Essays on the Intersection of Ecclessiastical and Military History

Solid in every sense, this excellent volume is of importance to ecclesiastical historians, to military counterparts, and to historians concerned with particular topics, including from Anglo-Saxon England and Crusading history to art to animal history. That range underlines the significance of these Studies, both this volume and others in the series, and the need for their careful consideration by non-ecclesiastical historians. Indeed, it is difficult to think of a major series that is of such general importance.

The standard reviewing approach would be to provide comments on each essay but, aside from Snape’s careful introduction, which, indeed, does so, the range of the 22 essays, from Chirstopher Scargill on the Roman army and the conversion of Northern Britain (the significance of Hadrian’s Wall as a ‘hot spot’) to Brandon Hurlbert on how the Psalms were extensively used by the American military in the Iraq War of 2003-11, is somewhat beyond the expertise of this reviewer. Andrew Totten on purification by the Church in order to secure providential support for Carolingian armies raises interesting questions about variations in this established practice. ‘Magic’ of an overlapping type was established by the use of saintly symbols, as with James Barnaby’s consideration of the banner of St Edmund at the battle of Fornham (Oct, 17, 1173), an instance of his evolution as a warrior saint. In turn, the use of the crusader cross on the First Crusade is assessed by Alastair Forbes.

There is a consistency here which is not apparent in the next piece, Haoyang Lin’s study of the Mongols on the fresco cycle in the Oratory of San Giorgio in Padua. There is much supposition, as in ‘the depiction of Mongolian warriors watching the martyrdom of Saints as neutral bystanders could weaken the tension and hostility between Christians and Mongols … there is probably a suggestion that Mongols might be converted.’ Maybe so, but the evidence is very limited, which, unfortunately, is all-too-often the case with Art History.

We are on firmer ground in Angus Crawford’s consideration of the Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick, an almshouse which is presented as a godly military political project. This, however, is shown to have been difficult and controverted in practice. Puritanism emerges as far from a happy ship.

Leicester’s opponents are discussed in the next, Silvia Mostaccio’s ‘Missionaries and Military in Spanish Europe: Cultural and Religious Issues from the Jesuit Mission in the Army of Flanders, 1587-1659.’ In this careful and well-argued piece, a more ‘communitarian’ approach, also open to Protestants, is seen as from the mid-1630s. ‘Service to the suffering body’ was reconceptualised.

Fiona McCall assesses the New Model Army and parish life, with a middle-path drawn between a recovered memory of insistent military intervention and a reality of some influence. This ‘middle path’ is seen as operating through behind-the-scenes influence, as in facilitating clergy appointments and ejections. Relations were closer in the case of Scottish Presbyterians and the Dutch and Swiss forces sent in 1715-16 to defeat the Jacobites. Michael Fraser provides a most interesting account of an international religious solidarity that benefited the Hanoverians and contrasted with attitudes in England where more hostility to such troops was displayed.

Authority over the multi-confessional British army in Scotland is shown by Xiang Wei to have posed many problems for the Kirk, forcing it to re-negotiate parameters that accepted the autonomy of the army and its rules. The Kirk, instead, exercised influence but in a more collaborative fashion; thus accepting a narrower ‘national’ practice within bi-confessional Britain. Denis Sdvizhkov considers a more varied multi-confessional army, that of Russia during the Seven Years’ War of 1756-63. Co-existence benefited from the practice of state control. Confession and communion were popular in the field army, and notably so before major clashes.

The British Empire is to the fore, with Stewart Brown on the mid-nineteenth century ‘Punjab School’ with its evangelical conviction that the Empire had a Providential purpose. Moral character was seen as providing purpose to and in rule, not least in defence against the Mutiny.

