Much work that is absolutely essential for the continuance and progress of an ordered society has a severely limited attraction for those who perform it. How, nevertheless, men and women were persuaded to work regularly or at all in the Middle Ages has provided one of the central themes in the study of the period, for this is what we study in the institutions of slavery, serfdom and villeinage—all three were ways and means of persuading reluctant workers to work. But these were also means of escape from toil, and it is with one of these, the custom of abstaining from many habitual forms of work on church festivals, that this essay is concerned.

Historians and biographers have written at length about Philip Melanchthon, both as a humanist and reformer. Among recent studies are those by Michael Rogness, Philip Melanchthon: Reformer Without Honor (1969) and Clyde L. Manschreck, Melanchthon: The Quiet Reformer (1958). The most massive study is Wilhelm Maurer's Der junge Melanchthon zwischen Humanismus und Reformation, in two volumes. The first, published in 1967, is the thinner; it deals with Der Humanist. The second, exceeding 600 pages, published in 1969, portrays Der Theologe. Maurer did not go beyond the year 1529; he gave much attention to the Loci of 1521.

Victorian religious thinkers were peculiarly concerned with the problem of discovering the origins of religious knowledge and with analysing the correct relationship between that knowledge and contemporary scientific and philosophical developments. Among others, the small group of mid-nineteenth century English Roman Catholics was much given to discussion on the matter. Apart from Acton, the outstanding men concerned—Newman, Manning, Richard Simpson, and William George Ward—were converts from Anglicanism. Considerable attention has been devoted to those who, as Roman Catholics, adopted what is generally (if inaccurately) labelled a ‘liberal’ position.