Professor Andrew Spicer

"The volume comprises a selection of peer reviewed articles drawn from the range of communications presented at the Ecclesiastical History Society's Summer Conference at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in July 2018 and its Winter Meeting at the Institute for Historical Research, London in January 2019."--Preface, page ix.

This volume brings together the work of a wide range of scholars to explore the long and complex history of the relationships between churches and education. Christianity has always been involved in education, from the very earliest teaching of those about to be baptised, to present-day churches' involvement in schools and higher education. Christianity has a core theological concern for teaching, discipleship and formation, but the dissemination of Christian ideas and positions has not necessarily been an explicitly didactic process. Educational projects have served not only to support but also to question and even reconfigure particular versions of the Christian message, and the recipients of education have also both received and subverted the teaching offered. Under the editorship of Morwenna Ludlow, this volume explores the ways in which churches have sought to educate, catechise and instruct the clergy and laity, adults and children, men and women, boys and girls.

'The Church and Empire', the theme of Studies in Church History, 54, reflects the reality that from its beginnings, the Christian Church has had close, often symbiotic, relationships with empires and imperial power. Initially the Church engaged with the Roman Empire, subsequently in Europe with the Carolingian, Anglo-Norman, Genoese, Venetian and Holy Roman Empires, and later - through the Church's global expansion with European empires in the Americas, Africa and Asia - the Spanish, Dutch, French and British empires, and the imperial structures it encountered there. Bringing together the work of twenty-four historians, this volume explores the relations of churches and empires, and Christian conceptions of empire, in the ancient, medieval, early modern and modern periods, as well as the role of empire in the global expansion of Christianity.

The fifty-second volume of Studies in Church History explores the myriad ways in which doubt has tested Christianity and the life of individual Christians. Men and women have always had doubts about ideas, or individual doctrines, if not faith itself; they have also doubted how truth can be authenticated. The means and the implications of expressing either kind of doubt are shaped by historical circumstance. Led by scholars including Kirstie Blair, Janet Nelson, Charles Stang and Rowan Williams, the essays explore doubt from the Early Church to the contemporary world. They investigate a range of questions, from the familiar 'doubting Thomas', and the more surprising 'doubting John', through the pressing concerns of the Middle Ages, the emphasis on rationalism of the Enlightenment, to the competing ideological and confessional perspectives of the modern world. This fascinating collection offers an introduction to the complex relationship between doubt, faith and the Christian Churches.

This collection of essays, edited by Graeme Murdock, Penny Roberts, and Andrew Spicer, developed from a one-day conference 'Religion and Violence in Early Modern France: The Work of Natalie Zemon Davis' which was held in June 2008 at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. Five of the papers published here were initially delivered on that occasion, but the conference also sought to learn from the differing perspectives of violence outside sixteenth-century France. This concern is also reflected in this collection, which seeks to offer new insights and approaches to the relationship and significance of religion and violence as well as paying tribute to the immense contribution made in this field by the writings of Natalie Zemon Davis.

Until recently the impact of the Lutheran Reformation has been largely regarded in political and socio-economic terms, yet for most people it was not the abstract theological debates that had the greatest impact upon their lives, but what they saw in their parish churches every Sunday. This collection of essays provides a coherent and interdisciplinary investigation of the impact that the Lutheran Reformation had on the appearance, architecture and arrangement of early modern churches. Drawing upon recent research being undertaken by leading art historians and historians on Lutheran places of worship, the volume emphasises often surprising levels of continuity, reflecting the survival of Catholic fixtures, fittings and altarpieces, and exploring how these could be remodelled in order to conform with the tenets of Lutheran belief. The volume not only addresses Lutheran art but also the way in which the architecture of their churches reflected the importance of preaching and the administration of the sacraments. Furthermore the collection is committed to extending these discussions beyond a purely German context, and to look at churches not only within the Holy Roman Empire, but also in Scandinavia, the Baltic States as well as towns dominated by Saxon communities in areas such as in Hungary and Transylvania. By focusing on ecclesiastical 'material culture' the collection helps to place the art and architecture of Lutheran places of worship into the historical, political and theological context of early modern Europe.

Alastair Duke has long been recognized as one of the leading scholars of the early modern Netherlands, known internationally for his important work on the impact of religious change on political events which was the focus of his Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (1990). Bringing together an updated selection of his previously published essays - together with one entirely new chapter and two that appear in English here for the first time - this volume explores the emergence of new political and religious identities in the early modern Netherlands. Firstly it analyses the emergence of a common identity amongst the amorphous collection of states in north-western Europe that were united first under the rule of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy and later the Habsburg princes, and traces the fortunes of this notion during the political and religious conflicts that divided the Low Countries during the second half of the sixteenth century. A second group of essays considers the emergence of dissidence and opposition to the regime, and explores how this was expressed and disseminated through popular culture. Finally, the volume shows how in the age of confessionalisation and civil war, challenging issues of identity presented themselves to both dissenting groups and individuals. Taken together these essays demonstrate how these dissident identities shaped and contributed to the development of the Netherlands during the early modern period.

Was there such a thing as 'public opinion' before the age of newspapers and party politics? The essays in this collection show that in the Low Countries, at least, there certainly was. In this highly urbanised society, with high literacy rates and good connections, news and public debate could spread fast in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, enabling the growth of powerful opposition movements against the Crown, the creation of the Dutch Republic, and of the distinctive Netherlandish culture of the Golden Age. 

