In rejecting allegory, Martin Luther rejected far more than a verbal technique of biblical interpretation. He rejected a conception of the nature of revelation and the modes by which God communicated with humankind. He rejected William Durand’s sense of the interreferentiality of Scripture and Creation. Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Martin Bucer, Uly Anders, and Claus Hottinger all rejected an understanding of revelation as mediated through the made world. In so doing, they also rejected Durand’s sense of the made world mediating time. And in doing that, they reconceived just what worship was and what it did.

The second part of this book opens with a title page (Figure 21). In itself, a title page marks one of the many changes that lie between William Durand’s Rationale and the sixteenth century. It belongs to book markets: something that a passer-by might see in a printer’s shop and decide to purchase. Durand’s Rationale was first a manuscript; it, too, came to be printed – in 1459 – one of the earliest medieval works to be printed using moveable type. Print, as we shall see, is also very much a part of our story.

Focusing approximately on the period 1584–1610, this chapter addresses the contrasting question of the translation of European world maps in China. The chapter argues that the creation of Matteo Ricci’s world map, which was based on European and Chinese sources with text in Chinese characters and the use of Chinese printing methods and materials, was motivated by the need to create a new identity for Europeans in China; Matteo Ricci’s world map created “The Great West” as a geographical and cultural category. The chapter also explores the intricacies of cartographic translation and the back and forths between China and Europe, covering the activities of Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Neroni

Chapter 4 begins by tracing some reappearances and interconnections of Emersonian themes, in what Goodman calls paths of coherence in Emerson’s philosophy: not a complete system, but ways that his thoughts hang together. The chapter focuses on “Nominalist and Realist,” where Emerson sets out the competing metaphysics of particulars and universals without reconciling their opposition. Near the end of the essay, he draws a skeptical lesson from his epistemology of moods. “I am always insincere,” he writes, “as always knowing there are other moods.” This might be cause for despair, but Emerson’s tone in this final paragraph is more in tune with ancient skepticism and Montaigne. He ends “Nominalist and Realist” by withdrawing from the dispute, but this does not mean that he gives up inquiring. Skepticism can be both a withholding of final judgment, and, as Herwig Friedl observes, “a constant looking around, without any attempt at closure.”

How has the CPC maintained its organizational strength over time, especially during the period of economic reform? This chapter argues that the several important measures taken since the 1990s have reinforced the party as a strong organization. The personnel management reform since the 1990s has standardized the elite recruitment and provided a relatively fair channel of social mobility within the regime. The CPC has monopolized both the allocation of critical economic resources and appointments of key political, economic, and other societal offices through the Nomenklatura system, so that the party can distribute spoils of China’s economic growths to its key members and supporters in exchange of their loyalty. Since the beginning of Xi’s rule in 2012, the party has expanded the anticorruption and disciplinary body, committed more resources to campaigns of ideological indoctrination, increased the party’s involvement in daily policymaking and the private sector, and diversified channels of elite recruitment. These measures appear to have reinforced the party’s organizational capacity, but their long-term effects are yet to be assessed.

This chapter analyzes the impact of remittances – the money migrants living abroad send to their family members in the home country – on the survival of authoritarian regimes, particularly in developing countries where poor economic and political conditions lead people to exit en masse. Immigrants have remitted over $500 billion in the last decade, with much of the money flowing from high-income to low- and middle-income countries. In 2018 alone, officially tracked remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached $529 billion. The actual amount is probably more because much money is channeled via unofficial routes. Ethnographic data from family interviews shows that senders can bargain for or against political participation with their receivers. Parents of young adults were likely to discourage them from engaging in politics, fearing for their lives. Receivers could also opt out of political engagement because they did not see the government playing an essential role in their economic lives. Remittances also cushioned the government from possible voter protests and welfare demands.

