huntingdonshire from 1252 to 1457. He divides his study into periods of continuity (1252-1370) and change (1370-1457). In the first period, few significant changes occurred in the land tenure system or in the tenant population. But in the second, all land came to be held by money rather than by work tenure, and those peasants with suf­ ficient wealth to take advantage of the increased supply of land developed into a "proto-yeoman" class that differed from sixteenth-century yeomen only in their unfree status. The author also shows that juries and offices were dominated by customary tenants and that after 1350 the cooperation and cohesion which had characterized the village lost ground to individuality. The author's thirty-six analytical tables are helpful; a few misprints occur, including one disturbing one on pages 213-214.

Christian ‘Atheism’ and the Peace of the Roman Empire

Abstract: Sometime between a.d. 176 and a.d. 180 Athenagoras, a Christian, an amateur philosopher and possibly an Athenian, wrote a Plea addressed to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. This document is marked by a carefully controlled apologetic aim unmarred by crude efforts to convert and is remarkable for the positive attitude it shows toward the Roman emperors and the administration of justice throughout their realm. Athenagoras' apology was lost sight of in antiquity, in all likelihood, because it contributed so little to theology; precisely for the same reason it is valuable to us in our assessment of the political and social awareness of a segment of Christians shortly before the empire plunged into the troubles of the third century. Athenagoras was obviously well trained in rhetoric; he had dabbled in philosophy; and he clearly felt himself culturally superior to the “common men, artisans, and old women” whom he praises for their simple, if unreasoned, display of Christian virtue (11.4). He is representative of a growing elite in Christian circles which was seeking to explain the new religion to the Graeco-Roman world.

John Wyclif and Hussite Theology 1415–1436

Abstract: A good deal of literature has dealt with the relationship between the works of John Wyclif and John Hus. It seems clear now that John Hus did not simply parrot Wyclif as Johann Loserth argued in the nineteenth century, but rather he was the product of a native Bohemian reform movement. He regarded Wyclif as a fellow reformer and was reliant on him for much of his realist philosophy and ecclesiology but was largely independent of Wyclif in matters of dogmatic theology. Concerning the eucharist, for example, Hus clearly accepted the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation rather than Wyclif's remanence.

Irish Nationalism and Irish Catholicism: A Study In Cultural Identity

Abstract: Seven years ago the Irish people celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Monday Rebellion: the “Blood Sacrifice” that inspired the Anglo-Irish War leading to the Treaty, the Free State and finally the Republic. During the festivities, politicians paid homage to the memory of Padraig Pearse, James Connolly and their colleagues in the Volunteer and Citizen Armies; towns and villages erected monuments to men who died for Irish freedom; professional and amateur historians produced volumes of description and analyses of the brave deeds of Easter Week; bands played and singers sang patriotic airs; and someone blew up Nelson's Pillar in O'Connell Street.A prominent politician, a hero of 1916, allegedly described the last event in newspaper headline style as ‘noted British admiral leaves Dublin by air.’ The 1916 commemoration was more than a hymn to the past; it was also a tribute to the values and successes of physical force nationalism. Ireland in 1966 seemed a model of productive revolution: a stable community with viable democratic institutions and an expanding economy; an example for other countries emancipated from the scourge of imperialism. This was the consensus of a confident nation.

Lyman Beecher's Long Road to Conservative Abolitionism

Abstract: Lyman Beecher's approach to antislavery reform has received remarkably little attention from historians. No thorough study has been made of his attitudes toward chattel slavery, the methods he advanced to ameliorate or eradicate it, and his feelings toward free blacks and their future in America. The interpretations that have been proposed have been deficient in design, superficial in exposition and misleading in conclusion.

The Early Quaker Literature of Defense

Abstract: Faced with suspicion, hostility and repression, yet small in number and dedicated increasingly to peaceful principles, the early Quakers had recourse to the press. They published detailed accounts of their persecutions and a large number of purely theological treatises which are relatively well known. They also published a literature of defense which, although widely cited, has not until now been the subject of systematic study. In these tracts they refuted charges that they were emissaries of Rome and enemies of the established order; justified their refusal to do “hat honor”, to take oaths, to pay tithes and to participate in the rituals of an established church; pleaded for liberty of conscience; threatened their opponents with God's wrath; and encouraged each other to stand fast in adversity. The literature of defense grew rapidly in the decade before the Restoration and declined steadily in the decade or so thereafter.

