If we affirm against recent criticism the authenticity of the Middle Recension of the Ignatian letters, we are nevertheless left with the enigma of Ignatius' relations with Polycarp. This paper explains that enigma in terms of two distinct cultural worlds of early second-century Christianity that come together in the meeting of these two church leaders. Ignatius was the first great missionary bishop who reinterpreted church order, the eucharist and martyrdom against the backcloth of the Second Sophistic in Asia Minor, with its pagan processions, cult and embassies that celebrated the social order of the Greek city state in relation to imperial power. Much of Ignatius' iconography was alien to Polycarp, though the latter was finally to canonise both him and his writings by focusing on his impressively enacted refutation of Docetism through his portrayal of his forthcoming martyrdom.

On Passion Sunday in 1417 (28 March) a sermon known by its scriptural theme as ‘Accipiant qui vocati sunt’ was delivered at the general council of the Church then assembled in the south German city of Constance. Three centuries later it was edited by Hermann von der Hardt who characterised ‘Accipiant’ as ‘by far the most severe sermon in which the enormous crimes of prelates – especially love of money, ambition, luxury and ignorance – are revealed with the greatest liberty and are vehemently reproached, so that it is a wonder that the council heard it patiently’. In an earlier publication containing excerpts from this sermon, Hardt had described it in similar terms as being ‘not unlike a burning furnace in terms of its fiery passion and its vehement attack on the vices of the clergy’. More recently Heinrich Finke clearly agreed with these appraisals in describing ‘Accipiant’ as a ‘scharfe Reformpredigt’, for he did not bestow such adjectival emphasis on any other reform sermon listed in his register of the Constance sermons. Paul Arendt, a student of Finke's and the author of the only monograph devoted to the many surviving sermons from Constance, repeatedly commented on the severity of ‘Accipiant’, especially in his long chapter on ‘das Hauptthema unserer Prediger: Behandlung der Frage der kirchlichen Reform’.

Hardt ascribed this sermon to Vitale Valentine OFM, bishop of Toulon. However, as the following analysis will show, it is certain that this ascription was based on conjecture and that another preacher actually delivered the sermon. Hardt's only source for his edition of ‘Accipiant’ was an Erfurt manuscript which is now in the Schlossbibliothek at Pommersfelden. Because this lacks a rubric or colophon identifying the author of the sermon, Hardt's attribution must have been inferred from internal evidence. Thus began the long tradition of Vitale Valentine's authorship of ‘Accipiant’ which has previously been accepted without question by scholars of these conciliar sermons.

Starting with the fact that John of Antioch and Nestorius were friends, this article asks whether they were also theological allies, as is commonly assumed. Based on an examination of a letter written by John to Nestorius in November of ad 430, as well as other pertinent letters and documents, the author concludes that the two were not on the same side theologically, but that John was unaware of how fundamentally they disagreed. The relationship between John and Nestorius is then used to help interpret the proceedings at Ephesus in ad 431, the action of John and of Cyril of Alexandria in the Reunion of 433 and the Christological controversy as a whole.

The bishops of the medieval English Church were among the greatest landowners in the kingdom. The list of their estates in the Valor ecclesiasticus of 1535 eloquently testifies to their extensive holdings. But concentration on temporalities as the source of episcopal wealth ignores the extent to which the Church's own jurisdictional and administrative structure provided a means for generating wealth. This income, which the Church itself provided for bishops as a part of their office, distinct from the revenues generated by land-holding and other resources ancillary to their ecclesiastical functions, deserves more attention than it has so far received. The neglect of income from spiritualities is partly explicable by the nature of the sources, which are usually very incomplete and, in most cases, limited in chronological coverage. Nevertheless, usable evidence does survive from many dioceses, which eventually may be brought together to produce a worthwhile general statement.

This essay is an attempt to find out what Winstanley meant by certain terms, using close textual analysis. Extensive work has already been done in locating Winstanley in political, theological and, as far as possible, intellectual terms. This will receive only cursory treatment here. A scholarly tradition can be traced from Bernstein, through Petergorsky and Margaret James to Christopher Hill, which places Winstanley at the beginning of the development of materialist socialism although, it is suggested, his ideas proved to be a false start and went underground for a century or more. This view derives from his later works, especially The Law of Freedom, with its practical design of tilling the land communally, and sees his mysticism either as a cloak for revolutionary aims or as an undeveloped stage in his thought which he later left behind and which is thus of secondary importance. Work has been done, sometimes by the same scholars, to map out the tenets of his religious beliefs in the context of contemporary radical Puritanism, considering whether he was, for instance, a mortalist, a universalist or a millenarian, and how far he was any of these. For such doctrinal identification one can look to W. S. Hudson, the co-operative study of L. Mulligan, J. K. Graham and J. Richards and to Christopher Hill, for all of these have compared and contrasted his beliefs with those of Seekers, Ranters, Fifth Monarchists and Quakers. Hill himself, however, has pointed out the difficulties of placing Winstanley in a particular group because of the fluidity of the borders between one sect and another; sects sharing certain beliefs while differing in others and changing character internally with changing political circumstances.

As founder of ‘the first continuing Congregational church on English soil’ in the London suburb of Southwark in 1616, Henry Jacob has figured prominently in denominational hagiography. His place in the wider circle of puritan scholarship has also been secured by virtue of this radically new ecclesiological experiment in puritan Congregationalism which, by most historical accounts, signalled a drastic departure from the prevailing presbyterianism of the Cartwright generation of left-wing puritanism. While his shift into a more progressive, democratic ecclesiological mode has appeared self-evident to many historians, those scholars intrigued by Jacob's churchmanship have often puzzled over the source of his new polity. Among an earlier generation of historians, the obvious solution seemed to be that Jacob had at some point borrowed from the Separatists, adopting their ecclesiology while declining their practice of separatism. This conclusion arose primarily from the assumption (which persists today) that before Jacob's Southwark church formed, Congregationalism was alone the preserve of late Tudor and early Stuart separatism. Daniel Neal became one of the first to suggest this, explaining that Jacob probably derived his Congregationalism from the Separatists by way of John Robinson at Leyden, where the two had met in 1610.

In the Middle Ages it was believed that the souls of those who died in a state of mortal sin were consigned to hell immediately after death, those that were free from sin went straight to heaven, while those guilty of venial sins, the majority, entered purgatory, a state in which sin was cleansed through suffering. Bodily death for most of the faithful was, therefore, seen as initiating a period of transition between life on earth and eternal bliss in heaven. The emphasis on the soul during this period of transition, and the complex variety of prayers for reducing the soul's sufferings in purgatory, have been extensively explored by historians.

On 24 June 1504, being the Feast of St. John the Baptist, Brother William Ingram, of the Cathedral Priory of Christ, Canterbury, paid 3d. ‘pro reparacione inferioris hostii prope claustrum vocati le red dur et pro una clave pertinente ad eundem’. Such was the first expenditure of a cautious man who had taken over the charge of Custos Martirii, which, together with the two custodes at the shrine of the Saint, and two others at the Corona and the site of the first tomb, in the Crypt, was one of the greater offices in the cult of St. Thomas of Canterbury.