Dr. G. A. Michell has argued that the kind of Eucharistic Prayer presupposed in the letter of Firmilian to Cyprian, about a prophetess who arrogated to herself the functions of the ordained ministry, was an invocation, or naming, of the Trinity, ending with the Sanctus; that this was, therefore, the kind of Eucharistic Prayer which was used at Caesarea in Firmilian's time; and that it survives in the first part of the Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. Basil, ending with the Sanctus. If this is true, it follows that all the rest of the prayer has been added, after the original ending. The question arises, whether it is an original composition, or whether it is borrowed from another church. This essay will try to answer that question, in the light of an attempt to recover the original structure of this part of the prayer.

Among the legislators of the medieval English Church John Pecham, archbishop of Canterbury, 1279–92, is remembered chiefly on account of canons published in two councils early in his pontificate, at Reading in July-August 1279 and at Lambeth in October 1281. His successor, Robert Winchelsey (1294–1313), less celebrated for his laws, none-the-less is assigned by Lyndwood, the fifteenth-century canonist, nine chapters of the Provinciale. The ‘Winchelsey’ documents and some others described in medieval manuscripts as ‘Statuta’ or ‘Constitutiones’ or ‘Decreta’ of one or other of the two archbishops cannot be immediately or surely connected with any known provincial council. They include texts on questions of almost daily occurrence to medieval archdeacons and parochial clergy: about the calculation of tithe, the duties of stipendiary priests, the obligations of the laity for church repairs. Lyndwood glossed many of them. Modern students of history and canon law commonly cite them. It is, therefore, of some importance to establish the degree of credit which may be allowed to the ascriptions. This study will consider the evidence of the manuscripts and will aim at sorting the genuine statutes from the spurious and the dubious. Some of each kind will be found. The enquiry may not only help to determine the nature of these particular documents, but also may reflect light on other doubtful legislation and illustrate the ways in which laws were framed and customs established in the English Church in the later Middle Ages.

Fasciculi Zizaniorum. has become the bible of ‘Wycliffite’ and early protestant studies. The best known collection of materials relating to John Wyclif and his heresies, and roughly contemporary with what is described, it is the most important single source for the history of John Wyclif. The full title—Fasciculi Zizaniorum magistri Johannis Wycliff cum Tritico—is derived from the description which precedes the opening narrative in the MS. A great deal more is included in the MS. than this title would at first sight suggest. The collection also contains much about the heresies of the Oxford followers of Wyclif, about his leading opponents and the cases of many early Lollards. It also includes the Latin text of the two statutes against Lollards, De Haeretico Comburendo of 1401 and the Leicester Statute of 1414. To these Lollard materials are added the proceedings of the Council of Constance against Wyclif, John Hus and Jerome of Prague, and summaries of condemnation of heresies made by the Church before Wyclif's day, beginning with those condemned at Oxford and Paris in the thirteenth century. The other works are mostly concerned with the age-long controversies over Apostolic Poverty and the Mendicant Orders: a selection from the writings of archbishop Fitzralph of Armagh; the proceedings against the Irish Cistercian, Henry Crump, in 1392; the Protectorium Pauperis of the Carmelite, Richard Maidstone; the Defence of the Carmelite Order written in 1374 by Richard Hornby. The last two works in the MS., a sermon by John Hornby and the well known treatise against Wyclif's Trialogus by the Franciscan, William Woodford, are incomplete.

The history of the Oratory for which Bremond hoped has not yet been written and much of it remains doubtful. André George has recently repeated his own lament that this should be so, especially as a full study ‘éclairerait singulièrement les obscurités dont sʼentourent les origines du XVIIIe siècle…’. An examination of some of the difficulties which overpowered Sainte-Marthe, the fifth Superior General of the Congregation, may enlighten these dark places and perhaps serve both as a modest contribution to the unwritten history and as a detailed illustration of the magisterial thesis of Paul Hazard. A comprehensive history of the intellectual achievements of the Oratory—which would, in these years, include a study of such giants as Quesnel, Simon, Lamy, Male-branche and Thomassin—is plainly impossible within the limits of an article, and attention will therefore be concentrated on the attempts of Sainte-Marthe himself to direct the turbulent life of the Congregation.

Late at night on 18 May 1688 the bishops, granted an audience by James II, handed him their petition. ‘When he looked upon it he said he knew whose handwriting it was, as well he might, for it was the Archbishop's.’ It certainly was the archbishop's hand, but it was not wholly his work, nor that of the other six bishops who had signed it with him and who now presented it to their king. How this document came into being is the subject of this paper.

The return to office of Peel and the Conservatives in 1841 was reassuring to the Church. On the whole, Melbourne had been less objectionable than the bishops had expected. But the Whigs had by no means lived down the suspicion with which Churchmen naturally regarded a party so strongly supported by Dissenters; and, although there were men unfriendly to the bishops in the Tory ranks, Peel was a far more skilful disciplinarian than Melbourne, if only because he took more pains.