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684 results in Church history

Page 1 of 35

The Minority Mind
  • Jews and Protestants in Catholic Ireland, 1912–1968
  • Eugenio Biagini
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    February 2026
    Print publication:
    28 February 2026

Visiting the Oracle at Dodona
  • Contexts of Unknowing in Ancient Greek Religion
  • Edited by Hugh Bowden, Esther Eidinow
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 January 2026

The Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Inquisition
  • Edited by Lu Ann Homza
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 January 2026
  • Founded in 1478 and not permanently abolished until 1834, the Spanish Inquisition has always been a notorious institution in history as an engine of religious and racial persecution. Yet, Spaniards themselves did not create its legal processes or its theoretical mission, which was to reconcile heretics to the Catholic Church. In this volume, leading international scholars assess the origins, legal practices, victims, reach, and failures of Spanish inquisitors across centuries and geographies. Grounded in recent scholarship and archival research, the chapters explore the Inquisition's medieval precedents as well as its turbulent foundation and eradication. The volume examines how inquisitors changed their targets over time, and how literal physical settings could affect their investigations and prosecutions. Contributors also demonstrate how deeply Spanish inquisitors cared about social status and legal privilege, and explore the scandals that could envelop inquisitors and their employees. In doing so, this volume offers a nuanced, contextual understanding of the Spanish Inquisition as a historical phenomenon.

Inscriptions from the Age of Constantine
  • Editions, Translations, and Essays
  • Edited and translated by Raymond Van Dam
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2025
    Print publication:
    30 November 2025
  • The reign of Constantine, Roman emperor from 306 to 337, was one of the most important periods in world history. Although literary texts often represented him as the first Christian emperor, the inscriptions engraved on monuments, statue bases, and milestones offer alternative perspectives. Inscriptions highlight the influence of the other emperors, the prominence of senators at Rome, the civic traditions for praising benefactors in provincial cities, the logistics of the economy, and the abiding importance of traditional cults. This book includes the Greek and Latin texts of over 800 inscriptions from the early fourth century, with translations and critical annotations. An extended Introduction and almost 200 short essays provide context by explaining the issues and problems, correlating the literary texts, and comparing the legends and images of coins. Without the emperor as the constant focus, the Age of Constantine becomes all the more fascinating.

Death and the Afterlife in Syriac Christianity
  • Creating Social Identity and Emotional Communities
  • Maria E. Doerfler
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2025
    Print publication:
    30 November 2025
  • In late antiquity as in the present age, death left its mark on the lives of families, communities, and societies. Syriac funerary hymns provide important insights into the social, emotional, funerary ritual histories of early Christian communities. Maria Doerfler here explores this body of largely ignored literature that has been attributed to Ephrem the Syrian. Different parts of the collection focus on individuals from a variety of social and ecclesiastical backgrounds: women and children, clergy and ascetics, as well as those who fell victim to natural disasters. The hymns provide insights not only into Syriac Christian ideas about death and the afterlife, but also into their existence, beliefs, and practices more broadly. Through engagement with different theoretical lenses, Doerfler uses instances of personal and communal crisis to elucidate historical and philosophical patterns among late antique Christians, addressing, inter alia, their responses to pandemics, understanding of wealth, and forging communal bonds that transcended death.

Debating Papal History, c. 250–c. 1300
  • Responsive Government and the Medieval Papacy
  • D. L. d'Avray
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    31 October 2025
  • The papacy is the oldest surviving government in human history, yet the forms and roles of papal authority remain contested in scholarship. Debating Papal History offers a reinterpretation of papal history from the third to the thirteenth century, through an extensive series of case studies with translations of supporting documents. D.L. d'Avray argues against interpretations of the papacy which focus on a top-down imposition of power, suggesting instead that papal authority was primarily responsive, invoked to resolve uncertainty arising from different ecclesiastical subsystems, and interlinked with the roles of other non-ecclesiastical powers. The study brings together late Antique and Medieval history while also transmitting the findings of non-English scholarship in the field. Debating Papal History aims to inspire fresh thinking and discussion, rendering original documents newly accessible and presenting a vivid corrective to conventional understandings of the papacy.

