好太王碑一千五百九十年祭

好太王碑是高句丽第十九代王广开土境平安好太王的墓碑。414年立于国内城（今吉林省集安市）东郊,至2004年11月正好建立五千五百九十年。过去曾对其保护与研究进行过总结。十年来（1994-2004）,好太王碑的保护与研究出现了一些新交化,中国学者出版了几部著作,发表了一批论文,特别是吉林省考古研究所方起东研究员推出的新释文,中国社会科学院徐建新研究员对于北京地区好太王碑拓本的发现研究,是这一时期好太王碑研究的重要成果。     

已佚1590年单幅中国大地图研究

透过法国制图家桑松1656年绘制的中国地图,揭示已佚的由耶稣会士罗明坚与意大利制图家内罗尼合作的1590年单幅中国大地图面貌,指出此图主体部分是由罗明坚依据《大明一统文武诸司衙门官制》所载中文舆图摹绘的抄摹型分省图稿拼合而成的,拼合主要基于对分省图稿省际河道比较随意的连接,造成水系、诸省轮廓及方位等重大错误。部分图示还借鉴1584年刻印的巴尔布达"中国新图"。此图是已知最早的单幅西文中国详图,虽有缺陷,但对中国地理面貌的展现较此前西文地图有所推进。     

Roman London

This paper discusses two fragmentary stone pillars, one decorated, which were recently discovered at Trefollwyn, near Llangefni, Anglesey. These are the first examples of their kind from Britain but they belong to a tradition of La Tène carved stone pillars from the Rhineland, Brittany, and Ireland. They may be connected with burial. In antiquarian sources an early Christian inscribed stone (fifth-sixth centuries A.D.), now lost, was reported from Capel Heilin in the same immediate vicinity and suggests that the area was used for burial in the early medieval period.     

Rooflessness in London

Rooflessness in London emerged as a media issue and political problem during the 1980s. While "rough sleeping" undoubtedly increased, numbers are hard to quantify because studies are unreliable, use different categories, and people seamlessly drift from one category to another. This article analyzes the causes of rooflessness in London, focusing on central government policy change at a time when London, atypically among major cities, had no overarching metropolitan government. The creation of multiple quasi-governmental agencies and charities whose responsibilities for homelessness overlap does not help coordination. Many short-term initiatives have been attempted, but solving rooflessness may require more radical changes if endemic homelessness is not to be the condition of the post-welfare state.     

Monthly London Meeting

When the Catholic Mass was outlawed by Edward VI, ‘The sacrifice of Masses, in which it was commonly said that the Priests did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits’—the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, 1553, Article Thirty-one (Bickwell 1955, 410), not only were priests loyal to Rome forced underground, but altars, vestments and chalices used in the Mass were destroyed. Clandestine priests had to either rescue and hide such items or purchase new ones.

Few chalices survived this iconoclasm and most Catholic priests must have had to purchase new plate, and there is evidence that some such plate was made in base-metals, an area which has so far been little researched.