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John of Damascus was an early eighth century theologian in the Jerusalem Patriarchate. His family supplied financial administrators in Syro-Palestine for most of the seventh century, who were involved in surrendering Damascus to the Arabs if not also to the Persians. They thrived in the sectarian environment under the Umayyads. Numerous Greek Lives paint John in legendary terms; however, these are late and unreliable. I deconstruct the Lives decoupling his timeline from Byzantine Iconoclasm, arguing that there is no evidence and good reason to think that he did not leave the Arab administration because of vexed piety, persecution or administrative language change. Rather, focusing on the chronicler's treatment of John's family, I argue that John left office for his own reasons. I propose that John was instrumental in a quid pro quo: cathedral for patriarchate negotiation. Consequently, the Arabs built the Damascus Mosque on the site of the cathedral church of St John the Baptist, and the (dyothelite) Chalcedonian party moved to Jerusalem, where they reestablished the Jerusalem Patriarchate. Thus, I argue the context of John's polemical works is Jerusalem and patriarchal policy. Further, I argue that John was commissioned to produce something like 'proto-school' texts in the context of debate in the Anastasis with internal Maronite and external West and East Syrian interlocutors. Then I look at one example of John's theological creativity to show how this context impinged on his theological program. John appropriates Maximus the Confessor's term perichoresis and reduces its scope to the Incarnation while moving it into the doctrine of God for the first time. I show that he does this for polemical reasons in order to contravene each of his interlocutors with a simple biblical rhetorical model providing Chalcedonian monks in debate with a simple formula against better educated foes. This thesis demonstrates that reading John out of context fails to appreciate his creative response to these local exigencies.

The subject of my thesis is a little-studied hagiographical work that gives important insights into rewriting processes and their significance in medieval textual culture. The anonymous Life of Christina of Hane, a thirteenth-century Premonstratensian nun from the Palatinate, is an example of bridal mysticism which combines the medieval tradition of the reception of the Song of Songs with hagiographic elements. A codicological and palaeographical analysis of the only manuscript shows it to be a sixteenth-century copy, but the type of mysticism and the theological questions that it discusses suggest that the text was initially composed in the thirteenth century, when Christina is thought to have lived. The theological and spiritual ideas in the text belong to the wider context of communicating the transcendental within the world. My thesis uses performative language analysis to address the problems of textuality and authorization in the Life of Christina of Hane. It yields new insights into the ways in which this mystical text makes use of hagiographic strategies, how gender and vernacular theology are linked, how liturgical elements support the text’s pragmatic nature, and how somatic spirituality is reflected on an allegorical level in the embodiment of God’s bride. An assessment of three communicative aspects – medial, narrative, and allegorical – highlights the textualization of the mystical experience. The appellative structure of Christina’s text invites the reader to engage with the text. This study provides the first comprehensive interpretation of the text on Christina of Hane. It compares it to other mystical texts, to a German–Latin prayerbook, and to a fragmentary legend about Mary Magdalene. It challenges existing judgments about Christina’s biography and offers alternative solutions founded in the latest scholarship on female mystical literature.

This thesis considers the civic elite in Coventry during the Reformation, from 1530-1580. It describes how the presence of a longstanding civic and political culture, dating back to the late middle ages, helped to mitigate religious change and bring other economic and social priorities to the fore during this period. The thesis looks at contemporary understanding of ideas of the city, including civic history and political power, as well as the economic forces which shaped the civic government?s interaction with other political hierarchies and the broader social world of the kingdom. It is argued that, although the corporation was keen to protect and define the political and physical boundaries of the city, they lived in an environment that was permeable to outside influence and the presence of geographically broad social and political networks. Urban political disputes are also examined, with the aim of elucidating those principles which ensured the smooth running of civic government and the control of the city by the corporation and the civic elite. Religious disagreements during the 1540s and 1550s are examined in detail, to show why, despite the potential for turmoil, the city never saw the breakdown of order or the political hierarchy. The spread of protestantism during later decades is dissected, alongside attempts to maintain urban religious provision at an acceptable standard, and to preserve the structures and hierarchies of civic religion. The thesis concludes that, even in cities like Coventry, where the effects of the dispute and dissonance that came with the growth of a new religion were strongest, it was possible for the traditional moral rules of urban governance to ensure that the city was an ordered and successful society well into the latter half of the sixteenth century.

