Clerical Attitudes Research Articles

Truth in Many Tongues: Religious Conversion and the Languages of the Early Spanish Empire

Truth in Many Tongues examines the Spanish empire's language policies in the first century of Iberian colonization of the Americas. Daniel Wasserman-Soler compares language policies and practices in Granada and Valencia with those in various regions of New Spain throughout the sixteenth century. He argues that the empire's language policy was not particularly consistent and was much more hands-off compared to other policies related to colonization. He effectively demonstrates that Spanish language policy was much more adaptable than the historiography has tended to describe it.The first chapter examines how the Inquisition dealt with the use of language. Following the rise of Protestantism and the Council of Trent, inquisitors throughout the sixteenth century were leery of exposing the laity to complicated biblical texts and theological content in the vernacular because they believed that the untrained were likely to misinterpret scripture and theological concepts without pastoral guidance. Thus, the Inquisition tended to prohibit the use of vernacular language in Spanish Iberia. Wasserman-Soler states that recent studies have paid attention to inquisitors' individual and often self-serving motivations, and he argues that it is also important to account for more religiously based motivations such as pastoral concerns (p. 37). The remaining chapters outline the official royal language policy in various contexts and then explore how clergy interacted with those official policies, how they thought about language, and, finally, how they implemented language policy on the ground. Applied language policy usually meant that the friars made ad hoc decisions depending on local language factors and the level of language proficiency of the individual friars assigned to specific localities.Chapters 2 and 3 concentrate on language policy in Granada and Valencia. In Spanish Iberia, royal policy tended to be more restrictive toward Arabic, which the clergy were less likely to learn, and the Muslim population was less likely to convert to Catholicism. In Granada, Wasserman-Soler notes, Philip II prohibited Arabic in 1547 because he thought that its use had prevented the Islamic population's full evangelization, yet broad policies prohibiting Arabic were not readily enforced. Wasserman-Soler shows a broader spectrum of attitudes and policies toward Arabic use within the church locally. Wasserman-Soler proves that there was a wider range of attitudes and policies among church leaders and particular regions than has been portrayed in the historiography. He shows that policies were often implemented according to the attitudes and proclivities of individual decision makers in the church. While there was a range of attitudes and policies among the clerical authorities in both Granada and Valencia, Wasserman-Soler reveals a greater propensity to ban Arabic in the latter region.Chapters 4 and 5 provide a rich examination of language attitudes and practices by early Mexican church fathers as they sought to convert the Indigenous populations. While Wasserman-Soler refers to the first three Mexican provincial church councils as sources for official church language policy, the strength of these chapters is their close examination of the language skills, attitudes, and practices of individual clergymen when it came to the relationship between language fluency and effective conversion of the Indigenous populations in various geographic and linguistic regions of New Spain. Chapter 4 lays out the issues that clergy in the early sixteenth century had to grapple with as they began the process of Indigenous conversion. While initially the crown encouraged the clergy to learn Indigenous languages in order to effectively evangelize, there was also an explicit expectation that the Indigenous population would learn to speak Castilian (p. 98). Wasserman-Soler demonstrates that the early friars approached learning Native languages to teach Christian doctrine in a variety of ways. Thus the church councils increasingly encouraged the clergy to learn Native languages to communicate Christianity throughout New Spain and increasingly recognized the merits of those friars who did so effectively. Chapter 5 digs into what language learning looked like for clergy on the ground throughout central Mexico. The chapter closely examines specific religious texts written by friars in order to interpret their attitudes toward Indigenous languages and their usefulness in Indigenous conversion. The chapter also describes the wide variety of clerical bilingualism and how effectively, or not, clergy communicated with the communities that they served.Throughout the book, the more hands-on prohibitive language policy taken by the Castilian crown toward Arabic in Iberia stands in stark contrast with the much more flexible, complex, and adaptive approach toward Native languages in New Spain. While this monograph's focus on the clergy's perspective leaves it open to the potential criticism that it lacks the Indigenous perspective, it does provide a rich reading of theological texts by early Mexican church fathers. It provides a nuanced and welcome interpretation of clerical attitudes toward languages, theology, and indoctrination that enriches the field.

