The Patronage of Rembrandt's Passion Series: Art,Politics, and Princely Display at the Court of Orange in the Seventeenth Century

This article sets out a new reading of a neglected poem by Sir Robert Howard, The Duell of the Stags (1668). It places the poem in the political context of the fall of Clarendon and rise of Howard’s friend and ally the Duke of Buckingham, and of Howard’s concurrent falling-out with his brother-in-law John Dryden. It explores the influence of Thomas Hobbes’ political theory on Howard’s poem, especially refracted through Sir William Davenant’s Hobbesian epic Gondibert (1651). The author argues that Howard’s poem implicitly attacked Dryden’s mode of panegyric for the Restoration regime by offering a radically alternative reading of Hobbes, casting royal power as fragile and contingent.     

Reims,Bibliothèque Carnegie, 806: a little‐known manuscript of Benedict of Aniane's Concordia regularum

Benedict of Aniane is usually portrayed as the major instigator of a series of monastic reforms undertaken by Louis the Pious in the early years of his reign, which attempted to impose the Rule of Benedict of Nursia as the sole monastic standard across Francia. Based on information provided by Ardo, Benedict of Aniane's biographer, the Concordia regularum has been seen as Benedict's main instrument in his attempt to convince or compel others to accept the Rule as a superior norm. The Concordia itself is a sort of commentary on the Rule, where almost the whole of St Benedict's Rule is explained by texts drawn from other monastic rules. However, a number of fragments from a copy of the Concordia, apparently written a decade or more before the accession of Louis, contests Ardo's chronology, and challenges our traditional understanding of both Benedict of Aniane's role in monastic reform and of the Aachen reform councils. An edition of these fragments is included in an Appendix.     

British hospitality for an unfortunate prince: the Duc de Bordeaux's visit to Britain as an early test of the entente cordiale, 1843–4

In the summer of 1843, Anglo-French relations thawed in the wake of the British and French royal families' meeting at the Château d'Eu in Normandy. Members of both governments began to speak of the good understanding, or entente cordiale, between them, and much of the existing historiography points out that by 1844, what proved to be a fragile arrangement was under some pressure. However, mere months after the Eu visit, another royal visit threatened the entente, that of King Louis Philippe's exiled great-nephew, the Bourbon pretender Henri, Duc de Bordeaux (later known as the Comte de Chambord), to Britain. Owing to Britain's tradition of allowing entry to foreigners, Bordeaux was able to enter Britain freely, whilst the British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, argued that his visit would have little political consequence. Rather, Bordeaux and his suite intended to make political demonstrations. These activities and Aberdeen's willingness to believe professions to the contrary deeply offended the French government. Aberdeen was eventually forced to admonish Bordeaux and his suite. Although the dispute was amicably resolved, it almost fatally undermined the entente soon after its inception.     

‘Halt! Be Men!’: Sikelgaita of Salerno,Gender and the Norman Conquest of Southern Italy

This article examines the career of Sikelgaita (1040–1090), wife of the Norman conqueror of southern Italy, Robert Guiscard, as a means of understanding the impact of the ‘other’ Norman conquest of the eleventh century. Sikelgaita is unusual in that she has left images in narrative sources both within and well beyond the confines of southern Italy. She is also well documented at a local level. Both types of material combine to reveal her crossing gender boundaries in titles she used, the way in which she managed property, her legendary presence alongside Robert on his campaigns and, more speculatively, in organising a campaign of written propaganda to ensure the succession of her son to his father's patrimony in preference to his half‐brother by Sikelgaita's predecessor as Robert's wife. Her history raises the problems of women's access to written texts, their conscious shaping of their own identities, their conflicting loyalties between natal and marital families, and the need for competing male heirs to prove themselves against a prevailing notion of masculinity in a period when one aggressively masculine group, the Lombards, was being supplanted in power by another, the Normans. As such, it demonstrates that the lives of so‐called ‘exceptional’ women continue to have a value to historians of gender in the middle ages, and can often demonstrate the patriarchal boundaries which even they could not cross.     

