Pulpit and Cross: Preaching the Crusade in Fourteenth-Century England
In contrast to earlier periods, the activity of crusade preachers and their propaganda in the fourteenth century has been little studied. Partly this is a result of the repeated failure to embark on grand crusades to the east after the 1270s and of the increasing fragmentation of crusading along alternative fronts, beyond easy control of the church. It has long been tempting to agree with one expert that, in the era of the later crusades, ‘preaching was much less important than it had been’: there was no Peter the Hermit or Fulk Neuilly of the fourteenth century. Yet, closer scrutiny of the English sources shows that preacherly transmission of the crusade idea remained a dynamic force, open to varied influences and pursuing various objectives. Besides core messages of support for ‘wars of the Cross’, it could involve basic instruction on Christian civility, good manners, orthodoxy and pious living. It was also a platform for comment on matters of national interest and papal policy. Drawing heavily upon little-known sources, including an unedited English crusade sermon, the primary aim of this article is to provide a case-study of crusade promotion in the 1300s—of what it meant to engage and mobilise public opinion in practice. Two key questions are addressed: how was crusade preaching organised in this period, and what can be reconstructed of the preacher’s voice?
Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/541/1319?rss=1
A Scottish Anti-Catholic Satire Crossing the Border: ‚Ane bull of our haly fader the paip, quhairby it is leesum to everie man to haif tua wyffis‘ and the Redeswyre Raid of 1575
The significance of political commentary and satire in Scotland in the aftermath of Mary, Queen of Scots’s deposition and during the minority of James VI is gradually receiving scholarly recognition. Many examples survive in the English state papers, but few survive in Scottish archives and even fewer date from after the end of the Marian Civil wars (May 1573). This article considers a hitherto unknown piece of anti-Catholic satire. Taking the form of a fake papal Bull, the piece opens by bemoaning the woeful state of Catholicism in the face of Protestant incursion, and provides a solution in the form of a dispensation allowing Catholic men to take two wives. On the first reading, this constitutes an amusing critique of the sexual morality of Catholics. However, a reference to the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre reminds readers that the Catholic threat from the continent remained palpable. The accompanying cover note allows the Bull to be dated to circa August 1575, a point when Anglo-Scottish tension was high following the Raid of Redeswyre. Circulated amongst pro-English Scots, including former spies, negotiating with England following the Raid, this satire not only commented upon, but potentially also tried to direct, contemporary politics, at a critical juncture for Anglo-Scottish Protestant solidarity.
Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/541/1346?rss=1
The Identity of the Author of the ‚Statement by an opponent of Cromwell‘
The Statement has been well known to Cromwell scholars since its publication in the Camden Society volume edited by John Bruce and David Masson in 1875. It is a devastating indictment of Cromwell’s career in the early stages of the civil war. It accuses him of seeking to make the Isle of Ely a stronghold for those who shared his religious prejudices and of organising the army of the Eastern Association as an enclave for religious radicals. Both projects were designed to provide foci for resistance against the Presbyterian religious settlement demanded by the Scots and which was supported, if less aggressively so, by the dominant group in Parliament. But without any ascription of authorship, the Statement has been neglected in discussions by Cromwell’s biographers. In this article I argue that the writer was Lieutenant-Colonel William Dodson, and that his local experience and military service made him a knowledgeable commentator, if not an unprejudiced one, on Cromwell’s activities in the two years following the outbreak of the civil war.
Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/541/1371?rss=1
James II and David Nairne: The Exiled King and his First Biographer
During the last years of his life in exile, King James II became increasingly dependent on, and even friendly with, one of his servants at Saint-Germain-en-Laye named David Nairne. Yet none of the many biographies of the king shows any awareness of this. In fact there is no mention of Nairne in any of the books devoted to the life of the king. The present article therefore has a double purpose. The first is to draw attention to an interesting master–servant relationship which has been overlooked for too long. The second is to use that relationship to shed new light on the final years of the king. One reason why those years have posed such a problem for his biographers is that almost all of the king’s papers were destroyed during the French Revolution. By studying the close relationship between James II and David Nairne, we are able to demonstrate that Nairne was both the king’s archivist and his first biographer. James II entrusted his papers to Nairne and asked him to use them to write his Life. Immediately after the king’s death, Nairne continued to assemble and arrange all of these papers, and it is his detailed diary entries which enable us to have a good general idea as to what was lost when they were destroyed. It is to a great extent the involvement of James II with Nairne, who was Scottish, which has misled so many people into wrongly identifying the Stuart court at Saint-Germain with Scotland.
Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/541/1383?rss=1
The Paris Commune in Bolshevik Mythology
The article describes and analyses the mythology that the Bolsheviks in Russia created about the Paris Commune of 1871. At first glance it seems odd that they would do this: the Commune existed for only a few months in a foreign country, and by the time the Bolsheviks took power in 1917, it was a distant memory for the few Russians who remembered it. But because the socialism the Bolsheviks promised had no demonstrable empirical validity—in 1917 no socialist regimes existed—the Bolsheviks found the legitimacy they needed as the new rulers of Russia primarily in history: in historical events like the Commune, which in their minds anticipated their own revolution and justified the radical transformation in Russia and elsewhere that would follow it. That the Commune was a failure was not an impediment. In fact, the aura of martyrdom it exuded made the Communards more admirable rather than less so.
The article traces the evolution of this mythology from its origins in Lenin’s views prior to the October Revolution, through the 1920s and into the Stalin era. The article shows how Bolshevik views of the Commune were reflected in theatre, music, movies, the omnipresent posters and placards of which the Soviet leadership was inordinately fond, and other expressions of popular culture. Finally, the article explores what the Bolsheviks’ critics on the left, notably Kautsky and Martov, had to say about the Commune, and why Lenin and Trotsky in particular felt compelled to polemicise against them with such vituperation and rhetorical violence.
Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/541/1412?rss=1