There was a trend of increased respect for the monarchy (p349) and growing devotion to Christ (p350f).  Literacy, text and printing were of ...

  One medieval child who was not baptised until the age of 12 was known as Pagan, but baptism on the day of birth became normal. The princip...

 Nicholas Orme, Going to Church, p259, a picture shows people's dogs following them to church  Lengths of candle and wick might be stret...

 Rubrics were so called because they were in red.  The Office readings included history and doctrine and less Bible (p208) The canon or pray...

 Church attendance figures were not normally recorded until the mid 19th C though from at least the 13th C, incumbents and churchwardens wou...

 (See below for previous blogposts on consecration and seating).  Nicholas Orme, Going to Church in Medieval England, chapter 3. Churches fa...

 In nine pages (p120ff) Nicholas Orme tells us more than we could possibly imagine about this difficult and controversial subject ( Going to...

 These rites date from Anglo-Saxon times and consecration was required by the papal legate to England in 1237.  You are going to need a bish...

 As described by Nicholas Orme in Going to Church in Medieval England chapter two.  There were all sorts of clergy, secular and religious. D...

  Nicholas Orme’s Going to Church in Medieval England (Yale University Press, 2021) does not prosecute any particular thesis but tries to d...

 In his little book Creativity, John Cleese explains that he didn't join the Cambridge Footlights because he wanted to go into show busi...

 For a few weeks now I have been living in the book of Ecclesiastes. With its message of foggy vapour, it tries to teach us that life is but...

 I have just picked up John Cleese Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide (Penguin, 2020). And it has set me thinking about creativity in p...

  Today the church remembers Bernard of Clairvaux (died 1153). If you don't have time to read his 86 sermons on (part of) The Song of So...

  Most of us can’t always be deliberately thinking of God – we’ve got to do other stuff we have to concentrate on. You don’t want to crash...

  James K. Smith, On The Road With Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts (Brazos Press, 2019) hb, 240pp   Metap...

  I read theology as an undergraduate and since then spent a year with UCCF / RTSF and I have had two stints as a student at a theological c...

  You may have seen something of the Save The Parish campaign either online or in the national press.   Let me say to begin with that in...

 Speaking on Exodus 15 at the Evangelical Ministry Assembly (24/6/21) Nigel Styles suggests that in the Bible Egypt is characteristically th...

One way of thinking about the story of the Bible is as salvation through the waters. Salvation through the waters.   You may remember ...