Abbots and Aristocrats: Patronage,Art and Architecture at Hailes Abbey in the Late Middle Ages

This article focuses on the art and architecture of the Cistercian abbey of Hailes, home of a famous relic of the Holy Blood, in the two centuries before the Suppression. It is intended to be a contribution to evolving literature on late medieval monasticism, showing the enduring spiritual vitality and relevance of Hailes between the 14th and early 16th centuries. The article discusses the planning and architecture of the late medieval monastery, the extent of and motives for the internal and external patronage and the relationship of the monastery with its sister Cistercian houses, especially those in northern England.     

Reconsidering reputation through patronage: Cardinal Napoleone Orsini and Angelo Clareno at the Avignonese papal court

The changeable politics of Cardinal Napoleone Orsini (c.1262/3–1342), negotiator and pope-maker, have been explained for over a century as the expression of his independent character and antagonistic relationships. Significant moments in his early career are interpreted as deliberate opposition to his own family's policies. This generalisation does his political acumen and familial loyalty a disservice. In particular, the rationale for his political decisions has previously been relied upon in explanations for his support of the Spiritual Franciscans, reformers and sometime separatists within the Franciscan Order. The cardinal's impact on the group has likewise been understated, as scholars have largely focused on their spokesmen's intellectual output, with limited investigation of the political support that enabled their survival. Orsini was connected to the group's spokesmen at the papal court at Avignon, including the prolific author Angelo Clareno (c.1250–c.1337). Close examination of Clareno's letters allows for a reinterpretation of the relationship. Orsini family documents reframe the relationship as part of an established familial tradition of Franciscan patronage. In this larger picture, the impetus for the cardinal's idiosyncratic patronage of the Spirituals becomes, instead, a small strand in the much larger network of familial obligations and patronage responsibilities. This also sheds further light on the fourteenth-century papal curia.     

Patronage of the poetic Mélusine romance: Guillaume l’Archevêque’s confrontation with dynastic crisis

In 1400 Guillaume l’Archevêque, the lord of Parthenay, commissioned the Roman de Parthenay (RP), a poetic ancestral romance affirming his family’s descent from Mélusine, the mythic fairy-serpentine matriarch of the Poitevin Lusignan dynasty. Prevailing scholarship holds that Guillaume’s commission was a political response to the earlier patronage of a prose Mélusine romance by Jean, duke of Berry, c. 1392. According to this view, Guillaume was an English partisan who sought to counter the French claims to Poitevin territories embedded in Berry’s romance with a text that proclaimed his own (and therefore English) rights to lands in central France. After exploring textual and historical evidence for this conventional view, the paper argues that clues to understanding Guillaume’s patronage lie in an analytical comparison of passages in the RP with the specific dynastic circumstances confronting l’Archevêque at the end of the fourteenth century. Examination of the romance in conjunction with evidence provided by feudal, financial, and legal sources suggests that Guillaume’s literary patronage was motivated not by contemporary affairs of state but by his anxieties about the imminent extinction of the Parthenay dynasty.     

Italy's unfinished transition: between domestic dynamics and international change

In the early 1990s, Italy was drawn into a spiral of unprecedented transformation precipitated by changes that were taking place both inside Italy and on the international scene. Financial, political and institutional crises were superimposed in ways that brought into question the survival of the whole Italian system. This occurred at a moment when world geo-political relations were shifting dramatically and radically changing established relations, attitudes and policies and marked the beginning of a long period that is often described as a ‘transition’. But since the outcomes still remain far from certain, it is necessary to consider how accurately this term describes what has been taking place in Italy over the last two decades. This paper shows how more careful identification of the different phases and components of the crisis enable us to understand why the upheavals of 1992–94 have led to a systemic crisis of the Italian economy and politics.     

