Clerical Political Research Articles

Sixteenth-Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch (review)

Reviewed by: Sixteenth-Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch Roger A. Mason Sixteenth-Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch. Edited by Julian Goodare and Alasdair A. MacDonald. [Brill Studies in Intellectual History, Vol. 166.] (Leiden and Boston: Brill. 2008. Pp. xx, 471. $148.00. ISBN 978-9-004-16825-1.). Michael Lynch retired from the Sir William Fraser Chair of Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh in 2005; and this hefty, handsome, and meticulously edited volume is a tribute from his friends, colleagues, and former students to his impact on the study of Reformation Scotland. Its eighteen chapters cover what the editors call the long sixteenth century, from 1500 to 1650, but there are only three contributions relating to the period before the Reformation of 1560 and three on the period after the Union of Anglo-Scottish Crowns in 1603. The book’s core is the four decades immediately following the Protestant Reformation and serves as the focus of twelve chapters. This is perhaps an accurate reflection of where Lynch’s own interests primarily lie, as is the fact that very few of the contributions are essays in urban history as such—the field in which Lynch initially made his name with his magisterial work on Edinburgh and the Reformation (Edinburgh, 1981). Rather, the book reflects Lynch’s more recent interest in the royal court, and its significance [End Page 550] to Edinburgh in the reign of James VI, as well as the interdependence of political, religious, and cultural history and the ways in which each can illuminate the others. Perhaps not surprisingly in a collection of this kind, the quality is uneven; some of the chapters are decidedly slight, while others lack analytical depth. Yet there is still enough substance to the volume for it to be of real interest to historians of the period. It opens with Steve Boardman and Andrea Thomas exploring from different perspectives the emergence of a Scottish “Renaissance Monarchy”’ in the reigns of James IV and James V, and the theme of court culture is picked up again in later essays on the reign of James VI where Maureen Meikle discusses the coronation of Anna of Denmark and Amy Juhala Edinburgh’s role in bankrolling the royal court. In similar vein, there is a particularly effective essay by Theo van Heijnsbergen on the poet Alexander Scott and the courtly and urban cultures that greeted Mary, Queen of Scots on her return to Scotland in 1561. More straightforwardly politico-religious are Ruth Grant’s reassessment of the background to the Anglo-Scottish alliance of 1586 and Julian Goodare’s very convincing chapter arguing that the so-called Edinburgh “riot” of 1596 in fact amounted to an attempted coup d’etat. Other contributions to the religious history of the period include David Ditchburn’s compendious look at pre-Reformation pilgrimage, Sharon Adams’s reassessment of the conference at Leith in 1572, and Jane Dawson’s illuminating examination of the social as well as the religious ramifications of the fifth earl of Argyll’s marital problems. Nor is Catholic survivalism ignored: Rod Lyall and Michael Yellowlees contribute essays respectively on the Catholic poet and activist James Halkerston and the inveterate Jesuit plotter William Crichton. But among the most innovative chapters on religious themes are Alan MacDonald’s fascinating study of the unlikely friendship between Andrew Melville and Patrick Adamson, and Jamie Reid Baxter’s study of the early-seventeenth-century literary world of the well-educated and well-connected Andrew Boyd, bishop of Argyll. Boyd’s was a world of clerical politics as well as clerical culture, and the issue of kirk-crown relations is addressed more broadly by Jenny Wormald in what is the most wide-ranging and thought-provoking essay in the book. Wormald uses a discussion of the Five Articles of Perth to question recent interpretations of the extent to which James VI and I pursued genuinely British policies in the two decades after 1603 and whether or not he left his son an irretrievably poisoned ecclesiastical chalice. Finally, although urban history is not well represented here, there are essays by Pat Dennison on the persistence of Robin Hood...

The Political Activity of Evangelical Clergy in the Election of 2000: A Case Study of Five Denominations

This article focuses on the political participation of ministers from five evangelical Protestant denominations that differ in theology, polity, and history. Despite such differences, these clergy respond to political influences in much the same fashion. We find that the standard theories of political participation have varying success in accounting for their political involvement. Sociodemographic explanations provide little help, but psychological engagement with politics has more explanatory power. Professional role orientations are the best predictors of actual participation. And the clergy who see moral reform issues as the most important confronting the country—and who hold conservative views on such issues—are most likely to become engaged. Finally, membership in Christian Right organizations serves to elicit more activity than might occur if ministers were left to internally motivated participation. Despite the emphasis on other contextual variables in some work on clerical politics, we find that communications exposures, congregational influences, and even the support of clerical colleagues have very limited independent effects on political involvement.