The popular millenarian movement founded by Joanna Southcott (1750-1814) enjoyed a complex relationship with political radicalism in early nineteenth-century Britain. Southcott opposed radicalism during her lifetime, encouraging her followers to await a messianic agent of the millennium. Within two decades of the prophet’s death – as Southcott expected to give birth to this messiah – some surviving Southcottians became political radicals, most notably, John ‘Zion’ Ward (1781-1837) and James Elishama Smith (1801-57). Ward was a popular preacher during the agitations around the Reform Bill, Smith a radical lecturer, editor of Robert Owen’s journal Crisis, and ideologue within general trades unionism in 1833-34. The respective influence of each figure drew several hundred Southcottians into engagement with politics. This thesis presents a new interpretation of why such millenarians engaged with radicalism. Utilising a substantial range of Southcottian and radical sources, many previously unstudied, it challenges the existing explanations of Southcottian radicalism of E.P. Thompson, J.F.C. Harrison, Barbara Taylor and others. Through a close study of the religious experience, ideas and practices of Southcottians in 1815-35, it locates an altered disposition towards social activity through the evolving millennial theologies of Southcottian groups and the personal acquaintanceship of individual believers with radical freethinkers. Under the prophetic leadership of Zion Ward and John Wroe (1782-1863), earlier Southcottian notions of the respective roles of divine and human agency in the realising of the millennium were changed by 1830. This led Southcottians to a new sense of agency, where their own actions took on a millennial significance when directed towards the achievement of God’s perceived intentions for the world. For some, this presented engagement with political radicalism, even freethought radicalism, in a new light: as action apposite to their beliefs. This argument features an alternative theoretical framework for millenarian beliefs which takes account of the way conceptions of human agency can vary within religious movements centred on modern prophecy. In exposing the inadequacy of existing pre- and postmillennial categories to explain such beliefs, it demonstrates how visionary religion can inspire expectations of both disruptive and evolutionary change, and require both divine and human agency, in the realisation of the millennium. This is a study in religious history, orientated towards politics. It demonstrates that a sensitivity to how visionary religious ideas influenced individuals involved in political movements, aids an improved understanding of political motivations and ideals.

This thesis examines the ways in which mid-nineteenth century evangelicals imagined and talked about the concepts of time and eternity, focusing particularly upon the eschatological position termed 'historicist premillennialism'. Although often seen as indicative of a reactionary or pessimistic tum in nineteenth-century evangelicalism, this study argues that historicist premillennialist thought was closely related to ideas that are usually viewed as progressive or optimistic within nineteenthcentury religious life. Historicist premillennialism is understood as part of the development of Victorian theology in which the temporal sphere (or 'time') came to receive new emphasis as an important and enduring element within the purposes of God, rather than as a simply a place of preparation for heaven (or 'eternity'). Drawing on sermons, tracts, and religious periodicals, this thesis examines four aspects of historicist premillennialism which exhibited this growing emphasis upon the temporal-spatial sphere. First, it demonstrates that historicist premillennialists believed that God manifested his purposes in history, working gradually through nations to enact his plan of redemption. Secondly, it examines their belief that God would establish his eternal kingdom on earth, not in an immaterial heaven, thus creating the conditions in which resurrected human beings could continue to live in society forever. Thirdly, it suggests that this high view of the physical universe led some historicist premillennialists to hope that intimate communion with the 'eternal' could be experienced even within the present dispensation, thus prompting some reconsideration of whether 'eternity' was best understood as a quality of existence, rather than as a future state. Finally, the thesis examines the commitment shown by some historicist premillennialists to ameliorative social reform. It suggests that their eschatological commitment to materiality, and also a belief that God was concerned with behaviour of communities as well as with individual morality, explains the growth of reforming sentiment within the movement.

