On the Medieval National Church

1914 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 39-75
Author(s):  
Joseph Cullen Ayer
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Legal Relation ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
False Sense ◽  
The Church

That Magna Carta guarantees to every Englishman trial by jury is in some legal circlesan almost inerradicable conviction. As firmly rooted in many ecclesiastical circles is a belief in respect to the first clause of that great document: quod Anglicana Ecclesia libera sit. Though the historical meaning of the phrase is indisputable, it is constantly used in a false sense. It is supposed to have defined a fundamental principle of English ecclesiastical policy although not immediately realized. Just as trial by jury was definitively established only in the contest with the Stuarts, so this great principle of liberty was only secured for the Church at the Reformation; at that time the Anglicana Ecclesia became free and received its birthright assured it in the Charter. This quaint perversion of the meaning of the phrase may in some points be connected with the indisputable fact of the religious and administrative continuity of the Church of England; and the legal status of the modern Church of England has come to be regarded as practically identical with that of the Anglicana Ecclesia contemplated by the Charter. That the libertas electionum, the liberty especially referred to in Magna Carta, has totally disappeared, lost at the Reformation, seems not in the least to have effected the popular ecclesiastical interpretation. But closely connected with that belief as to Magna Carta and the Church is a commonplace of English legal tradition, universal since the sixteenth century, that the Ecchsia Anglicana, which term may be conveniently used throughout this discussion to designate the medieval Church in England as distinguished from the Church in modern times, stood in some exceptional legal relation to the rest of Western Christendom and to the Roman See and that that See had usurped at some time an authority over that Church not recognized either by theChurch or the State. In the exposition of this theory the point is often made that Pope Urban recognized this exceptional position when, according to William of Malmesbury, he introduced Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, to a Roman synod as quasi alterius orbis papam.

Assessing the Risk

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 316-330
Author(s):  
Nicholas Coulton
Keyword(s):  
Child Abuse ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
False Accusations ◽  
The Church

While the English Church shared in celebrating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, not least its own part in gaining those rights for everyone, the Church of England was reversing the principle that people are innocent until proved guilty. Such is the pressure of today's concern about child abuse, historic and present. As evidence mounts of the injustices done by false accusations against some high-profile public figures, we are less aware of the toll on other individuals whose turmoil does not hit the headlines. Those teaching and caring are often targeted for claims, and the Church of England has been toughening its procedures.

The Clerical Declaration of Assent

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-187
Author(s):  
Rupert Bursell
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church

Following the Reformation, uniformity was a key principle undergirding worship in the Church of England. The Crown claimed the prerogative to order the use of, and to alter, Church services in spite of the provisions of any Act of Uniformity, the Canons or any Declaration of Assent. This caused confusion among the clergy and others as to who had ‘lawful authority’ to permit such usages or changes. This confusion was exacerbated by episcopal claims to a jus liturgicum. Statute and case law, as well as the wording of the Declaration, also ensured rigidity in doctrinal adhesion. Since the Church of England (Worship and Doctrine) Measure 1974 and recent amendments to the Canons and the Declaration of Assent, this rigidity has been relaxed and clarity provided as to who may authorise services or permit departure from otherwise authorised forms of service.

A Leicestershire Recusant Family: The Nevills of Nevill Holt – I

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
James I ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Church

At the Reformation, three possibilities faced English Catholics. They could continue to be Catholics and so suffer the penalties of the penal laws; they could conform to the Church of England; or they could adopt a middle course and become Church Papists. The Nevills of Nevill Holt, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire, went through all three phases. In the reign of Edward VI, Thomas Nevill I became a Protestant. His grandson, Thomas Nevill II, became a Church Papist under James I; and Thomas II’s son, Henry Nevill I, continued to be one at the time of the Civil War. But Henry l’s son William was definitely a Catholic and went into exile with King James II, while William’s son, Henry Nevill II, was an open Catholic under Charles II. Henry Nevill II’s descendants continued to be Catholics throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until they left Nevill Holt in the late nineteenth century.

