ABSTRACT
The close conjunction of the Holy Spirit and the church in Catholic theology, and the need to respond to Protestant claims for radical ecclesial reform, produced an exalted ecclesiology that Marian theologians possessed in common with their continental peers. After the religious upheaval of the previous reformations, the question of ecclesial authority was of vital importance to the Marian theologians, and they wrote about it incessantly; the issue of authority in the church cannot be said to have been 'only gradually and fitfully emerging' in the 1560s. Even more important to Marian theologians than episcopal prerogative was the subject of papal primacy. The active and communal aspects of Christianity were iterated by Marian theologians in their focus on the quality of charity in the church. By undertaking the works of mercy, Christians not only received the divine gift of charity, they also shared it with their 'euen chrysten'.