Protestant Clergy Debate the Nation's Vocation, 1898–1899

Abstract: A review in the New York Times observed that “the church abandoned the Negro in the 19th century and took up Hugh Hefner in the 20th. Churchmen in America have always been followers instead of leaders.” While this wry comment is not entirely true, it has enough truth to keep clergymen from undue selfesteem. It is clear, on the other hand, that churchmen on occasion have been leaders as well as followers. An equally wry comment attributed to Lincoln Steffens provides a clue to the clergy's leadership role. Americans, Steffens remarked, never learned to do wrong knowingly. Whenever they compromised with principle, they had to find a pious justification for it. Clerical leadership was especially prominent in the period prior to World War I, since this was a time when the American public looked to the pulpit for its pious justifications.

Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations . By H. C. Erik Midelfort. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972. viii + 306 pp. $11.50.

Abstract: sion of Christianity in the period, one different from both the Church of Rome and mainstream Protestantism. Thus, Gastaldi sees the Anabaptists as more radical than other Christians because they wanted to rid the church of 1500 years of accumulated cultural baggage and restore it (restitutio) to New Testament purity. Moreover, like Williams, Littell and most other current historians of the topic, Gastaldi distinguishes between peaceful, mainstream Anabaptists and fanatical aberrations of the movement such as the one at Münster.

Anglican Against Puritan: Ideological Origins during the Marian Exile

Abstract: Traditionally, divisions among Protestant groups during the English Reformation have been examined as deep theological crises, simply written off as manifestations of economic or political struggles, or, more recently, treated as having roots in basic ideological commitments. One of the most important Protestant divisions, that between Anglicans and Puritans, has undoubtedly had a great impact on western history; however, it lacks full treatment from the point of view of its intellectual and social bases. One's attention is easily drawn to the Anglican-Puritan conflict of Queen Elizabeth's rule or to the seventeenth-century revolution in England; but earlier origins often receive only cursory treatment. Actually, the ideas, party divisions and social characteristics of the Anglican-Puritan division in the Elizabethan and Stuart eras have their roots and first appearance during the flight of Protestants from England after the reign of King Edward VI. It is to the ideological and social factors which appeared in the congregation of English exiles at Frankfurt-am-Main in 1554–55 that I should like to draw attention, for it was in the “Troubles at Frankfurt” that the historical pattern of the Anglican-Puritan division assumed a form which was to have such a great impact on western society.

The English Indemnity Acts 1726–1867

Abstract: Modern scholars generally agree that the Indemnity Acts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were enacted to afford legal relief to religious nonconformists from the restrictions placed upon them by the Test Act of 1673 and the Corporation Act of 1661. The oaths required by this legislation were a means of debarring religiously and politically seditious individuals from offices, in national government in the case of the Test Act and from corporation government in that of the Corporation Act. Both acts required the taking of “the several oaths of supremacy and allegiance” in addition to the “sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the usage of the Church of England.” To qualify under the Test Act the sacrament had to be taken in a public church on a Sunday “immediately after divine service and sermon…” within three months of admission to office. The Corporation Act differed significantly in its requirement that the sacrament had to have been received in the year preceding election to corporate office.

The Origin of the Monophysite Church in Syria and Mesopotamia

Abstract: The earliest extant sources of Syrian Christianity reveal a powerful spirit of self-consciousness for independence. This desire is imprinted on every page of the historical records. That which stands at the very forefront of Tatian's thought is profoundly instructive for our purposes: it is his dislike, nay more his hatred, fore everything bearing a Greek or Roman label. This spirit shows itself in whatever direction we look. Syrian gnosis is the least hellenized of all. The pattern of Christian life carries its own attributes of sovereignty in every respect. Autonomy is the hallmark of the early Syrian conception of the church. Theological thought travels along quite independent lines in accord with that genius—even in the works of Aphrahat written decades after the Council of Nicea.

Innocent III, Hungary and the Bulgarian Coronation: A Study in Medieval Papal Diplomacy

Abstract: During the twelfth century the papacy in the interest of peace within the Christian community gradually took a more active part in the mediation and settlement of secular disputes. Innocent III regarded such mediation as an obligation of his office, and throughout his pontificate he sought to promote more harmonious relations among Christian princes. In his correspondence he referred on several occasions to the words of the Psalmist, “…seek peace, and pursue it.” He often cited Christ's counsels of peace as in the Gospel of John, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” At the beginning of the thirteenth century peace was not only a worthy end in itself; it could have the additional advantage of freeing the European princes to fight as crusaders in a cause which Innocent zealously fostered.

