This first publication of the newly-found letter to Gandhi from Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a window into his thinking in the early 1930s, a time of personal formation and of resistance to National Socialism. Western Christianity needed ‘a Christian peace movement’, and Bonhoeffer wanted to learn from Gandhi's movement ‘the meaning of Christian life, of real community life, of truth and love in reality’. The letter includes Bonhoeffer's critique of Western culture and the Church in Europe and America, his hopes for a Church regenerated by the Sermon on the Mount, and his appreciation and critique of Karl Barth

Ever since Henry VIII, the law of marriage has occupied a special place in the relationship between the Church of England and the state. Changes made to the law since 1857 have raised far-reaching and difficult questions about the nature of this relationship, involving the status of canon law. Marriage in church has remained, perhaps even more than the other rites of passage, an essential point at which the Church of England still touches the lives of great numbers of the otherwise unchurched, and these questions have thus impinged on the practical reality of the Church's work.

The statute 4 Henry VIII, c. 2 denied benefit of clergy for particular crimes to certain offenders, and also modified due process in handling pleas of sanctuary. The statute's possible renewal in the parliament of 1515 triggered a confrontation between the crown and leading churchmen. The passage of the act through the parliament of 1512 illuminates this important episode. The law that was enacted is shown to have differed substantively from the measure that had been proposed. Extensive amendments reveal in what ways the bill provoked controversy. Positions adopted in 1512 may well have rehearsed those assumed three years later.

The relations of England with the Curia in the thirteenth century is hardly a subject neglected by historians. From A. L. Smith to C. H. Lawrence stretches a long line of scholars who have been concerned during the last sixty years or so with the impact of papal authority on this country in that century. Meanwhile, on the continent, the vast output of studies on papal doctrine and curial machinery elucidate the particular question of England's links with Rome. When so much has been written, and where so many experts are in the room, it is temerarious to say more. I do not intend to present a startling new view of Anglo-papal relations in the time of Innocent III. My object is much more modest. For the last few years Mrs. Cheney and I have been tracing as much as possible of the correspondence between the Roman Curia and England during that pontificate, 1198–1216. All I want to do is to offer a few facts and figures and reflexions which come from our search.

Throughout its history the institutionalised Church has sought in different ways to define its position with respect to the ‘world’, in order to give meaning to the injunction to be ‘in’ this world but not ‘of’ it. During the Middle Ages, the tension was acute because the Church, in its narrow definition of the clergy, claimed to be a separate, spiritual order, set apart from the temporal world. The tangible results of this dichotomy are particularly evident with respect to the real property held by ecclesiastical institutions. Property gave the Church the security to be independent from the lay power and the aristocracy; hence the Church claimed varying degrees of immunity for its property from secular jurisdictions.

What is a photisterion? Translators usually render the Greek word phōtistērion (site of illumination) as ‘baptistery’ (site of immersion in water). This article reopens the study of phōtistēria, arguing that being ‘immersed’ or ‘illuminated’ evokes different senses of the concomitant meaning of the sites and rites of initiation. It situates late ancient phōtistēria from epigraphic and literary sources in their theological and liturgical contexts. The evidence from Galilee, Syria, Jordan and Cyprus corroborates the idea that many Christians of late antiquity preferred ‘illumination’ to express the composite rite of initiation in a phōtistērion, within which ‘baptism’ was one part.

This article examines the delegation of Monsignor Salvatore Luzio to the Irish Free State between March and May 1923, and the reactions of the Irish Catholic bishops, who had proclaimed their support for the government of the Free State, and of militant republicans, who opposed it. The bishops viewed the mission with trepidation, fearing the damage that it could do to their authority, while the republicans deemed it and Luzio potential assets. Newly-released Vatican papers also allow for the inclusion of Luzio's perspective on the mission and his strongly worded criticism of the Irish hierarchy.