Local Priests in the Latin West, 900–1050
  • Alice Hicklin, Steffen Patzold, Bastiaan Waagmeester, Charles West
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2025
    Print publication:
    31 August 2025
  • The local priest was the most ubiquitous embodiment of the Church for many people in medieval Christian Europe. By centring this key figure in post-Carolingian Europe, this book provides a fresh perspective on the transition between two focuses of historiographical attention, the Carolingian reform and the Gregorian reform. This pivot away from Church elites such as popes, bishops and abbots, and the institutional structures of dioceses and parishes, sheds light on new lines of continuity and moments of transformation, examining the resources and kinship ties of local priests and assessing their relationship with the bishop at both the collective and the individual level. It draws on a variety of methodologies and forms of evidence, ranging from the detailed study of specific manuscripts to wide-ranging overviews of liturgical and documentary evidence. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Cyril of Alexandria: Against Julian
  • Introduction and Translation
  • Edited and translated by Matthew R. Crawford, Aaron P. Johnson
  • With Edward Jeremiah
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2025
  • In 362/363 the Roman emperor Julian composed a treatise titled Against the Galileans in which he set forth his reasons for abandoning Christianity and returning to devotion to the traditional Greco-Roman deities. Sixty years later Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, composed a response. His resulting treatise Against Julian would dwarf the size of Julian's original work and in fact serves as our primary source for the fragments of it that have survived. Julian's treatise was the most sophisticated critique of Christianity to have been composed in antiquity and Cyril's rebuttal was equally learned. The Christian bishop not only responded directly to Julian's own words but drew upon a wide range of ancient literature, including poetry, history, philosophy, and religious works to undermine the emperor's critiques of the Christian Bible and bolster the intellectual legitimacy of Christian belief and practice. This is the first full translation of the work into English.

The Fragmentary Greek Chronicles after Eusebius
  • Edition, Translation and Commentary
  • Edited and translated by Peter Van Nuffelen, Lieve Van Hoof
  • Assisted by Maria Conterno, Lorenzo Focanti, Andy Hilkens, Panagiotis Manafis, Marianna Mazzola, Stephanie Pambakian
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2025
    Print publication:
    24 July 2025
  • This is the first systematic collection of the remains of the lost Greek chronicles from the period AD 350–650 and provides an edition and translation of and commentary on the fragments. Introducing neglected authors and proposing new interpretations, it reveals the diversity of the genre and revises traditional views about its development, nuancing in particular the role usually attributed to Eusebius of Caesarea. It shows how the writing of chronicles was deeply entangled in controversies about exegesis and liturgy, especially the dates of Christmas and Easter. Drawing from Latin, Armenian, Syriac and Arabic sources besides Greek ones, the book also studies how chronographic material travelled across linguistic and cultural boundaries. In this way, it sheds a profoundly new light on historiography in transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.

The Cambridge Companion to Christian Heresy
  • Edited by Richard Flower
  • Published online:
    17 July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • The concept of heresy has played a major role across Christian history. Traditionally, heretical sects have been regarded as distinct, real-life groups of people who had departed from the stable orthodox traditions of Christianity and who posed a threat that needed to be addressed, sometimes through violent repression. More recently, scholarship has focused on the notion of heresy as discourse, placing particular emphasis on its literary construction and the social and cultural contexts in which it was deployed. This literature has generated significant debates about the nature and historicity of many heresies. The Cambridge Companion to Christian Heresy provides a systematic and up-to-date guide to the study of this topic and its methodological challenges. The opening chapters explore different forms of written material that have played vital roles in historical disputes and in modern scholarly accounts. These are followed by case studies of thirteen notable heresies, ranging from the Gnostics through to the Hussites at the dawn of the Reformation.

