The literary evidence describing the revelation of the strange Christian prophet Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio in the communities of Italy and France at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century has been treated with considerable interest by a number of scholars. W. B. McDaniel was the first to publish the existing evidence on this unusual figure, together with the text of a hermetic plague tract attributed to him with an English translation. These sources portray a divinely inspired prophet, together with his wife, five children, and his disciples, making his way as a mendicant through Italy and France. Mercurio sees as his task the reprobation of all the sins of the Catholic Church and Christian peoples. He is empowered with the magical gift of the Supreme Being to prepare an antidote against the horrendous plague.

The manuscript diary of the patrician Girolamo Priuli reveals the hidden background of one of the decisive events in the contest between Venice and the great European coalition of Cambrai. The defeat of Agnadello in May 1509 shattered the armies of the republic and threatened the metropolis itself with conquest. One after another the towns of the Veneto voluntarily opened their gates to the invaders, and finally, early in June, Padua fell to the Austrian emperor. Only five weeks after this culminating disaster, however, the Venetians recaptured the city by a sudden coup and so changed the course of the war. When the allies of Cambrai failed to regain Padua by a prolonged siege, the League broke up, and Venice could deal with each of its enemies in turn. By 1515, the republic was able to make peace with its dominions nearly intact.

During the Tudor period, Protestant Reformers tended to rely heavily on the Scriptures as a weapon against their Catholic opponents, since they believed that the Scriptures were the ultimate authority for Christian doctrine and conduct. The work of the most important of these, William Tyndale, has already been treated, and it is therefore the intention of this paper to examine the contribution made by one of Tyndale's contemporaries, George Joye.

Joye fled to the continent toward the end of 1527 and between 1529 and 1549 produced a large number of polemical works, among them biblical translations and commentary. It is on this latter aspect of Joye's achievement that the present study intends to focus, specifically on his The exposicion of Daniel the Prophete (1545).

The Wars of Religion in France greatly stimulated the use of printing for partisan purposes. Books and pamphlets proliferated as France's internal divisions deepened. Several generations of historians have studied the content and tried to assess the impact of the propaganda issuing from the pens of royalist, Huguenot, and Leaguer polemicists. But another use of the press, the promotion of a royal minister's career and policy, has received little attention. In a recent study of Richelieu, William F. Church remarks: ‘For several generations, French statesmen had been aware of the power of the press to influence public opinion, but Richelieu was one of the first to use it systematically and effectively for promoting his views and himself.’ Church is referring to Richelieu's use of the writings of François Langlois de Fancan to promote his views and to secure his appointment as first minister to Louis XIII in 1624.