The thesis examines the effects of Christianisation upon regional identity and political thought in the eastern Mediterranean in the fifth and sixth centuries. The historiography has emphasised the centripetal side of this process. But this thesis also draws attention to the centrifugal effects of Christianisation. The Syriac-speaking world could manufacture foundation myths to develop a cultural independence within the Roman Empire and to limit and, ultimately, to challenge the prestige of the emperor. I begin by examining the centripetal effects of Christianisation in the ecclesiastical histories of the fifth century and, in the Syrian provinces, in Theodoret of Cyrrhus Historia Religiosa. I argue that Christianity provided a more extensive means of classifying the peoples of the empire, both to exclude heretics and to monitor and judge the religious practices of provincial populations that had rarely been the concern of an earlier 'paideia'. In Theodoret's case, his attempts to control the reputations of provincial holy men are also a symptom of a more widespread cultural trend in the fifth century, namely the increasing importance and prestige of the Syriac language and the customs and histories of its users. This trend operates most starkly in the invented histories of the city of Edessa, the 'Doctrina Addai', which I examine with the aid of comparisons from more modern history. In the second half of the thesis I examine how a sense of local orthodoxy and ascetic prestige was used to criticise the empire during the Miaphysite movement, firstly in the city of Edessa, in the 'Julian Romance', and then in the whole of the Miaphysite east, centred on Mesopotamia, in John of Ephesus' 'Lives of the Eastern Saints'.

This thesis explores the origins of the role and title of the Master or head of the order of Sempringham from the foundation of the order c.1130 until the final draft of the Institutes of the order in the 1220s. It demonstrates that many of our existing assumptions about this important role in this early period of the order's history are flawed. Firstly, in contrast with previous work on the terminology used to designate the head of the order, it demonstrates that the term 'magister' was in frequent usage during the lifetime of Gilbert, founder of the order and its first head. The use of this particular title was influenced by, but not entirely dependent upon, Gilbert's status as a Master of Arts. This particular title also reflected Gilbert's anomalous role, as the head of an order of which he was not a member, at least until the late 1160s or 1170s. Secondly, the evidence examined in this thesis undermines the portrait of Gilbert as a stereotypical charismatic leader, big on ideas but short on the capacity to provide his followers with effective leadership. On the contrary, much of the structure of the order, from the statutes of the order to an early official account of the foundation of the order, was already in place before Gilbert's death in 1189. Thus, on the one hand, the extent of the changes made to the order by Gilbert's successors has been exaggerated - many trends, such as the shift away from mixed houses, were already underway before Gilbert's death. However, one of the most important issues, the role of the head of the order, was still unresolved. It was up to Gilbert's successors to disentangle the personal role of founder from the institutional role of head of the order, and to set out this role in the order's legislation.

In this thesis it will be argued that there was considerable commonality to Christian ideals of manliness during the period of the Evangelical Revival. At the core of the thesis is the ideal ofthe imitation of Christ. It will be argued that this provided a central Christian ideal ofpersonhood, and the thesis examin~s the variety ofways in which the ideal was interpreted and understood. Crucially, variations did not tend to follow Church-party or denominational lines. Chapter one looks at the imitation of Christ itself and the theological frameworks within which it was understood, whilst the remaining five chapters take a broadly life-cycle approach, examining the ways in which the ideal was applied to different aspects ofa man's life. Although the thesis argues for commonality, this is not to suggest that commonalitY did not come under strain. Indeed, it will be argued that some Christians were accused of undermining or neglecting the imitation of Christ. There were two main sets of charges: 'enthusiasm' and 'moralism'. Both accusations were rooted in, and reflected, differences over the theological frameworks for the imitation of Christ and disagreements over the strictness with which ideals were developed in relation to the various aspects of a man's daily life. There was also an overwhelming continuity to ideals through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Within this framework there were however some developments. Most importantly, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the term 'Evangelical', having been synonymous with 'Christ-like' and 'the Gospel', acquired Church-party associations. Furthermore, the theme of 'occasional' solitude was promoted from the 1760s as a result ofconcerns about people taking pleasure in company. There were also some shifts of emphasis. The late eighteenth century saw an intensification of the critique of 'moralism'. This was particularly evident in criticisms of 'moral' preaching and also in concerns over the teaching of the classics at the public schools. Educational ideals, more generally, were the subject of considerable discussion from the 1780s. Finally, Christian ideals ofmanliness were highly interconnected. The imitation of Christ was an all-encompassing ideal, and different aspects of a man's life, and indeed death, were seen as linked. Particularly important is that 'the family' meant more than the nuclear unit of husband, wife and children, and could operate metaphorically to include all aspects of social life.

