Poet as politician: Venantius Fortunatus' panegyric to King Chilperic

In August 580 the Italian poet, Venantius Fortunatus, delivered a panegyric before King Chilperic and a synod of bishops assembled at Berny-Rivière to hear the poet's friend and patron, Bishop Gregory of Tours, arraigned on a charge of treason. The poem has long and widely been interpreted as a dishonourable and opportunistic betrayal of the bishop, as the poet looked for more convenient patronage. This article argues that the poem must be analysed in its historical context and in its place in the poet's development of the genre of addressing the Merovingian kings. Such an analysis shows that the poet is using the panegyric with subtlety and political acumen to offer a formula for rapprochement between the king and his bishops, thus protecting his friend Gregory; and that more generally he is playing the traditional active role of a panegyrist in mediating between the ruler and his people, developing a distinctive image of Merovingian kingship as he does so.     

After Gundovald,before Pseudo‐Isidore: episcopal jurisdiction,clerical privilege and the uses of Roman law in the Frankish kingdoms

The article focuses on the mobilization and reconfiguration of Roman law in the Merovingian kingdoms. It pays particular attention to a collection of legal texts first compiled in the late sixth century, in preparation for the Second synod of Mâcon in 585. Drawing heavily on an extraordinary collection of late Roman imperial laws, the so‐called Sirmondian Constitutions, the bishops sought to declare themselves untouchably sacrosanct. A close analysis of the synodal canons shows that the bishops adapted these imperial rulings to legitimate their position in ways that had no basis in the original laws themselves. The study closes by linking the synod of Mâcon with a debate over episcopal privilege as reflected in the writings of Gregory of Tours, and with a brief look at the further history of the debate in the Carolingian period.     

Ruodlieb VIII, 103

The essential question in this article is why Cyprian chose to suffer martyrdom sub Valeriano and not sub Decio eight years earlier. In his letters Cyprian defended what he called his withdrawal from the persecutors by referring to his obedience to God but also to his responsibilities as a bishop. It is claimed that Cyprian both in 250 and 258 acted as a patronus for his congregation, his behaviour being typical of an aristocratic pattern of behaviour.     

Evangelical mission and the railway workshop apprentices: Institutionalising Christian presence in imperial Bengal, 1885–1914

Personal limitations prevented the Reverend Charles Bradburn of the Church Missionary Society from contributing to the conversion of unbelievers in poor communities in Nadia District. As a Manchester yarn-agent's son, however, he had assimilated a vision of economic enterprise to his uncompromising evangelical convictions. He developed it in the light of an ethically resonant Scandinavian discipline of carpentry (Sloyd), which also had followers in Britain and the United States. On this basis he was to contribute to the ‘institutionalisation’ of the Christian presence in India by developing collusive relationships between the CMS schools and a range of imperial political and administrative agencies, government departments and expatriate employers. As a ‘patron’ of the poor, not all of them descendants of earlier converts, he offered his clients training and the prospect of gainful employment. As a client of government, he earned grants for training dependable workers and generating employment. His contributions to a general institutionalisation of the Christian presence in Bengal was highly regarded by the Indian Civil Service. Approval in the CMS hierarchy in London was more uncertain.     

"And the Bones Come Together": Women'sReligious Expectations in Southern Africa, c. 1900–1945

African religious beliefs invaded Christian missions and provided the backdrop for interaction between African converts and women missionaries. African women came to missions not as tabulae rasae; their culture had stamped them with expectations and insights with which they imbibed and moulded the Christian message. They viewed religion as a resource. Their cultural expectations reinforced missionary promises and facilitated Christian conversion. As religious specialists women gained status, respect, social and economic security in pre-colonial society because they provided necessary and important services. These expectations lingered among African women at the missions. Thus, within patriarchal Christian denominations African women often exhibited an assertiveness which missionaries misunderstood and maligned. Mission conflicts were based on missionary attempts to make African women dependent upon their Christian spouses. This role was contradictory to African beliefs and Christian African needs. Differences were further exacerbated by gender discrimination within the church, which affected both European and African women, and colonialism, which provided the background for Christian occupation of the colony. Although familial obligations and cultural expectations were points of contention, motherhood, literacy, and leadership training provided meeting points of mutual concern for African women and missionaries.     

