Pius II in the Bath: Papal Ceremony and Cultural History
This article examines Pope Pius II (1458–1464) as a performer, receiving an ambassador while being undressed for the bath in May 1460 and directing the translation of St Andrew’s head to Rome in April 1462. An analytical comparison of anti-ceremonial and ceremonious conduct at the papal court of the High Renaissance, the study challenges antitheses conventionally drawn between popular and high culture, and questions the pertinence of secular models to this pope’s theatricality. Not the humanist on the throne of St Peter whom cliché calls him, Pius II emerges as an exponent of clerical courtliness that was based on the Bible and directed towards reform of the Roman Curia. His gift for dramatic shock and surprise, which cannot be explained in terms of the ceremonial literature of the period, invites us to reflect on the traditional but inadequate distinction between the two personae of the pope that is still current in cultural history.
Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/539/808?rss=1
Divided Conquerors: The Rump Parliament, Cromwell’s Army and Ireland
This article reassesses the relationship that existed in the period 1649–53 between war in Ireland and politics in England. Drawing upon a largely overlooked Irish army petition, it seeks to remedy an evident disconnect between the respective historiographies of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland on the one hand and the Rump Parliament on the other. The article reconstructs some of the various disputes over religion, authority and violence that undermined the unity of the English wartime regime in Ireland. It then charts the eventual spilling over of these disputes into Westminster politics, arguing that their impact on deteriorating army-parliament relations in the year prior to Oliver Cromwell’s expulsion of the Rump in April 1653 has not been fully appreciated. The key driver of these developments was John Weaver, a republican MP and commissioner for the civil government of Ireland. The article explains how his efforts both to place restraints on the excessive violence of the conquest and to exert civilian control over the military evolved, by 1652, into a determined campaign at Westminster to strengthen the powers of Ireland’s civil government and to limit the army’s share in the prospective Irish land settlement. Weaver’s campaign forced the army officers in Ireland to intervene at Westminster, thus placing increased pressure on the Rump Parliament. This reassessment also enables the early 1650s to be viewed more clearly as a key phase in the operation of the longer-term relationships of mutual influence that existed between Dublin and London in the seventeenth century.
Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/539/830?rss=1
Adomnan’s De Locis Sanctis and the Seventh-Century Near East
De locis sanctis is a seventh-century description of Palestine and other regions in the Near East written by Adomnán, the ninth abbot of Iona. Adomnán claimed that he obtained much of his information from a Gaulish bishop called Arculf who had travelled around the east Mediterranean lands. This meant that for a long time scholars categorised De locis sanctis as a pilgrimage account. In recent years this view has been challenged, and it has been argued that Adomnán wrote the text principally on the basis of literary sources; this has led to a downgrading or even denial of the role of Arculf. This article looks afresh at this debate and reassesses the text in three ways. Firstly, it illustrates the ways in which Adomnán blended the written and oral sources at his disposal. Secondly, it re-examines the references in the work to the Arabs and Islam from an Islamicist’s perspective, and considers what might have been their significance to Adomnán. Finally, the article reconsiders the motives behind the structure and purpose of the problematic Book III of De locis sanctis. Rather than seeing De locis sanctis as either a pilgrim’s testimony or a work created solely by Adomnán in his library, this article presents the text as a complex narrative shaped by Adomnán on the basis of written and oral sources, the latter provided by a recent traveller to the Near East.
Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/539/787?rss=1