Recent interest in the position of women in the early Church has stimulated new investigations of texts and documents which consider or define the roles of women. A number of surveys have appeared which consider a spectrum of early sources, and most of these refer to the rules laid down for widows and deaconesses in the Didascalia apostolorum. A simple reading of the Didascalia interprets it as a description of contemporary church practice which reveals a Church that allowed women a certain amount of involvement in restricted spheres: widows are to pray for the Church and deaconesses to assist at the baptism of women and to visit Christian women in their homes. Since the Didascalia does not empower women it is generally regarded with a certain amount of suspicion by those postulating a more positive role for women in early Christianity. However, a closer examination suggests that such a reading is not the whole story. Rather than having a purely descriptive function, it is more likely that the Didascalia represents an attempt to change the structure of ministry in the Churches in Syria, opposing some practices and supporting others. This article will argue that the internal evidence of the Didascalia reveals it to be an attempt to impose an episcopal structure on the Church and to restrict the activity and authority of women. Seen against a background of other sources this suggests that there were groups of Christians in second- and third-century Syria and Asia Minor which recognised women's authority, and that the Didascalia was written partly in opposition to such groups.

The episcopate of Cuthbert as bishop of Lindisfarne was a product of a time of great change in the Northumbrian Church in the late seventh century. Bede's Ecclesiastical history and Stephen's Life of Wilfrid make it clear that the expulsion of Wilfrid, bishop of York and sole bishop of the Northumbrians, in 678 (HE v. 19; VW 24) opened up the Northumbrian diocese to large-scale ecclesiastical reorganisation. Wilfrid's vast see was divided and new bishops appointed. In 664, as a young man, Wilfrid had played a significant part at the Council of Whitby in bringing about the expulsion of Colmán, Aidán's successor as bishop of Lindisfarne, the termination of the Columban mission and the replacement of the see of Lindisfarne by that of York; but the bishops who replaced Wilfrid were prepared to deal sensitively with the legacy of Aidán's mission in a post-Council of Whitby era. Bosa, trained at Whitby under Abbess Hild who had been instructed in the religious life by Aidán, became bishop of Deira at York; Eata, abbot of Lindisfarne, one of Aidán's Northumbrian disciples and formerly abbot of the monastery of Melrose which had been founded in the time of the Columban mission, became bishop of Bernicia with his episcopal seat variously at Hexham and Lindisfarne; and Eadhæsd, a former companion of Aidán's disciple Chad (HE iii. 28), was made bishop of Lindsey (HE iv. 12). When Lindsey was lost to the Mercians in 679 Eadhæd was made bishop of the short-lived see of Ripon [HE iv. 12), and in 681 Trumwine, whose antecedents are unknown but who later retired to Whitby, became bishop of Abercorn on the Forth [HE iv. 12, 26).

Compared with other apologetical works from the early Christian period, the Consultationes zacchaei et Apollonii are surprisingly little discussed. One reason for this is that a lack of scholarly consensus regarding both the author and the period when the text was written has clearly limited its usefulness as a source for historians and theologians. But there is a second problem too: the Consultationes appear to belong to a number of different genres. The work, in different parts, has aspects of a standard apologetic treatise, in which the basic doctrines of Christianity are explained to a sympathetic pagan; of a sometimes rather specialised exposition of systematic theology, which is especially concerned with the relationship between the persons of the Trinity; of a rather mean-spirited attack on various kind of Christian enemies, from pagans to heretics to Jews; of an ascetic, or perhaps even monastic, tractate, which seeks toexplain certain Christian practices.