The Lord's opening partnership: church and cricket in Calderdale, 1860 to c. 1920

During the second half of the nineteenth century, religion and cricket came together in the industrial area of West Yorkshire now known as Calderdale. Such an eventuality seemed remote during the first half of that century with clergymen opposed to – even fearful of – popular sports. This article examines why clerical attitudes changed, allowing churches, chapels and Sunday schools to form cricket clubs. It argues, however, that the factors which drove the creation of church cricket and moulded its nature were more a consequence of industrial society and the situation of working men within that society than of clerical influence and even less of Muscular Christianity. It further holds that it was the adaptation of church cricket to this working-class culture, rather than a reaction against a clerical agenda of what Peter Bailey has termed ‘play discipline’, that the marriage sooner or later ended in separation or divorce.

The Lord and Labour: Irish clerical attitudes to the workers’ question, 1903-1920

The Lord and Labour: Irish clerical attitudes to the workers’ question, 1903-1920

The Lord and Labour: Irish clerical attitudes to the workers’ question, 1903-1920

The Lord and Labour: Irish clerical attitudes to the workers’ question, 1903-1920

The Prosecution of Sexual Crimes in Early Eighteenth-Century Scotland

A session of the north circuit held at Perth on 20 May 1709 marked a turning point in the prosecution of sexual crimes in Scotland and a significant change in the administration of Scottish criminal justice. By pardoning more than 300 men and women charged with fornication and adultery, the court brought about the de facto decriminalisation of those crimes in the Scottish secular courts. An incest trial held before the court the same day revealed difficulties in the prosecution of this crime and challenged prevailing male and clerical attitudes towards rape. The proceedings of the court also demonstrated the growing reluctance of Scottish advocates to appeal to biblical authority in criminal prosecutions. The legal developments at Perth were made possible by a bill of indemnity passed by the British parliament in 1708, the abolition of the Scottish privy council in the same year, and the establishment of a comprehensive circuit court system in Scotland.

Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (review)

Reviewed by: Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion Daniel G. Van Slyke Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion. By Derek A. Rivard. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2009. Pp. xii, 332. $39.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-813-21545-7.) One hundred years after Adolf Franz published his monumental two-volume Die Kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittelalter (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1909), a scholar has dared to explore in a sustained fashion the complex meanings and anthropological import of the Latin blessings that Franz chartered. In Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion, Derek A. Rivard conducts an ambitious study of ritual blessings in continental Latin sources, especially from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. Rivard’s first and shortest chapter, “The History and Theology of Christian Blessing,” sketches the development of blessings from the Old Testament to the Middle Ages and introduces key liturgical books to be studied. The next three chapters constitute the heart of Blessing the World and its major contribution. Each chapter explores a category of ritual blessings as a “window through which to explore the relationship between the human and the divine in medieval religion” (p. 6). Chapter 2, “Sacred Places and Sacred Space,” analyzes blessings related to agriculture, homes, bridal chambers, work spaces, cemeteries, and churches—including consecrations and reconciliations. Chapter 3, “Sacred Persons: Blessing the Laity,” discusses how blessings instilled divine power in “the visible and tangible elements of special social status” (p.172)—namely, pilgrims’ staves and purses, and knights’ swords, standards, lances, and armor. Chapter 3 also addresses twelve sample rites of blessing related to illness, pestilence, healing, and childbirth. Rivard devotes chapter 4 to “Sacred Vessels, Objects, and Events,” including ships, nets, wells, dishes, vessels, ordeals, and judicial duels. The theological problems of and lukewarm clerical attitudes toward ordeals and duels are noteworthy. Central to the structure and content of each section in the main chapters is a set of rituals drawn from Latin liturgical books copied between the ninth and the sixteenth centuries. Rivard applies “a textual approach drawn more from religious studies than from history and focusing primarily on the broad ideas, beliefs, and trends found within” various formulae of the rituals themselves (p. 2). His translations accurately render the original Latin texts, which are consistently placed in footnotes. The conclusion highlights general themes across individual rites, including the “adaptability” of divine power, [End Page 526] which blessings portray as capable of meeting every need (pp. 209, 214); the “ambiguity” that resulted because petitioners could only guess at how God might respond to the blessing; “belief in the deep engagement of the sacred with the natural world” (p. 271); the notion of a “contract” between God and his worshipers; and the relationship of the sacred to the demonic and profane. Rivard’s most refreshing conclusions regard the “positive perspective on the natural and social world” (p. 280) exhibited by the blessings and the extent to which they were influenced by the piety and concerns of the laity. Rudolf Otto’s anthropological theories, and particularly his notion of the numen, exert a pervasive influence over the study. Commentators on medieval religion such as Augustine Thomson, Keith Thomas, and R. N. Swanson provide categories for Rivard’s interpretation of the rituals. Yet Rivard draws more from Franz and the primary sources than any more recent scholarship. Desiderata include outlines of each rite to contextualize individual formulae. It is surprising, for example, to read suddenly “the seventeenth prayer” of a given blessing (p. 110). The reader also must keep in mind that the texts studied are multivalent and open to other interpretations. For example, what Rivard calls the “ambiguity” of the divinity might be better understood in terms of the subjective disposition of the faithful, even in the medieval mentalité. This study exhibits a lack of familiarity with patristics, liturgiology, palaeography, and theology, which are intimately related to the topic. For example, Rivard follows the formidable but in some respects outdated surveys of Josef Jungmann, Theodor Klauser, and Cyrille Vogel in attributing the Apostolic Tradition to Hippolytus (p. 29), despite more recent research on the document by Paul Bradshaw and...

