Religious Dissent Research Articles

Catholic Reform in Ireland in a European Context

456 Studies • volume 106 • number 424 Catholic Reform in Ireland in a European Context Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin While exceptionalism is rightly considered a particularly hazardous form of historical explanation, the religious evolution of Ireland during the early modern period can be considered anomalous in European terms.1 First, within the wider family of European Catholicism, Ireland was unusual in that the majority of the island’s inhabitants continued to identify themselves as members of the Church of Rome, although for practically the entirety of the period the monarch of Ireland was Protestant. The closest analogy to this situation was probably the Dutch Republic immediately following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, when the inclusion of the Generality lands boosted the Catholic proportion of the Dutch population to between forty to fifty per cent. Elsewhere on the continent, however, Catholicism was the majority religion only in those areas where state power rested in Catholic hands, and often where that state power was highly aggressively deployed. Ireland represents a sharp contrast, therefore, with large areas of Scandinavia, most notably Norway, where little enthusiasm for an externally-imposed Reformation existed but where Catholicism nevertheless declined steeply in the face of state hostility. Even in polities such as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Hungary and, to a lesser extent France, where the monarchy was restricted in its capacity to deploy outright coercion to promote adherence to Catholicism, the Church of Rome benefited from active support and partisanship rather than, as in the case of Ireland, facing harassment, restriction and hostility. Ireland as a special case This continued disjunction in religion between monarch and subjects also rendered the island unusual within the wider history of the continent’s confessional states. The early modern European state system was founded on a union of throne and altar in which religious dissidence was not only seen as a deadly threat to the stability of the body politic, but ius reformandi came to be seen as one of the most highly prized attributes of state sovereignty Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin Studies • volume 106 • number 424 457 by European monarchs. Pious princes also conceived it as their duty to promote the mission of the (approved) Church in their dominions and could take heart that this activity both rendered the polity more pleasing to the Almighty, and thus less likely to provoke a divine chastisement, while also isolating and weakening a potential fifth column of religious dissidents who might be driven to make common cause with an external foe in the interests of their deviant beliefs. The advantages conferred by control over the state coercive apparatus and patronage were enormous and allowed monarchs to accomplish some extraordinary metamorphoses. In Austria and Bohemia, the Habsburgs transformed Catholicism from the church of a threatened minority to the accepted religion of the vast majority of the population, while the Elizabethan regime successfully transmuted the religious allegiance of the majority of the English population, although in a manner which stored up significant issues for her successors. Ireland was certainly not a unique case of state confessional failure. Philip II’s attempts to reconfigure both the political and religious governance of the Netherlands provoked a revolt which ultimately saw the Habsburgs lose control over the seven northern provinces of what became the Dutch Republic. Strong resonances can be seen between the Dutch and the Irish experiences in that it can be argued that an original a-confessional cause, in the Netherlands the defence of local autonomy,2 in Ireland resentment of the militaristic state-building wars of the later Tudors, eventually polarised into religious conflict. Where Ireland differed from the Netherlands, however, was the sheer longevity, indeed the institutionalised instability, of the confessional conflict. Eighty years of war in the Netherlands eventually gave the Habsburgs free rein in the southern provinces while in the north an unusually tolerant western European society developed. While religious antagonisms remained potent, they did not represent a mortal threat to the continued viability of the Republic. In Ireland, by contrast, confessional hostilities continued to have the potential to threaten the stability of the entire kingdom to the end of the eighteenth century and beyond. Within the more narrow confines of the Atlantic archipelago...

