Academic literature on the topic 'Reformed Church (Dutch) in London, England'

This article considers responses to Habsburg persecution of Protestants in Hungary during the 1670s. Focusing on the Reformed church, it will first assess how long-established contacts with Reformed co-religionists in northwestern Europe came to provide support for Hungarians in the face of violent state repression. This will concentrate in particular on the trial and imprisonment of Protestant clergy after 1674 and on the liberation of one group of ministers in 1676, thanks to Dutch intervention. It will then consider the diverse ways in which Habsburg persecution of Hungarian Protestants was represented in the Dutch Republic, England, France, and in Hungary, and what this reveals about the international Reformed community toward the end of the confessional age. It will then assess the role of persistent but shifting memories of this era of martyrs and liberators in the later development of Hungarian Reformed identity.

In the year 1643 the Dutch revolt against Spain was dragging gradually to an end. Repeated attempts by Stadtholder Frederick Henry to take Antwerp had failed. Since 1640 only minor military operations had been undertaken. The demand for peace was growing, but this, at the same time, led to divisions of opinion. During this period of domestic tension the United Provinces became involved in events in England leading to the Civil War.

The article deals with the epidemic of plague which happened in London in 1563. It is studied through the lens of sources connected with the Church of England, namely, the documents establishing extraordinary services, special homily written and published in the same year, and the correspondence of ecclesiastical as well as secular authorities. This approach leads to the conclusions of how the plague was understood by theologians, which measures (both, spiritual and practical) were considered to be efficient, and how the epidemic reflected in the administrative practice of the English church. The Early Modern people perceived plague as a supernatural calamity as it was sent by God in order to punish people for their sins and move them towards repentance. The natural mechanisms of plague’s spreading, most commonly explained through the theory of miasma, were nothing more but an instrument of God’s will. Thus, the reaction to the plague became primarily a matter spiritual which belonged to the competence of the church. Practical measures were inextricably entwined with the theological comprehension of the problem as well as the reasons of ecclesiastical policy. The London plague of 1563 was the first “great” epidemic for the reformed Church of England to face. The ecclesiastical administration introduced in cooperation with the secular authorities a special form of service and a homily for ‘this time of God’s visitation’ which determined the whole posterior tradition of reactions towards plague.

In Tudor Prelates and Politics, Lacey Baldwin Smith wrote sympathetically of the dilemma faced by the conservative bishops who saw control over the Church of England slip from their grasp after the accession of Edward VI in 1547, but he gave less attention to the reforming bishops who worked to advance the Protestant cause. At the beginning of the new reign the episcopal bench, according to Smith's calculations, included twelve conservatives, seven reformers, and seven whose religious orientation could not be determined (see Table 1). The ranks of the conservatives were thinned as a consequence of the deprivation of Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, Edmund Bonner of London, Nicholas Heath of Worcester, George Day of Chichester, and Cuthbert Tunstall of Durham. On the other hand, eight new bishops were appointed between 1547 and 1553. These new men together with the Henrician reformers, of whom Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was most important, had responsibility for leading the church during the period which saw the most extensive changes of the Reformation era. This essay examines the careers of the newly-appointed reforming bishops and attempts to assess their achievements and failures as they worked to create a reformed church in England.The first of the eight new bishops appointed during the reign of Edward VI was Nicholas Ridley, who was named Bishop of Rochester in 1547 and translated to London in 1550. In 1548 Robert Ferrar became Bishop of St. David's in Wales. No new episcopal appointments occurred in 1549, but during the following year John Ponet succeeded Ridley at Rochester while John Hooper took the see of Gloucester.

This article analyses the theological development of the eighteenth-century Church of England priest Augustus Montague Toplady through two manuscript collections. The first of these is a copy of John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament that Toplady heavily annotated during his time as a university student in 1758. This book is held in the Methodist Archives and Research Centre at the John Rylands Library. Toplady’s handwritten notes total approximately 6,000 words and provide additional information regarding the development of his views of John Wesley and Methodism, ones which he would not put into print until 1769. Toplady’s notes demonstrate how he was significantly influenced by the works of certain Dutch, German and Swiss Reformed theologians. The second is a collection of Toplady’s papers held by Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Together, these sources enable Toplady’s own theology and his controversies with Methodists to be viewed from a new perspective. Moreover, these sources provide new insights into Toplady’s conceptualisation of ‘Calvinism’ and changes in the broader Anglican Reformed tradition during the eighteenth century.

