The heart of this thesis is a very detailed reconstruction of the life of Thomas 3rd Baron Paget of Beau desert, Staffordshire (1544-1590), with particular emphasis between the years 1570 and 1590. A thorough analysis is made of his courtship and marriage to Nazareth Southwell (nee Newton) a member of the queen's privy chamber, as well as that of his household and family, which reveals that whilst his marriage helped advance his noble career, it was ultimately a failure which led to considerable social, religious and political difficulty. An exploration is made of Paget's involvement in Catholic circles in his native Staffordshire and surrounding area, as are his relationships with prominent local and national figures, both Catholic and Protestant. Paget elicited the support and loyalty of the local community and had solid friendships with members of the nobility centred on a shared love of music. In 1580 Paget was confined in a house in Windsor for approximately fourteen weeks, ostensibly because of his Catholicism. Paget indulged in multi-faceted discussions and arguments over the nature of religious and political loyalty; these arguments are analysed and contextualised. His release was secured. only after he agreed to satisfy a number of conflated personal, religious and political concerns, one of which was an apparent agreement to conform in matters of religion. Thomas made a shallow attempt to conform and after his release his Catholic resolve seemed only to harden. In 1583 Paget was drawn into the Throckmorton Plot conspiracy; finding himself implicated he fled abroad and settled for a time in Paris. The extent of his involvement in this plot and his divided loyalties are explored. Whilst abroad, finding himself exiled and ostracised, he worked on behalf of the Queen of Scots. A consideration is made of his motivations and a close exploration is made of his movements and dealings. After the death of the queen of Scots, Paget's loyalty was again in question.

This thesis examines the role of bishops in political reform and rebellion in England, beginning with the return from exile in 1213 of Stephen Langton (archbishop of Canterbury 1207-26) and ending with the suspension in 1266 of five bishops for their involvement with the Montfortian revolution. Langton and his successor Edmund of Abingdon (archbishop of Canterbury 1233-40) created a model for episcopal involvement in the affairs of the realm, especially during times of discord between king and barons. Prioritising the peace of the kingdom, they maintained their loyalty to the king as well as his subjects so that they were empowered and incentivised to act as peacemakers. This obligation was developed by Langton’s biblical understanding of the clerical duty to ensure good government. When illegal or destructive royal policies caused baronial discontent that threatened civil peace, the bishops could step in to reform the king’s behaviour. Although they threatened ecclesiastical censure, Langton and Edmund never attacked the foundations of royal power. In contrast, the Montfortian bishops renounced their loyalty to the king. As partisan Montfortians, they were no longer qualified to act as peacemakers. Members of a regime that appropriated the bases of royal power and ruled in the king’s name, they advocated measures that their predecessors would have considered illicit and dangerous. The intellectual conflict created by this rupture is reflected in the actions and justificatory arguments of the Montfortian bishops, who had to construct their case from scratch in the crucible of political crisis. Their story provides an ideal-type for the study of political thought: exothermic ideology. Not the cause but the consequence of events on the ground, their arguments are not coherent as political theory but reveal the effect on the production of ideas exerted by external pressures and the internal conflicts of those who created them.