ICONS, SMUGGLING AND MCDONALDIZATION OF CULTURE

Culture undergoes constant changes. Although today, Poland is an almost ethnically homogenous country, ages ago, the dialogue of cultures took place not only on the borderlines of the First Polish Republic but also in the then capital city of Cracow. In 1390, Slavic Benedictine monks who used Old Church Slavic language settled in the church of the Holy Cross in Krakow. Francis Skaryna (Francysk Skaryna), a pioneer of Belarusian printing and later the founder of the first printing house in Eastern Europe in Vilnius, published the first Cyrillic prints in the world in Cracow and in the early 16th c. also studied there. Poland was a great example of a multicultural society. In the early 16th c. the Catholics and the Protestants, the Jews and the Armenians, the Tatars and the Karaims lived in Poland. After the Union of Lublin, the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania formed one of the biggest countries in Europe at the time; it was inhabited by the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Ukrainians and the Belarusians. In the mid-16th c. Poland became a shelter for multitudes of religious dissenters in Western Europe, such as the Lutherans, the Calvinists, and other Protestants. Today it is useless to seek traces of such multiculturality in many museums. In museums which collect paintings related to the Eastern Orthodox Church, places of monuments connected with Polish culture are frequently occupied by late icons of mediocre artistic value smuggled from Russia. The article attempts to explain this phenomenon in the context of the transformation of modern museology.

Ivan Hel: features of the political portrait (1987 - 1990)

The paper reviews anti-Soviet activities of Ivan Hel, a well-known Ukrainian dissident, political prisoner and socio-political figure of the restructuring and independence period of Ukraine. It is pointed out that after returning from long-term confinement he never ceased fighting for restoration of independence of Ukraine and initiated / cofounded a number of informal socio-political organizations which activity was focused on undermining the political system of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (UkSSR).It is indicated that the restructuring period set up a new page in I. Hel's political biography as the glasnost and democratization policy resulted in revival of the socio-political life of the UkSSR and allowed to set up a range of informal national-cultural and political organizations which member the Ukrainian dissident was in the second half of the 1980s. Among his closest associates to be mentioned were M. Osadchyi, Igor and Iryna Kalynets, Z. Krasivskyi, V. Chornovil, L, Lukianchenko, Mykhailo and Bogdan Goryn, V. Barladianu et al.It is stated that over the period under research I. Hel cofounded the Ukrainian Helsinki Group - the Ukrainian Helsinki Union (UHG - UHU), Memorial, local units of the People's Movement of Ukraine (PMU) for restructuring, the Ukrainian initiative group for release of prisoners of conscience. Concurrently, I. Hel was an active participant of the so-called 'religious dissidence' - he headed the Ukrainian Catholic Church Protection Committee which activities had an explicit political focus: in addition to the fight for legalization of the Greek Catholic Church in the UkSSR, the organization encouraged dwellers of the region to fight with the imperious regime.A conclusion is made that the peak of I. Hel's socio-political activity fell on the late 1980s - early 1990s. Over that period he was victimized by the Soviet punitive and repressive system for involvement in the so-called 'meeting democracy', participated in elections for the Supreme Council of the UkSSR and the Lviv Regional Council. It is pointed out that I. Hel's political / anti-Soviet activity was aimed at democratization of the existing regime, development of the national patriotic outlook of the local population and breakup of the Soviet Union.

Reflection of Sola Scriptura in the Classical and Radical Reformation: Western European and Eastern European Contexts

The article examines the need for Sola Scriptura at the first stage of the reformation movement as the main tool for solving epistemological problems in order to find a reliable source of knowledge of God, bypassing the mediating role of the Catholic Church. Then the reformers tried to apply this principle to the practice, they faced the hermeneutical difficulties and the article shows the ways how they are solving these problems. Author demonstrated how the representatives of the Magisterial Reformation (the Lutheranism, Calvinism and others) limited hermeneutical highhandedness with the introduction of catechisms and confessions of faith, and representatives of the Radical Reformation (Anabaptists, Mennonites, etc.) mainly used the principle of congregational hermeneutics and hermeneutics of obedience. In the Eastern European context, the idea of Sola Scriptura appeared several centuries later and was widely spread in the movements of religious dissidence, and later in various groups of evangelical Christianity. The use of the Sola Scriptura’ principle in these groups for a long time was based on the “common sense” approach, preserving the Anabaptist hermeneutic trajectory of naive realism, obedience and congregational control. At the early 90’s of the XX century, after the arrival in this part of the world of the historicalcritical approach, which gained popularity in evangelical schools, the principle of Sola Scriptura became more a slogan than a real program of actions. The article raises questions about the search for new hermeneutical strategy of biblical interpretation, which returns the researcher directly to the text, rather than to historical and cultural reconstructions.