Charles the Simple,Robert of Neustria,and the vexilla of Saint‐Denis

A recent consensus holds that the deposition of Charles the Simple by Robert of Neustria in 922 was the result of a sudden deterioration in their relationship that had nothing to do with any earlier hostilities. A close examination of contemporary diplomas suggests a very different story. In 898, Charles did not faithfully implement the agreement he had made with Robert's brother Odo that gave him the succession and he resisted recognizing Robert's lay abbacies, in particuar that of Saint‐Denis. These grievances shaped the entirety of the reign, and their memory remained quite alive at the time of the deposition.     

The Gender of Grace: Impotence,Servitude, and Manliness in the Fifth‐Century West

This essay attempts to stage an encounter between post‐Foucauldian approaches to masculinity in the ancient world on the one hand, and the reading of Augustine of Hippo's idea of Original Sin as a disjunction of the will, put forward in Robert Markus's Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of Saint Augustine. Emphasis is placed on Book XIV of the City of God, where Augustine emblematises the result of Original Sin not –pace Foucault – through an image of irrepressible lust, but rather through that of the impotent male, humiliated by his inability to embody his desire.     

Behçet Kemal Çağlar's Kur’ân‐ı Kerîm'den İlhamlar (Inspirations from the Holy Qur’ān): A Kemalist's Personal,Poetic Response to the Qur’ān

Behçet Kemal Ça?lar, 1908–1969, is the author of a commentary of the Qur’ān, Kur’ân‐? Kerîm'den ?lhamlar (‘Inspirations from the Holy Qur’ān’), published in 1966. This work can be described as a poetic reflection on the Qur’ān. It does not adhere to rendering every line or verse, but instead insists on maintaining a rhythmic cadence and end‐rhyme. Although it resembles a translation in some ways, Ça?lar refuses to call his work a translation. This paper begins by introducing Ça?lar and his text, a brief history of Turkish translations of the Qur’ān, then Ça?lar's approach is contrasted with the aims of translators of the Qur’ān. Ça?lar's text is studied in more detail, providing a sample of the Turkish text and a translation of it into English, focusing on Ça?lar's reflection on Sūrat ?aha. Through this study, it becomes clear that as a result of his prioritizing the literary aspects of the Qur’ān in his reflection, Ça?lar's book has an advantage over literal translations of the Qur'an and it can be useful for Qur’ān translation. At the same time, Ça?lar's book is a reflection of a desire to develop a Turkish Islam—a manifestation of Islam that came from Turkey, that reflected its language and culture and that was intelligible to its people.     

‘Attaque and Break Through a Phalanx of Corruption . . . the Court Party!’ The Scottish Representative Peers' Election and the Opposition, 1733–5: Three New Division Lists of the House of Lords of 1735*

In the early 1730s, Archibald Campbell, the earl of Ilay, gained a dominant position in Scotland, and Sir Robert Walpole, the prime minister, entrusted him with the distribution of patronage there. Ilay took full advantage of this power, and controlled the votes of the financially weak Scottish peers in the election of 16 representative peers. The excise crisis of 1733–4, however, changed the political scene in Scotland. Although they had been chosen as supporters of the court party, some of the Squadrone Volante members (the duke of Montrose and the marquess of Tweeddale) and two courtiers (the earls of Marchmont and Stair) raised a standard of revolt against Walpole and Ilay. The Scottish opposition co‐operated with the English country party (‘the Patriots’) and such Scottish tories as the duke of Hamilton. In the 1734 peers' election they launched a challenge to the ministry, but the opposition was crushed by a bankrolled election campaign organised by the court party. Although the English and Scottish opposition petitioned in the house of lords to criticize the ‘undue practices’ of Walpole and Ilay at the election, the ministry was backed up by English and Scottish courtiers and bishops, and overwhelmed the opposition. Three new division lists related to the aftermath of the Scottish election shed much light upon the party alignment of the upper House in the middle of the 1730s.     

In the name of a distant king: representing royal authority in the county of Castile,c.900–1038

This article explores the representation of royal power in the tenth‐century county of Castile by contrasting the low degrees of effective royal agency within the county with a dominant charter‐writing tradition that coupled king and count in the synchronisms of the dating clauses. The components of the Castilian charter corpus are broken down and compared to other areas in northern Iberia, in order to suggest that, rather than a mere regional charter‐writing tradition, this practice reflects a widespread political culture that sought to legitimize the counts' unitary leadership of Castile by reference to a prestigious yet distant royal figure.     

