The Christian church in late Roman Britain is usually seen as a largely urban phenomenon, but there is increasing archaeological evidence of a late Roman Christian ‘hot spot’ along Hadrian’s Wall, which seems to date from the time of the Theodosian reorganization of the northern defences of the British provinces, following the near collapse of Roman rule in 367. We also have evidence for the Christianization of the lands immediately north of the Wall from the late fourth century onwards. This article argues that this Christianization seems to be part of a deliberate policy by the imperial government to draw the British tribes north of Hadrian’s Wall more securely into the oikumene (the whole civilized Roman world, now further united by Christianity) as a means of securing the frontier. This article also examines how, as a by-product of this policy, the logistics chain running south from the Wall into what is now north-west England may then have served as a conduit for Christianity from the border region into Britannia proper, as well as exploring its later impact on the development of Christian Northumbria.

In 742, unit commanders in the Frankish army were granted priests to hear their soldiers’ confessions. These clerics prescribed penance according to ‘tariff books’ which had been introduced from Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England. This repeatable practice supposedly maintained military morale by assuring soldiers of salvation. However, killing in battle had never been deemed a damnable sin. Soldiers, moreover, could atone without confessing to a priest. This article proposes that the primary aim was not to maintain morale but to purify the army and thereby secure divine providence in war.

An East Anglian king who died defending his people against Viking conquerors, St Edmund was known to provide protection to his people after his death. As well as being a martyr, Edmund was also a warrior. This article investigates the development of the military side of Edmund’s cult. It argues that the battle of Fornham on 17 October 1173, the first time Edmund’s banner was used in battle, is an important chapter in this development, which brought greater recognition to Edmund’s warrior status. His warrior nature is further investigated through a discussion of his miracles and of his adoption by English royalty in their conquest of the British Isles.

This article examines the investiture of the crusader cross at the Council of Clermont in 1095. It argues that the presentation of this moment in monastic chronicles of the First Crusade represents a literary policy of social identity-making based upon the monastic experience. Monks were invested at their profession with their habit, which represented both a literal and a metaphorical cross which tied them to their monastic identity. The article goes on to explore the references to military arms in these monastic accounts of the crusader cross, and draws comparisons to contemporary depictions of depositions of arms as a cornerstone of knightly identity. It concludes that the investiture of the cross in 1095 should be considered within broader conversations about early ‘knighting’ practices, and that, despite the monastic influences on their presentation of crusaders, they were depicted deliberately as a distinct social group.

The armed Mongols in the frescoes of Padua’s Oratory of San Giorgio by Altichiero remain misunderstood despite several scholarly studies. Beginning with the investigation of contemporary Chinese visual materials, a Persian manuscript, and western and non-western knights’ armour, this article analyses how Altichiero represented Mongolian armour and physiognomy. Their appearance in a Franciscan church supported by a family of knights suggests potential religious and political meanings. This article also explores how their political propaganda was visualized in this chapel by considering the military and political context of fourteenth-century Padua.

This article uses the Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick, named after its founder, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, as a case study to explore the complex relationship between the church and the military in Elizabethan England. It argues that Leicester conceived of his almshouse as a godly military political project. The earl stated that he wished for ex-soldiers to be among the groups of the poor prioritized for admission. The article situates Leicester’s hospital, with its puritan agenda and military identity, at the centre of two of the biggest sources of controversy within Elizabethan politics and society. It demonstrates that the Lord Leycester Hospital embodied a contested relationship between the church and the military by examining the context surrounding its foundation and the wider background of the Dudley ascendancy in Warwickshire; the hospital’s internal governance; and finally, the tenure of Thomas Cartwright, the prominent puritan theologian, who served as the master.

This article focuses on the Jesuits of the Missio castrensis (1587–1659), the military mission to the army of Flanders, the Spanish Catholic army that criss-crossed Europe between Flanders and Italy during the Eighty Years’ War and the Thirty Years’ War. A comparative analysis of unpublished sources allows us to trace the radical change in attitude of these men. These sources testify to a fundamental modification in the Jesuits’ pastoral and human priorities. If, at the beginning, the discourses and practices referred to the ‘holy war’ against the heretics, as the war continued, new attention was drawn to all bodies suffering from the war. This profound shift echoed a new attention to the poor, the sick and their needs. In the first part of the article, this alteration in the Jesuits’ priorities is contextualized by comparing it with the case of the Ministers of the Sick, founded in Rome in 1586 by Camillo de Lellis.

