Wagner was working on the score of Act Two of Siegfried when he started having second thoughts. He had begun Das Rheingold in 1853, but now, in 1857, he was ready to give up his “headstrong design of completing the Nibelungen.” He put Siegfried aside, picked it up again to complete the second act, and then stopped work on it altogether. He could see no way for the Ring to be produced, and so he decided to write something more commercially viable, a drama on a smaller scale that would be within the capacities of lesser opera houses.

The result was Tristan und Isolde, which does have a small cast but which grew to be so demanding and avant-garde that after seventy rehearsals the Vienna Court Opera, one of the greatest of European theaters, gave up trying to mount the premiere. His next project was Die Meistersinger, the longest piece in the operatic repertory, which he was working on when, in 1864, Ludwig II was crowned king of Bavaria. The young king was obsessed with Wagner, and he sent his idol an emissary— whom Wagner turned away at first, thinking he was a hoaxer—and promised to settle the composer's debts and see to the production of all of his works, the Ring included. By the time Wagner had finished Die Meistersinger and returned to the cycle eleven years had passed, but everything went well, and at the end of February 1869 he could write to his wife and King Ludwig that “Siegfried is divine. It is my greatest work!” He expected that it would become the most popular drama in the cycle.

That never happened. Die Walküre is usually the audience favorite and many musicians and scholars prefer Götterdämmerung.3 Siegfried is often the least liked of the four, in fact. Too many male voices, people say; too much fairy tale and not enough human drama.

The physical city of Caen rose up rapidly in the middle of the eleventh century as Mathilda and William constructed its primary elements. These included the ducal castle, the abbey of Holy Trinity and, lastly, St Stephen's Abbey. The merchant community of Caen grew alongside it, encouraged by the ducal presence and the navigable waterways of the Orne and the Odon which fed Caen. The previous chapter provides evidence for the expansion of a bustling city with neighborhoods of tenants and workers developing in the boroughs of the abbess, the abbot, and those dependent directly on the ducal couple. As the contours of Caen emerged in the physical world, Mathilda was also building a parallel city; spiritual, ephemeral, liturgical. This spiritual city was governed by the presence of holy bodies: saints whose remains shaped the religious observance of Caen as it developed. Caen's liturgical city was organized around temporal observance of feast days. The assemblage of holy bodies also shifed the spiritual center of Normandy towards Caen.

In 1706, Anthony Collins observed that the ‘nature of God question’ was esteemed already by the greatest among the ancient philosophers ‘as one of the most abstruse and difficult questions in all philosophy’. However, ‘the light of the Gospel, together with that clear and distinct method of reasoning introduced by the new philosophy’ concurred to establish that only his attributes were knowledgeable. In the opinion ‘of the generality of Christians, and particularly of our modern divines and philosophers’, God possessed the attributes of perfection (he is a ‘wise, good, powerful and eternal being’), so he could not coincide with the universe and must be separated from it. ‘But this age, fruitful in disputes of all kinds, and that suffers no question to lie unexamin’d […] has given a new turn to the question about the nature of God.’ The ‘turn’, to Collins, was a sceptical one, and it consisted in a recovery of the ancient notion of the ‘obscurity’ of ‘the nature of God question’. Collins aimed to explain to an English readership the historical reason for such a recovery of a sceptical attitude towards understanding God. For this purpose, he introduced the question by concisely illustrating different points of view confronting each other in a debate opposing Bayle (whose doctrine consisted in ‘captivating the understanding to the obedience of faith’), to the rationaux Isaac Jacquelot and Le Clerc, the Calvinist ‘Mr. Naudé’ and ‘Mr Placette’ and, last but not least, the prime target of his pamphlet, Archbishop King's sermon The Origine Mali, written in response to Bayle, which sought to accommodate God's ‘foreknowledge’ with the justification of evil.

