Abstract: The rapid growth of national revival movements in the Baltic republics over the last three years has not been just a political phenomenon. The assertion of their national identity and rights by the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians, their demands for reform and democratisation, have been accompanied by a noticeable revival of interest in religion and increased commitment to religious causes. The involvement of religious activists in national political movements and the founding of some specifically Christian parties are merely part of this change in the churches' position. As recently as July-August 1987, I Dean Modris Plate and a number of other influential clergymen in the Latvian Lutheran Church were dismissed from their positions by Archbishop Mesters because they had founded a 'Rebirth and Renewal' movement to 'defend openly the right of Latvians to lead a Christian life;' they had called for alternatives to military service, legalisation of religious instruction for children, legal status for the church and authorisation of religious activities in hospitals and old people's homes. The archbishop, yielding to pressure from the Council for Religious Affairs, had stated 'there are authorities we caI ot ignore'. In November 1986, the Lithanian CRA official P. Anilionis had refused to allow the Lithuanian Catholic bishops to visit Rome for the 600th anniversary of Christianity in Lithuania, because of their support for 'extremist priests' and 'illegal literature'. He rejected their 'impossible demands' for the return of confiscated -churches such as Vilnius Cathedral and St Casimir's church (a well known museum of atheism) and told them to discipline clergymen who wrote petitions to the CRA asking for the release of imprisoned priests. The changes since then have been substantial. The CRA officials in both Latvia and Lithuania have been replaced. In 1988 Lithuanian priests imprisoned for their participation in the Catholic Committee

Abstract: No sane man would for one moment think of making a graduate from West Point a field general, or one from Annapolis an admiral, or one from any university or college chief of a great newspaper, magazine, or business house. A priest or preacher who has just taken orders is not immediately made a bishop, archbishop, or cardinal. In every walk of life, "men must tarry at Jericho till their beards are grown." Champ Clark, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

Abstract: List of illustrations Preface List of abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. The kingdoms of the Hwicce and the Magonsaetan 3. Paganism and Christianity 4. Early influences on the church 5. Varieties of monasticism 6. The eighth-century church 7. Biblical study 8. Letter-writing 9. The unseen world: the monk of Wenlock's vision 10. Prayer and magic 11. Milred, Cuthbert and Anglo-Latin poetry 12. The church and the landscape 13. Conclusion Bibliography Index.

Abstract: Speaking about Sobukwe, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said: "I am greatly privileged to have known him and to have fallen under his spell His long imprisonment, restriction, and early death were a major tragedy for our land and for the world" "Pogrund's book is welcome not just because it bears witness to the real complexity of black liberation politics but as a monument to a fine and remarkable man who gave voice to the voiceless"--New Statesman & Society "This is a moving story well told It is based on unique knowledge and documents, written with all the fluency, commitment and authority of the reporter who himself enraged the regime by exposing conditions in South African prisons"--The Guardian, London Thirty years ago, Robert Sobukwe led a mass defiance of the pass laws in South Africa He persuaded blacks to present themselves at police stations and demand arrest, but the nonviolent protest turned to tragedy when the police opened fire, killing sixty-nine It was March 21, 1960, at Sharpeville, Sobukwe's last day of liberty He died nearly eighteen years later of lung cancer Leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress, Sobukwe was both a colleague and rival of figures better known today: Tutu, Mandela, and Buthelezi Because the Pan-Africanist idea was not in the end supported by the anti-Apartheid leadership, Sobukwe and his contributions have been largely forgotten It is more than appropriate that his story be told now Understanding his life is essential to a full understanding of the tensions among contemporary black leaders in South Africa

Abstract: Proud, greedy, corrupt and driven by overwhelming personal ambition. Such is the traditional image of Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of York, Bishop of Winchester, Abbot of St. Albans, Bishop if Tournai and Papal Legate. It is an image which Peter Gwyn examines, challenges and decisively overturns in this remarkable book. From exceedingly humble beginnings Wolsey rose to a pinnacle of power unsurpassed by any other British commoner. Peter Gwyn explores every aspect of the Cardinal's career - not least his relationship with Henry VIII - and sets it firmly in a vividly recreated Tudor world. The Wolsey who emerges is a man of prodigious energy and ability, a tireless dispenser of justice, an enlightened reformer wholly dedicated to his king and country - a man who has been consistently misrepresented and maligned for four-and-a-half centuries.