Ite potus est: Liturgical parody and views of late-medieval worship

This article examines the genre of liturgical parody for the information it provides on late-medieval worship. Though sometimes dismissed as anticlerical, these texts were in fact written by the clergy and demonstrate considerable familiarity with liturgical formulae. Parodists understood the liturgy well and manipulated its words cleverly to produce humor or to attack others — above all, heretical Bohemians. Liturgical parody reveals clerical attitudes toward and mundane interaction with the liturgy. These compositions allow scholars to counter timeworn stereotypes of a declining late-medieval liturgy. They suggest instead that public worship was at times light-hearted and enjoyable, and it could build community.

“Wild Oats or Acorns?” Social Purity, Sexual Politics and the Response of the Late‐Victorian Church

The late‐Victorian social purity movement heralded a new phase in the history of moral regulation, generating significant levels of Anglican and Nonconformist support for male chastity and the elimination of the sexual double standard. Historians have so far highlighted the more repressive aspects of these campaigns such as their willingness to use criminal legislation and censorship to elevate standards of public morality. This article rehabilitates the discourse and activity of churchwomen — not least Ellice Hopkins — who were prominent campaigners for social purity. Women purity workers exerted enormous pressure upon the professional hierarchies of church and chapel, actively reworking Christian readings of the body so as to bring the moral influence of the churches to bear upon public opinion. In so doing they brought about a significant transformation in clerical attitudes that regarded discussions of sex as beyond the boundaries of civilized discourse and led in the promotion of a regulatory, but nonetheless highly public, religious discourse on sexuality.

The Representation of Women's Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Culture by Lisa Perfetti

