Concubinage and marriage in medieval canon law

The medieval canon law adopted an ambivaient attitude toward concubinage among the laity. While the canonists disapproved of concubinage on moral grounds, they sought to assimilate the status of the concubine to that of the married woman and thus to legitimize concubinous relationships. In this process of assimilation the canonists made use of the institution of clandestine marriage, which created problems of its own. The crucial difficulty lay in constructing a satisfactory system of proof, so that it would be clear whether or not a given couple should be treated as married, or whether they should be considered legally as unmarried. The Council of Trent abolished lay concubinage and clandestine marriage, but thereby created a system of marriage law flawed with defects almost as serious as those experienced under the medieval law.     

Celebrating Heritage and the Female Orphan School

The Female Orphan School, completed in 1818, is now a part of the University of Western Sydney, in New South Wales, Australia. This recently restored building has been referred to as a rejuvenated heritage jewel and a forgotten heritage treasure, but which aspects of heritage, and whose heritage, are being celebrated? This paper investigates the Orphan School’s discursive construction in historical documents and more recent media releases. Using a theoretical approach informed by the work of Michel de Certeau and Michel Foucault, and drawing on the writings of various modern historical geographers, the paper considers the ways in which understandings of the Institution and the building have been created and argues that many interesting aspects have been overlooked in an effort to produce a heritage designed to appeal to a relatively privileged constituency.     

The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge.     

Urban transformation in Istanbul and Budapest: Neoliberal governmentality in the EU's semi-periphery and its limits

By discussing the variety and variability of urban neoliberal governmentality and its limits in the semi-periphery of the advanced capitalist world, the article aims to explore the embeddedness of neoliberalism at the dawn of the new millennium. Cities that are increasingly becoming parts of the global economy, despite being on the periphery of advanced capitalism, host a myriad of diverse forms of neoliberal governmentality in terms of spatial change. Although responding with enthusiasm to the increasing mobility of capital and the internationalization of investments through gentrification plans, the current transformative efforts of Istanbul and Budapest under two conservative governments indicate, for instance, the re-invention of authoritarianism so that these cities serve the purposes of their national leaders. This development signals a hybrid form of governmentality that combines neoliberalism with illiberal logics and manifests similar processes in different locations despite disparities in scale, local needs and characteristics. The article further argues that since such urban transformations take place within the neo-conservative leaders' battles to acquire cultural and social capital, they create potential to make both metropolises the new rebel cities of Europe, albeit with divergent levels of resistance.     

Sisters in cahoots: female agency in the marriage of Beatrice of England and John of Brittany

As the study of queenship and female agency continues to flourish, this article contributes to recent historiography which has increasingly emphasised the importance of family ties in the functioning of the monarchy in the Middle Ages. This was particularly prevalent in thirteenth-century Anglo-French relations, as Henry III of England and Louis IX of France were married to the count of Provence’s two eldest daughters. The sisterly bond between Marguerite and Eleanor was one of the key components of improved relations between the two kingdoms. One of the ways the sisters were able to restore cordiality was through the marriage of Eleanor’s daughter, Beatrice, to the heir to the duchy of Brittany. This marriage demonstrates the many facets of female agency in reinstating and consolidating peace between England, France and Brittany. It also suggests that Beatrice was more than a pawn and played a role in the diplomacy involved in securing her marriage.     

甘肃合水唐魏哲墓发掘简报

2010年6月,甘肃合水县肖咀乡发现了一座唐代墓葬,经发掘,该墓为唐初右监门卫将军魏哲之墓。墓中出土一方墓志,明确记载了魏哲的生平等,是陇东地区正式发掘的唐墓,丰富了甘肃唐墓资料。     

语图关系视野下的《列女传》文本及其图像

西汉刘向的《列女传》以其传、颂、图三位一体的编撰方式在中国古代典籍中别具一格,正因为如此,《列女传》文本及其图像在后世流传过程中,必然涉及到其文本（语言文字）与图像的关系问题。不同时代,不同类型的《列女传》文本与图像中,其语图关系的紧密程度也有所区别。一方面,《列女传》中语象与图像在这种相互模仿、相互斗争的模式中共同发展、共同进步;另一方面,语象与图像结合程度的不同也带来了叙事强度上的区别。     

Rousseau,Pufendorf and the eighteenth-century natural law tradition

The relationship between the political theory of Rousseau and modern natural law continues to be the subject of debate, both with regard to Rousseau's faithfulness to the idea of natural law itself and regarding the precise extent of the debt he owed to his predecessors. In this article the author re-examines this relationship by focusing attention on what has been defined as the protestant tradition of natural law. In particular she concentrates on the political and theoretical exercise that Jean Barbeyrac had sought to perform by constructing a particular version of this tradition, namely that of using the science of natural law to promote a policy of tolerance between protestants and to justify the right of citizens to resist catholic sovereigns who denied them religious freedom, as well as the right of protestant countries to come to the aid of persecuted fellow believers. The thesis asserts that Rousseau was fully aware of this exercise, just as he was aware that some of Barbeyrac's ideas had been adopted and reworked by another illustrious Genevan, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, a member of the Small Council, to support anti-populist and antidemocratic politics in Geneva. Viewed in this way it is possible to perceive in Rousseau's political thought not so much a “first crisis” of natural law as an intention to reformulate this science from a republican perspective in order to derive rigorous principles of political law from it. And in developing his republican political theory Rousseau took up and overturned the analysis of democratic sovereignty carried out by Pufendorf, who in opposing the “pro-monarchist” excesses of authors such as Hobbes and Horn had unhesitatingly demonstrated the complete validity of democratic sovereignty.     

Confrontation and conciliation: the sami,the crown and the court in seventeenth-century swedish lapland1

This article aims to discover in what kind of legal cases conflicts may be traced between the Sami and representatives of the Crown, and in which situations conciliation is apparent; and it also answers the questions of how and why this happened. It is evident, from the court rolls from the court district of Jukkasjärvi (one of the two northernmost lappmarker in Sweden at this time), that the Crown prosecuted the Sami for sexual offences and crimes against religion. This was due to the prevailing ideology of the seventeenth century, in which Lutheran Christianity prevailed, and because the court was the arena for a power discourse: there was a “right” way to live and behave. This came into conflict with Sami tradition. The Sami themselves pursued a desire and need for conciliation, which becomes apparent in cases of crimes such as murder, manslaughter and grand theft, but also in civil cases, e.g. inheritance. This was due to the fact that the population was quite small, bound together in different relations, and because large-scale conflicts were not beneficial to Sami communities. Even though the Crown Court was an arena of power, it was also used by the Sami for their own ends, and thus we can see an interactive Sami society, independent of the prevailing political Lutheran Christian ideology and its discourse.