John H Arnold

Biographic Data

ID3680990
NAMEJohn H Arnold
GIVEN NAMESJohn H
FAMILY NAMEArnold
SIGNATUREARNOLD J H
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Cambridge
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS30
TOTAL CITATIONS26
WORKS AS AUTHOR26
WORKS AS EDITOR4
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1998
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX2

  • Continuity and Change in the Experience of Confession across the Central Middle Ages

    John H ArnoldARTICLEJournal of Medieval and Early…2025

    Historians have long debated to what extent there was a shift in the sacrament of penance marked by the injunction at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) for all Christians to make annual confession. It has long been suggested that in the early Middle Ages confession was primarily a collective ritual and only became individualized and interiorized in the later Middle Ages, though early medievalists have recently presented evidence challenging this …

  • Living on the Edge

    John H ArnoldARTICLESpeculum2025

  • Believing in Belief

    Open AccessJohn H ArnoldARTICLEPast & Present2023

    While in recent decades historians have, to some degree, engaged with anthropological debates over the nature of 'religion', they have tended still to take the key term 'belief' somewhat for granted. This article suggests that we have inherited an Enlightenment legacy of thought on 'belief' that tends to treat it as credulity when applied to the general masses (taking Edward Gibbon as an important exemplar of that legacy). More recently, the theo…

  • Talking with ghosts

    Open AccessJohn H ArnoldARTICLEJournal of Medieval History2022

    The French theorists Jacques Rancière and Jacques Derrida both produced reflections on the nature of the historical archive and its relationship to dissent or resistance. The notion of a ghost, a ‘spectre’ (as referenced in Derrida’s Specters of Marx), provides this article with a means of reflecting upon those theoretical positions. It engages briefly with the civic uprising in Carcassonne led by Hélie Patrice in 1303, an event ‘haunted’ by earl…

  • Voices in Hostile Sources

    Open AccessJohn H ArnoldARTICLELaw & Social Inquiry2021Cited by: 1References: 2

    This engagement with Christopher Tomlins’s In the Matter of Nat Turner (2020) focuses on a key methodological issue faced by the author, namely how one reads and positions the “authentic voice” of a past subaltern subject, known to us only through a hostile written source. This challenge is well-known to social historians of the European middle ages, and this essay suggests various ways in which Tomlins’s monograph contributes to existing debate,…

  • The Birth of Modern Belief

    Open AccessJohn H ArnoldARTICLEThe English Historical Review2020

    The sixteenth-century Puritan Arthur Dent (whose name always makes me smile) wrote of his co-religionists ‘few will believe the scriptures. Few will believe this, because few feel it; where it is not felt, it can hardly be believed. Only the elect do feel it, and therefore only the elect do believe it’. As Ethan Shagan argues, in this gripping and hugely imaginative book, Dent’s radically restrictive view of who actually believes reflects not onl…

  • Voicing Dissent

    Open AccessJohn H ArnoldARTICLEPast & Present2019Cited by: 1

    Recent work on medieval heresy has emphasized the 'constructedness' of heresy by orthodox power, thus undermining the coherence of heretical sects and tending to suggest that those tried as heretics were essentially unwitting victims. This article examines the evidence from the entire range of surviving Lollard trials, and argues that we can see consciously 'dissenting' speech alongside the standard theological positions associated with (and perh…

  • History after Hobsbawm

    Jan Rüger, John H Arnold et al.BOOKHistory after Hobsbawm2018

  • Benedict of Alignan’s Tractatus fidei contra diversos errores

    John H ArnoldARTICLEJournal of Medieval History2018Cited by: 1

    Benedict of Alignan (c.1190–1268), bishop of Marseilles, was author of one of the most widely circulated anti-heresy treatises of the thirteenth century; probably the most widely circulated large-scale work. However, his work is little known to historians of heresy. This article describes the contents of his Tractatus fidei, reports what we know of Benedict’s life and political context, and argues that the treatise should be seen much more as a (…

  • History after Hobsbawm

    History After Hobsbawm London, John Arnold et al.EDITORBOOKHistory after Hobsbawm2017

