Reflections from #EHSConf2021: The Churches & Rites of Passage.

Written by Eloise Davies, conference bursary holder. ‘The Churches and Rites of Passage’ only became more fitting as a theme for a conference that was delayed for a year. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a jolting reminder of just how contingent the ceremonies and rituals with which we mark our lives really are. As we…

Bureaucrats: the Heroes of the Medieval Church

Professor William H. Campbell (University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg) is the Visiting Professor of History and Digital Studies and Director of the Center for the Digital Text. His monograph ‘The Landscape of Pastoral Care in Thirteenth-century England’ (2018) won the EHS Book Award for 2018. Spare a thought for the poor bureaucrat.  We tend to think of…

On moving out of my late modern comfort zone: Protestant Reform on the Isle of Man

Dr Tim Grass has been the Assistant Editor for Studies in Church History since 2007, guiding each year’s volume to completion with an expert hand, as well as being a historian of non-established churches in modern Britain. Recent years, however, have taken his interest on an unexpected scholarly voyage, which he explains as follows…. It…

Our recent conference: The Church in Sickness and in Health

On Saturday 16 January 2021, the Ecclesiastical History Society gathered for its annual Winter Conference as usual in all but one respect: we gathered, as has become the norm for so much, on Zoom. Virtual conferences remain a novelty for many of us, but speaking as a chair of a panel, it all went very…

Martin Luther’s Jewish Assassin: A Forgotten Story

Samuel J. Dubbelman is a PhD candidate in the School of Theology at Boston University. His research on the story of Luther’s Jewish assassin began working as a research assistant for his advisor Christopher B. Brown on Sixteenth Century Biographies of Martin Luther (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2018). Some of the research was presented…

Introductng Mark Chapman

I am Vice-Principal and Academic Dean at Ripon College, Cuddesdon where I have taught Modern Church History and Theology since 1992. I am Professor of the History of Modern Theology in the University of Oxford and teach sociology of religion. I am Canon Theologian of Truro Cathedral and Associate Priest in the Benefice of Garsington,…

Archbishop Manners-Sutton and the Marriage Law

Nicholas Dixon is a member of the executive committee of the Ecclesiastical History Society. He has contributed to the latest three volumes of Studies in Church History. Last year, he was awarded a PhD in History by the University of Cambridge for his thesis on the activity and influence of the Church of England from…

Introducing Ken Jeffrey

Rev Dr Ken Jeffrey is a Senior Lecturer in modern Church History at the University of Aberdeen and coordinator of the Centre for Ministry Studies. It was my privilege to study at Stirling University in the late 80s and early 90s and to meet two men who have had a very significant effect upon my…

Rites of Passage in the Vita Wilfridi: Constructing Wilfrid’s Sanctity

Calum Platts is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, supervised by Professor Simon Keynes and Dr Rory Naismith. Calum Platts is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, supervised by Professor Simon Keynes and Dr Rory…

Two Views of Secularization

Sam Brewitt-Taylor is Darby Fellow in Modern History at Lincoln College, Oxford. His research explores moral and cultural change in 1960s Britain. His first book, Christian Radicalism in the Church of England and the Invention of the British Sixties, 1957-1970, was published by OUP in 2018, and jointly received the Ecclesiastical History Society’s 2019 Book…

The Destruction and Recovery of Monte Cassino Abbey

Kriston R. Rennie is Associate Professor in Medieval History at the University of Queensland. He specializes in the history of church councils, canon law, papal legation, and monastic exemption privileges. Monte Cassino (est. 529) is an iconic abbey – one of the most important religious, political, cultural, and intellectual centres in western Europe. Sitting 519…

The divine travels of John Cassian

Simon Cashmore is a student at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His PhD study investigates the relationship between the descriptions of ecstatic experiences in the writings of John Cassian and the texts’ broader advocacy of self-control and constraint in the pursuit of holiness.   John Cassian had a knack for travelling into trouble that…