The many similarities between the eighth-century Leges Frisionum and the early laws of Kent and Wessex, particularly in their schedules of compensation for various bodily injuries, have long been a matter of scholarly discussion, debate and conjecture. These similarities may be seen, not merely in analogous clauses, but also in their criteria for the adjudication of disputes. Criteria of this sort define which facts may be accepted as legal evidence and how that evidence is to be interpreted to produce what, in context, was considered a just resolution. Yet, as the Italian legal historian Massimo Vallerani has observed, the processes by which such resolutions are reached are as much epistemological as they are legal. In other words, the acts of formal procedure and adjudicatory reasoning involved in legal dispute resolution establish what Vallerani calls a ‘juridical reality’: agreed-upon facts that have been selected and arranged into a dispute narrative deemed to be ‘true’ via a properly conducted court proceeding. This narrative replaces the ‘real’ circumstances of the dispute with a legal construct to be preserved in the official archive as well as in the collective memory of the community. As a result, in Vallerani's words, ‘the facts that “really” happened and the facts judged in the trial are not precisely identical’. Moreover, the determination of fact cannot be separated from the expertise and exercise of legal reasoning by the judge, ‘because the reading of those facts responds to a form of classificatory knowledge that immediately selects elements according to a scale of the jurist's own interests’.

Appendix 6: Beyond Dyngley: Satellite Manuscripts at Gonville and Caius College

Twelfth Century

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 12. Psalter. 12 ¾

Thirteenth Century

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 4. Peter Lombard, Libri sententiarum quattuor. c. 1200

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 1. Bible. 13 ½

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 3. Anthology of Isidore and Augustine. Pre- 1242

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 7. Hugutio, Derivationes. 13 2/2

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 15. Bible. 13 2/2

Fourteenth Century

• • University of Bristol, MS DM 268. Innocent III, De miseria humanae conditionis. c. 1350

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 14. Book of Hours (The Ruddok-Clyve Hours). 14 4/4 with additions 15 1/4 and ½

Fifteenth Century

• • Bristol Archives, CC/2/7. The Maire of Bristow Is Kalendar [Ricart's Kalendar]. 1479–1899

• • Bristol Archives. P.AS/B/12. Augustine, De trinitate, etc. 1465

• • Bristol Archives. P.AS/B/11. William Peraldus, Sermones, etc. 15 ½

• • Bristol Archives, P.AS/B/10. Gerard Zerbolt, De spiritualibus ascensionibus, etc. 15 1/2, the main portion pre-1432

• • Bristol Archives. P.St T/PM/1. The St. Thomas Bible. c. 1420

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 8. John Lydgate, Troy Book, 15 2/4

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 10. Medical Compendium. 15 2/4 • Bristol Central Library, MS 5. Jacob Voragine, Sermones quadragesimales. 15 2/2

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 13. Missal. 15 ¾

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 9, John Trevisa, Proprietatibus rerum. 15 4/4

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 11. Book of Hours. 1479

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 2. Missal. 15 4/4 or 16 ¼

• • University of Bristol, MS DM 14. Medulla grammatice. 15 4/4

• • University of Bristol, MS DM 832. Cobden Book of Hours. 15 ¾

• • University of Bristol, MS DM 2226. Homiliary with Lections. 15 2/2

• • University of Bristol, MS DM 2196, Franciscan Office of the Dead and Antiphonal. 15 2/2

Sixteenth Century

• • Bristol Central Library, MS 6. Devotional Compilation. 1502

The cult of St Thomas Becket spanned continents and centuries. While Becket's medieval popularity and the material forms that popularity took are increasingly well researched, relatively little work exists on revivals of Thomas's cult in the modern era. One place that warrants such scrutiny is Normandy, a region rich in both medieval monuments to the saint and artistic evidence of his re-emergence during the nineteenth century. This essay explores medieval and modern devotion to Thomas Becket through the material traces of one particular site: the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Coutances. The cathedral houses a thirteenth-century chapel and window dedicated to St Thomas together with an elaborate Gothic revival altar built in the 1840s [Figs 10.1–10.2]. Its medieval decoration and modern embellishment feature shared facets of Becket's legacy, their linkages residing both in the circumstances of their construction and their underlying themes. Such continuities, across a span of six centuries, raise intriguing questions regarding the saint's medieval import to the cathedral and his legacy as a subject of memory and commemoration. While interpretation of the medieval chapel relies largely on contextual arguments, the commission and execution of its altar is well documented. The chapel thus offers a site to consider Becket's medieval significance and modern reappearance at a moment when Coutances Cathedral sought – literally and metaphorically – to rebuild itself in the wake of the French Revolution.