The medieval period witnessed many attempts at organization, of both the mundane and sacred spheres. The otherworldy realms of heaven and hell are familiar to the modern reader, as is purgatory, but it was during the middle ages that the existence of another realm, limbo, was posited. This realm had its beginnings in questions of Christology and the extent to which Christian salvation could or could not be extended to non-Christian peoples. Its development was also shaped by questions of infant baptism, and the fate of those infants who died lacking this baptism. By the thirteenth century, it becomes more proper to speak of "the limbos", as the idea of limbo is split into two realms: the limbo of the Fathers (limbus patrum), wherein were placed the notable figures of the Old Testament, and the limbo of children (limbus puerorum). wherein were placed unbaptized infants of the Christian era. This thesis examines the development of the idea of limbo, concentrating primarily on works of speculative theology. It begins with the roots of the idea of limbo to be found in the writings of Augustine of Hippo and in the apocryphal Christian work, the Gospel of Nicodemus. From there, the questions of original sin, divine redemption, and baptism which shape the development of the idea of limbo are examined in the writings of several influential twelfth-century authors, including Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Peter Lombard. The earliest uses of the term "limbo" are examined in the works of William of Auvergne and William of Auxerre, and the full theology of limbo is considered in the works of the high scholastic writers Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure. Finally, the thesis concludes with a fusion of theology and art in an examination of the unique depiction of limbo in Dante's Divine Comedy.

The present study provides for the first time a systematic and comprehensive examination of the evidence for ecclesiastical penance found in the vast corpus of pre-Metaphrastic Byzantine hagiography. The value of the thesis lies primarily in the body of evidence which it makes available and interprets within the context of what can be known of the historical development of penitential practice among the Byzantine laity and of the nature and limitations of hagiographical evidence. The evidence is arranged chronologically in four sections (330-551, 451-692, 692-863, 843-983), and a distinction is made within each section between evidence which reflects a Constantinopolitan milieu and evidence taken from other areas of the Greek-speaking Christian world. The cumulative weight of the evidence supports the following conclusions about the history of Byzantine penance: 1) ecclesiastical penance did not cease to exist in the Byzantine churches following the "Nectarius incident" of 391/2; 2) monastic influence upon the outward form and inner understanding of ecclesiastical penance spread gradually from the fourth century onwards and was not a sudden phenomenon provoked by the events of the iconoclastic age; 3) the constitutive elements of the modern Greek practice of confession can be found in the practice of Byzantine lay people already in the fifth and sixth centuries, but the Lives of the saints nowhere suggest that confession was ever an obligation upon the laity in the period under survey or that a majority of the Byzantine faithful had recourse to the institutions of ecclesiastical'penance as a normal or routine part of their religious practice; 4) the phenomenon of unordained monks consciously exercising the apostolic power of binding and loosing was not, as Holl asserted, a central and informing element in the history of Byzantine penitential practice; 5) enthusiasm for hagiographical sources as privileged reflectors of the Byzantine popular milieu must be tempered by a realistic appreciation of the limitations inherent in the narrative forms and techniques of hagiography.

Though this thesis has a section on Quaker numbers and distribution and impact at the local level (in Cheshire, Essex and Somerset) and it deals, in an appendix, with Quaker social origins, its main concern is with the impact of the sect during the period 1652-1664, with those aspects of the Quaker movement that brought it into conflict with the authorities and with the way in which the various authorities - local as well as central, in the Interregnum as well as the early Restoration period - dealt with the Quaker problem. The thesis both establishes and accounts for hostility towards the Quakers (at all levels of society), a hostility which during the 1650s intensified dissatisfaction with the Cromwellian regime, encouraging a more conservative religious settlement, and which during the 1660s had something to do with the repressive legislation and paranoia of those years. Fear and hatred of Quakers had clear political repercussions, contributing in part, in 1659, to the reaction that ended in the restoration of the Stuarts. Finally, it is argued that before 1660 the Quakers were not consistent pacifists and did not abstain from politics; that after 1660 the famous peace testimony was slower in developing and less universally accepted than most historians have assumed. For this reason and because of the sect's social radicalism - their opposition to tithes for example - the anxieties of the gentry and ministers were not without foundation.