This thesis consists of a critical edition of the Abbreviatio dyalogi Okan of Pierre d'Ailly (1350-1420), a leading figure in the University of Paris and in the western church during the period of the great schism. Previous discussion of the Abbreviatio dyalogi Okan has been dependent on a single manuscript of the work: Paris, Bibliothe~que Nationale ms. lat. 14579. This edition makes use of four additional texts of the work: Paris Arsenal ms. 517; Cologne, Stadtarchiv ms. GB f 0 76; London, Lambeth Palace Library cod. 168; and an early printed version, printed in Paris. Estimates of the dating of the Abbreviatio dyalogi Okan have varied from 1372 at the earliest to 1415 at the latest. On the grounds of internal evidence and by reference to other works of d'Ailly, it is possible to date it prior to 1378, while d'Ailly was still a student in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Paris. This calls for a revision of the assumption that it was the great schism which led d'Ailly to turn to Dialogus primarily for Ocknam's theories of ecclesiastical power. The weight of evidence is that d'Ailly's initial interest in Dialogus was doctrinal and dogmatic. His abbreviation of the Dialogue provides further evidence of his interest in Ockham's theology, and further evidence, too, of the importance of the College of Navarre during the fourteenth century as a centre of interest in the philosophical and theological writings of William of Ockham. Beginning with a brief historical survey intended to situate the Abbreviatio dyalogi Okan within the context of the life and relevant works of d'Ailly, the thesis then addresses itself to the problem of dating. A survey of some of d'Ailly's major works, extending over the duration of his distinguished career, reveals that his borrowings from Ockham's Dialogue were more frequent and more extensive than previously realised. Most of these were taken from Dialogus itself rather than from d'Ailly's abbreviation, which served primarily as a reference guide. In d'Ailly's selection and use of material from the Dialogue later in his career, it is possible to see a number of significant differences in emphasis, direction and position between d'Ailly and Ockham. During d'Ailly's own lifetime, and for more than fifty years afterwards, his abbreviation was recognised as a convenient guide to the Dialogue. In a number of manuscripts and in the historically important editio princeps of Dialogus, d'Ailly's abbreviation served as a detailed table of contents. The edition of the text of the Abbreviatio dyalogi Okan, in addition to the identification of sources in the apparatus fontium, provides cross-references to other works of d'Ailly. The style of the edition is basically that being used in the edition of the Opera Politica of Ockham; hopefully, it will not be long before it is possible to compare the text of d'Ailly's abbreviation with the first critical edition of Ockham's Dialogue,

This thesis is the first scholarly assessment of the role of pleasure in the works of Gregory of Nyssa. The term ἡδονή occurs in Gregory’s works more than 300 times, almost always in a negative context. In Homily 12 on the Song of Songs, Gregory calls pleasure the ‘instigator of all vicious actions’. Thus, I set out to investigate what gives pleasure such a fundamental role in Gregory’s understanding of sin. Casting Gregory’s thought in the framework of ancient eudaimonistic ethics, I argue that the main problem with pleasure lies in the way in which it obscures that which is truly good: the life of virtue and the attainment of the divine likeness. Through its sensual appeal, pleasure projects a false appearance of beauty and goodness and confuses the mind’s judgment. This, for Gregory, is the origin of all sin, both in Paradise and in the life of every postlapsarian individual. I will show that in Gregory’s works the life of pleasure comes to denote a fundamental misorientation of the human faculties, the antithesis of the good Christian life. By pursuing sensual pleasure, the individual mistakes the sensible creation for the final level of reality and fails to access the most fulfilling forms of enjoyment. True insatiable enjoyment can only be attained in a spiritual communion with the limitless God. The thesis is divided into three main parts: In Part I, I investigate Gregory’s notion of pleasure and lay the anthropological groundwork for his ethical considerations. Part II looks at the junction between pleasure and sin, showing how pleasure as the false good obscures higher ends, such as the life of virtue and the satisfaction of physical needs. Finally, Part III addresses Gregory’s notion of spiritual pleasure and its similarities to and differences from sensual pleasure.

