The nineteenth-century editor of Ermenrich of Ellwangen's (ca. 814–74) Vita Sualonis, Oswald Holder-Egger, dismissed the Carolingian hagiographer's sermon on the Anglo-Saxon hermit Sualo as historically unimportant because of its heavy reliance on oral traditions, its turgid prose style, and its clumsy Latin grammar. Holder-Egger found fault with the “ahistoricism” of Ermenrich's Vita—a scholarly stance no doubt influenced by the historicism of his day that privileged “the basic story as the primary object or goal of research.” For the late-nineteenth century, the recovery and reconstruction of an original source (an archetype or Urtext) from which all other derivative and secondary versions sprang was the ultimate task of historical inquiry. Such an Urtext, once unearthed, would then present the true, uncontaminated story of what had happened in the past, and the historian who successfully excavated an Urtype would assume the role of truth teller.

Historical narrations of the Gregorian Reform tend to cultivate a certain machismo. The traditional narrative emphasizes a struggle for dominance between two men, Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV, which escalated from epistolary sparring to armed combat and culminated in a dramatic scene in which one man was on his knees before the other at Canossa. Even the newer narratives, such as the late Karl Leyser's “Gregorian Revolution,” while highlighting broad social and religious transformations attendant upon the movement, still privilege a revolutionary cadre, a handful of reformers (all male, of course) gathered around Gregory VII, who artfully channeled the discontents of the masses into a permanent reordering of western society.

Scholars of the Middle Ages have established that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was an intellectual shift in the Christian polemic against Islam. Whereas in earlier centuries heresiologists defined Islam as pagan, in the high Middle Ages the prevailing opinion emerged that it was instead a heresy. Medieval writers, who drew upon a rich theological tradition dating to the patristic era, sustained and expanded this new perspective. Many of the patristic theological refutations against heretics proved once again useful as groups such as the Waldensians, Albigensians, and others made serious challenges against the dominant orthodoxy. Even though Islam had already been a formidable presence in the Mediterranean—especially since the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the early eighth century—in the high Middle Ages the continued expansion of Islam, including its defeat of the Crusaders, was perceived to be an increased threat to Christendom. A corollary development was the greater interest in Islam—mainly to discredit or refute it—by some leading western Christian theologians. One thing is certain: medieval writers were intent on demonstrating the heretical nature of Islamic doctrines and the perversity of Islamic morality. Medieval polemicists, however, resorted to a standard theological weapon to assault Islam, typology. Through typology medieval writers were capable of constructing alleged historical and doctrinal links between Muhammad and two of the most notorious “types” of heresy from early Christianity: Simon Magus and Nicolas of Antioch.

The modern idea that to converse means to talk, to exchange ideas with another person, emerged between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Before that time, and throughout the Middle Ages, conversatio was a state of being or a way of life. To converse was to commune with God or other people, particularly in the context of religious communities. John Bossy says that this definitional shift from conduct to dialogue is one indication of how Christianity changed from a medieval system that promoted communal solidarity into a modern religion that emphasized morality and civility. John O'Malley similarly underscores the importance of the new meaning of conversation by pointing out that one of the Jesuit innovations was to make conversation a “ministry of the word” practiced in and through confession and spiritual exercises. But how did contemporaries experience the transformation of conversation from “togetherness” to “dialogue”? Apart from the Jesuit practices, do we have any way of discerning whether sixteenth-century Christians experienced conversation as a religious praxis?

Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (1486–1541), one of the most prolific authors of the Reformation, is one of the most difficult for historians to classify. He produced about ninety published writings, which were printed in about 213 editions. “Among evangelical authors during the years 1518–1525, Karlstadt, after Martin Luther (1483–1546), published the largest number of works in German; and, after Luther's, his works had the second-largest number of editions.” Indeed, on these grounds “it is a safe assumption that Karlstadt's activities as a publicist had a major impact.” Yet during several years of his career, his writings had to be printed and read secretly. He even gave up his academic responsibilities for a time. However, his battles against images and, later, against Luther's doctrine of the Lord's Supper, both influenced the whole course of the Reformation in Germany and beyond.

William Bradford wrote, at the beginning of his history Of Plymouth Plantation, “I must begin at the very root and rise” of the story, setting events down “in a plain style, with singular regard unto the simple truth in all things.” He intended to produce an accurate and clear account of the way the Plymouth settlers' lives unfolded. Readers after postmodernism may note with skepticism the governor's claim that his portrayal set down only the perfectly discoverable truth of the matter. Yet certain sparely depicted moments in his history lead us to accept the description “the simple truth” as the only one appropriate to his work.

Early one Canadian winter morning in 1908, a teenage girl knelt to pray, pleading with God to grant her the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” Soon her petition was answered. Her body began to tremble, she slipped to the ground, and out of her lips escaped murmurs in unknown tongues. The next day, during Sunday services at a little pentecostal mission, the teenager again quaked on the floor while jabbering strange syllables. A parishioner was so shocked that he telephoned the girl's parents and implored them to retrieve the way-ward adolescent immediately. When the young woman learned that her mother was en route, panic engulfed her. How could she make her parents understand? Would they forbid her from worshipping with pentecostals?