scholarly journals “Decently and order”: Scotland and Protestant pastoral power

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Mutch

Foucault’s conceptualization of “pastoral power” is important in the development and application of the notion of “governmentality” or the regulation of mass populations. However, Foucault’s exploration of pastoral power, especially in the form of confessional practice, owes a good deal to his Roman Catholic heritage. Hints in his work, which were never developed, suggest some aspects of Protestant forms of pastoral power. These hints are taken up to explore one Protestant tradition, that of Scottish Presbyterianism, in detail. Based on the history of the church in the eighteenth century, four aspects of Protestant pastoral power are outlined: examination, accountability, ecclesiology, and organizing as a good in its own right.

1973 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-523
Author(s):  
John Dunning Woodbridge

The struggles and sacrifices of those pastors and laymen who reconstructed the Reformed churches in southern France during the eighteenth century compose one of the intriguing chapters of the history of the “Church of the Desert.” Members of an outlawed Protestant church in a country which was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic by religion, these pastors and their flocks ran great risks in holding open-air religious services in the secluded and rugged countryside of the Midi—or the “Desert”—in southern France. Attendance at their services was punishable by perpetual service in the king's galleys for the men and life imprisonment for the women; the Reformed pastors who led these meetings did so on pain of death. Not a few of these Calvinists suffered extreme physical and mental anguish because of their obstinate refusal to abandon the faith of their fathers.


1990 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 99-108
Author(s):  
Sheridan Gilley

In his famous essay on von Ranke‘s history of the Popes, Thomas Babington Macaulay remarked that the ‘ignorant enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy… the Catholic Church makes a champion’. ‘Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. He is certain to become the head of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the first General of a new Society devoted to the interests and honour of the Church.’ Macaulay’s general argument that Roman Catholicism ‘unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the strength of dissent’, depends for its force on his comparison of the Catholic Regular Orders with the popular preachers of Nonconformity. As the son of a leader of the Clapham Sect, his witness in the matter has its interest for scholars of the Evangelical Revival, and has been echoed by Ronald Knox in his parallel between Wesley and the seventeenth-century Jesuit, Paolo Segneri, who walked barefoot 800 miles a year to preach missions in the dioceses of northern Italy. More recently the comparison has been drawn again by Owen Chadwick, with the judgement that the ‘heirs of the Counter-Reformation sometimes astound by likeness of behaviour to that found in the heirs of the Reformation’, and Chadwick’s volume on the eighteenth-century Popes contains some fascinating material on the resemblances between the religion of the peoples of England and of Italy. An historian of Spanish Catholicism has compared the Moravians and the mission preachers of eighteenth-century Spain, not least in their rejection of modern commercialism, while an American scholar has traced some of the parallels between nineteenth-century Protestant and Catholic revivalism in the United States. Not that Wesleyan historians have been attracted to study the great movements of revival religion in the Catholic countries in Wesley’s lifetime—a neglect which is hardly surprising. One point of origin of the Evangelical revival was among refugees from Roman Catholic persecution, and for all the popular confusion, encouraged by men like Bishop Lavington, between Methodists and Papists, and for all Wesley’s belief in religious toleration and tenderness for certain Catholic saints and devotional classics, he was deeply hostile to the Roman Catholic Church, as David Hempton has recently shown. Yet there are many points of likeness as well as difference between the enthusiasts of Protestant and Catholic Europe, and both these need to be declared if Catholics and Protestants are ever to attempt to write an ecumenical history.


2004 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 268-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Mandelbrote

The letter of Scripture suffering various Interpretations, it is plain that Error may pretend to Scripture; the antient Fathers being likewise dead, and not able to vindicate themselves, their writings may be wrested, and Error may make use of them to back itself; Reason too being bypassed by Interest, Education, Passion, Society, &c…. Tradition only rests secure.The 1680s were a difficult decade for the English Bible, just as they were for so many of the other institutions of the English Protestant establishment. Roman Catholic critics of the Church of England, emboldened by the patronage of James II and his court, engaged in controversy over the rule of faith and the identity of the true Church, much as they had done in the early years of the Reformation or in the 1630s. Nonconformists and freethinkers deployed arguments drawn from Catholic scholarship, in particular from the work of the French Oratorian Richard Simon, and joined in ridicule of the Bible as a sure and sufficient foundation for Christian belief.


The writings of a seventeenth/eighteenth century divine do not sound a promising source of material for a modern discussion of a point in Old English linguistics. Yet any examination of the runic texts engraved on the Bewcastle Cross, one of the most important and controversial monuments of Northumbrian art, must begin with a report of William Nicolson, a Cumberland cleric, Bishop of Carlisle from 1702 to 1718 and thereafter Bishop of Derry and nominated Archbishop of Cashel and Emly. In this connexion the student of Old English finds an interest in the early history of the Royal Society. O f Nicolson the man we know a good deal, for diaries, notebooks and many of his letters have survived. He had wide interests, which he pursued with energy. He engaged in the religious and political controversies of his time, studied languages, writing Latin and German with ease and having some knowledge of Scandinavian tongues, and also found time to be an antiquarian, local historian and student of the natural sciences. We find him writing on botanical and geological subjects, translating a work on astronomy, examining collections of coins and medals, observing local industries and their techniques, recording old inscriptions, collecting lists of local dialect words, remarking ancient and curious buildings, and commenting on folk customs. He corresponded with the learned antiquaries of his time, and wrote and edited books on antiquarian subjects. Among Nicolson’s interests was one in runic inscriptions. Besides recording the two rune-stones then known in his native county of Cumberland, he twice made the toilsome journey to Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire to see the fragments of the famous runic cross which lay in the church there. His drawings of the runic texts of one of these fragments are of the greatest importance to the modern runologist.