We add an appendix which contains a short biography of Laurence Tomson, together with an account of his works and a summary of the relationship between his New Testament and the AV. This is intended as an example of the English Puritans' attitude to Beza during the late sixteenth century.

British religious revivalism in the mid nineteenth century is an undeniably neglected area of study; despite the widespread incidence of revivals, and the vast numbers of men, women and children embraced by evangelical churches, there exists no comprehensive analysis of revivals in these years. Similarly neglected - yet widely recognised as influential in the development of that revivalism - is the impact on the British evangelical community of American revivalistic ideas and practices. By examining the latter, and in particular the British itinerancies of American revivalists, this thesis offers an insight into the extent and organisation of British revivals in a generation when attitudes to conversion and revivals were undergoing fundamental changes. In the 1820s the majority of evangelicals were extremely reluctant to use anything other than the most traditional of 'means' to encourage revivals. By the time of the revival of 1859 a much more 'instrumentalist', calculated and promotional approach to conversion and church recruitment had taken hold. American example transmitted through publications, private letters and the work of visiting Anericans played a significant part in this transition. The main sources used for this study - especially biographies and autobiographies of major evangelical figures, revival sermons and addresses, and the great quarry of material in evangelical periodicals - have made it possible sympathetically, if not uncritically, to examine the evangelical world from within. They have suggested the need to recognise that there existed a world of conversion and revivals with a life of its own. The evangelical was always a member of a wider secular society as well as of his church; but for the most aggressively evangelistic the regeneration of himself and others was his primary object. Once this is understood, simple secular explanations of the outbreak of revivals - economic decline, or the onset of cholera - are seen to be inadequate} the causation of revivals was complex, but the evangelical's search for conversions and his constant expectation of widespread revival were always fundamental ingredients. Chapter one examines the origins of the more 'engineered', new measures revivalism in the United States in the early nineteenth century. It argues that the revival movement originating in upstate New York under the aegis of Charles Grandison Finney has been given too prominent a place in explaining the introduction of this new style revivalism, and that equally important was the stimulus provided by the fast-growing hyper-evangelistic Methodist churches. Moreover, much of this thrust came from urban centres and not, as has been generally assumed, from the frontier and western areas alone. The urban modifications in the methods and style of revivals (betterorganised agencies of conversion, growing refinement and decorum in worship, for instance) are examined, as are the problems of city churches facing a more heterogeneous population than in Protestant small-town America. The chapter concludes with a summary of the incidence of revivals in the generation up to 1857, noting the peaks of the late 1820s and early 1830s, the late 1830s and early 1840s, and the late 1850s; and asserting the everbroadening hold of the new measures during the period.

During the revolutionary decade of the 1640s Thomas Collier emerged from his native Somerset to become a significant Particular Baptist leader. He produced more than a score of books and established numerous churches. Collier was a well-known controversialist who debated opponents on subjects such as baptism and the ordination of lay preachers. Collier's theology was worked out in the heat of such debates and must be studied against that landscape to be properly understood. Collier's writings and career reveal surprising willingness to embrace heterodox theological positions by Particular Baptist standards, especially in the late 1640s and after 1660. In the early period of his career he was enaroured of an allegorical, spiritualizing method of biblical interpretation and after 1660 he became increasingly hostile to limited atonement and election. The most orthodox phase of Collier's career was the period between 1653 and 1659 when he served as the leader of the Particular Baptists' Western Association. Under his leadership the association produced their Somerset Confession in 1656. After the Restoration Collier's disputes were increasingly with his fellow Particular Baptists. The publication of his Body of Divinity in 1674 and his Additional Word as a supplement to it in 1676 revealed increasingly divergent soteriological and eschatological views from those being espoused by the Particular Baptists. An attempt was made to discipline Collier by the London Baptist leadership, which was strongly and successfully resisted by Collier and his supporters within his local church in Southwick, Wiltshire. Collier's 1678 Confession of Faith, written in response to the London Baptists' adaptation of the Westminster Confession published the previous year, illustrated the wide breach of doctrine that had developed between Collier and his denominational colleagues.