Birth, Death, and Domestic Religion in Early Modern London
  • Emily Vine
  • Published online:
    17 July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • Early modern London has long been recognised as a centre of religious diversity, yet the role of the home as the setting of religious practice for all faiths has been largely overlooked. In contrast, this study offers the first examination of domestic religion in London during a period of intense religious change, between the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the Gordon Riots of 1780. Emily Vine considers both Christian and Jewish practices, comparing the experiences of Catholics, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, Huguenots, and conforming and nonconforming Protestants alike. Through its focus on the crowded metropolis as a place where households of different faiths coexisted, this study explores how religious communities operated beyond and in parallel to places of public worship. Vine demonstrates how families of different faiths experienced childbirth and death, arguing that homes became 'permeable' settings of communal religion at critical moments of the life cycle. By focusing on practices beyond the synagogue, meeting house, or church, this book demonstrates the vitality of collective devotion and kinship throughout the long eighteenth century.

Christianity at the Crossroads
  • The Global Church from the Print Revolution to the Digital Era
  • David N. Hempton
  • Published online:
    19 May 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • Combining expansive storytelling with striking analysis of 'networks, nodes, and nuclei', David Hempton's new book explains major developments in global Christianity between two communication revolutions: print and the internet. His novel approach (replete with vivid metaphor – we read of wildflower gardens and fungi, of exploding fireworks sending sparks of possibility in all directions, and of forests with vast interconnected root systems hidden below our vision) allows him to look beyond institutional hierarchies, traverse national and denominational boundaries, and think more deeply about the underlying conditions promoting, or resisting, adaptation and change. It also enables him to explore the crossroads, or junction boxes, where individuals and ideas encountered different traditions and from which something fresh and dynamic emerged. Cogently addressing the rise of empires, transformation of gender relations, and demographic shifts in world Christianity from the West to the Global South, this book is a masterful contribution to contemporary religious history.

The Cambridge History of the Papacy
  • Volume 1, The Two Swords
  • Edited by Joëlle Rollo-Koster, Robert A. Ventresca, Melodie H. Eichbauer, Miles Pattenden
  • Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025
  • Throughout its history, the papacy has engaged with the world. Volume 1 addresses how the papacy became an institution, and how it distinguished itself from other powers, both secular and religious. Aptly titled 'The Two Swords,' it explores the papacy's navigation, negotiation, and re-negotiation, initially of its place and its role amid changing socio-political ideas and practices. Surviving and thriving in such environment naturally had an impact on the power dynamics between the papacy and the secular realm, as well internal dissents and with non-Catholics. The volume explores how changing ideas, beliefs, and practices in the broader world engaged the papacy and lead it to define its own conceptualizations of power. This dynamic has enabled the papacy to shift and be reshaped according to circumstances often well beyond its control or influence.

The Cambridge History of the Papacy
  • Volume 3, Civil Society
  • Edited by Joëlle Rollo-Koster, Robert A. Ventresca, Melodie H. Eichbauer, Miles Pattenden
  • Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025
  • Historically, the papacy has had – and continues to have – significant and sustained influence on society and culture. In the contemporary world, this influence is felt far afield from the traditional geographic and cultural center of papal authority in western Europe, notably in the Global South. Volume 3 frames questions around the papacy's cultural influence, focusing on the influence that successive popes and various vectors of papal authority have had on a broad range of social and cultural developments in European and global societies. The range of topics covered here reflects the vast and expanding scope of papal influence on everything from architecture to the construction and contestation of gender norms to questions of papal fashion. That influence has waxed and waned over time as successive popes have had access to greater resources and have had stronger imperatives to use their powers of patronage and regulation to intervene in society at large.

The Cambridge History of the Papacy
  • Volume 2, The Governance of the Church
  • Edited by Joëlle Rollo-Koster, Robert A. Ventresca, Melodie H. Eichbauer, Miles Pattenden
  • Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025
  • This volume engages with the centrality of the popes within the Catholic Church and the claim of papal authority as it was exercised through the institution's various governing instruments. Addressing the history of the papacy in the longue durée, it highlights developments and the differences between the first and second millennium of the papacy. The chapters bring nuance to older historiographical models of papal supremacy, focusing on how apostolic primacy was contested and re-negotiated, and how the contours of power relationships shifted between center and periphery. The volume draws attention to questions about papal supremacy across time, place, and transnational lines; the function of law in the exercise of papal authority; the governance of the church in the form of the Curia, synods, and regional and ecumenical councils; the governance of the Papal States; the management of finances and church-state relations; and the relationship between papal temporal and spiritual authority.

