Render Unto Caesar

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\viewkind4\uc1\pard\hyphpar0\sb227\sl252\slmult1\qj\cf1\lang1033\outl\f0\fs20 Render Unto Caesar is a remarkable study of the religious politics of the reign of Queen Anne, rooted in a profound knowledge of manuscript sources. Barry Levis has revealed how central the Church was to the period of \lquote the rage of Party\rquote . It is further evidence that the Church was a source of passionate controversy in the early eighteenth century.\par
William Gibson, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Oxford Brookes University.\par
Using an impressive range of archival and printed sources, Levis details the high politics of ecclesiastical policy politics in the early eighteenth century. Render Unto Caesar offers a reliable guide to the complex debates about the relationship between church and state in post-revolutionary England.\tab\par
Brian Cowan, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Early Modern British History, McGill University\rquote . \par
R.B. Levis grounds this first deep-dive regnal analytical narrative of Queen Anne\rquote s struggle to rule with moderation in a thorough exploitation of the extant sources, making especially effective use of the surviving fragments of the diary and correspondence of Anne\rquote s figurative confessor, the embattled Anglican moderate John Sharp, Archbishop of York. The result is a definitive study of Church-State politics for Anne\rquote s reign for our times and, one anticipates, for many years to come.\par
R.O. Bucholz, Professor of History, Loyola University Chicago\par
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Leavis, by contrast, considers the Church of England through the machinations involved in its governance. Render unto Caesar is to be commended for its exceptionally close reading of the personalities at the court of Queen Anne. But one cannot help wondering whether politics, even ecclesiastical politics, is bigger than that.
Brent S. Sirota, North Carolina State University In Church History, Volume 92 , Issue 4 , December 2023, pp. 994 - 995.

Outside of the bishops' correspondence, much of Levis's evidence base is the familiar ground of the famous pamphlets that made up the "Rage of Party," spurred from wellunderstood debates like the Occasional Conformity controversy, and the Sacheverell Riots. These sources will probably never stop attracting scholarly attention, not least because of their remarkable readability: Swift's Conduct of the Allies, and many of the others that feature in Levis's book, are pleasures to read centuries later. They have also been shown to be central to literary and political developments of the long eighteenth century. Levis's lens of analysis presents these pamphlets in a fresh perspective. Levis's capacity to do so leaves one wondering what insights these sources will be used for next.
William H. F. Mitchell, London School of Economics and Political Science, In Journal of British Studies, April, 2024, pp.1-2.