This note is a transcription of two hitherto unknown letters of Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester (c.1497–1555), found in an early seventeenth-century Catholic commonplace book (Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Eng. th. b. 2). Composed in late August or early September 1547 and addressed to several of the royal Visitors of Winchester, the letters are a delaying tactic in Gardiner's ongoing resistance to the Edwardian Injunctions and the ‘Book of homilies’, an attempt to win time until the calling of the parliamentary session. The strongly theological content of the letters challenges traditional characterisations of Gardiner as primarily a legalist.

The conquest of Ireland between 1649 and 1653 created almost as many problems as it solved for the English government of the country. Not least of these was how, if at all, the majority Catholic population was to be won over to Protestantism. This article reassesses Cromwellian religious policy towards the Catholic laity and traces its evolution up to the end of the decade, taking account also of Catholic responses to official measures. It argues that the supposed leniency of government policy has been overstated and that Catholics who refused to conform to Protestantism in fact risked heavy penalties.

Despite the prominence of religious issues in the historiography of Restoration Scotland, understanding of the position of the Kirk in the Highlands remains sparse. This article seeks to address this lacuna through analysis of two related themes. Firstly, it looks at provision, discussing the Kirk's financial, material and manpower resources, as well as the challenge posed by Gaelic. Secondly, it traces the extent of Nonconformity, both Presbyterian and Roman Catholic, with a view to judging the degree of adherence to the established Episcopalian structure. It concludes that the Kirk, while facing challenges, retained a position of unrivalled religious dominance.

When Roman Catholics and Puritans declined to swear the ex officio oath, they cited not only legal but also religious arguments. They appealed to their consciences and noted that Scripture disallowed the taking of the Lord's name in vain and the swearing of oaths against truth, justice or judgement. They then argued that the ex officio oath violated these biblical standards. Such arguments were powerful because they rested on the same theory of oath-taking that buttressed the Elizabethan regime's own use of oaths. The Elizabethan authorities could question the application of this theory, but they could not challenge the theory itself, for to do so would risk undermining the very mechanism that they used to enforce the Elizabethan settlement: oaths.

At about noon on Thursday, 2 March 1905, Charles Gore knocked on the south-west door of St Philip's Birmingham, and, having been admitted, proceeded to be enthroned as the first Anglican bishop of Birmingham. A commemorative booklet described those ceremonies minutely, but only briefly alluded to the prolonged agitation for the creation of the diocese. Apart from passing references and a perceptive analysis, in an earlier pamphlet, of the reasons for the initial failure of the scheme, no substantial secondary literature on the subject exists.

The bishops of Roman Africa vacillated in their relations with the papacy in the three decades preceding the Vandal invasion and, more specifically, during the papacies of Innocent, Zosimus, Boniface, and Coelestine. Theyseemed grossly inconsistent, first praising papal authority, then curbing its ability to influence African jurisdiction. In synodal letters of 416 associated with the Pelagian controversy, the bishops exalted Roman authority, even ascribing to the pope a ‘greate dignity’ and a ‘special gift of grace’. An additional private letter of five African bishops contrasted the African ‘brook’ with the Roman ‘spring’. Augustine also acknowledged the special authority of Rome. These were no mere effusions of polite speech. The Africans intended to sway a papal hand in their campaign against Pelagius and his supporters by seeking papal approbation of their condemnations of Pelagianism. The Council of Sardica and Roman law had earlier granted the papacy the authority to function as a ‘court of appeals’ in the Western Church. Accordingly, Innocent responded to the African bishops with a condemnation of the heresy, however equivocal in points of doctrine, dramatically clothed in the style of imperial rescript. Boniface and Coelestine soon provided official approbation of African canons issued in 418 at the Council of Carthage, and Augustine and subsequent popes regarded this as the proof of a consistent papal position in support of African doctrine, leaving Zosimus' temporary exoneration of Pelagius and Caelestius the unsuccessful exception to the rule.

This article examines the representation of women and femininity in Archbishop William of Tyre's Chronicon. It considers how his text was shaped by contemporary Western ideas of gender, and how this impacted upon his presentation of women, especially Queen Melisende of Jerusalem and three Antiochene princesses, Alice, Constance and Sybil. It argues that, in doing so, we can raise important questions regarding his use for empirical reconstruction by revealing the nuanced ways in which, in pursuit of broader narrative goals, he utilised gender as a tool to both praise and discredit.

According to Western canonists, husband and wife had a debt towards one another: they were obliged to render sexual intercourse on demand. This article looks at the differences and similarities of the ‘marital debt’ in Byzantium and the West in order to evaluate whether this concept can be applied to Byzantine couples. It argues that, contrary to the West, in Byzantium there was no fixed linguistic terminology or sophisticated rules to describe a sexual obligation between spouses. Ultimately, there was also less need for one as sexual intercourse within marriage was not considered sinful and needed no justification.

The prominence of religious issues in eighteenth-century British politics has received growing, and gratifying, recognition in recent years. In particular, attacks upon, and defences of, the doctrine of the Trinity have been seen as central to theological, and hence to political, debate. For many, the term ‘orthodoxy’ without qualification referred to one's position on this question. Although there is perhaps still insufficient emphasis upon trinitarian orthodoxy as a central feature of what is fashionably termed the state's self-image, Unitarianism is rightly perceived as important to critiques of the existing regime, especially after 1750. Historians of the Wilkites, of later eighteenth-century radicalism and of peace campaigns in the Napoleonic period, have cast Unitarians in at least a supporting, and sometimes a leading, role. Yet too often Unitarianism has appeared elusive and difficult to pin down, manyheaded and half-concealed under the vague label of ‘heterodoxy’.

Few conflicts in imperial Germany were more important than the Kulturkampf, a major dispute between the Catholic Church and the Prussian State and a notorious example of the destructive character of Bismarckian politics. The Kulturkampf began in 1871, gathered in intensity and bitterness until 1878, and then continued with slowly diminishing severity down to 1887. Despite all its drama (the attempted assassination of governmental officials, the arrest and trial of prominent churchmen, even riots and mass demonstrations) and its undeniable political importance, the Kulturkampf remains among the neglected problems of nineteenth-century German history. For the most part what has been written is so contradictory and prejudiced that even now – more than one hundred years later – the issues remain controversial and, in many respects, obscure.

At the end of the eighth century Alcuin of York adapted an Augustinian catechetical programme for missionary use among the Avars of central Europe. This article explores how and why Alcuin went about adapting Augustine's plan, focusing on the place of his effort in the early medieval tradition. Special emphasis is placed on the idea of ‘innovative deference’ whereby Alcuin distinguished his work from that of his predecessors while consciously preserving a Christian tradition. The article also considers the importance of adaptation to the Carolingian world, including the influence of Alcuin's programme upon other Carolingian thinkers.