The Monothelete controversy, a Christological dispute that seemingly consumed the Eastern Roman Empire in the seventh century, also left its mark in Latin texts composed in Merovingian Gaul. By integrating the western evidence and recent revisions to the controversy's history, this study presents a new overview of how Frankish observers viewed the eastern ‘heresy’ and papal efforts to condemn the doctrine in 649. Though negative on the surface, western attitudes towards this Christological debate in the 650s are much more mixed and new evidence can be adduced for the continuation of positive exchanges between the empire and the Franks.

Monks writing at Saint-Clément, Metz, over roughly two hundred years produced conflicting images of Bishop Theodoric I (965–84). In earlier texts, he is the monks’ benefactor, in later sources, their foe. Historians have sought to flatten this contrast, partly because of their assumptions about monastic reform. This paper offers an alternative reading that questions those assumptions. It suggests that the evolution of Theodoric's image reflects changing ideas about monastic reform and the proper relationship between bishops and monks. It also cautions against accepting narratives – medieval or modern – that obscure the fluidity of such ideas and relationships.

Trinity College, Cambridge, ms B.15.5, contains a copy of Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica, donated by Nigel of Canterbury to the library at Christ Church. This article focuses on the exegetical content of its dense annotations. Heavily dependent on the writings of theologians associated with the school of St Victor, they offer an insight into the kinds of sources which were read alongside the Historia scholastica in this period. The article also queries a note made on the flyleaf which identifies Nigel as the compiler, examining its credibility and its implications for the presumed chronology of his life.

England's first Tudor monarchs were formally devoted to the cult of St Thomas of Canterbury. In popular memory, however, Thomas was a champion of law and custom, an opponent of untrammelled royal power, and – especially among the clergy – a martyr for ecclesiastical ‘liberties’. This suggests that the pre-Reformation Church was considerably less ‘monarchical’ than is sometimes supposed. In the 1530s Thomas became a powerful symbol of resistance to Henry VIII's royal supremacy. However, the fact that he could be portrayed as a patron of the clergy's sectional interests helps to explain how opposition was weakened and divided.

The principal aim of this article is to analyse the rise of a Latin American Catholic identity during the mid- to late nineteenth century. It examines the institutionalisation of this collective project via the foundation of the Latin American College in Rome in 1858 and the initiatives that led to the Latin American Plenary Council in 1899. This article also explores how this collective religious identity was imagined and how its limits were drawn. In doing so a new insight into how religions contributed to the imagining and defining of geographical spaces is offered.

Chinese men began emigrating to the Australian colonies from the 1840s onward. Past historiography has been sceptical of the impact of Christianity on these Chinese immigrants. This paper revisits this theme, placing it in the wider context of mission to Chinese immigrants in other anglophone countries. It documents the ministry of the Anglican Church among Chinese settlers in colonial Queensland, and especially the role that Chinese converts played in the evangelisation of their fellow countrymen. It provides a new perspective on the ways in which the Chinese embraced Christianity, and their contribution to the evangelisation of their countrymen.

Towards the end of the twentieth century much UK public money for research was diverted to collaborative projects with specific research objectives, notably in the field of history. This distinguished the UK from other countries on the cutting edge of historical research, notably the USA which lags far behind, but not from Germany, which had long led the way when it comes to teamwork with a clearly defined theme, and where average budgets for historical research projects are still on a scale unimaginable on this side of the Channel. One of the greatest German historical enterprises is the Repertorium Germanicum. The project was conceived in the 1890s, and linked from the start with the German Historical Institute in Rome, from which so much fine work on papal history has emerged, notably by Protestant scholars. The first secretary of the DHI (Deutsches Historisches Institut) had the idea of creating a ‘search engine’ (Suchmaschine). It was to be and is organised within pontificates by the names of individuals who appear in documents in the Vatican Archives: a prosopographical structure. Though the individuals need a ‘German’ connection to be included, that is interpreted in the broadest sense, so that dioceses from Poland to Belgium find a place, as do any Germans who turn up in any other region, if the team happened upon them. Consultation online is now also possible, at < http://194.242.233.132/denqRG/index.htm>, though the volumes under review did not seem to have been made available electronically at time of writing – and many will find the paper volumes easier to manage, where they are available. Ludwig Quidde, who conceived of the project, thought that it could be completed up to the end of the fifteenth century by a team of five within three years. He had no idea of the scale of the holdings in the archive. Furthermore, alongside the Repertorium Germanicum one must now place its precocious younger sister, the Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum, which has (thanks to Ludwig Schmugge and his team) already overtaken the elder sibling with Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum, XI: Hadrian VI,1522–1523, ed. Ludwig Schmugge (Tübingen 2018).