Chapter 4 discusses the sign of the cross, another gesture with a long history going back to the early church. In the Middle Ages the cross was believed to have power to protect against evil, and was widely used both as a gesture of everyday blessing and in rituals and charms of healing. After the Reformation its use was discouraged, but it survived in the Prayer Book rite of baptism, where the minister was instructed to trace a cross on the child’s forehead. This necessitated a radical transformation in its meaning, removing the associations with exorcism and purification and redefining it simply as a symbol of allegiance to Christ. Yet the belief in the apotropaic power of the cross persisted in early modern England and was reflected both officially, in the ritual of the royal touch, and unofficially, in the use of the gesture as a form of protection against witchcraft. Even among theologians who regarded the cross as symbolic, there was still a sense that it was not ‘merely’ symbolic but retained some kind of operative power to effect change.

This chapter explores sacramental fees in respect of baptisms, weddings, funerals, and other life cycle events. One of the most significant aspects of clerical income, these fees were equally a substantial, but vital, financial outlay for the laity, which had meanings that were social, cultural, religious, and personal. This chapter argues that those on either side of the transaction could often value the money involved very differently, a finding that has an important bearing on our understanding of where the balance of power lay between Church and people. This chapter will also emphasise, through its varied examples, that sacramental fees were highly regionalised and could operate very differently depending on the parish or diocese involved.

The dynamics of this movement, from un-faith to faith, has been considered in mythopoieic terms as operating by way of desire: the Christian mythos grasps the would-be Christian aesthetically before it convinces logically. There is nothing to say that this willing seduction by the Christian evangel must happen in the context of the Church or other than over the course of a long period of life. Nonetheless, the entrance into the mythic sensibility of Jesus’ life and the disruptive encounter with the parables’ disclosure of God is marked sacramentally by baptism, as the formal beginning of the Christian’s life in Christ and, through formation and sanctification, in some sense as Christ. It is a decisive response to the call of the beauty of the Christian mythos and the God to which it points. In what follows, I explore the mythic quality of names, unpacking some of the resonances that come with them. With this in mind, I examine the meaning of baptism as an entrance into Christ’s mythic sensibility by way of participation in his name and so his life. In this way, our myth-making can be said fully to participate in Christ, God incarnate, the archetype of our mythopoiesis.

Liturgical prayer plays a significant role in Anglo-Saxon healing remedies. It is not, contrary to recent studies on prayer, “relatively rare in medical remedies” (Thomas 2020: 224). Chapter 1, “Invoking Baptism,” argues that charms borrow crucial verbal and physical components of the baptismal liturgy in order to invoke the sacrament and its celebration. The most vital of the texts gathered as incantations is the Creed, which lies at the foundation of Baptism. Alongside the Creed appears the Pater Noster, anti-demonic utterances and exorcistic gestures, water and its use for washing, and the Sign of the Cross or Triune blessing. The allusive force of these liturgical artifacts is clear and strong enough, especially when they act as a collective, to evoke the liturgy. The act of recalling the liturgy within the performance arena results in the summoning of the liturgy’s power as a force for healing. Through the manipulation of baptismal forms, charms translate Baptism’s ability to heal the soul into the ability to heal the body. While charms do not exorcize the devil or baptize people in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as is done at Baptism, the sacrament is so essential to the people’s spiritual welfare that healers harness its associations and apply them medicinally in traditional remedies.

The book is devoted to the relationships between Nicene and Homoian Christianities in the context of broader religious and social changes in post-Roman societies from the end of the fourth to the seventh century. The main analytical and interpretative tools used in this study are religious conversion and ecclesiastical competition. It examines sources discussing Nicene–Homoian encounters in Vandal Africa, Gothic and Lombard Italy, Gaul, and Hispania – regions where the polities of the Goths, Suevi, Burgundians, and Franks emerged. It explores the extent to which these encounters were shaped by various religious policies and political decisions rooted in narratives of conversion and confessional rivalry. Through this analysis, the aim is to offer a nuanced interpretation of how Christians in the successor kingdoms handled religious dissent and how these actions manifested in social practices.

Oral witness is also the basis for the account of what Margery Baxter, charged with heresy at Norwich in 1428, has said and done. Her friends and neighbours are called to witness against her, and through their words we learn not only of the shocking things she has said which confirm her contempt for the Church, but details of the women’s lives.

