I begin with the central fact about Christian origins: that although the earliest surviving Christian documents are in greek and although Christianity spread from city to city in the graeco-roman world, its Founder lived and preached almost entirely outside the area of graeco-roman civilisation proper; the world in which he was active was not at all that of the polis (the city) but the very different world of the chōra (the countryside). This may require some explanation.

In his recent and excellent book The Coming of Christianity Henry Mayr-Harting has some interesting things to say about lay society and the monastic ideal. Taking as his sources those two fundamental guides to seventh-century history, Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica and the Penitential of Theodore of Tarsus, he shows how the Christian pattern of holiness, as demonstrated especially in the monastic life, could be observed also in the lives of Bede’s heroic kings. ‘The King’ he says, ‘was a kind of Christ, and his life should show forth the virtues of his prototype as they were cultivated in monastic circles. Oswald demonstrated his generosity and charity, . . . Sigbert of the East Saxons demonstrated his meekness, . . . Oswin of Deira demonstrated his humility . . . The Ecclesiastical History presents a gallery of exemplary kings, each of whom had many virtues, but each of whom is brought forward in a narrative of great care and skill to illustrate the particular virtue in which Bede regarded him as pre-eminent.’

The monastic community at Durham was founded by bishop William of St Calais in 1083. Its arrival from Jarrow and Wearmouth was accompanied by an act of aggression, when the secular clerks previously in residence were presented with the ultimatum of either becoming monks or leaving. All but one chose to leave. This action can be seen as setting the tone for the community’s attitude to the world outside the see. In their historical writings, particularly Symeon’s Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae, written between 1104 and 1109, the Durham monks were self-assertive and defensive.

The Life of Saint Waldef by Jocelin of Furness is the only surviving account of a man who would seem to have played a prominent part in the political and ecclesiastical affairs of the north in the middle years of the twelfth century, and who acquired a reputation for conventional sanctity. Apart from Jocelin’s account, written almost fifty years after his subject’s death, there are only a handful of contemporary references to Waldef. If the historian was limited to these Waldef would be a shadowy figure indeed, and the annals of the twelfth-century church would lose a man who appears, both in Jocelin’s narrative and the pages of modern historians, almost as a second-rank Ailred.

Elo dozes sera Folquetz de
Marseilla, us mercadairetz
que a fait un fol sagramen
quan juret que chansos no fetz
et anz dizon que fo per vetz
qe·s perjuret son escien
And the twelfth one will be Fulk of
Marseille, a merchant of importance
Who made an oath so mad
And swore his songs no more to write
This seemed to all to be in true sincerity
When he so consciously forswore.

This short piece of a contemporary troubadour’s song makes a suitable introduction to Fulk of Toulouse who was first a jongleur and troubadour, a citizen and merchant and later in life a monk and bishop. Underlying most of this varied career was a desire on Fulk’s part to retreat from the world in order to achieve the vita apostolica.

‘Church, Society and Politics’ is a theme of great importance, and for most of the history of the church christians have been aware of the distinction between these three areas of human activity. They have differed about their relationship, and in particular about the extent to which political action and social order ought to be controlled directly by the christian ethic, but it has been widely recognised that the conduct of government, for example, was a field which had its own special requirements and expertise, in which God’s personal intervention would be neither expected nor welcomed. ‘Aid from heaven’, went one nineteenth-century comment, ‘aid from heaven you may have by saying your prayers, but no angel will come to name the junior lords of the Treasury’.

Novelty in this paper refers to a new idea or institution. I shall not distinguish between religious, social and political novelties, since medieval churchmen did not do so. The church concerned herself with every aspect of Christian life: any change in men’s way of living affected her either directly or indirectly and generally the former.

I shall begin by quoting four examples of attitudes to novelty. My first two come from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. One will illustrate an attitude to new ideas, the second to a new institution. The distinction is artificial, but convenient. Men normally think up ideas in order to justify or criticise institutions. First listen to an anonymous opponent of Manegold of Lautenbach. Manegold contributed an extremist theory to papal polemic in the gregorian reform movement in order to explain and justify Gregory’s action in declaring the emperor Henry IV deposed and absolving subjects from their oath of allegiance (1085).

The expulsion of aliens from England in 1378 forms one episode in the history of the alien priories, a story which began with the norman conquest and continued into the fifteenth century. The alien priories—they may be defined as the english dependencies of foreign religious houses—had been subjected to interference from the english crown since 1295, when Edward I’s seizure of them on the outbreak of the anglo-french war became the precedent, both of occasion and method, for the future. By 1378 the priories had been in crown hands during four periods of hostilities: 1295 to 1303, 1324 to 1327, 1337 to 1360, and again from 1369.

