An Eighth-century Poem on St. Ninian

Antiquity ◽  
1940 ◽  
Vol 14 (55) ◽  
pp. 280-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilhelm Levison
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Northern Province ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Spiritual Instruction ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

Whithorn in Galloway and Kirkmadrine nearby are famous to the archaeologist and historian as the homes of the oldest Christian monuments in Scotland, namely the memorial stones still to be found there. They were erected in a district where the church history of Scotland originated through the efforts of St. Ninian. A few lines in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, III, 4, contain the earliest traditions about him which have come down to us. According to this late record, ‘Nynia’ was a British bishop who brought the Christian faith to the southern Picts (australes Picti). He had got his spiritual instruction in Rome, and had his episcopal see and his last resting-place amidst other saints-at Whithorn, Ad Candidam Casam, so called after the church dedicated to St. Martin which he built of stone, a fashion unusual to the Britons. As to his age, Bede merely says that he was at work a long time before St. Columba came to the northern Picts in 565. The intercourse with Rome can hardly have been later than the fifth century; a dedication to St. Martin who probably died in 397, cannot have been made before the same century. When Bede finished his History in 731, Whithorn was under Northumbrian rule, belonging to the northern ‘province’ of Bernicia. An English episcopal seat had been erected there shortly before, having Pecthelm as first bishop (Hist. eccl v, 23); he had been a long time deacon and monk in Wessex with Aldhelm, the abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Sherborne, famous for his writings, who died in 709. Pecthelm was one of Bede’s authorities (ib., v. 13, 18); so it has been suggested that the latter was indebted to Pecthelm for his knowledge of Ninian. Pecthelm was one of the correspondents of St. Boniface who also came from Wessex, and who wrote him a letter on a question of canonical law shortly before he (Pecthelm) died in 735. It must also be noted that Bede distinguishes clearly between Whithorn, situated amongst the British, and the Pictish country, the scene of Ninian’s missionary efforts.

The Idea of the Church in Christian History

1952 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilhelm Pauck
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Church History ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
Christian History

It is customary to describe and interpret the history of Christianity as church history. To be sure, most church historians do not emphasize the special importance of the “church” in the Christian life they study and analyse; indeed, they deal with the idea of the church, with ecclesiological doctrines and with ecclesiastical practices as if they represented special phases of the Christian life. But, nevertheless, the fact that all aspects of Christian history are subsumed under the name and title of the “church” indicates that the character of Christianity is held to be inseparable from that of the “church”; the very custom of regarding Christian history as church history indicates that the Christian mind is marked by a special kind of self-consciousness induced by the awareness that the Christian faith is not fully actualized unless it is expressed in the special social context suggested by the term “church.”

A Reconsideration of Richard Bancroft's Paul's Cross Sermon of 9 February 1588/9

1969 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. D. J. Cargill Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church History ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Considerable Length ◽  
Anglican Theology ◽  
The Church

Richard Bancroft's Paul's Cross Sermon of 9 February 1588/9 owes its fame to the fact that it has traditionally been associated with the first appearance in Anglican theology of the jure divino theory of episcopacy. So far as I have been able to discover, this tradition appears to derive its origin from the account of the Sermon given by John Strype in the eighteenth century, although the germ of the idea is considerably older, since it can be traced back to the attacks made at the time by Bancroft's puritan opponents, most notably Sir Francis Knollys, who accused him, along with archbishop Whitgift and others, of seeking to undermine the Royal Supremacy by preaching that bishops owed their ‘superiority’ over the lower clergy to God rather than to the queen. Until the eighteenth century, however, this interpretation of Bancroft's teaching is only to be found in puritan writers. Seventeenth-century Anglican church historians in general do not appear to have attached any doctrinal significance to the Sermon. Peter Heylyn, for example, in his Aërius Redivivus (1670) refers to it as ‘a most excellent and judicious Sermon’ and proceeds to give a lengthy summary of its contents without at any point suggesting that Bancroft was putting forward a novel theory of episcopacy, while Thomas Fuller makes no reference to it at all either in his Church History of Britain (1655) or in his account of Bancroft in The Worthies of England (1662). At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Sermon enjoyed a modest vogue among the Non-Jurors, who admired it for its vigorous defence of the Church of England against the attacks of the puritans; but neither Henry Gandy, who reprinted it at the instigation of Dr. George Hickes in the first volume of the Bibliotheca Scriptorum Ecclesiae Anglicanae (1709), nor Jeremy Collier, who discussed it at considerable length in his Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (1709-14), drew any explicit connexion between the Sermon and the emergence of the jure divino theory of episcopacy.

