The bishops of Liège became concerned with Christianisation throughout the whole diocese in the Carolingian period. This study examines the concrete measures that they took. The field chosen is the Ardennes region in the south of the diocese, where they reorganised the abbey of St-Hubert as a religious centre. The bishops reformed the community and offered it economic support. They also encouraged the cult of St Hubert and introduced the new custom of annual processions. This approach throws light on the pastoral situation in a way that their episcopal capitularies cannot.

This article examines responses to the spread of Lutheranism and related heresies in England during the final years of the ascendancy of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. It demonstrates that the preferred method for dealing with scholars and others toying with the New Learning was to attempt to convince them of the error of their ways rather than to punish them. The small number of Lutheran heresy trials in the 1520s is shown to be evidence not of a ‘soft’ approach to the growing problem of Lutheran infiltration, but of a successful policy of humanist reform.

The experience of Jean-Pierre Camus, a reforming bishop in seventeenth-century France, highlights the problematic ambivalences present within French Catholic reform after the Council of Trent: the persistent tensions between bishops, the papacy and lower clergy over the most effective means of achieving renewal and the most appropriate forms of ecclesiastical government, as well as the growing emphasis upon episcopal perfection within an episcopate that was, paradoxically, closely linked to politics and secular society. His publications on episcopacy provide an insight into the motivations and beliefs of a prominent episcopal reformer and into the ecclesiastical culture of seventeenth-century France. This article seeks to demonstrate that Camus' episcopal ideal was a coherent adaptation of traditional and contemporary views produced in response to post-Trent circumstances and that the bishop's published views had a significant impact upon his fellow prelates and their relationship with the papacy.

The Martyrs' Memorial at Oxford is usually interpreted as an anti-Tractarian statement provoked by the publication of R. H. Froude's notorious Remains. This paper argues, however, that the monument's anti-Catholic nature has been overlooked, largely as a result of interpreting the scheme in the light of subsequent developments. Much of the original polemic surrounding the project was directed exclusively against Roman Catholicism and it won support from a wide theological spectrum within the Church of England. The heated debate over the wording of the inscription is examined, as is the question of whether the memorial should take the form of a Martyrs' Church or a Martyrs' Monument.

Cardinal Manning's Catholic University project was a spectacular failure. Financial mismanagement by Thomas John Capel, the Rector, as well as gossip surrounding his personal life, undermined confidence in him and the college. The Jesuits opposed the scheme as it rivalled their own plans. Despite a Vatican ban, the Jesuits, some influential converts, old Catholic families and sympathetic bishops continued to press for Catholic higher education at Oxford, for social reasons and because they preferred the classical education to Manning's scientific syllabus. The project revealed the tensions and divisions caused by Manning's vision of future Catholic engagement in late Victorian society.