Offering a new interpretation of the sermon ‘De ordinatione beati Gregorii anglorum apostoli’, a text preserved in Eadmer's ‘personal manuscript’ (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 371), this article argues that the cult of St Gregory the Great was promoted by Archbishop Lanfranc (1070–89) and Archbishop Anselm (1093–1109) in order to undermine the pretensions to apostolic rank of St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury. It draws attention to the existence of a hitherto unrecognised but major conflict over apostolic authority that took place in England after the Norman Conquest; a conflict that involved the king as well as Canterbury's most important churchmen. In so doing, this essay contributes, more generally, to our understanding of the roles that the cult of saints and its rhetorical structures played in battles over status and rank order.

Spain in the sixteenth century was not exempt from the movements of reform sweeping over Europe. Its enthusiastic but short-lived reception of Erasmian humanism in the 1520s is well-documented. So is its even more enthusiastic suppression of native ‘Lutheran’ conventicles in the 1550s and the extinction of hope for a Protestant Church in the kingdom of the Spanish Habsburgs. These events have relegated Hispanic Protestantism to little more than a footnote in most histories.

The story, though, is not limited to the Iberian peninsula. A dedicated cadre of Spaniards did battle in the realm of ideas from places of exile in Naples, France, England, Geneva and Germany. In so doing, they contributed significantly to a core literature of evangelical humanism in Spanish. This corpus consists, in part, of translations of Reformers' works, such as Melanchthon's Antithesis and Luther's treatise on Christian liberty, by Francisco de Enzinas (1540); Calvin's catechism, by Juan Pérez (Geneva 1556); and Calvin's Institutes, by Cipriano de Valera (London 1597). Translations of classics also figure prominently in the work of Francisco de Enzinas, for example Plutarch's Lives and the Decades of Livy.

This paper reflects on the uncomfortable relationship between gender, religion, authority and influence in the Victorian Church of England, using the example of the ecclesiastical response to the rise of Anglican religious communities for women in the second half of the nineteenth century. Anglican sisterhoods occupied equivocal and disputed space within the Victorian Church of England, proclaiming their loyalty to the Church but unfettered by any ecclesiastical legislation or tradition that would have compelled them to obey the bishops. In a society that assumed that obedience to lawful authority was a natural attribute of godly women, their ambiguous and improvised relationship with the church hierarchy created enormous tension as well as considerable hostility.

In the summer of 1543 King Henry VIII promised that he would send 40,000 ducats, the equivalent of £10,000, to Ferdinand, king of the Romans and of Hungary, archduke of Austria, to help his brother, Emperor Charles V, in his defence of Christendom against the Turk. Europe witnessed a strange alliance between Henry, himself a schismatic monarch, and Charles, who had effectively blocked Henry's attempts to have the pope annul his first marriage. The coalition of opposing forces was equally remarkable, comprising the Most Christian King of France and his non-Christian ally, the Turk. Francis's support for the Turks was contrasted by some with the king's attitude to Protestant reform. Francis seems to have regretted the presence in 1543–4 of a Turkish colony at Toulon, which appears to have possessed a slave market and mosque. The alliance between Charles V and Henry VIII attests to the persistence of the medieval concept of Christendom (Christianitas), groups of nations which shared basic religious and cultural values despite the religious divides being caused by the Reformation.

Henry made elaborate plans to furnish Charles with the promised £10,000 to support military action on the continent. The money, available either as cash or as bills of exchange, was released in two halves, the first on 16 August 1543 and the second on 18 September. In his usual way, the imperial ambassador in England, Eustace Chapuys, made things worse by harrying the Privy Council for speedy payment of the funds. The crown, none the less, hit on an interesting solution to the problem of recovering its money. Henry issued an appeal to every diocese in England to organise voluntary contributions from parishioners to recover the amount of money he disbursed abroad. Working from the financial returns among the exchequer subsidy rolls at the Public Record Office, Dr Kitching has calculated that such collections raised no more than £1,903 8s. 3d., less than a fifth of the money advanced to Charles V. The English parishes reimbursed the crown in late 1543 and early 1544.

