Pope,Province, and Power

The Nidaros province, founded in 1152–1153 with Nidaros/Trondheim in Norway as its metropolitan see, was a wide-spanning unit encompassing the episcopal sees in Norway, Iceland, Greenland, The Faeroes, Orkney, and The Isle of Man. This article discusses a period in the history of the province which has attracted little scholarly attention to date. The point of departure is the archbishop’s apparent disappearance from the Icelandic scene in the 1240s, and the author addresses the question of ecclesiastical integration by examining the Nidaros metropolitan’s authority in the mid-13th century. The subject is approached from three perspectives: the archbishop’s relationship with the pope; the struggle for power between the archbishop and the Norwegian king; and the archbishop’s executive authority within his province, exemplified by the Icelandic Church. The article reveals that in the mid-13th century the archbishop was facing several challenges to his authority. The analysis also provides compelling insights into the dynamics at work within the wider context of the high medieval Church.     

Anarchy in Our Churches? The American Architectural Press, 1944–65

In the mid-twentieth century American architectural journals, including Architectural Forum, Architectural Record, and Progressive Architecture, routinely ran features on the state of contemporary church architecture in the United States. Rapid suburban expansion and the revival of religious life in the post-Depression, postwar era generated tremendous amounts of construction, with a great deal of work available for architects. This article examines the concerns and hopes of modernist editors in the 1940s–1960s, as they sought to stabilize a “direction” for church architecture. Specifically, it examines the role of the architectural press as the self-established gatekeepers for acceptable church design, and their relationship with theologians, liturgists, and building commissions within the Catholic Church. Questions of authority (who was competent to determine whether a church design was successful?) and expertise (whose theological knowledge should be weighted more heavily?) lay behind the stark assertions commonplace in these discussions. Editors, generally not themselves Catholic, used their professional positions to weigh in on hot debates within the Catholic Church over the purpose of a church building, the relationship of the Church to modernity (and modernism), and the appropriateness of new materials and engineering techniques.     

The Politics of the Pew: Faith,Liberty, and Authority in a Sydney Church in 1828

This article examines the political implications of the dispute between E. S. Hall and Archdeacon Scott over a pew in St James’ Church in the late 1820s. Beyond the legal questions it raised about the established status of the Church of England in New South Wales, Hall's public protest, conducted every Sunday during the largest regular social gathering in Sydney, was a self‐conscious performance of his wider critique of colonial authority. This episode reveals the symbolic importance of church spaces and the role of religious ideas about authority and freedom in colonial political debate.     

The Religious Crisis of the 1960s: The Experience of the Australian Churches

The decade of the 1960s in North America and Europe is generally seen by historians and sociologists as a time of sudden and unexpected religious upheaval. But was this the case in Australia? This article examines the changes in belief and behaviour within Australia’s major churches during the ‘remembered sixties’ from c. 1964 to c. 1972, in relation to the cultural and social context, and the extent to which these amounted to a religious turnaround or crisis. Areas examined include the impact of radical theology, symbolized by the book Honest to God, and the ‘new morality’; the changes in Australian Catholicism initiated by the Second Vatican Council; the debate among Catholics over birth control and the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae; the decline in weekly church attendance, Sunday school enrolments and the membership of church youth organizations; the ‘crisis’ in the ordained ministry; changing attitudes in the churches towards social issues; and the responses of the churches to the Vietnam War. The religious unsettlement that occurred in Australia during this period was very similar to North America and Europe, though there were distinctive local emphases. The central issues in debate were common to all major denominations: the relevance and authority of traditional institutions and formulations of belief.     

Constructing,promoting and controlling the littérature coloniale of interwar France: an anatomy of the Grand prix de littérature coloniale (1921–1938)

In creating the Grand prix de littérature coloniale (1921–1938) and appointing the award’s panel, the Minister of the Colonies, Albert Sarraut, endowed littérature coloniale with its first institution and ushered in new synergies between the political centre of the Empire and writers self-identifying as ‘colonial’. Pan-colonial in scope and bundling all overseas territories into a single entity that only made sense in relation to the metropolis, the form of literary colonialism that the metropolitan Grand prix promoted and its claim to universal authority over the textual representations of the Empire were contested by regional cultural awards mushrooming across French colonies and protectorates in the interwar period. The author argues that the fast-changing politics and policies of the Grand prix and the discourse surrounding its attribution were all weapons through which this battle for the ownership of colonial literature between the métropole and its periphery was fought, quickly outweighing discussions about aesthetic merit. They also show why metropolitan colonial literature and its regional variants gain from being analysed jointly, in their interrelatedness, by exploring understudied links between geographical space (both real and imagined) and the distribution of financial and symbolic capital across the French Empire during the interwar period.     