Bath, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, had all the appearances of a quiet market town. With a population of c.2000, it was heavily reliant on its natural springs for producing bottled water and for supplying its famous baths. Though its origins as a spa date from Roman times, the city's fortunes began to improve in the sixteenth century with the visit of Mary of Moderna, Queen to James II; she attributed her success in producing the Old Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart (1688–1766), to Bath's thermal waters. Queen Anne then visited in 1692, 1702 and 1703 to relieve her persistent gout. What made Bath special for the Romans, Queens Mary and Anne, and the eighteenth- century ‘company’ (i.e., the well-healed visitors who stayed in Bath for health and leisure) were the ‘chalybeate’ waters, believed beneficial for health. The quotidian drinking of the waters and bathing in the hot baths was known as ‘the cure’, and had long incorporated a good degree of entertainment and social interaction among the well-healed visitors that constituted ‘the company’, in which music played a prominent role.

The decades that followed the 1705 appointment of Richard ‘Beau’ Nash (1674–1762) as Master of Ceremonies saw Bath's advancement as a centre of leisure and gambling. Bath's spa ‘season’ gradually evolved into an autumn and spring period that extended from the end of September until mid-May. The months out of season were initially described as ‘desolate as a Wilderness’ but, as the eighteenth century progressed, the summer developed its own programme of entertainments.

In writing this book, I had two aims. One was to provide readers in the English-speaking world with a comprehensive guide to the fiction of Alfred Döblin (1878-1957) that would help them to appreciate his achievement. The other was to convey the kind of information and interpretative suggestions that would be useful to anyone studying his works in an academic context and in the original German, whether at a senior or a more junior level. (It is with them in mind that I have included the sort of footnotes that will help them to fine-tune their understanding of particular aspects of Döblin's works and to shed further light on them themselves.)

In describing Döblin on my title page as an “epic modernist,” I had more in mind than the sheer length and complexity of some of his fictions, and in the course of my Introduction I explain what Döblin himself had in mind when he applied the term “epic” to his own writing. Overall, I hope to have shown why he deserves to be regarded as an important and intriguing European writer for our time as well as his own.

‘Several circumstances render society here peculiarly easy and pleasant; in many respects the place unites the advantages and escapes the evils both of London and provincial towns. It is near enough (to London) to allow its inhabitants to partake in the society, the amusements, and the accommodations of the capital as freely as ever the dissipated could desire; whilst it affords pure air, lovely scenery, and retired and beautiful walks. Because every one here is supposed to have a London set of friends, neighbours do not think it necessary, as in the provinces, to force their acquaintance upon you; of local society you may have much, little, or none, as you please; and with a little, which is very good, you may associate on the easiest terms. Then the summer brings an influx of Londoners, who are often genteel and agreeable people, and pleasingly vary the scene. Such is Hampstead.’

The first days of January are uneventful, and Henry again rather neglects the journal, writing it up all at once on the 17th. Margaret Cooper from Caversham comes to stay with them, and he ‘glued playthings for the children’ (Sunday 2 January). Joseph Janson visits on the 6th: ‘It was beautiful to see how all the children played with him.’ It is cold enough for skating on the Heath ponds.

Eliza's parents decide to move to Hampstead and Eliza and Henry look for a suitable house for them, finding one on Squire's Mount; he measures up the rooms, and on his way home on the 8th passes by Gower Street to tell them about it.

In Christianity Vindicated against Infidelity, Bishop Waterland ascribed the increasing diffusion in England of a view of the clergy as ‘imposers’ directly to the ideas of Hobbes and Spinoza. This assertion could be hastily dismissed as an orthodox defence of the basis of belief and identity of the Anglican Church resulting from the processes of confessionalisation and of the reconstruction of orthodoxy ongoing almost everywhere in seventeenth-century Europe. After all, there is hardly anything new in this partisan justification of the peculiarity of the English Church with respect to other religious and intellectual traditions developed in Europe. Almost one century earlier and with a similar purpose, English bishops warned their students in theology not to read foreign authors, specifically those accused of ‘Arminianism’. They invited students rather to rely – to use the words of Robert Skinner, Bishop of Bristol – on ‘our own excellent writers’ Jewel, Hooker, Bilson and Andrewes, as guides to the reading ‘of the Fathers, Councils and the schools’. Nonetheless, the quotation from Waterland suggests seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English authors were aware of the profound diffusion and impact of European ideas about church authority and ‘priestcraft’ on English religious and ecclesiological debates.

