The body politic and “political medicine” in the Jacobean period: Edward Forset’s A Comparative Discourse of the Bodies Natural and Politique

ABSTRACT

The use of metaphors and analogies was widespread in English political literature during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and for contemporary readers they were more than merely rhetorical artifices – they were used to illustrate and, in some cases, even to provide evidence. In this regard, none was more apt than the most prominent of these analogies: that between the human body and the state. The political thought of the time established an unshakeable connection between the two, building an argument for how their structures and ways of functioning mirrored each other. This paper examines one of the most extensive and thorough examples of corporal analogies in early modern English political literature – that of Edward Forset’s A Comparative Discourse of the Bodies Natural and Politique (1606) – and shows how such corporal analogies were used to construct an absolutist political model wherein the king was depicted as the soul, the head and the heart of the body politic. The paper integrates Forset’s A Comparative Discourse within the context of the ideological struggles from the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, while its place within the larger picture of the medieval and early modern metaphor of the body politic is also examined, in order to assess the lineage and originality of Forset’s ideas and point out how the same kind of analogies could be used to provide significantly different political interpretations.     

“■禁丞印”补证

秦封泥“□禁丞印”,文字经考证,应为“■禁丞印”。“■”同“玤”,地在秦汉时古渑池,春秋时期“玤宫”作为周王“离宫”,具备苑囿等可供游玩的职能。战国时期,秦国取得渑池后,将“玤宫”和苑囿提升到新高度,专门设立“玤禁”负责离宫和苑囿安全。随着秦朝灭亡,汉初革秦制,“玤宫”及附近苑囿最终被更名后的“渑池宫”替代了。四枚同文秦封泥的存在,是这段变革历史的见证。     

帕勒莫石碑及其学术价值

帕勒莫石碑是古代埃及已知最早的王室年鉴。它还有其他6个版本。它们来自于两块不同的石碑。帕勒莫石碑的书写年代是古王国时期,是埃及人为神庙而刻写的,是他们祖先崇拜的一项重要内容。石碑关于埃及前5个王朝的记述不能被用来重建埃及早期历史,它只是揭示了埃及早期王权思想,即国王的行政职能和宗教职能。     

金文中的王称

金文王称的研究始于王国维《古诸侯称王说》,其后张政烺作《■王簋簋跋——评王国维古诸侯称王说》,对王氏理论加以修正。本文在两位前辈学者研究的基础上,全面检讨了金文中记录的殷代至战国各个时期的王称,将其归纳为“时王生称”、“时王美称”、“时王别称”、“在野王称”等四种。其中“时王别称”系由作者首次提出,该文具体考证了西周金文中的周王、成周王、豐王、畢王、幽王分别是文王、成王、西周早期某王、懿王、孝王的别称,它们都是以都城或重要驻地命名的。命名别称可能是西周诸王的一种普遍现象。     

方介堪先生篆刻艺术评析

本文论述篆刻艺术家方介堪先生的艺术成就，并重点从鸟虫书印和印学著述两方面加以评析。     

The Elizabethan House of Commons and St Stephen's Chapel Westminster

This essay explores the significance of the Elizabethan house of commons meeting in a converted royal chapel within the Palace of Westminster. In 1548 the dissolved collegiate chapel of St Stephen at Westminster was given over to the exclusive use of the Commons, providing MPs with a dedicated meeting space for the first time. Although a great deal has been written about Elizabethan parliaments, little attention has been paid to the physical spaces within which MPs gathered, debated and legislated. Drawing on parliamentary diaries and exchequer records and informed by digital reconstructions of the Commons chamber modelled by the St Stephen's Chapel project at the University of York, this essay argues for the enduring influence of the architecture and decoration of the medieval chapel on the procedure, culture, ritual, and self‐awareness of the Elizabethan house of commons. Famously likened to a theatre by the MP and writer on parliamentary procedure, John Hooker, the Commons chamber is analysed as a space in which parliamentary speeches were performed and disrupted. The sound of debate is contrasted with other kinds of noise including scoffing and laughter, disruptive coughing, and prayers led by the clerk and the Speaker of the Commons. The iconography of the chamber, including the royal arms above the Speaker's chair and the mace carried by the serjeant‐at‐arms, is interpreted as enabling a culture of counsel and debate as much as an assertion of monarchical power. Evidence is also presented for the Commons chamber as a site of political memory.     

Household knights,chamber knights and king’s knights: the development of the royal knight in fourteenth-century England

The fourteenth century witnessed a considerable change in the way in which knights were retained in royal service in England. The system of retaining ‘household knights’, which had been in operation since at least the twelfth century, gave way to a new system based around the retaining of ‘chamber knights’ and ‘king’s knights’. These new ranks were retained in different ways to the household knights and often performed different functions. Consequently, the place they occupied in fourteenth-century kingship was markedly different. Despite the significance of this development, the scholarship on it has been limited and often contradictory. This article offers a detailed reassessment of how and why this development occurred and what its impacts were for the fourteenth-century polity.     

Black Rod and the Office of Usher of the Parliament Chamber

The gentleman usher of the black rod has long been acknowledged as an officer of the house of lords. Yet he was in origin an officer of the order of the Garter with no necessary connection with parliament. This note aims to throw light on the process whereby this association came about. By 1509, the house of lords had the services of an usher of the parliament chamber, a post always held in conjunction with an office in the royal household. By 1558, this post was being exercised by one of the gentlemen ushers daily waiters, who had been granted the office of black rod as an additional perquisite in 1554. From this point it became customary for the offices of black rod, daily waiter and usher of the parliament chamber to be held by one man. This association was broken in 1620, when the then usher relinquished the office of daily waiter but retained his parliamentary functions together with the office of black rod. In 1631, a decree was promulgated annexing the office of black rod to that of one of the gentlemen ushers daily waiters but it was only from 1660 that this became fully effective.