Englishmen,Scots and Marchers: National and Local Identities in Thomas Gray's Scalacronica

Abstract

The abortive Wakefield Plot of March 1541 against Henry VIII was followed by a massive — and armed — royal progress to the North that summer. Historians have, however, tended to see the progress as being more concerned with a projected meeting between Henry and James V of Scotland at York. This article re-examines both the Wakefield Plot and the progress. It argues the Plot did indeed present great danger to Henry VIII. It was well planned, involved unprecedented inter-class collaboration, and envisaged a bloody conflict to overthrow the 'tyrant' Henry. It also envisaged aid from the Scots, with whom the conspirators may have had links. The Plot is set in the context of serious discontent about taxation in early 1541, and severe local economic problems in Yorkshire. The progress bound the northern elites to the King through a succession of choreographed supplications from the northern gentry and yeomen. Despite serious fears that the progress might meet trouble in the North, it succeeded in pacifying the region. Meanwhile, the possibility of a meeting with James at York emerged only during the progress, and James's failure to appear was of little importance in the slide to war between England and Scotland in 1542.     

A Unique Project of Mission: Forty Years on,a Personal Memoire

Fifty years ago, Call to the North was conceived against the background of sectarian terrorism. This was a unique occasion when all the traditional Christian churches of the North of England were engaged in unitedly presenting the Christian faith to the general population. The exercise was led by the Anglican Archbishop of York together with the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool and Dr John Marsh representing the Free Churches.

The objectives of the exercise, the methods employed, the problems encountered and its eventual outcome in 1973 are outlined, together with an account of the Roman Catholic Archbishop’s strategy of seeking Pope Paul VI’s support to help his traditional dioceses come to terms with the new Vatican thinking of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II.

The account concludes with a reflection on the historic outcome of this unique exercise.     

The ‘Obstacle of Sex’. Christina of Sweden and Her Aspirations to the Polish–Lithuanian Throne

An important field of research related to early modern sovereignty is the topic of female political authority. This article aims to utilise the category of gender to analyse potential obstacles that Queen Christina of Sweden had to overcome in order to obtain royal dignity in an elective monarchy, the early modern Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Could the election of a female monarch constitute an acceptable and functional alternative for the Catholic and conservative noble society of this vast composite state? Former examples of Jadwiga of Anjou (1384) and Anna Jagiellon (1576) elected and crowned Kings of Poland seemed to suggest as much. The case of Christina's aspirations is all the more interesting, as her prominent supporter during the royal election of 1669 was the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Clement IX. It is, in fact, the diplomatic correspondence created by the papal Secretariat of State that constitutes the historical basis for the research presented here.     

Civil Power and the Deconstruction of Scholasticism in the Thought of Marc'antonio de Dominis

Summary

Marc'antonio de Dominis is well known to historians as a figure in the political and religious culture of early modern Britain and Europe. This article contends that he was also a major theorist of civil power: his critique of Catholic scholastic political thought is compelling and his account of divine right kingship sheds light on conceptual problems that troubled a range of early modern thinkers. De Dominis dismantled the scholastic theory of political power on its own terms, insisting that Almain, Bellarmine, Suárez and others could not distinguish, as they sought to, between the potestas politica in general and the rule of particular princes. By this insight de Dominis could vindicate royal authority against the deposing pretensions of the Pope, the main objective of James I's supporters during the Allegiance Controversy, but his own positive account of how to think about power ran into theoretical trouble which he evidently perceived himself. If the potestas politica cannot be abstracted from a specific regime, and if the prince's absolute sovereignty depends on this fact, can politics be understood only at the level of the particular and contingent? The article closes by setting Thomas Hobbes—well versed in Jacobean polemic—in the context of this question.     