Marsden, Thomas The Crisis of Religious Toleration in Imperial Russia: Bibikov's System for the Old Believers, 1841–1855 (review)

SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 566 Thanks to its tireless editors, this collection has finally appeared in English, thus making the efforts of these Balkan historians available to a wider readership. UCL SSEES Bojan Aleksov Marsden, Thomas. The Crisis of Religious Toleration in Imperial Russia: Bibikov’s System for the Old Believers, 1841–1855. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2015. xv + 280 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. £60.00. Based on an impressive range of archival sources, this intriguing book probes an unfamiliar and revealing episode in Russia’s history: a two-year campaign at the end of the Nicholas I’s reign that featured ‘perhaps the most significant acts of religious repression in Russia in the nineteenth century’ (p. 28). In accounting for the origins and demise of the associated system of coercion, Thomas Marsden exposes profound tensions besetting Russia in the mid nineteenth century and offers new insights on the historical experience of a key group of religious dissenters. For decades before the 1850s Old Believers had enjoyed a basic toleration rooted in a grudging ‘condescension’ (sniskhozhdenie) reflecting the ideological and administrative impossibility of legalizing an alternative Orthodoxy. The first half of Marsden’s book recounts how even this paternalistic forbearance was eroded over the 1840s by a series of factors: the establishment of an OldBeliever hierarchy in neighbouring Austria; investigations by the interior ministry under Lev Perovskii into the civil significance of Old Belief; the discovery of seemingly subversive manuscripts at the Old-Believer Preobrazhenskoe Cemetery; and the work of statistical expeditions revealing an unexpected prominence of Old Belief in the provinces. All of this motivated Perovskii’s successor, Dmitrii Bibikov, to place the eradication of Old Belief at the heart of his political programme beginning in 1852. Indeed, a sense of emergency gripped the interior ministry, which moved energetically to persecute dissenters with fiscal penalties, the destruction of hermitages, the disruption of dissident gatherings and the curtailment of their civic life. Yet the assault proved short-lived for two principal reasons: the project generated opposition even within the autocracy itself, where many beyond the interior ministry became alarmed by its arbitrariness; and it depended almost entirely on the will of the emperor, so that when Nicholas died in 1855, his successor abandoned it — although without reversing most of its effects. Marsden thus concludes that in demanding a return to ‘the lawful order,’ Alexander II’s servitors ‘demonstrated that autocratic power was, itself, limited’ (p. 243). REVIEWS 567 Central to the ‘crisis of religious toleration’ in the book’s title was a critical shift in official thinking about religious dissidence. In the decade or so before the campaign, Old Believers were reconfigured as a political threat to the state rather than a spiritual challenge to the Church, not least because they were seen to inhibit the project of national unity that motivated many key statesmen connected with the interior ministry. In this regard, the campaign reflected a ‘secularization of the politics of toleration’ (p. 136) as well as an attempt ‘to replace imperial with national priorities’ (p. 243). The initiative thus came not from conservatives, who emerge in the narrative as proponents of lawful administrative procedure, but progressive officials who fretted that the persistence of Old Belief would render permanent and implacable a religious fissure between educated society and the people. Preventing this outcome, they thought, demanded urgent measures, and they therefore ‘compromised their progressive principles in the cause of national unity’ (p. 24) by identifying Old Believer leaders as political criminals and acting against them in an emergency mode. Ultimately, then, the crisis at the end of Nicholas’s reign ‘derived not primarily from the dying spasms of the unmitigated traditions of absolutism, but from newborn forces that struggled to realize themselves within a backward-looking political structure’ (p. 15). There is much to recommend in this book, starting with its very revelation of Bibikov’s system, which was unfamiliar to this reviewer. No less interesting is Marsden’s discussion of the campaign’s anti-capitalist dimensions, which were directed against eminent representatives of Russia’s emerging capitalist class who happened also to be dissidents. Marsden is especially good at...

