Religion

In this section religions, religious belief and many elements of religiosity are explored and discussed. Early pagan beliefs in Britain and Ireland to the worship of gods across Europe are explored as are the religious changes that monotheism introduced. How religion affects themes of power, individuality and architecture are debated as are key historical movements such as the Reformation and the crusades.

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  • Religion and Politics 1559-1642

    Article

    It is a truism to say that religion and politics were inextricably mixed in the seventeenth century. "So natural" wrote Richard Hooker,"is the union of religion with Justice, that we may boldly deem there is neither where both are not" Sir John Eliot observed that in the House of Commons...

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  • The First Crusade

    Article

    Nine centuries after enthusiasm for pope Urban's expedition to Jerusalem swept western Europe the phenomenon of the first crusade continues to fascinate. This pamphlet examines the nature of the crusades and the motives of those who joined it, describes the hardships of the long journey to the Holy Land and...

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  • Puritan attitudes towards plays and pleasure in the Age of Shakespeare

    Article

    In Twelfth Night Shakespeare gently mocked the Puritans, who objected to stage plays and other entertainments. Yet within four decades, the Puritans had closed the London theatres and were about to seize power from Charles I. Among their many reforms were the banning of Christmas celebrations and of Twelfth Night itself....

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  • The Investiture Disputes

    Article

    Historical labels are dictated by a wayward fashion; and the name which is still most commonly associated with the first struggle of Empire and Papacy (1076-1122). "The Investiture Disputes," is neither lucid or appropriate. It has been commoner for historians to name the great wars of history after the issues...

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  • Regional Aspects of the Scottish Reformation

    Article

    Reformation Perspective In recent years studies of the Scottish Reformation have undergone a marked change. Religion is seldom advanced as the sole mainspring of the events of 1560 and explanations have been increasingly sought in political and economic terms. On the political side growing opposition to French influence within Scotland...

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  • Women and the Politics of the Parish in England

    Article

    Petticoat Politicians: Women and the Politics of the Parish in England The history of women voting in Britain is familiar to many. 2013 marked the centenary of the zenith of the militant female suffrage movement, culminating in the tragic death of Emily Wilding Davison, crushed by the King's horse at...

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  • Papal Election and Murder

    Article

    Before the smoke clears: The longest papal election in history was marred by a brutal murder Papal elections never used to be so short or easy. In 1268 Pope Clement IV died and the cardinals, divided between French and Italian factions, would be deadlocked for the next three years over...

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  • Cathars and Castles in Medieval France

    Article

    Almost exactly 800 years ago, in September 1213, a decisive battle was fought at Muret, about ten miles south-west of Toulouse. King Peter II of Aragon, fighting with southern allies from Toulouse and elsewhere, faced an army largely made up of northern French crusaders who had invaded the region at the...

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  • The Byzantine Empire on the Eve of the Crusades

    Article

    This resource is a pamphlet titled ‘The Byzantine Empire on the Eve of the Crusades’ and written by R. J. H. Jenkins in 1953. As such, some of the scholarship has been updated since then, although it can provide useful historiography. It is not strange that there should in recent...

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  • Prehistoric Scotland

    Article

    Prehistory is an attempt to reconstruct the story of human societies inhabiting a given region before the full historical record opens there. Its data, furnished by archaeology, are the constructions members of such societies erected and the durable objects they made. The events which should form its subject matter naturally...

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  • Francis I and Absolute Monarchy

    Article

    Francis I of France reign lasted for more than thirty years and coincided with movements as significant as the Renaissance and the Reformation. Text-books are apt to gloss over the domestic history of France before the outbreak of the Wars of Religion and convey the impression that Francis was more...

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  • Ulrich Zwingli

    Article

    The Reformation of the sixteenth century has many sides, and not the least significant of these is the contribution from Switzerland. How under the leadership of Zwingli, Zurich, Berne, Basle and St Gall broke away from Rome, how this led to civil war, how and why agreement with the German...

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  • The Miraculous Crusade: The Role of the Mystical and Miraculous in the Morale and Motivation of the First Crusade

    Article

    The First Crusade may be considered the only really successful crusade in that it achieved its stated goal, but it demanded great courage and stamina of its participants in their journey to the Holy City of Jerusalem, fighting their way through an unforgiving hostile territory. But courage and stamina by...

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  • Varieties of Reformation

    Article

    The most significant change to have occurred in our view of the Reformation in recent years is the growing acknowledgement of historians that it was no unitary phenomenon whose triumph was assured and inevitable. What we refer to in short-hand as ‘the' Reformation was a many-sided affair which began with...

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  • The Establishment of English Protestantism 1558-1608

    Article

    The Reformation which Queen Elizabeth and her ministers created was a series of acts of state, but if we consider it only at the level of official hopes and pronouncements, we will paint a picture of hopeless unreality. For the Reformation to success, the government needed to follow up its...

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  • The Albigensian Crusade

    Article

    At the time of the First Crusade southern France was strongly Catholic: the army led by Raymond IV of Toulouse was the largest single force to take part in the expedition and was recruited from all classes. Yet eighty years later the Count's grandson, Raymond V, sent this appeal form...

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  • Jacobitism

    Article

    In recent years, the debate over the nature, extent, and influence of the Jacobite movement during the 70 years following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 has become one of the new growth industries among professional historians, spawning scholarly quarrels almost as ferocious as those which characterised ‘the Cause' itself.The term...

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  • The Oxford Movement and Anglican Ritualism

    Article

    The English Reformation of the Sixteenth century had been a compromise, both politically and theologically. The administrative framework of the medieval church, with its system of church courts, private patronage, pluralism, the social and financial gulf between the lower and higher clergy, its inadequacy of clerical education and its hierarchical...

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  • Religion and Party in Late Stuart England

    Article

    The second English Revolution of the seventeenth century, the Revolution of 1688, ushered in during the next twenty-five years a series of changes which were to be profoundly important to the ultimate development of the country. Most conspicuously, the reigns of William III and Anne released Englishmen - though not...

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  • The French Wars of Religion

    Article

    This classic pamphlet takes you through the French reformation, the first, second and third war of religion, The St Bartholomew's Day massacre and the Fourth War, the later wars, the Catholic League, Henry IV, the nobility, the towns, confessional violence, social contexts and warfare and its costs.

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