Did the English Presbyterians Become Unitarian

Abstract: Among the problems posed to one interested in Unitarianism is to explain why it was that Unitarianism evolved out of Presbyterianism in England while it emerged out of Congregationalism in the United States. The problem of the origins of Unitarianism is in this way fashioned into denominational questions. Why did English Presbyterianism become Unitarian? What explains the appearance of Unitarianism in New England Congregationalism? The purpose of this essay is to examine the denominational understanding of the genesis of English Unitarianism.

Christian Democracy and Social Modernism in Italy during the Papacy of Pius X

Abstract: Historians of Italian Christian Democracy have traditionally paid rather scant attention to the period 1903-1914, the years of the papacy of Pius X. Their lack of interest in this era cannot fully be explained by the scarcity of available official documents. The archives of the Vatican also keep under lock and key the documents pertaining to Leo XIII, the predecessor of Pius X. Yet volume after recently published volume has dealt with the Leonine period of Italian history. Interest in the papacy of Leo XIII is understandable in view of the fact that intellectual ferment in that era produced many of the sustaining ideas of Italian Christian Democracy. The Leonine period also saw in action for the first time some of the future leaders of Italian Christian Democracy. But the intellectual ferment had abated during the papacy of Pius X, who declared as contrary to Roman Catholic doctrine some of the ideas openly debated in Italian Catholic circles during the period of Leo XIII. The new pope transformed the Leonine garden of ideas into a desert and called it the Kingdom of God. And what of the leaders of nascent Italian Christian Democracy? Romolo Murri was excommunicated and forever lost to Italian Catholic Action. And Luigi Sturzo withdrew almost completely from the national scene and went into a selfimposed exile in Caltagirone, a tiny Sicilian town where he became deputy mayor. In the experiences of Murri and Sturzo we may see the symbols of the fate that befell Italian Christian Democracy under the heavy hand of Pius X. His ideas, his directives, his influence appear negative and his reign a regression rather than an advance when they are seen within the context of the history of Italian Christian Democracy; hence they are usually ignored by historians. Or if not ignored, the era of Pius X becomes a brief chapter, an interval before the drama progresses to its denouement with the appearance of the Partito Popolare, the Italian Catholic political party, in 1919. An intermission it may seem, but behind the curtains were men on the stage, and a close look at them shows that they were acting out a drama just as serious as any. Hegelian or Marxian imperatives that view success, positive action, as the criterion of historical importance, might reduce the influence of Pope Pius X to insignificance because it was negative. But it was an historical influence nevertheless, and it cannot be ignored. This article attempts to fill an apparent gap in the history of Italian Christian Democracy by building tentative syntheses from the evidence in scattered and often marginal writings on the particular problems confronted by Christian Democrats during the era of Pius X. Almost all these writings are characterized by a rather one-sided orientation: they usually connect the history of Italian Christian Democracy with the problems created by Italian unification and with the

Henry of Huntingdon: Clerical Celibacy and the Writing of History

Abstract: By the time that Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, completed the first edition of his Historia Anglorum, about 1129, four reform councils had made it quite clear, even to the stubbornly resistant English clergy, that subdeacons, deacons and priests should not have wives, concubines or sons with clerical ambitions. Henry, who had uncanonically succeeded his father, Nicholas, in his archdeaconry, was by 1129 about forty-five years old and had at least one son, probably in minor orders. His major literary works, Historia Anglorum and the epistle De Contemptu Mundi, contain explicit information about his father and the succession of the archdeaconry of Huntingdon, but Henry's careful silence has kept several further generations of this clerical family virtually hidden from readers. Needless to say, he was not pleased with the notions of clerical celibacy that some, in increasing numbers during his lifetime, chose to call reform. Modified by a wary reluctance to state his objections openly, Henry's angry inability to accept that central issue of Gregorian reform shaped his account of the introduction of Gregorian reform to England with insinuation, slander and prevaricating silence. The particular interest of Henry of Huntingdon's treatment of reform councils and reformers lies in its tense delineation of the discomfort felt by many of the higher clergy and their families caught when the reform ideal of celibacy was no longer a startling novelty, but was still not universally accepted, not yet venerable as custom, certainly not easy.