John A. Ryan, Virgil Michel, and the Problem of Clerical Politics

John A. Ryan, Virgil Michel, and the Problem of Clerical Politics

The temptations of cult: Roman martyr piety in the age of Gregory the Great

Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) was arguably the most important Roman writer and civic leader of the early middle ages; the Roman martyrs were certainly the most important cult figures of the city. However modern scholarship on the relationship between Gregory and the Roman martyrs remains curiously underdeveloped, and has been principally devoted to comparison of the gesta martyrum with the stories of Italian holy men and women (in particular St Benedict) told by Gregory in his Dialogues; in the past generation the Dialogues have come to be understood as a polemic against the model of sanctity proposed by the Roman martyr narratives. This paper explores Gregory's role in the development of Roman martyr cult in the context of the immediate social world of Roman clerical politics of the sixth and seventh centuries. Gregory's authority as bishop of Rome was extremely precarious: the Roman clerical hierarchy with its well‐developed protocols did not take kindly to the appearance of Gregory and his ascetic companions. In the conflict between Gregory and his followers, and their opponents, both sides used patronage of martyr cult to advance their cause. In spite of the political necessity of engaging in such ‘competitive generosity’, Gregory was also concerned to channel martyr devotion, urging contemplation on the moral achievements of the martyrs – which could be imitated in the present – as opposed to an aggressive and unrestrained piety focused on their death. Gregory's complex attitude to martyr cult needs to be differentiated from that which was developed over a century later, north of the Alps, by Carolingian readers and copyists of gesta martyrum and pilgrim guides, whose approach to the Roman martyrs was informed by Gregory's own posthumous reputation.

Patterns of clerical political behavior in postwar Iran, 1941–53

The advent of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 has raised a number of important questions concerning the complex interrelationship between religion and politics in Iran and in Muslim societies in general. The clerical class, the ruhaniyyat,l because of the crucial role that it played in the revolution and its total dominance of the present Iranian political scene, has become a particular focus of interest. Despite the growing postrevolutionary literature on this subject, there is still little analysis available on many important aspects of clerical political behavior.2 What motivates the clergy to become involved in politics? What circumstances, religious as well as political, facilitate or forbid clerical political involvement? What factors determine the political orientations of the clergy? How do issues of political significance affect intra-clerical relationships? Another important shortcoming of the existing literature is the presence of a strong tendency to treat the clergy as basically a politically monolithic group, while historically there have existed different and distinct patterns of behavior within the Iranian clergy. The present paper attempts to provide some answers to the questions raised above through an analysis of the clerical role in the political developments of postwar Iran. More specifically, it focuses on the 194153 period which is particularly important since it reflects the interactions among various political forces, including the clerics, in a relatively free but highly charged political atmosphere. The goal here is to demonstrate the existence of different patterns of clerical political behavior which may be explained in terms of different sources of motivation for political action among various clerical groups. Also through an examination of the clerical politics in the nationalist era, the increasing involvement and influence of the clergy in the process of the revolution can be placed within the proper context of the changing religious and political circumstances. Furthermore, the experience of this period may shed some light on the roots of some of the major post-revolutionary developments, especially the tension between religious and nationalist political forces. To facilitate a more systematic analysis of the sources of variation in clerical political behavior, the following analytical framework will be utilized in this study.

Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century France: The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791

*FrontMatter, pg. iii*Table of Contents, pg. vii*List of Tables, pg. xi*List of Figures, pg. xiii*Preface, pg. xv*Acknowledgments, pg. xix*Abbreviations, pg. xxi*ONE. The Oath and the French Revolution, pg. 3*TWO. The Statistical Approach to the Oath: An Overview, pg. 34*THREE. Clergymen Explain Their Oaths, pg. 59*FOUR. Collective Portraits, pg. 75*FIVE. The Ecclesiastical Milieu, pg. 99*SIX. Clerical Politics, pg. 127*SEVEN. Clerical Leadership and the Voice from Below, pg. 159*EIGHT .The Oath as a Referendum, pg. 183*NINE. The Protestant Menace, pg. 205*TEN. Clericalism and the Oath, pg. 226*ELEVEN. The Urban Elites and the Oath, pg. 251*TWELVE. The Meaning of the Oath, pg. 287*Appendix I: Note on Method and Sources, pg. 303*Appendix II: Oath Statistics by Department and District, pg. 307*Appendix III: Oath Statistics (Summary), pg. 364*Appendix IV: Estimated Oath-taking for Old-Regime Dioceses, pg. 367*Appendix V: Incidence of Cure Collective Action, 1730-1786, pg. 369*Sources and Bibliography, pg. 373*Index, pg. 409

The Affinities between J.-K. Huysmans and the "Rosicrucian" Stories of W. B. Yeats