REVIEWS The Representation ofWomen's Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Ed. by LISA PERFETTI. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2005. vii + 222 pp. $65. ISBN 978-o-8I30-2829-3. Lisa Perfetti deserves congratulation. She has discovered a new subject, an aspect of early literaturemost of us have never thought about. She thus spurs enquiry, not least inher comments (p. 2) that 'few textsof themedieval period are known tohave been authored bywomen, and so inmany cases we are looking at emotions described by men', and thatone may thus ask iffemale authors were 'more likely to resist stereo typical discourse on women semotions in theirown writing'. We shall return to this. Her book has an introduction by herself and essays by seven collaborators. E. Ann Matter discusses the spiritual ecstasies of female religious,which learned clerks (p. 28) tried to restrain. James Paxson sets out the construction of female feelings in Hildegard of Bingen, especially as regards literarydevils and personification, which latter (p. 45) 'dissipates ontological solidity and disrupts epistemological stability' (in deManian theory). Elena Carrera analyses emotion and the spirit inMechthild of Magdeburg, Angela of Foligno, and St Teresa ofAvila, the lastbecoming something of a feminist icon,who (p. 84) confounded hermale detractors. In an account of an thropological value, Katharine Goodland examines English miracle plays on Lazarus for their depiction ofwomen's grief.Wendy Pfeffer considers women's emotions in Old French lyrics, especially in anonymous ones that she feels sure (p. I20) are by unknown women trouveres.Kristi Gourlay describes Floripas, thepugnacious Mus limheroine ofFierabras. Sarah Westphal details a bizarre (though fictional) voyeurist incident inSachsenspiegel, set in the legal context of theUSA and medieval Germany. Valerie Allen discusses shame and the female body (with clerical attitudes to it) in Ancrene Wisse and otherMiddle English writing. The editor chose her contributors well. With texts frommany countries, theypro vide a varied and comprehensive survey.They also offer a range of ideas on gender, physiology, psychology, shame, guilt, spirituality, demonology, literary theory, and social order and power. On this theyvariously cite thework ofAristotle, Galen, Au gustine, Aquinas, Savonarola, Ignatius Loyola, Rabelais, Freud, Bakhtin, Barthes, Derrida, Paul deMan, Jacques Lacan, Georges Bataille, and Helene Cixous. Their subject prompts enquiry forother literatures. In theCeltic languages, forex ample, Ceri Lloyd-Morgan and Dafydd Johnston have written on Gwerful Mechain (1462?-I 5oo). Her poems, once ignored but now in the foreground (and including a declaration of female sexuality unique in earlyWelsh), contrast with much inLisa Perfetti's book. One wonders why.Also in Welsh, the twelfth-centuryFour Branches of the Mabinogi (showing signs of female authorship) describe women's emotions with restraint, despite incidents of (supposed) child murder and (genuine) male violence, rape, and adultery. The women of theMabinogi appear as individuals, whether as a chaste wife, a cool-headed and resourceful bride-to-be, a perjurer and her accom plices, a foster-mother, a scorned queen, a rape victim, a child-abuser, or amarried woman falling in lovewith another man. Presented without sensationalism, they still have rarepower and conviction; possibly because theircreator was awoman. Hence, perhaps, theavoidance of that 'stereotypical discourse onwomen's emotions' referred toby Lisa Perfetti. In short, The Representation ofWomen's Emotions supplies a wealth of profitable data. It will be fundamental for the study ofwriting about and by women in the period I200 to i6oo. UNIVERSITY OF NAVARRE, PAMPLONA ANDREW BREEZE ...

A Pastoral Vision: The Novels of Canon Joseph Guinan

The early twentieth-century Irish novelist Fr. Joseph Guinan (1863–1932) came from a strong farming family in County Offaly. After attending St. Patrick's Seminary, Maynooth, from 1881 through 1888, Guinan spent five years in Liverpool following his ordination. After some years teaching in St. Mel's College, Longford, which he left owing to failing health, Guinan served as a curate in several parishes until he was appointed parish priest of Bornacoola, County Leitrim, in 1910. In 1920 he became a canon and transferred to Ardagh, where he remained until death. Today, Guinan is chiefly remembered as an imitator of a better-known priest-novelist, Canon Sheehan. Guinan's writing, like Sheehan's, appeared initially in such American Catholic outlets as the magazine Ave Maria published from the University of Notre Dame. Between 1903 and 1928, Guinan published eight novels. Guinan also published a Catholic Truth Society of Ireland pamphlet titled The Famine Years (1908), and a collection of essays, Months and Days (c. 1920–23) modeled on Sheehan's Under the Cedars and the Stars (1903). Historians of clerical attitudes in early twentieth-century Ireland have made use of Guinan's works. The only extensive literary analysis of them is Catherine Candy's Priestly Fictions: Popular Irish Novelists of the Early Twentieth Century (1995). Candy's examination of Guinan's fiction does not fully appreciate their political context and overlooks some of his ambivalences.1 Reacting to Sheehan's literary example, Guinan constructed a Catholic arcadian vision of the impoverished, small-farm Shannon lowlands of North Longford and South Leitrim as part of a wider clericalist social project, and presents the political, social, and cultural developments of his lifetime in terms of this vision. * * * Guinan does not replicate Sheehan's inept excursions into "high society" and his trite plots lack Sheehan's excessive elaboration. When Guinan comments on the [End Page 79] invalidism and premature death of the hero of his novel The Island Parish (1908)—"were we to adopt the tricks of the professional novelist, we should have made Father Devoy a bishop, instead of consigning him to the cold clay in the prime of his age"—he is glancing at the glittering career Sheehan forecasts for Fr. Letheby in My New Curate (1900).2 Both priest-novelists idealize rural Ireland, reflecting the sensibilities of their exile audiences and memories of British slums as places of dislocation, death, and religious lapsation.3 Guinan's The Soggarth Aroon (1905) comments revealingly that it is not necessary in rural Ireland, as in Liverpool, to make parochial visitations and compel parishioners to attend Mass (SA 99-107). Guinan rejoices that in Ireland even drunken cornerboys are proud to be Catholic and will beat up any Protestant who curses the pope.4 Guinan hesitates between using wealthy returned emigrants as deus ex machina for the expected happy endings, and fearing that favorable descriptions of emigrant life encouraged emigration.5 Indeed, Guinan emphasizes the sufferings of even successful emigrants. by darkly referring to emigration as well-deserved consequence of moral failings and to returned Yanks as amoral trouble-makers (SA 169).6 Like Sheehan, Guinan asserts identity with the common people by idealizing and sentimentalizing poverty. In The Soggarth Aroon, a priest is proud of persuading a young couple to stay in Ireland, where the husband earns "as many shillings as he might have earned dollars in the States," that is, one-quarter the amount (SA 180–81).7 Unlike Sheehan, Guinan conveys a strong sense of poverty's physical presence. He is interested in local detail: precise descriptions of farmhouses, the embarrassment of a farmer's daughter greeting a priest in her working clothes, how men at a fair slowly get drunk while buying and selling (SA 88–89, 103–4). [End Page 80] Even so, Sheehan deserves his higher reputation because he tries, however hesitantly, to portray priests as human beings, albeit within clearly defined limits. Sheehan's priests...

