“The churchwardens have not used to meddle with anie seate”: seating plans and parochial resistance to Laudianism in 1630s Somerset

This article considers the impact of the Laudian Reformation upon the spatial organisation of early modern English parish churches, drawing upon the Somerset churchwardens’ accounts and court depositions of the 1620s and 1630s. An explosion of scholarly literature on early modern church seating plans and pew disputes has increased our understanding of how early moderns used the parish floor space to represent and reinforce social hierarchies and relationships. This paper investigates the significance of pewing practices to understanding parochial receptions of Laudianism, which required an overhaul of church interiors and which impacted seating arrangements in turn. It proposes that Laudian attempts to enforce a radical restructuring of churches, and to co-opt the churchwardens in pursuit of their policies, ran against established and hotly defended practices for the organisation of the parochial space.     

Patterns in the Survival of Catholic National Parishes, 1940-1980

National parishes represent the primary institutional response of the Catholic Church to its ethnic diversity in the United States. The national parish differs from the more common territorial parish in the definition of its membership, which comprises all Catholics in an area sharing a specific ethnic or national background. This study examines patterns in the survival of German, Italian and Polish national parishes between 1940 and 1980. Factors related to characteristics of a parish's institutional environment and of the ethnic community it serves have strongly influenced parish survival. These factors include the parish's ethnic affiliation, the size of the ethnic community it serves, the diversity of national parishes present at the local and diocesan level and the process of parish consolidation in places where an ethnic group has formed more than one parish. Through the effects of these factors, national parishes have declined at a much faster rate in the Middle West than in the Northeast, regions in which the vast majority of national parishes were originally established. Catholic ethnic diversity should thus continue to contribute most significantly to American cultural pluralism within the latter region.     

Jerusalem Transformed in Post-Reformation England: The Case of the Cliffords and Beamsley Hospital

Abstract

This article explores the impact of the Tudor religious reforms in the rural upland parish of Kirkby Malhamdale, Craven, in the Yorkshire Dales, from the late medieval period, when it was dominated by the economic power of the monasteries, during the Dissolution and subsequent changes, to 1603. Although early churchwardens' accounts have not survived for the parish, the analysis draws upon a variety of contemporary sources including wills, ecclesiastical documents, manor court rolls and other miscellaneous material, as well as the fabric and structure of the parish church itself. Aspects of worship and ritual in Kirkby Malham, the response to the reforms, and the extent to which conformity in the reformed Church of England was established in the parish by the end of the sixteenth century, are examined.     

Missionary,Reformer, and Old Believer in Revolutionary Russia: Bishop Andrei (Ukhtomskii) (1872–1937)

This article examines the life and thought of Andrei (Ukhtomskii), a prominent Orthodox churchman in late imperial and early Soviet Russia. A proponent of ecclesiastical reform, Andrei believed that the Church was unable to instil piety because of an overly close relationship with the state. Basing his opinions on Slavophile philosophy, Andrei campaigned for the restoration of the Russian patriarchate and parish reform that would grant the laity increased autonomy. As a missionary among non‐Russian populations, he rejected linguistic Russification. After 1905, these beliefs led him to clash with the right and Rasputin. After the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government appointed Andrei to a leading position in the Holy Synod. However, during the collapse of the Church's hierarchy in the 1920s, he grew weary of the prevalent inertia and in 1925 attempted to single‐handedly resolve the centuries‐old Old Believer schism. This was rejected by the Moscow Patriarchate, leading Andrei to create his own catacomb church. This article concludes that Andrei should be seen as a church politician undone by the contradictions inherent both in his own position and that of the Church.     

Medieval memories and the reformation of religious identity: Catholic and Anglican interactions with parish church sites in County Limerick,Ireland

SUMMARY: This paper examines parish church sites in County Limerick and their evolving meanings as a result of Ireland’s unsuccessful Protestant Reformation. Unusually for Europe, most Irish parish churches fell into ruin from 1550 to 1700. Conquest, loss of patronage and the Anglican Church of Ireland’s failure to convert most native Catholics ensured this eventuality. Nevertheless, local memories continued to draw people to these sites. There is evidence for Catholic burial in the 18th and 19th centuries, conversion of chancels into burial plots and, sometimes, church maintenance or construction by Anglicans. These activities all reveal contemporary concerns with history, identity and legitimacy.     

