This volume of scholarly essays explores the important question of how Christian communities from antiquity to the present have viewed their own history. The subject is appropriate. The volume marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Ecclesiastical History Society itself. Many of the authors, therefore, explore changes in the treatment of ecclesiastical history over the past half century with particular attention to recent approaches to historical investigation. There is a notable richness of subject matter represented in the thirty-three papers here that were read at the Society's meetings in 2011–12, and in the informative introduction by Sarah Foot, the society's president. Postgraduate students are conspicuous among the contributors. Anyone interested in the history of Christianity and its connections to other aspects of the past is sure to find much of interest and value in this book.
The essays are divided into three categories: ‘The Churches’ use of the past’, dealing with specific instances in which ecclesiastical writers and leaders sought to give direction to their fellow believers by examining aspects of the Church's earlier experience; ‘Changing perspectives in church history’, dealing with broad currents of interpretation across significant spans of time; and ‘Church and State in history’, dealing with relations between religious and political institutions in key historical eras. Two chronological periods stand out as receiving particularly close attention: that often called the ‘long Reformation’, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and modernity from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. Western Europe, especially Britain, receives close attention, as might be expected, but the essays deal with a surprisingly large number of countries and eras.
Some treatments of the Church's past stand out. Luke Gardiner shows that historical disputes were an important part of the struggle between Nicene Christians and their Arian opponents in the fourth and early fifth centuries. He demonstrates that Socrates Scholasticus stressed in his Church history (c. 440) that it was crucially important to establish an accurate account of the past achieved through examining historical sources. But his own account of the reign of the emperor Theodosius i, the grandfather of the emperor Theodosius ii, under whom Socrates lived, shows how difficult it was to achieve impartiality. Renie Choy argues persuasively that the Carolingian reform of monasticism in 789–819, achieved in part by collecting Benedictine rules from East and West, resulted in a new emphasis on conversion of the soul, not just following a way of life, as previously understood. Luther, as we learn from Charlotte Methuen, defended his charges against papal practices, made in his Ninety-Five Theses (1517) and Explanations (1518), by citing historical evidence of ecclesiastical abuses. The historical record thus became, in his works of controversy, a means of revealing ‘God's will for the church’ (p. 143). Likewise, as Jonathan Arnold shows, Polydore Vergil, the Italian collector of ‘Peter's Pence’, a papal tax in England, treated the medieval Church as a source of knowledge and teaching in his Beginnings and discoveries (1499–1521). Vergil contrasted medieval religious practices with those attributed to Christ and the Apostles. Susan Royal shows that John Bale's ecclesiastical history of the English nation, written from a Protestant point of view, was not so much a work of historical scholarship as a prophetic narrative drawing on medieval traditions.
In an amusing and crisply written analysis of polemical exchanges in England in the eighteenth century, Robert J. Ingram gives additional credence to the idea of a long English Reformation. He throws particular light on Daniel Neal's The history of the Puritans or Protestant Non-Conformists (1737–8). Neal, a dissenter, provided massive evidence of his coreligionists’ efforts to reform the established Church, despite the persecution meted out to them by the authorities of Church and State. In the process Neal made the Puritan movement seem far more coherent than was actually the case and he distorted the role played by some who were labelled with what originally was, and long remained, a term of disparagement.
In an extensive discussion Diarmaid MacCulloch shows that scholarly views of the English Reformation have changed significantly over the past half-century. Where once a self-consciously Anglican interpretation prevailed, which stressed the distinctiveness of the English reformed Church and its close links to the medieval and patristic past, a new approach emerged that saw the English Reformation as part of the broader Protestant Reformation in Europe. The Church of England came to be seen by historians as closely connected to the Reformed or Calvinist Churches abroad. Though there were those in early modern England who favoured radical changes in the polity, liturgy and discipline of the established Church, there was also widespread acceptance of episcopal government, an authorised liturgy and the royal supremacy, along with a Reformed emphasis on proclaiming the Gospel, providing pastoral care, and seeking a more just society. In another extensive discussion, Anthony Milton focuses on historians in America, Britain and on the continent of Europe who have written about religion and politics in the early modern era. This article is noteworthy for its close attention to continental, especially German, scholarship. Milton focuses on confessionalisation as a concept and theme of interpretation over the past four decades. The historian Heinz Schilling is shown as having been critical in establishing that a furthering of religious projects was key to the development of an effective state. This view was contrary to the prevailing one, which held that it was the secularisation of society that made the modern state possible. By and large, Milton argues, English historians have seemed oblivious to the theory of confessionalisation, though he notes that the late Patrick Collinson came to endorse it. Milton sees England as largely a Reformed country in the reign of Elizabeth i and James i, and he maintains that the struggles which involved rival views, Roman Catholic and Protestant, deserve closer attention.
Some of the essays deal provocatively with recurring historical issues. Judith M. Lieu treats the question, ‘What did women do for the Early Church?’ by examining historical evidence of women as martyrs, as ascetics, and as mystics. She contends that women provided an alternative to increasingly stultifying institutional structures, thus challenging as well as helping to solidify the Christian community. Kenneth L. Parker, in a refreshing and important analysis of what he considers the unresolved historiographical struggle in Roman Catholic scholarship and authoritative teaching, urges that recognising ‘the metanarratives at work in Roman Catholic theological debates’ (p. 416) is urgently needed. Such an examination, he suggests, would help to resolve tensions within the Catholic Church, especially in its treatment of current moral and ecclesiastical problems. John Wolffe asks, ‘What does history have to offer to the present-day Church?’ His answer, based on a project that got under way in 2008, is that in the diocese of London historical investigation helps to identify appropriate strategies for dealing with parish life, the allocation of resources, social work, and ongoing controversies. Yet in the education of candidates for the ministry, the study of church history ‘often appears something of a Cinderella subject … struggling to maintain its foothold in the curriculum’ (p. 249).
Sarah Foot, in her presidential address, entitled ‘Has ecclesiastical history lost the plot?’, observes that established chairs in ecclesiastical history in British universities have dwindled from ten to two over the last half century. At the same time, even in some schools of theology and religious studies, the subject has been neglected on the assumption that it belongs to history departments. Yet, at the same time, ‘religion as a social and cultural phenomenon’ (p. 13) has been widely recognised in the social sciences. Moreover, she contends, the integration of religion into comprehensive accounts of modern history continues to be illuminating, indeed essential, to ordinary citizens as well as policy-makers. On the evidence provided in this volume, religious history remains a key component in any adequate effort to understand the present, as well as the past.
