Justin Martyr closes his First Apology by quoting at length the rescript which the emperor Hadrian addressed to Minucius Fundanus, proconsul of Asia, concerning the treatment of Christians and their accusers. The rescript is properly an appendix to the Apology, attached as a pièce justificative in support of Justin's final plea for toleration, which rounds off his description of the rites of Baptism and the Eucharist. The description itself is the true ending of the treatise; it is the logical termination and dramatic summary of the doctrinal exposition of which the bulk of the Apology consists.

In modern Christological thinking, the tendency is to start with an affirmation of the real humanity of Christ. We recognise with everincreasing realism that the man, Jesus, lived a life open to historical investigation, a life which was circumscribed within the limitations of a normal human psychology and its contemporary environment. This being our pre-supposition, we tend to approve the Antiochene school for its realistic exegesis of New Testament texts referring to the human weakness, progress, experience, finite knowledge, temptation and conflict of the Christ. Correspondingly, we criticise the Alexandrian Fathers for their unnatural exegesis, based, we instinctively feel, upon a form of docetism, however sophisticated. How justifiable is this attitude? It is not the purpose of this paper to minimise the difficulties involved in the Alexandrian position, but the following suggestions may lead to a more sympathetic view of Alexandrian thinking.

It would be absurd to complain that the church courts have been neglected by historians of twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. Their conflicts with the royal power over the extent of their jurisdiction lay at the heart of the Becket drama, and help to explain the uneasy relations between church and crown which subsisted throughout a considerable part of the thirteenth century. Although this aspect of the topic is prominent in general histories of the period, however, surprisingly little work has been done on the bishops’ courts themselves; on their mode of operation and the way in which they were organised. On investigation, it must be admitted that one can understand the neglect of historians. The questions of disputed jurisdiction, which are of primary interest for political history, have been thoroughly discussed in a number of able studies. Moreover, the amount of surviving evidence from the bishops’ courts before 1250 is very restricted. Influential litigants preferred to have their cases heard by the pope, either in the Roman curia itself or (more commonly) before papal judges delegate in England; and the uninfluential leave no records. This does not mean that the bishops and archdeacons had lost virtually all their jurisdiction to Rome, but it does mean that the reconstruction of the way in which they operated is a detective problem of considerable delicacy. A complete picture would be very difficult to achieve, but a progress report, however imperfect (for this is all that this article can claim to be) reveals some features of considerable interest.