When the Visigoths crossed the Danube in 376 and entered the Roman provinces, were they Christian or pagan? Were the two armies which clashed at Adrianople on 9 August 378 composed substantially of Christians, or were the victors still pagan? When Ulfila, the Apostle of the Goths, died c. 382, had he succeeded in converting his fellow countrymen to Christianity? It will be argued here that it would be inconsistent with such evidence as exists to suppose that the Visigoths were a Christian people at any of these dates

It is, no doubt, appropriate that the document which ushers in the stormy history of the African Church should be a record of martyrdom. But there is another, scarcely less significant, feature in the Acts of the Scillitan Saints—a reference to Holy Scripture. Saturninus proconsul dixit: Quae sunt res in capsa vestra? Speratus dixit: Libri et epistolae Pauli, viri justi. Biblical scholar and palaeographer alike find the reference interesting. For the one, there is evidence of the spread of the text of the Bible in North Africa at the end of the second century. For the other, there is the problem of the nature of the book-form in which the scriptures circulated. Recently, however, another aspect has been mentioned, in this Journal, by Dr. W. H. C. Frend in an article on ‘The Gnostic-Manichaean tradition in North Africa’. In this article, Dr. Frend argues that there was in the North African Church, besides the rigorist tradition which produced the Donatists, and the more inclusive and more compromising element, which constituted the strength of the Catholics, a third element, whose outlook was enshrined first in the Gnostics against whom Tertullian fulminated and later in the Manichees, from whom African Catholicism was to draw her most illustrious convert. Dr. Frend argues persuasively for the existence of an historical continuity between the Gnostics and the Manichees, one of his points being that both heretical movements relied extensively on the writings of St. Paul to support their teaching. In this connexion, he writes: ‘Rejection of the Old Testament led in Africa to an almost exaggerated respect for the Epistles of St. Paul, and also for the various Gnostic Ada of the Apostles.

In the library of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, there is a MS. of fourteen leaves which formerly belonged to the priory of Durham. The MS. is of the eleventh century and contains some Pontifical offices, namely the forms of ordination to minor and major orders (with the exception of bishop) and the office of Confirmation. The office of Confirmation begins with an injunction that the bishop shall lay his hand on the head of the candidate. Primitus, impone manum super capud infantis et tangis eum vel eam. Then, after the salutation, follows the prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit, ‘Almighty and everlasting God, who hast deigned to regenerate thy servant by water and the Holy Spirit and hast given him remission of all his sins, send out upon him from heaven thy sevenfold Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and godliness. Fill him with the spirit of thy fear and graciously sign him with the sign of thy holy cross unto life.’ Then the bishop, having mentioned the candidate's name, makes a cross with chrism on the forehead, saying ‘I sign and confirm thee with the sign of the holy cross in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’.

The journey to Mongolia of Giovanni de Plano Carpini and Benedict the Pole of Vratislavia (Wroclaw, Breslau) in 1245–1247 has been explored by historians. But the significance of their careers in Poland and Ruthenia has not yet been studied and remains a subject for future research. The Minorites, in addition to their chief mission—the peace negotiations with the Grand Khan in Karakorum—had been ordered to start conversations in Cracow (Kraków) and Halicz to bring about the union of Orthodox Ruthenia with Rome. Since he was vicedelegate and companion to friar Giovanni, Benedict's contribution to the achievement of the union seems to have been overlooked or insufficiently appreciated.

Thomas Bradwardine has suffered more from neglect than perhaps any other major medieval thinker. This is less his fault than that of his age. The fourteenth century, even now, is still largely misty and confused; its main streams of thought have none of the comparative clarity of the thirteenth century; many of its thinkers are still largely unknown; and even its topics lack the sweep and fullness of, say, St. Thomas or St. Bonaventure, at first sight appearing arid and remote, governed by little but a love of dispute.

The self-imposed exile of archbishop Edmund of Abingdon is part of the accepted account of his career. The incident provides an excellent example of the psychological gulf which separates the medieval hagiographer from the modem historian. For the historian tends to be unsympathetic towards acts of fugitive virtue, and the plain fact seems to be that the archbishop ran away from his responsibilities. Thus, in a century of great ecclesiastical leaders, St. Edmund is assigned the rôle of the gentle, pious, but ineffectual reformer, overwhelmed by forces which he was not strong enough to resist. But the thirteenth-century hagiographers had different criteria. In their view, the archbishop's exile was a flight from iniquity which vindicated the rights of the Church. It formed a splendid consummation of his career, as dramatic and meritorious as martyrdom. As St. Edmund's biographers were quick to point out, his exile and residence at Pontigny offered an obvious parallel to incidents in the lives of St. Thomas Becket and Stephen Langton. On this occasion, Pontigny, now the traditional refuge for fugitive archbishops of Canterbury, was handsomely rewarded with the bones of a saint.

