Derek Baker – författare

This eighth volume of Studies in Church History contains twenty-six papers read at two recent meetings of the Ecclesiastical History Society. Popular religion, in theory and practice, within established religious forms and outside them, against a background of acceptance or of controversy, is examined in studies ranging from Professor Momigliano's analysis of the attitude of the later Roman historians to Professor Latreille's discussion of popular piety in modern France. A number of papers focus on the attitudes to sanctity and relics in the central Middle Ages. There is also a significant and wide-ranging discussion centred on the theme of the Presidential Address: post-Reformation popular religion both in its local and general setting. These contributions clearly demonstrate the significance of current research into social and economic influences upon popular faith, practice and allegiance, and indicate the large areas and difficult problems which require further research.

The thirty papers which comprise this volume are selected from those delivered at the summer and winter conferences of the Ecclesiastical History Society in 1971 and 1972. The volume opens with three important, wide ranging surveys of the nature and types of religious orthodoxy and dissent in the early Christian centuries. A further group of papers considers the emergence and treatment of earlier medieval heresies, while a number of contributions concerned with Lollardy have their focus in M. J. Wilks' examination of relations between Wyclif and Hus. For developments in more modern times K.T. Ware supplies a wider perspective to a rich and varied series of papers on more familiar matters in British, Continental and American history. In this volume, considerable attention is paid to the relationship of movements of protest and dissent to their social, intellectual, cultural and political backgrounds: in this many of the authors reflect the interest in 'religious sociology' which characterises much contemporary Continental work in the field of ecclesiastical history.