In the last decade of the reign of Emperor Constantius (351–61), Christians in Antioch in Syria were still in a state of turmoil. This turmoil had ecclesiastical overtones, but was essentially doctrinal in origin. The doctrinal issues were of two kinds, one theological and the other Christological, the former centring around the relationship of the Son to the divine Father and the latter around the nature of Christ's humanity. Regarding the first there was a contest for supremacy between the theologies of the hard-line Nicene party, the successors of Bishop Eustathius, who supported the Nicene assertion of consubstantiality of Father and Son, the Meletians, who to all intents were Nicene, and the Arians under their bishop Eudoxius, who resisted the Nicene thinking. The Christological issue, a concern of Eustathius for some time, was given new impetus in Antioch by Eudoxius when he denied Christ's human soul. Meanwhile, in Laodicea, not far south of Antioch, Apollinarius was active. He was an orthodox Nicene trinitarian in his fight against the Arian theology of George of Laodicea.

The lavish patronage bestowed on Westminster Abbey by Edward the Confessor, and later by Henry III, ensured its status as the church which pre-eminently enjoyed royal favour and was designated by each as his mausoleum. During the intervening reigns the prestige of the abbey was less assured. The present paper seeks to examine the extent to which the genuine charters issued from, or for, Westminster between 1066 and 1216 testify to any special relationship with the monarchy.

In January 1454 Sultan Mehmet II (1451–81), ruler of much of the Orthodox Christian Balkans and lately conqueror of Byzantium, vested the patriarch of Constantinople, George Scholarius, with full ecclesiastical authority over all the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman empire.

This ‘donation’ of Mehmet, long accepted by the scholarly consensus, now stands revealed as a ‘foundation myth’, concocted long after 1454 by the Great Church to justify the over-arching authority it wielded or aspired to wield under the Ottoman imperium.

The present paper is intended as a contribution to the recent debate on the failure of the Irish Reformation. It commences with a critical summary of the modern historiography of the subject which serves also to highlight a potentially significant imbalance between the early and later Reformation periods in the identification and exploitation of relevant source material by historians. Arguably, the nature of the evidence hitherto deployed goes far towards explaining the dimensions of the present controversy. The paper addresses this controversy mainly in two ways. First, it aims to draw attention to, and analyse, a neglected source compilation which is of central importance in assessing the reasons for the failure of the Irish Reformation. Second, and partly in order to.establish the full significance of this evidence, it seeks to develop a wider perspective from which to assess the potential for, and chronology of, religious change in Ireland.

For the most part historians of the nineteenth century have tended to categorise the Whigs as the party of reform and the Tories as the party opposed to it. This trend has been strongest in the spheres of political and ecclesiastical history and has been supported by reference to events that led to the reforms of Church and State in the 1830s. The Whig commitment to ecclesiastical reform under Grey and Melbourne has established their reputation in the minds of historians as Church reformers without equal in the era.