Silent Disagreement: Microinteractional Solutions to Moral Dissent Among Catholic Converts

How do converts manage their disagreements with religious teachings? Previous literature on religious dissent has largely focused on church members advocating change or apostatizing, solutions largely unavailable to initiates. Based on six months of ethnographic observations in a Catholic conversion class and 21 in‐depth interviews with converts, sponsors, and teachers, I demonstrate how microinteractional norms encourage an atmosphere of silence around disagreement. I then show how initiates explain this conflict avoidant response by justifying their doubt, engaging in a process of hierarchical deference, in which initiates call upon the top‐down structure of the Catholic Church to defer control upward, and faulting human imperfection rather than the institution itself. While “culture wars” debates of the past two decades have investigated a purported moral polarization of the American public, this study contributes to a growing literature on how the moderate majority negotiates disagreements between their beliefs and religious teachings.

Introduction: Non-state Actors in Mediterranean Politics

Introduction: Non-state Actors in Mediterranean Politics

Postsecular History

This study provides a particular historical reading of the postsecular moment. In an effort to problematize and historicize the claims of both the secular and the postsecular, this study draws a connecting line between a contemporary postsecular thinker (Daniel Colucciello Barber), and a group of religious dissidents in the seventeenth century Dutch Republic (the Collegiants). In order to demonstrate that the concept of the secular is value-laden and historically situated, the following will explore the ways in which an historical group shares many epistemological characteristics with present postsecular discourse.

Rileggendo Nella Valtellina del tardo Cinquecento di Alessandro Pastore

The occasion for this article was provided by the reprinting (Rome Viella 2015), with a significant introduction by Massimo Firpo, of a book by Alessandro Pastore, Nella Valtellina del tardo Cinqucento. Fede, cultura, societa, the first important work of this historian, originally published in 1975 (Milano Sugarco). The aim of this article is to place Pastore’s book in the context of its production. His research was influenced by the approach of the group working on the Atlante Storico Italiano, directed by Marino Berengo, by suggestions taken from the studies of Delio Cantimori and Antonio Rotondo on religious dissent in the XVIth century and especially by the Braudelian model of social history. In addition, this article focuses on the reception of Pastore’s volume at the time of its original publication and outlines the subsequent research on the topic.

Childhood, youth and religious dissent in post-Reformation England. By Lucy Underwood . Pp. xvi + 275 incl. 6 figs and 1 table. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014. £63. 978 1 137 36449 4

Childhood, youth and religious dissent in post-Reformation England. By Lucy Underwood . Pp. xvi + 275 incl. 6 figs and 1 table. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014. £63. 978 1 137 36449 4 - Volume 68 Issue 2

Property and Sovereignty Imbricated: Why Religion Is Not an Excuse to Discriminate in Public Accommodations

AbstractMay a hotel owner that objects to same-sex marriage on religious grounds refuse to host a same-sex wedding in its ballroom or deny the couple the right to book the honeymoon suite? Do public accommodation laws oppress religious dissidents by forcing them to act contrary to their religious beliefs or does discriminatory exclusion threaten equal access to the market economy and deny equal citizenship to LGBTQ persons? Answering these questions requires explaining why one property claim should prevail over another and why one liberty should prevail when it clashes with another. And answering those questions requires analysis of the relationship between property and sovereignty.Sovereign power both creates and regulates the types of property rights that can be tolerated in a free and democratic society that values each person equally. Should we view sovereignty as a threat to property or property as a threat to sovereignty? Libertarians choose the first and liberals the second. But this is the wrong way to understand the relation between property and sovereignty. Property and sovereignty are not separate and independent concepts or spheres of social life that can be brought into relationship with each other. Rather, they are imbricated; they overlap like roof tiles. Our aspiration to live in a free and democratic society places certain constraints on both property and sovereignty. Such societies do not recognize absolute power, whether public or private. Free and democratic societies are committed to a substantive vision of both social relations and politics. We have fruitful debates about property and sovereignty and, in the end, must construct a legal system that effects an acceptable compromise between access and exclusion in the property regime.Our historic practices regarding racial and other forms of discrimination and our evolving norms suggest that public accommodation laws enable access to the marketplace without regard to invidious discrimination. Religious freedom cannot operate to deny equal citizenship or opportunity. For that reason, a same-sex couple should not have to call ahead to see if they are welcome to book the honeymoon suite. Public accommodation laws do not infringe on legitimate property rights or religious freedoms; rather, they define the legitimate contours of liberty and property in a society that treats each person with equal concern and respect.