Historians have argued over how much influence the army had on local government during the 1640s and 1650s. Discussion of the military impact on parish religion has, however, been more limited, despite many remembered accounts, from both loyalists and nonconformists, of its negative consequences. Such memories are examined here, along with contemporary legal records relating to the involvement of military Justices of the Peace and ordinary soldiers in dealing with religious matters. A conclusion is reached that while the army later became a scapegoat for all that was deemed wrong with the 1640s and 1650s, its religious agency was more limited than later accounts suggested. It was not, however, insignificant, as the military exercised influence through selective representation and subtle networks of power, intervening decisively at particular times over issues of religion that particularly concerned them.

In 1715–16, Scotland played host to 6,000 Dutch and Swiss soldiers dispatched to defeat the Jacobites. These forces have been little studied in a historiography more concerned with the Jacobites than with their opponents, of whom few were stauncher than the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. This article aims to deepen our understanding of Scottish Hanoverianism by investigating a novel topic: confessional relations between Scots and the Dutch and Swiss forces. What is revealed is that, despite the presence of Roman Catholic soldiers amongst these forces, not only were the foreign forces welcomed as co-religionists amid confessional controversy with England, but they also played a role in local Presbyterian struggles against Episcopalians. Ultimately, the reception of these forces highlights the interplay between a church and a foreign, largely co-religionist military; reveals the importance of the church in supporting a foreign garrison; and testifies to an enduring supranational confessional identity among Scottish Presbyterians.

Following the 1688–90 Revolution, the Presbyterian Kirk sought to assert its authority over the British army in Scotland in matters of worship and discipline. However, the multi-confessional composition of the troops, as well as the legal ambiguities of military and ecclesiastical law, complicated these efforts. In particular, the use of Anglican liturgy for English soldiers in Scotland was in line with military laws but contradicted ecclesiastical law. The ensuing jurisdictional disputes both contributed to, and were exacerbated by, the Toleration Act (1712), which weakened the Kirk’s control over the military population. Despite these setbacks, the Kirk adapted by working together with military authorities to provide worship for soldiers, particularly in Highland garrisons, albeit in a more collaborative and less authoritative role. Ultimately, the presence of a multi-confessional army in Scotland forced the Kirk to redraw a narrower boundary around its national church status within the bi-confessional British state.

During the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), the Russian ‘Expeditionary Army’ fought against Frederick the Great in Prussia. As well as regimental priests, an Orthodox ‘chief priest’ Ioann Bogaevsky from Ukraine was appointed, who was tasked with organizing the spiritual care of the army. Alongside him, Pastor Christian Täge, whose memoirs survive, was commissioned as Protestant chaplain. Based on their personal testimonies and unpublished archival materials, this article aims to reconstruct the organization of the military clergy in the Russian Imperial Army of the eighteenth century, taking into account its multi-ethnic and multi-confessional character. With this army including Protestants, Roman Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, and even pagans in addition to Orthodox Christians, this article also considers what religious coexistence looked like in practice, shedding light on forms of military religiosity. Contrary to perceptions of the irreligiousness of the military, not only is their active participation in church sacraments noted, but also the persistent tension between religious and rational attitudes to warfare, which were clearly evident in conflicts about adherence to traditional practices of piety.

The Punjab school, a network of soldier-administrators involved in the conquest and governance of the Punjab between the mid-1840s and mid-1860s, had a profound influence on British Christian attitudes towards the empire in India. The network included some sixty army officers and civilian administrators, who were characterized by military valour, a strict sense of duty, emphasis on moral character, paternalist attitudes, philanthropic activism, imperialist beliefs, and an evangelical Christian faith. They exercised considerable personal authority under what was called the ‘non-regulation’ system. Members of the network supported the expansion of Christian missions in the Punjab, viewing the empire as having a providential purpose for the spread of Christianity.