Author(s):  
B. W. Young

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 254-268
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Bazavluk

The author analyzes the ideological views of a group of Russian migrants of the fi rst wave, known as Eurasianists, including N.S. Trubetskoy, P.N. Savitsky, N.N. Alekseeva, L.N. Karsavina and others. The author discusses fundamental elements of the classical Eurasianist program, such as the role of the Orthodox Church and the state in the life of Russia and its society, their attitude to Roman Catholic culture, and their place in dialogue with other religions. In addition, other important elements of Eurasianism noted here are the ideas of pan-Eurasian nationalism, ideocracy, the spatial borders of Russia-Eurasia, the symphonic personality, a guarantee state. These issues are associated directly with the authors of these concepts and with Eurasianism in general. The author demonstrates the continuity with the teachings of the Slavophiles and highlights the special attention that the Eurasians paid to the traditional cultures of Russia. Also noted is the interest in Eurasianism of church circles in exile in Europe. At the same time, the Eurasianists’ critical vies on the “Petersburg period” in the history of the Russian church are highlighted, which are also implicit in Eurasianism as an independent ideological and philosophical line of thought of Russian emigration in the fi rst half of the twentieth century. An attempt is made to show how, through conservative thought, Eurasians tried to form a new type of political identity. This ideological direction with an emphasis on spirituality and special institutions was considered by Eurasians as a prototype of the future statehood of Russia as opposed to the Soviet-Marxist system. In the context of the contemporary Eurasian integration (EAEU), of the current role of the Russian Orthodox Church and external political manipulations around the role of the Moscow Patriarchate, the theoretical views of the Eurasians take on a new dimension.


1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-319
Author(s):  
Philip Olleson

A good deal of attention has been paid in recent years to the relationships between Methodists and Catholics in England in the eighteenth century and, in particular, to John Wesley’s own dealings with Catholics and Catholicism. This article examines a link with Catholicism at the very heart of Methodism’s first family: the involvement of Samuel Wesley (1766–1837), the younger of the two musician sons of Charles Wesley, and the nephew of John. As will be seen below, Wesley converted in 1784, marking the occasion by composing an elaborate setting of the Ordinary of the Mass (the Missa de Spiritu Sancto) which he sent to Pope Pius VI. This article discusses the background to the composition of the Mass, its musical content, and the subsequent history of its autograph score. It is prompted by the publication of a performing edition of the work and by a subsequent performance (almost certainly the world première) in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, on 10 September 1997, which was recorded and later broadcast on both Irish and British radio.


1937 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 371-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivor Atkins

Very divergent views have been held about the constitution of the Church of Worcester in the centuries before Oswald established the Benedictine Rule. The ideas of eighteenth-century historians are perhaps of little importance to-day in the light of our further knowledge, for in the last fifty years the attention of an increasing number of scholars has been turned upon the investigation and elucidation of the history of that church, and much light has already been thrown upon its dark spots. But for a time there was considerable confusion, and it was a little hard to see where the truth lay, so various were the views put forward by investigators.


1969 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert L. Michaels

The man of the Revolution disputed the very nature of Mexico with the Roman Catholic. The revolutionary, whether Callista or Cardenista, believed that the church had had a pernicious influence on the history of Mexico. He claimed that Mexico could not become a modern nation until the government had eradicated all the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic, on the other hand, was convinced that his religion was the basis of Mexico's nationality. Above all, the Catholic believed that Mexico needed a system of order. He was convinced that his faith had brought order and peace to Mexico in the colonial period, and as the faith declined, Mexico degenerated into anarchy.


2004 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 106-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bossy

The title, and subject, of this piece is ‘satisfaction’, though its main locus in time is the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I chose the subject because it fitted in with our president’s preoccupations, and because it interested me; it turns out, to my surprise, to jog our elbow about some contemporary matters, as I guess he wished.We had better start with the word, where there are two distinctions to be considered. The obvious one is between making up for, paying for, making amends, making reparation; and contentment, gratified desire, giving satisfaction, what you can’t get none of. I shall say that the first is the strong meaning, the second the weak one. The first is always other-directed, and entails an offence previously committed; the second is principally self-directed. ‘To content’ is a classical meaning of satisfacere, but it means to content someone else: to do something (facere), as against receiving something. A short history of the word in Latin and English records that the strong meaning emerged into late Latin as a description of church penance, and so passed into English in the fourteenth century. Its heyday was from then until the eighteenth. It referred to ecclesiastical penance (interrupted by the Reformation), the theology of the Redemption (encouraged by the Reformation), and in general public usage to the meeting of any kind of obligation, payment, atonement or compensation. From the eighteenth century it passed from public use, superseded by the weak meaning except in technical or professional fields. One professional usage, to which The Oxford English Dictionary gives a good deal of attention, is ‘to satisfy the examiners’: they think it is a case of ‘content’; may it be a case of ‘avert wrath’?


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