Religion

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?

Richard Wilkinson argues against the prevailing orthodoxy.

A sea voyage in the 12th century was a perilous undertaking, as a Spanish Muslim courtier’s account of his crossing of the Mediterranean demonstrates. Yet, explains David Abulafia, it was also a test of one’s religious devotion, whether Muslim or Christian.

Though their appeal seems bizarre to the modern mind, relics and reliquaries reflected an entirely logical system of belief bound up in the medieval worldview, explains James Robinson, curator of a new exhibition at the British Museum.

The Victorian era was an age of faith – which is why it was also a golden period of progress, argues Tim Stanley.