Two law books of the early Middle Ages stand out for their heavy reliance on the Old Testament, which was rarely quoted in legal texts of the period. The Irish Hibernensis and King Alfred’s Domboc drew not only on the Old Testament itself, but also on adapted biblical verses. An investigation into the literary roots of these legal compilations uncovers parabiblical material which formed part of a literate discourse that spanned Ireland, Wessex and Reims, raising questions about the extent to which contemporary scholars regarded the Bible as a fixed and immutable text.

Around the turn of the twelfth century, Bishop Ivo of Chartres (c. 1040-1115) wrote the sermon-tract Quare deus natus et passus sit in which he outlined the process of human redemption. Although widely circulated in the twelfth century, this important text has been little studied. Here it is situated within the context of high-medieval penance. It is argued that Ivo was specifically concerned to impress the importance of contrition in Quare deus natus et passus sit by providing an outline of the redemptive process that emphasised God’s ‘medicinal mercy’ whilst delineating human knowledge of that process for priestly audiences.

Preserved within the corpus of the East Roman polemicist Peter the Sicilian, several unassuming statements subtly contradict the historical consensus that the Paulicians espoused absolute dualism. According to their own testimony, rather than literally upholding two gods, as their Roman adversaries alleged, the Paulicians worshipped the heavenly Father but contended that the devil was merely a false god to whom the Romans were subject. This article therefore contributes to a broader critique of several received truths: that the Paulicians were absolute dualists, or dualists more generally, and that their thought informed that of later dualist groups.

The Testament of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste is a document whose authenticity has been debated for decades, but has remained unresolved. Here the Testament is analysed in detail and it is shown that its central issue is the martyrs’ request not to disseminate their relics. In addition, the earliest sources relating to the cult of the Forty Martyrs are presented and recent studies on the beginnings of the cult of relics are cited. On this basis it is shown that the Testament is spurious.

Stemming from a canonical commentary of Theodore Balsamon (1130s–1195), this article examines an underexplored Byzantine Christian practice: the consecration of virgins. It focuses on an unusual religious establishment, a parthenon, founded in Thebes by its metropolitan John Kaloktenes (1166–c.1190), which accommodated lay virgins to pursue asceticism without demonstrating monastic commitments. It investigates the practice's origins, development and significance in Byzantine religious heritage, highlighting Kaloktenes's innovative revival of the practice. This study offers a unique case for exploring Byzantine monasticism and ecclesiastical leadership, while also demonstrating the potential for integrating Byzantium into the religious movements of the contemporary Latin West.

This article examines the fear of death in fourteenth-century Italy by analysing miracle testimonies through the methodological frameworks of terror management theory (TMT) and lived religion. It argues that devotion to saints served as a key coping mechanism for existential anxiety. Examples from the canonisation processes of Clare of Montefalco and Nicholas of Tolentino reveal how individuals turned to saints for protection, seeking to prolong life rather than accept death. This study provides both empirical and methodological insights into the medieval fear of death, illustrating its parallels with contemporary experiences of death anxiety.

In 1408, as the Great Western Schism entered its fourth decade, the Parisian community of Celestine monks asked Pierre d’Ailly to write a life of their founder, Pietro Morrone, who served as Pope Celestine V in 1294. D’Ailly found in him an example that suited his times: a pope could resign without damage to the Church at large. With cardinals from both obediences ready to withdraw support from Avignon’s Benedict XIII and Rome’s Gregory XII, both of whom resisted resignation, d’Ailly made his case for papal resignation via his life of Celestine V.

Little attention has been paid to how canon law interpreted religious poverty, an influential ideal in twelfth and thirteenth-century Christian Europe. Given that many involved in the apostolic poverty movement were educated in canon law, this omission needs to be addressed. Gratian held a reformist view, advocating for a secular clergy largely without private property, but subsequent canonists abandoned this ideal as impractical, confining poverty to monks and canons regular. This weakening of the ideal continued as Decretalists gradually allowed popes to relax vows of poverty. This canonistic trend is vital context for later doctrinal conflicts around apostolic poverty.

In 1519, the German theologian and humanist Johann Eck published an edition and commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius’ Mystical theology. By examining this edition, this article explores the early modern reception of Pseudo-Dionysius and the influences that shaped Eck as a scholar. It categorises these influences into humanism, scholasticism and affective theology, analysing how each impacted his work. This article also argues that the purpose behind Eck’s edition is two-fold: to renew scholastic theology and to revive mystical theology by introducing or recommending it to an audience of scholastic theologians.

This article argues that we must look beyond Paolo Sarpi's infamous history of the Council of Trent to understand the culture of reading about the council in early modern Italy. We unearth prohibited works that garnered more attention from Rome than Sarpi's, and we show that these were widely read in multiple formats across Italy from the late sixteenth through the eighteenth century. By recovering this history, we can see Sarpi's magnum opus in a new light: as one of many works that sought to make sense of the council, working within and around serious constraints.

