The articles in this volume are based on a selection of papers given at two conferences organised by the Ecclesiastical History Society in Cambridge and Edinburgh in 2017 and 2018. The authors are overwhelmingly from the UK, some from the US and Australia, and some from continental Europe (Italy, Switzerland and France), while the articles reflect this imbalance through a preoccupation with the British Empire. Fourteen articles deal with the Church in the British Empire, seven focus on the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and two on the Ottoman and Chinese Empires. A connection between the first two is forged by selected articles focusing on how the Roman Empire provided a template for Churches in the British Empire to think about their position. The authors constitute a nice mixture of well-established, mid-career and junior scholars as well as PhD students. The attraction of this volume is that it offers a sprawling range of case studies, and that, of course, is also its weakness. However, if the reader is prepared to look beyond this, he or she will find a rich repository of articles on a fascinating topic. Without exception, the quality of the research is high; the contributions are all well-researched, well-written and engaging. Together, the articles in this volume succeed in identifying aspects that define Church-Empire relations from several angles.

The organisational logic of the volume is chronological, with papers ranging from the Early Church in the Roman Empire to the early twentieth century. A first cluster of case studies deals with the interpretation of the census in the Gospel of Luke by the early Church Fathers as a way to establish a link between the Roman Empire and Christ (Faitini), an analysis of Constantine's efforts to incur divine favour rather than to achieve ecclesiastical unity per se (Pottenger), and a rethinking of Augustine's ideas on the contrast between the City of God and the Earthly City (Clark). The second cluster concerns the Middle Ages. One article deals with the way in which the papacy connected itself to the Roman Empire after the latter's fall in 476 (McKitterick) and the continuity between the Carolingian and Roman Empires (O'Brien). The articles by Wiedemann and Macrides explore the tense relationship between the emperor and the Church in the Middle Ages and in the Byzantine Empire, suggesting that the power of the Church vis-à-vis the emperor should not be overestimated. The third cluster consists of four articles that focus exclusively on early modern Britain, with studies rethinking the Church of Ireland (Tong), the interpretation of Roman history for the position of the Anglican (Rose) and the Scottish Episcopalian Church vis-à-vis the king (Carter), and the attitude of Scottish missionaries towards empire (Loughlin). More than half of the articles (twelve) study the modern age between 1800 and 1940, the majority of which are concerned with the Anglican Church in the British Empire: the changing ways in which the Church viewed the providential nature of empire with regard to India (Brown), the ways in which prayer and fasting days connected Church and Empire (Hardwick and Williamson), royal support for the Anglican Church on Malta (Dixon), the strategy of the Church Missionary Society for the extension of Protestantism in the Arctic region (Turner), the overseas activities of Anglican chaplains in the British Empire (Strong), the Anglican mission in the Hawaiian archipelago (Maughan) and the views on empire of Anglican Christian Socialists (Lockley). Further articles deal with anti-Catholic discourse in the British Empire after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 (Vaughan), millenarian providential views of empire by the Panacea Society (Shaw) and the relationship between missionaries and the British Empire (Thompson). Two articles focus on non-European empires: one on changing strategies of the Catholic mission in early modern and modern China (Hsia) and one on the Catholic Church in Armenia during the Ottoman Empire (Kartashyan).

It would be easy to point out the difficulties posed by a loosely connected series of case studies for getting a clear overall picture. What the volume does do, is to provide some clue as to the current state of research, the sorts of themes and topics that are currently being researched, and perhaps implicitly the need for more collaborative and comparative international research. On a more positive note are the patterns that emerge from the volume as a whole and that underscore the buoyancy of a set of themes and approaches that seem particularly fruitful. For instance, there is a recurrent interest in several articles in the minute analysis of ceremonies as reflections of ecclesiastical or imperial ambition and power; the study of architecture proves to be fertile for capturing the same. Several articles tear down the monolithic perception of the symbiotic relationship between mission and empire. And there is an undertow in a number of studies that rethink and redefine the very two categories that this volume is built upon: Church and Empire. Is the Church an institution, is it universal, is it the people? Is empire territorial, constitutional or the people? The title of this volume is striking: a juxtaposition between ‘the Church’ and ‘Empire’, suggesting the move through history of a single Church through fleeting empires. Perhaps it should have been ‘Churches and Empires’. These fundamental questions and the patterns that emerge give this volume critical weight and allow it to transcend its nature as a collection of case studies. Together, these studies present a multifaceted picture of the ways in which empires and Churches competed, cooperated, overlapped, reinforced and distinguished themselves.