Religion

Sheldon van Auken on the great English historian of the Reformation.

Pilgrims were a lucrative source of income for the Church and miracles did not come free. Adrian Bell and Richard Dale discover some striking parallels with modern marketing tactics in the management of shrines in the Middle Ages.

Arthur Bryant relates how Becket’s death, at the hands of Henry II's servants, made this once worldly prelate a popular religious hero.

In the twelfth-century conflict between Church and State, Henry II found his most determined opponent in his formerly devoted servant, Thomas Becket, as Arthur Bryant continues his Story of England series.

When Richard II succeeded his grandfather, Edward III, he turned to alchemy to create a more pious ideal of kingship. Though his reign ended in failure, it left us one of medieval England’s most enduring and complex images. Jonathan Hughes explores its symbolism.

Allen Cabaniss investigates rumour, propaganda and freedom of thought in the ninth century life of the late Carolingian empire.

Historians have held that religious Revivalism in the late eighteenth century distracted the minds of the English from thoughts of Revolution. Eric Hobsbawm expresses a completely different view.

US presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a Mormon, which is a problem for some voters. But, says Andrew Preston, so was the Catholicism of John F. Kennedy and it did not stop him winning the 1960 election.

Today, choosing a new Archbishop of Canterbury is a relatively straightforward process. It was not always so, as Katherine Harvey explains.

Modern secularists often paint a naive view of the medieval church. The reality was far more complex, argues Tim Stanley.

Jos Damen tells the stories of two unusual men who lived a century apart in the Dutch colony at Elmina in West Africa; a poet who became a tax inspector and a former slave who argued that slavery did not contradict ideas of Christian freedom.

Often portrayed as a paragon of Christian virtue, the real King Arthur was an embarrassment to the Church, writes Simon Andrew Stirling.

Christian apocalyptic literature and ecological predictions both anticipate the end of the world. Are they born of the same tradition, asks Jean-François Mouhot?