Abstract: Lord Ramsey of Canterbury, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1961 to 1974, died on 23 April 1988. During the 1960s and 1970s he was approached several times by authors and publishers with the suggestion that his life should be written. On this, however, he had strong views: that it was wrong to publish anyone's biography while he or she lived. He therefore courteously rejected all applications. But in 1980 he invited the present author to be his biographer when the time came. He handed over to the author the materials he possessed, and obtained for him free access to the Lambeth Palace archives. The resulting biography is a comprehensive account of Ramsey's life and works. He was the Archbishop in an unsettled age of new liberty in sexual mores; of the impact of television on politics and opinion and morality; of the arguments over the restatement of religious truth; of the post-colonial moods in Africa. At home he campaigned against racism in Britain and determined to secure justice and equality for immigrants. Abroad he was a stern opponent of apartheid, whether in South Africa or in Rhodesia. In Parliament he helped to abolish capital punishment and to secure better treatment for homosexuals. In Christendom at large he was leader in a new spirit of brotherhood among the churches, and benefited from the new ecumenical spirit in the Roman Catholic Church and in the orthodox churches of eastern Europe. He comes out of this book as a man of deep spirituality and rock-like conviction, who in an age of shaken opinion aspired to be an anchor of faith and hope among a pessimistic generation.

Abstract: This book brings together accounts of martyrdoms from many periods of the church, many cultures and many confessions. After an extended introductory section on the nature of martyrdom, the diversity of its significance and yet the unity of the sacrificial witness which it represents, there are three main parts. The first deals with antiquity up to the edict of Milan in 313, which put an end to persecutions, and is concerned with figures like Polycarp, the martyrs of Lyons, Perpetua and Felicitas, Pionius, Cyprian and Crispina. The second covers the period from the fifteenth century to the end of the nineteenth and portrays events as disparate as missions in distant lands and struggles against the abuse of power, whether religious or secular. Here we move from Joan of Arc, Jan Hus and Thomas More through Damian the Blind in Japan and Paul Ni in Korea to the martyrs of Madagascar and Uganda. The third, the shortest but by no means the least harrowing, covers this century, with Archbishop Vladimir, Maximilien Kolbe, Marie Skobtsova, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Janani Luwum, Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet, Oscar Romero and Jerzy Popieluszko.

Abstract: The most important contribution made by Archbishop James Ussher to the ecclesiastical developments of the Interregnum and Restoration periods was his short tract The Reduction of Episcopacy Unto the Form of Synodical Government. Printed only after his death in 1656, its combination of ministerial synods with episcopal rule was seen as a basis for presbyterian-episcopal reconciliation over the next three decades. The tract was printed in five editions during the later 1650s, and came out in two more editions in 1679, when the Popish Plot and the calling of a new Parliament revived hopes that dissenters could be comprehended within the Church of England. It was printed once more in 1689, in Edinburgh, when "comprehension" was again being hotly debated in both England and Scotland.' By that time Ussher's name had come to symbolize such "limited" or "primitive" episcopacy, and indeed it has continued to do so 2 among twentieth-century historians. The fame of the Reduction rests upon its content and authorship. Although the tract was only one of many such compromises offered during the Interregnum, it was the most radical to come from the royalist and Anglican side during that period. Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, Ussher was admired and respected by radical puritans and major Laudian spokesmen such as Henry Hammond and Bishop John Bramhall. The power of Ussher's name in this context was shown in 1685, when the nonconformist divine and politician Richard Baxter was on trial for allegedly making a printed attack against the king and the bishops. When Baxter's attorney, Sir Henry Pollexfen, sought to introduce as evidence one of Baxter's own printed compromises between episcopal and presbyterian government, Lord Chief Justice George Jeffreys replied, "I will see none of his books; it is for primitive Episcopacy, I will warrant you a bishop in every parish." In replying "Nay, my lord, it is the same with Archbishop Usher's," Pollexfen indicated both the radical nature of the Reduc-

