This is a collection of thirteen papers chosen from over seventy which were delivered at the colloquium of the Commission Internationale d’Historie Ecclesiastique Comparée held at the University of Durham in September 1981. Besides highlighting the work of CIHEC, the book is intended to draw attention to current scholarship in the field of ecclesiastical history. The papers are international in scope and also in authorship with two papers in French and one in German. Though this may cause some irritation to readers not conversant with those languages, the inclusion of these papers serves as a reminder of the global character of the church and of the value of taking a broad view of the past and of the present.

The same sense of breadth and variety is conveyed within the papers themselves, which range from the patristic period to the twentieth century. The difficulty of making such a book fully representative of all the work which went on at the colloquium, while retaining some sense of coherence, was met by choosing three broad themes and including under each a section of papers on different subjects from different periods of history. The themes chosen: death, reconciliation and Christian spirituality, are perennial themes of the Christian faith, and indeed of man’s existence. Thus while illustrating how these issues have been treated in the past, the papers raise a number of questions which address themselves directly to the contemporary situation. Under the theme of reconciliation, for example, Professor G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes examines Protestant irenicism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The irenicists sought to allay or reconcile differences between the confessional churches in a peaceful way. The irenicists, who should be understood within the context of the established churches, were not religious tolerationists, however; Professor Meyjes examines different aspects of irenicism by looking at those who influenced this way of thinking: Erasmus, Bucer, Melanchthon and Cassander. The study brings out the question of the relative importance of church order and dogma, which for the confessionalists were inseparable. It was this which divided them irreconcilably from the Christian humanists. The final part of the paper examines the idea of irenicism in the ‘Republic of Letters’, an international fraternity of men of learning in the humanist tradition. The paper notes how all different established churches claimed to represent the true catholic church, and offers important insights as to the way they perceived the problem of confessional discord.

It would be impossible to summarize each of the thirteen papers here. They range from how St Augustine viewed the state of the departed, through the use of wills as evidence of the growing acceptance of Protestantism, to a final paper, well illustrated, relating art and spirituality in twentieth century Nonconformity as seen through the architectural designs of F. W. Lawrence.

The colloquium was primarily an academic one, dealing with various aspects of church history through different kinds of evidence. The treatment of the material reveals both the academic excellence of church historians currently at work, and something of the different ways we can understand the development of the Christian church. By bringing together these multivarious aspects of church history some appreciation of the richness of the Christian’s inheritance is made possible.