The Virtue Ethic Difference in the Just War Discourse of James Turner Johnson and Catholic Social Teaching

Abstract

In this article, I investigate how incorporating virtue ethics into the process of interpreting and responding to conflict re-shapes the understanding and application of just war theory. More specifically, I analyze James Turner Johnson's idea of just war and the implications of Thomistic virtue ethics. My argument in this article is that Johnson's rule-based idea of just war theory lacks the more integrated virtue ethic, which we find in Thomas and in the re-appropriation of Thomistic virtue ethics in contemporary Catholic Social Teaching's discourse on just war. This contributes to Johnson's idea of just war being inconsistent with the direction of contemporary Catholic Social Teaching on just war theory, particularly regarding the presumption against war. His lack of a virtue ethic also contributes to an inadequate understanding, development, and application of basic just war criteria, particularly from a Catholic perspective.     

Hegel on the World-historical

The article considers the development and the diversity of the understandings of the Norman Conquest in Jacobean England. In 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended the throne of England, and one of his first policies to unify the two kingdoms culminated in failure in face of English opposition. Modern historians have demonstrated that at the heart of this quick collapse lay a constitutional struggle—the English fear of the loss of their sovereignty. Taking this as the vantage point, the article examines a number of historical publications composed by English lawyers in the following decade. The Jacobean period witnessed a significant proliferation of historical literature, and modern historians have stressed that English common lawyers staunchly adhered to a belief in the ancient constitution, a belief in the antiquity of English law that was counter to royal policies. The article demonstrates how the Union debate, despite its eventual collapse, produced unparalleled interest in the meaning of conquest in the 1610s. It also considers the works of civil lawyers in comparison. By comparing the differing accounts of the Norman Conquest, the article ultimately demonstrates the contested nature of James's kingship in England.     

The condemnation of Roger Bacon

The condemnation of the English Franciscan Roger Bacon in 1277 has been the subject of a great deal of discussion, most of it inconclusive or misleading. There is ample evidence to suggest, however, that Bacon's condemnation and imprisonment resulted from his adherence to an astrological tradition, transmitted to Europe through the writings of Albumasar, which placed the birth of Christ and the advent of Christianity under the influence of a planetary conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. In his works written for Pope Clement IV in the 1260s, Bacon treats this celestial phenomenon as an integral part of his astrological doctrine. Most of his contemporaries, including Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, reject the idea that the stars exerted an influence on the human nature of Christ at his birth. In contrast to the opinion of the noted historian of science, Lynn Thorndike, this article shows that Roger Bacon's views on this subject were indeed unique, and sufficiently heretical to warrant his condemnation and imprisonment by the Franciscan Order.     

Scandal: Olivia Pope,Pope Francis,and Catholic Social Thought

Millions of viewers tune in to watch ABC's Scandal where political corruption, sexual infidelity, secret lives, and hidden crimes abound. What is it that makes something scandalous? In popular culture, scandal involves something morally or legally wrong coupled with public outrage. In contrast, as a theological category scandal is that which impedes the community's relationship with God. Pope Francis identifies poverty as just such a scandal damaging our relationship with God and each other. Examining scandal in popular culture and the media along with Catholic social thought, this article identifies three types of scandal: hypocrisy, impurity, and dehumanization. Ultimately, the theology of scandal can direct us away from the salacious towards addressing scandals of dehumanization.     

Ruinismo: the Catholic Church in Italy from ‘mediation culture’ to the Cultural Project

It is only seven years since Monsignor Camillo Ruini resigned from his role as President of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), yet it feels much longer. The tempestuous events that marked Silvio Berlusconi's decline, on one hand, and the election of Pope Francis to the Holy See, on the other, have made such an impression on recent Italian history that seems to leave no time for reflection on what has happened over the last twenty years. This article explores how, during this time, Cardinal Ruini has re-fashioned the relations between the Catholic Church and Italian politics, following a pattern that has come to be known as ‘ruinismo’. The essay follows the development of the theological-political line of the Conference, from the “mediation” of the “Catholic Party”, the Christian Democrats (DC), to the “policy of presence” of politically committed Catholics, defined in these terms by the ecclesiastical congress in Loreto in 1985 and fully carried out under Ruini's management, with the backing of Berlusconi's governments. The aim is to establish whether and to what extent the “Ruinian” rule may be regarded as the consequence of mainstream Catholic politics of the 1980s and, equally, as a response to the cultural and political transformation brought about by the upheavals of the corruption scandals of 1989–91. Only from this long-term perspective is it possible to determine whether Ruini's exit has brought an end to ruinismo.     