Ngugi’s creative work is first inspired by women’s stories in his family and culminates in an extended return to women’s expressive leadership and partnership in literary co-creation. Ngugi increasingly places female characters centrally within Kenya’s national struggle – both as site of resistance to the Christian missions banning clitoridectomy, and in active contributions to Mau Mau. Female characters provide narrative mechanisms for the changing ideological contexts of Ngugi’s fiction. In the early fiction, women stabilise the centre ground of the story amid political conflict. A failure of romantic resolution accompanies the hero’s political failure. In the middle fiction, motherhood becomes a metaphor for national unity. In the early post-Independence era, female characters register extractive neo-colonial economics. Ngugi’s later work diversifies its female characters. It imagines Kenyan women inhabiting many of the possible destinies that they might want to claim in post-Independence Kenya: motherhood; adoptive motherhood; intellectual and practical skills, work and career; political activism towards national futures. These varied destinies disaggregate women’s abilities from their particular relationship status. In his late fiction, in the Kamirithu community theatre collaboration, and in his approach to translation, Ngugi models distributed gender political interest and networked partnership between men and women. He welcomes women’s artistic co-creation of narrative outcomes, and invites their leadership on political and artistic issues.

DRAB OR GOLDEN?

In 1935, Bernard M. Wagner published an article announcing ‘New Poems by Sir Edward Dyer’. The poems in question came from a 1580s verse miscellany manuscript then in the British Museum, now in the British Library, Harley MS 7392 (2). Two of the poems are written in the voice of a despairing lover on the point of death. The second, in thumping poulter's measure, begins like this:

But this and then no more, it is my laste and all, And for each word that I did write, a brackish tear did fall.

Not that I hope for Grace, I do these lines endighte, For well I know the Fates themselues, at such my fortune spighte.

But sith my faith, my hope, my love, & trew intente,

My liberty, my service vowd, my time, and all is spente,

Sith that all these I say, I see ar lost in vayne, To lose the latter lynes withall, I count it little payne,

And yet if yow but read, & view them with your Eye I never shall account them lost, though nought I gaine therby.

At the end of the poem, after 16 more lines of this, we come to two apostrophes, to readers in general and to the beloved in particular, the second of which is cited in George Puttenham's Art of English Poesy as an example of the figure, Englished by him as ‘the Turn-Way’ or ‘Turn-Tale’:

This chapter discusses the tensions, disparities and contradictions that Ngugi’s background and education have come to symbolise, particularly as connected to his writing and worldview. It analyses his essays and memoirs where he strongly critiques both Christianity and mission education as influences fashioned to breed a class of Africans conditioned to think that they could be a privileged few in control of the others. It explores his that mission education, which was closely connected to Christianity and colonial power, sought to control the mind of the colonised and how they related to real life in their contexts. Despite the influence of Christianity and mission education, Ngugi has consistently shown allegiance to his own language and heritage. The chapter argues that whereas Ngugi actively distances himself from Christianity and mission education, his writing is steeped in Christian narratives, symbols, mythology as well as images from experiences of mission education. Whereas Ngugi was born, grew up and was educated in the grip of colonial institutions such as Protestant missions and the schools, he also progressively questioned and protested this influence. Despite vehement disassociation from both Christianity and mission education, this influence is deeply imprinted on Ngugi’s work.

Before turning to the second kind of imitation, which consists, as I have already said, in reproducing the tone of passions and feelings, and even in reproducing in music the image of objects that are only visible, I shall say a few more words about physical imitation.

This kind of imitation, according to M. Carpani, was taken to such an excess in seventeenth-century Italy that the composer Melani, in his opera Le Bailli de Coloniola, set to music the following words and asked his orchestra to take on the roles of the animals mentioned below:

Sometimes the frog in the mud Sings cheerfully: kouà kouà rà; The cricket goes: tri tri tri, And the little lamb: bè bè; The nightingale goes: kiou kiou kiou, And the cock: couri ki ki.

But long before Melani, in antiquity this kind of imitation was employed by the Greeks in their plays, as in Aristophanes's The Frogs and The Birds. Although Haydn was careful and discerning about using it in his famous oratorios, one can't help regretting that the subjects he chose often led him to embrace such childishness. No doubt he judged them at their true worth, and perhaps he found place for them in his scores merely to please certain amateurs of the kind one finds in society, who are more taken by such instrumental tours de force than by feats of sublime inspiration. Baron van Swieten, among others, bullied the great composer to include frogs.

Both of John Skelton's famous anti-Wolsey satires, Collyn Clout and Why Come Ye Nat to Courte?, begin with extended passages mocking his own style. These passages operate differently: in Collyn Clout, the characterisation of the speaker as an unlearned fool implicates the poem in the fool convention, inviting Wolsey to respond appropriately, that is graciously; whereas the excursus on age at the opening of Why Come Ye Nat to Courte?, positioned after Skelton's screed against niggardly patrons, aligns the speaker with his subject – two old men, neither one of them welcome at the centre. Both passages also illustrate something important about the mechanics or praxis of Skelton's poetry, the means by which he achieves his distinctive style. Collyn Clout foregrounds the materiality of language:

Sey this and sey that: ‘His heed is so fat He wottyth never what Ne whereof he speketh.’ ‘He cryeth and he creketh, He pryeth and he preketh, he chydeth and he chatters, He prayeth and he patters; He clyttreth and he clatters, He medleth and he smatters, He gloseth and he flatters.’ Or yf he speke playne, Than he lacketh brayne[.]