中世纪西欧教会法对教会与国家关系的理解和规范

本文依据中世纪西欧《教会法大全》讨论当时教会与国家的关系。中世纪的教会法学家和教皇们有一种二元论的政治理论 ,认为世俗政权和以教皇为首的教会领导机构应该有各自不同的势力范围 ,前者负责国家的治理 ,后者负责宗教事务。他们以为这一理论有利于教会和国家保持良好的合作关系。为了划分清楚教会和国家的权威范围 ,教会法学家把教会法界定为独立的法律体系。在复杂的现实政治中 ,对世俗权力和宗教权力做这种区分是极为困难的。     

King Stephen,the English church,and a female mystic: Christina of Markyate's Vita as a neglected source for the council of Winchester (August 1139) and its aftermath

One of the central reasons for the disintegration of royal authority (sometimes called ‘the Anarchy’) during the reign of King Stephen of England is generally thought to have been his troubled relationship with the English church. The king was summoned to appear before the legate in England, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (who was also Stephen's brother), at a church council called for Winchester on 29 August 1139, in order to show cause for his conduct in arresting several prominent bishops and in confiscating their property. Several major chroniclers discuss the events leading up to and occurring at the council of Winchester, especially William of Malmesbury in his Historia novella and the anonymous Gesta Stephani. The versions of events contained in these sources are not entirely consistent. The present paper examines yet another recounting of the events of the council, seldom appreciated by historians of twelfth-century England, presented in the Vita of Christina of Markyate (c.1096/98–c.1155/66), composed by an anonymous monk of St Albans between 1140 and 1146. Christina was close to the abbot of St Albans, Geoffrey de Gorham, who was probably the patron of the Vita and who quite likely attended the Winchester council and apparently became involved in its aftermath. These events are recorded in some detail in the Vita, presenting us with a vivid recounting of the council and the immediate consequences thereof. The narrative of the Vita contains a somewhat different picture of the personalities and occurrences surrounding the Winchester council than we encounter in the chronicles. The current essay compares the Vita to the standard accounts. We argue that the Vita may be the earliest and possibly most reliable source for the events of the council. Moreover, if we privilege the report of the Vita, the council becomes an especially significant moment in the breakdown of relations between Stephen and the English church.     

Towards the New Regionalism Approach in the Metropolitan Governance of Turkey

The Greater Municipality Law (no. 5216) was enacted in 2004 in order to coordinate the governance of metropolitan areas in Turkey. In fact, this law has been a part of the restructuring process of the government in public domain as well as of the centralization and metropolitan governance approaches. However, the evaluation of this law displays many conflicts and uncertainties discussed by this study. Analysing the Law no. 5216, this study explores the case of Izmir Greater Municipality from the aspects of metropolitan governance approaches. The study findings suggest that this law conflicts with the issues of functionality along with its definition of metropolitan area boundaries, has problems related to the boundaries, efficiency and incomes of the district municipalities, causes complexities about the distribution of authority between district municipalities and greater municipalities in an unbalanced structure of responsibility and authority for planning issues, and has uncertainties related to the principles of sustainable planning and participation processes.     

“Where the spirit of wisdom lies”: Inculturation,self-determination and the authority of First Nations

By the 1970s, Christian missions to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory were enthusiastic supporters of Indigenous self-determination, even as they sought to maintain a missionary presence in Aboriginal communities. This article asks how missions continued to seek to influence and direct Aboriginal churches and communities through espousing self-determination, and how Aboriginal leaders engaged with and exploited this apparent contradiction. Focusing on contributions to the missiological publication Nelen Yubu from Deacon Boniface Pedjert, Patrick Dodson, Miram Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann, Dyiniyini Gondarra and Alice Kelly this article considers how Aboriginal leaders and thinkers managed and challenged non-Indigenous expectations set for them around how their decolonisation was to proceed. Self-determination, for missionaries, could be achieved by a new, supposedly more enlightened mission to “inculturate” the gospel. Whereas missionaries presumed Aboriginal church leaders' authority rested in their cultural authenticity, these Aboriginal leaders were also asserting other sources of authority including their culture, but especially the authority that arises from Country itself.     

