Christianity

The site of her oldest university and the home of one of her earliest missionary Saints, St. Andrews holds a special position in the history of Scotland, as Russell Kirk here explains.

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

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

Richard Cavendish marks the anniversary of St Catherine of Siena's canonisation by Pope Pius II on 29 April 1461.

The quest for spiritual virtue through personal austerity drove many Eastern Christians to lead solitary lives as hermits surviving in the wilderness. Andrew Jotischky describes how indifference to food became an integral part of the monastic ideal in the Byzantine era, one revived in the West in the 11th and 12th centuries.

Though Protestants sought to distance themselves from Roman Catholics on the subject, angels  played a key role in Protestant culture as a means by which to understand humans and their place in the universe, explains Joad Raymond.

During the Anglo-French conflicts that characterised the 14th century, the Oxford theologian John Wyclif challenged the  ‘un-Christian’ pursuit of war and wealth. Yet, just like anti-war protesters today, Wyclif had little influence on Parliament or the king, writes Rory Cox. 

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was not only a celebration of Victorian Britain’s scientific and economic pre-eminence but also a hymn to the religion that underpinned it, argues Geoffrey Cantor.

J.K. Elliott describes how many diverse elements are woven into the traditional account of the Nativity; but ‘the inspiration that the story has given to countless believers... speaks for its effectiveness.’

Lucy Wooding introduces a highly significant, but often much misunderstood, cultural force.