Building communities in a post-conflict society: churches and peace-building initiatives in northern ireland since 1994

In 1994 the IRA and Loyalist paramilitary groups declared ceasefires, leading to a more relaxed attitude and cross-community contacts in Northern Ireland. The result was the establishment of a new type of church-based reconciliation group, the Church Fora, intended to improve community relations and promote peace and reconciliation within local areas. This article focuses on the ways in which Church Fora have expanded the methods of such work since 1994. It will assess their effectiveness in promoting peace and reconciliation and developing community relations in Northern Ireland by placing them within the broader framework of church-based reconciliation work. Finally, by assessing how successful Church Fora have been in achieving their aims and objectives, I examine the lessons that could be learned for church-based reconciliation work being carried out within Northern Ireland.     

An Irish Conservative Perspective on the Defence of the Church of Ireland, 1865–1868

This article provides an analysis of the range of arguments used by senior members of the Irish Conservative party to defend the Established Church of Ireland from 1865 to 1868. The position of the Anglican Church in Ireland came under increasing threat following the death of Lord Palmerston, the British Prime Minister and the leader of the British Liberal party, in October 1865. Throughout his career, Palmerston, who had close connections to Ireland, had been a staunch defender of the privileges of the Church of Ireland. The first section of this article looks at the historical context in which this attack on its privileged position in Ireland arose. The second part traces some of the key arguments which leading members of the Irish Conservative party used in their defence of the Established Church. The final part of the paper considers some of the divisions which existed within the Conservative party, both in Britain and in Ireland, on the question of the future status of the Church of Ireland and at the effects that these divisions had in weakening its case against it.     

Parishes under Pressure ‐ The Church of England in South Buckinghamshire 1913–1939

Secularisation, or the reducing social significance of religion in the twentieth century, has been widely researched in terms of “demand” factors, but less so on the “supply‐side,” considering the contributory effects of the strategies and actions of religious organisations themselves. This article explores these strategies in a group of Anglican churches in South Buckinghamshire in the period leading up to the Second World War, as industrial and population development shifted proportionally to the southeast. This rapid growth and accompanying demographic change posed major challenges to the Church of England, subjecting the parish system to severe pressure. The availability, allocation, and suitability of clergy were a constant concern. The very basis of the Church of England's “offer” to the average citizen — of being the established, national church, there for everyone — seemed under threat: in some places, there was simply no church to “belong” to. Money was in short supply — perhaps both a cause and a symptom of other problems. A general issue was how to reach young people, but a specific concern was the funding of church schools. More widely, the church seemed to be losing touch with the changing cultural and moral landscape in which it operated.     

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.     

Between Virgins and Priests: The Feminisation of Catholicism and Priestly Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Spain

The feminisation of religion in the nineteenth-century has been broadly discussed by historians and sociologists. Considering the main contributions of that debate from a critical perspective, this article defends the hypothesis that the Catholic Church identified itself with the same characteristics with which it defined femininity in the nineteenth-century through the symbolic link with the Virgin Mary. Although this discursive feminisation of Catholicism left laymen in a difficult situation, it did contribute to reinforcing the patriarchal and hierarchical structure of the Church. The great challenge to bishops and priests, the leading subjects in the project of re-Christianising society, was to demonstrate their condition as men within a feminised organisation. This article will mainly focus on Spain, although with the international perspective that any study about Catholicism requires.     

