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?
Ian Bradley looks at the fundamentally religious nature of monarchy and the persistence of its spiritual aspects in a secular age.
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.
One of the last popes to play a major role in international affairs, Innocent XI defied Louis XIV, the Sun King, and played a decisive part in the defence of Christianity against the spread of Islam under the auspices of the Ottoman empire, as Graham Darby explains.
Richard Cavendish marks the anniversary of St Catherine of Siena's canonisation by Pope Pius II on 29 April 1461.