This study is an attempt to analyze the motif, or collection of motifs, of divine accommodation as they appear in the thought of John Calvin. After introducing the subject and critically summarizing the relevant secondary literature, the course for the thesis is plotted. To determine the most basic elements of a reference to accommodation, these are set out in the form of three questions. 1. What is human capacity? 2. What is the character of the accommodating responses of God to that capacity? 3. What do Calvin's explanatory statements, which often accompany his remarks on accommodation, teach us about his accommodating God? Each of these is given individual attention. Chapter two examines human capacity, concluding with an attempt to reassess the three-fold division of it into human finitude, sinfulness, and Jewish barbarity which has arisen in scholarly discussion. Next, God's responses to that captus are considered. Here their scope and character are appraised by means of constructing a taxonomy of them, which is organized on the supposition that they appear in different spheres of the divine-human relationship, namely, the pedagogic, legislative, cultic, pastoral, incarnational, and covenantal spheres. In chapter four, Calvin's observations on the reasons, intentions, and motives behind God's selfadapting are explored towards the end of drawing the portrait of the reformer's accommodating God. The thesis finds that accommodation is so pervasive in Calvin that it appreciably penetrates his thinking about God. Accommodation touches on many different aspects of the divine-human relationship and is a frequent theme in the reformer's interpreting of God's behavior. In addition, Calvin's reflections on the Almighty's reasoning behind his accommodating actions are wide-ranging, and often depict God in surprising ways. All of this results in questions being raised about the character of Calvin's God, the coherence of Calvin's theology, and the relationship which exists between the reformer's dogmatic and exegetical works, which are addressed in the concluding chapter.

This dissertation is a study of the spatialities in the role of dissident Catholic figures and organisations in South Korea’s democracy movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Its thesis is that the religious spatial dynamics of Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul enabled the South Korean Catholic Church, through providing a sacred, immune, and thus strategic site of opposition, to play a salient role in the democracy movement that is distinctive compare with other dissident Christian denominations and religious organisations. The spatial politics of Myeongdong Cathedral further shaped critical junctures of South Korea’s democratisation movement in the 1970s and 1980s. By the agency of dissenting South Korean Catholic figures and organisations, and their coordination with other movement actors, the effect of the spatial politics of Myeongdong Catholic Church constituted significant phases of South Korea’s democracy movement through mobilising, sustaining, and networking the movement. The scholarship of the history and sociology of the South Korean democracy movement, while mainly focusing on temporal progress of contentious politics, has noted on particular actors that have made important contribution to South Korea’s democratic transition such as students and workers. This study asks to move beyond this actor-oriented perspective that is limited to account for the multi-layered dynamics of how protesting actors are mobilised, connected, and diffused which is the core aspect of achievability of a social movement, and suggest a religious spatial analysis that can securely explicate the relational dynamics between movement actors for the developments of pro-democracy movement in the South Korean context. This dissertation speaks further to the linkage between spatialities of religious contentious politics and developments of social movements in respects to durability and effectiveness of collective actions through exploring a constituting role of the religious spatial dynamics of Myeongdong Cathedral in South Korea’s democracy movement.

This thesis seeks to illustrate and explain the fundamental changes which occurred in English attitudes to Roman Catholicism, and in the construction of English national identity, in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcentury. It argues that the excltisivist Protestant identity of the nation, which had hitherto been maintained by an anti-Catholic historical narrative, was challenged by the development of a confident Roman Catholic historical consciousness which was believed to be based on an authoritative, 'scientific' appreciation of England's medieval past. The thesis offers the first systematic analysis of Francis Gasquet's historical works. It examines their intellectual origins and formation, and situates Gasquet in relation to the increasingly respected academic discipline of history. It argues that his writing played an important role in reshaping scholarly and popular attitudes to the role Roman Catholics had played in the national past, and should play in the contemporary public sphere. Gasquet's historical credentials were essential to the English Roman Catholic Church's campaign to secure a papal condemnation of Anglican orders. This thesis analyses the role historical consciousness played in the inter-Church polemics of the 1890s. It argues that these texts reinforced popular recognition of the historical consistency of Roman Catholicism, and transferred much of England's residual anti-Catholic animus to Anglican ritualism. The thesis concludes by exploring how Anglo-Vatican diplomacy, stimulated by the national security imperatives of World War One, highlighted the political value of the new position of the Roman Catholic Church in the English public sphere. Through a study of the British Mission to the Holy See based on extensive use of British and Roman archives, it argues that English national identity was finally freed from its traditional opposition to the role of the papacy within Roman Catholicism.