As Dr Kitching himself has indicated, the background to the whole episode is poorly documented. Previously unknown to historians, however, important material concerning the king's plan survives in the diocesan archives of London and Westminster. The episcopal registers of Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, and Thomas Thirlby, bishop of the short-lived see of Westminster, both shed valuable light on this scheme. Diocesan bishops recorded their formal administrative acts in registers, the compilation of which was supervised by the diocesan registrar. Unfortunately, the archiepiscopal archives at Lambeth are silent on the collections of 1543. The registers for the dioceses of London and Westminster, however, are particularly informative for the opening years of the Reformation. It is my purpose to consider the nature of the new evidence and to offer a transcript of the more important documents.

In a particularly active, if sadly undocumented, period in the history of the English Church, Alexander, third bishop of Lincoln (1123–1148), stands out as a prelate of unusual energy and achievement. Beyond his intermittent involvement in national affairs, he was responsible in the twenty-five years of his episcopate for the establishment of at least nine prebends in the Lincoln chapter; the acquisition of substantial assets for his see—including the right of market and fair in two towns; the setting up of an additional and final, archdeaconry; extensive structural and decorative innovations at his cathedral; the founding of at least one leper hospital; the erection of two, and very probably three, castles; and the establishment of four religious houses. The last of the activities in this impressive curriculum, the founding of the Cistercian houses of Thame and Louth, the Arrouaisian house of Dorchester and the Gilbertine house of Haverholm, all in the brief period 1139–41, represents an achievement approached at that time only by the three foundations of bishop Warelwast of Exeter (1107–37) at Plympton, Launceston and Bodmin. If, moreover, Alexander was not the formal founder of the Gilbertine house of Sempringham some years earlier, it is at least clear that he played a decisive role there, as, indeed, there is good reason for supposing that he made a more positive and critical contribution to the early development of this, the only indigenous English monastic order, than has previously been allowed.

Using John Trusler's unpublished memoirs, this article seeks to reconsider his trade in printed sermons using imitation manuscript print, which clergy could pass off as their own. While the trade smacks of corruption and dishonesty, and attracted considerable scorn for Trusler, it was in some respects a reflection of late eighteenth-century sermon culture. Trusler's defence to Bishop Terrick of London of trading in imitation manuscript sermons suggests that he was not embarrassed by the enterprise. Trusler's talents as a preacher were considerable, but Victorian Britain came to regard his commerce as reprehensible.

This paper analyses the scheme of imagery designed in about 1638 by Christopher Wren, dean of Windsor, for the chancel of East Knoyle parish church in Wiltshire. While Wren's close association with Lancelot Andrewes and the Laudian circle makes this scheme understandable as ‘Laudian’, its particular combination of picture and text accommodated a broader range of beliefs. The study of the theological content of the scheme, and of its intended manner of reception, sheds new light on the function of imagery within the pursuit of the ‘beauty of holiness’, drawing attention to the role it could play in establishing an active understanding of the liturgy.

For English Catholics the eighteenth century has justifiably been termed ‘the age of Challoner’, because Richard Challoner, vicar apostolic of the London District between 1758 and 1781, left a distinctive mark on the character of the English Catholic Church through his long period in office at a formative period and through his many popular spiritual books and pamphlets. Challoner's pre-eminence has tended to diminish the stature of all other bishops appointed as vicars apostolic to the four districts in England and Wales during the course of the century. The only other vicar apostolic who came close to Challoner was the Benedictine monk, Charles Walmesley, a near-contemporary and coadjutor in the Western District from 1756 to 1764, when he became vicar apostolic of that district until his death in 1797. Although Walmesley's published works were far fewer than Challoner's, they demonstrated a wider range of interests and a more original mind. For, while Challoner has often been taken as the representative eighteenth-century English Catholic clergyman, the main feature of his mind, a dread of innovation, prevented him from tuning his theology to the new world of eighteenthcentury scientific and philosophical enquiry.