Within the past thirty years a painstaking literature has been produced by the descendants of the sixteenth century Anabaptists, mostly Mennonites, in an effort to replace the traditional European interpretation of Anabaptism as fanaticism beginning with the revolutionary mystic, Thomas Muentzer, and ending with the revolutionary polygamous debacle at Muenster in Westphalia ten years later. Thus were the Anabaptists discredited for centuries by Lutheran and Reformed theologians within the majority churches of Europe, the American Anabaptist historians say.

Any study of France's political history since the Liberation must inevitably attempt to explain the sudden emergence in 1944 of that somewhat unconventional and ambiguous political grouping known as the Mouvement Républicain Populaire. Almost overnight the new party, despite its obscure origins and unfamiliar program, succeeded in winning the largest bloc of seats in the National Assembly and in the years since the war has provided France with some of her most prominent leaders. Although the M. R. P. has declined in parliamentary strength in recent years, it seems probable that the party of Robert Schuman and Georges Bidault will continue to play an important role in French politics.

The completion of F. S. Schmitt's critical edition of the Opera omnia of St. Anselm of Canterbury, with its elimination of a good many spurious meditations and prayers and with its recalendaring of the old and the newly identified correspondence, has stimulated widespread interest in the father of scholasticism. In the present study I wish to show that Anseim's Cur Deus Homo is a “penitential-eucharistic,” as distinguished from a “baptismal,” theory of the atonement. This is a terminology which must be explained at once.

The many aspects of Catholic activity during the sixteenth century make it difficult to present a systematic bibliography for that period. Interest in the Reformation era has considerably increased among Catholic scholars during the last decades. We must therefore proceed to a severe selection. Only studies that deal with the most significant topics will be included. No breakdown of the material can be completely satifactory. As the main point, however, is to give as clear a picture as possible, one must distinguish three broad periods: before, during and after the Council of Trent. Subdivisions of the subject matter in each period will necessarily overlap. But we will reduce this to a minimum.