Genealogical narrative and self-knowledge in Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men

SUMMARY

Why did Rousseau cast the substance of the Second Discourse in the form of a genealogy? In this essay the author attempts to work out the relation between the literary form (genealogical narrative, as the author calls it) of the Discourse's two main parts and the content. A key thesis of Rousseau's text concerns our lack of self-knowledge, indeed, our ignorance of our ignorance. The author argues that in a number of ways genealogical narrative is meant to respond to that lack. In the course of his discussion he comments on Rousseau's puzzling remarks in the Second Discourse about his expository method. Further, given the thesis that we lack self-knowledge, Rousseau owes us an account of his genesis as self-knowing genealogist. He attempts to do so in part through his narrative of the ‘illumination of Vincennes’. The author examines that narrative as well, reading it and the Discourse in light of each other. Can Rousseau resolve the problems of self-reference that the philosophical use of genealogy often leads to? The article discusses this complex metaphilosophical problem, along with views about the value of genealogical accounts, in light of recent work by Robert Guay, John Kekes, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Frederick Neuhouser, among others.     

The voice of the dead king Chindasuinth: poetry,politics, and the discourse of penance in Visigothic Spain

Around ad 653, Eugenius II, bishop of Toledo, composed a first‐person poetic epitaph for the deceased Visigothic king Chindasuinth (r. 642–53) in which the monarch is made to speak with self‐deprecating candour. This paper offers a reassessment of the poem's language and rhetorical strategy by situating it within contemporary discourses surrounding royal admonition and penance. Rather than interpreting Eugenius's composition as an act of defamation, as the majority of critics have done, it reads the poem as a dignifying literary expression of atonement. This reading corresponds with other specimens of Eugenius's poetry and evidence from a developing literary culture at Chindasuinth's court.     

Herbert Brownell,Jr.: The “Hidden Hand”1 in the Selection of Earl Warren and the Government's Role in Brown v. Board of Education

There are, of course, many heroes behind the Supreme Court's most famous and, some would argue, most significant case of the 20^th Century: Brown v. Board of Education. ² Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the decision and is credited with convincing the other Justices to make it unanimous. Thurgood Marshall and Robert L. Carter argued important aspects of the case for the NAACP and championed a legal strategy that brought it to the High Court. Few, however, would readily name Herbert Brownell, Jr. as one of the heroes. Yet, as Attorney General, Brownell was President Eisenhower's chief adviser on judicial appointments when he put Warren on the Court, and Brownell led the Justice Department in supporting the notion that segregation of public schools violated the Constitution.     

Norman Gash and the Making of Mr Secretary Peel

In May 1961, the firm of Longmans published the first volume of Norman Gash's monumental life of Sir Robert Peel. Mr Secretary Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel before 1830 was hailed at the time as a landmark and has proved surprisingly durable as an interpretation of Peel's early life and formation. This essay is concerned with locating Gash's work within its political, biographical, and historiographical context. It begins by considering the reaction of Peel family members to Gash's biography, before tracing the antecedents of his historical preoccupations and intellectual development in the years leading up to the publication of Mr Secretary Peel. It presents a wide range of new evidence relating to Gash's life and emergence as a political and parliamentary historian, drawing upon sources which have come to light in the decade since his death in May 2009.     

Henry II,liturgical patronage and the birth of the ‘Romano‐German Pontifical’

Variously acclaimed as coepiscopus, saint and Mönchskönig, Henry II of Germany has always had a reputation as a quasi‐religious figure. This article goes a step further, appending to his résumé the creation of the wildly successful liturgical tradition known as the ‘Romano‐German Pontifical’. Formerly dated to the tenth century, its major ordines are here argued to have been cultivated in royal circles in the years 1002–9, before being compiled for the first time as a gift for the new Bamberg Cathedral. The tradition is shown to reflect the king’s concerns, scholarly, political and confessional, as well as projecting an idealistic, Bamberg‐esque notion of Romano‐German unity.     