The Queen and the City: Royal Female Intervention and Patronage in Hellenistic Civic Communities

In 196 bce , Queen Laodike III issued a decree (I.Iasos 4, I) to Iasos in Caria, Asia Minor, announcing that she was giving the Iasians a ten‐year supply of grain to alleviate their penury after her husband's conquest of their city, and she specified that the grain ought to be sold and the income used to provide dowries for the daughters of poor citizens. This and other donations were part of rebuilding efforts in the wake of military violence by Laodike's husband Antiochos III. For her beneficence, Laodike was honoured by cities with foundations of festivals, priestesses and sacred areas dedicated to preserving her cult. This reciprocity of goodwill was gendered, not only in the establishment of priestesses, but in the nature of the honours given; for example Iasos celebrated Laodike III's birthday with a procession of a maiden priestess and couples who were about to wed (I.Iasos 4, II), and the people of Teos dedicated a fountain in their city centre to Laodike and required that all brides should draw from it the water for their baths (SEG 41, 1003). Laodike's patronage and the cities’ responses to her bring to light the role of female citizens within the structures, perpetuation and ceremonial of the civic body. At the heart of honours given Laodike and her own self‐promotion was the identity of sister and mother, roles shaping her own queenship and the civic participation and power of the women she assisted.     

Cyprian and his collegae: Patronage and the episcopal synod of 252

The Roman patron–client relationship has been useful for understanding early Christian bishops and their relationships with their own communities. In this paper the question is asked whether that relationship could shed light on the relationships among bishops themselves. Taking the third–century Saint Cyprian of Carthage as the example, his interactions with other North African bishops at the synod of 252 are examined. The author accepts that Cyprian's Epp. 59 and 64 refer to that synod. Whatever else was discussed, we know that the bishops in synod resolved questions about the status of a former presbyter and the timing of infant baptism. In Ep. 59 Cyprian made reference to the college of bishops ( sacerdotum collegium ). The heart of the paper examines Cyprian's understanding of other bishops as collegae and whether he treated them as clients. The evidence that is available suggests that he accepted bishops who all shared in the same office as being responsible to God alone for their communities, but that his ability to exercise some degree of patron–age over them, through his greater prestige and financial base, was a control mechanism by which he sought to keep unity among the African Christian communities.     

A new era and new themes in Italian politics: The case of Padania

Abstract

By calling for the independence of Padania from the rest of Italy, the Lega Nord has recently drawn a great deal of attention to itself. In support of this campaign the Lega has actively introduced mythical and Utopian models onto the Italian political scene, combining a degree of cultural innovation with a certain political adventurism. This article focuses on these elements, beginning with the events of the autumn of 1996 when the Lega organized a ‘grande festa’ along the banks and in the towns of the River Po aimed at marking the birth of the new nation of Padania. The principal events of the festival were dominated by the many performances of the League's founder and leader, Umberto Bossi, whose speeches were full of pseudo‐religious or pseudo‐prophetic elements. Though the festival ended in Venice with a unilateral declaration of independence by the Lega and its followers in the north, it did not lead to any immediate political consequences. Nevertheless, the situation in Padania is marked by a complex mixture of identities. The Lega has not just introduced new methods of political opposition, it has also brought many subjects (local cultures, regionalism, the right to self‐determination) into the Italian political debate. Furthermore, it has used the language of the sacred and of ‘origins’ to create new characters, new calendars and new sacred sites.     

Italy and Australia: a relationship made and unmade by immigration

Australia's new-found post-colonial ‘independence’ in 1901 initially required it to continue to hold on to the apron strings of its colonial master. After World War II, these needs changed, as did the geopolitical power of the leading nations. For Australia, there would be the need to secure its borders, build its labour power, find security arrangements, and adhere to a cold war framework in its geographical region. The USA and the Asian region fell into Australia's sphere of interest. Italy, on the other hand, was a nation of contrasting interests and perspectives. Besides being located in Europe, the post-war period defined Italy by its participation in the concept of a European community and an entirely different set of allies, concerns and trajectories, which made it position itself in a different orbit than that of Australia. Australia's changing economic and social needs required a new and vast migration program in 1947, which would change the dynamics of its relationships. Enter Italy. The two countries now had common destinies in relation to migration—Australia needed people to help build its country, whilst Italy encouraged its impoverished rural population to emigrate to this distant and foreign land. A relationship was born.     

