In the early years of the fifth century a significant step in the development of the Roman Church's claim to a universal jurisdiction was taken as it clarified its relationship with the Churches of Eastern Illyricum. Among the letters of Innocent i, bishop of Rome from 402 to 417, there are a half dozen addressed to the churches within that prefecture, politically now in the East but ecclesiastically still looking to Rome. Yet the authority exercised by the Roman bishop was not all-encompassing, being restricted primarily to judicial matters. This article considers Innocent's epistula xviii, written to a group of Macedonian bishops, headed by Rufus, bishop of Thessaloniki, Innocent's vicar, in which Rome acts as a court of appeal in the matter of Bubalius and Taurian. What is fascinating is the role that forgery played in the appeal process. It is argued that the evidence should be considered in its own historical context and not in the light of later ecclesiological understandings.

The importance of canon law collections to Anglo-Saxon legal culture has long been thought negligible, especially in comparison to the considerable importance of an alternative genre of canonical literature known as the penitential handbook. Over the past several decades, however, evidence for the use and circulation of continental canon law collections in pre-Conquest England has been mounting, to the extent that it could challenge traditional notions about the dominance of penitential law in the early English Church. This study presents new evidence for the reception in Anglo-Saxon England of a major continental collection known as the Collectio vetus Gallica.

This article discusses one specific way in which Protestant communion was, and still is, celebrated: the ‘Wandelabendmahl’, or ‘walking communion’, in which communicants receive bread and wine at the two sides of the altar, walking around it in between. After a general discussion of the ‘Wandelabendmahl’ in Lutheranism, the article examines how this rite was and is reflected in material culture, especially in today's northern Germany and southern Denmark. The rite was physically enshrined in church buildings by special furnishings at and around the altar. This study argues for a more holistic approach to sources: the inclusion of material culture in the study of religious practices allows for consideration and analysis of the experience of parishioners on a day-to-day basis. It is argued that it was by such means – visible, tangible, and to be experienced by each individual parishioner – that complex theological concepts were made accessible to congregations.

The conquest of Ireland between 1649 and 1653 created almost as many problems as it solved for the English government of the country. Not least of these was how, if at all, the majority Catholic population was to be won over to Protestantism. This article reassesses Cromwellian religious policy towards the Catholic laity and traces its evolution up to the end of the decade, taking account also of Catholic responses to official measures. It argues that the supposed leniency of government policy has been overstated and that Catholics who refused to conform to Protestantism in fact risked heavy penalties.

The article discusses the impact of antisemitism on Jewish Christians in twentieth-century Germany. The fate of one Jewish Christian from an Orthodox Jewish background, Maly Kagan, is used to highlight overarching themes. The article focuses on the impact of National Socialism on her work in a Protestant psychiatric hospital and for the London-based Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel. Light is shed on how she survived the Holocaust, her work with displaced persons in Frankfurt after the war and her decision in 1952 to leave Germany to spend the rest of her life in Israel.