Medieval historians confronted with the Latin word papa may be tempted to translate it unthinkingly as ‘pope’. Certainly the word has been restricted to the bishop of Rome for much of the history of the Church, and its application to this bishop is of long standing. It occurs in an inscription from pre-Constantinian Rome, in a letter despatched to Rome by the fathers of the Council of Aries in 314, which is addressed ‘dilectissimo papae Silvestro’ and goes on to style Silvester ‘gloribsissime papa’, and in the acts of the first Council of Toledo which met in 400, where language is used which implies that the bishop of Rome, and he alone, was papa. But in the early Church it generally seems to have been felt that the word could be applied to other bishops as well. A striking indication of this is furnished by a letter sent to Cyprian of Carthage by the priests and deacons of the Roman Church itself, which refers to him as papa. Sidonius Apollinaris, who became bishop of Clermont in 469, felt free to address his confrères among the Gallic episcopate by the same title, apparently indiscriminately, and was himself so addressed.

In recent years some of the most interesting statements about medieval Christianity have come not from medieval but early modern historians, Jean Delumeau, Keith Thomas, John Bossy and others, in the broad descriptive accounts which form the backcloth to discussions of reformation or counter-reformation developments in ‘religion’ – provocative statements which have not, however, evoked a large response from the English world of medieval scholarship. The latest of such statements is contained in an article by John Bossy. In part of this Bossy puts forward contentions and arguments which are of considerable importance for the study of medieval Christianity. If his arguments and the evidence he advances in their support were to be accepted the historian of medieval Christianity would be pressed to reconsider the words and concepts he deploys in his definition, descriptions and explanations of his subject. Even if modified or rejected they are acute and fruitful points, and their examination may sharpen understanding of medieval thought about religion. Bossy's arguments also point to a gap in modern scholarship: a general account of one area (assuming it was an area) of thought – the development of medieval description, classification and explanation of ‘religious’ phenomena.

There are currently two approaches to the perennial problem of characterising Elizabethan puritanism. Successive attempts to establish a general taxonomy have failed to describe the historical diversity of puritan thinking. Recently the variable contemporary meanings of the epithet ‘puritan’ have been emphasised.1 Neither approach advances our understanding of reforming ideas within the Elizabethan Church, because the first tries to make individuals conform to type and the second limits the usefulness of the term ‘puritan’ in historical discussion. Both approaches ignore important facets of the intellectual environment of puritanism, particularly the contemporary historical vision. The present study offers an alternative approach to the problem through an analysis of the religious mentality revealed in the writings of William Harrison. It argues that Harrison's works reveal some of the underlying assumptions of puritan thinking. By comparing Harrison's thought with that of some radical and conformist contemporaries, it attempts to show that a distinctive historical interpretation, and the application of that interpretation to contemporary conditions, provide a consistent index to puritanism. Analysis of Harrison's thought suggests that, for radicals, divinely inspired faith and knowledge were transmitted through the past, providing a universally normative truth whose criteria could be used to evaluate contemporary circumstances. This truth, which directed every facet of life, establishing the limits of the individual's interests, of his knowledge and of its application, was centred in Israel. To depart from its criteria was to lapse into Gentilism.

Twenty years ago, when Patrick McGrath was writing Papists and Puritans, it made sense to present the history of Tudor Catholicism in terms of early decline and later heroic recovery. Our understanding of the sixteenth century was then dominated by two books, which seemed to demonstrate revolutions in religion and government that breached all continuities in ecclesiastical and political history. In A. G. Dickens's The English Reformation, an increasingly sophisticated laity, discontented with the moral laxity and spiritual torpor of the late medieval clergy, was shown to have accepted with enthusiasm the break with Rome and the new doctrines of Protestantism. Gentlemen, lawyers, merchants and artisans responded to the energetic evangelism of the early reformers, and abandoned medieval obscurantism. Secular and ecclesiastical politicians espoused reform for their own calculations of expediency or experience of spirituality, and threw the weight of the state behind the new doctrines, while conservatives lacked the commitment and imagination to resist change.

When the redoubtable Presbyterian Richard Baxter came to write his engagingly biased autobiography he distinguished three broad categories of conformists to the Restoration Church Settlement of 1662. There were those who had been forced to conform out of need, or had casuistically placed their own meaning on the words of the Subscription; next there were the Latitudinarians, who were ‘mostly Cambridge-men’ and of ‘Universal Principles and free’; and then there were those of the ‘high and swaying Party’ who were ‘desirous to extirpate or destroy the Nonconformists’.

In 1966 Keith Thomas wrote an article in the Times Literary Supplement which laid down the axiom, ‘All historical propositions relating to the behaviour of large groups, for example… religious activity, are susceptible of treatment in this [statistical] way, and indeed permit of no other.’ Social historians have increasingly adopted this approach ever since. It has obviously great merits: I am sometimes afraid, indeed, that the principle is in some ways not being carried far enough, and that only the letter, and not the law, is being implemented. For instance, in my own field, individual village studies, often of high quality, are produced. But their authors frequently omit to indicate the nature of the agricultural and marketing region in which their community lies, and therefore fail to establish either its probable social structure or its ‘normality’ or ‘abnormality’ within its area. Quantified studies of great complexity and considerable value are therefore produced; but this value is diminished by the total ignorance of the reader, and sometimes it seems of the author, of the ‘typicality’ of the example.

On 25 May 1085 Pope Gregory VII died in exile. The ninth centenary of the death of this great pope – ‘the greatest who has ever sat in St. Peter's chair’ Erich Caspar called him in 1924 – provides an obvious pretext for a bibliographical essay. What makes such. an essay a necessary exercise rather than a mere commemorative gesture is the fact that there is not available at present in any language a full-scale biography of Hildebrand–Gregory which reflects the current state of research. There is no doubt that Gregorian studies are flourishing: the colloquium in Salerno in May 1985 will offer an impressive account of research in progress. Over 200 books and articles on different aspects of the life and thought of Hildebrand-Gregory, written in the second half of this century, are listed below. Perhaps it is this sheer wealth of material and opinion which has disheartened potential biographers. The following survey concentrates on Gregorian literature since 1947, the year in which the Salesian and Scriptor of the Vatican Library, Father Giovanni Battista Borino (1881–1966) founded in Rome the journal Studi Gregoriani, which has certainly fulfilled its founder's purpose of stimulating research into the history of the papal reform movement.