AbstractThe London churches built by Nicholas Hawksmoor – the architect required by the Commission for the Fifty New Churches to provide a template for the new churches according to the principles laid down in 1712 – are often regarded as the idiosyncratic creations of the architect’s individual genius. They were, however, as much the creation of the particular intellectual, theological and political context of the late Stuart period, an expression of a high church attempt to reconnect the Church of England with the early centuries of the Christian Church, particularly the great basilicas built under Constantine and Justinian. Conservative in intent, they were at the same time fed by the new spirit of intellectual enquiry led by the Royal Society and the expansion of global trade at the start of the eighteenth century. These express a new Anglican denominational identity as the inheritor of the ‘purest’ traditions of the ‘primitive’ church, ancient yet modern, orthodox and, at the same time, reformed: one that still influences discussion across the Communion today.

The topic of my research is the Hungarian students at the universities of England and Scotland in the modem age (1789-1914). In this topic, prof. emer. George Gömöri carried on research-work on Hungarian students in England and Scotland (16—17th century) and there are other researchers and historians who are concerned with making scientific investigations on H ungarian and Transylvanian students abroad like Richard Hörcsik and Agnes Simovits. Moreover, regarding to the Transylvanian Unitarians: Elisabeth Zsakó and Andrew Kovács have to be mentioned. My research includes the studies of students from the Hungarian Kingdom and from Transylvania. I burrowed in sources and I collected references and trying to find all of the H ungarian students who studied in England and Scotland during the long 19th century. First of all I examined the matriculation books of Oxford and Cambridge which contain facts about the students’ birth-places, nationality or their origin, the date of entry, and their fathers' name. I also checked the registers of the colleges in w hich I found the same data. Furthermore, I burrowed in the documents of the H ungarian Protestant church districts, especially the documents of foreign affairs and of the educational administration. I also searched through the annual reports of Universities. After all I completed my data from different encyclopedias, like Pallas, Szinnyei's or Révai's. During the long 19th century 13 English and 4 Scottish universities existed. I found H ungarian and Transylvanian students in 4 English universities and in all the Scottish ones. Altogether there were 226 students. A couple of them studied in more universities. In England: 138. In London: 70, in Cambridge: 32, in Oxford: 30, in Manchester: 1, the target universities of 5 students are unknown. In Scotland: 101. In Edinburgh: 91, in Aberdeen: 5, in Glasgow: 3, in St. Andrew's: 2. (I mention that during my research I found 2 other Hungarian students who studied in Belfast.) Before 1860 we can't talk about the flow of students, according to my research there were only 10 students. 1 have to emphasize that my research has not been finished yet, consequently the num bers may change in the future. Studying in England and in Scotland wouldn't have been possible without the foreign or the home scholarships and foundations. I found that the greater part (more than 50 per cent) of the students who studied in England and in Scotland, traveled and studied with the assistance of English and Scottish foundations. More than 80 of the Hungarian students learnt theology at the Neu> College in Edinburgh, where a foundation was founded in 1863 for H ungarian and Czech reformed theological students; which granted 50 pounds per capital for 2 people from both of the countries in every year. Another foundation existed for Transylvanian Unitarians by the Manchester New College which institute was situated in London, than in 1889 it moved to Oxford. This college welcome 20 Transylvanian Unitarians who studied theology, pedagogy and other arts. For Transylvanian Unitarian women there was another scholarship - so-called the Sharpefoundation - in London