Abstract: Any historian who sets out to write a book faces two dangers. The one might be called the “one more document syndrome,” the obsession with research that is so exhaustive that nothing further can be found. The other is the prospect of publishing a work, only to have further documentation come to light that was lacking in his original research or alters his conclusions. Perhaps the latter is the lesser danger because it at least permits part of the historical record to reach the public. It may be that I am prejudiced in that regard, having suffered this very experience. In a recent biography of Pedro Moya de Contreras, the first inquisitor of New Spain, third archbishop of Mexico, and interim viceroy, I wrote of his last years in Spain “one can only hope that future research and perhaps fortuitous discoveries will complete that part of his life's story.” The fortuitous discoveries were made within a few months after publication, happily by the author himself. They consist for the most part of a collection of documents in the library of the Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan in Madrid, especially the papers of Mateo Vazquez de Leca (1543-1591), Philip II's private secretary and an indefatigable hoarder of valuable documents.

Abstract: Abstract So wrote Archbishop Bancroft in the course of a lengthy letter of July 1 6 1O to the episcopate of the southern province. ‘We may’, he added, ‘noe longer to our utter discreditt leave theise abuses unreformed.‘1 This was the third call in nine years for tighter episcopal control over diocesan officials.2 No one doubted that delegation was the hallmark of any diocesan administration, in view of the extensive size of many English dioceses and the very varied roles that the episcopate were expected to fulfil, including commissioners of the peace, preachers, lords of Parliament and provincial agents of the Crown. The procedures of the diocesan courts had evolved to function smoothly in the absence of the bishop, for whom the canons of 1604 reserved only the formal act of ejecting a minister from his benefice.

Abstract: Abstract As every soldier carries a Field Marshal’s baton in his knapsack, so ambitious professionals of every kind look to achieving some ultimate pinnacle which demonstably stamps them with the approbation of their peers. In politics it is to be Prime Minister; in the Church, Archbishop of Canterbury; in the judiciary, Lord Chancellor; and so on. In British science, it is to be President of the Royal Society. It was to this high office that Robinson was elected in 1945; but to understand how this came about, and its significance, something must be said about the nature of the Society and its organization.

Abstract: An engrossing look at one of this century's most controversial clergymen--a man who played a prophetic and inspiring role in the violent vortex of Central America--Romero: A Life focuses on the final years of this outspoken Catholic archbishop.

Abstract: Abstract The term “Anglican Reformation” applies best to those two periods in the mid-sixteenth century which cover the six years of King Edward VI (1547-1553) and the first five years of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1563). They are the periods when Archbishop Cranmer, Parliament, and Convocation created, and Elizabeth, Parliament, and Convocation selected, those important Protestant reforms, especially in worship and belief, which form the historic base of the Anglican Church essentially as we know it today. In the decade before Edward’s six years, Henry VIII had reformed the Church minimally, and in the four decades after Elizabeth’s first five years, the queen resisted practically all suggestions for change.

Abstract: Abstract Each bishop listened to the balanced cadences of this charge as the archbishop handed him a Bible in the concluding moments of his consecration to the episcopal office.1 His first and most important opportunity to pursue this pastoral ideal was on visitation. A bishop was canonically required to visit his diocese, preferably in person, within a year of his appointment to a see, and to revisit it at regular, usually triennial, intervals. The episcopal visitation contained significant judicial, administrative and pastoral features as the bishop toured his diocese, ‘uprooting vice and planting virtue’*, in the words of Archbishop Abbot,2 and familiarizing himself with its population and temper. It was an occasion, too, for the diocese to judge whether a bishop was more intent on fleecing or feeding his flock.

Abstract: Abstract In the preface to the King’s Works in 1616, Bishop Mountagu claimed that James I had ‘so tempered’ Puritan nonconformity at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 ‘as the harmony hath bene the better ever since’.1 Many historians, in their search for religious origins of the English Civil War, would contest this view. Lord Clarendon maintained that the uniformity of the English Church was fatally undermined by the lax rule of Archbishop Abbot of Canterbury from 16u to 1633.

Abstract: Abstract It is customary for us nowadays to chuckle at Archbishop Ussher’s famous calculation that the earth was created in 4004 BC on 26 October at 9.00 a.m! Such an attitude fails to do justice to the highly scholarly tradition of textual and historical criticism within which Ussher worked, as a figure much respected by his contemporaries.