The Audiences for English History in the Early Twelfth Century

Chapter 2 attempts to establish who the audience was for the sudden spate of books on the history of England, and about English saints, which appeared from the beginning of the twelfth century. The audience is shown to have been mainly but not exclusively monastic and clerical. There is extensive discussion of the circumstances in which books were read and listened to. Suggestions are made about lay audiences, particularly in the case of Gaimar’s (French) vernacular history of the English, and also about the influence of the lay experience on clerical authors. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s parody of the new genre of historical writing is considered in depth.

Moving Evidence: Patients’ Groups, Biomedical Research, and Affects

Research in science and technology studies has analyzed how patients’ groups engage in practices that connect biomedicine and patient experience in order to become involved in the shaping of biomedical research. However, there has been limited attention to the affective dimensions of such practices. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with a gynecological cancer patients’ group in Sweden, this article focuses on practices that aim to influence researchers and research institutions to prioritize biomedical gynecological cancer research. It analyzes how “affects” are woven through these practices and pays attention to the entanglements of affects, biomedical research, and lay experience they involve. The article explores the relation between the gynecological cancer patients’ group and biomedical research as a set of material-semiotic practices of “moving evidence.” These practices of moving evidence (1) enact gynecological cancer as under-researched; (2) collect and produce new “evidence”; (3) “mobilize” the evidence at public events, in interactions with biomedical researchers, and in different online settings; and (4) entangle affects with biomedical and experiential evidence to enact (a lack of) gynecological cancer biomedical research as a matter of concern.

Experiencing Grace: A Thematic Network Analysis of Person-Level Narratives

The aim of the present study is to clarify the lay experience of grace through person-level narratives. This empirical qualitative study follows a bottom-up approach, not restricted by specific theoretical assumptions, and includes a large and heterogeneous group of Belgian participants. The sample (recruited online) was composed of 456 participants (64% women, mean age = 50.04, age range from 18 to 93 years). Data consisted of 456 written narratives describing the experience of grace. They were analysed using a thematic analysis and thematic network approach with the help of a qualitative data management package Nvivo 12 pro. The resulting thematic network visualizes the experience of grace in the flow of time with (a) antecedents, grace can happen anywhere and anytime, but difficulties often precede grace; (b) the core experience is one of receiving an unmerited free gift in response to failure or brokenness or as an encounter with goodness and beauty, and this can be given by the divine or by other people and lastly (c) consequences entails a transformation at the intrapersonal, interpersonal and/or situational level. Our approach allows for an ecological and bottom-up understanding of grace as experienced nowadays in a secularized country and can empirically inform future studies about the connection between grace and psychological flourishing.

The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume I

The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume I traces the emergence of Anglophone Protestant Dissent in the post-Reformation era between the Act of Uniformity (1559) and the Act of Toleration (1689). It reassesses the relationship between establishment and dissent, emphasizing that Presbyterians and Congregationalists were serious contenders in the struggle for religious hegemony. Under Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts, dissent was largely contained within the Church of England, as nonconformists sought to reform the national Church from within. During the English Revolution (1640–60), Puritan reformers seized control of the state but splintered into rival factions with competing programmes of ecclesiastical reform. Only after the Restoration, following the ejection of 2,000 Puritan clergy from the Church, did most Puritans become Dissenters, often with great reluctance. Dissent was not the inevitable terminus of Puritanism, but the contingent and unintended consequence of the Puritan drive for further reformation. Nevertheless, in the half-century after 1640, religious pluralism became a fact of English life, as denominations formed and toleration was widely advocated. The volume explores how Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers began to forge distinct identities as the four major denominational traditions of English Dissent. It tracks the proliferation of Anglophone Protestant Dissent beyond England—in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Dutch Republic, New England, Pennsylvania, and the Caribbean. And it presents the latest research on the culture of Dissenting congregations, including their relations with the parish, their worship, preaching, gender relations, and lay experience.

Introduction

This chapter begins with a brief sketch of the history of Protestant Dissent in post-Reformation England. It then introduces the influential tradition of denominational historiography, before examining how this ‘vertical’ approach to Dissenting history has been critiqued by historians who take a ‘horizontal’ approach—focusing on the politics of religion in a specific era or moment. Whiggish, teleological, and partisan histories of Anglicanism and Dissent have been displaced by histories that stress political contingency and the fluidity of post-Reformation religious identities. The chapter argues that historians should not overreact to the excesses of denominational historiography; they should recognize that the Stuart era did witness the formation of Dissenting denominations, as religious communities went to great lengths to sharpen the boundaries of group identity. It concludes by surveying recent trends in the historiography, including work on scholarly editions, dissenting women, the literature of dissent, lay experience, theology, exile, and migration.

Emotions and the Body in Early Modern Medicine

Drawing on Latin treatises, letters, and autobiographical writings, this article outlines the changes in the—thoroughly somatic—learned medical understanding of the emotions (or “affectus/passiones animi”) between 1500 and 1800 and their impact on lay experience. The mixture of the four natural humors explained individuals’ different propensity to certain emotions. The emotions as such, however, were described primarily as movements of the spirits and the blood towards or away from external objects. The term “e(s)motion” emerged. The final part highlights the 18th-century shift from spirits and blood to the nerves as the principal site of the emotions. Physicians and laypersons alike now associated the emotions closely with the peculiar nervous sensibility and irritability of individuals and groups.

Praying Orthodoxy

Throughout the early Middle Ages, yearly penitential seasons like Rogationtide and Lent provided a context for basic doctrinal instruction—a replacement for the vanishing Patristic catechumenate. Not only was lay participation in such penitential seasons high, but the ritual structure of these holidays meant that verbal instruction and physical practice mirrored each other. Rogationtide developed a special connection with teaching on the Lord’s Prayer. During the early Middle Ages, knowledge of the Apostles’ Creed and Lord’s Prayer was the proof of someone’s Christianity. The Rogation procession—a ritual that all Christians had to join—mirrored the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer—a text that all Christians were expected to understand. The interdependence of these two popular practices shaped lay experience of their own Christianization. Christian instruction occurred through rituals. The rule of prayer upheld the doctrines of faith.

Complementary medicines regulatory reform

AUSTRALIANS ARE BEING encouraged to take greater responsibility for their own health care. The concept of self-care is being promoted widely, including the recent paper released by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission1 and, more commercially, by the Australian Self Medication Industry (ASMI).2 Self-care in health refers to the activities individuals, families and communities undertake with the intention of enhancing health, preventing disease, limiting illness, and restoring health. These activities are derived from knowledge and skills from the pool of both professional and lay experience. They are undertaken by lay people on their own behalf, either separately or in participative collaboration with professionals.3 To enable Australian consumers to assume this responsibility, they should have the right to know and have access to the evidence-based status of any treatment they are considering, to enable them to make well-informed choices. This especially applies to medicines.