at the Charming House School, which made possible for 16 Transylvanian women to study different studies in England between 1892 and 1914. Besides these foreign foundations there were H ungarian ecclesiastical relief funds which helped students who would have liked to study in England and Scotland. I found Szalapfoundation among the documents of the Trans-Danubian Church District. In other church districts there were other aids about 200 korona/crowns per capital and in special cases the church district awarded 400 crowns to a student to cover his travel expenses. In H ungary there were other foundations at the universities to maintain the students who wanted to study in England. After having finished their studies in Hungary, the medical students could gain experiences in England with the Benc-travelling-scholarship and w ith the Schordann-scholarship. In the early years of the 20th century medical students studied at the universities of England and Scotland for 2 years in general. Tor engineers there was the Abraham Ganz scholarship which made the way free to England. Furthermore, I found a Joseph Ferenc jubilee scholarship, it was the foundation of the city of Budapest which made possible for students to study abroad, especially in London. Besides these, other state-foundation existed for students. The religious distribution of the students is the following: Reformed: 100, Unitarian: 38, Catholic: 6, Jew: 8, Evangelical: 4. It can be ascertained that the greater part of the students were reformed and Unitarian who according to my research studied theology at the universities of England and Scotland. Regarding the origin of the students, more than 22% came from Transylvania. The 50% of the Transylvanians chose London as a destination. It is worth examining what kind of jobs they took and what kind of articles and books they wrote in connection with their English and Scottish studies after they had returned from England or from Scotland. The majority became teachers and pastors. First of all they examined the educational system of England and Scotland, secondly they saw the renewal of the Free Church of Scotland so they played an important role in the changes of the Hungarian Reformed Church. For instance the new institution whereas priests are working in prisons came from Scotland too. Owing to the fact that there were H ungarians who studied medical science in England, they acquainted H ungary with new scientific achievements. Those who became the m asters of English language found employment in diplomacy or they became interpreters and translators. As a result of their works, the writings of Darwin, John Stuart Mill and Shakespeare could be read in Hungarian. Those who got job in connection with politics or law, examined the Anglo-Saxon system of law and the English parliamentarism. They wrote books about the comparison of the H ungarian and English system of government, also about the international law ... etc. A m ong the Hungarian engineers Andrew Veress w ho finished his studies in England took part in building the first Romanian railway. What is more, the botanist, paleontologist and mineralogist Elek Pávai Vajna, who originated from Transylvania, studied natural sciencies in England. O n top of all, the famous Asia-scientist Aurel Stein studied in England too. Thanked to other students who were engaged in horticulture the English style of parks became know n in H ungary. As a conclusion I w ould like to summarise my experiences. The revealed data shows that the m ajor part of Hungarian students who studied in England and Scotland, were Reformed theological men students w ho studied with the aid of foreign foundations after 1860. W ithout a scholarship it was hard to get to England and Scotland, because of the distance and the other reason w as that the University of Cambridge and Oxford w ere elite schools and too expensive for Hungarians. In these schools the members of H ungarian aristocratic families could study like Ziehy s, Batthyány's, Esterházy's and Festetics’s. Thanked to their foreign studies the Hungarian students brought back the new scientific achievem ents and knowledge from England/Scotland w hich led to the modernization and scientific renewal of Hungary.