Constantine and the Bishop: The Roman Church in the Early Fourth Century

When Constantine first entered Rome after his defeat of Maxentius in October 312, he encountered a rich and complex Christian community and a bishop whose position was precarious. Centuries of growth and a long religious peace had resulted in the development of a large number of locally based communities in Rome with their own centres of worship - the tituli. Constantine needed to convince these communities of his bona fides as a Christian emperor. The bishop of Rome, Miltiades, was the ruler of a relatively newly unified see, recently fractured by persecution and controversy. Miltiades' relative weakness was to Constantine's political advantage, especially since it made him eager to receive the vast ocean of generosity which Constantine began to pour into the Roman Church. The particular and immediate beneficiary of this generosity was the bishop, who gained a vast and lavishly appointed cathedral, and a palace to go with it.     

Recovering Classical Philosophy in the Modern Context: The Work of Francis Slade

Francis Slade's spoken words and his writings are concrete and realistic: in their arresting formulations, their close reading and juxtaposition of texts, their use of literature and art, their insights into classical political philosophy, and their understanding of Christian faith. This article illustrates these features by examining three contrasts he develops in his work. First, the distinction between ends and purposes helps recover the classical significance of telos, which was done away with in modernity and has been lost to contemporary thought and culture. Second, Slade contrasts the premodern city, where political life naturally emerges in several kinds of communities in accord with the ends of human nature, with the modern state, which has been constructed by thought from “deracinated individuals” organized into a “depoliticized society” and governed by “decontextualized rule.” Third, Slade shows how Augustine's reevaluation of human experience and Greek thought in the light of Christian revelation differs from Machiavelli's rejection of classical and Christian thought in favor of effective rationalism.     

Pontius’ Vita S. Cypriani and the making of a saint

The development of ancient biography into a Christian literary genre is a central theme of the article. The Vita S. Cypriani, allegedly written by thî deacon Pontius, forms the basis of this study, which examines Pontius’ methods not only of collecting but also of presenting his material. The writing of this first Christian Life is shown to be inspired by the tria genera of school rhetoric. This is exemplified by the Vita in question where the author, besides eulogizing and defending St. Cyprian, seeks to edify his audience.     

Two Indigenous Evangelists: Moses Tjalkabota and Arthur Wellington Clah

Arthur Wellington Clah was a Tsimshian man on the Pacific north-west coast of Canada, who encountered the missionary, William Duncan, as a young adult at the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Simpson in the 1850s. Moses Tjalkabota was an Arrernte man in central Australia. He was a young boy when he first came into contact with Lutheran missionaries at Hermannsburg mission in the 1880s, and was baptized in 1890. Both these men became Christian evangelists, both preached to their own people, and further afield among neighbouring groups. But here the similarities between them seem to stop. Clah was never part of a mission settlement, maintaining his independence from any established church; while Moses, who became blind as a young man, spent most of his life at Hermannsburg.
  This article examines these two evangelists' understandings of Christianity and how they communicated these understandings to their own and neighbouring peoples. Clah encouraged good behaviour, which conformed with his understanding of Christian precepts; Moses tried to communicate a more abstract form of belief through which happiness and eternal life could be attained.     

The politics of the ‘Church’ in the Italy of Pope Wojtyła

Abstract

This article analyzes the development of different political tendencies with the Italian Church during the pontificate of John Paul II. Two different strategies enabled the episcopal conference to maintain stability for a long period, in which time Cardinal Ruini played a key role, first as secretary and then president of the bishops. In his years the conference of bishops accepted that the political unity of the Catholic world was over, but it still tried to retain a strong political influence even though the mediation of the Christian Democratic Party was no longer available. With the end of Wojty?a's pontificate, however, this period came to a close and the different tendencies that make up the rich and complex world of the Italian Catholic Church have become more visible.     

The Archbishop of Canterbury,the Episcopal Bench,and the Passage of the 1911 Parliament Act

The passage of the 1911 Parliament Bill ended the power of the British house of lords to veto any legislation passed by the house of commons. Henceforth, it could only delay the passage of a measure. The bill was carried by a mere 17 votes and friction between Unionists who took up die‐hard opposition, advised abstention, or actively sought to aid passage was bitter. The role which the archbishop of Canterbury played in canvassing the episcopal bench and helping to ensure final passage of the bill has not attracted much attention. Prior to the debate, the archbishop advised abstention but did not dissuade others from encouraging bishops to support the bill to help ensure passage. Before the vote, therefore, ‘die‐hards’ opposing any concession to the government, ‘hedgers’ advising Unionist abstention in the vote, and ‘rats’, Unionists willing to vote for the bill to ensure passage despite personal reservations, attempted to sound out and pressure the bishops in their direction. At the debate, the archbishop changed his mind and decided he must support the bill in order to avoid a greater crisis, and 12 other bishops joined him in the government lobby, helping to create the final majority of 17 by which the measure passed. Consideration of the role of the bishops adds to the understanding of the mechanics by which the bill passed, amidst considerable intrigue, pressure and acrimony, as well as further illuminating the extent and intensity of the divisions within the Unionist party at this critical moment.     

