The struggle of the Confessing Church', wrote Otto Dibelius, ‘was a struggle of theologians, backed by a very small group of courageous laymen’. The importance of Karl Barth among these theologians was soon recognised. Even today in England and Germany many write almost as if Barth had been the sole theological resource of Hitler's protestant opponents: ‘It was he who nerved the Confessing Church in Germany to resist the attempts of the Nazis to corrupt the Christian witness, and who was driven into exile for doing so’. This is an exaggeration. My purpose here is to draw attention to the Catholic or high church movement in this same struggle. The theological ideas of this movement can be shown to have influenced, directly or indirectly, a considerable number of the protestants who opposed Hitler.

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.

In the introduction to what was for long the standard work upon the Prayer Book, Charles Wheatly's Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer, the learned and industrious author refers to archbishop Cranmer as ‘the chief promoter of our excellent Reformation’, who ‘had a principal hand, not only in compiling the Liturgy, but in all the steps made towards it’. A commemoration of Cranmer which omitted to recall his liturgical projects and achievements, and to notice the more striking of their features, would be incomplete. Of itself, the liturgical work ascribed to him is significant enough to vindicate his right to be remembered, and to insure respect for his name.

Historians of the Church of England have paid little attention to the women's movement. There have been several serious studies of religious communities for women, and there is increasing interest in churchwomen's part in Victorian philanthropy and moral reform. Studies of Victorian marriage and family life have an important religious dimension. Alan Wilkinson's recent book on The Church of England and the First World War makes a number of references to women's work and aspirations, subjects virtually excluded from Roger Lloyd's standard history of the twentieth-century church. The history of women's place in the management and recognised ministry of the Church of England, in its institutional life at local, regional and national levels, has not been touched.

Was there a second session of the Council of Nicaea? To that question – first posed and affirmatively answered by Otto Seeck – there have been numerous responses, mostly in the form of bald assertions of one kind or another. Occasionally there have been lengthier discussions of the matter, but with no emerging consensus, and it is still the case that opposite views continue to surface in discussions of the aftermath of the first ecumenical council. Furthermore, among the statements accepting or rejecting the fact of a second session, it is regularly unclear whether the problem at issue is that of a reassembly at Nicaea of all the bishops who had gathered there in 325, a reassembly of these same bishops at some other unspecified place, or a reunion somewhere of only some of those who had participated at the major gathering.

This article argues that the liturgical tradition of celebrating Christmas on 25 December travelled from the Latin West to the Greek East at the behest of Theodosius I upon his arrival in Constantinople in AD 380. From there it made its way to Cappadocia, Pontus and Syrian Antioch by means of travelling clerics who belonged to a pro-Nicene network. The essay also makes the larger methodological point that in late antiquity liturgical traditions did not travel of their own accord; rather, they were often carried by networks of travelling bishops and ‘radiated out’ from major sees to minor ones.

Walter Stapledon, bishop of Exeter 1308-26, treasurer of England and victim of the downfall of Edward 11, was a notable benefactor of the Church. As well as giving generously to the rebuilding of Exeter Cathedral (where he was buried in a splendid tomb beside the high altar), he founded or planned three institutions for the clergy of his diocese: a school foundation for a tutor and twelve pupils in the hospital of St John at Exeter; a college for a chaplain and twelve scholars at Oxford (now Exeter College); and a hospital for two chaplains and twelve infirm priests at Clyst Gabriel in Bishop's Clyst, four miles east of Exeter. Unlike the college, the hospital has long since disappeared, but its records survive in unusual profusion for such a small foundation. Not only do they reveal the constitutional and financial history of the house, they also preserve the names of many of its inmates, the dates of their entry and of their deaths or departures. Clyst Gabriel possesses, in effect, one of the oldest registers of patients in an English hospital, commencing as early as 1312.

In all the Ignatian epistles, except the Epistle to the Romans, we find polemical remarks and warnings against heretical tendencies which threatened the churches of Asia Minor.

It is not quite easy to obtain a clear picture of the heretics combatted by Ignatius. One point only is evident: their docetism. They considered Christ's life on earth, his birth, his human body, his death and resurrection as mere appearance.

The writings of Gregory of Elvira are among the most important sources for understanding early Latin biblical exegesis as well as the culture and theology of the Spanish Church in the fourth century. The paucity of ancient sources on Gregory's episcopal career, however, renders a proper assessment of these works difficult, and he has not been well served by historians. In this essay, I propose a modified account of Gregory's life and career, arguing that the dates of his birth, ordination and death are fixed later than they should be and that his involvement with the ‘Luciferians’ has been significantly overestimated.

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.

Since the end of the nineteenth century scholars have been divided on the identity of Hilary of Poitiers's opponents in his Commentarium in Matthaeum. As he wrote the treatise in the early 350s, it is assumed that his opponents, if real and not contrived, must be ‘Arian’. What has not been sufficiently considered is whether Hilary may be addressing other fourth-century theological positions. In this article it will be argued that two key passages from the commentary, generally used to indicate an awareness of ‘Arian’ ideas, actually suggest an engagement with the theological views commonly associated with Photinus of Sirmium.

Hitherto we have depended on the State, i.e. on the ruling powers in the country—the King and the aristocracy … But these recollec-tions of the past must not engross our minds, or hinder us in looking at things as they are, and as they will be soon, and inquiring what is intended by Providence to take the place of the time-honoured instrument which he has broken (if it is yet to be broken) the regal and aristocratic power, I shall disgust many men when I say, we must look to the people’. (J. H. Newman, British Magazine, 1833).

An analysis of the works of Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) on natural philosophy, this article aims to show the affinities between the content and form of his philosophy of nature and some main features of medieval, scholastic and Renaissance thought: theology as the ‘queen of sciences’ (‘regina scientiarum’), science as ‘handmaiden to theology’ (‘philosophia ancilla theologiae’), the emblematic or typological understanding of world phenomena, and belief in the ‘great chain of being’ (‘scala naturae’). It argues that Edwards's works are inseparable from the school of ‘physico-theology’, the English followers of which set out to prove the being and attributes of God by the order and harmony of nature, and through their worship of the God of nature to show ‘the wisdom of God in creation’ in face of the threats which new modes of scientific thought and reasoning were posing to traditional Christian thought and belief in the early modern period.