On 24 June 1504, being the Feast of St. John the Baptist, Brother William Ingram, of the Cathedral Priory of Christ, Canterbury, paid 3d. ‘pro reparacione inferioris hostii prope claustrum vocati le red dur et pro una clave pertinente ad eundem’. Such was the first expenditure of a cautious man who had taken over the charge of Custos Martirii, which, together with the two custodes at the shrine of the Saint, and two others at the Corona and the site of the first tomb, in the Crypt, was one of the greater offices in the cult of St. Thomas of Canterbury.

In the Middle Ages the Church of Chichester had many good, and some remarkable, pastors. It had its share of administrators: Richard le Poore, who went on to the bishopric of Salisbury and became one of the best of the early synodical legislators; Henry III's chancellor Ralph Neville; Henry Ware, official of the Court of Canterbury, appointed by Henry V in 1416 keeper of the privy seal; John Kemp, chancellor of Normandy and later archbishop, first of York, then of Canterbury; and Thomas Polton, a curialist versed in the ways of Rome. It had its scholardivines like William Reed who left a splendid collection of books to New College, among them a celebrated manuscript (No. cxxxiv) of Bradwardine's De Causa Dei; or the unhappy Reynold Pecock, silenced by the Church for his attempt at a rational interpretation of doctrine, one of the first to essay for that purpose an English philosophical vocabulary; or the early humanist John Rickingale, chancellor of Cambridge; and other clerks of talent and distinction. Not least noteworthy in the history of this Church was the episcopate of Richard of Droitwich, the close friend of archbishop Edmund of Abingdon, his faithful disciple and chancellor who accompanied him to France and, in time, came back to represent the spirit of his patron both in the diocese and in the English Church.

This is the story of Edward Kirkby's deposition from the office of abbot of Rievaulx in 1533. It has been briefly told before, but the author of that article was not aware of some important evidence and also burdened his account with misleading preconceptions. Perhaps it is not surprising that all monastic events in the decade 1530–40 should tend to be linked with greater events in Church and State: the Dissolution is commonly allowed to cast its distorting shadow both fore and aft. When a single London monastery is dissolved, historians suspect a carefully staged dress rehearsal of the larger destruction; similarly they ascribe the fate of abbot Edward Kirkby to his ‘opposing the king's new doctrines’. But this concentration on the outstanding event is most perilous. The monasteries of the day do not seem to have been aware of their coming doom; their history continued to be centred upon the narrower compass’ of their own interests. We shall see that Kirkby's story does indeed reflect some issues of more general importance, but it is not true that he was deposed because he quarrelled with the new state of things or because the king wanted him out. In fact, Henry VIII in person never enters upon the stage and is likely to have remained practically ignorant of Edward Kirkby. Like others of that time, the abbot has been permitted to wear an undeserved, if rather tiny, crown of lesser martyrdom—lesser because, surviving the 1530s, he lacked the full qualifications for a victim of Henry VIII. The facts must rob him of his touch of spurious glory, but his unmasking may help towards a better understanding of that troubled age.

In the introduction to what was for long the standard work upon the Prayer Book, Charles Wheatly's Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer, the learned and industrious author refers to archbishop Cranmer as ‘the chief promoter of our excellent Reformation’, who ‘had a principal hand, not only in compiling the Liturgy, but in all the steps made towards it’. A commemoration of Cranmer which omitted to recall his liturgical projects and achievements, and to notice the more striking of their features, would be incomplete. Of itself, the liturgical work ascribed to him is significant enough to vindicate his right to be remembered, and to insure respect for his name.

Among the archives belonging to the diocese of London and housed in two muniment rooms in St. Paul's Cathedral, is a bundle of papers labelled ‘Certificates as to Papists, 1706’. Curiosity having tempted me to undo and examine its contents, I now give a survey of the documents therein contained, believing that this may prove to be of value in two respects: first, as throwing new light upon members of a proscribed religion at a time which, so far as can be ascertained from books and records in libraries, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, is very poorly documented; secondly, as giving yet another insight into the character and outlook of a section of the Anglican clergy at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

‘Ireland would ever seem to be the place of experiment, both of politics and of education, and a cloud of never-ending failures has encompassed her in both.’ This illuminating comment provides a perspective in which the whole peculiar and rather complex relationship between the two countries, so unnaturally yoked together, may be considered afresh. The role of Ireland as experiment and precedent for English legislation—since in many respects Ireland's condition was that of England ‘writ large’—made possible the breaking of new ground and ventures into new spheres of governmental action. In Education, the Irish situation led government into an admission of its responsibility for the education of the people by grants to the Kildare Place Society in 1815. Three decades of agitation and debate were needed in England before the same admission was made by the grant-in-aid of 1833, and the same relationship existed between Irish education experiments of the early 1830's and their later English equivalents.