Deviant ideas, prohibited books and aberrant practices: reflections of the Roman Inquisition in the societies of the Venetian Ionian Islands (sixteenth–seventeenth centuries)

The paper examines the history of relations between the Roman Inquisition and the societies of the Venetian Ionian Islands. Specifically, it studies cases of arrest or accusation to the Inquisition of subjects of the Republic of Venice residing permanently or displaying in the Ionian region delinquent behaviour on issues relating to faith during the period οf the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. Besides the definition of the divergent ideas embraced or propagated by the accused as well as their deviant behaviours and practices, principal issues investigated are on the one hand the role and the policies of the State authorities regarding religious dissent and its repression, and on the other the perception of the Roman Inquisition by the local societies and the reflections of its function in the social domain.

Liberty, Conscience & Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn by Andrew R. Murphy

Reviewed by: Liberty, Conscience & Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn by Andrew R. Murphy J. William Frost Liberty, Conscience & Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn. By Andrew R. Murphy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. xiii + 301 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $74. Murphy, author of Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America (2006) and an edition of Penn’s political works, has now written an in-depth study of Penn’s political theories. He argues that, like John Locke’s famous essay on religious toleration, Penn’s writings were a response to specific events and are important not because of originality but because both men summarized and popularized major themes. Agreeing with Mary Dunn’s William Penn, Politics and Conscience (1967), Murphy insists that working for toleration or liberty of conscience remained a constant feature of Penn’s life. The book focuses on Penn’s response to the II Conventicle Act, Bushel’s [End Page 30] Case, the Popish plot and Exclusion Crisis, the founding and early history of Pennsylvania, and James II’s attempt to guarantee toleration through the suspending power and then by act of Parliament. Murphy has mastered the secondary literature on each of these subjects and his analysis provides new insights. For example, in Bushel’s Case Penn sought for the jury to determine both fact and law and his actions were a kind of performance theater that made him a national figure. Penn consistently defended religious liberty for Roman Catholic individuals, but opposed “popery” that he defined as an attempt by Rome or the Church of England to merge ecclesiastical and state power and to force worship. For Britain, Penn advocated toleration – that is, no disestablishment of the Church of England and freedom for public worship. In Pennsylvania, the law guaranteed freedom of worship, ignored tithes or any taxes for churches, required strict enforcement for morality, and supported Quaker beliefs on marriage, oaths, and peace. Freedom to error in religious belief did not allow liberty for a licentiousness that threatened civic interest in either Britain or Pennsylvania. Depending on circumstances, Penn emphasized a variety of reasons for toleration: Christianity (Jesus’ kingdom was spiritual and the early church did not persecute), English history (Magna Carta, Great Charter, and common law), human nature (conscience cannot be coerced), economics (property rights and dissenters’ hard work strengthened the realm), and pragmatism (persecution did not work). Opponents of toleration agreed that conscience could not be forced but feared spiritual anarchy as leading to another Puritan revolution, undermining political unity, and strengthening Catholicism. Murphy’s careful analysis of Penn’s writings and use of examples from early Pennsylvania to illustrate the difficulties implementing theories should appeal to political scientists – the book’s intended audience. Those primarily interested in Quaker history may be dissatisfied. The book does not discuss Quaker writings on religious freedom before Penn or comment on how he might have changed Friends’ emphases or tactics. Also ignored is the influence of Penn’s study at Saumur where he encountered a moderate Calvinist defense of religious toleration and saw the actual practice of harmony between Catholics and Protestants. Penn’s defense of property rights could have been juxtaposed against the Quaker refusal to pay tithes and disputes over impropriated tithes. There are no meeting minutes cited and the only personal papers are the microfilmed Penn Papers. Except for Fox’s Journal, Barclay’s Apology, and several [End Page 31] works by George Keith, Penn exists in isolation from other Friends, except in Pennsylvania. Here are the kinds of issues that more concentration on Penn’s Quakerism would have brought to Murphy’s political focus. In 1681–82 as Penn sought settlers and drafted Frames of Government, he published A Brief Examination and State of Liberty Spiritual and the revised edition of No Cross, No Crown. Why should historians assume that these were directed only to Quakers in England and not to prospective settlers? Penn knew the disruptive effects of religious schism. If Pennsylvania were to become a harmonious civil society populated by Quakers, then Penn needed to stop religious disputes, build deference to spiritual and political leaders, and foster moral...