Great Britain and Argentina: From Invasion to Recognition, 1806-26

Klaus Gallo has written a diplomatic history of Argentine-British relations from 1806, when Sir Home Popham landed 1,600 soldiers in Buenos Aires, to 1826, the year after Britain formally recognized the new republic. The monograph, which is a revision of the author’s doctoral dissertation and a Spanish edition published in 1995, is “a study of the evolution of the political and diplomatic relations between the two countries [Argentina and Britain]” (p. 1). It is divided into six chapters: “The River Plate Viceroyalty”; “The British Invasions of the River Plate”; “The Ministry of All the Talents and the River Plate”; “Strangford, Independence and the London Missions”; “Rivadavia and the British Attitude towards Recognition”; and “Great Britain and the Recognition of the River Plate.” An introduction, conclusion, bibliography, and index are included.There are numerous strengths to this work. First, it is nicely written (several typographical errors aside), with ample documentation for its conclusions from the British Library and Public Records Office, both in England, and the National Library of Scotland and Scottish Record Office. The author consulted a plethora of printed sources as well. Second, the analysis should interest students and scholars of the subject, and readers fascinated by the period’s diplomatic history generally. Third, the complex interaction of domestic politics and foreign diplomacy— in the isles and River Plate—are intriguing to this reviewer, though the uninitiated might be somewhat lost at times because of the many players in this drama. Revisionists will relish Gallo’s interpretations of the beginnings and early years of the Anglo-Platine relations. In contrast to mainstream writings, he concludes that the “correspondence between the River Plate emissaries and the [British] government officials does not suggest that this [a sound commercial relationship] was the exclusive objective” of the relationship (p.162).A few suggestions for a later edition are in order. For example, the section on the Rivadavian reforms (pp. 115–36) should be expanded via a study (and literature review) of clerical attitudes toward British interference in the Río de la Plata, Bernardino Rivadavia’s ecclesiastical policies, and the revolutionary struggles of the early 1800s. This strategy will flesh out Gallo’s treatment of an important local elite, which, after all, was part of the Argentine-British equation. Moreover, the events surrounding the La Plata invasions are not sufficiently detailed for military specialists. The latter are not, however, Gallo’s primary audience. A chronology, included as an appendix, would summarize the numerous events and leaders discussed in the book.Gallo’s publication is, overall, a solid contribution to the growing scholarship on the political actions and views of South American elites regarding independence from Spain, non-Iberian influence throughout the continent in the early nineteenth century, and contemporary European diplomacy vis-à-vis Latin America. I agree with previous reviews by John Lynch, Ines Pardal, and Eduardo Posada, which complimented the volume’s writing style, scholarly thoroughness, and novel ideas. It is recommended reading for anyone interested in European opinions concerning a Latin America in transition, and of how the “indiscretion of Popham, followed by the diplomatic manoeuvres of Canning [head of Foreign Affairs] and Rivadavia, which opened Anglo-Argentine relations,” influenced such perceptions (p. 164).

