The medieval Bible was hardly a book at all, but a collection of ancient writings in translation. Usually the Bible was read in parts with commentary or in the form of semi-biblical narratives. One of the most influential commentaries was Nicholas of Lyra's Postilla litteralis on the entire Bible. Cambridge also continued to require Bible lectures, as did Paris and, given the influence of Paris' theology curriculum, probably every theology faculty in Europe's proliferating universities. Fifteenth-century theologians believed, like their predecessors, that the Bible was a coherent body of literature. The Bible's purpose, defined as its 'final cause', was human salvation, a state of perfect humanity. Perhaps the most important sign of the proliferation of biblical media was the production of vernacular translations of the Bible. The fifteenth-century church knew no total censure of Bible translation. Waldensianism was a movement begun around an interpretation of the gospel and vernacular Bible reading in the late twelfth century.

This chapter explores how Carolingian writers on theology defined their topics, and with what methodologies they hoped to resolve uncertainties in a domain allowing little speculation and less doubt. It focuses on attitudes to the Trinity, to the process of salvation and the damnation of the wicked, to the ways in which the Eucharist might assist in human salvation, and on the mysteries of the soul. The chapter explores differences between eastern and western ecclesiology. For most Carolingian writers, the understanding of the divine nature was a part of faith or doctrine. A crucial feature of Carolingian religion was the dichotomy between the thought of Frankish prelates, secure in a national tradition of church councils and continuities, and the concerns of converts whom the expansion of Frankish territories had made Christian. Most Carolingian theology is rebarbative, because it offers an accumulation, a plurality of human texts as the only adequate exegesis of the divine text.

For more than three centuries, from the reign of Constantine to the Arab invasions of the 630s, Mediterranean Africa was the scene of a Christian civilization. The Christian leaders, Augustine of Hippo and Cyril of Alexandria moulded the teaching of the Latin and Greek Churches respectively in a way that has survived for centuries. This chapter outlines the history of Christian civilization from its beginnings to its collapse before the Arabs, partial in Egypt but complete in North Africa. Inevitably Christianity itself must take the centre of the stage. The Church in North Africa west of the Gulf of Syrtis was separated from that in Egypt and Cyrenaica by geography, language and theological tradition. The Church in Egypt and Cyrenaica was, Greek-speaking and outward-looking, responsible for missions to Nubia, Ethiopia and south India, and while not denying the importance of ecclesiastical discipline, directed its energies towards arriving at an understanding of the mystery of human salvation through the Incarnation.