An engineering career as industrial mission: Jack Keiser in post-war Britain

ABSTRACT

British mechanical engineer Jack Keiser’s postwar career in industrial education was simultaneously a career in justice work and Christian industrial mission. This paper examines the Christian critique of industry Keiser developed early in his career, as he transitioned in 1949–1950 into his life’s work in firm-based industrial education, and asks how historians of technology might interpret a critique that characterized industry in hyperbolic terms as enslaving or demonic. Keiser’s was part of an international critique connected to three important post-war Christian institutions: Student Christian Movement, the Industrial Mission Movement, and the World Council of Churches. He engaged with justice at both an intimate and a cosmic level, intimately through face-to-face relationships with apprentices and trainees under his supervision, and cosmically by engaging with the biblical prophets through whom God called for justice.     

Balancing and Limiting Episcopal Power: Bishop Thomas Barlow’s Use of Common Law in Disputes with Arminian Anglican Clerics

Thomas Barlow was a Reformed theologian simultaneously fighting on three fronts against Catholic, Dissenting Protestant and Arminian Anglican opponents. The first two of these groups threatened the Church of England from the outside, while the last group was transforming Anglican doctrine through its domination of the most important posts in the episcopal hierarchy. Barlow could not argue directly against the power of bishops without assisting the external opponents, yet he had to find a way to prevent other bishops from interfering in his continued support for Reformed theology. In order to reduce their power within the Church of England, Barlow had to look outside the institution for ways to limit his superior’s power. This essay examines two arguments in which Barlow ventured into polemics about the secular law of England in an effort to maintain limits on his Anglican opponents’ exercise of power.     

The cannonade of Valmy

Abstract

The eccentric American zoologist Richard Lynch Garner (1848–1920) spent almost two decades living with Nkomi people in southern Gabon between 1893 and 1918. His essays often discussed the connections between occult beliefs and political change during the chaotic era of concessionary companies in the colony. This period is often seen by historians as a violent period that destroyed pre-colonial political institutions in equatorial Africa. However, Garner described how he engaged with local occult beliefs in ways that reveal the continued use of landlord/stranger relationships in the colony. While Garner employed chemicals and phonographs as a means of gaining authority over his African hosts, Gabonese people sought to incorporate Garner into their communities through healing rituals and boycotts backed by supernatural threats. Although the American constructed Gabonese people as gullible and backward, a close reading of his writings demonstrates how southern Gabonese communities placed Garner and his technology into a long tradition that tied together European wealth, supernatural forces, and rights of local people over foreigners. The nineteenth century Nkomi kingdom might have crumbled, but links between occult forces and political power survived and adapted to the new realities of the early colonial era.     

Liberated from the Liberator: Frederick Douglass and Garrisonian Political Theology

I argue that Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison held very different political theologies, even while they seemed to work productively together from 1841 to 1847. Examining Douglass's self-presentation on both sides of his split with Garrison, I conclude that he stifled his Christian moral vision in order to comply with Garrisonian theological ideals while working in New England. After moving to Rochester, New York, Douglass was free to give full voice to his authentic Christian political vision. I explore their differing approaches to the Bible's authority, theological anthropology, and the moral permissibility of force, which influenced their political responses to slavery. Scholars such as John Stauffer and John Sekora have argued that his departure facilitated esthetic and racial forms of emancipation for Douglass; I argue that leaving Garrison allowed Douglass to express not only his authentic literary and black identities, but his true Christian identity as well.     