scholarly journals Florensky Paul, priest. Foreword to the publication of a series of the Fathers

2015 ◽  
pp. 437-441
Author(s):  
Андроник Трубачев
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
Center Of Gravity ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
What Is Said ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pavel Florensky ◽  
Manuscript Text ◽  
The Church

Публикуется текст рукописи из архива священника Павла Флоренского, в которой он дает критический анализ учебника «Церковной истории» И. И. Соколова. Текст, написанный Флоренским по просьбе М. А. Новоселова, должен был стать предисловием к неосуществившемуся изданию творений святых отцов и житий святых в рамках альтернативного подхода. Согласно отцу Павлу, церковная история является непрестанно нарастающим потоком святых и духовных ценностей, а местом притяжения при написании церковной истории должно быть не то, что говорят о Церкви, а то, что сама Церковь свидетельствует о себе. This is a publication of a manuscript text from the archive of the priest Pavel Florensky, in which he critically talks about the textbook “Ecclesiastical History”of I. Sokolov. The text, written at the request of M. A. Novoselov was supposed to be a preface to the publication of a series of unrealized Holy Fathers. Fr. Paul Florensky, in his discussion of the ideology behind the writing of the Church history, criticizes the approach of I. I. Sokolov, who talks about “history’s struggle with the Church” and how it is simply a series of small and accidental conflicts and intrigues, representing “what was done to the church, rather than what the Church did”. According to Fr. Paul, Church history is a constantly increasing flow of Saints andspiritual values, and the center of gravity in writing a Church history should not be, what is said about the Church, but what the Church says about itself.

Slavery in the Imperial Church

2020 ◽  
pp. 64-106
Author(s):  
Mary E. Sommar
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
General Reader ◽  
History Of ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Church Law ◽  
The Church ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Insight Into

This is the story of how the church sought to establish norms for slave ownership on the part of ecclesiastical institutions and personnel and for others’ behavior toward such slaves. Chronicles, letters, and other documents from each of the various historical periods, along with an analysis of the various policies and statutes, provide insight into the situations of these unfree ecclesiastical dependents. Although this book is a serious scholarly monograph about the history of church law, it has been written in such a way that no specialist knowledge is required of the reader, whether a scholar in another field or a general reader interested in church history or the history of slavery. Historical background is provided, and there is a short Latin lexicon. This chapter discusses slavery in the church from Constantine to the end of the fifth century.

Joseph Milner's Evangelical Church History

1959 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Far East ◽  
Sole Source ◽  
Church History ◽  
Church Of Christ ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
Better Than

‘The Church History of Joseph Milner is one of those books which may perish with some revolution of the moral and religious character of the English race, but hardly otherwise.’ Sir James Stephen's prophecy reads alarmingly to-day when the book has vanished even from the dustiest and highest shelf of the rectory library. But it was of Milner's History that Cowper also wrote enthusiastically ‘the facts are incontestible, the grand observations upon them are all irrefragible, and the style, in my judgment, incomparably better than that of Robertson or Gibbon’. Translated into German, Swedish and Spanish, relayed to Grundtwigian pietist circles through the histories of Rasmus Sørensen, Milner was read as far north as Greenland and as far east as the Volga. His book was instrumental in converting half a dozen Members of Parliament. It was long considered—as Milner intended it to be—as the replacement of Mosheim's famous History, and as such it was prescribed reading in the educated Evangelical home and beyond. In 1847 Julius Hare regarded it as still ‘the main, if not the sole, source from which a large portion of our Church derive their notions of ecclesiastical history’. Ironically, it was from Milner's soundly Evangelical pages that young Newman got his first love of the Fathers. The History of the Church of Christ must thus be reckoned as a book of first importance in the religious history of early nineteenth-century England. Yet, save for a few pages in Abbey and Overton (still the most reliable survey of Evangelicalism, after eighty years) Milner's book is now unknown.

scholarly journals Syncretism in the church of Philippi

2008 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduard Verhoef
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Church

It has been known for a long time that the history of Christianity has seen the incorporation of syncretistic elements. This is not at all exceptional. On the contrary, in order to grow, any religion necessarily fits in with the existing frame of reference. It is hardly surprising then, that elements of Hellenistic hero worship were adopted in the veneration of the Christian martyrs. Over a century ago, E Lucius presented several examples of such phenomena in his book, Die Anfänge des Heiligenkults in der christlichen Kirche (1904), arguing that Christian churches adopted several rituals and ideas from older pagan cults. Indeed, excavations in Philippi have revealed a connection in the first decades of the fourth century between the Christian cult and the cult of a certain Euephenes, son of Exekestos. He was probably an initiate into the mystery cult of the Kabeiroi. This can only mean that in Philippi as elsewhere syncretistic elements must have crept in. In the beginning of the fourth century the Basilica of Paul was added onto the Hellenistic shrine, so that the buildings shared one wall. In the first half of the fifth century this Basilica was replaced by the bigger Octagon. A baptistery was constructed, and the Hellenistic heroon was incorporated into these buildings. Around this time the cult of the Hellenistic hero Euephenes was supplanted by the veneration of the Christian hero par excellence, the apostle Paul.

