Volume 5, Issue 2 -

Henry VIII is seldom considered a steerer of religious policy and theories of his political ambition, conservative religiosity and susceptibility to manipulation by his advisors dominate the historiography. Accordingly, the notion that Henry may be characterised as a conciliarist is one that has only ever been rejected outright. However, a preliminary consideration of this heretofore unconsidered matter reveals uncertainty in the verity of our existing historical paradigms. Henryʼs writings (which we maintain are authentic), actions following the Sack of Rome and approach to his annulment proceedings serve as evidence which suggests that Henry was an interested amateur theologian with a sincere appreciation of conciliarism. An understanding of the Kingʼs Great Matter as essentially a dispute over papal power and Henryʼs solution of a royal supremacy are developed as the ecclesiological backdrop against which this appreciation is to be viewed. In the light that other such matters may have been similarly overlooked, indications of the need for further research are outlined throughout.

This article explores how sin and trust as fundamental notions of Luther’s relational anthropology determine his understanding of social relations unfolding in the hierarchies of the earthly realm. Against scholastic works righteousness, Luther maintains that humans are absolute sinners incapable of justifying themselves through good works and receive faith as a gift of unconditional trust in God. This reformulation of the human relation to God has profound consequences for Luther’s understanding of interpersonal relations. Luther understands the justifying relation to God as a precondition for fruitful and trusting social relations in a world infused by sin. Moreover, Luther patterns his understanding of the hierarchic relations between subjects and their earthly authorities on the trusting relation between God and human beings. However, because of sin individuals need to subject themselves to superiors. In this way, Luther’s understanding of the human being as both righteous and sinful seems to be the reason behind the apparent paradox of hierarchy and equality permeating his conception of society.

How to be counted among the saved on Doomsday? This article presents the emergence of Danish funeral works in the sixteenth century through a case study of Niels Hemmingsen’s sermon for Herluff Trolle (1565). It discusses in particular the theological function of the charitable deeds in the funeral biography for Trolle, and argues that the preacher’s motivation for presenting these deeds was more than the dynastic interests of the noble families. The frame of the emergence of the genre, as well as the particular emphasis on charitable deeds, is the expectation of Judgement Day.

This article analyses the approval of the Gallican Confession during the so-called first national synod of the French Reformed churches, held in Paris in May 1559. The established consensus is that Calvin had a starring role in the adoption of the Confession by the pastors assembled in Paris. The latter are believed to have modified and promulgated the Gallican Confession based on a draft that the former had authored and sent to the synod. This paper will test the hypothesis that Calvin never sent any draft to Paris for approval in May 1559 and that a 1557 Parisian document—the letter-confession Au Roy —was used as the basis for the text of the Gallican Confession. We will also show that in May 1559 Calvin was not opposed to the promulgation of a confession of faith, but to its untimely disclosure and/or publication in print. This article offers a different interpretation of the relationship between Geneva and the brethren assembled in Paris at this crucial stage, and suggests that the categories of agreement/disagreement between Calvin and some French pastors, normally applied to this event, might not be appropriate.

Scholarship on the Spanish galleon trade has tended to ignore both the importance of religion and the significance of the port of Acapulco. This paper will seek to offset each shortcoming by offering a glimpse into the religious life of Acapulco during the seventeenth century. This glimpse will aim to establish the spatial linkages between religion and economy in the port by (1) identifying the sacred places, practices, and missions of the city, and (2) illustrating how they were intimately related to the galleon trade. Though Acapulco occupied a paradoxical space within the broader Spain’s imperial vision, its unique spiritual cartography continued to be dictated by the aims of that vision. The port provides a unique case study by which to understand the complex and often-contradictory relationship between urbanity, trade, and religiosity in the Spanish empire. It illustrates that the economic and religious structures needed to create heavenly spaces in Spanish colonial holdings also produced unintended byproducts, places where religion and economics merged to produce more unexpected outcomes. Acapulco never became the envisioned heavenly city; yet, throughout the seventeenth century, it continued to demonstrate that economics and religion remained integrally connected.

This article examines the representation and function of Christ in Anne Conway’s only treatise, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy , published posthumously in 1690. Christ plays a prominent role in Conway’s philosophical system as he is both a medium between God and the creatures in the ontological hierarchy, and the instrument that will make possible the conversion of Jews and Muslims to the Christian religion. Conway draws upon Quakerism and the Lurianic Kabbalah to build a Christocentric metaphysics that also aims to make sense of pain – Conway’s own physical pain as well as the existence of evil in the world. Finally, the article enquires into Conway’s personal relationship with Christ. As a suffering woman, she might be expected to feel a closer connection with the human Christ, following the example of medieval female mystics, but Conway’s philosophy actually presents a metaphysical, genderless Christ, which can paradoxically be interpreted as a way of reintroducing women into Christianity.