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This dissertation traces the history of the Divine Office (the daily round of fixed services of psalmody and prayer) in England from the Augustinian mission to c.1000. After a chapter exploring early medieval developments in the Office on the Continent, the first part of the dissertation uses literary and manuscript evidence to refute as anachronistic the common assumption that English monks used from an early stage the form of the Office laid down in the Rule of St Benedict. Instead, a Roman form of the Office, perhaps first introduced in 597, came into widespread use by both monks and secular clergy in the seventh and eighth centuries. It was ‘pre-Gregorian’ in structure and content, differing from later Carolingian codifications of the Roman Office. Contrary to some earlier scholarly views, the Divine Office was maintained throughout the ninth century in the face of Viking invasions and a decline in learning. The reign of Alfred (871-99) was probably a watershed in the introduction from the Continent of new ‘Gregorian’ ways of singing the Roman Office. Only in the second half of the tenth century did Dunstan, Æthelwold, and Oswald, inspired by their study of ninth-century Frankish monastic reform texts, seek to implement a Benedictine Office liturgy in their monasteries. The second part refines a methodology for reportorial comparison of Office chant texts. A secular Office chant repertory from Lotharingia or Bavaria (preserved in tenth-century additions to Durham, Cathedral Library, A. IV.19, and in eleventh-century marginalia in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41), perhaps transmitted to England under Alfred, was known in Wessex and perhaps also in Canterbury, and may lie behind some later English Benedictine Office books. Comparison of two fragmentary tenth-century English Office books (London, British Library, Royal 17. C. XVII, fols. 2-3 and 163-6, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawl. D. 894, fols, 62-3) with later English and Continental sources reveals two very different approaches to the establishment of a Benedictine Office liturgy in newly reformed English monasteries: the imitation of a Continental model (as in Royal 17. C. XVII, apparently from one of Æthelwold’s monasteries) and the adaptation of a local secular Office tradition for Benedictine use (as in Rawl. D. 894, from St. Augustine’s Canterbury). In both approaches, existing English traditions seem to have been preserved where possible.

This dissertation is a study of the controversial literature of the eighteenth century, an examination of certain texts which offended against the religious convictions of the period. The discussion concentrates on four works: Pierre Bayle's <I>Dictionnaire Historique et Critique </I>(1696-1701), Bernard Mandeville's <I>Fable of the Bees </I>(1714-1724), Henry Dodwell junior's <I>Christianity not founded on argument </I>(1742) and David Hume's <I>Dialogues concerning Natural Religion </I>(1779). This dissertation seeks to establish why these texts were so disconcerting, subversive and fascinating to an eighteenth-century audience. These works were not straight-forward declarations of impiety: the authors themselves - with varying degrees of irony - proclaimed their innocence of any subversive design. And the contemporary response was not always a unanimous chorus of disapproval: it was a curious mixture of outraged denunciation, careful negotiation and - in some cases - unqualified praise. While some readers believed that Bayle <I>et al</I> were seeking to undermine the Christian religion, other readers insisted that they were defending its prerogatives in good faith. This dissertation examines how such contrasting interpretations were constructed from the textual evidence and will thus be a contribution to the study of reader-response in the period. The interpretative difference of opinion was due - at least in part - to the presence of incommensurable theological idioms in the period. Bayle, Mandeville and Dodwell employed religious languages which were unfamiliar to an Anglican audience. While some readers shared the necessary theological presuppositions, many contemporaries were simply baffled by Mandeville's Augustinian moralism, Bayle's use of scepticism and Dodwell's rigorous fideism. The eighteenth century was riven by outbreaks of theological controversy: it was a period in which the definitions of orthodox and heterodox opinions were peculiarly fluid and unstable, a period in which a religious consensus could not be taken for granted.

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This thesis explores the variety of perceptions of crucifixion among Jews and Christians in antiquity, especially focusing on the period from Alexander the Great until Constantine. Earlier studies of crucifixion in antiquity have either concentrated on the Graeco-Roman world more broadly, or have limited themselves to discussing the thorny issue of whether certain Jews in the ancient world favoured the penalty of crucifixion. This study, in contrast, examines Jewish literature more broadly in order to demonstrate the range of general perceptions about crucifixion as a penalty. Early Christian literature is then shown to reflect awareness of, and interaction with, these Jewish perceptions. Knowledge of crucifixion in ancient Jewish communities is frequently reflected, for example, in the writings of the Qumran community, Philo, Josephus, and in early rabbinic literature. These passages are examined, as well as important references from apocryphal and pseudepigraphal literature. Special attention is also paid in this thesis to ancient Jewish interpretations of key Old Testament texts which mention human bodily suspension in association with execution; this concern has led to analyses of Septuagintal and targumic renderings, of other expansions of biblical texts, and of specific halakhic and haggadic treatments. The perceptions attested in this diverse material are then compared with the New Testament and early patristic literature. Pervious studies have rightly demonstrated how pervasive in antiquity was the view of the cross as a terrible and shameful death. This thesis provides further evidence that such views were taken in ancient Jewish communities. In addition, an attempt is made to complement this view by indicating that more positive perceptions could also be attached to crucifixion insofar as the death could be associated with the innocent sufferer or martyr as well as with latent sacrificial images. Christian literature, committed to proclaiming a crucified Messiah, betrays awareness of all these various perceptions by seeking to reject or transform negative stereotypes, or by embracing some of these more positive associations. Thus early Christian literature on the cross exhibits, to a greater degree than is commonly recognized, a reflection upon the various Jewish perceptions of the cross in antiquity.

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Recent research has suggested the nullification of tensions between monks and the Church following the official subordination of the former to the latter in the legislation of the mid-fifth-century Council of Chalcedon. This thesis argues, however, that potential tensions between the Church and ascetic groups were perpetuated not only by sustained monastic economic independence, but also, more crucially, by the monastic intellectual tendency to associate spiritual attainment primarily with ascetical self-transformation, to the detriment of sacrament and ecclesial mediation. It explores the gradual reconciliation of ascetical and sacramental themes through the seventh-century works of three closely associated Palestinian monks: John Moschus, Sophronius Sophista and Maximus Confessor. In the wake of the early seventh-century Persian and Arab invasions, and in the face of imperial, dogmatic interventionism, the attitudes of the Moschan circle towards the terrestrial Church began to change. The conceptualisation of Persian and Arab invasion as the product of collective sin not only precipitated a redefinition of Christian community and ascetic social responsibility, it also had the more immediate effect of removing Palestinian monks from their previous economic basis. Increasingly alienated from Constantinople both by eastern economic crisis and imperial religious policy, such monks sought their patrons at a papal court equally ill-disposed to imperial doctrine, and in turn dependent upon eastern ascetics not only for the articulation of Roman theology in Greek, but also for the maintenance of the papal chain to ecumenical primacy. Within that context, Moschus, Sophronius and Maximus urgently propounded models of Christian unity which centralised the Eucharist as the pinnacle of Christian life and recognised the necessity of clerical mediation. At the same time, such models acknowledged papal primacy and denied the religious authority of the emperor.

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