In the mid-1940s a Catholic lay organisation, Maria Duce, emerged in Ireland which vigorously promulgated the idiosyncratic writings of Revd Denis Fahey, a Holy Ghost priest. Amongst other activities, Maria Duce campaigned in the late 1940s for an amendment of the Irish constitution of 1937 by which the Roman Catholic Church would be recognised as the ‘one true Church’ rather than the ‘special position’ enshrined in article 44 of the constitution. The origins and development of Maria Duce are charted in some detail and particular attention is paid to Fahey's role in the group. The campaign to amend article 44, which ultimately led to the demise of the organisation in 1954, is examined, as is the lack of widespread support for the activities of Maria Duce in post-war Ireland.

John of Damascus (c. 655–745) is a striking figure in church history as a defender of icon veneration and as a Church Father who maintained Byzantine Orthodoxy despite living under Muslim rule. His life amongst Muslims and his association with the Umayyad Melkite Christian community, the Christian Church which attempted to maintain an adherence to Byzantine Orthodoxy after the Arab conquest, is often associated with his defence of icons. However, most scholarship claims that his Three treatises on the divine images were written solely against Byzantine iconoclasm. This article provides a close reading of his Treatises focusing on themes which overlap with contemporary Jewish and Muslim debates on figurative images, arguing that John wrote his Treatises in an attempt to create a seminal Melkite theology on icons for both Byzantine and Umayyad Christians faced with iconoclastic arguments from all three Abrahamic faiths.

Simon Sudbury is one of the more obscure archbishops of Canterbury.He should be better known, if only because he was archbishop during a particularly confused but important period of English history—the period of Edward III's dotage and Richard II's minority. Anything which casts a little light upon the politics and personalities of that period should be welcome to historians.

The primary account of the martyrdom of Maurice and the Theban legion occurs in a letter addressed by Eucherius, bishop of Lyons c. 434–50, to a fellow bishop, Salvius. This relatively brief document has attracted a degree of scholarly attention out of all proportion to its length, the purpose of which has been to investigate its historical basis. There are those who believe with varying degrees of certainty that there is a historical basis to the story which Eucherius relates, that there did indeed exist a group of Theban soldiers who were executed in the Alps during the early years of the reign of Emperor Herculius Maximianus because they refused, for religious reasons, to obey his commands. However their arguments have left many unconvinced. Denis Van Berchem's thorough examination of the story has raised many doubts about its veracity, and many commentators now incline to believe, with him, that no such martyrs ever existed.

This article examines the context for the establishment of the non-denominational Port of London Society, and the dissenting Bethel Union, which came together to form the British and Foreign Sailor Society in 1833. Making forensic use of the surviving archives as well as contemporary reports in regional and national newspapers, it challenges the traditional historiography which focuses on the charismatic, but disruptive, figure of George Charles (‘Boatswain’) Smith (1782–1863). It suggests that the cult of the founder is misplaced for Smith, and that marine religious charities flourished despite, rather than because of, his contribution.

In the twelfth century the cult of St Agatha of Catania was revived on the island of Sicily. This article explores the development of the cult within the wider process of the re-Christianisation of an island which had, in the previous century, been removed from Muslim control by Norman conquerors. It demonstrates that the revival of St Agatha's cult occurred through its connection to powerful political circles and to a range of emergent communication networks. The increasing renown of this shrine centre contributed to Sicily's integration into the Latin Christian world, and countered suspicious external perceptions of the island.

This paper reexamines the reform of the cathedral chapter of Sées in 1131. It does so by looking primarily, though not exclusively, at the almost 400 acta – that is, the charters and documents –issued by the bishops of the diocese in the period up to 1220. It shows that this underused material has the potential better to contextualise this key event in the ecclesiastical history of medieval France and radically to improve our understanding of its wider effects. It also looks in detail at the careers of the bishops during this period and shows that these prelates, contrary to popular belief, were often supportive not only of the reform established within their cathedral, but also of the wider Augustinian movement. It concludes by briefly considering what the example of Sées can tell us about the regularisation of cathedral chapters in the Middle Ages.