Some may question the suitability of sermon material as a means of illuminating the thought and background of a specific period. If anything, preachers were even less original—though that is too modern a concept—than other categories of medieval author. Frequently the same material was recast and pressed into service on a variety of occasions; a practice familiar to preachers down the centuries, but one which effectively blurs the dates of initial ‘publication’ and the extent of an individual’s contribution.

Much of this criticism is applicable to the collection of twenty-five sermons which occupies the first part of Bodley MS 649. Yet, when all the customary quotations from classical and medieval authors have been abstracted, along with the time-worn exempla to be found in the works of Jacques de Vitry, Vincent de Beauvais, Jacques de Voragine, and a host of other compilators, acknowledged and unacknowledged, there remains a core of material which is both contemporary and in the manner of its handling, particular. As one reads the sermons there is an increasing awareness of atmosphere, the sense of a distinct historical period and its problems. A wealth of contemporary metaphor and apt proverbial phrase, the interpolation of arresting—albeit to our ears incongruous—passages in english, and the mention of specific events, together contribute to an impression of society which is both vital and convincing.

Like most problems connected with Luther, the question of his attitude to the right of resistance to the emperor is one that has attracted a great deal of attention from german scholars. Sixty years ago, at the height of the first world war, Karl Müller published his pioneering essay, Luthers Äusserungen über das Recht des bewaffneten Widerstands gegen den Kaiser, in which he provided the first detailed analysis of the development of Luther’s views: since then the problem has been extensively debated by a succession of german historians and theologians. Yet it is perhaps typical of the insularity of so much english historical writing on the continental reformation that these debates have largely been ignored on this side of the Channel. Even to-day there is no adequate study of the problem in english.

The problem which I wish to consider is the problem of deciding whether the protestant reformation was a revolution. The problem should be of interest to a number of different scholars. There is no obvious reason, however, why it should interest those who define themselves primarily as ecclesiastical historians. I believe, however, that there is an ecclesiastical dimension to this problem and that earlier work upon it is flawed by a failure to recognize that fact. I see these flaws even in the work which has most stimulated my own recent thinking on the problem. This is the work of a number of modern english historians and above all a book published by that great english contribution to the american community of historians, Lawrence Stone, titled The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529–1642. I found particularly useful Stone’s lengthy analysis of the phenomenon of revolution, borrowing extensively from the recent work of political scientists, sociologists, and other behavioral scientists. And I found persuasive his application of that analysis to the puritan revolution. I found his ultimate conclusion, however, ‘that the crisis in England in the seventeenth century is the first “Great Revolution” in the history of the world,’ to be nonsense. It is nonsense partly because he has ignored the illumination which can be shed on this topic by a consideration of ecclesiastical history. I shall argue that the protestant reformation of the early sixteenth century was also a revolution, anticipating Stone’s by more than a hundred years. And I shall seek to demonstrate this argument with evidence drawn from ecclesiastical history.

Like most other rulers of his time, king Henry IV of France wished to see a single religion practised within his realm. But in the late sixteenth century, as is well known, the state of France was such as to make this objective singularly difficult to achieve. The protestants, of whom Henry had been until his accession the political leader, were a sturdy minority, with a well-developed system of church courts for the definition of doctrine and the administration of discipline. The catholics, who adhered to the centuries-old established church of the kingdom, had no doubt become much more aware of their own religious heritage by the thirty years of civil and ecclesiastical strife they had had to endure. Henry himself, who announced his second conversion to catholicism in the summer of 1593, was never able to shed a certain aura of denominational ambivalence; he himself said, in a famous anecdote, that his own religion was one of the mysteries of Europe. Yet some measure of religious pacification and conciliation was clearly essential for France in the 1590s, both for the health of the country and for the security of the man who was her sovereign ruler. And under the circumstances existing in France, new initiatives and fresh ideas were needed. As an english historian observed, some years ago, for Henry to be accepted by the french as their ‘Most Christian King and eldest son of the Church, a new definition of Church and Christian would be required.’

One of the difficulties in the way of understanding the establishment of episcopacy in Scotland which followed upon the restoration of Charles II, is that of accounting for the apparent willingness on the part of the politically active nobility to co-operate in such a change, when that nobility had previously taken a leading part in abolishing episcopacy and setting up presbytery. Some light can, I believe, be thrown on this problem by considering the relations between the resolutioner ministers and the Scottish nobility in the early months of 1660. In particular I should like to consider the correspondence between Robert Douglas and the earls of Crawford, Lauderdale, Glencairn and Rothes. An examination of the letters reveals, it seems to me, a disposition on the part of the resolutioners to perpetuate ministerial control and direction of the nobility. This attitude may well have prompted an answering disposition on the part of the nobility to take back into their own hands as quickly as possible the conduct of political and religious negotiations in order to reduce ministerial pretensions to the direction of public affairs.

