Friendship and the Solitude of Greatness: The Case of Charles de Gaulle

The French statesman Charles de Gaulle was, and remains, something of an enigma. A genuinely great man, at first glance, he seems to tower above mere humanity. In studying de Gaulle's biographies and writings, the statesman and military man eclipses the human being without leaving his human bearing wholly behind. De Gaulle himself emphasized the solitude and sadness that accompanied the burden of human greatness. Yet de Gaulle, the self-described “man of character,” “the born protector,” was also a loving husband, a not terribly demanding or severe father, a faithful Christian, and a French patriot. There were profound limits to his solitude and self-sufficiency. His austere magnanimity coincided with moderation, even benevolence. He loved his country, strove for greatness, and sacrificed something of his private happiness for the public good. He was a complex man and soul, and perhaps a conflicted one.     

Balancing and Limiting Episcopal Power: Bishop Thomas Barlow’s Use of Common Law in Disputes with Arminian Anglican Clerics

Thomas Barlow was a Reformed theologian simultaneously fighting on three fronts against Catholic, Dissenting Protestant and Arminian Anglican opponents. The first two of these groups threatened the Church of England from the outside, while the last group was transforming Anglican doctrine through its domination of the most important posts in the episcopal hierarchy. Barlow could not argue directly against the power of bishops without assisting the external opponents, yet he had to find a way to prevent other bishops from interfering in his continued support for Reformed theology. In order to reduce their power within the Church of England, Barlow had to look outside the institution for ways to limit his superior’s power. This essay examines two arguments in which Barlow ventured into polemics about the secular law of England in an effort to maintain limits on his Anglican opponents’ exercise of power.     

When the Revolution Reached the Countryside: Use and Destruction of Imported Wares in Alta Gracia,Córdoba, 1810

During the 1970s, excavations were conducted in Alta Gracia, Córdoba, Argentina, in a compound that once was a seventeenth and eighteenth-century Jesuit Convent and is presently a museum. During the excavation, an amazing amount of historic material never studied before was discovered inside a sealed privy. After studying the material, we were able to identify the objects as once belonging to Santiago de Liniers, a man who successfully resisted and expelled British invaders from Buenos Aires. As a result, he was appointed Viceroy, though eventually he was shot in 1810 for confronting the Independence movement. Our hypothesis is that these objects were thrown into the privy as a gesture of contempt associated with his capture and execution.     

Assessing Spatial Dependence in Count Data: Winsorized and Spatial Filter Specification Alternatives to the Auto-Poisson Model

The auto-Poisson probability model furnishes an obvious tool for modeling counts of geographically distributed rare events. Unfortunately, its original specification can accommodate only negative spatial autocorrelation, which itself is a rare event. More recent alternative reformulations, namely, the Winsorized and spatial filter specifications, circumvent this drawback. A comparison of their performances presented in this article reveals some of their relative advantages and disadvantages.