Roman Identity and Lived Religion
  • Baptismal Art in Late Antiquity
  • Stefanie Lenk
  • Published online:
    08 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 February 2025
  • Christianity is often considered prevalent when it comes to defining the key values of late antique society, whereas 'feeling connected to the Roman past' is commonly regarded as an add-on for cultivated elites. This book demonstrates the significant impact of popular Roman culture on the religious identity of common Christians from the fifth to the seventh century in the Mediterranean world. Baptism is central to the formation of Christian identity. The decoration of baptisteries reveals that traditional Roman culture persisted as an integral component of Christian identity in various communities. In their baptisteries, Christians visually and spatially evoked their links to Roman and, at times, even pagan traditions. A close examination of visual and material sources in North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy shows that baptisteries served roles beyond mere conduits to Christian orthodoxy.

Europe's Eastern Christian Frontier
  • Alice Isabella Sullivan
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    09 January 2025
    Print publication:
    31 May 2024
  • Within the shifting political landscapes of Eastern Europe during the late Middle Ages, the principality of Moldavia (extending over today's northeastern third of Romania and the Republic of Moldova) emerged as an eastern Christian frontier - indeed, a bastion, a 'gate of Christianity' - in the face of the advancing Ottoman armies and Tatar forces. Moldavia's leaders - among them Peter I Mușat, Alexander I, and Stephen III - established political, military, and economic contacts in efforts to strengthen and protect their domain, and, by extension, the rest of Europe. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Moldavia under Stephen III also refashioned Byzantine traditions in a new context, thereby preserving and transforming the legacies of the former Byzantine Empire to the north of the Danube River. This book argues for Moldavia's central role in the political, military, economic, and cultural spheres of Eastern Europe from the second half of the fourteenth century to the turn of the sixteenth century.

Christianity in Hitler's Ideology
  • The Role of Jesus in National Socialism
  • Mikael Nilsson
  • Published online:
    31 August 2024
    Print publication:
    27 June 2024
  • How did Hitler's personal religious beliefs help to shape the development of National Socialism? Through close analysis of primary sources, Mikael Nilsson argues that Hitler's admiration of Jesus was central in both his public and private life, playing a key role throughout his entire political career. Christianity in Hitler's Ideology reexamines the roots of National Socialism, exploring how antisemitic forms of Christian nationalism de-Judaized Jesus and rendered him as an Aryan. In turn, the study analyses how Hitler's religious and ideological teachers such as Völkisch-Christian writers Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Dietrich Eckart weaponised these ideas. Nilsson challenges the established understanding that Hitler only used religion as a tool of propaganda. Instead, it is argued that religious faith and deeply held convictions were at the core of National Socialism, its racism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust.

Conversion and the Contest of Creeds in Early Medieval Christianity
  • Marta Szada
  • Published online:
    06 June 2024
    Print publication:
    13 June 2024
  • As the Roman Empire in the west crumbled over the course of the fifth century, new polities, ruled by 'barbarian' elites, arose in Gaul, Hispania, Italy, and Africa. This political order occurred in tandem with growing fissures within Christianity, as the faithful divided over two doctrines, Nicene and Homoian, that were a legacy of the fourth-century controversy over the nature of the Trinity. In this book, Marta Szada offers a new perspective on early medieval Christianity by exploring how interplays between religious diversity and politics shaped post-Roman Europe. Interrogating the ecclesiastical competition between Nicene and Homoian factions, she provides a nuanced interpretation of religious dissent and the actions of Christians in successor kingdoms as they manifested themselves in politics and social practices. Szada's study reveals the variety of approaches that can be applied to understanding the conflict and coexistence between Nicenes and Homoians, showing how religious divisions shaped early medieval Christian culture.

Saint Simon de Montfort
  • The Miracles, Laments, Prayers and Hymns
  • Edited and translated by David Cox
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    16 May 2024
    Print publication:
    05 March 2024
  • A miracle book, prayers and hymns inspired by Simon de Montfort provide rare evidence of an unusual aspect of popular religion.

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