Church, Space and Conflict: Religious Co-Existence and Political Communication in Seventeenth-Century Switzerland

This article sets out to explore how a local quarrel in theGrafschaft of Baden, a bi-confessional Swiss county, occasionedby efforts to install a separate font for Protestant parishioners,activated larger constitutional and confessional tensions betweenthe Catholic and Protestant cantons of the Swiss Confederation.The article reconstructs the lengthy political negotiationscaused by the rearrangement of church space since the Landfriedenof 1531: this treaty had enshrined bi-confessionalism in theSwiss Confederation and had established the duties and rightsof both confessions, although to the disadvantage of the ReformedProtestants. It had also transformed the consecrated space ofthe church into a stage for political action by the cantons.From 1531 onwards, changes in religious belief and observancewere subject to the will of the supreme governing authority.The article shows that local conflicts over the arrangementand furnishing of certain church spaces can give us fascinatinginsights into political practice, the establishment of socialorder and the handling of denominational differences withinthe Swiss Confederation. It attempts to contribute to our understandingof early modern political history by using concepts from culturalhistory and communication theory in which politics is closelylinked to social and confessional processes generating meaningand order.     

Implementing the Regulation on Places of Worship in Indonesia: New Problems,Local Politics and Court Action

This article examines the local implementation of the national Joint Regulation 2006 on places of worship in Indonesia. It focuses on the case study of the Protestant Christian Batak Congregation, which became one of the first churches to successfully challenge the authority of a local leader to cancel its permit to build a church. I begin by exploring the history of the regulation of permits for places of worship in Indonesia and the various proposals for law reform that have been put forward since 1998. I then outline the provisions of the new Joint Regulation and highlight the ongoing problems for religious minorities at the local level because of the failure of local authorities to implement the national regulation. I will demonstrate how religious minorities are challenging the decisions of local authorities by complaining to independent watchdogs, taking court action and using the political process. In conclusion, I argue that the Protestant Christian Batak Congregation court case is part of a broader trend for local authorities to use conflict over places of worship as an opportunity for political gain in the highly competitive political atmosphere since the downfall of Suharto in 1998.     

Catholic Child Migration Schemes from the United Kingdom to Australia: Systemic Failures and Religious Legitimation

Between 1938 and 1956, an estimated 1,147 children were sent from the United Kingdom to Australia through child migration initiatives delivered by Catholic organisations. Whilst experiences of child migrants varied, there has been a growing public recognition over the past thirty years of the trauma experienced by many. Although the suffering of child migrants occurred in the context of wider policy failures, this article argues that there was a particular pattern of systemic failures characteristic of these Catholic schemes. After providing an overview of the complex organisational structure through which Catholic child migration operated, the article identifies six systemic failures in this work relating both to organisational processes and the institutional conditions to which child migrants were sent. It goes on to argue that these occurred in a framework of religious legitimation which emphasised the unique role of the church as a mediator of salvation, the need to safeguard children's faith, the child as a member of a corporate body more than as an individual and the relative moral authority of the church over secular institutions. Within this framework, these systemic failures were either unrecognised or seen as tolerable in the context of wider organisational and theological priorities.     

Investigating Empire: Humanitarians,Reform and the Commission of Eastern Inquiry

In the wake of the Napoleonic wars, British debates about colonial rule and, in particular, the treatment of subject peoples brought practical, financial and religious concerns together. As a means of addressing these problems, the British government despatched a series of travelling commissions to survey and reform the governance of its empire. British-based humanitarians and abolitionists drew on anxieties about the corrupting influence of empire on metropolitan society to press for commissions as vectors of imperial probity; their colonial counterparts harnessed the commissions' authority to inform and persuade a metropolitan audience of the need for specific colonial reforms. This article explores humanitarian attempts to influence colonial and imperial policy by considering the Commission of Eastern Inquiry, appointed in 1822 to investigate successively the Cape Colony, Mauritius and Ceylon. The Commission's history underscores links between networks of metropolitan and colonial humanitarians, and between anti-slavery activists and supporters of indigenous rights.     