The Poor Law,the Parish Apprentice,and the Textile Industries in the North of England, 1780–1830

Abstract

This article combines evidence from a variety of Poor Law sources, including apprenticeship registers and indentures, and minutes of discussions of parish officials, and information from business records, to assess the relationship between textile entrepreneurs and Poor Law officialdom in the development of the early textile factory labour force in the North of England, of which parish children formed an important component. It reveals the distribution of parish apprentices over long and short distances to the early northern textile mills. The impact of such labour on textile manufacturing in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries will be considered; and finally the experience of parish children as they became accustomed to novel working conditions will be explored. The analysis of Poor Law and business documentation reveals a meticulous record-keeping process, and a formality of procedure not previously acknowledged. It has been possible to trace apprentice children, both individually and in groups, from their parish of origin through their years of apprenticeship to adult employment. Reports of factory visits and correspondence between parish officials and employers are examined to analyse the relationship between parish and employer through the course of the apprenticeship term. It concludes that parish children were more important to the formation of the early textile factory workforce than conventionally believed, and that their apprenticeship enhanced their longer term employability.     

The Dichotomous Legacy of the Catholic Church’s Opposition to the Philippine Revolution of 1896

ABSTRACT

This article examines the repositioning of the Catholic Church in the aftermath of the Philippine Revolution of 1896–98, during the transfer of Spanish to American colonial rule. It reviews the consultations between the outgoing Spanish bishops and the Vatican’s Apostolic Delegate, Placido Chapelle, in January 1900, and the subsequent religious settlement promulgated in the Vatican’s Apostolic Constitution for the Philippine Church, Quae mari Sinico, in 1902. The Delegate’s identification with the Spanish bishops and their opposition to Filipino nationalist aspirations and the Filipino secular clergy confirmed the anti-Filipino position of the Church in the American colonial period. Both the Filipino bishops and the American bishops opposed independence and distrusted the nationalist leaders as anti-clerical Masons. This is followed by a discussion of the claimed reconciliation of Church and Filipino political aspirations in the post-Vatican II period in the 1960s, which culminated in the Church’s role in bringing down President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Committed to a theology of social justice, the bishops now aligned the Church with progressive democratic nationalists. In its successful opposition to the Marcos dictatorship in the name of “People’s Power,” the hierarchy claimed that through the “Miracle of EDSA” the Church had identified with and indeed represented the political will of the Filipino people.     

Clothing the Poor in Early-Nineteenth-Century England

Abstract

In a pioneering study in this journal, Steven King suggested that parish clothing provision was of fundamental importance in the eighteenth century both in terms of local social relations and the perceived standing of parish authorities. This article tests his thesis for the first decades of the nineteenth century, confirming that parish clothing was indeed pivotal in maintaining a sense of local social justice. However, it takes issue with King's reasons for the relatively high levels of clothing provision enjoyed by the poor, suggesting that they had as much to do with a set of shared values between giver and receiver as they did with considerations of parish prestige or social order.     

The Shifting Ideological Currents of the Transatlantic Puritan Community in the Early Seventeenth Century

This article explores the ideological transfigurations which appeared when English Puritans relocated to New England. It does so by examining particular communications which took place between the Puritans of the “Great Migration” of the 1630s and their erstwhile associates in “Old” England. Though both sets of Puritans had seemingly much in common when they were ideological allies back in Old England, not least being an antipathy towards the Laudian ecclesiastical establishment of the late 1620s and 1630s, the movement to the colonial periphery of New England exposed previously unnoticed, or, at least, overlooked, ideological divisions. This article explicates one significant ideological issue upon which these Old and New England Puritans were divided: that of the appropriate relationship between the civil and ecclesiastical spheres of the polity.     

The Connolly Association,the Catholic Church,and anti-communism in Britain and Ireland during the early Cold War

ABSTRACT

During the Cold War era, the Connolly Association, an Irish republican socialist political organisation in Britain close to the Communist Party of Great Britain, was seen by British Communists as a potential means of winning recruits amongst Britain’s growing post-war Irish community. This view was shared by the Catholic Church, which, amidst the broader ideological atmosphere of the Cold War, placed an increased emphasis on anti-communism in the early post-war years. This article will discuss clerical opposition to the Connolly Association in early Cold War Britain and Ireland, drawing chiefly on diocesan archives and Catholic periodicals.     