IN MARCH OF 1890, after a preparatory experience with Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, W. B. Yeats joined the Hermetic Students of the Golden Dawn.1 Like JorisKarl Huysmans, who at about this time became interested in the activities of the French counter? part of the Golden Dawn, "Le Grand Ordre Kabbalistique du Rose Croix," Yeats's interests were largely aroused by the willingness of the members of the group to experiment with magical prac? tices. Where Yeats, however, committed himself by oaths and rituals to a cult which pretended to be the guardian of ancient insights into the supersensory life, Huysmans stood apart, first skeptical, then fascinated, and finally outraged. The eccentric MacGregor Mathers headed the Lon? don Rosicrucians, and he and his French wife, the sister of Henri Bergson, were acquainted with all the principal figures involved with the slightly older French order. The latter had been founded in 1888 by Sar Josephin Peladan and the self-styled nobleman Stanislas de Guaita. The French group existed on the shady fringe of clerical politics in the hostile rationalism of the early Third Republic, and it was in search of documentary material for a novel about this fantastic circle of clerical Royalists that Huysmans was first drawn to them. Like Saul who only sought lost asses, this quest led him, as he came to believe, to God's grace. Before he became a Catholic Huysmans was, in effect, something of a Manichean. As Yeats did, he sought experimental evidence to confirm the existence of opposing forces of good and evil, and when he had this evidence he rejected forcefully the Devil through whom he had found God. Yeats was more equivocal. The inversion of values in Huysmans' A rebours, and of ritual in his Ld-bas never confounded or reconciled the opposition of good and evil and of false and true worship, as Yeats tried to do in his Rosicrucian stories of 1896. But then Huysmans was never so deeply involved as Yeats in constructing out of the farrago of late nineteenth-century occult beliefs a systematic basis for his life. The Rosi? crucian Golden Dawn did provide the beginnings for such a systematic basis, and in his three stories of 1896, "The Tables of the Law," "Rosa Alchemica," and "The Adoration of the Magi," Yeats draws on the beliefs and rituals of his cult. It seems to me that there are elements in the first two of these Rosicrucian stories which have curipus affinities to the writings of Huysmans, and these become significant in the context of other relations between the two writers. It is doubtf ul that Yeats would have welcomed a comparison of his work to that of Huysmans, for the latter, maintaining as he did the strict duality of Satan and God, conceived of almost all occult rituals as sacrilegious and obscene. In 1884 Huysmans had, in A rebours, described Satanism as sadistic in its basis,2 and in his roman a clef of 1891, Ld-bas, the principal French Rosicrucians, with some of whom there is evidence Yeats was acquainted,3 were pilloried as black magicians, orgiastic celebrators of indecencies in Black Masses, such as the one Huysmans claimed he attended.4 In the teachings of the Golden Dawn the opposition between God and Lucifer was not so clear-cut. In the symbolism of the Philosophicus grade, into which Yeats had been initiated before 1896, the fiery dragon, the cause of the fall of Adam, is intertwined in the tree of life. Israel Regardie, the historian of the Golden Dawn and himself a member, points out that the "Dragon is the symbol of the enemy to be overcome, as well as, when eventually conquered, the

The Affinities Between J.-K. Huysmans and the “Rosicrucian” Stories of W. B. Yeats

In march of 1890, after a preparatory experience with Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, W. B. Yeats joined the Hermetic Students of the Golden Dawn. Like Joris-Karl Huysmans, who at about this time became interested in the activities of the French counterpart of the Golden Dawn, “Le Grand Ordre Kabbalistique du Rose Croix,” Yeats's interests were largely aroused by the willingness of the members of the group to experiment with magical practices. Where Yeats, however, committed himself by oaths and rituals to a cult which pretended to be the guardian of ancient insights into the super-sensory life, Huysmans stood apart, first skeptical, then fascinated, and finally outraged. The eccentric MacGregor Mathers headed the London Rosicrucians, and he and his French wife, the sister of Henri Bergson, were acquainted with all the principal figures involved with the slightly older French order. The latter had been founded in 1888 by Sâr Joséphin Péladan and the self-styled nobleman Stanislas de Guaita. The French group existed on the shady fringe of clerical politics in the hostile rationalism of the early Third Republic, and it was in search of documentary material for a novel about this fantastic circle of clerical Royalists that Huysmans was first drawn to them. Like Saul who only sought lost asses, this quest led him, as he came to believe, to God's grace.Before he became a Catholic Huysmans was, in effect, something of a Manichean. As Yeats did, he sought experimental evidence to confirm the existence of opposing forces of good and evil, and when he had this evidence he rejected forcefully the Devil through whom he had found God. Yeats was more equivocal. The inversion of values in Huysmans' A rebours, and of ritual in his Là-bas never confounded or reconciled the opposition of good and evil and of false and true worship, as Yeats tried to do in his Rosicrucian stories of 1896. But then Huysmans was never so deeply involved as Yeats in constructing out of the farrago of late nineteenth-century occult beliefs a systematic basis for his life. The Rosicrucian Golden Dawn did provide the beginnings for such a systematic basis, and in his three stories of 1896, “The Tables of the Law,” “Rosa Alchemica,” and “The Adoration of the Magi,” Yeats draws on the beliefs and rituals of his cult. It seems to me that there are elements in the first two of these Rosicrucian stories which have curious affinities to the writings of Huysmans, and these become significant in the context of other relations between the two writers.