Seeking Sanctuary

Seeking Sanctuary brings together life stories from LGBT migrants living in Johannesburg and their battle to reconcile faith with their sexual identity. The narratives reveal the complex interplay between homophobia and xenophobia; the fight for sexual and gender rights; and how faith-based organisations can direct social change.

"Seeking Sanctuary' explores a curious aspect of premodern English law: the right of felons to shelter in a church or ecclesiastical precinct, remaining safe from arrest and trial in the king's courts ... Although for decades after 1400 sanctuary-seeking was indeed fairly rare, the evidence in the legal records shows the numbers of felons seeing refuge in churches began to climb again in the late fifteenth century and reached its peak in the period between 1525 and 1535."-- Back cover.

Seeking Sanctuary explores a curious aspect of premodern English law: the right of felons to shelter in a church or ecclesiastical precinct, remaining safe from arrest and trial in the king's courts. This is the first volume in more than a century to examine sanctuary in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Looking anew at this subject challenges the prevailing assumptions in the scholarship that this 'medieval' practice had become outmoded and little-used by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Although for decades after 1400 sanctuary-seeking was indeed fairly rare, the evidence in the legal records shows the numbers of felons seeing refuge in churches began to climb again in the late fifteenth century and reached its peak in the period between 1525 and 1535. Sanctuary was not so much a medieval practice accidentally surviving into the early modern era, as it was an organism that had continued to evolve and adapt to new environments and indeed flourished in its adapted state. Sanctuary suited the early Tudor regime: it intersected with rapidly developing ideas about jurisdiction and provided a means of mitigating the harsh capital penalties of the English law of felony that was useful not only to felons but also to the crown and the political elite. Sanctuary's resurgence after 1480 means we need to rethink how sanctuary worked, and to reconsider more broadly the intersections of culture, law, politics, and religion in the years between 1400 and 1550.

The story of a large yet little-known Protestant denomination

“An entrancing read, illuminating how life in Britain has been influenced and enhanced by those who arrived, often with nothing except their skills.” —Babs Horton, author of Winter Swallows Seeking Sanctuary explores the history of people looking for refuge in Great Britain. It starts with those Protestant refugees fleeing oppression and persecution from Catholic Spain who ruled the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. It traces successive waves of peoples in the context of why they fled. At various times this was due to religious persecution, political upheaval, war and ethnic cleansing. “The author writes from the perspective of her work with asylum seekers, which evidently generated her interest in Britain’s history as a refuge. Jane Marchese Robinson’s passion for displaced persons is apparent in her examples and case studies, and for anyone with an interest in, or connection with, the selected groups of refugees over the past 100 years, it will make interesting reading . . . The author demonstrates compassion for, and empathy with, the groups she examines, and many will find this the compelling aspect of the book.” —Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives “This is a wide-ranging book which explores these major refugee movements in depth and it is often emotional in its details.” —Bristol and Avon Family History Society

We are not our bloodlines, but the culmination of the choices we make. Twelve years after their lives were ravaged by Vulcan’s heinous acts, Agatha and Thomas have nestled into a life in the heart of Germany. But when the bodies of townsfolk turn up dead and mutilated, people whisper about the return of Beast of the Black Forest. Agatha discovers that the place she has brought Thomas to raise and protect him is not a haven after all, but a town with a sinister past. This will not be the quiet life she had hoped for. Agatha must decide whether to stand idly by or join the effort to restore peace. All the while, she is raising a boy, who is tottering on the edge of becoming a man, as each of them learns more about who they are and how it affects who they will become. Seeking Sanctuary is a work of dark fantasy that is the second book in The Zauberi Chronicles series. The first book in the series is Vulcan Rising.

New formulations of globalisation have radically altered how people conceptualize the movement of people, ideas and capital throughout the globe, with questions of securitisation and transnational sentiment re-shaping long-standing Western concepts of asylum and human rights. Questioning the manner in which the reception of sanctuary in modern Australia changes migrants' sense of belonging, this interdisciplinary volume focuses on the disjuncture between receiving sanctuary and feeling secure in one's self and community. With emphasis on the formation and expression of migrant and refugee cultures, the book deliberately blurs the distinction between migrants and refugees, in order to engage more directly with the subjectivities of lived experience and social networks. Presenting research from the fields of sociology, media studies, politics, international relations and history, Cultures in Refuge places explores the manner in which notions of asylum and refuge affect the processes of articulating and negotiating identities.

A pictorial history of Jewish houses of worship - past and present - in Nassau and Suffolk counties in New York State. Contains more than 300 photos.