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Volume 66 - Issue 1 - March 1997
Page/Article number Title Type Online publication date
Preaching at Epiphany: Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom on Baptism and the Church
Everett Ferguson
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009, pp. 1-17
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From as early as 200 C.E., the church made the spring paschal celebration its primary occasion for baptizing new converts. A week of intense preparation climaxed for the candidates in their reception of baptism early on Easter Sunday. During the fourth century, the preliminary preparation of candidates during Lent included attendance at lectures that gave doctrinal instruction. The catechumens who were ready to receive baptism at the coming Pasch turned in their names to be enrolled for the period of teaching. This registration for the final period of catechetical instruction occurred near the beginning of the year, not long after the feast of Epiphany on 6 January—celebrated in the Eastern church since the fourth century as the feast of the baptism of Christ. The proximity of these two events—a celebration of Christ's baptism and the enrolling of candidates for baptism at the next Pasch—made the time around Epiphany a propitious time for preaching sermons on baptism. Since many catechumens in the fourth century delayed their baptism until old age, many of these sermons took the form of exhortations to baptism in order to encourage the hearers not to postpone baptism but to enroll for the immediate season.
The Earliest Queen-Making Rites
Julie Ann Smith
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009, pp. 18-35
While the study of early medieval kingship and king-making rites has generated an extensive literature, scholarship on contemporary queenship has concentrated on themes of authority and power in religious and political contexts, and queen-making rites have received only passing mention. Beginning in the late ninth and early tenth centuries it became customary in England and Francia for a queen to be ritually inaugurated to her position. The rite of consecration endowed her with a new persona, entailing the attributes and virtues of queenship. Of course, sources reveal that kings' wives had been considered queens and significant members of royal households from at least the sixth century. The nature of queenship changed gradually over the period. Initially marriage to a king made a queen, and this position appears to have been quite satisfactory until the late eighth century, when Bertrada was consecrated queen in 751 or 754. Regular consecrations of queens, which included unction, began in the mid- to late eighth century.
Puritan Church Architecture and Worship in a Dutch Context
Keith L. Sprunger
English Puritans have only a small reputation for aesthetic contributions to architecture. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they worshiped God without making a show of buildings or beautiful ceremonies; consequently, there are few grand Puritan architectural monuments. Nonseparating Puritans, blending into the larger church, put their emphasis on the pure preaching and practice of biblical religion, not on outward appearances. And the Separatists, the strictest of the Puritans, gathered in disguised house-churches. Because of this artistic silence it is easy to downplay the importance of architectural concerns in the early history of Puritanism. Whenever historians mention "Puritan" architecture or "nonconformist" architecture, they are likely to describe it as simple, plain, functional, humble, austere, and practical. While true as far as it goes, this description is not the whole story. An examination of Puritan discussions about architecture in early seventeenth-century Netherlands reveals the interplay of theological and practical factors in creating the "proper" church architecture.
Of Catechisms and Sermons: Church-State Relations in France, 1890–1905
Joan L. Coffey
The years from 1890 to 1905 were tumultuous ones for church-state relations in France. The Third Republic (1870–1940) sought a more secular state while remaining ever mindful that the majority of French were at least nominally Roman Catholic. Anticlericalism became the unifying theme of an otherwise factious government, and a formal separation of church and state took place in 1905. The church in France, for its part, dreamed of reviving its former power and influence. Some in the church looked back and saw the restoration of the monarchy as the way to realize the dream; others worked to establish a presence in the modern world of factories and department stores. All were concerned with the decline in the number of communicants and the growth of socialism. Feeling threatened and increasingly forced into a defensive stance, the church determined to hold ground and, periodically, even to go on the offensive.
The Impact of Early New England Missionaries on Women's Roles in Zulu Culture
Amanda Porterfield
As missionaries from New England made initial forays into Zululand and Natal in the 1830s, the Zulu people were in a state of considerable stress. Dingan had come to power in 1828 after participating in the assassination of his brother Shaka, the notorious warrior king whose conquests after 1816 brought people from dozens of clans and chieftanships into a Zulu state. Ecological crises caused by drought and competition for scarce resources contributed to Shaka's ability to exert unprecedented authority, as did the predatory incursions of European traders seeking ivory, skins, and slaves in various parts of southeast Africa. Expanding on a tradition of religious initiation and military ranking known as ambutho, Shaka crated a system of loyalty to the state that built on but also compromised the loyalties to particular clans commanded by lesser chiefs.
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. By Bart D. Ehrman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. xiii + 314 pp. $45.00.
Louis William Countryman
The Spirit of God: The Exegesis of 1 and 2 Corinthians in the Pneumatomachian Controversy of the Fourth Century. By Michael A. G. Haykin. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 27. Leiden, The Netherlands: F. J. Brill, 1994. xxiv + 253 pp.
David L. Balás
'Virgins of God': The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity. By Elm Susanna. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. xvii + 444 pp. $70.00 cloth; $21.00 paper.
Susan Ashbrook Harvey
Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom—Ascetic, Preacher Bishop. By J. N. D. Kelly. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995. x + 310 pp. $47.50.
Margaret M. Mitchell
The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community. By Graham Gould. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. viii + 202 pp. $42.50.
Francine Cardman
Church and State in Early Christianity. By Hugo RahnerS.J. Translated by Leo Donald Davis S.J. San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 1992. xviii + 324 pp.
Philip F. Gallagher
The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Socio-historical Approach to Religious Transformation. By James C. Russell. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Donald Sullivan
Histoire du Christianisme, des origines à nos jours, vol. 4, Évêques, moines et empereurs (610–1054). Edited by J.-M. Mayeur, et al. Paris: Desclée, 1993. 1049 pp.
Robert T. Coolidge
Bernard von Clairvaux: Rezeption und Wirkung im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit. Edited by Kaspar Elm. Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien 6. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1994. 436 pp.
Dennis E. Tamburello
The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098–1180. By Martha G. Newman. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996. 406 pp.
Bede K. Lackner
Huguccio: The Life, Works and Thought of a Twelfth-Century Jurist. By Wolfgang P. Müller. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law 3. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1994. ix + 220 pp.
Kathleen G. Cushing
The Early Medieval Bible: Its Production, Decoration and Use. Edited by Richard Gameson. Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xiv + 242 pp. $64.95.
Notitia experimentalis Dei—Erfahrungserkenntis Gottes: Studien zu Hugo de Balmas Text "Viae Sion lugent" und deutsche Übersetzung. By Harald Walach. Analecta Cartusiana 98:1. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1994. iv + 4O6 pp. DM 75.
Thomas Renna
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009, pp. 99-100
Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century: Private Grief and Public Salvation. By Michael E. Goodich. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. xi + 220 pp. $14.95.
John Coakley
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009, pp. 100-101
Modern Questions About Medieval Sermons: Essays on Marriage, Death, History, and Sexuality. By Nicole Bériou and David L. D'Avray. Spoleto, Italy: Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 1994. xi + 408 pp.
Daniel Bornstein
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