‘To Recover His Reputation Among the People of God’: Sex,Religion and the Double Standard in Presbyterian Ireland,c.1700–1838

This article explores how Presbyterian religious belief and practice shaped the operation of the sexual double standard in Ireland. It argues that reputation continued to have a public element into the nineteenth century and highlights the role of religion as a locus around which male reputation was validated, restored and safeguarded. Through a system of surveillance, and underpinned by the gossip network, the Presbyterian church courts in Ireland held men to account for lapses in sexual conduct. Presbyterian men, too, were concerned to maintain clear characters. In their efforts to keep sexual indiscretions private and silence their accusers, some men even resorted to bribery, threats of violence and extortion. Others turned to the church courts to validate their reputations, recognising the place and power of the church as a source of moral authority.     

Noble Traditions and Christian Principles: The Integral Spirituality of Bernard Narokobi

ABSTRACT

This article describes some of the major events in the Catholic Church in Papua New Guinea (PNG) following the Second Vatican Council, the ‘self study’ of the church in PNG in the 1970s, and the General Assembly of 2003–4. An outcome of the self study was the establishment of a national Catholic council in which Bernard Narokobi played a significant role. The article continues with a reflection on how Narokobi’s promotion of Melanesian spirituality finds links with a Catholic theology of grace and sacrament and how these two contribute to his understanding of the dual pillars of the PNG Constitution with its noble traditions and Christian principles coming together in the ideal of integral human development. The article lays out different ways Bernard Narokobi was formally involved with the church over his lifetime and how his bringing together of Melanesian experience and Christian faith provided a model for the integral liberation he envisaged and expressed – both in his work in the church and in the National Goals and Directive Principles of the PNG Constitution.     

Demographic and budgetary influence on the geography of the poll tax: alarm or false alarm?

"The paper examines the influence of demographic change and the adaptation of local authority budgets on the level of poll tax between local authorities. The changes introduced by the Local Government Finance Act [in the United Kingdom] are argued to make almost all the possible variation between areas depend upon demography and local decisions on expenditure. Means of assessing local expenditure need are outlined and a consistent measure is developed which is used to estimate the relative contributions of changing need, tax base, new expenditures and grants over the period 1974-85 and up to 1991. 'New realism' in local authority spending is argued to combine with demographic change to allow radically reduced potential poll tax levies to be estimated than have been forecast by other sources. The reductions are particularly significant in inner London and many metropolitan districts."     

试论西欧中世纪封建王权的"合法性"

中世纪的西欧在建立采邑制的过程中确立了个人联合的政体形式。在这个政体中 ,王权的合法性决定了其具有政治统治权威。基督教“君权神授”的神权政治思想为封建王权的合法性提供了理论基础 ,由教会举行的加冕礼使王权的合法性具体化。日耳曼人的习惯法使采邑制具有潜在的分裂因素 ,封建王权用特许权作为对各自为政的封建领地施行统治的工具。王权的合法性赋予特许权法律权威 ,法律权威给予封建领地的社会群体司法保护 ,保证个人联合政体的正常运行 ,同时也促进了封建社会中新因素的生长。     

Visions of Muhammad in Bukhara and Tabaristan: Dreams and Their Uses in Persian Local Histories

Persian authors couched claims to the religio-political authority and legitimacy of their cities through dream narratives in local histories written between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. Persians did not always fit neatly into genealogical claims to legitimacy like the Arab descendants of Mu?ammad and his clan, and dreams form alternate avenues that sanctify and legitimate specific Persian cities and individuals. Dream narratives embedded in Tārīkh-i Bukhārā and Tārīkh-i ?abaristān are literary devices that bring the prestige of religious authority to their city and province and to specific persons. These dream narratives are not only windows into understanding the broader social, political, and religious contexts of local histories but also the particular anxieties and priorities of the authors.     

A State Within the State: The Inquisition in Enlightenment Thought

ABSTRACT

Enlightenment thinkers wrote many pages against the Inquisition. In particular, they widely criticized the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions, which they regarded as the epitomes of cruelty and fanaticism. Both inquisitions were established at royal request and remained subjected to the authority of the kings until they were abolished at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Indeed, therein the kings nominated the grand inquisitors, who were invested with civil jurisdiction for reasons that were at least as much political as religious. However, Enlightenment writers almost always portrayed the Inquisition as the ultimate example of the many ills derived from clerical authority, ecclesiastical autonomy and monastic despotism. Kings and civil magistrates were, in fact, usually depicted as victims of inquisitorial power. This common portrayal of the Inquisition reveals that the Enlightenment idea of toleration was essentially constructed for reducing the power of churches to disturb public peace and challenge civil authority. Thus, this idea of toleration was in effect less capable of denouncing political intolerance, let alone of promoting the separation of church and state.