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).     

Myth and history in the contemporary Spanish Novel

Locke has often been hailed as the father of an empiricism that provided a philosophical basis to natural science in the Age of Enlightenment. In this article his empiricism is compared with that of the little known Dutch Aristotelian professor Gerardus de Vries. There are striking parallels between Locke's brand of mechanist empiricism and the pragmatic and flexible Aristotelianism of De Vries. These parallels put strictures on both the archaic character of the Aristotelianism embraced by De Vries and on the modern and forward-looking character of Locke's philosophy of science.     

Justices and Injustices: the Order of St John,the Holy See,and the Appeals Tribunal in Rome

In the early seventeenth century it became customary for knights of Malta who committed crimes to appeal to the tribunal of the Apostolic Chamber (Audentia Camera) in Rome. The Grand Masters of the Order of St John in Malta blamed this practice on the advent of the Apostolic Visitor and Roman Inquisitor in 1574 and saw its activities as a direct infringement of their authority over members of the Order and their subjects in Malta. Therefore on occasions successive Grand Masters found ways to “protest” with the Holy See claiming that the activities of the Apostolic Chamber were a threat to their rule, but the Grand Masters could not go beyond protesting because the Order of St John was above all a Catholic religious institution and the Pope in Rome was its ultimate head.     

British School Atlases, 1880–1930: Questions of Relevance,Credibility and Authorship in the Production of Geographical Knowledge

Abstract

The focus in this article is on school atlases produced in Britain in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and on what is revealed, both in their pages and in the processes behind their compilation, about the people who were producing and using such map books. The Bartholomew Archive, in Edinburgh, has proved to be an exceptionally rich source of hitherto unexamined data on the business and personal activities of one of the leading producers of school atlases, the local firm of John Bartholomew and Son, which was active in map making and publishing between 1880 and 1987. The sociology and pattern of communication of publishing, explored by book historians and historians of science, geography and cartography in other contexts, are here considered in relation to the atlases that were produced in Britain for schools in the United Kingdom and in other parts of the Empire in the period 1880–1930. Particular attention is paid to the efforts of mapmakers, publishers, geographers and other professionals to ensure the relevance of the maps selected in school atlases for specific audiences, to guarantee the credibility of the information communicated through these atlases, and to negotiate questions of authorship.     

Matthew Clark and the Beginnings of Chart Publishing in the United States

ABSTRACT

At the end of the eighteenth century Boston, Massachusetts, emerged as a centre of chart publishing in the United States. With little cartographic experience among them, Bartholomew Burges, John Norman and, later, Matthew Clark undertook a publishing venture that resulted in the first atlas of sea charts made in the United States. The research presented here redefines the roles of the principals and examines the atlas's relationship to other Boston publications.     

Monks and hermits in medieval love stories

Monks and hermits are frequently mentioned in courtly romances. It is an unresolved problem whether these are real men or the product of literary imagination. The monks and hermits of love literature do evolve over time: whereas in the twelfth century they are predominantly monastic figures, later they are laymen. This article examines the literary image of the monk and hermit, including their role as advocates of marital fidelity, and asks how effective these models were for contemporary Christians, especially in cases where poets abandoned their secular life to become monks and hermits. With the rise of the friars traditional literary images were not abandoned. Emphasis is placed on the role of the hermit as a symbol of the quest for divine love.     

On food and fossils: natural philosophy,mathematics, and biblical history in the works of John Wallis

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses how John Wallis (1616–1703), Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, used biblical evidence to support his ideas about natural philosophy and mathematics. Examples from Wallis’s long career include his calculation of the age of the Earth, his critique of Robert Hooke’s theory concerning the origin of fossils, and his debate with Edward Tyson about whether humans are naturally herbivorous or carnivorous. My analysis shows that Wallis’s use of biblical history did not necessarily commit him to an intellectually conservative position, but neither did it always encourage him to embrace new ideas. In fact, the truth is somewhere in the middle: I argue that biblical history provided a useful way for Wallis to negotiate between tradition and innovation, to determine which new ideas represented important advances and which were unsubstantiated follies.     

Recovering Republican Eloquence: John Cheke versus Stephen Gardiner on the Pronunciation of Greek

Abstract

The controversy over Greek pronunciation at Cambridge University in 1542, principally between university chancellor Stephen Gardiner and regius professor of Greek John Cheke, marked the emergence of not only the linguistic but also the political agenda of the mid-Tudor Cambridge humanists. This important group included future statesmen and political thinkers such as William Cecil, later Elizabeth's famous minister, Thomas Smith, author of De republica anglorum, and John Ponet, leading exponent of ‘resistance theory’. In the 1542 Greek controversy Cheke and his allies advocated the restoration of an ancient pronunciation they saw as having been the medium of eloquence in the Athenian republic. Their concepts of language provide a template for their political concepts: both language and political structures are generated by the community, reflective of the community's particular character, susceptible to change and capable of improvement. Throughout their subsequent careers and especially in the reign of Edward VI, when their influence was at its height, these humanists fostered a ‘monarchical republican’ politics; it involved rhetorical persuasion as the main mode of political action, programmes of religious and economic reform, and popular consent as an important factor in the good governance of the commonwealth.     

Economic Imperialism and Financial Citizenship: Reconsidering British Subjectivity in Martin Chuzzlewit and Lawrie Todd

During the tumultuous time of financial and colonial expansion between 1825 and 1855, both Charles Dickens and John Galt published picaresque novels depicting transatlantic travel and land speculation. If emigration is the act of permanently leaving one's homeland and living in another, then neither novels' eponymous protagonist Martin Chuzzlewit nor Lawrie Todd is an emigrant. By reading Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–44) and John Galt's Lawrie Todd (1830) alongside nineteenth-century developments of the geo-political and financial spheres, this article shows how these works form a counter-narrative to traditional novels of emigration. Both protagonists leave Britain with the explicit intent to seek their fortune in America through engagement with land speculation companies. Though the characters' experiences of transatlantic financial speculation is dichotomous (with Todd becoming rich and Chuzzlewit losing all he has), both characters ultimately return to Britain. In these counter-narratives, we argue that America is deployed as Britain's financial periphery, rather than an alternative imperial centre, working to entrench British nationalism through transatlantic financial speculation. It is through the act of returning from America that Dickens and Galt counter typified emigration narratives that represent the choice to emigrate to America as synonymous with abandoning the Empire for the ‘Great Republic’. Instead, Dickens and Galt show how America can be exploited as a financial extension of Empire where Britons can maintain national loyalty while simultaneously responding to an unstable global financial market that was increasingly dependent upon speculation and foreign investment practices.