‘Raptus’, the abduction of women in order to marry them, was seen as a serious problem in Carolingian Francia. This article examines the only Frankish text that provides a theological justification for condemning raptus, Hincmar of Rheims's De coercendo et exstirpando raptu viduarum, puellarum ac sanctimonialium. It shows the difficulties that Hincmar found in providing a coherent theological argument against a practice normally condemned for its social and familial disruption. In particular, it suggests that Hincmar was worried that laymen, who had been encouraged by Carolingian reformers to study the Bible, might use Old Testament precedents to justify raptus.

In two texts written between 1185 and 1205, Gervase of Canterbury proposed a vision of the role of the Benedictine community of Christ Church in relation to the archbishop, their nominal abbot. In the Tractatus de combustione and the Actus pontificum, Gervase repeatedly presented the monks as the guardians of the archbishops' relics and memory. This in turn allowed him to establish close links between the prelates and a precise locus, the cathedral, in an attempt to reassert the traditional role of Christ Church as the archiepiscopal church at a time when this role was under threat.

This article examines foundations of perpetual mortuary intercessions in Nantes between 1500 and 1700. The sixteenth-century religious wars were a crucial era of devotional change. In reaction to Protestantism and conflict, collective ritual, devotion to the eucharist and charitable work received emphasis, while mortuary intercession declined. After 1600 traditional practices reasserted themselves, encouraged by Tridentine-inspired devotions and renewed clericalism. Foundations in convents and collegiate churches became the hallmark of the wealthy devout. However, elite and popular groups also turned to greater engagement with the world through good works, and dependence upon Mary for intercession. While interiority was a vital part of the new spirituality, exterior and collective religious acts remained vital.

This paper analyses the scheme of imagery designed in about 1638 by Christopher Wren, dean of Windsor, for the chancel of East Knoyle parish church in Wiltshire. While Wren's close association with Lancelot Andrewes and the Laudian circle makes this scheme understandable as ‘Laudian’, its particular combination of picture and text accommodated a broader range of beliefs. The study of the theological content of the scheme, and of its intended manner of reception, sheds new light on the function of imagery within the pursuit of the ‘beauty of holiness’, drawing attention to the role it could play in establishing an active understanding of the liturgy.

Pope Benedict xv's gradual rehabilitation of the French Christian Democrat Marc Sangnier, whose Sillon movement stood condemned for social Modernism, demonstrated his desire to end the excesses of his predecessor's anti-Modernist crusade and to return to the policies of Leo xiii. Sangnier, unofficial emissary of the French republic to the Vatican, helped to prepare for the restoration of diplomatic relations in 1921. Perplexed, like most French Catholics, by papal neutrality on the war, he later campaigned for Franco-German reconciliation, adopting the Vatican critique of the Versailles settlement. Sangnier's pardon, like Benedict's cautious endorsement of the Popolari in Italy, highlights the paradoxical papalism of advanced Social Catholicism.