Catholic Responses to Evolution, 1859–2009: Local Influences and Mid‐Scale Patterns

This article discusses Catholic responses to evolution between 1859, the year of publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and 2009, the year in which the scientific world celebrated its 150th anniversary. Firstly, I will discuss how the Vatican initially responded to evolution in the period between 1859 and 1907, the year in which Pope Pius X issued the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. Secondly, I will explore the responses of Catholic authorities and intellectuals and identify the local factors that influenced their responses. Also, I will demonstrate that, gradually, Catholics have shifted towards a more lenient position concerning evolution. Thirdly, I will demonstrate that, in the end, the Vatican has complied with this pattern. In general, this article shows that not only Protestants, but Catholics too have struggled to come to terms with evolution and evolutionary theory and that local factors had an impact on these negotiations.     

New idols: Catholicism in the face of Fascist totalitarianism

Abstract

This article explores the attitudes of the Vatican and Catholic culture towards Fascism and Fascism's political religion during the pontificate of Pius XI, in the context of the Catholic church's rejection of modernity as a new epoch of paganism that took the form of political mysticism. It shows that despite the Concordat of 1929, the papacy reacted with growing alarm to the Fascist regime's ‘sacralization of politics’ that threatened to make Catholic religion a handmaid of the totalitarian state.     

Protestantism and liberty: Catharine Macaulay’s politics of religion as a response to David Hume

ABSTRACT

Catharine Macaulay’s History of England from the Accession of James I (1763–1783) was intended by its author and received by its audience as, in part, a response to David Hume’s History of England. Macaulay’s writing has been read as a Whig counter to Hume’s Tory interpretation of England’s seventeenth-century history; more recent work has explored whether Macaulay or Hume has a better claim to be considered an “enlightenment historian”. This article will suggest that Macaulay’s views on the role of England’s Protestant belief and practice in the development and maintenance of the nation’s liberties contained, in the earlier volumes of her History, some of her substantive and important refutations of Hume’s arguments, and, further, that Macaulay’s well-argued claim that Protestantism was instrumental in the formation of England’s national character and potential enjoyment of political liberties was received by her readers as a particularly valuable part of her historical argument. Her accounts of Roman Catholic violence against Protestant victims at the Siege of La Rochelle and in the Irish Massacre of 1641 became some of the most quoted parts of her historical writing.     

Sovereignty,mercy, and natural law: King James VI/I and Jean Bodin

ABSTRACT

The affinities between Jean Bodin's and King James VI/I's political theories have been recognized, and the fact that James had owned Bodin's Six livres de la république has been recorded, but Bodin's specific influence on James has remained nebulous. This article examines the evidence for James's direct engagement with Bodin, by studying James's copy of the Six livres alongside James's political treatises. It provides substantial new archival evidence for Bodin's influence on James's political thought and, thereby, on Scottish and English theories of sovereignty.     

The Neoconservatives and the Pope: Misreading John Paul II in George Weigel's Biographies

With the recent release of his autobiographical narrative of the composition of the papal biography, Witness to Hope, prominent Catholic neoconservative George Weigel has invited a reexamination of the presentation of John Paul II to the world by Catholic neoconservatives. In his biographies, George Weigel crafts an often misleading portrait of Pope John Paul II as the pope of American liberalism and neoconservativism. Ironically, at the same time, the story of Weigel's biographies contains the story of the rise and fall of the Catholic neoconservative movement in America.     

