Religious history

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936 divided national public opinions throughout the West. One of the factors behind such split was religious beliefs. This was the case for the United States and Ireland where Francisco Franco's rebels got significant public support. This work argues that both the Irish and American Catholic Church hierarchies and laity Catholics' support of the Nationalists had dramatic effects domestically. This thesis expands previous scholarship on the Spanish Civil War by utilizing primary sources from both American and Irish archives to understand the intention, forms, and controversy of Irish and American Catholics' support of the Nationalists.

Author Keywords: Anti-clericalism, Catholicism, Clergy, De Valera, FDR, Spanish Civil War

This thesis examines low-ranking British soldiers' memoirs in the nineteenth century to determine the extent to which they identified with Christianity and how their expressions of faith differed from each other. Using twelve narratives published between 1811–1863, it finds that all of these soldiers identified themselves with Protestant Christianity and, more importantly, considered irreligion an evil which could not be justified by any decent British citizen. Furthermore, it argues that soldiers' identity construction was largely determined by the degree of depth of their religious understanding. It uses the work of William Wilberforce to contextualize these soldiers' expressions of faith and demonstrates how military writing can be more fully understood as representing a spectrum between nominal Christianity and real or true Christianity. This project strives to demonstrate that the religiosity of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain has a significant impact upon our understanding of their time.

Author Keywords: Britain, Christianity, memoirs, Military, soldiers, William Wilberforce

This thesis examines Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)'s theology of music, using as a starting place her letter to the Prelates of Mainz, which responds to an interdict prohibiting Hildegard's monastery from singing the liturgy. Using the twelfth-century context of female monasticism, liturgy, music theory and ideas about body and soul, the thesis argues that Hildegard considered the sung liturgy essential to monastic formation. Music provided instruction not only by informing the intellect but also by moving the affections to embrace a spiritual good. The experience of beauty as an educational tool reflected the doctrine of the Incarnation. Liturgical music helped nuns because it reminded them their final goal was heaven, helped them overcome sin and facilitated participation in the angelic choirs. Ultimately losing the ability to sing the liturgy was not a minor inconvenience, but the loss of a significant spiritual and educational tool fundamental to achieving union with God.

Author Keywords: Hildegard of Bingen, Letter to the Prelates of Mainz, liturgy, monasticism, music

This study analyzes Christian European perceptions of group identity and beliefs in early modern geographic literature, as exemplified by John Ogilby's Africa (1670), a selective translation of Olfert Dapper's 1668 work, and its descriptions of West-Central Africa. Ogilby's work, congruently with contemporary geographic literature, employed the Christian religion as a key marker of group identity, using it as a lens to interpret and define the collective identities of African societies it described. Using a theoretical framework derived from Daniel Bar-Tal's Group Beliefs, the thesis demonstrates that Africa portrayed the officially Christian kingdom of Kongo as superior to its non-Christian neighbours, consistently represented in a negative light. This attitude reflected normative European beliefs of Christian superiority fanned by the period's intense denominationalism and religious anxiety. Africa's general ecumenism towards other Christian denominations and its maintained "othering" of non-Christian Africans was closely linked to Ogilby's own sense of self-identity and group beliefs shaped by his life experiences in the seventeenth-century British Isles.

Author Keywords: Africa, Christianity, Identity, Kongo, Ogilby, Syncretism