Religion

Saint Thomas Becket curing a man in his sickbed, stained glass window (detail), Canterbury Cathedral, early 13th century.

Age of Doubt: Saints and Sceptics

The medieval period was a golden age of saints and miracles, but they were met with a healthy dose of scepticism.

Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1542 and Katherine of Aragon, unknown artist, c.1520.

Gone But Not Forgotten

The Dissolution of the Monasteries is a well-worn tale. Are we getting the whole story?

‘The Confession’ by Stahlstich Wrankmore, steel engraving, 1847.

Confess Your Sins

In 17th-century Tuscany and Malta some women were able to hold their abusers, members of the clergy, to account.

No Grand Plan

The dissolution of the monasteries as a series of decisions and indecisions.

Synagogue, by Thomas Rowlandson c. 1809. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Bad with the Good

The history of England’s Jewish community in a period of revolution.

The Ramayana is one of the two great ancient Sanskrit epics from India (the other being the Mahabharata) and is one of Hinduism’s foundational texts. Thought, in its earliest sections, to date from between the seventh and fourth centuries bc, it forms part of the cultural consciousness across the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. The Ramayana covers the journey of prince Rama and his wife Sita, and is full of poignant stories and captivating characters through which the importance of virtue and duty e

The Nandi Bull

Two Hindu gods discover an abandoned child while following the wind’s path.

Woman holding cacao (and decorated with cacao beans), Maya, AD 250-450 © Bridgeman Images.

The Theology of Chocolate

The introduction of chocolate to the Catholic world caused a dilemma: could it be eaten? Should it be given up for Lent?

Frieze panel showing triumphant Romans carrying the seven-branched menorah from the Temple of Jerusalem from the Arch of Titus, Rome © Werner Forman Archive/Getty Images.

Jerusalem Burning

When Roman forces burned the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70, the Flavian dynasty thought it had defeated the Jewish god in the name of Jupiter. It was mistaken.

Playing Saints

Unmasking an audacious saintly fraud in early modern Naples.

Mara, the spirit of evil, tells the Buddha it is time to die and Ananda asks the Buddha three times to remain on earth, from The Life of the Buddha, Burmese, c.1800-20.

One of Buddhism’s most reviled villains was crucified in the Buddhist underworld. When French Christians arrived in Siam in the 17th century, venerating images of Christ on the cross, dialogue between the two religions reached an impasse.