The Fear of Cultural Decline: Josiah Strong's Thought about Reform and Expansion

Abstract: Congregational minister and onetime home missionary Josiah Strong (1847–1916) is perhaps best known for his militant advocacy of American expansion. He was also, however, an early leader of the Social Gospel movement who urged the reform of society to cope with the problems of an industrial era. Throughout the thirty-year period during which Strong set forth his views in print (1885–1915) expansion and reform were important themes in his thought, although significant changes appeared in his treatment of both; this was symptomatic of a basic attitudinal shift toward American society.

‘All the Best Bishoprics and Deaneries’: The Enigma of Arminian Politics

Abstract: There are two old Arminian jokes: one can be recounted here, the other later. In the late seventeenth century, when English Arminianism was riding high, so the story goes, Bishop George Morley was asked: "What do the Arminians hold?" He replied: "All the best bishoprics and deaneries."1 The quip suggests that at some point Arminianism became something more than a theory about Romans 9 and had to do with power politics at high levels. Apparently beginning with the theories of a harassed Dutch professor, Arminianism was to become a matter of high state affairs in England. This article is a study of Arminianism as a political phenomenon and the relationship of early Dutch Arminianism and early English Arminianism as perceived in terms of political theory and reality.2 Arminianism as a political phenomenon in the Netherlands antedates the man whose name became the name of the game. Jacobus Arminius (c. 15591609) came into a situation in the Dutch church and state which was already developing a polarity along lines involving both national policy and church polity. William of Orange (1553-1584) represented one pole. At first he had hoped simply for the withdrawal of all foreigners from civil and military positions and for the restoration of the ancient liberties throughout the seventeen provinces. Then, when he saw various provinces and towns instituting a Protestant order, he hoped for a religious toleration which would not only permit local option in religion but would also grant public worship to the second religion wherever a hundred families requested it. When he himself declared for the Reformed, he refused to ally himself with the intolerant faction which treated the Roman Catholics with something of the same severity which they had known from the Catholics. He remained loyal to the King of Spain as long as possible, and only when he found his policy of moderation utterly rejected did he finally seek protection from England or France. But his moderation was rejected at home as well, by the Calvinist preachers and the middle classes, and although he lived to see signs of hope for victory over Spain, granted only for the seven northern provinces, his death in 1584 left the north with an uneasy alliance of Sea Beggars, local oligarchies, moderate Protestant clergy and Calvinist refugees from the south. There were also Catholics, indeed, Catholics who supported the cause of freedom and who hoped for the mutual toleration which William had espoused. After William's death, the Dutch sought help from France and from England. Queen Elizabeth responded in October 1585 by sending British troops and, in December, her court favorite, the Earl of Leicester. Leicester in his two years

Fate, Fortune, Free Will and Nature in Eusebius of Caesarea

Abstract: In working out his own understanding of historical causation, Eusebius had to deal with the great issues of the pagan Graeco-Roman historiographical tradition. He had to reject, alter or adapt the classical understanding of Fate, Fortune, Nature and human free will in order to work out a coherent Christian understanding of history and the forces that shaped it.

Jacob Sturm of Strasbourg and the Lutherans at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530

Abstract: All through the second half of the year 1529, John the Constant, the Elector of Saxony, played a double game with the Evangelical towns of southwestern Germany. In April of that year at the Diet of Speier, John had led a united Evangelical party in a protest against the recess of the Diet and in an agreement to form a military alliance of all the Evangelical governments in the empire. A few weeks later, John began to regret that he had allied with cities suspected of Zwinglian heresies, a step which could only aggravate his relations with the emperor. John and his advisers searched for the proper instrument by which to win favor from Charles V by abandoning their Zwinglian associates. That instrument was the Schwabach Articles, an uncompromisingly Lutheran statement of doctrine which flatly excluded the disputed Zwinglian interpretation of the sacrament of the Eucharist. John kept the southwestern towns dangling in expectation until the meeting at Smalkalden in December, 1529. There he informed Jacob Sturm of Strasbourg and Bernhard Besserer of Ulm that his conscience forbade him to ally with the southerners so long as they supported the errors of Zwingli. Sturm and Besserer, who now began to understand John's duplicity, announced that their governments would not sign the Schwabach Articles. At the year's end, nothing remained of the solidarity the Evangelical estates had displayed at Speier.