This article argues that allegorical exegesis is important for understanding the writings of William of Malmesbury, both in his exegesis and beyond. In the mid-1130s, William penned a commentary on Lamentations in part to explain the causes and aftermath of the Norman Conquest. His allegorical exegesis decried exploitation and mismanagement of ecclesiastical lands by episcopal appointees from the continent, including his own bishop, Roger of Salisbury. In William’s sometimes veiled yet unmistakable critiques, Roger appears as an invading tyrant whose tenure as abbot of Malmesbury amounts to a period of Babylonian captivity for the monks of that house.

On an Adventide Sunday in 1523, a visitor to Milan’s Duomo witnessed something unexpected. Lay congregants halted high mass by yelling at the priests, demanding that attention remain fixed on their favoured preacher. This and similar episodes are recounted in the Cronica Milanese by the shopkeeper Giovan Marco Burigozzo. Using Burigozzo’s accounts alongside overlooked evidence from the Duomo’s archives, this article traces moments when customary rituals broke down under lay intervention. Such episodes reveal how ordinary congregants experienced, contested and redirected the cathedral’s functions, reshaping the church’s sonic and liturgical space in ways that diverged from its intended purposes.

Both Ranters and Fifth Monarchists emerged as sectarian groups during the English Revolution, believing in an imminent apocalypse and the need for a total spiritual and social overhaul in England. Yet, their unique eschatologies resulted in dramatically different plans to overhaul the political and spiritual authorities in England. This article seeks to reassert the importance of scriptural citations in historical studies by arguing that the basis for these groups’ differences can be identified in the hermeneutical underpinnings of their millenarianism, and how their reading practices in turn informed their understanding of the apocalypse and their own political participation during the end times.

Robert Testwood (c. 1490–1543), professional singer and evangelical mischief-maker, is the subject of many colourful anecdotes in Foxe’s Acts and monuments, including a scene in which Testwood mocks the veneration of the Virgin Mary by sabotaging a performance of a polyphonic motet in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. This act of sonic iconoclasm can be dated securely to mid-May 1538. It can be placed in a rich context of surveillance, propaganda, dissent and counter-dissent among the liturgical staff of St George’s as they navigated the changes of the early Reformation.

The Oxford English dictionary’s earliest citation for the coinages Baxterianism and Baxterian to refer to the distinctive ecclesiological and theological thought of the seventeenth-century Puritan divine Richard Baxter is dated 1835, with no examples of use after 1839. This is incorrect. These, and related terms, originated in the 1650s and were in regular use during the intervening 185 years (as well as thereafter to the present day). This essay traces the changing signification and usage of these terms from the religious controversies of the seventeenth-century through the development of denominational identities and of a moderate tradition within eighteenth-century dissent that contributed to the development of Unitarianism.

This article examines three highly successful English broadside-ballads about Protestant martyrs of the mid-sixteenth century and seeks to explain their evident popularity. It argues that ballads were very important in encouraging people to think about martyrs and identify as Protestants, and that the highlighted examples have been either overlooked or underestimated by scholars. The songs also shed new light on commonplace religious tastes and preoccupations, revealing an apparent preference for female martyrs and an apparent distaste for gruesome detail. In both respects, the ballads are contrasted with John Foxe’s much more famous ‘Book of martyrs’.

This essay examines the historical and intellectual significance of the Dutch Doopsgezind-Collegiant poet Gesine Brit. It reconstructs the historical background that led to the writing of a religious-political poem that Brit penned in 1705 to denounce the persecutions suffered by her religious companions in Groningen at the hands of the local religious and civil authorities. It then offers both an examination of its content and its first English translation. It demonstrates that Brit belonged to a tradition of Nonconformist intellectuals who contributed to shaping Dutch Enlightenment culture, thus expanding the canon of political writing to include women and their poetry.

This article delves into the often-overlooked scholar Robert Greene, a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, who authored works in both religion and natural philosophy. Greene made significant contributions to the debate on the interplay between reason and faith, with his primary target being John Locke, whose epistemology and views on the relationship between reason and faith he considered detrimental to religion. This article examines Greene’s criticism of Locke’s views on the relationship between reason and faith within its institutional context, shedding new light on Locke’s early reception at the University of Cambridge.

Given the centrality of immediate revelation to early Quaker theology, modern historians have often assumed that the first Quakers disregarded tradition. However, this article demonstrates that the early Friends frequently made historical arguments, both to launch and rebut polemical assaults. The Quakers did not, therefore, turn to history as the movement became increasingly conservative or respectable. Instead, they consistently claimed to be the true heirs of John Foxe’s Protestant martyrs. By maintaining that their movement represented the culmination of the tradition celebrated in the Acts and monuments, they were deeply engaged in the historiographical contests which constituted ‘England’s second Reformation’.

In 1747, Johann Conrad Arbogast Gauch, a parish priest in the diocese of Constance, was executed for serial child abuse – a unique outcome among known clerical cases in the eighteenth-century Holy Roman Empire. Drawing on extensive inquisition records, this article examines how Church and State authorities negotiated jurisdiction, reputation and punishment when clerical crime threatened moral and social order, exposing tensions between justice, discipline and institutional self-preservation.