On Monday 23 May 550 a directive was issued by the Emperor Justinian to John, metropolitan bishop of Anazarbus in Cilicia Secunda. Another directive, cast in corresponding terms, was sent to Cosmas, bishop of Mopsuestia (the present day Misis, seventeen miles east of Adana in southern Turkey) in the same province. ‘We indicate to your holiness”, he writes to John, ‘that you are to convene all the most-religious bishops of your synod; you are to repair to the town of Mopsuestia and make a detailed examination, with the senior men (whether clerics or laity), there established, foregathering, and learn from them whether they know the date when Theodore's name was removed from the diptychs.” If the senior persons in question do not know the answer, the fact is to be expressly recorded and the diptychs themselves are to be duly checked. Into the events leading up to this directive I will not now enter. It must suffice to recall that the setting was the so-called Three Chapters Controversy: what to do about Nestorius' precursors Theodore and Diodore, about Theodoret's writings against Cyril of Alexandria's twelve Anathematisms and the Letter of Ibas to Maris. On these matters the Council of Chalcedon had been indecisive. A hundred years after that council, it looked to many people, the emperor included, as if a few modest addenda to the council's decisions, amounting, perhaps, to nothing more than explications of its mind on Nestorius and his school, would put an end to the painful disunity of eastern Christendom.

Much has been written about the masters of theology at the University of Paris in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and their views on the nature of theology. Less work has been done on their view of themselves as a social group and what they were supposed to do with their distinctive kind of knowledge, however they defined it. Furthermore, analysis of their self-image has remained very general, included within studies of masters in all subjects in all universities over several centuries. This broad approach is entirely justified in that many sources deal with learning in general and because study of the Paris theologians contributes to wider debate about the social and political significance of medieval universities and intellectuals. It is, however, important to examine the self-image of the masters of theology at Paris specifically because, whatever the wider contemporary ideals, the world of learning was in reality far from homogeneous and harmonious.

Within the league table of thirteenth-century English bishops, Master Alexander ‘de Stavensby’ has generally been considered no more than a second division player. The standard biographies do their best to credit him with a network of associations that includes such luminaries as St Dominic and Stephen Langton, but the evidence is uncertain, or at least has never been probed sufficiently deeply to achieve certainty. Master Alexander remains a shadowy figure; a scholar of strange dreams and visions; a rootless cosmopolitan whose family and even whose birthplace remain unknown. Yet it is possible to trace his earlier career with greater precision. His origins and his close association with Stephen Langton and the early friars can be traced more exactly, and once established they help to illuminate his achievements as bishop.

Describing the general condition of the Latin Church in Outremer in the 1220s, Jacques de Vitry enumerated, as examples of those who had chosen the religious life, the hermits of Mt Carmel:

Others, following the example and imitation of the holy solitary Elijah the Prophet, live on Mt Carmel, especially on the part which overlooks the city of Porphyria, which today is called Cayphas [Haifa], near the spring which is called the spring of Elijah, and not far from the monastery of the Blessed Virgin Margaret. They lead a solitary life in small cells as in a hive; like the bees of the Lord they gather the honey of spiritual sweetness.

This article aims to reassess current historical judgements on the Czech Utraquist Church during the second century of its existence, from 1517 to 1621. It seeks to outline the special problems which Bohemian Utraquism faced as a religious via media, partly viewed from the comparative perspective of the kindred phenomenon of the post-Reformation Church of England. After a discussion of the historiographic issues, the focus is on the distinctive development of sixteenth-century Utraquism and its relations to English theology and eastern Orthodoxy. The Church's intermediate position between the Church of Rome and the fully reformed Protestant Churches is then explored more systematically through the writings of the authoritative, but neglected, theologian of sixteenth-century Utraquism, Bohuslav Bílejovský.

In the Middle Ages it was believed that the souls of those who died in a state of mortal sin were consigned to hell immediately after death, those that were free from sin went straight to heaven, while those guilty of venial sins, the majority, entered purgatory, a state in which sin was cleansed through suffering. Bodily death for most of the faithful was, therefore, seen as initiating a period of transition between life on earth and eternal bliss in heaven. The emphasis on the soul during this period of transition, and the complex variety of prayers for reducing the soul's sufferings in purgatory, have been extensively explored by historians.

At Rouen on a certain day, the people who had undertaken to go on that expedition [that is, the First Crusade] under the badge of the cross began to complain to one another, ‘After traversing great distances, we desire to attack the enemies of God in the East, although the Jews, of all races the worst foes of God, are before our eyes. That's doing our work backward.’ Saying this and seizing their weapons, they herded the Jews into a certain place of worship, rounding them up by either force or guile, and without distinction of sex or age put them to the sword. Those who accepted Christianity, however, escaped the impending slaughter.