General Gordon’s death in Khartoum in January 1885 aroused in Britain a profound sense of loss and mourning. Celebrated by many as a heroic Christian soldier, martyr and saint, his memory rapidly gave rise to a nationwide cult. This article re-examines the last year in the life and immediate legacy of a man described as ‘the nearest approach to that one man, Christ Jesus, of any man that ever lived’. It argues that Gordon’s death, portrayed through the imagery of the Passion of Christ, was imbued by many commentators in the churches and the army with a messianic significance. Gordon, in this portrayal, was not simply a heroic exemplar, but an atonement for the sins of his country and a catalyst for Britain’s spiritual re-awakening. As one religious journal put it: ‘Gordon, so powerless to work out his will in life, had conquered in death’.

This article examines the role of the Church of England in the Royal Navy before and during the First World War. It highlights the importance and ultimate fragility of their historic alliance, its reputational consequences, and their significance for our wider understanding of the impact of the war on England’s established church.

This article explores the wartime ministry of Maurice Peel (1873–1917), grandson of Sir Robert Peel, prime minister 1834–5 and 1841–6, and son of Arthur Peel, Speaker of the House of Commons 1884–95. Educated at Winchester and Oxford, Peel spent time at Oxford House, East London, followed by a long curacy at St Simon Zelotes in Bethnal Green. Appointed to St Paul’s Beckenham in 1909, he volunteered in 1914 as an army chaplain, writing a series of letters to his parishioners which form the substance of this article. He gained an MC in early 1915 and, after being wounded in battle, became vicar of St Editha’s Church, Tamworth. Returning to the front in 1917, he was awarded a bar to his MC. He died in battle while rescuing a wounded man. He was singled out by Siegfried Sassoon as a ‘byword for bravery’ and as the only chaplain who had been able ‘to come near to’ the ordinary soldier.

Humans can forget that they inhabit what the philosopher Mary Midgley called ‘mixed communities’. Nonetheless, at times of crisis and during periods of shared suffering, such as wars, our community with non-human animals becomes difficult to ignore. At such times, people have pressed churches – institutions that have traditionally emphasized the distance between humans and non-humans – to give fuller recognition in prayer and worship to human-animal relationships. This article examines this phenomenon through a study of Britain in the First World War. During this conflict and afterwards, the religious public asked the Christian churches to recognize the service of military animals through prayers, memorials and ceremonies. The article argues that, and explains why, Britain’s national churches struggled to accommodate requests to recognize the wartime mixed community. By exploring the churches’ awkward relationship with military animals, the article explores the reasons why prayers and rituals involving animals and animal themes have occurred at the margins of institutional religion.

During 1930, the British government ordered that special intercessory prayers appointed by leaders of the English Protestant churches were not to be said by naval, army and air force chaplains. This order provoked widespread ecclesiastical and political protests. Ironically, since the intercessions were concerned with religious persecution in Soviet Russia, the government order infringed the principle of freedom of worship. This article considers the reasons for the government ban, and why the controversy did not provoke a crisis in relations between the churches, the military authorities and the state. It is particularly concerned with the attitudes of free church leaders, those most sensitive towards the principle of religious liberty, and especially with their apparently paradoxical acceptance of compulsory attendance at religious services in the armed forces. It connects this episode with a general change in free church attitudes towards the state, the Church of England and national institutions.

During World War II, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (BrazEF) reinstated religious assistance after decades of military secularization. This article examines the role of these chaplains in providing emotional and spiritual support to soldiers on the Italian front. Drawing on archival records, chaplain reports and personal testimonies, it explores how faith influenced troop morale and psychological resilience. While inspired by global chaplaincy models, Brazil’s case was distinctive: religion, long absent from military life, became central once again. Despite their rushed training and the logistical challenges they experienced, chaplains became indispensable figures. Their experiences not only reshaped the BrazEF’s wartime dynamics, but also influenced the permanent re-establishment of military religious assistance in 1946.

The British painter Stanley Warren (1917–92) was a prisoner of war in Changi Camp between 1942 and 1945. While in captivity, he was commissioned to paint murals for the Anglican Chapel of St Luke, which was situated in the dysentery wing in Roberts Barracks. This article investigates how the murals came to be and places them in their wider artistic and religious contexts. I argue that these artworks participated in anchoring the POWs in their British Christian identity, especially in the Far East, and were even a sign of resistance. A commission from a padre, they were designed to care for the souls of the captives, keeping their dignity and humanity alive in the midst of extreme suffering. While the murals present similarities in the treatment of their subjects with contemporary artworks in Britain, they also hold a redemptive message whose value carries on to this day.