‘All the gold in the world and all the promises of heaven’ could not persuade Sainte-Beuve to carry on his study of jansenism into the eighteenth century. The spirit of Port-Royal was not there, ‘or at least it was only found in traces, dried up like a branch of a river that has turned aside into the sands and lost itself among the rocks...It is found even less in the entirely political Jansenism which was, or which appeared so considerable for a moment in the eighteenth century, and which allowed many to be of the party, without being of the dogma, or indeed, of religion at all’. The story of Jansenism after the death of Louis XIV is indeed a story of the war of the parlements against the crown – remonstrances, exiles. writs, denunciations, pamphlets; of the rising discontent of the lower clergy, demanding economic justice and a share in the government of the church; of the convulsionist movement, a strange spiritual underworld of masochism and miracles. Upon this barbarous scene of political and social strife and crude illiterate spirituality Sainte-Beuve turned his back, and those who have walked with him through the magic world of Port-Royal will understand his bitterness. The journée du guichet when Angélique Arnauld renounced human affections, the night of fire of 23 November when Pascal wept tears of joy, the cold ethereal beauty of the paintings of Philippe de Champaigne, the intellectual adventure of the alliance with cartesianism, the grammar, the logic, the translation of the new testament, the plays of Racine and the Pensées of Pascal – the eighteenth century can offer nothing like this.

The traditional reputations of Hoadly and Law could hardly be more sharply contrasted. Hoadly’s latitudinarianism, his promotion on the bench for political reasons, his neglect of diocesan duties have long made him a favourite example for castigating the hanoverian episcopate. Law has been much more fortunate. Almost universally cited as a happy exception to the lax theology of his age; credited with a religious appeal to men of all parties; and praised for his literary style and powers of argument, Law has enjoyed a generally uncritical press, despite the difficulties of reconciling the early, orthodox controversial and devotional writings with his later and mystical works. Of the confrontation between Hoadly and Law over the Bangorian sermon, the prevailing opinion has been that of dean Hook: ‘Law’s “Letters” have never been answered, – may indeed be regarded as unanswerable’. Some, indeed, have suggested that Hoadly failed to reply directly to Law either through fear or inability to do so. Overton, however, with his customary fairness, allowed that Hoadly ‘was a very able controversialist and not afraid of any antagonist’. Hoadly claimed that others had replied to Law (who had not attempted to answer them), and that all of Law’s most important points had been answered in Hoadly’s Answer to the Representation.

Sierra leone began as an explicitly christian colony, and as an overwhelmingly african one. The 1100 immigrants of african descent who effectively took over Granville Sharp’s ‘Province of Freedom’ were as much children of the evangelical revival as the Clapham philanthropists who planned and financed the settlement. They brought other transatlantic imports to Africa besides evangelical religion; a material culture based on that of the plantation states where most of them had once lived (so they built their houses in the ‘colonial’ style, wore european clothes and spoke english) and radical political reflexes which came to be hardened and sharpened by the settled sense of grievance, first in Nova Scotia and then in Sierra Leone.

Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion.

Historians no doubt have problems enough without setting before themselves that ‘memento mori’ from Eliot, who, though he was describing an old man seeking to understand his own past, leaves nevertheless an echo in the mind disturbing to those who practise the historian’s craft. We assume a confidence which in our heart of hearts we do not always, or should not always, possess. Eliot’s words not only demonstrate the difficulty of one man understanding his own past, but also the historian’s difficulty in understanding those whom they select for questioning from among the vast multitudes of the silent dead, whose deeds, artifacts, ideas, passions, hopes and memories have died with them. We dig into the past, obtain data from archives, brush off the objects found, collect statistics, annotate, arrange, describe, establish a chronology – but do we effectively understand the dead, especially since we are affected by our own beliefs, customs and ideologies? We are, of course, all aware of this: we silently scorn the lecturer who raises these diffident hesitations. For we know our duty: we examine all that we can, we describe our findings, we annotate them, we draw conclusions, or leave our demonstrations to speak for themselves. There are reasons, as I shall hope to show, that these considerations – Eliot’s ominous words and our determination not to be disquieted by them – bear upon the subject of this paper, the almost forgotten Alessandro Gavazzi.