The intellectual climate of the crisis occurring in England and Europe was characterised by a confrontation between a widespread spirit of anticlericalism and an intellectual strand of apologetics, which often recurred to the arguments and languages of its ‘atheist’ and ‘sceptic’ adversaries to defend organised church and religion. The development of biblical scholarship and the diffusion of debates about the relationship between reason and Revelation, philosophy and theology, nature and the supernatural examined earlier had an effect on the interpretation of biblical passages concerning the nature of priesthood and thereby challenged existing assumptions about the nature and functions of church authority.

From the middle of the eleventh century, the papacy embarked on a series of ecclesiastical reforms aimed at improving religious observance, repositioning the Church relative to the secular powers, championing papal independence, and asserting papal primacy and authority. These reforms profoundly impacted the relationship between the papacy and the rulers of Latin Christendom. Frictions and disputes erupted, particularly between the popes and the German emperors, but, oftentimes, popes also managed to cooperate peacefully with the emperors and other rulers.

One of the papacy's most important tools of reform was its legates. Legates were the pope's most elevated representatives, acting as his deputies and implementing (sometimes sweeping) changes to local churches while engaging in highlevel diplomacy. The most powerful were the legati a latere, who ranked above all other prelates. The popes almost exclusively selected these individuals from the cardinalate – the group of men comprising the liturgical, advisory, and jurisdictional body surrounding the pope – hence the denomination a latere, meaning from ‘the side’ of the pope. Cardinal-legate and legate a latere were largely synonymous terms.

25 January. Resolved yesterday to keep a journal, as the best check against wasting my time, by enabling me to look back on former resolutions, as to my conduct, and also by seeing what long periods are passed without any real advantage to myself to stimulate me to employ it better. I intend also that it shall contain an account of the principal daily occurrences and my feelings respecting them; my opinions of the persons I come in contact with that I may see how they vary, my views for life, prospects in business, intentions as to study, account of what I consider to be the state of my mind from time to time, everything which it may be agreeable to look back to, at some future period. Principally suggested by reading Gibbon's memoirs although I had often thought of it before.

At my office in Pinners Hall Broad St. London. Received a letter from Lewis Drusina at the Mauritius, with an account of his getting on well, a letter and remittance for his mother, he and his brother both thriving; …… it is nearly a year since he left. Read yesterday Gibbon's life of himself, a delightful book & shows what a man may do to raise a name in the world. Business appears doing well and I trust that the last year, a blank both as to profits and pleasure, this one will compensate every way. If I make for my share from £300 to £400 I shall be satisfied; I intend this year to spend about £200. Last year only spent about 150.

Mathilda of Flanders died on November 2, 1083. Her illness must have lasted only a matter of months as she was active in mid-July of that year. According to Orderic Vitalis, she fell ill sometime in September and her condition rapidly declined. It is possible that Abbot Baldwin of Bury St Edmunds treated her as he was in Caen at the time. If so, he was unable to improve her health. Orderic reported that her death was mourned for many days in Normandy and England. Both Orderic and William of Malmesbury indicate she was celebrated with a lavish funeral.

Mathilda was interred at Holy Trinity, Caen just as she intended, her body placed between the choir and the altar. Orderic attests that many archbishops, bishops and abbots were present for the ceremony, as well as monks, nuns and ‘a great throng of poor people’. Mathilda was set beneath an elaborate black Tournai marble monument covered in gold and jewels, decorated with a golden efgy. Orderic records her epitaph, carved in gold, which celebrates her bloodline, her piety and her foundation of Holy Trinity (Plate 7).