This chapter tracks the importance and resilience of CPC ideology by examining the development of Mao Zedong Thought from his early Communist writings (1927–1940) through to Yan’an Rectification (1942–1945) and then during his reign as Supreme Leader (1949–1976). It then explores Mao Zedong Thought’s importance for the CPC today. CPC leaders since Mao’s death have invoked, and continue to invoke, Mao Zedong Thought for legitimation and to exhibit continuity despite shifts away from the ideology and practice of the Mao era. Mao Zedong Thought thus fulfills a legitimative need rather than a social one; CPC leaders must acknowledge, and often reference, Mao Zedong Thought to project continuity even if the ruptures since Mao’s death have resulted in an un-Maoist Party-state.

This chapter emphasises the ways in which chivalric poetry remained in dialogue with the everyday culture of the piazza as well as of élite court circles, crossing boundaries between high and low culture, publication in oral performance, writing and print, blending aspects of medieval and Renaissance worlds. Discussion focuses on the evolution of themes and techniques across the three major writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Luigi Pulci, Matteo Maria Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto, exploring how their works continue to interact with the oral culture of the canterini. Although each of their three poems constitutes a distinct response, analysis reveals an underlying and continuous relationship with the popular and oral traditions of performed poetry that helped to shape authors’ presentations of their own poems and of the art of poetry itself.

The third chapter of Invisible Fatherland reconstructs and analyzes the symbolic decisions of the Weimar National Assembly, including the adoption of the name Reich, the compromise over the national flag and colors, and fundamentally the revision of the state’s honorary practices. The chapter shows that the flag compromise emerged from both heated debates about the imperial past and impassioned protest against the Treaty of Versailles. The revised honorary practices, on the other hand, aimed to promote equality and inclusion by removing official traditions that had excluded workers and other marginalized groups from state recognition. The chapter argues that the assembly’s symbolic choices represented works of compromise that balanced national heritage and modern state design. These constitutional decisions set the stage for the creation of a cohesive and modern republican style under the Federal Art Custodian.

Chapter 1 focuses on Afro-Porteños’ visual representations as domestic servants. The corpus of images under analysis is from the end of the colonial period to the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Examining this iconographic motif is relevant because many of the ideas and conventions associated to the image of Afro-descendants in Argentina were and are formulated according to this tradition. The stigma of servitude associated to their enslaved past was constant in the assignment of this labor role and therefore became a stereotype, as Afro-Porteños themselves demonstrated in their periodicals in the late nineteenth century. Stereotyping’s after-effects can be seen to the present. One might think that, in today’s world, representations such as those analyzed in this chapter no longer exist. However, the representation of African descendants as servants has been used for centuries and has become widely naturalized.

This chapter concentrates on ways in which poetry established relationships with spirituality, both in conventionally ‘literary’ production and in verse works written for devotional purposes, which have often been accorded lesser aesthetic value in literary scholarship. It argues instead that there is significant common ground between verse hagiography and hagiographic passages in non-devotional poetry, especially when their shared affective strategies and invitations for reader engagement are considered. The chapter focuses on the figure of Clare of Assisi, reviewing how she is represented poetically in clerically oriented works including a Latin verse hagiography, a vernacular lauda for sung performance and in her canonisation papers, and also in key passages from Dante’s Paradiso.

Historian Carl Becker once said that every generation rewrites history to suit its needs and according to its perspectives. This twenty-first-century collection of essays on the Declaration partly validates his claim and partly does not. Probably the chief way in which this collection differs from earlier efforts is in its broadened horizons. There is a systematic effort to consider the Declaration in relation to groups and concerns that received little attention in the past – women, labor, Native Americans, the international resonances of the document. But there are familiar themes as well, though these are mostly treated differently from the past. The intellectual roots of the Declaration is indeed a familiar topic, but the century or so since Becker’s book has enriched and deepened our grasp of the intellectual sources and, perhaps even more deeply, of their meaning. Not often emphasized in previous treatments are the religious and theological influences. Themes like the relation of the Declaration to the political context from which it emerged, the legal basis of the document, its main ideas, the Declaration and slavery – these are all topics that have a long history but which receive new treatment here based on new scholarship.