The Rutledge Prize 2016: For Graduate Students Giving Papers at the SCLA Conference

The Rutledge Prize 2016For Graduate Students Giving Papers at the SCLA Conference Harry C. Rutledge (bio) Each year the SCLA offers a prize of $500 for the most promising work presented at its annual conference by a graduate student. The essay is also considered for publication in The Comparatist. You may submit a paper for consideration for this award by sending it as an email attachment to the SCLA vice president. The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2018 with the prizewinner to be announced in the 2018 issue of The Comparatist. Send to: Prof. Brian O'Keeffe, bokeeffe@barnard.edu. Since conference papers are often shortened from longer projects, students are encouraged to submit an essay-length version of their work that would be suitable for journal publication (no longer than 7,500 words). If publishable, prize essays normally appear in the next issue after the official announcement (i.e., a year and a half after the conference presentation), thus allowing ample time for feedback and advice from the editor. Rutledge Prize Winner 2016 Kathleen Hines, Southern Methodist University "Contagious Metaphors: Liturgies of Early Modern Plague." Judges' Citation "Kathleen Hines's essay visits a time in England (from 1623 to 1633) when the plague was particularly rife. Such virulence, as she elegantly shows, could hardly be contained to the physical bodies of the victims—the plague infected the anxious minds and worshipful souls of the period, contaminating their language and their writing, invading the discourses of theology, literature, and politics. The plague made a metaphorical leap, she argues, from bodies to language. Specifically focusing on religious writing (sermons preached from the pulpit, tracts disseminated to the faithful), Hines analyses the way in which the plague served as a touch-stone for religious thought—a way to explain concepts of sin and divine punishment. Consider the wracked questions of the faithful: is the plague something [End Page 393] like God's Word made manifest, as if His (presumably negative) commentary on mankind literalized itself as marks on the plague-stricken bodies? Could greater faith ward off the pestilence? Is the plague a disaster visited by God on religious dissenters and the theologically unorthodox? Hines's deft exploration of the answers supplied by various preachers and men of the cloth gives the reader a vivid insight into the culture of early modern England. Her essay excellently demonstrates how metaphorically pervasive the idea of the plague was at that time, and, in so doing, she makes an important contribution to theoretical work on the discourse of contagion." [End Page 394] Harry C. Rutledge Harry C. Rutledge, Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and an internationally recognized classicist, was the guiding spirit behind the founding of the SCLA March 28–30, 1974. He served as President, Board Member, and Conference Coordinator, but is best remembered for his enthusiasm in encouraging comparative work of all kinds. He also helped inspire the founding of The Comparatist. Copyright © 2017 Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts

Jan Hus Between Time and Eternity: Reconsidering a Medieval Heretic by Thomas A. Fudge