Urban law—II

This paper explores the political thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay with particular reference to his highly acclaimed book called A New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus (1727). Dedicated to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, to whom he was tutor, this work has been hitherto viewed as a Jacobite imitation of the Telemachus, Son of Ulysses(1699) of his eminent teacher archbishop Fénelon of Cambrai. By tracing the dual legacy of the first Persian Emperor Cyrus in Western thought, I demonstrate that Ramsay was as much indebted to Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History (1681)as he was to Fénelon's political romance. Ramsay took advantage of Xenophon's silence about the eponymous hero's adolescent education in his Cyropaedia, or the Education of Cyrus (c.380B.C.), but he was equally inspired by the Book of Daniel, where the same Persian prince was eulogised as the liberator of the Jewish people from their captivity in Babylon. The main thrust of Ramsay's adaptation was not only to revamp the Humanist- cum-Christian theory and practice of virtuous kingship for a restored Jacobite regime, but on a more fundamental level, to tie in secular history with biblical history. In this respect, Ramsay's New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus, was not just another Fénelonian political novel but more essentially a work of universal history. In addition to his Jacobite model of aristocratic constitutional monarchy, it was this Bossuetian motive for universal history, which was first propounded by the German reformer Philipp Melanchthon in his Chronicon Carionis (1532), that most decisively separated Ramsay from Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, author of another famous advice book for princes of the period, The Idea of a Patriot King (written in late 1738 for the education of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, but officially published in 1749).     

Turning Latin into Greek: Anna Komnene and the Gesta Roberti Wiscardi

This article examines the relationship between one of the most famous Byzantine sources, the Alexiad of Anna Komnene, and the Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, written by William of Apulia at the end of the eleventh century. It shows that Anna not only had access to a substantial archive of material relating to the Normans of southern Italy, but also that the author drew extensively on William of Apulia's account of the attacks of Robert Guiscard on Epirus in 1081–5. Multiple borrowings are identified, including a crucial case of mistranslation from the Latin into Greek, demonstrating that the Gesta lay at the heart of the Alexiad's coverage of the Normans. It argues that Anna Komnene makes carefully judged variations from the southern Italian text, before suggesting that the latter was composed shortly before the Council of Bari (1098). It concludes with a suggestion that the contribution of William of Apulia is surreptitiously acknowledged by the Byzantine author.     

The Interest of Reason Is to Go Without God. Jacobi's Polemic Against Philosophical Theology

Jacobi's polemics against philosophical theology is meant to show that neither Spinoza, nor Kant, nor Fichte nor Schelling have been able to think God as a person, that is as a free, intelligent being. In order to elucidate Jacobi's position I focus on two less well‐known texts of his, viz., A Few Comments Concerning Pious Fraud (1788) and Of Divine Things and Their Revelation (1811). In the second section I situate two key philosophical theological concepts — deism and theism — against the broader context of modern philosophy. The third section analyses Jacobi's polemic against deism, followed by an examination of his positive attitude towards theism and an explanation of the reasons why he, at the end of his life, came to identify theism with deism and extended the negative meaning of the latter term to the former. In the final section, I give an outline of Jacobi's alternative idea of philosophical theology.     

“… but in its proper place. …”Religion,Enlightenment, and Australia's Secular Heritage: The Case of Robert Lowe in Colonial NSW 1842–1850

Over the last few decades historians have been rediscovering Australia's religious heritage, often in response to entrenched narratives depicting Australia's social, intellectual, and political history as a triumph of secular enlightenment over vestiges of Old World partnerships of religion, state, and society. That Australia has a rich secular heritage is indisputable, but to draw a sharp distinction between the “secular” and the “religious” is anachronistic and misguided, and any attempt to tell the story of Australia's secular heritage must acknowledge that the “secular” often found its justification flowing from more general religious premises grounded in enlightenment ideals such as rational religion, rational piety, and general Christianity. Indeed, when liberal democracy was emerging in the colonies the “secular” had to be justified in terms acceptable to the public square and these terms were broadly religious. Robert Lowe is an apt case study for divining the nature of the secular in colonial Australia, for his thought and political activity show the subtle and complex way that ideals such as “enlightenment,” “religion,” and “secular” entered into dialogue rather than warfare with one another and contributed to social institutions judged suitable for a fledgling pluralist nation.