The primary account of the martyrdom of Maurice and the Theban legion occurs in a letter addressed by Eucherius, bishop of Lyons c. 434–50, to a fellow bishop, Salvius. This relatively brief document has attracted a degree of scholarly attention out of all proportion to its length, the purpose of which has been to investigate its historical basis. There are those who believe with varying degrees of certainty that there is a historical basis to the story which Eucherius relates, that there did indeed exist a group of Theban soldiers who were executed in the Alps during the early years of the reign of Emperor Herculius Maximianus because they refused, for religious reasons, to obey his commands. However their arguments have left many unconvinced. Denis Van Berchem's thorough examination of the story has raised many doubts about its veracity, and many commentators now incline to believe, with him, that no such martyrs ever existed.

It has frequently been observed that the intellectual activities of the English Black Monks were in decline during the last two-and-a-half centuries before the Dissolution. There is, indeed, a remarkable contrast between the fecundity of the monastic scriptoria in the two centuries after the Conquest and the apparent inertia of later years, when the creative stimulus seems to have dwindled to the verge of extinction and few, if any, original minds are found at work within the cloister. This generalisation cannot be challenged, as the evidence leaves little room for doubt, but the ‘apparent inertia’ may be questioned since it is a contradiction of the emerging facts. The latter suggest not apathy but persistence in the pursuit of learning, that is, a continuing concern for study on the part of the monastic community; and this should not be disparaged because it bore little more than the practical, commonplace fruits of preaching and teaching. We cannot regard these as fruits of scholarship to be compared with the original compositions which grew out of the philosophical and theological disputations at the centre of university life; they were daily or weekly activities, quite unremarkable, and probably for this very reason left scant record of their occurrence. Moreover, the Black Monk Chapter was promoting these fruits by stating unequivocally, in its statutes of c. 1363, that the principal reason behind the joint decision to send one monk in twenty for further study at the university was to fulfil these precise and practical requirements. A clear indication of the enduring commitment to this policy on the part of most of the cathedral monasteries is to be found in many of the surviving documents, which affirm a consistent adherence to their obligations.

It is now commonplace for historians of religion to treat the creation of saints as a political process that included such issues as doctrinal orthodoxy, church authority and popular practices and beliefs. The early twentieth-century Bollandist scholar of sanctity, Hippolyte Delehaye sj, touched on these when he considered the problems facing the critical, but devout, hagiographer in his history, The work of the Bollandists:

To question the lawfulness of the cult of a saint, or to raise doubts as to the authenticity of his relics, were issues which could not in most cases remain theoretical, but which demanded practical measures, and in the application of these more than usual tact was required. How was it to be made clear to the faithful that the authority of the Church was not responsible for certain vagaries? How were devotions which had taken root in the heart of the people to be suppressed without causing serious disturbances? On the other hand how were they to be upheld, in the face of the conviction that they were without foundation?… Of course the faithful have never been taught that the lives of the saints are to be believed in the same measure as the Gospel, but it is a fact that they incline to this belief. Hence was it not dangerous, from the standpoint of faith, to destroy certain pious illusions?

At the beginning of 1844, the Revd John Flowerdew Colls, Anglican minister of Duke Street Chapel, St James's Park, London, published Utilitarianism unmasked, a vitriolic attack on Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the philosopher, jurisprudent, and advocate of reform. ‘The writer's main object’, the advertisement which prefaces the work grandiloquently announces, ‘has been to expose, in all its naked deformity, the hollowness and deceitfulness of the so-much-vaunted principle falsely called the Greatest happiness principle’, which formed the basis of Bentham's philosophical system. But apart from a few desultory remarks on utilitarianism – such as a belaboured attempt to connect it with Robert Owen's socialism (p. 33) – Colls devoted his energies to undermining Bentham's ideas by pouring scorn and ridicule on Bentham himself.

Early in April 1945 a little collection of political prisoners, including a British secret agent, a Russian air force officer and a German general, were driven by their guards across the diminishing face of the Third Reich. Among them was the thirty-nine year old theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was curious company for a German pastor. Bonhoeffer had joined the group at Buchenwald concentration camp on 7 February. In April he and his new friends were moved to Regensburg, and from there to Schönberg. On 8 April 1945 Bonhoeffer was abruptly separated from the other prisoners. As he was about to leave, he turned to the British agent, Captain Payne Best, and said a few words. The next day he was hanged at Flossenburg with the former head of German Military Intelligence, Admiral Canaris, and Colonel Hans Oster. An SS doctor saw the execution, and was struck by the religious devotion, and the spiritual trust, of the victim.