The recent extensive article on this subject by the distinguished French Scholar Dr. Jérome Carcopino provides an opportunity to return to a subject which I have already discussed in a paper published shortly before the War. Since its publication fresh evidence has come to light which may be thought to bear upon the subject, and various explanations of the origin of the square have been put forward which seem to invite comment. The exhaustive article of Fr. de Jerphanion, which is largely summarized by Carcopino, makes necessary only the briefest sketch of the development of our knowledge of the square. In its later form (beginning with Sator, fig. 2) it can be traced in a more or less complete form from the sixth century to modern times over an area extending from France to Ethiopia, Nubia, and even to South America, where its prophylactic virtues were accepted in the nineteenth century. The discovery of its earlier form (beginning with Rotas, fig. 1) incised on Roman wall-piaster at Cirencester in 1868 caused little interest, and it remained almost exclusively a matter for the medievalist for many years. In 1926 it was observed by Grosser that twenty-one of the letters of the square were made up of the word ‘Paternoster’ twice over (but necessarily arranged as a cross since the N, the middle letter, appears only once) and that the remaining four letters are two A's and two O's (fig. 4).

It has often been noted that St. Stephen stands, at first sight, as an isolated figure in the history of the early Church. His theological thought, as expressed in his speech (Acts vii), is very personal and, if compared with other forms of primitive Christian thought, almost completely aberrant. Its main characteristic is a strongly antiritualistic trend, and a fierce hostility towards the Temple, which he obviously considers almost as a place of idolatry. The building up of the Temple by Solomon seems in his eyes to stand on the same plane as the making of the Golden Calf. It is the last of those many and grievous sins and apostasies which mark the whole course of Israelite history. He thus clearly demonstrates that the accusations produced against him by so-called ‘false witnesses’, and which motivated his trial, were perfectly well founded: lie had indeed spoken ‘blasphemous words against this holy place’ and, ipso facto, against at least part of the Law.

C'est en pleine guerre,—en août 1941—que fut trouvé à Toura, aux environs du Caire, l'intéressant document que j'ai l'honneur de présenter ici. C'est même la guerre qui en a provoqué la découverte. L'armée anglaise faisait aménager d'anciennes carrières de pierre pour y abriter des munitions. En l'une d'elles on découvrit, déposée dans un coin, sans aucune protection, une assez forte liasse de papyrus anciens. Comme il fallait s'y attendre, les ouvriers cherchèrent aussitôt les moyens de vendre à leur profit la trouvaille inespérée, mais le gouvernement égyptien, assez tôt alerté, finit par en récupérer la majeure partie, qui figure maintenant au musée du Caire. M. Octave Guéraud et M. Jean Scherer firent un premier inventaire du trésor. Après la guerre, M. Guéraud en a donné un signalement détaillé.

In his second article on the Pattern of the Early Anaphora Professor Ratcliff claims that the Eucharistic Prayer in the first ages of the Church ended with the singing of the Sanctus; and in a footnote on pages 130–1 he claims that ‘although the singing of the Sanctus by the people was a general usage in the fourth century, there is no reason to suppose that it was universal in the earlier centuries. “Amen” is the people's sole utterance according to Justin Martyr (Apol. 65, 67)’. But is there any positive evidence which would lead us to think that the Sanctus was sung, like the passage about Angels and Archangels which presumably preceded it, by the celebrant alone, and that the people merely sang ‘Amen’ at its conclusion? It is the purpose of this note to suggest that such evidence does exist, and that it supplies further evidence with regard to the text of the Sanctus in the Roman Eucharistic Prayer.

In recent years liturgiologists have abandoned the search for a primitive consecration prayer which was universally employed in the early Church. It is now realized that while the essential eucharistic action was everywhere the same, the way in which it was done, and the interpretation of what was being done, differed considerably in the local churches. There were, for example, many local peculiarities in the Syrian and Egyptian rites, some of which probably reflect differences in the interpretation of what was being done, that is to say, differences in doctrine. Development took place, and the old was sometimes allowed to remain alongside the new. Thus the liturgy of Sarapion reveals a double tradition with regard to the consecration.

The career and personality of Peter the Iberian, bishop of Mayuma, near Gaza, present exceptional interest for the history both of the Monophysite movement of the fifth century and of the Georgian Church. At the same time, the hagiographical writings recording his life raise documentary problems of a complex nature.

Le Monothélisme était-il particulier aux seuls anciens Maronites? C'était, jusqu'ici, l'opinion régnante tant en Orient qu'en Occident. Or deux textes monothélites, appartenant aux anciens Melkites, viennent de voir le jour et jettent une nouvelle lumière sur cette question assez obscure. L'un fut révélé en 1945; nous allons faire connaître l'autre.

Nicephorus Gregoras was a fourteenth-century man of letters living in Constantinople who wrote a history of his own times. This work is an example of the traditional school of Byzantine historial writing in that it consists of an introductory summary of earlier history and a much fuller account of events contemporary with the author. But it departs from tradition in that it deals as much, or more, with ecclesiastical as with civil affairs. Gregoras was deeply implicated in the hesychast controversy, which began simply as a dispute among monks, but developed into a crisis of state, and his concern with it, in his life as well as his history, serves to illustrate its scope and importance. He was aware that his history lacked balance and needed some excuse. But the literary deficiencies of the work may be offset by its value as historical evidence. Since it was the hesychast doctrine, opposed by Gregoras, which became officially accepted, it is interesting to read the account of a defeated partisan. One must not, however, expect dispassionate reporting from Gregoras, although his account has sometimes been taken as such by western theologians.