The medieval landscape was marked by many sacred sites - churches and chapels, pilgrimage sites, holy wells - places where the spiritual and temporal worlds coincided. Although Max Weber argued that the Reformation brought about the 'disenchantment of the world', this 2005 volume explores the many dimensions of sacred space during and after the religious upheavals of the early modern period. The essays examine the subject through a variety of contexts across Europe from Scotland to Moldavia, but also across the religious divisions between the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Calvinist Churches. Based on research, these essays provide insights into the definition and understanding of sanctity in the post-Reformation era and make an important contribution to the study of sacred space.

Holy sites, both public - churches, monasteries, shrines - and more private - domestic chapels, oratories - populated the landscape of medieval and early modern Europe, providing contemporaries with access to the divine. These sacred spaces thus defined religious experience, and were fundamental to both the geography and social history of Europe over the course of 1,000 years. But how were these sacred spaces, both public and private, defined? How were they created, used, recognised and transformed? And to what extent did these definitions change over the course of time, and in particular as a result of the changes wrought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Taking a strongly interdisciplinary approach, this volume tackles these questions from the point of view of archaeology, architectural and art history, liturgy, and history to consider the fundamental interaction between the sacred and the profane. Exploring the establishment of sacred space within both the public and domestic spheres, as well as the role of the secular within the sacred sphere, each chapter provides fascinating insights into how these concepts helped shape, and were shaped by, wider society. By highlighting these issues on a European basis from the medieval period through the age of the reformations, these essays demonstrate the significance of continuity as much as change in definitions of sacred space, and thus identify long term trends which have hitherto been absent in more limited studies. As such this volume provides essential reading for anyone with an interest in the ecclesiastical development of western Europe from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

The Huguenots formed a privileged minority within early modern France. During the second half of the sixteenth century, they fought for freedom of worship in the French 'wars of religion' which culminated in the Edict of Nantes in 1598. The community was protected by the terms of the Edict for eighty-seven years until Louis XIV revoked it in 1685. The Huguenots therefore constitute a minority group tolerated by one of the strongest nations in early modern Europe, a country more often associated with the absolute power of the crown - in particular that of Louis XIV. This collection of essays explores the character and identity of the Huguenot movement by examining their culture and institutions, their patterns of belief and worship and their interaction with French state and society. The volume draws upon research by leading historians and specialists from across Europe and North America.

In 1911, Roger Rodière delivered a lecture entitled ‘L’Épigraphie pratique’, in which he argued that as archaeology became increasingly scientific in its approach, there remained a more arcane branch of the discipline. The reading and recording carved inscriptions, whether formal statements or graffiti, provided important archaeological evidence of the past. Through these inscriptions, it was possible to read the history of the people. An architectural historian, Rodière used these carvings to document churches across the Pas-de-Calais, many of which were subsequently destroyed in the bombardments of World War I.

Rodière was one of the principal contributors to the eight volume Épigraphie du département du Pas-de-Calais published between 1883 and 1937 by the Commission départementale des Monuments historiques. Although these substantial volumes have been important for the architectural history of the region, there has been little attempt to use this material in other ways. This chapter demonstrates how inscriptions can be read to provide insights into attitudes and beliefs during the early modern period. Through focusing on inscriptions recorded in churches, the essay explores patronage and the material culture of worship during a period of ecclesiastical change and reform. This chapter demonstrates the value of reading inscriptions alongside the archival record and published material of the early modern period.

At the Reformation, the Reformed Church of Scotland took possession of the existing Catholic parish churches. These buildings were purged of the liturgical fittings associated with the celebration of the Mass and were reconfigured for the preaching of the Word of God and the Reformed administration of the sacraments. Initially some communities struggled to accommodate the entire congregation for services while others were obliged to gather at inconvenient locations associated with the Catholic past. Gradually the Kirk began to erect new churches which accorded more closely with their liturgical needs; it also experimented with new architectural forms, most notably at Burntisland. This chapter reflects on the transition from Catholic churches erected for the celebration of the Mass to kirks intended for hearing the Word of God.

The burial ground created by William Blundell at the Harkirk on his Lancashire estate in 1611 was one of the few established after the English Reformation for the interment of Catholics. As he makes clear in his succinct account, Blundell established the graveyard due to the exceptional persecution of the time that had seen his co-religionists refused burial in the parish churchyard. The circumstances were very different from the almost contemporaneous churchyards associated with the chapels royal of Queen Henrietta Maria, which were ‘appointed to inter and bury such of her ladyship’s followers as shall chance to depart this life, according to the manner and form of the Church of Rome’.2 Although similarly enclosed to protect the sanctity of a place of burial, the Harkirk lacked official approval and the protection of the authorities. It operated for almost two decades until it was laid waste by the sheriff of Lancashire and his men in the early1630s, after Blundell had been found guilty in the court of Star Chamber of ‘suffering a buriall place in my Demaine’. Following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the Harkirk came to be used again for burials, which continued into the eighteenth century, but during this later period it was almost exclusively priests who were interred there. The Harkirk provides a useful case study of how a confessional minority sought to maintain and uphold the religious propriety and practices that surrounded death and burial, in spite of the challenges posed by the Reformation and the established Church in England.