The ecclesiastical history of early seventeenth-century Protestant Germany presents a generally gloomy picture. Lutherans and Calvinists, locked in increasingly uncompromising fratricidal controversy, divide the heartland of the Reformation against itself, thereby unwittingly preparing for the Habsburg reconquest of subsequent decades. In the light of this ensuing disaster, the heroes of the era are naturally identified as those few figures who attempted to combat the leading tendency of their age: the ecclesiastic irenicists, who appealed to the quarrelling theological groups to set aside their differences and join forces in defending the advances of the Reformation. In this they were destined to fail, but modern historians have nevertheless credited them with helping to break the ground later cultivated by the more successful proponents of reconciliation in the nineteenth century and the yet more broad-minded ecumenists of the twentieth.

In 1858 Lourdes was the site of a famous series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Bernadette Soubirous (1844–79). These visions became the basis of one of the major religious shrines of the contemporary world. The miraculous spring at the Grotto of Lourdes is visited by tens of thousands of pilgrims every year and the story of St Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes has been thoroughly disseminated throughout the Catholic world. Despite the fame of Lourdes, and despite the dramatic foundation of the shrine during the mid nineteenth century, the events at Lourdes have received relatively little attention from historians. A scholarly consideration of Lourdes is included in Thomas Kselman's Miracles and prophecies in nineteenth-century France. This book initiated research into several neglected fields and until it appeared writers who made mention of Lourdes, such as Marina Warner and Judith Devlin, were obliged to rely upon works of Catholic history. The apparitions at Lourdes and the life of Bernadette have given rise to a vast devotional literature, some of which has been carefully researched, but it serves the purposes of hagiography rather than historical enquiry. A voluminous quantity of contemporary documents relevant to these events is in existence in the archives of both Church and State, and some collections of these primary sources have been published.

Most Scots have heard of the National Covenant subscribed in Edinburgh around the end of February 1638. Few, by contrast, know anything about the five acts or articles (requiring the observation of holy days, episcopal confirmation of the laity, kneeling in the act of receiving the eucharist, and permitting the celebration of both communion and baptism in private) passed by a general assembly of the Church at Perth twenty years earlier. Yet those who took time to read the Covenant through would find that its signatories were, among other things, renewing a fifty-year-old pledge to resist all ‘vain allegories, ritis, signes, and traditions brought in the Kirk, without or againis the Word of God and doctrine of this trew reformed Kirk’, and were agreeing more immediately to refrain from the ‘practice of all novations, already introduced in the matters of the worship of God’ until they could be ‘tryed & allowed in free assemblies, and in Parliaments’. Those who examined the aftermath of the Covenant would also learn that it was one of the first acts of the general assembly convened at Glasgow later in 1638 to abjure the Perth Articles. If the National Covenant remains a crucial component of Scottish national consciousness, few Scots, for all the talk of Laud's Liturgy and Jennie Geddes, have much awareness of the debate about church ceremonies that helped to form the context in which the Covenant was produced.

Few conflicts in imperial Germany were more important than the Kulturkampf, a major dispute between the Catholic Church and the Prussian State and a notorious example of the destructive character of Bismarckian politics. The Kulturkampf began in 1871, gathered in intensity and bitterness until 1878, and then continued with slowly diminishing severity down to 1887. Despite all its drama (the attempted assassination of governmental officials, the arrest and trial of prominent churchmen, even riots and mass demonstrations) and its undeniable political importance, the Kulturkampf remains among the neglected problems of nineteenth-century German history. For the most part what has been written is so contradictory and prejudiced that even now – more than one hundred years later – the issues remain controversial and, in many respects, obscure.