In turn, Mark Whalan considers the posthumous Gordon cult which was buttressed by a quasi-messianic reinterpretation of his final passion. This sought to demonstrate that his apparent defeat was made triumphant by preordained sacrifice while underlining the degree to which core Christian and military virtues were ultimately synonymous. Whalan does not bring this out, but this approach was important to the attitudes seen in the First World War. Haig was invited to the Gordon Memorial Service at Sandringham hosted by Edward, Prince of Wales in 1898. This was an important occasion in the development of the Gordon cult.

Michael Snape offers an important account of the Church of England and the navy before and during the war, with neither the Church nor the navy fulfilling prewar expectations. The difficult legacy of Jutland is considered, as are the clash between memorialisation and humiliation, the search for heroes, the raffishness of Beatty, Randall Davidson’s highly positive response to the Zeebrugge Raid, and the greater repute earned by the army. A very important piece that closes with the postwar career of a wartime naval chaplain, Harold Davidson, Rector of Stiffkey. Both his wartime and his postwar reputations were very poor.

Mark Chapman considers a very different wartime chaplain, Maurice Peel, a Prime Minister’s grandson and cleric who volunteered as a wartime chaplain, winning a Military Cross, before being killed in battle by a sniper. Popular and not paternalistic, he translated the values of the East End ministry to the Church.

Differently, Joseph Hardwick assesses the churches’ relationship with military animals, while Philip Williamson considers the 1930 governmental ban on military chaplains saying special intercessory prayers at religious services, an essay that leads him to consider the free church participation in military chaplaincy. Ana Amélia G. Dias discusses the reintroduction of religious activity into the Brazilian army during the Second World War, showing how it reversed a pattern of prewar secularisation. This looks toward its greater postwar conservatism.

Stephanie Burette assesses Stanley Warren’s redemptive Changi murals, and Charlotte Methuen uses the letters of Charles Hooper to focus on RAF Chaplaincy and Moral Leadership courses. Peter Howson shifts attention to peacetime in the shape of British garrison churches in Germany which continued until 2019, but, as he shows, are now in danger of being forgotten.

A most impressive and important volume. It could and indeed should be the first of several in this field, and possibly, for each volume, in a more coherent fashion. There is certainly much to discuss, including institutional and personnel issues. The Church as context, cause and process is all significant. The chronological dynamic, however, is challenged because the Church in a period of conversion was different to that in one of mastery and then, again, with that of division. So also in terms of differential social contexts and their gender equivalents. These comments are not intended to criticise the volume under review, but simply to suggest that it is possible to think and rethink the subject by adopting different categories. At any rate, we need to see work of this quality.

The idea that war is an embarrassment to an ecclesiastical history focused on religious confessional reconciliation is foolish, not only as an approach to the past but also as an approach to present and future. The difficulty is more general in historical studies, as the approach based on sensibilities currently dominates, with identities past and present validated as a consequence. This is misleading and rests on a failure to appreciate the essentially unfixed nature of the recoverability of the past.

There are obviously potential parallels in the treatment of religious and ecclesiastical history, but here the question is the combination of the two. This volume clearly shows that it is important and can be ably handled, which is an invitation to do much more.

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Our Reviewer: Jeremy Black, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Exeter, is a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of an impressive number of works in history and international affairs, frequently demonstrating unique interactions and trends among events, including The Great War and the Making of the Modern World, Combined Operations: A Global History of Amphibious and Airborne Warfare, and The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon. Among others, he has previously reviewed here The Pacific’s New Navies, No More Napoleons, Republic and Empire. Crisis, Revolution, America’s Early Independence, The Fate of the Day, The Maginot Line: A New History, The Nuclear Age. An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival, Daring to Be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World, Mexico: A 500-Year History, A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China, On Strategists and Strategy, Japan’s Grand Strategy: Liminal Power in an Uncertain World, The War that Made the Middle East, The Cambridge History of War, Volume III, War and the Early Modern World, The Firearms Revolution. Generalship on the Eastern Front 1941-45, The Generals: 69 Generals, 69 Authors, 69 Lessons in History, and The Return of the Great Powers.

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