SACRED POLYPHONY ‘NOT UNDERSTANDID’: MEDIEVAL EXEGESIS, RITUAL TRADITION AND HENRY VIII'S REFORMATION

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 33-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana T. Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
Traditional Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
To Come ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

This study focuses on the ritual ‘conservatism’ of Henry VIII's Reformation through a new look at biblical exegeses of the period dealing with sacred music. Accordingly, it reconsiders the one extant passage of rhetoric to come from the Henrician regime in support of traditional church polyphony, as found in A Book of Ceremonies to be Used in the Church of England, c.1540. Examining the document's genesis, editorial history and ultimate suppression by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, it is shown that Bishop Richard Sampson, Dean of the Chapel Royal (1522–40), was responsible for the original drafting of the musical paragraph. Beginning with Sampson's printed commentaries on the Psalms and on the Epistles of St Paul, the literary precedents and historical continuities upon which Sampson's topos in Ceremonies was founded are traced in detail. Identified through recurring patterns of scriptural and patristic citation, and understood via transhistorical shifts in the meaning of certain key words (e.g. iubilare), this new perspective clarifies important origins of the English church's musical ‘traditionalism’ on the eve of the Reformation. Moreover, it reveals a precise species of exegetical method – anagogy – as the literary vehicle through which influential clergy were able to justify expansions and elaborations of musical practice in the Western Church from the high Middle Ages to the Reformation.

Protestant Reactions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Atherstone
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church

Protestantism was a major rallying cry during the Tractarian controversies. It was anathematized by some Oxford Movement radicals as a ‘heresy’, and held tenaciously by evangelical campaigners as ‘the pure Gospel of Christ’. Protestant polemicists decried Tractarianism as a revival of Roman Catholicism in an Anglican disguise and called their brothers-in-arms to fight the theological battles of the Reformation over again. Focusing on the events in Oxford itself between 1838 and 1846, this chapter surveys the rhetoric which surrounded three overlapping themes—Protestant Reformers, Protestant Formularies, and Protestant Truth. It shows how these loomed large in the speeches and writings of those who wanted to defend the Protestant hegemony of the Church of England and the University of Oxford.

Jacob Tengstrom, First Archbishop of Finland

1975 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-351
Author(s):  
Toivo Harjunpaa
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Church Of Sweden ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church

The Reformation of the sixteenth century dealt a heavy blow to the historic episcopal government of the church. Only two of the national churches which embraced the Protestant Reformation succeeded in retaining their old primatical sees and episcopal polity: the Church of England and the Church of Sweden-Finland. For centuries before the Reformation, the Finnish church had been ecclesiastically part of the province of Uppsala (an archbishopric since 1164) just as Finland itself was politically part of the Kingdom of Sweden. Thus there was no need to establish a Finnish archdiocese while union with Sweden continued. But with Napoleon's concurrence (the Tilsit pact of 1807), the Russians invaded Finland in 1808 and met with such success that all Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia in 1809.

scholarly journals Law and the Protestant Reformation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Witte
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Legal Form ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Ius Commune ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Power Property ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation revolutionized not only theology and the Church, but also law and the state. Though divided into Lutheran, Anabaptist, Anglican, and Calvinist branches, the Reformation collectively broke the international rule of the medieval Church and its canon law, and permanently splintered Western Christendom into competing nations and regions. The Reformation also triggered a massive shift of power, property, and prerogative from the Church to the state. Protestant states now assumed new jurisdiction over numerous subjects and persons, and they gave new legal form to Protestant teachings. But these new Protestant laws also drew heavily on the medieval ius commune as well as on earlier biblical and Roman jurisprudence. This chapter analyses the new Protestant legal syntheses, with attention to the new laws of Church–state relations, religious and civil freedom, marriage and family law, education law, social welfare law, and accompanying changes in legal and political philosophy.

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