In English and American Studies in German, summaries of theses and monographs, a supplement to Anglia, 1983, there is a notice of Hans Sauer's edition of the Middle English poem the Owl and the Nightingale with a German translation. Sauer stresses ‘that no completely satisfactory interpretation of this fascinating poem has been suggested so far. At best, only some of the aspects of O & N are covered by the various allegorical explanations or by reading it as a burlesque-satirical poem - these interpretations by no means explain its significance as a whole.’ The present paper suggests that a knowledge of the papacy's changing attitude t o marriage in the twelfth century, as expressed in the development of canon law, as well as in the deliberations of English provincial synods, goes far to illuminating the scope and purpose of this Middle English satire/burlesque.

Early in 1652 the leading Independent divine John Owen, with a group of other ministers, published a plan for the reform of the Church entitled The Humble Proposals. The scheme aroused antagonism and opposition. The existence of petitions against it, one of them published by Roger Williams under the title The Fourth Paper (1652), was noted by David Masson in his Life of Milton. The protest was more intense, and went on longer, than Masson suggests. Petitions were soon followed by a number of tracts, some of them anonymous, others raising the issues in an introductory epistle or an appendix to material with a wider reference. Taken together, they clearly indicate a well-organised campaign behind the scenes.

Even the darkest accounts of the eighteenth-century Church of England have generally singled out the religious societies of (various sorts as a bright spark in the gathering Latitudinarian gloom. They included: private devotional groups (‘the religious societies’); the Societies for the Reformation of Manners (referred to here as ‘the SRMs’); the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG); and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), which also supported charity schools. Taken together, these activities seem to add up to a considerable movement of religious renewal. The devotional religious societies are of particular interest because of their problematical relationship to the origins of the evangelical revival and of Methodism in particular. The present paper is mainly concerned with this question.

The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, issued by the leaders of the German Evangelical (i.e. Protestant) churches in October 1945, was a unique document in the recent history of the Christian Churches. This public acknowledgement of responsibility and guilt for their inadequate response to the criminal actions of the nation's political leaders was, and remains, unprecedented. The solemn proclamation included the by-now well-known sentences:

With great pain do we say: through us endless sufferings have been brought to many peoples and nations. What we have often borne witness to before our congregations, we now declare in the name of the whole church. We have for many years struggled in the name of Jesus Christ against the spirit which found its terrible expression in the National Socialist regime of tyranny, but we accuse ourselves for not witnessing more courageously, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyously and for not loving more ardently.