Ecclesiastical Slavery in the Germanic Kingdoms

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-153
Author(s):  
Mary E. Sommar
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
General Reader ◽  
History Of ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Church Law ◽  
The Church ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Insight Into

This is the story of how the church sought to establish norms for slave ownership on the part of ecclesiastical institutions and personnel and for others’ behavior toward such slaves. Chronicles, letters, and other documents from each of the various historical periods, along with an analysis of the various policies and statutes, provide insight into the situations of these unfree ecclesiastical dependents. Although this book is a serious scholarly monograph about the history of church law, it has been written in such a way that no specialist knowledge is required of the reader, whether a scholar in another field or a general reader interested in church history or the history of slavery. Historical background is provided, and there is a short Latin lexicon. This chapter discusses slavery in the kingdoms of the Visigoths, the Franks, the Lombards, and other Germanic peoples from about 500 CE to the eighth century.

The Professionalization of an Elite: The Nineteenth Century Episcopate

1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
William T. Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Church History ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Popular View ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Church

A number of Victorian writers identified a change in the episcopate in the nineteenth century: Dean Burgon, for example, believed that a remodeled episcopacy emerged at this time. Historians have advanced the view that the changes were generated by the Whig ecclesiastical reforms of the 1830s. Indeed it is part of the schemata of ecclesiastical history that bishops in the eighteenth century were fundamentally different from those in the nineteenth century. Yet, as C. K. Francis Brown admitted, there has been no attempt to establish a pattern of this in the career and social history of the nineteenth century episcopate. This is all the more surprising since a structuralist analysis of the Caroline and Hanoverian episcopate has existed for some years. The traditional view of Church history, that the ecclesiastical reforms of the 1830s and 1840s were the principal engine of change, have tended to overlook the structural changes in bishops' career patterns and that there was a change in the concept of the episcopal function. The context of this changed concept of episcopal duty is important. Recent work on the professionalization of the clergy has focused on the immediate impact of the Reformation and the development of the Church as a profession up to the early eighteenth century. Rosemary O'Day and Geoffrey Holmes have demonstrated that between 1580 and 1730 the clerical profession became increasingly stratified. The overpopulation of the clergy in the eighteenth century accelerated this trend, establishing a Church in which there were extremes of wealth and poverty. At the same time the clergy were subject to greater lay control than any other emergent profession. This tension between professionalization and institutions of the state has been examined in other occupations, but throughout the nineteenth century it grew stronger in the Church. From patronage of a living to nomination to a see, laity dominated the Church. In spite of Whig reforms of the 1830s and 1840s lay control established strict parameters within which the professionalization of the episcopate occurred. The effect of control from outside the Church was that the paths to the bench of bishops remained more numerous and varied than the limited paths to the elite of other professions like the judiciary. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also saw functional trends that brought about the professionalization of the clergy. These changes have been thoroughly analyzed by Anthony Russell. The self-conscious spirituality of the Tractarian movement also effected changes in the popular view of the clerical function, and the episcopate was not immune to these changes. By the closing decades of the nineteenth-century bishops were appointed whose careers had been touched by these trends. Equally important were developments within the episcopate that altered the bishops' roles.

Theology in the Church of England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. W. Young
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
International Reputation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Joseph Butler ◽  
Anglican Theology ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Church

The dismissive characterization of Anglican divinity between 1688 and 1800 as defensive and rationalistic, made by Mark Pattison and Leslie Stephen, has proved more enduring than most other aspects of a Victorian critique of the eighteenth-century Church of England. By directly addressing the analytical narratives offered by Pattison and Stephen, this chapter offers a comprehensive re-evaluation of this neglected period in the history of English theology. The chapter explores the many contributions to patristic study, ecclesiastical history, and doctrinal controversy made by theologians with a once deservedly international reputation: William Cave, Richard Bentley, William Law, William Warburton, Joseph Butler, George Berkeley, and William Paley were vitalizing influences on Anglican theology, all of whom were systematically depreciated by their agnostic Victorian successors. This chapter offers a revisionist account of the many achievements in eighteenth-century Anglican divinity.

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