Reviewed by: Jan Hus Between Time and Eternity: Reconsidering a Medieval Heretic by Thomas A. Fudge Carole M. Cusack Fudge, Thomas A., Jan Hus Between Time and Eternity: Reconsidering a Medieval Heretic, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2016; cloth; pp. xii, 277; R.R.P. US $99.00, £65.00; ISBN 9781498527507. Thomas A. Fudge's collection of essays on Jan Hus is neither a biographical nor a conventional historical study. Rather, Fudge seeks to address issues in Hus's life and martyrdom, and in the reception of Hus that are generally not considered. Part I, 'Priest and Reformer in Prague', contains chapters on possible influence on women's spirituality in Bohemia, Hus's sex life (he had no active sex life but did write on sex, for example, accusing Czech priests of living immoral lives, and in a commentary on the Ten Commandments), and apocalyptic dimensions of his thought. Fudge cleverly mines textual evidence (Hus's own writings, those of his predecessors, like John Wycliffe, and contemporaries) to illuminate his subject. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were tumultuous with regard to religious dissent and eschatological expectations, and Hus was no exception; he expected the end of times, and martyrdom made him an inspiration to 'those left to struggle in "the night of Antichrist" in the shadow of eternity' (p. 70). The second part, 'Martyr at Constance', contains four investigations by Fudge. Chapter 4, 'Hus on Trial', considers the ways that different parties at Hus' trial regarded him. His accusers ranged from 'detached' Jan Železný to Štěpán Páleč, who was a friend of Hus but deemed him as 'proud, arrogant, truculent, and unable to absorb any critique without recourse to defamatory threats' (p. 85). This study makes clear that there were nuances between Hus's opponents, and that some were genuinely enemies where others were not. The next chapter takes up the theme of heresy that dominated the trial at Constance, situating Jan Hus in the late medieval context of heresy hunting. The chapter 'Friendship and Faith: The Prisoner and the Knight', which addresses the relationship between Hus and Lord Jan Chlum, is one of the most intriguing and moving in the book. A sizeable correspondence between Hus and Chlum survives (an 'Appendix' deals with it), and Chlum challenged Pope John XXIII on Hus's behalf after he was arrested (a guarantee of safe conduct had been given by the pontiff). The final chapter in this part, '"The Other Sheep": Reflections on Heresy by a Suspected Heretic', analyses Hus's [End Page 198] writings on simony and other divergent theological views, and probes the idea that he believed that separating 'the wheat and the tares' was too dangerous, too difficult, and that there were 'other sheep' (p. 153). Part III, 'Legacy to the World', is comprised of three chapters that consider the afterlife of Hus. The first argues that he was not a significant presence (as inspiration or rallying point) of the later Hussite Crusade, and questions whether that might be in part because he was radically opposed to violence and killing. The second considers Hus in the light of heretical predecessors and subsequent Reformation heroes like Martin Luther. The six-hundredth anniversary of Hus's death at Constance in 1414 was the occasion that sparked many of Fudge's essays, and a half-millennium has passed since Luther's 'Ninety-five Theses or Disputations on the Power of Indulgences' were nailed to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, the start of the Reformation, which changed Christianity irrevocably. Chapter 10, 'The Seven Last Words of Jan Hus', situates the words Hus uttered as he left the prison and walked to the stake, and leaves readers in no doubt of the great faith Hus possessed, and his absolute trust in God. Fudge's final chapter, 'Politicizing the Legend of Jan Hus: Problems and Perspectives', is a historiographical study that reveals fault-lines and fissures in Hus scholarship that persist to the present day. This is a lively and readable study, filled with surprises (unusual subjects of research, original methods to get close to Hus's ideas and context, and new conclusions). It will be of interest to scholars of late medieval...

The Hussites or the Tartars? The Secret of the Depictions of Helmets in the Battle Scenes of St Hedwig’s Altarpiece in the Bernardine Church in Wrocław

St Hedwig’s Altarpiece, or the so-called: „Bernardine Panels”, was created c. 1430-1440. The panels depict the Mongol (Tartar) invasion and the Battle of Legnica in 1241. All warriors are armed in accordance with Western standards of the time when this work of art came into existence. The Tartars can be recognised by their coat of arms and the stylization of helmets and offensive weapons. The heraldic charge of their army is a pointed hat or kettle hat with a long spike. Not only this Tartar sign but also kettle hats used by the Tartars were recognised as „typical Hussite hats”, despite their different form and curved spikes. A supposed aim was to make the viewers associate the Tartar invasion with the Hussite threat. In fact, we do not know any specific hat or iron hat that can be considered as „typical of the Hussites”. Much earlier scenes of the Battle of Legnica from the manuscript Vita beatae Hedwigis from 1353 show the same way of stylization of the Tartar helmets. There is no reason to assume that spiked iron hats from the Bernardine Panels are somehow connected with the Hussites. The spiked hat pictured on the banner is similar to late medieval Jewish hat. It can be recognized as a symbol of religious dissenters or peoples of the East. According to the analysis, none of the forms of kettle hats or hats shown on the Bernardine Panels can be reasonably considered „typically Hussite”, either with regard to arms or history of clothing and textiles.

