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This thesis looks at the Jerusalem Conference and Antioch dispute as described by Paul in Galatians (2.1-14) and Acts (15). A new approach to the topics is used, that of using models derived from socio-psychological research. The Jerusalem Conference and Antioch dispute are concerned with group interactions and dynamics; socio-psychological research studies the behaviour of individuals in social groups and so is well suited to study this aspect of early church history. I argue that the emergence of Gentile leadership at Antioch precipitated the need for the Jerusalem Conference. Whereas ‘sympathizers’ to Judaism, lacking circumcision, were not fully integrated into Jewish communities, Gentile believers at Antioch underwent the initiation rite of baptism. Thus Gentile believers had a greater sense of belonging than did ‘sympathizers’ in Judaism. Also Gentiles entered the Antiochene church in numbers, forming a distinct subgroup within the community. These two factors provided ideal conditions for Gentile leadership to emerge. However, leadership inferred a certain status for Gentile believers. This was opposed by some Jewish believers who insisted on complete Torah observance, including circumcision, for full membership of the early church. The Jerusalem Conference met to resolve the issue. Paul’s claim that nothing was added to his gospel implies that the Jerusalem Conference accepted Gentile membership of the church, including Gentile leadership, without circumcision. This would be unacceptable to the Law-observant Jewish believers. To avoid schism the Conference needed a compromise which appeased the Jewish believers. I suggest that the compromise was the ‘two missions’; Gentile believers were accorded the status of full membership as Gentiles, but provision was made for those Jewish believers, who experienced threats to their Jewish identity by associating with Gentile believers under these conditions, to avoid such Gentile contacts. The test of the ‘two missions’ came at Antioch. Peter, in eating with Gentiles, accepted their status as full members of the church. However, the ‘people from James’ did not accept the Gentile believers on equal terms and insisted on their right to avoid such contact with Gentiles. Peter and the other Antiochene Jews had to choose – offer hospitality to their fellow Jews and withdraw from Gentile contact or maintain table fellowship with Gentiles and isolate their fellow Jews. They opted to extend hospitality to the Jews, but this decision implied a rejection of the Gentiles’ status within the early church.

The present work seeks to explore the nature of law and legality in the Byzantine canonical tradition through a careful reading of the central texts of the Byzantine canonical corpus. The principal topics to be considered include the shape and growth of the corpus as a whole, the content and themes of the traditional prologues, the language, genre and style of the canons themselves, and the traditional thematic rearrangements of the canonical corpus. As a cultural-historical exploration of law, this work has as its goal throughout to trace the fundamental contours of how the tradition conceives, frames and "imagines" itself as a legal system: central themes and concepts, basic presuppositions, recurring patterns, and prominent contextualizations. Drawing on categories of modern legal theory and legal anthropology, this work is particularly interested in the nature of legal norms and their relationship to other normative systems, the place and role of technical rule-discourse, and mechanisms of change, development and interpretation. The relationship of the canons to the secular law will also be taken into account. The central argument of this work is that the picture of law that emerges from the Byzantine material is fundamentally at odds with many formalist/positivist expectations of modern western legal culture. This dissonance had traditionally made it very easy to dismiss Byzantine canon law as "primitive" or "decadent". If approached more sympathetically, however, this strange legal world can be read as constituting a surprisingly coherent and rich legal system that is characterized by 1) a deep investment in embedding itself in broader value-narratives; 2) the centrality of the idea of law as a sacred (and relatively inviolable) tradition; and 3) a strong orientation towards the realization of substantive justice, not formal consistency. If taken seriously, this picture of law has a number of important implications for contemporary Orthodox canonical legal theory, the broader history of church law, and the study of late antique and Byzantine law generally.

This is the first attempt to provide a detailed description of the different types of devotional literature (excluding all liturgical books, biblical translations, doctrinal and polemic works, saintS lives and sermons) available in print to English readers in the years immediately preceding England's break with Rome. It shows that there were far more Catholic works of devotion, many of them written or printed for the first time 1520 - 35, than has previously been recognized. It is also clear that this flourishing literature came to a sudden and decisive end in 1535, although the tradition lived on unofficially to be taken up by the English Recusants. The leading themes of this traditional literature are indicated in chapters on treatises about confession and prayer, the mass, the life and Passion of Christ, on tribulation, death and the Last Things, while more general teaching about the Christian life addressed to religious, contemplatives and lay people, and the humanist and Protestant contribution to this literature is also discussed. The treatises are doctrinally sound and on the whole advocate moderation and common-sense; they avoid many of the weaknesses of popular non-literary devotion, including the Marioleatry and excessive morbidity for which the late middle ages are often condemned. Some of the weaknesses of the Catholic tradition are suggested by comparison with the more rational and secular attitudes of Christian humanist , authors, notably Erasmus, available during the 1530s. The Protestants, whose treatises become increasingly common, despite official censorship, during the decade until they dominate its second half, carry the humanist~ reform much further, and break with the Catholic Church. Traditional devotional topics and audiences are displaced by doctrinal and biblical teaching addressed to lay people. The Bible replaces the Church's authority and there is more emphasis on the spiritual and social dimensions of religion.