The 1559 Book of Common Prayer printed by Richard Grafton has been dismissed by bibliographers, who have suggested that Grafton printed it as ‘agent for Jugge and Cawood’ (the Queen’s Printers) and ‘improperly put his name in the imprint’. Relying on evidence from a 1559 Grafton prayer book in the collection of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which contains the signatures of members of Elizabeth i’s Privy Council that can be dated prior to the opening of Elizabeth’s Reformation Parliament, this article argues not only that Grafton’s Book of Common Prayer was legitimate (indeed ‘authorised’), but also that it may have been printed in a limited edition, perhaps to be circulated in association with the Bill for Uniformity.

None of the episcopal appointments in the reign of Edward III was more difficult for the king to secure than that of William of Wickham to the see of Winchester. Edward III was never keener for the promotion of a favourite clerk. The pope rarely agreed with more reluctance to a royal choice.

This article combines prosopographical analysis of the episcopate between 1307 and 1330 with examination of its participation in the politics of the time – baronial unrest, the deposition of Edward II and a regency dominated by his queen and her paramour. Elevation to the episcopate brought status, an opportunity for career clerks. Nobles were not prominent among bishops, nor were regular clergy; curiales were, but more numerous were university men. The differing roles of archbishops Winchelsey, Reynolds, Mepham, and to a marginal extent Stratford, are reviewed. Crucial is the reaction of prelates to the crisis of 1326–7. Diagrams and tables help to quantify the conclusions reached.

The arrival of Robert Morrison in Macau on 4 September 1807 marked the beginning of the nineteenth-century Protestant missionary movement in China. The most familiar and important legacy of Morrison is his translation of the Bible into Chinese and the compilation of A dictionary of the Chinese language. When Morrison concluded his work in 1832, only ten Chinese had been baptised. However, the true measure of his accomplishment is not to be sought in the harvest of souls, but in the foundations that laid for future work. As a pioneer missionary in the nineteenth century, Morrison lived in an alien ‘heathen’ world for twenty-five years. How did he hold on to his evangelistic vision and passion in such an adverse and unfavourable environment? This essay aims to sketch Robert Morrison's views on mission, focusing on the way in which he responded to traditional Chinese culture and religion and the huge political obstacles in early nineteenth-century China.

The adoption of socialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was for many an experience akin to religious conversion. Katherine St John Conway's path to enlightenment provides a stark example. While sitting in her fashionable Bristol church ‘praying for a fuller consciousness of the Presence’, she was confronted by a group of workers adopting the socialist tactic of the ‘church parade’, the invasion of churches during Sunday services to highlight labour disputes and the plight of the unemployed:

[I]n they came, lassies out on strike against starvation wages and for the right to combine … there they stood, sister-women, … ill-clad, wet through with the driving rain, hungry … ‘They stand between me and the Christ.’ So the thought smote me; so I see it still … . For the first time in my life I heard and began to understand.

An analysis of the works of Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) on natural philosophy, this article aims to show the affinities between the content and form of his philosophy of nature and some main features of medieval, scholastic and Renaissance thought: theology as the ‘queen of sciences’ (‘regina scientiarum’), science as ‘handmaiden to theology’ (‘philosophia ancilla theologiae’), the emblematic or typological understanding of world phenomena, and belief in the ‘great chain of being’ (‘scala naturae’). It argues that Edwards's works are inseparable from the school of ‘physico-theology’, the English followers of which set out to prove the being and attributes of God by the order and harmony of nature, and through their worship of the God of nature to show ‘the wisdom of God in creation’ in face of the threats which new modes of scientific thought and reasoning were posing to traditional Christian thought and belief in the early modern period.

Hitherto we have depended on the State, i.e. on the ruling powers in the country—the King and the aristocracy … But these recollec-tions of the past must not engross our minds, or hinder us in looking at things as they are, and as they will be soon, and inquiring what is intended by Providence to take the place of the time-honoured instrument which he has broken (if it is yet to be broken) the regal and aristocratic power, I shall disgust many men when I say, we must look to the people’. (J. H. Newman, British Magazine, 1833).