Focusing on the rural zones of Palestine and exploiting extensive archaeological research permits a re-examination of the traditional view that much of Palestine had been Christianised by the late fourth century. This article suggests that the process of adopting Christianity in the countryside was far more gradual than previously believed. While the map of holy sites in Palestine had largely taken shape by the end of the fourth century, the conversion of the population only achieved real momentum during the fifth and sixth centuries. Research on the community churches of Palestine, in particular on their location in the villages, reveals that Christian penetration into the countryside stemmed from internal social developments and was not institutional in inspiration.

The two bishops of Worcester between 1218 and 1266, William of Blois and Walter de Cantilupe, were in many ways very similar. Both were dedicated reformers, who made use of the cathedral chapter's churches for their own households for example. Yet their relationships with the monastic chapter of Worcester were very different. William's episcopate was marked by acrimony and dispute, Walter's by harmony and assent. The reasons for these differences are complex but include the personalities and backgrounds of the bishops, the chapter's growing awareness of the limitations of monastic chapters for bishops' patronage and political changes within England.

During the later Middle Ages the ecclesiastical jurisdiction generally abandoned ritual humiliation in the market place as an integral part of penance imposed by sentence in its courts, although intermittently this punishment continued into the early sixteenth century. In the early decades of the ecclesia anglicana of Elizabeth, however, several jurisdictions reintroduced shaming in the market place as a consistent part of a disciplinary regime. Although constituting no more than an episode, as public penance had again declined by the 1580s, the reintroduction of penance in the public forum reveals much about the character of the Anglican Church in the first decades after the settlement of 1558, but also reflects back on the pre-Reformation Church.

The discovery of a document, until now hidden in an obscure Protestant pamphlet, presented by Charles cardinal de Lorraine (1525–74) to the privy council in August 1562, underpins recent work which shows the cardinal to have been an evangelical Catholic interested in reform and in reconciliation with Lutherans, both before and after the Colloquy of Poissy. This paper argues that Protestants feared Lorraine precisely because his interest in dialogue had the potential to split the reform movement. Publication of his five articles in 1565 was an attempt to embarrass him after Trent and to compromise his political rapprochement with the prince of Condé.

The survival in published form of a range of sermons commemorating the execution of Charles I provides an opportunity to examine the character and limits of political debate within the Church of Ireland. After 1688 the task of condemning the regicide of 1649 without seeming to question the legitimacy of the Revolution presented serious difficulties. In the longer term the anniversary ceased to be contentious, as defenders of the Hanoverian establishment appropriated much of the traditional Anglican rhetoric of obedience to lawful authority. That appropriation provides the context for a significant 30 January sermon by Jonathan Swift.