This article examines Sulpicius Severus' use of the image of St Jerome in his Dialogi, a work intended to defend Sulpicius' earlier Vita Martini, as well as to censure the low standards of the Gallic clergy and ascetics. Sulpicius, by misrepresenting the contents of Jerome's epistle xxii, was able to offer an indirect critique of his compatriots. Moreover he played to a secondary pro-Rufinian audience by reworking Rufinus' arguments and casting them in Jerome's face. These included such sore points as the reception of Jerome's epistle xxii, his volte-face on the question of Origen and his excommunication by John of Jerusalem. This use of figured speech adds another dimension to this text, one which suggests that Sulpicius was not as friendly towards Jerome as has previously been thought.

Arguments as to why St Louis diverted his 1270 crusade to Tunis from Jerusalem have been raging ever since the expedition returned to France. Although historians have recently agreed that the diversion was the decision of Louis himself, this consensus has not led to exploration of his reasons for crusading to a north African port city. This essay argues that the diversion to Tunis is best understood in terms of Louis's ideas about conversion in general and his policy towards the Jews of his land in particular. The close parallels between Louis's Jewish policy and the Tunisian strategy suggest that these conversion policies led Louis to Tunis.

Thomas White alias Blacklo, an English Catholic priest, natural philosopher and theologian, was the leader of a small group of Catholics, known as ‘Blackloists’, who in the 1640s and 1650s wrote in support of Oliver Cromwell. This article seeks to explain the ecclesiological, theological and political arguments put forward by White and his followers in order to justify their approach to the Independents and later to the Lord Protector. After putting into context and interpreting some of the issues elaborated in White's circle, the reaction of the Holy See to Thomas White and to his political and theological positions is examined. While contemporary historiography seems to agree that the majority of English Catholics were on the king's side during the civil war, the evidence that emerges from White's case shows that the Roman hierarchy was of a different opinion.

The Society of Free Catholics was founded in 1914 by a small group of Unitarian ministers, who, inspired by Richard Baxter, James Martineau, F. D. Maurice and the Catholic Modernists, sought to combine historic Catholic sacramental and devotional practice with theological freedom, and to unite all Christians in a Free Christian Church. The members included Anglicans, Nonconformists and a few Roman Catholics. The two main leaders of the society were J. M. Lloyd Thomas of the old Meeting, Birmingham, and W. E. Orchard of the King's Weigh House, London. Their chief legacy was a series of prayer books for public worship.

The friendship of Thomas Cranmer with the Polish humanist and diplomat Bishop Johannes Dantiscus is one of the most interesting among Cranmer's European-wide circle of acquaintance. Although it was extremely episodic and petered out in religious disagreement, it was a vivid and early illustration of the international cast of mind of this central figure of the English Reformation. So one of the archival discoveries which pleased me most in writing my biography of Thomas Cranmer was a pair of letters from Cranmer to Johannes Dantiscus. I learned of these letters through the generosity of Dr Stephen Ryle, who sent me an unsolicited letter about them while I was actually reading the proofs of my book, and supplied me with photocopies of the originals in the Czartoryski Library in Kraków, preserved amid other fragments of the Polish royal archives. As I hastened to read these, in a frighteningly brief window of opportunity before my proofs had to be completed, I found a beguilingly and startlingly novel addition to Cranmer's career, which necessitated last-minute alterations to my text. The letters were dateable to early summer 1527. The first letter was written from Bilbao on the Basque coast, while the writer was waiting for a ship to England, and passed on greetings to Dantiscus from a number of mutual acquaintances in diplomatic circles at the emperor's court in Spain.