Bücher der Reihe Studies in Church History

Exploring a variety of themes, this collection examines the Reformation in relation to key aspects of church organization, belief, sacrament, conversion, relationships with other denominations, theological education, church and state, worship, and issues of resilience and decline.

Starting in the early Middle Ages, it moves through the great medieval councils to Vatican I and II. Some of the papers raise issues of the first importance, others fill gaps in our knowledge. All are well worth the attention of historians.

This eighth volume of Studies in Church History contains twenty-six papers read at two recent meetings of the Ecclesiastical History Society.

The theme of foreign missions is comprehensively examined, with papers on both the conversion of Europe and the missions to Asia and Africa. A later development considered if the missionary situation facing the church at home after the Industrial Revolution. The volume concludes with a masterly survey of the literature of missionary history by Bishop Neill.

In this volume, considerable attention is paid to the relationship of movements of protest and dissent to their social, intellectual, cultural and political backgrounds: in this many of the authors reflect the interest in 'religious sociology' which characterises much contemporary Continental work in the field of ecclesiastical history.

Martyrdom, Murder, and Magic: Child Saints and Their Cults in Medieval Europe is a comprehensive history of child saints and their cults from late Antiquity to the end of the fifteenth century. The child martyrs of the persecutions, including the Holy Innocents, were the first child saints recognized by the Church and their cults spread throughout Europe in the early Middle Ages. Alongside these cults, medieval society also venerated child «martyrs», victims of political or domestic violence. The increasing role of the papacy in the canonization process after the tenth century resulted in the veneration of saintly child confessors in the high Middle Ages, but from the end of the twelfth century, most children worshipped as saints were the alleged victims of ritual murder by Jews. This book considers the formation and transformation of child saints and their cults in the context of popular belief and the history of childhood.

The horror story of the Huguenot persecution after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes from the early 1680s to the Edict of Toleration in 1787, needs to be retold by looking at some of the positive benefits the refugees brought to the lands to which they escaped. The brutality of the dragonnades, gallows, and hangings cannot be overlooked; nor the gradual oppression of a considerable proportion of the population of France. Yet, this emigration also included success stories, such as two generals in the Ligonnier family and two admirals in the Laforey family. Some Huguenot pastors banished from the realm became like Duval, high-ranking officials in the Church of England or of Ireland. Among artists, Roubillac, a sculptor, enlivened Westminster Abbey, whilst Marot, an architect and engraver, designed castles and gardens. Some businessmen, like Beron and the Faneuil brothers, thrived in Boston. From Huguenot lineage sprang four presidents of the United States. All of this was a tribute to their faith, to their belief in the doctrine of Predestination, and to the qualities of their character such as reverence, chastity, frugality, sobriety, and industry.

St. Cyril of Alexandria's Metaphysics of the Incarnation seeks to reposition its subject in the precise philosophical context to which he belonged, seeking, as he did, for common ground between ecclesiastical biblical presuppositions and the semantic terms central to the Late Antique philosophical Academy.

'The Church and Empire' is the theme of Studies in Church History, 54. This volume explores the relations of churches and empires around the world, and Christian conceptions of empire, in the ancient, medieval, early modern and modern periods, as well as the role of empire in the global expansion of Christianity.

This volume reflects the long and complex history of the various relationships between churches and education, exploring the ways in which churches have sought to educate, catechise and instruct, from the very earliest communities' teaching of those about to be baptised, to present-day churches' involvement in schools and higher education.

This volume explores the interplay between inspirational movements and institutional structures throughout Christianity's history, tracing how different Christian movements have striven to hold these two aspects of their faith together, finding creative or unexpected ways to institutionalize inspiration or breathe new life into their institutions.