In 1559 Philip II left the Netherlands for Spain, where, from then on, he was to rule his empire. The government of the Provinces united by his father, Charles V, was left to his bastard sister Margaret, Duchess of Parma. Although she faithfully followed the Habsburg line, which in religion meant opposing Protestantism, her reign was characterized by a certain lack of firmness, enabling opposing factions to assert themselves. Shortly before Philip’s departure, Henry II, his French rival, had died in a tournament. His children and widow were as unable to quell the religious unrest in France as Margaret was in the Netherlands. In this situation, Calvinism grew irresistibly: from around 1555, it had already increased greatly in strength under Henry II, and in 1559 it had managed to hold a synod in Paris. That synod, as well as drawing up a Confession of Faith, produced its Discipline or Church Ordinance; and the best way of tracing the growth of Calvinism is to examine how rapidly the synods met, and to see how the Church Ordinances were adjusted to meet particular circumstances. That this development in the French Reformed Church had repercussions in the adjoining Netherlands, where the same language was spoken, at least in part, needs scarcely to be emphasized. Besides, during the reign of Elizabeth I, Calvinist refugee congregations were established in England, and these, in turn, could be used as bases for serving the Netherlands.

AbstractIn 1856 the sixth volume of the editio princeps of the famous German encyclopedia Real-Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche was published. The volume included a lengthy article on the history and present situation of the Dutch Reformed Church and other protestant churches in the Netherlands. A reformed minister of Frankfurt am Main, Carl (or Karl) Sudhoff, was the author. His article provoked a fierce protest. A Dutch ministers' association demanded from the editor, the Erlangen professor J.J. Herzog, a new article that put right what they regarded as errors. Herzog was not very inclined to comply, for it is hardly common practice to enter critical supplements in an encyclopedia. Finally, however, he gave way. The Leyden professor J.J. Prins wrote an article with a mass of criticism and after the endorsement of the ministers' association this was sent to Erlangen. Those discontented men then fell into a rage again. There was indeed a supplement to the article on Holland at the end of the eighth volume of the Real-Encyklopädie, but it did not offer the text of Prins. Herzog had added his own commentary to Prins's review. Time and again he remarked that the severe criticism sent from Holland was the criticism of a party. Besides that it turned out that he had omitted many important matters in the critical review written by Prins. The point at issue was that the very orthodox Sudhoff gave a highly biased description of the history and contemporary situation of Dutch Protestantism. Already in 1851 many people in Holland were angry about Abraham Capadose's report on the Netherlands at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in London. The orthodox agreed with what men like Capadose said in other countries, but followers of other parties in the Dutch protestant churches wanted a balanced and more appreciative judgement of their position. All parties were keen on an image matching their own viewpoints. The reason why they were doing so much to correct a negative image elsewhere was the interest in their identity. In 1860 all that thinking about identity led to two brilliant treatises on Dutch Protestantism in the nineteenth century: Chr. Sepp's Proeve eener pragmatische geschiedenis der Theologie hier te lande and D. Chantepie de la Saussaye's La Crise religieuse en Hollande.

This article studies the appropriation of Anglican choral evensong, and more specifically, dress at choral evensong, in the Netherlands outside the context of the Anglican Church to gain more insight into religiosity in the Netherlands. The authors explore the dress worn at choral evensong in the Netherlands and the meanings participants attribute to it. The concepts of denotational and connotational meanings are used as an analytical tool. In analysing their interviews, the authors came across three categories of meaning and function participants attribute to dress at choral evensong. The first category was the reference to ‘England as a model’. By wearing Anglican dress, choirs indicate they belong to the high-quality sound group of English cathedral choirs. At the same time, by changing the Anglican ‘dress code’, choirs emphasise their unicity and individuality, independent of church traditions. The second category was the marking of identity: choirs copy the dress from the English tradition, but add some elements to mark their own identity. Besides this marking of identity, aspects of unicity, uniformity, group identity, and gender-marking also play a part. The third category was metamorphosis and transcendence. Choir members refer to unarticulated transcendental experiences by wearing ritual liturgical dress. On the one hand the authors noted a ‘cathedralisation’ or ‘ceremonialisation’ of the singers’ dress, and on the other a de-institutionalisation, for example, in the dress of the minister, if present. The article’s main conclusion is that the fieldwork data reveal that dress at choral evensong in the Netherlands points to changing religiosity at two different levels. First, the authors observe a transformation in the way religion is expressed or ritualised in Reformed Protestant churches in the Netherlands. The popularity of evensong suggests a longing for other forms of worship, with a focus on ceremonies and Anglican-like vesture for the singers. Second, they observe a mix of concert practices and Anglican-like rituals, which the interviewees in our research refer to as a new form of religiosity. In both practices the traditional dress of the Anglican Church is used, whether copied exactly or adapted. A new phenomenon may be observed: choirs wear Anglican-like vesture decoupled from the Anglican Church as they are longing for transcendental experiences which they find in the musical-ritual form and high musical quality of choral evensong.

Chapter 4 analyzes the publications resulting from Featley’s debates with prominent anti-Calvinist leaders. This chapter examines Featley’s use of patristic tradition in these disputes, the pastoral motivations that underpinned his polemical exchanges, and how Featley strategically issued these polemical publications to counter anti-Calvinism and to promulgate his own alternative version of orthodoxy at several crucial political moments during the 1620s and 1630s. It explores how Featley depicted Montague’s anti-Calvinism as a threefold threat to the established church: he viewed Montague’s response as a republication of the ancient Pelagian heresy, a transmission of Dutch Arminianism to the English Church, and as a slightly adapted version of Catholicism.

