Preaching and History: The Audience of Ranulf Higden’s Ars componendi sermones and Polychronicon

In his Ars praedicandi sermones, in traditional yet rich metaphoric language, Ranulf Higden compares Christ to a fountain, a shepherd, a rock, a lily, a rose, a violet, an elephant, a unicorn, and a youthful bridegroom wooing his beloved spouse. Ranulf encourages preachers to use such metaphors while using them himself, rendering his text a performed example of what he encourages. This text is clearly linked to two others: Ranulf’s Latin universal history, the Polychronicon, and John Trevisa’s English translation of it. In the Polychronicon, Ranulf relates the life of Christ, utilizing some of his own rhetorical suggestions from his preaching manual. He also depicts a cross-section of good and bad preachers, including Gregory, Wulfstan, Eustas, St Edmund, and one William Long-Beard and his kinsman, who exemplify (in different ways) the wisdom conveyed in Ranulf’s instruction in the Ars praedicandi. This essay suggests that the literary relationship between the preaching manual and the Polychronicon supplies additional support for the idea that the audience of the latter was not noblemen exclusively, but also clergymen who preached and had responsibility for the care of souls (cura animae).     

略论杜勒斯对苏战略的早期思想背景（1919—1952）

杜勒斯的对苏战略构想和政策主张与其早期经历和思想有着密切的关联。杜勒斯对苏战略观的政治哲学基础是他早年形成的“和平变革”论,其思想根源包括在冷战初期即已基本定型的苏联观,即他对苏联“挑战”的性质、对外目标与手段、战略上的优势和弱点等问题的基本判断。联系这个思想背景,可以从杜勒斯令人目眩的多种表象背后,看到一条清晰而又前后连贯的政策思路。可以说,杜勒斯的对苏战略构想就其本质而言是一以贯之的,其逻辑顺序可以概括为“共处—竞争—高压—变革”。     

The Great Landowners in the House of Commons, 1833–85

This prosopographical article demonstrates that the traditional British landed interest suffered very little by the terms of the 1832 Reform Act. They maintained their customary dominance of the house of commons, although voting records show that they had lost some of their ability to push legislation through the House that spoke to their more parochial interests. By contrast, the 1867 Reform Act caused serious erosion of their legislative power in the Commons. The 1874 election, especially in Ireland, saw great landowners losing their county seats to tenant farmers. Democracy was coming to Britain; just not as soon as some would have it.     

King Pym and his ‘Happy,Scrappy Jester’

The Reign of King Pym took mid 17th‐century studies in a new direction when it was published in 1941. Anglo‐American collaboration in the field in the 1920s and 1930s had been rooted in making available in print to a scholarly readership one of the private diaries of the Long Parliament. J.H. Hexter's book, produced at a time when Anglo‐American collaboration was temporarily on hold under pressure of global war, changed the direction of academic discourse by its format (monograph), content (a detailed study of a brief period in a unique parliament) and tone (brash and unrestrained by the idiom of the academy). The book scoped out the power of John Pym, but also its limitations, and introduced to scholarly debate a categorisation of political groupings in 1642–3 that held sway for 40 years. The first direct attacks on Hexter's work, beginning in the 1980s, were weakened by overstatement. In the forthcoming History of Parliament volumes, Pym's signal importance is reasserted, but Hexter's concept of the ‘middle group’ is found to be untenable.     

‘It is Not Easy What to Say of our Condition,Much Less to Write It’: The Continued Importance of Scribal News in the Early 18th Century

This article engages with recent work on the nature of the press in the late 17th and early 18th centuries that has emphasized that print, and more specifically printed news, came to dominate religious and political affairs. Recent scholarship has suggested that political elites embraced the new opportunities that the lapse of licensing (1695) offered by reading and buying newspapers and periodicals in ever greater numbers. Inherent in this portrayal of news culture is a sense that censorship had little effect on news‐writers. Journalists, so it is claimed, were left alone to pursue their trade free from any consistent interference. This article, by contrast, argues that scribal news – handwritten newspapers – continued to be important in the 18th century. The reason for the survival of scribal news‐writers such as John Dyer can be found, I argue, in understanding the complex relationship between press and parliament. Far from embracing the press, most members of parliament were, in fact, reluctant to allow unhindered publication of their discussions. While recognizing the importance of news to political debate, this article insists that the continued production of scribal news is indispensable for understanding both the nature of censorship and the power of the press in post‐licensing England.     

Editorial

Abstract

Solidarity has become a central concept in Christian ethics. Although solidarity or analogous concepts can be found in other Christian traditions, as well as other religious and philosophical systems of ethics, the Catholic social tradition has perhaps most fully developed a concept of solidarity over the last century. This article contends that solidarity as conceived in Catholic social teaching (CST) provides a robust and useful understanding of the social obligations of individuals, communities, institutions, and nations. As a general overview of the concept of solidarity in CST, the article elucidates its biblical, theological and experiential foundations, its historical antecedents, and the goals, methods and scope of solidarity. The article also describes contemporary applications of the Catholic ethic of solidarity, and theoretical and practical challenges to its realization.     

‘The Devil Who Heals’: Fraud and Falsification in the Evangelical Career of John G Lake,Missionary to South Africa 1908–1913

Abstract

An analysis of the missionary career of John G Lake shows that the initial spread of Pentecostalism and Zionism in southern Africa was facilitated by the systematic use of fraud and deception. After having fled from Zion City in America in 1907 to escape popular justice, Lake and his missionary party introduced to South Africa an array of faith healing techniques used by the original Zionist John Alexander Dowie. They used these and other forms of deception to build a unified Zionist/Pentecostal movement. Additionally, they trained a number of influential African Zionists to use these methods – a factor that further contributed to the rapid spread of this new religious movement.     

A Cross-Staff from the Wreck of HMS Stirling Castle (1703), Goodwin Sands, UK, and the Link with the Last Voyage of Sir Cloudesley Shovell in 1707

Several pieces of cross-staffs have been found on the wreck of the Stirling Castle on the Goodwin Sands. One has been assembled from parts of staffs found when the wreck was first investigated, and is currently in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Another part of a staff was found in 2001. It is from a cross-staff rather than a back-staff and, except for broken ends, is in good condition. The problems encountered in using such instruments are linked with the loss of Sir Cloudesley Shovell's fleet in 1707.
© 2009 The Author