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The film, “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”, released in 1979, has continued to cause a vast variety of controversial responses among many global religious communities worldwide. The dissimilarity of reception is absolutely overwhelming: it ranges from official condemnations and appeals to local blasphemy laws - to whole-hearted laughter and support for this whimsical view of the I century Palestine. “’Monty Python’s Life of Brian’ provoked a furious response in some quarters when the film first appeared in 1979, even leading to cries of ‘blasphemy’. However, many students and teachers of biblical literature were quietly, or even loudly, amused” , writes Joan. E. Taylor. However, what are the conditions underpinning this severance of opinions? The aim of this research is to conduct a comparative analysis of responses within the same topographical culture of most widely spread Christian denominations of England: Anglicanism and Catholicism, with the Jewish community of England used as a control group. This way, we can make an attempt at bringing out what determines the reception of this particular film as amusing (humorous) or blasphemous. In order to reach this aim, we are to achieve these objectives: • To establish operable definitions for the key terms: blasphemy, the comic, humour, laughter, etc.; • To look into the historic background of “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”: cultural profile of the creators, main themes and topics employed of the film, its goals; • To acquaint ourselves with the historical context and conditioning of the blasphemy law in the UK from the time of its introduction to its abolition; • To make an overview of the way the film was received in the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish communities of England in the period from 1979 to the present, based on the periodicals and existing research works on the topic; • To draw a comparative analysis from the data, obtained upon achievement of the previous objectives. The conclusion of the research should represent the factors, which draw the line between the comic and the blasphemous in the reviewed context.

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Despite having been a prominent figure during a thoroughly researched period of Western European history, François I has long been the subject of neglect and misunderstanding. This is exhibited by the failure of the historiography to analyse his theological outlook. The notion that François held theological sympathies has been simply disregarded by the factionalist paradigm initiated by Jules Michelet in the late nineteenth century based on the assumption that his licentiousness precluded this possibility and has been explicitly rejected by the Milanese paradigm represented by Robert Knecht who maintains that he was solely concerned by the pursuit of certain territorial ambitions. Through a repudiation of these positions in conjunction with French and English archival sources, we offer an alternative perspective which we apply to an evaluation of the hypothesis that François held genuine theological convictions which motivated his religious policies. Given that François considered it his duty to extirpate heresy, we argue that his consistent protection of evangelicals from the denunciations of the Parlement and the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris throughout the 1520s is best explained through his affinity for certain reformist theological principles. Following an examination of the diplomatic context surrounding the negotiation of the Concordat of Bologna in 1516 and its later financial exploitation, we interpret the justifications offered by François for its imposition as pointing to his attempt at a holistic reform of the French Church based on what he considered to be his ecclesiastical prerogatives and duties. These same duties were exercised following the Sack of Rome in 1527 when François convened the Conciliabulum of Avignon in order to address how the French and English Churches should be governed during the captivity of Clement VII. Despite having never been considered the steerer of French religious policy, we analyse evidence of François having steered English religious policy through his innovation of the final solution to Henry VIII’s Great Matter. We also propose a semantic revision of François’s correspondence which has the capacity to resolve the paradox between his attempts to ally with the Schmalkaldic League in the early 1530s while concurrently persecuting French Protestants as well as a narrative revision of his response to the Affairs of the Placards in 1535 which unveils his profound appreciation of traditional Eucharistic theology. In the light of this evidence, we conclude that our hypothesis is worthy of acceptance and carries significant repercussions both for our understanding of François and the sixteenth century as a whole.