In the course of his work a medieval bishop was bound to collect a great number of archives. In the thirteenth century these included his register (the official record of his out-going letters and institutions), his visitation-rolls and lists of the persons whom he had ordained, as well as incoming letters which ranged in importance from papal bulls to complaints about the depredations of poachers. In the see of Lincoln it was the custom to classify the institutions and memoranda separately. Oliver Sutton is the first bishop whose memoranda survive, but we have the institution-rolls of the bishops from Hugh of Wells to Richard of Gravesend. Moreover Canon Foster has shown, from MSS. now in the munimentroom of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, that records of institutions were kept for the periods between the death of St. Hugh and the consecration of William of Blois, and between the death of Hugh of Wells and the consecration of Robert Grosseteste. The MSS. now existing, which Canon Foster dated about 1240, are not the original records made at the time of the institutions, but it appears probable, to judge by the care generally taken of the official rolls of the see, that such originals still survived in the time of Oliver Sutton. It is quite certain, from a reference in Sutton's register, that he possessed the memoranda of Bishop Gravesend, a MS. which is now lost.

Among those who came into collision with the authorities during the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII was Robert Wisdom. Although one of the lesser figures among the English reformers, he was not without importance. In 1552 he was suggested by Cranmer as a person suitable and willing to fill die then vacant archiepiscopal see of Armagh, but eventually he was passed over. At the time of the Marian reaction he sought refuge on the Continent, and on his return was made archdeacon of Ely, in the enjoyment of which dignity he died nine years later, in 1568.

‘At any period of English history from the thirteenth century until a century ago, the records of the great diocese of Lincoln furnish an admirably full illustration of the working of ecclesiastical institutions and administration in the English Church as a whole.’ Of no epoch is this statement of Professor Hamilton Thompson more true than of that which witnessed the tenure of the see of Lincoln by Thomas Tenison, William Wake, and Edmund Gibson. When, therefore, amongst the Wake MSS. at Christ Church, Oxford, I discovered a volume labelled Arch. W. 297. Actorum Episcopal, Tom. I, it was with the eager anticipation of a rich harvest that I opened its pages. At first anticipation was frilly realised; for the first year of Wake's episcopate fills twenty folio pages of careful and detailed entries. But, alas! those thieves of episcopal leisure, the administrative duties of so large a diocese, made as speedy as sudden an end of his diligent resolve to keep a personal diary of his activities. On page 21 the entry Anno Consecrationis Secundo contains only three items and the rest of the volume consists of blank pages.

It was probably during the thirteen-eighties that the Dominican Thomas Stubbs wrote his short lives of the Archbishops of York. A Yorkshireman, from the forest of Knaresborough, Stubbs had been a close acquaintance of Bishop Bury and Bishop Hatfield of Durham, both of whom, in earlier years, were members of the York chapter. He is therefore likely to have been well informed about his subject. His life of William Melton, archbishop from 1317 to 1340—under whom Bury had been chancellor of York—though laconic, is no merely formal piece. Its phrases suggest a comprehensive knowledge. Stubbs apparently wished to leave a distinctive impression of Melton. He tells his reader that the archbishop was severe in correcting rebels; that he kept a great household, and clothed it in his livery twice a year; that he would often cancel the amercements imposed on his tenants by his bailiffs, and would remit to the needy the farms and debts they owed him. Above all, Stubbs goes on, he frequently assisted the two kings, Edward II and Edward III, and the noble men of the land in their business, both with loans and with gifts—‘tarn ex mutuo quam ex dono’. Finally, Melton was an ardent promoter of his servants and of all his kinsmen.

When Richard Baxter arrived in the camp of the victorious New Model Army shortly after the battle of Naseby in June 1645, he was greatly distressed by the religious and political heterodoxies that found expression through the ‘few proud, self-conceited, hotheaded Sectaries’ who had become Cromwell's ‘Favourites’. He observed that these men held ‘vehement Disputes’ in behalf of ‘Liberty of Conscience’, the doctrine that the civil magistrate should have nothing to do with matters of religion. Furthermore, he noticed that they also talked of ‘State Democracy’ and ‘Church Democracy’ as well as ‘about Free-grace and Free-will, and all the Points of Antinomianism and Arminianism’. In other words, in Baxter's mind those men who were attacking the orthodox Calvinistic doctrines of predestination and election were the very same men who were demanding additional political liberties. A single test case may be framed of the compatibility and nurturing effect (each upon the other) of these two tendencies by an examination of the writings of the New Model Army chaplain, John Saltmarsh.

No one can read Richard Baxter without perceiving that he was an intensely bookish man, widely read and living close to his books. In most of his writings he turns aside to comment or to animadvert on others' books. His unpublished correspondence shows similar characteristics: one correspondent, writing in 1652, mentions five of the latest books; to another, who writes, ‘Though I have the use of a library at Westminster, yet there is in it neither Du Plessis, Grotius or Camero,’ Baxter replies, ‘I ans:[wer] they are comon bookes as most in ye shops’.

Archibald Campbell Tait, Fellow of Balliol College and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was sitting quietly in his room on Saturday morning 27 February 1841, when another Fellow of the College, William George Ward by name, burst in excitedly and threw down a pamphlet on the table with the exclamation ‘Here is something worth reading’. This pamphlet was Tract 90.