Origen and Austine might be thought to represent opposite extremes in Pauline exegesis. In working out his characteristic understanding of Pauline theology Augustine developed emphases which were different from those of Origen. In his early works of Pauline exegesis of 394–6 a central point for Augustine is the relationship between works of the law and grace. Origen’s Commentary on Romans develops many Pauline themes, but he takes a more historical approach than Augustine, and a prominent emphasis for him is the relationship between Jews and Gentiles in the divine dispensation. Augustine is an independent thinker, who digests his reading and does not plagiarise. It is not always easy to identify his use of earlier writers. The example to be discussed in the following paper is of particular interest, since it gives us the opportunity of seeing Augustine’s reaction to Origen on the central point of justification by faith at a period just before the outbreak of the Pelagian controversy.

The evidence left by the medieval church courts has proved to be a rich source for the study of both the social and legal aspects of marriage. This has been particularly true for the records of matrimonial litigation generated by the English courts as well as those from the continent and, to a lesser extent, Ireland. Much of this interest has focused on the instance business of the courts, corresponding roughly to modern-day civil litigation. In the context of the English courts, this usually involved an attempt to establish the existence of a valid marriage. Less attention has been paid to the ex officio actions brought by courts against errant individuals. Interest has also tended to concentrate on the actual act of marriage itself and the degree to which this matched the Church's ideal system of how marriages should be formed. Questions concerning courtship and the alternatives to marriage have only begun to be addressed.

‘Revisionist’ historians, led by David Loades, have begun to reexamine various aspects of the reign of Mary Tudor and thus to challenge traditional interpretations. Anyone considering the religious history of that period eventually encounters Cardinal Reginald Pole's refusal to accept into England some members of the newly founded Society of Jesus. Concurrent with the reappraisal of Mary's reign, a similar re-examination has dominated early Jesuit historiography. This work, which has generally passed unnoticed by Tudor historians, highlights the encouragement and support that the Society received from reformers, spirituali such as Cardinal Gasparo Contarini and Cardinal Giovanni Morone and, equally important, the attacks that both suffered from their common critics, for example from Gian Pietro Carafa (later Pope Paul iv), and Melchor Cano. One of that circle was Cardinal Reginald Pole. As research elucidates the relationship between that group and the Jesuits, it adds a new dimension to the old question: why did Pole resist Jesuit involvement in the restoration of English Catholicism? It is the purpose of this article to bring the two fields together and so first to demonstrate how developments in Jesuit historiography challenge established views and, second, to propose a more plausible interpretation.

True to its catholicity, the Counter-Reformation was in spirit a universal movement. The new universalism of the post-Tridentine Church produced greater centralisation, enhancing the authority of the papacy, and was reflected in the attempted imposition throughout the Catholic world of institutional uniformity and liturgical, cultic and devotional standardisation. In practice, however, the Counter-Reformation must also be seen as a local phenomenon, not only in the obvious sense that it was within their immediate locality that early modern Catholics were exposed to the new impulses originating at Rome, but also in the sense that such impulses were filtered through a prism of localism. Throughout the Catholic world, individual communities sought to preserve their traditional, home-grown institutions and customs, often by imaginatively adapting the new norms to suit local requirements. The existence of a complex relationship between centre and periphery, resting on a process of often tense negotiation and cultural exchange (since it could be a dynamic and not simply a one-way affair) has provided recent historians of Catholic reform with a fresh conceptual polarity, that of local versus universal, to set alongside the more standard dichotomies of popular and elite, official and unofficial or learned and lay religion.

There is a large and complex literature regarding the part played by working-class Nonconformity in the industrial revolution and the emergence of the English labour movement. For all its nuances, this writing can be separated into two main strands. The first, broadly Marxist, perspective sees working-class Nonconformity primarily as a form of capitalist control, inculcating bourgeois norms of hard work, thrift, respectability and political moderation into the working class. However, even labour historians who subscribe to this view cannot help but be struck by the ubiquitous accounts of lay preachers at the forefront of Victorian labour movement campaigns, especially in the coalfields. Thus, the second view stresses the part played by working-class Nonconformists in leading their class towards political and industrial emancipation. To a considerable extent, the stance taken, particularly on Methodism, depends on whether writers draw their evidence from national, usually middle-class, denominational hierarchies, or from local accounts of working-class religiosity.