Sixteenth-century London played host to the formation of a small but lively Italian Protestant community, which worshiped at Mercers’ Chapel in Cheapside. By 1598, as the major influx of religious exiles progressively ended, the Italian Reformed Church ceased to exist. After some ten years, the church reopened in 1609. This chapter reconstructs the seventeenth-century vicissitudes of the Italian Church of London and its links with the Church of England. The Italian Protestant church in London dissolved probably around 1663, never adopted Anglican worship, and both from the institutional and the liturgical points of view had always been a Calvinist church.

Abstract Thomas Dongan was perplexed. In 1683, he had become governor of New York, the old Dutch colony that the British had conquered in 1664. Dongan was a Roman Catholic who keenly felt the desirability of religious tolerance. But he had never encountered such religious diversity as he had found in New York. When he arrived from England in 1683, he expected to find one or two ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Protestant state church of the Netherlands, and a Church of England minister preaching to the small but growing English population in New York. Instead, Dongan encountered a religious blend so rich and confusing that he hardly knew what to make of it. The Dutch Reformed Church was indeed the town’s largest congregation; Dongan observed that there were “not many of the Church of England, [and] few Roman Catholics.” But New York teemed with other groups. It harbored an “abundance of Quaker preachers and women [preachers] especially.”

Historical records link Christianity in Sri Lanka to colonial rule. In 1505 the Portuguese introduced Catholicism to Sri Lanka and were followed by the Dutch, who in 1658, introduced the Dutch Reformed Church (Protestant). In 1796 the British, who brought with them the Church of England, gained control of the entire country by 1815. Today, five centuries after the advent of colonial rule, the combined number of Roman Catholics and other Christians stands at less than 9% of the total population. The Roman Catholic Church is spread across Sri Lanka, with churches in every district and ministering in all languages and across a wide cross-section of social groups, while growth within Protestant denominations has been stagnant. The Sri Lankan constitution in 1972 recognised Buddhism as the national, state-supported religion. Sri Lankan Buddhists and Tamil Hindus regard Christianity as a residue of the colonial governments. With the cycles of violence, Christian churches find opportunity to bring together believers from the Sinhala and Tamil ethnic groups and work for peace. In addition, with more emphasis on addressing key social justice issues, there is ground for confidence that Christianity in Sri Lanka can sustain itself and flourish in the coming century.

Abstract This chapter focuses on the attempt in 1665 to overthrow the authority of the College of Physicians in London and to replace it with a new body, the Society of Chymical Physicians. The Restoration of the monarchy and Anglican Church after 1660 did not witness a return to the medical status quo. On the contrary, support for medical change, in particular the promotion of the ideas of the Dutch physician and chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont, was widespread in England. This was especially acute among the upper echelons of government in church and state with the court of Charles II providing patronage and support for the aims of the chemists. While the Society of Chymical Physicians, whose members were drawn from across the religious and political spectrum, ultimately failed to dislodge the London College from its pre-eminent role in English medicine, medical chemistry itself remained a vital force in England for the next forty years.

This chapter explores the early decades of the seventeenth century, when James VI of Scotland became James I of England and controversy about worship and the structure of the state church erupted anew in Scotland. When James I succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603 and added England, Wales, and Ireland to his native Scotland, the hopeful and the admiring outnumbered the detractors, for the godly knew that in 1592 he had endorsed presbyterianism in Scotland and, more recently, had disparaged Catholicism and Dutch Arminianism. Their hopes aroused, a small group of English activists initiated a petition the king received as he made his way to London. The “Millenary Petition,” so named because of the assertion it was endorsed by a thousand ministers, complained of pluralism and nonresidency, singled out bishops as pluralists although otherwise saying nothing about episcopacy, and called for higher standards in admitting men to the work of ministry. The Millenary Petition signaled the persistence of Puritan sympathies in England despite the damage done to the movement in the 1590s. The chapter also considers “Dutch Puritanism,” a convenient shorthand for the more radical or safety-seeking laypeople and ministers who went to the Netherlands as early as the 1580s.