Newman's 'idea' of beauty subsists in the power of sensible and intellectual harmony and order which we perceive in the world, to draw us towards its perfect fullness in God. Seeing natural beauty in this world as the 'shadows and images' of a greater, spiritual reality in heaven, beyond the concealing veil of matter, he also identified in 'unearthly' personal holiness a participation in God's perfection. Both holiness and the beauty of nature evoke memories of Eden, lost by sin. His understanding of the 'mysterious' connection between this world and heaven was deepened when he adopted the sacramental idea, in which the material world becomes a vehicle for the revelation of the spiritual, and earthly worship an image of the eternal worship of heaven. In music he identified the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound, recognized from its emotive power as coming to us as echoes from our true home. His use and understanding of art and architecture in the service of religion demonstrate his love of 'frugality' expressed nonetheless through rich effects to create a foretaste of beauty in heaven. He recognized the need for a hermeneutic to distinguish false and misleading forms of beauty from that which is 'true', i.e. of God. Hence he identified a teleological purpose in beauty, which, interpreted in the light of revelation, draws humanity towards its destiny of the beatific vision of God's infinite perfections and an eternal share in God's glory. His priestly apostolate consisted in guiding souls to heavenly truth, fulfilment of all that is communicated in the liturgy and sacraments.

Current debates in the UK about faith schools often focus on whether they are able to promote liberal values while maintaining the values and doctrine of their religious tradition. These debates, worked out through education policy, legislation and the media, are typically conducted at the level of macro or meso-level generalisations, but are not informed by micro-level studies of how the transmission of religious tradition in relation to liberal values takes place through specific interactions between staff and students. This thesis seeks to contribute to such a knowledge-base through an ethnographic study of interactions between staff and students in relation to processes of religious transmission in a Catholic secondary school in London. Drawing on a Bourdieusian theoretical framework, informed by related work on the transmission of religious memory and the formation of religious emotion, the study examines how staff in this school try to enable students to develop a religious habitus in which Catholicism and liberal values are not experienced as being in tension with each other. The staff project of forming this Catholic habitus in their students is pursued in both conscious and non-conscious ways. Recognising the importance of reconciling Catholicism with wider liberal values, staff pursue a range of strategies with students to manage any tension that arises between them, with varying degrees of success. Conflict between liberal values and aspects of Catholic doctrine and ethical teaching is, in particular, avoided through emphasising the development of a distinctive Catholic habitus through the transformation of students' bodies and emotions through ritual and other forms of devotional practice. Staff seek to nurture such embodied and emotional formation particularly through the management of students' interactions with particular sacred times and spaces, trying to negotiate between enacting their authority over students and their understanding of students as active agents who need to come to their own authentic and freely chosen performance of Catholicism. Students engage with this project of formation in a variety of ways, ranging from committed collaboration to covert or overt forms of resistance. Whilst students' engagement with this staff project can sometimes reflect a shared sympathy for its devotional aims, it can also be motivated by an interest in the greater opportunities that arise through cultivating religious capital. For many students, this project of formation is approached through compliance rather than enthusiasm or hostility, but in ways where 'surface-acting' of devotional performance belies a lack of cultivation of more strongly-felt religious emotion or belief. Through its analysis of these micro-level processes, the thesis contributes to existing research on religious transmission in schools by extending an understanding of how this can take the form of particular kinds of interaction relating to students' embodied and emotional formation. It also generates a typology of staff approaches to managing potential tensions between their religious tradition and liberal values that could be utilised in other studies. It contributes to wider policy debates by problematizing simplistic notions of faith schools as inherently authoritarian sites of religious transmission, hostile to liberal values, by considering how staff can seek to reconcile religious tradition and liberal values through their practice as well as how students retain considerable agency in responding to such processes of religious formation.

No description available.