The Education of Natives,Creole Clerics,and the Mexican Enlightenment

In this article, I explore the parallel responses of two groups of colonial subjects who were confronted with the institutional changes that occurred in the context of Enlightenment ideas in eighteenth-century Mexico: creole clerics headed by the Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero; and native religious men who petitioned to colonial authorities and the Crown for additional spaces for the education of indigenous men. I explore some of the interactions between creole clerics—often referred to as creole patriots—and native elites in the schools of central Mexico, and efforts by indigenous noble men to broaden the opportunities for natives to join the ranks of the Church and to receive a higher education. To this end, I build on the scholarship that has made evident how the hegemonic program of Bourbon reforms, which was inspired by the Enlightenment, was not a top-down plan implemented successfully and equally across the continent but rather a series of contested interpretations. This article contributes to the recent shift in the scholarship on the Enlightenment that acknowledges cross-cultural global exchanges by arguing that certain groups of natives in central Mexico, and a particular group of American-born clerics, participated actively in building a pragmatic version of the Enlightenment that responded to their local realities and contributed to a globalized understanding of enlightened ideas.     

Welfare Systems and the Parish Nurse in Early Modern London, 1650–1725

Abstract

This article argues that the part played by parish nurses in the capital's welfare system requires radical reassessment. Such women were playing a central role in the lives of the poor by the early 18th century. It will demonstrate that, at least in some of London's large suburban parishes, there existed a surprisingly sophisticated network of parish nurses who played an important part in the overall care package delivered to paupers. Such nurses, often operating on a very substantial scale, were running what were in effect nursing homes for the homeless and sick poor. These women were running multi-functional enterprises. In addition to caring for the sick poor, they looked after abandoned and orphaned children, pregnant women and lunatics. The existence of these individuals has not been hitherto identified in the metropolis, has been almost completely missed by those interested in the history of women's work, and hardly features in the small but growing literature on nursing in early modern England. Such neglect is not surprising, because, as the article concludes, such 'multi-functional' parish nurses, in all probability, only existed in the metropolis for a relatively short period of time. The metropolitan workhouse movement undermined many functions of the London parish nurse. By the mid-18th century, the roles and responsibilities of 'the parish nurse' had become restricted largely to the rearing and nursing of children and infants.     

The Parish Community Through the Vicarage Window: Nineteenth-Century Clergy Visitation Returns

Abstract

This article uses the visitation returns of the clergy to Archbishop Thomson at his primary visitation of the diocese of York in 1865 in order to look at the relationships which defined the parish community as seen, idealised and criticised by the clergymen of this mainly rural diocese. Their collective view highlights key elements which helped make or break the community with the parish church at its centre: the support given by local landowners; the central importance of the school; and the relationship with the farmers of the parish and impact of farming practices on church attendance. Though the ideal parish community rarely existed it inspired conscientious clergymen to work for its creation in sometimes difficult circumstances. The study also illustrates the value of visitation returns for the local historian and gives pause for thought as the closure of village schools and churches to-day undermines the communities our forebears strove to create.     

Rise and Fall of the Brotherhood of St Andrew in the Anglican Diocese of Dunedin: Charting the American Influence in New Zealand's Religious History

In recent years, scholars have begun to highlight American influences upon New Zealand's religious history. They have demonstrated that even at the height of the British Empire, many non-episcopal churches maintained close ties to their coreligionists in the United States. This article contributes to this field of research by analysing American influences within the Anglican Church of New Zealand, usually portrayed as a thoroughly English institution before the Second World War. It takes as a case study the activities of the American Brotherhood of St Andrew in the Diocese of Dunedin from 1906 to 1915. The article demonstrates that Bishop Samuel Tarratt Nevill invited the Brotherhood because he had great admiration for the Episcopal Church, and that many of his flock accepted the Brotherhood for the same reason. Eventually, the Brotherhood was eclipsed by an English rival, the Church of England Men's Society. But this transition took place not because local Anglicans lost interest in America, but because the Edwardian Era witnessed a surge in imperial loyalty and because the local leader of the CEMS, Canon William Curzon-Siggers, deliberately sought to undermine the influence of the Brotherhood.