    What does it mean—and what might it yet come to mean—to write ‘history’ in the twenty-first century? This volume brings together leading historians from across the globe to ask what being an historian should mean in their particular fields of study. Taking their cue from one of the previous century’s greatest historians, Eric Hobsbawm, and his interests across many periods and places, the essays approach their subjects with an underlying sense of…

  • Cathars in Question

    Antonio Sennis, Bernard Hamilton et al.EDITORBOOKCathars in Question2016

  • Uncertain Knowledge

    Open AccessJohn H ArnoldARTICLERenaissance Quarterly2015

    Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages. Dallas G. DeneryII , Kantik Ghosh, and Nicolette Zeeman, eds. Disputatio 14. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. viii + 346 pp. €90. - Volume 68 Issue 2

  • Christian Experiences of Religious Non-conformism

    John H Arnold, Grado Giovanni MerloCHAPTERThe Oxford Handbook of Medieval…2014

  • Reform, Clerical Culture, and Politics

    John H Arnold, Maureen C MillerCHAPTERThe Oxford Handbook of Medieval…2014

  • Penitential Varieties

    John H Arnold, Rob MeensCHAPTERThe Oxford Handbook of Medieval…2014

    It is tempting to think of ‘penitence’ as one thing within Christian culture, but this chapter demonstrates that it involved various different practices, feelings, thoughts, and ideas in a variety of different contexts for a variety of different purposes. The chapter focuses on a series of specific moments in which penitential acts occurred, from late antiquity to the later middle ages; and in so doing, demonstrates that ‘penitence’ was tremendou…

  • The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity

    John H ArnoldEDITORBOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Medieval…2014

    This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Oxford University Press via the DOI in this record.

  • Intellectuals and the Masses

    Peter Biller, John H ArnoldBOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Medieval…2014

    This volume brings together the latest scholarship on the beliefs, practices, and institutions of the Christian Church between 400 and 1500 AD. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity is about the beliefs, practices, and institutions of the Roman Church between 400 and 1500AD, and brings together in one volume a host of cutting-edge analysis. The book does not primarily provide a chronological narrative, but rather seeks to demonstrate the v…

  • Heresy and Gender in the Middle Ages

    John H ArnoldCHAPTERThe Oxford Handbook of Women and…2013

    Earlier histories have linked women with heresy in a variety of ways. More recent work dispells the idea that women were particularly prominent or active in heresy. But heresy can be analyzed via gender: this article analyzes gendered orthodox representations of "heresy," discusses the particular roles available to women within different heretical sects, and argues that a key issue is the nature of our interest in female agency and dissent.

  • What is Masculinity?

    Open AccessJohn H Arnold, Sean BradyEDITORBOOKWhat Is Masculinity?2011

    Across history, the ideas and practices of male identity have varied much between time and place: masculinity proves to be a slippery concept, not available to all men, sometimes even applied to women

  • Acute Parenchymal Disease in Pediatric Patients

    Kathleen M Ventre, John H ArnoldCHAPTERTextbook of critical care2011

  • Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe

    John H ArnoldBOOKBelief and Unbelief in Medieval…2011Cited by: 15

    For most people in the middle ages--for thousands upon thousands who lived within Christendom in the period considered by this book, 1100-1500--we have no record of what they believed or did not believe. John Arnold sifts through the traces left behind by our ancestors across Europe and assembles a more complete picture than ever before. Religion in medieval Europe was hugely important, and impinged upon the most mundane aspects of everyday life.…

  • A Century of British Medieval Studies – Edited by Alan Deyermond

    Open AccessJohn H ArnoldARTICLEEarly Medieval Europe2009

  • Religion and Popular Rebellion, From the Capuciati to Niklashausen

    John H ArnoldARTICLECultural and Social History2009References: 3

    The historiography of pre-modern popular uprisings tends to ascribe a religiose ‘naïveté’ to earlier revolts, placing religion as innately antithetical to popular politics. This article challenges that opposition, and argues that whilst (as Sam Cohn has recently demonstrated) medieval revolts were not by any means all ‘religious' in outlook, leadership or inspiration, those which did involve religious elements can be read more sympathetically and…

  • History in the Comic Mode

    Open AccessJohn H ArnoldARTICLEEarly Medieval Europe2009

  • Responses to the Postmodern Challenge; or, what Might History Become

    Open AccessJohn H ArnoldARTICLEEuropean History Quarterly2007