Church and Stage in Victorian England

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introit 1. Heralds of change 2. Censure and censorship 3. Two professions 4. Clerical attitudes 5 Self-improvement 6. Shakespeare 7. From Passion Play to pantomime 8. The ancient universities 9. Actresses 10. Headlam, hell and Hole 11. Henry Arthur Jones and Wilson Barrett 12. Henry Irving Epilogue References Index.

The First Crusade As Reflected in the Earliest Hebrew Narrative

The First Crusade As Reflected in the Earliest Hebrew Narrative. Recent research into the First Crusade has featured an intensive effort to understand popular crusading mores and thinking. This has meant the search for new sources that allow for circumventing the well-known Latin narratives that are deeply grounded in clerical attitudes and perspectives. While the Hebrew First Crusade narratives have long been known and have been extensively used to portray the anti-Jewish violence that broke out during the spring and summer months of 1096, these narratives have, for a variety of reasons, never been utilized for reconstructing aspects of crusading in general. Recent research into the so-called Mainz Anonymous, the briefest of the three Hebrew First Crusade narratives, has suggested that this account is quite early, composed shortly after the events of 1096, and that its author was committed to describing for his Jewish readers the genesis and development of crusading. Viewed in this way, Mainz Anonymous...

The Influence of a Merit Pay Guide Chart on Employee Attitudes toward Pay at a Transit Authority

The influence of the merit pay guide chart on managerial, professional, technical, and clerical attitudes toward pay is examined in a large transit authority. Although findings indicate that both instrumentality and merit pay satisfaction are influenced by a merit pay guide chart (i.e. position in range and performance ratings) and the size merit increases, the relationship are not necessarily in the predicted direction. Regression analysis indicated that the impact of guide chart ratings on merit pay satisfaction is considerably more than on instrumentality belief. Employees who received merit increases larger than suggested by the guide chart are more satisfied with their merit pay increase than those who receive what is specified or less than what is specified. Implications for future research and compensation practices in the public sector are discussed.

Clerical attitudes towards society in the age of revolution: Points of view on government, freedom, equality and human rights in Danish sermons, 1775–1800

Clerical attitudes towards society in the age of revolution: Points of view on government, freedom, equality and human rights in Danish sermons, 1775–1800

Clerics and the Elderly in the Contemporary Novel

Providing a valuable basis for analysis of clerical attitudes toward aging and the aged are profiles in the contemporary novel. Ironically, many clerics in contempora fiction, lacking essential benefits of benignitas, simplicitas, hilaritas, do not represent Christianity positively in their attitudes toward their own aging and that of others. Clerics in eight novels published in the last two decades are examined-four American, three British, one Canadian- representing a wide ecumenical spectrum-Anglican, Episcopalian, Scotch Presbyterian, Methodist, Southern Evangelical, Southern Black-and ranging from pejorative to honorific In their respective reactions to aging.

Ordaining Women as Priests: Religious vs. Sexist Explanations for Clerical Attitudes

Ordaining Women as Priests: Religious vs. Sexist Explanations for Clerical Attitudes

The Problem of Social-Political Obligation for the Church of England in the Seventeenth Century

Much has been written on the political behavior of the Stuart Church of England. And much too has been written on its monotonous reiteration of the divine right of kings' doctrine—with its ancillary ideas of passive obedience and non-resistance to the commands of authority. Indeed, for this perspective on the institution there exists abundant evidence: seventeenth century sermons and treatises were filled with “church politics.” Morever, Figgis' study remains indispensable: before, and perhaps even more clearly and vehemently after the Puritan Revolution, insistence on absolute obedience to existing authority—especially to the king—reverberated in the parish churches of England. Thus, at this point in time little doubt exists as to the political attitudes of clerics; and indeed a consensus exists also on the probable motives for those clerical attitudes: they followed unavoidably upon the second great conquest in English history, the conquest of the church by Henry VIII. But the church was not unwillingly conquered: it both bound itself and was bound to the destiny of the monarchy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—its newly-granted constitutional legality protected it while it nourished the hope that the Crown would act as sponsor of reform in Christian society. In a word, the institution of the church, keenly aware of both its relative impotence and its relative strength with regard to the monarchy, made the best of circumstances by offering virtually unqualified support to Stuart kingship, with certain unintended consequences for the church. Given this perspective, it is easy to understand why, apart from special problems and issues, the thought of Anglican clerics commands little attention today. But perhaps another view of clerical thought will yield as much or more understanding than the traditional perspective has so far yielded: it is the purpose of this essay to offer another view.