试析会计信息有意失真及遏制途径

当前我国部分出版企业会计信息失真的基本特征主要表现为会计信息有意失真。在外部约束难以实现时,企业经营者便能够与会计人员勾结,受自身利益最大化驱动,往往任意操纵会计选择。实行会计委派制是遏制会计信息有意失真的有效途径。     

断裂与延续:意大利历史发展的特征

从西罗马帝国灭亡到意大利统一,从中央集权到大区自治,从罗马教廷的控制到天民党的长期执政,这是发生在意大利历史发展过程中的三次传统的断裂与延续。传统的断裂与延续,是意大利历史发展的一个鲜明特征。     

Law, Patronage and Municipal Authority in Seventeenth-Century France: The Aftermath of the Lanturelu Revolt in Dijon

Popular uprisings have attracted the interest of early modernhistorians but the efforts of local elites to manage their consequencesremain largely unexplored. This article examines how Dijon’smunicipality negotiated the aftermath of the 1630 Lanturelurevolt. Following the uprising, Louis XIII curtailed Dijon’sprivileges, reorganized its municipality, and ordered it toindemnify the revolt’s victims. Over time, however, theavocats of Dijon’s municipal government successfully manipulatedthe Ancien Régime’s power networks—law, localinstitutions and clientage networks—to win a restorationof Dijon’s traditional city government, the reductionof damage claims, acknowledgement of the municipality’sinnocence and reaffirmation of its contested authority. Lanturelu’saftermath, often interpreted as an example of the early Bourbons’growing control over French cities, thus reveals that the lattercould remain dynamic political centres in the early seventeenthcentury and that the state’s expanding apparatus couldbe used to contest royal authority, as well as extend it.     

The Shifting Fortunes of War: Patronage of the Wurttemberg Hofkapelle during the Thirty Years War

German courts have long been renowned for their support of music.How long could this support continue in times of war? This articleconsiders the fate of the Württemberg Hofkapelle duringthe Thirty Years War (1618-48), a conflict that forced manydistinguished Hofkapellen to close their doors for much of thewar's duration. The Hofkapelle (literally ‘court chapel’or music ensemble) was the focus of much music patronage atearly modern German courts, and typically consisted of an orchestraof strings, horns, and percussion, as well as adult male singersand a boys’ choir. Based on an analysis of church councilaccounts that list all expenditure for court music throughoutthe war, the article asserts that demand for music during religiousservices under both Protestant and Catholic control of the duchyremained relatively constant. This demand enabled the Hofkapelleto continue musical performances, despite the enormous constraintsthe war placed on court expenditure. Music patronage was significant in several ways. Payment forperformers and composers could be highly competitive among Germancourts, with the best musicians earning salaries often far exceedingthose of other officials. Foreign musicians were much in demandin Württemberg as elsewhere, such as English lutenist JohnPrice, who founded a group of English lutenists at the Württembergcourt in 1618 that lasted until the death of Duke Johann Friedricha decade later. While the hardship of wartime effectively endedthe payment of large salaries, forcing many top performers toleave, members of the court still called for music at church,even if they had to pay for performances themselves. A studyof music patronage during the Thirty Years War thus revealsnot only the extent to which the court sought to support thearts, but also how that support reflected the shifting fortunesof war.     

The judicialization of politics,Italian style

Abstract

The recent dramatic changes in the Italian political scene have been related to the expanding role of the judiciary. The judicialization of politics is a process at work in many other democracies, but in Italy the judicial revolution has been supported by an institutional setting of increasing independence and by the strong powers entrusted to public prosecutors. However, until 1992 judicial power was somewhat balanced by the strength of the political class. But the political crisis that came to a head in 1992 has opened a political vacuum that the judiciary has been able to fill.

The 1996 elections have brought to power a new and stronger political alliance, the Ulivo. A new political stability could lead to a containment of judicial power but it is unlikely that the Italian judiciary will be brought back to its traditional passive role. Judicialization has to be considered a permanent trait of the Italian political system.     

The history of modern and contemporary Italy: Made in France (from the late 1970s to the late 1990s)

Abstract

Over the past three centuries Italy has been the focus of numerous studies by French historians, who have taken advantage of the great wealth of sources available there. While no new synthesis has yet been achieved, we can identify certain main lines of development in French historiography. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s international relations and, especially, the relations between France and Italy were given the greatest attention, before a new focus on forms of sociability and political pedagogy began to be more common. However, the shifting of focus of historical studies to the centres of political decision making often coincided with less attention being paid to social stratification. Beyond these major themes, some researchers have reconstructed ‘global’ historical models, which have been characteristic of the renewal of post‐war French historiography.     

意大利环境管理与可持续发展体系的特点及启示

意大利环境管理和可持续发展体系具有政策务实、执法严格、层次化管理、市场化运作、全民参与、注重科技进步和科技创新等特点,这些成功经验为我国提供了很多可资借鉴的范例,值得我们认真思考和学习。