The theme of safe-guarding, accidents and death is demonstrated by reference to the bishops’ advice regarding the protection of babies, and the necessary measures to be taken in case of illness and death, including emergency baptism and Caesarean section. Accidents often occurred, especially to children, and this might lead, in more fortunate cases, to healing and even revival by means of a miracle. Miracle accounts are balanced by coroners’ accounts which record the details of death, often by misadventure, as in the case here of a young woman scalded to death by falling into a brewer’s vat.

One key text, Ordo Romanus 11, is here subjected to keen scrutiny. Though always held to be Roman in origin, and, indeed, among the oldest of the ordines, it is shown that Ordo Romanus 11 is actually a Frankish reworking and enhancement of rubrics in the Gelasian Sacramentary, with minimal input of only Roman homilies and prayers. This concerns the performance of scrutinies, or pre-baptismal sessions of education and examination of the catechumens, and their godparents, that took place in Lent. Via the Gelasian of the Eighth Century, three Roman scrutinie sexpanded to seven Frankish ones. A more detailed examination of these processes comes from a North Italian Mass book, probably taken to Metz.Diverse understanding and putting into practice is seen in the expositions, or texts studying baptism.

The purpose of this chapter is to outline in a more systematic way Augustine’s understanding of the nature of sin. This involves exploring a number of issues which have not been discussed in the previous chapters, namely, Augustine’s insistence that even when we were virtuous, we might also be sinful; his understanding of original sin; and his idea of sin as consent to carnal concupiscence.

Through attention to Augustine’s teaching on the Resurrection and Ascension, this chapter draws to the fore the ecclesiological consequences of the book’s christological proposal, emphasizing both the nature of the Church as the mutual recognition of Christ in one another, and the Church’s intrinsic dependence on and receptivity to the world beyond it.

In 1932, Karl Rahner’s article ‘Le début d’une doctrine des cinq sens spirituels chez Origène’ marked the beginning of twentieth-century debate about the ‘doctrine of the spiritual senses’. In 2012, Gavrilyuk and Coakley’s The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity marked a renaissance of interest in this theme. Gavrilyuk and Coakley harked back to Rahner as the father of the debate but revised his definition of the ‘doctrine of the spiritual senses, rendering it flexible enough to include a wider range of theologians. However, they drew their further examplars only from among theologians later than Origen, without considering earlier Christian material. In this chapter, select portions of Clement of Alexandria and of the New Testament are discussed, with a view to showing that Christian material earlier than Origen uses the language of sense perception in ways that are historically and conceptually significant for the spiritual senses tradition.

Jesus was a Jewish preacher and, for some Jews, a Messiah. His first followers lived in Jewish contexts. Only gradually did the differences between Christians and the followers of other religions become visible. Thus, there was a parting of the ways between Christians and Jews, but it was never complete. Jews and Christians always observed and influenced each other. Christians also set themselves apart from the many groups they called pagans. Although they believed in the existence of the gods, they considered them to be demons. They also developed their own rituals and created places where they met, so that Christianity became increasingly recognisable as a religion in its own right.

Tertullian provides evidence in several writings addressed to catechumens of the ways in which Christian contestations about ritual related to knowledge of God. Against what he describes as the obfuscations of heretical and pagan ritual, Tertullian emphasizes the simplicity of Christian ritual as a fitting mode for expressing true divine power. This chapter focuses on De spectaculis, De oratione, De baptismo, and Tertullian’s appeals to the Rule of Faith.

The Laudian view of the sacraments as the places where Christ’s presence in its church reached its apogee and of the altar as the site of the most intense divine presence in the church are expounded. The Laudians placed the reception of the sacrament at the centre of the collective worship of the church and of the life of faith, and thus made the altar the focal point of divine worship. The life of faith was defined in sacramental terms as a journey from font to altar, and stress placed on the need to give physical expression to these views and priorities through bowing towards the altar and worshipping towards the east. The Laudian altar policy, which placed railed-off communion tables altarwise at the east end of the church and reoriented worship towards them was the logical expression of such views. Through a case study of the church at East Knoyle, the communion room and altar are shown to have been that part of the church where the Laudians conceived the church triumphant and church militant came into closest contact in this life; something rendered explicit by their repeated insistence that angels attended the reception of the sacrament.

Amid the debates about the organization and unity of the church in third-century Carthage, Cyprian rose as a prominent and learned catechist. This chapter looks at several writings associated with basic education – Ad Donatum, Ad Quirinum, De dominica oratione – as well as letters from the ecclesiastical debates to shed light on the way these debates shaped approaches to teaching knowledge of God in catechesis.