Transatlantic Catholic responses to Fascist anti-Semitism: the Racial Laws of 1938 in the Jesuit press of America and Civiltà Cattolica

ABSTRACT

This article examines the Catholic responses to the Fascist Racial Laws in a transatlantic and comparative perspective. It looks specifically at two foremost publications of the Jesuit press in Rome and New York: Civiltà Cattolica and America, respectively. The comparative approach helps to comprehend the variety of factors behind editorial choices: readership, political context, Vatican directions, censorship, and silence. Jesuits on both sides of the Atlantic interpreted the anti-Semitic turn of the Fascist regime as an imitation of Nazi Germany and with the persistent hope that Italian policies would be milder and more ‘civilized’. The shaping of the myth of the ‘good Italian’ was an early process in which Church voices, including the Pope himself, took a significant part. This article argues that despite contextual differences, both Jesuit publications demonstrated a transnational pattern of Catholic relation to the Jews: endorsing Pius XI’s statements, they spoke out against racism but did not extend their condemnations to a full rejection of anti-Semitism in its religious and secular components. The disapproval of Italy’s Racial Laws was not a defense of the Jews of Italy.     

Re-thinking Solidarity as a Principle of Catholic Social Teaching: Going Beyond Gaudium et spes and the Social Encyclicals of John Paul II

Abstract

The tradition of official Catholic Social Teaching, which emerged within the context of the European social question, has since expanded to incorporate developmental issues of the Two-Thirds World. This is shown in the social encyclicals of Pope John XXIII, but more significantly in the Vatican II Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et spes, and the social documents of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II. In these writings, the principle of solidarity is a significant feature—both for discussions of the European social question, and in engaging with the problems of poverty and underdevelopment in the Two-Thirds World. This paper accepts that the principle of solidarity occupies a central position in Catholic social thought. It argues, however, that the ever-increasing poverty, exploitation and despair in the Two-Thirds World challenges our ethical and theological conceptualizations of solidarity. This paper intends to examine the use of the solidarity principle both in Gaudium et spes and in the social encyclicals of John Paul II. It will also raise the question whether their formulations and insights are adequate in confronting the ever-expanding challenges of international poverty and underdevelopment.     

Irish Female Emigration in the 1930s: Transgressing space and culture

Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in the 1920s, the continuing levels of emigration from Ireland came as a disappointment to many who believed that British colonialism had caused and perpetuated the emigration problem. Within this context, there was a need to explain emigration in ways that deflected blame away from the new state authorities. In this article, the author contributes to a gendered analysis of these shifting constructions of emigration. Drawing upon Irish newspapers of the period, she suggests that the figure of the 'emigrant girl' was central to post-colonial discourses on emigration. During the 1930s, the emigration of thousands of young Irish women to English cities such as London sparked widespread comment and criticism. The Irish press and the Catholic hierarchy in particular propagated an image of these vulnerable young women as lost and alone in the big, bad cities of England. The author analyses the ways in which the 'emigrant girl' embodied specific representations of place, culture and gendered identity; the 'emigrant girl' embodied an Irishness marked by religion, culture and landscape. Through her transgression of physical, cultural and religious spaces, she encountered loneliness, danger and the risk of denationalisation.     

Persian Ambassadors,their Circassians,and the Politics of Elizabethan and Regency England

The coincidence of the appearance of two Circassian women as wives of ambassadors on the Anglo-Persian diplomatic and political stage has generated more than passing interest in academic and lay literature. Though the story of Sir Robert Sherley and Lady Teresia Sherley is better known in British circles, and has even generated renewed interest with two simultaneous exhibitions in 2009 in London, the story of Fath Ali Shah's Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Abol Hassan Khan, has not received sufficient attention, and has certainly not been fully explored in the context of the politics of Regency England. The present article revisits key moments of the life of the Sherleys and of Abol Hassan Khan and Delaram, his Circassian wife, but goes beyond the retelling of their journeys to focus on how the latter two's visit to England generated bawdy depictions in the popular press and became the vehicle for political satire quite unconnected to their persons.