Church History

Only Buddhists and Anglicans: Moderation and the Church of England

by guest contributor Peter Walker Is it possible to be a fanatical Anglican? The idea sounds like a contradiction in terms. One readily thinks of George Eliot’s Casaubon, the stuffy and pedantic academic, or more sympathetically, Dawn French’s jolly and… Continue Reading →

2015/10/28 11

Making a Case for Bishops’ Authority in the Second and Seventeenth Centuries

By Madeline McMahon In 1644, James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh, published the letters of two early Christian martyrs: Polycarp and Ignatius (Polycarpi et Ignatii Epistolae (Oxford: Lichfield, 1644)). Both were bishops in the eastern Roman Empire and both met their… Continue Reading →

2015/09/21 3

Accessing the Secrets of Early Medieval Relic Labels

by guest contributor Jake Purcell Sometime in the eighth century, a nun sat at her writing desk in the scriptorium of the monastery at Chelles and cut a small strip of parchment measuring about 90 by 15/22 millimeters. In a… Continue Reading →

2015/06/01 5

Rescuing the Eighteenth-Century Church of England from the Enormous Condescension of Posterity

by Emily Rutherford I think I’ve found the biggest gap in the secondary literature of all time. As long ago as 1860, the Oxford priest and historian Mark Pattison noticed that historians tended to overlook the Church of England in… Continue Reading →

2015/05/06 0

Imaginary Iconoclasms in Early Modern Haarlem

by Madeline McMahon Isaak van Nickelen (or van Nickele) (c.1633 – 1703) painted multiple church interiors of the St. Bavo Kerk in Haarlem. Yet the Bavokerk in this painting—Fitzwilliam Museum 82— does not appear as it did in 1668, when… Continue Reading →

2015/03/18 0

The French Reformer and the Church of England: The Limits of Early Modern Ecumenism

by Madeline McMahon Pierre Du Moulin (1568 – 1658) was, paradoxically, an irenic and ecumenical controversialist. As a prominent minister in the French reformed church, Du Moulin wrote almost one hundred polemical pamphlets and books against Protestants and Catholics alike… Continue Reading →

2015/03/04 0

Histories of Tithes: Religious Controversy and Changing Methodologies

by Madeline McMahon In December 1618, the talented scholar John Selden was called before King James to answer for the publication of his Historie of tithes (London: William Stansby, 1618). Selden’s work on tithes (literally, the “tenth” of all goods… Continue Reading →

2015/02/18 0

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