The thesis establishes that the political liberty proposed by the Levellers during the English Civil Wars of the 1640s was derived from a theological doctrine of Christian liberty, rooted in Christology and Ecclesiology, and informed by various legal and philosophical traditions. The work is structured around an examination of the sources of Leveller political thought and a discussion of some implications of this for modern understandings of political liberalism. The thesis argues that a major key to understanding the Levellers is to see the way in which they utilised existing streams of thought, whilst both synthesising and modifying these. These diverse intellectual currents include the English common law, free grace theology, early General Baptist ecclesiology, and natural law and canon law traditions. The Levellers combine these to give rise to the idea that the state should be strictly limited by the individual’s freedom, rights, and contractual consent. The thesis takes great care with the religious sources, in order to avoid a number of current misreadings, especially with respect to theological ideas, ecclesial groupings, and terminology, particularly in relation to Puritanism. The opposition to fundamental elements of Puritanism will be shown to be a hermeneutic key that unlocks our understanding of the Levellers. The research calls into question particular socialist readings of the Levellers. It also implicitly shows that the rejection of liberalism by certain modern Christian thinkers is based on an unnuanced view of political liberalism. Equally, the work provides a corrective to some recent secular accounts of political liberalism that see the historical roots of liberalism in a reaction to the church and religion.

This thesis investigates the legends of saintly widows within Medieval Castilian prose, specifically the lives of Saints Paula and Cecilia, in hagiographical works known as Compilation A and Compilation B. These Castilian legends have been reworked from their appearance in the Latin Legenda aurea of c. 1264, composed by Jacobus de Voragine. Chapter One works as an introduction to the thesis. It observes the history of the hierarchy of married, widowed, and virginal women, debating which category of female, if any, was able to attain the highest level of eventual celestial purity. Chapter Two concentrates more specifically on manuscript context. It notes the composition of the original Latin Legenda aurea, in terms of male and female composition as well as looking at the constitution of different categories of saints. Following this the composition of the Castilian Compilations is discussed, including the purposes for writing these filiations and destined audience type. Chapter Three focuses on the reworking of the legend of Saint Paula from the Latin to Compilation A, commenting principally upon textual omissions, alterations, and other significant modifications. Chapter Four undertakes an in-depth thematic analysis of the legend for the same saint. Chapter Five works in much the same way as Chapter Three, here focusing on Saint Cecilia, and Chapter Six mirrors Chapter Four, again looking at the symbolic significance of Saint Cecilia in Medieval Castilian hagiography. Chapter Seven operates as a concluding section to the work, bringing together the concepts at the heart of the saintly widow, and asking if a common ethos can be established between such apparently disparate legends. In an appendix, complete editions of each text are presented for the first time, along with xeroxes of the manuscripts and their Latin sources.

The object of the thesis is to trace the doctrine of the Church in Norway during the 19th century, a period of unique Importance both in the thought and Church-life of the country. An attempt will be made to show that the problems Involved in the doctrine had a profound effect upon the whole current of Norwegian Church-life. On the basis of a theocentric approach and a dynamic, personal conception of Revelation, Martin Luther adopted a dialectical view of Christian doctrine as a whole and the doctrine of the Church In particular, and a functional concept of the Ministry. Through the re-Introduction of an Intellectualist conception of Revelation, however, these insights were lost in the later history of Lutheranism. The unity of the doctrine of the Church was broken, and a dualism of "Objectivism" and "Subjectivism" arose. Informed by an Idealist metaphyeic but virtually dependent upon an Empiricist epistemology, 19th century Norwegian theology was unable to overcome this dualism and to re-establish the dialectical view. It displayed a wide range of ecclesiologlcal positions, from Catholic Sacerdotalism (Krogh-Tonning) and Hegelian Erastianisra (Monrad) on the one hand, to Low-Church Orthodox-Pietism (Gisle Johnson) and Associational Independency (Sverdrup) on the other. The crisis in the doctrine of the Church was clearly reflected in the practical Church-life of the period, which was characterized by a gradual but definite trend In the Low-Church direction. The Grundtvigian party, seeking an objective authority, found it in the Church and its historic Creed. But the traditionalism and Sacramentallsm of this party were sharply opposed and finally overcome by the Orthodox-Pietists. The introduction of Revivalism, with its associational idea of the Church and charismatic concept of the Ministry, gave rise to the Inner Mission and Foreign Mission movements, and created tremendous tensions within the Church. After a protracted struggle, the "free organizations" and lay-preaching gained legal and ecclesiastical recognition. The Erastianlsm of the Church of Norway led to a reaction in the form of a vast movement for political reform. But failure to agree on a sound Lutheran doctrine of the Church within the movement and political pressure from without prevented the realization of Its objectives. The question of Church discipline within the national Church provided the occasion for several small separatist movements, which, although relatively Insignificant, illustrate the ecclesiological tensions. Thus, the unity of the Church In Norway was shattered during the 19th century. What was needed was a return to the dynamic conception of Revelation and dialectical view of Luther and the Confessions.

The collection of books assembled for Leofric, bishop of Exeter, during the twenty-two years of his episcopacy has been the subject of sustained scholarly attention, which has just started to uncover the importance that scriptorial materials have in illuminating the life and deeds of the bishop. Due to the lack of a hagiography dedicated to him, Leofric's importance in the eleventh century church has long remained obscure. The following thesis endeavours to shed new light on the activities that underpinned Leofric's episcopacy through an investigation into the books compiled at the bishop's behest. In particular, four homiliaries are here under scrutiny from a perspective that is both physical and textual: these manuscripts contain a selection of texts that Leofric requested specifically for performing his pastoral remit and that, for this reason, represent the bishop's interests. The analysis of some of these texts demonstrates that, when studied in their manuscript context, homilies yield crucial information on the way in which preaching materials were used and on the audiences to whom they were directed in times subsequent to their composition. The way in which Leofric exploited homiletic works dating to the late tenth century was innovative and original in so far as it reflected the administration policies that he adopted for his diocese and the reforms that he activated in restructuring a decaying episcopal see. His pastoral achievements were not only important in the context of the eleventh-century English episcopate but also in a broader, continental perspective and were attained as part of a reforming programme that would later culminate in the Gregorian Reform. Leofric's Lotharingian education triggered the activation of these reforms at Exeter at a time when Lotharingian prelates held prominent positions in the western Christendom.

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