In 1979, in a study of the ‘inquisitors of heretical depravity” and their work against heresy in medieval Germany, I urged rethinking of the term ‘the Inquisition” and the concept behind it. There is no clear evidence, I argued, that people in medieval Europe used either inquisitio or officium inquisitionis with reference to an agency or institution. The former term was used for specific trials following inquisitorial procedure, while the latter was essentially parallel to officium predicationis, and referred to the office or function of an individual inquisitor, not to an institutional structure. Furthermore, I argued that there is no reason to suppose there actually was an institution in medieval Europe to which the term ‘the Inquisition” might meaningfully be assigned. Heresy inquisitors during the Middle Ages were not held together by a structure of inquisitorial authority, which could ensure vigorous action, procedural regularity, or interaction of members. ‘In these circumstances”, I tentatively concluded, ‘it would perhaps be advisable to avoid speaking of even papal inquisitors as if they formed a suprapersonal agency, or an Inquisition.”

When Jean Lemaire de Belges composed his Traité de la différence des schismes et des conciles de l'eglise in 1511, the purpose of the text was to support Louis XII in his struggle with Pope Julius II, to promote the conciliar ideology which the French king was exploiting, and in general to set Christian kings and emperors in favourable contrast with the popes of Rome. Read beside vernacular texts by other authors – Jean Bouchet, Pierre Gringore, Jean Marot, Jean d'Auton – who were writing during France's war with Julius II, it appears more effective propaganda and in some ways bolder and more far-reaching. However, the contrast is not sufficient to mark its author out as heterodox in comparison with the rest, two of whom, Bouchet and Gringore, were later to attack Lutheranism with some vigour. Lemaire's text established itself as an acceptable Gallican–monarchical view of history. It sold well and was printed twice in both 1511 and 1512. It continued to be printed after the crisis which produced it had abated. Increasingly it was included in the collections of Lemaire's works which remained popular long after the author himself dropped out of public view in about 1515. As the Lutheran Reformation developed readers brought new perceptions to the text, and we may deduce a sharpened sense of its relevance from a new edition which appeared in Lyons in 1532. Romain Morin published the text in a new small format, and with a new title, Le Promptuaire des conciles de l'eglise catholique, avec les scismes et la difference d'iceulx. The text itself was very little modified. Morin himself reissued the Promptuaire in 1533 and ten years later Paris printers took it up, showing that the text continued popular in France into the 1550s, when it was finally placed on the Sorbonne's list of forbidden books.

Certainly since the time of the Emperor Constantine there had been little doubt in the Christian world that Christ was crucified, buried and rose from the dead on the site later occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Eusebius described the discovery of the tomb beneath the site of the Roman temple to Venus and the construction of the church, dedicated in 335. Constantine's church underwent numerous changes and rebuilding, through invasions, occupations, earthquakes and the disastrous fire of 1808, which caused extensive damage. But at no time did anyone seriously dispute the convictions of the competing Christian factions – Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Georgians, Copts and Ethiopians – who had chapels, or at least a recognised foothold, within that sacred precinct. While earlier travel accounts, such as those of Willibald (AD 724) and John Mandeville (1322), had recognised that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was located well within the walls of Jerusalem, it was generally accepted that this was because the city had expanded and surrounded the site, and that new perimeter walls enclosed the place of the crucifixion and the tomb which according to the biblical texts had to lie ‘without’ the city walls.

Recent research has rendered untenable the glib characterisation of the Henrician Reformation as ‘Catholicism without the Pope’, but the essential nature of the motives and achievements of Henry vra and his ministers in the 1530s and 1540s remains a controversial issue. To J. K. McConica, the polity created in the 1530s was an ‘Erasmian’ one, with the views of the great humanist on such matters as vernacular Scripture, superstitious pilgrimage and religious instruction providing a consensual nexus to bind together all but the most extreme shades of religious opinion. More recently, Glyn Redworth has similarly argued that the Henrician Reform was from the first ‘an intellectually coherent and satisfying movement’, and that it had positive and distinctive religious aspirations, seeking to use the techniques of ‘Protestant’ evangelism to transmit a purged but none the less essentially Catholic doctrine. G. W. Bernard has, by contrast, characterised the direction of religious policy after the break with Rome as ‘deliberately ambiguous’, and sees Henry as a ruler who held together an unwieldy coalition of interests by employing the rhetoric of continental Protestantism while inhibiting the implementation of any fundamental change.