The Epistola Widonis, or ‘Letter of Guido’, is a key source for the simony debates of the eleventh century, since it is usually considered the first major text to cast doubt on the validity of simoniacal ordinations. After examining the grounds for the letter's conventional dating to c. 1031 and attribution to Guido of Arezzo, this article makes the case for instead locating the letter's origins in the 1060s, and explores the implications of a re-dating for the dynamics of the eleventh-century ‘moral panic’ about simony.

Psalm lxxviii is one of the most prominent biblical texts associated with the crusades. Most previous scholarship has focused on the intersection of the violent language of the Psalm with the violence of crusading. This article, however, examines the use of Psalm lxxviii by crusade preachers in the context of the history of its medieval interpretations. It uncovers an established medieval tradition of using this Psalm to preach reform rather than vengeance, which crusade preachers maintained when they employed this text to encourage crusading. This finding emphasises the important role that the Church reform movement played in shaping the emergence and development of crusading.

In the early 1610s, some Italian Lutheran propaganda came to the attention of the Holy Office. Such propaganda is an anomaly for the period, and questions the current scholarship on the topic. Via the bibliographic study of pamphlets previously neglected or unknown, this article investigates this activity, mostly attributing it to Antonio degli Albizzi (1547–1627), sometime secretary to the Cardinal of Austria. This curious case elucidates the longevity of interest in Lutheranism in the Italian peninsula, and, even if in the mind of just one man, the belief that seventeenth-century Italians could still turn to Protestantism.

Hobbes's eschatology in Leviathan is one of the most striking aspects of this classic work and has received considerable scholarly attention. Nevertheless, its scriptural interpretation has rarely been examined. This article closely analyses Hobbes's scriptural case for two aspects of eschatology: the doctrine of mortalism and the terrestrial kingdom of God. It shows that, to a large extent, Hobbes's biblical exegesis for these two eschatological issues was preceded by that of his contemporaries, including Richard Overton and John Archer. It is likely, in particular, that the scriptural interpretation for Hobbes's mortalism was directly indebted to Overton's Mans mortalitie.

The Reformed Church was the official denomination at the Dutch Cape of Good Hope. Lutheran immigrants constituted the second largest Protestant group, and received recognition in 1780. This article argues that Cape Lutherans had an ambiguous relationship with their Church. They oscillated between the two denominations, guided by personal preferences, but also due to restrictions imposed on Lutherans by the Reformed authorities. The prolonged inability to secure recognition prompted the Cape Lutherans to seek support among coreligionists in the German lands, India and elsewhere in the Dutch Empire. This network challenged, but did not overcome, their restricted social and religious position in Cape society.

The formation of the General Council of Protestant Evangelical Missions in Korea in 1905 with the ultimate objective of achieving church union beyond denominational boundaries is a significant but neglected episode in the twentieth-century ecumenical movement. The council was reorganised in 1912 as the Federal Council of Protestant Evangelical Missions in Korea, which marked a significant shift of ecumenical objectives from institutional union to missionary cooperation. This article examines why and how this change happened and its implications for interpretations of the wider ecumenical movement in the twentieth century.

These two useful and beautifully-produced sets of conference and associated papers span 1200 years of theology and church archaeology in these islands and beyond. The volumes are complementary, comprising a thematic Venn diagram on the rood, its screen and the Reformation afterlife of screens. The area of Venn intersection around screens points to a missing fourth theme of great importance, which I will add to the rich store of data presented by the sixteen essayists, all of whose contributions are worthwhile in their own right.