William Temple: Christianity and the Life of Fellowship

Abstract

William Temple is best known for his contribution to the forging of a social consensus that resulted in the foundation of the post-war British welfare state following his untimely death in 1944 after only two years as Archbishop of Canterbury. Widely regarded as the most theologically gifted holder of that office since Anselm, his pioneering contribution to the elucidation of a methodology for Christian social ethics which emphasized the role of ‘Principles’ that should inform Christian social action and reflection reinvigorated the Church of his generation in the task of bringing to bear the Christian message on social problems. What is less well appreciated is how he was not only the spokesperson for the most advanced Christian witness in the inter-war years, but that he also provided a basis for Christian ethics that brought together the strengths of the Anglican incarnational theology stemming from F. D. Maurice with the British tradition of philosophical social idealism. Often moving from the circumference to the centre, he sought to relate philosophical questions and insights to the richness of the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. He was as at home in this task as he was in leading a mission on a Blackpool beach and the British public loved him for it. He was, as Winston Churchill said at the time of his elevation to Canterbury, "the half-crown article in a penny bazaar."     

The Significance of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue and Holocaust Studies for Catholic Ethics

Abstract

When I survey the vast field of literature on social ethics, including that from progressive Christian scholars, I find little, if any, recognition that the positive development in the understanding of the Christian-Jewish relationship these past forty years have any relevance for shaping Christian perspectives on social ethics today. In this presentation I share some reflections on various areas of study within the context of the Christian-Jewish dialogue, especially the experience of the Holocaust, which in my judgment do make an important difference in the way we present Christian thinking on social ethical questions. The positive impact of the Hebrew Scriptures is one important area as is the enhanced understanding of law in the Hebrew Scriptures and in Judaism generally. Also of significance is the growing body of literature linking Jesus positively to the Jewish tradition of his time, including in terms of his moral teaching. The same holds true for new studies on Paul's positive relationship to Judaism. Finally the Holocaust provides us with important links to contemporary moral issues such as genocide and human rights.     

How the Missionary got his Mana: Charles Elliot Fox and the Power of Name‐Exchange in Solomon Islands

Charles Elliot Fox (1878–1977) was one of the Anglican Melanesian Mission's most emblematic figures, extending its reputation for scholarship and respect for Pacific traditions. Uniquely among the Mission's European figures, however, Fox is also credited with exceptional powers (mana). Based on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork among the Arosi (Makira, Solomon Islands), I argue that Fox's name‐exchanges with Makirans have contributed in unrecognized ways to his reputation for mana. In so doing, I show how, in contrast with name‐exchange in Polynesia, Arosi name‐exchange implies the internalization of a gap between ontological categories that renders name‐exchange partners two persons in one body, endowed with access to one another's being and ways. Fox's writings indicate that he understood this aspect of Arosi name‐exchange as a prefiguration of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. This understanding, in turn, shaped his mission method and motivated his otherwise puzzling claims that he was a Melanesian.     

Patterns of Christian activity and dispersion in nineteenth-century Jerusalem

Various Christian communities existed in Jerusalem during the nineteenth century. The three largest ones were the Greek Orthodox, the Roman Catholics (Latins) and the Protestants. These communities were strongly supported by the European Powers, thus enabling them to be very active in the development of the city. Differences in historical background and interest in Jerusalem, plus different culturally based attitudes and values led each community to make a distinct contribution to the developing city landscape. Christian building activity was pronounced: there was the construction of big imposing institutions, churches and convents which usually were used as hospices for pilgrims as well as institutions for education, health and welfare and representative functions. The dispersal of Christian residences took a special form for their locations seem to have been determined by the wish to adhere to historical sites that had special meaning to the various communities. Also the distinctiveness of the religious communal neighbourhoods was confirmed. The contribution of the Christian communities to the urban landscape of Jerusalem during the nineteenth century thus included the construction of prominent buildings which still today dominate the morphology and skyline of the city, and also the strengthening of the special spatial pattern of this historical religious Holy City.     

We Know Not God's Designs in Permitting a Separation: Women Religious,the Consolidation Controversies,and the Nineteenth-Century American Catholic Church*

This article bridges the fields of Catholic history, Women's history, and American religious history to propose a new perspective for studying the development of the American Catholic Church, termed by me as the consolidation controversies. Previous historians have focused on the development of the local parishes and the dioceses, focusing on the power conflicts between the lay trustees and the local bishops that accompanied this institutional growth. However, an often-forgotten aspect of Catholic history is the simultaneous rise of religious congregations and orders. As these communities developed, their leaders clashed with the local bishops over questions of property and authority over members of the communities. Often at the centre of these power struggles were the women religious. Rather than allowing themselves to be manipulated, women religioudemonstrated their own autonomy, navigating larger institutional politics. Should these women fail, they faced losing their place in the diocese as well as their position and vocation as women religious.