Isabel Rivers and David L. Wykes (eds), Dissenting Praise: Religious Dissent and the Hymn in England and Wales (Oxford: OUP, 2012), pp. 320. £74.00.

Isabel Rivers and David L. Wykes (eds), Dissenting Praise: Religious Dissent and the Hymn in England and Wales (Oxford: OUP, 2012), pp. 320. £74.00.

Childhood, Youth and Religious Dissent in Post-Reformation England, by Lucy Underwood

Childhood, Youth and Religious Dissent in Post-Reformation England, by Lucy Underwood

Religion, Reformation and Repression in the Reign of Francis I: Documents from the Parlement of Paris, 1515–1547 by James K. Farge

Religion, Reformation and Repression in the Reign of Francis I: Documents from the Parlement of Paris, 1515-1547, by James K. Farge. Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2015. 2 vols., xlvi, 1463 pp. $200.00 Cdn (cloth). The Basilian priest and scholar James Farge is well known to the small but international group of scholars who are interested in the legal, intellectual, institutional, and religious history of France during the first half of the sixteenth century. He deserves a much larger audience and this masterful work should provide that. At the very least, these two volumes should be in the library of every university worthy of the name because they provide valuable keys to understanding the importance of religion in pre- and proto-modern societies, the growth of and resistance to new ideas, and the nature and functioning of bureaucracy and legal systems. The author's doctoral thesis on the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris in the first half of the sixteenth century was presented in 1976. From 1980 onward he has published books and articles on the individual members of that faculty, its collective mentality and methods of action, and its involvement in the religious affairs of France and Europe, as well as on Parisian booksellers and French religious censorship, all during the first half of the sixteenth century. In addition, Fr. Farge spent more than a decade collecting the documents that are reproduced in their original Middle French in these two volumes, as well as an unspecified number of years in analyzing them. Anyone who has used the records of the early modern Parlement of Paris knows how amazing it is that he deciphered and read carefully more than 100,000 pages in over 100 large registers of the records of the Parlement (the size of which are illustrated on the dust covers of the volumes under review here). He then transcribed the incredibly difficult script of 1,183 of the documents he had read and explained them through informative introductions and annotations. The reproduced documents pertain most directly to religion, reformation, and repression, specifically the development of what became known as the Protestant Reformation, attempts to eradicate it and efforts to reform the Catholic Church from within (the First Catholic Reformation). However, they also provide source material for many topics, ranging from the functioning of the French legal system, France's interaction with Emperor Charles V, the development of absolutism, the history of printing and bookselling to popular religion, and collective and individual psychology. The author provides an invaluable forty-six page introduction in which he sets out his intention: not to disparage or to attempt to justify the beliefs and actions of the members of Parlement, but to make available a significant, complete array of documents that have heretofore been almost exclusively unknown (xix). In the introduction Fr. Farge provides a brief but incisive introduction to the scope, membership, and complicated functioning of Parlement, along with ample references for further inquiry. He also comments at some length on the change in the attitude of King Francis I to religious reform, showing that it began earlier than the Placards Affair of 1534 and developed slowly but definitely thereafter. Likewise, he traces the development of Parlement's reaction to religious dissent beginning with what were perceived as Lutheran errors and slowly became an awareness of the dangers of the ideas of John Calvin. Particularly important for historians of early modern Europe are the three appendices (documents related to the Concordat of Bologna, documents related to the royal commission to suppress heresy in Alencon in 1534, and royal and papal documents published or mentioned in the documents). …

David Frendo. Religious Minorities and Religious Dissent in the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires (590-641): Sources for the Historical background

Cette etude publiee dans un volume en l’honneur de Mary Boyce evalue le statut des communautes juives et chretiennes de l’empire byzantin dans le contexte des succes de la conquete arabe apres la mort d’Heraclius (641), et examine comparativement le sort des minorites religieuses au sein de l’empire sassanide sous Wahrām Cobīn (590-591) et ses successeurs. Un nouvel examen du materiau documentaire permet a l’A. de reevaluer les positionnements des Perses en matiere de politique religieuse dan...