There is a general consensus among historians that there was something quite special about the church policy of the Ottoman and Salian rulers of Germany from Henry i to Henry m. The normal reliance of the medieval king on his prelates was here turned into a deliberate and systematic exploitation of the potential of the Church as an instrument of government. These rulers used bishops and abbots, whom they appointed, as a counterweight to a turbulent and unreliable lay nobility. Many historians have, so to speak, followed them in this, have turned from the Ottomans' and Salians' complex and seemingly unsatisfactory relations with their aristocracy to their church policy. Here they have seen plan, system and harmony, so much so that the Church has come to be regarded as the principal instrument of government available to these rulers. Our picture of the Ottoman and Salian 'imperial church system', the Reichskirchensystem of German historians, has been much refined by recent scholarship, but the essential outlines have not greatly altered since the time of Waitz and Giesebrecht. The purpose of what follows is to re-examine these outlines. The qualifications, doubts and re-interpretations offered are not all new; many have been expressed or at least hinted at in the existing literature. But they have never been fully articulated, and it seems worth looking again at the Reichskirchensystem as a whole to ask how far in fact it did or could have performed the functions usually attributed to it, and to ask also how far it was a system. The focus of attention will inevitably be on the German bishoprics (and to a lesser extent the royal abbeys) before the Investiture Contest, but it will also be necessary to look at the position elsewhere in Europe at this period, because an appearance of uniqueness and system has been fostered by considering conditions in the Reich in isolation

In the history of medieval regal and imperial anointing the consecration of Edgar as king of the Angles and Saxons in 973 deserves very special attention. For the ceremony, performed seventeen years after Edgar's succession to the throne of Mercia and fourteen years after he had become king of Wessex, was apparently without precedent either in biblical or medieval times. How are we to make sense of a consecration which by its very nature should inaugurate the reign and constitute the king, and which now took place more than a decade and a half after Edgar had been firmly in power? If we consider the consecration against the background of contemporary continental customs then the magnitude of the problem emerges in all its clarity, for by the late tenth century inaugural anointing had assumed its place at the opening of the reigns of most of the kings of western Europe. Regal consecration had been customary among the Franks for well over a century and for nearly as long in Burgundy; there is evidence that anointing took place from an early date in the small Christian kingdoms of Spain, and finally, after the consecration of Otto 1 in 936, inaugural anointing also became established in the German kingdom. In each case the Old Testament provided the pattern for the anointings: it was the pouring on of the holy oil which worked the regeneration of the prince in virum alium (1 Kings x.6), giving him a new heart (1 Kings x.9) and thereby constituting him as ruler over God's people (1 Kings x.1). Henceforth the spirit of God was with the king (1 Kings x.8) and as the christus Domini he enjoyed divine sanction and protection (1 Kings xxiv.7).

Few have studied the early eighteenth-century Church. Caught between puritan triumphs and the Methodist revival, its polemics and efforts at rejuvenation have gone largely unnoticed. Those historians who have noticed describe an Anglican hierarchy lacking in talent and drive and a population devoid of piety and religious fervour. Both of these images are incorrect, as more recent scholarship has begun to suggest. Church historians now concentrate primarily on biographies of famous ecclesiastics and monographs (and articles) on some of the more lively events such as SacheverelPs trial and the Convocation controversy. But no one has systematically explored the Church's attempts to combat the decline brought about by the Toleration Act of 1689 and by its own avoidance of earlier enthusiasms.

Among students of medieval monasticism the province of Rouen has long been famous for a unique record: the archiepiscopal register (Paris, B.N.MS lat. 1245) commonly called the Regestrum visitationum or Journal des visites pastorales of Archbishop Odo Rigaldi, or Eudes Rigaud, which extends from 1248 to 1269. Published first by Theodose Bonnin in 1852, during the past sixty years it has been translated into English, reprinted in Latin and much commented upon.

The authorship of The copy of a letter written by a Master of Art of Cambridge, or ‘Leicester's Commonwealth’ as it became known, was successfully kept secret when it appeared in 1584. It was common policy for Catholic writers to publish their books anonymously during this period, especially political works, but with one as libellous and seditious as ‘Leicester's Commonwealth’ it was necessary to take every precaution to conceal theidentity of the author. The Earl of Leicester, grossly insulted in the pamphlet, tried hard to find out in France – where the book was known to have been printed – who had written it, and it was reported that he had sent an assassin to the continent to deal with the author. When the book first came to light in London, Walsingham confidently ascribed it – ‘the most malicious written thing that ever was penned sithence the beginning of the world’ – to Thomas Morgan, an agent of Mary Stuart in France, assisted by three other Catholic exiles, Lord Paget, Charles Arundell and William Tresham, but this was no more than a guess and did not convince Leicester. It was not until fifteen years later that the authorship of'Leicester's Commonwealth’ again aroused interest, when a group of English Catholic writers known as the Appellants began to ascribe it to their enemy, the Jesuit Robert Persons. Persons refused to acknowledge authorship, but it was generally accepted that the book was his, and when in 1641 it was republished by a Protestant it was clearly ascribed to the Jesuit. Less certainty was entertained by later historians, but the difficulty remained: if Persons had not written the book, who had? This problem was solved in 1957 in an article by the Jesuit historian, Leo Hicks, who, developing an idea of his older colleague, J. H. Pollen, ascribed the book to a Catholic exile named Charles Arundell and denied that Persons had played any part in its composition. This ascription has been unanimously accepted by later scholars. I wish in this brief paper to question Fr Hicks's findings and to argue that Persons played the major part in the compilation of the book.