The accumulation here of vaguely onomatopoeic verbs, all disparagingly describing and enacting the fool's trivial speech, simultaneously emphasises the productivity of Skelton's language and its negligibility. Indeed, what makes Skelton's writing so negligible is precisely its profusion, the way in which words propagate seemingly under their proper power, without adding anything to the sense. As Bassanio will later say of Gratiano, he ‘speakes an infinite deale of nothing.’

As political authority in the German kingdom grew increasingly fragmented over the course of the thirteenth century, many cities began to develop military institutions to defend their citizens and interests. The opponents, and potential opponents, of these cities included competitors for the German throne, their own bishops, local aristocrats and even other cities. Many cities took steps to improve their mural defenses, institute civic militias, develop arsenals and establish taxes to pay for these new military burdens. Many of these aspects of urban military organization have received extensive attention from scholars. However, one important element of urban military organization that has not yet benefitted from significant attention was the practice of authorities in many Germany cities to establish military contracts with local aristocrats. These contracts took a variety of forms, including the prohibition on these men and their supporters from joining the enemies of the city as well as the actual recruitment of secular magnates to serve in the defense of the city or even to participate in the city's own expeditionary campaigns. One common thread among the various types of military contracts with local aristocrats was their designation as Mitbürger of the citizens in a particular city, with all of the rights of urban citizenship. This essay will examine the various military agreements made by cities in the Rhineland with the aristocrats living in their hinterlands over the course of the thirteenth century.

From 1239 to 1254 the Staufen kings of Germany, Frederick II (1212–50) and his son Conrad IV (1237–54), were engaged in a titanic struggle against the papacy.

It may initially strike the reader as otiose to follow Berlioz's demolition of Duponchel with another, but this article is crucial in providing chapter and verse for the composer's discontent.

This evening will remain in my memory as the saddest I’ve attended since the memorable benefit performance given on the same stage for Mlle Falcon. I can't imagine that the public who were present at the musical agony of that young and beautiful singer, whom it surrounded with so much love and passionate admiration, suffered more on that occasion than at the recent spectacle of Duprez's fanatical, ferocious devotion to the theatre of which he was for so long the glory and support. The fact is (and it needs to be said in favour of our Parisian public who are so fickle and ungrateful in general towards its one-time idols) that certain artists enjoy the rare privilege of retaining their unalloyed sympathies for years on end, and as passionately as ever. Duprez is one of these. Here, then, is the position he has come to assume.

The Opéra is sick, the Opéra is dying. It's undeniably easier and more straightforward to regain the interest of a public who are bored, discontented, and discouraged by means of a striking artist, a young talent, original, seductive, and exceptional, who takes control and carries everything before him, than it is by the impact of a fine ensemble, a majestic, faithful and lively production of the great works in its repertoire, a grandeur that can be achieved only through intelligent and constant care, well directed efforts, and dedication that is even painful, supported by a true and deep love of music. As a result, it was decided to turn almost exclusively to this brave singer capable of preventing so many disasters, this diamond who's able to carry so much paste.

This quotation, taken from a radio broadcast delivered on Sunday 13 September 1941 by Cardinal Arthur Hinsley, Archbishop of Westminster, is a reminder of the important and enduring relationship between the Catholic Church in Britain and the Central European state of Poland. It was spoken in the context of the Second World War and the continuing devastation caused by the German occupation of the country that had begun two years previously, but it remained applicable to the Catholic Church's attitude in the period following that war, when the inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe fell under the control of Soviet-influenced communist governments. Poles, along with Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Latvians and Lithuanians, fled their homelands to escape from religious persecution, arriving in Britain in their thousands during the late 1940s and 1950s. Many lay Catholic associations, independent from hierarchical control, took it upon themselves to organise initiatives and raise funds for these exiles. This article will examine the role played by one such lay society, the Newman Association, in supporting the tertiary education of Polish exiles in Britain in the Second World War and its aftermath.

The manuscript now known as Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Brogyntyn ii.1, first came to public attention in the mid-nineteenth century. An initial list of the contents of ‘MS Porkington 10’ furnished by Thomas Phillipps was quickly extended by Frederic Madden, and both their descriptive efforts informed the report prepared by Alfred J. Horwood for the Historic Manuscripts Commission. All three scholars focussed on the identification of the small volume's multiple texts and made no mention of its copyists beyond noting the inscription ‘H. Hattun’, which Madden believed was the name of the scribe or compiler. The manuscript's scribal production received no investigation until the 1950s when Auvo Kurvinen posited a multiplicity of scribes to match its multiple textual contents. Kurvinen identified nineteen hands and provided a table of scribal stints labelled A–S, aligned to the manuscript's foliation and to a numbered catalogue of fifty-five texts; the latter helpfully extended the nineteenth-century descriptions by including transcriptions of many shorter texts and bibliographical references, but the account of the scribal hands lacked substantiating detail.

Such a large number of scribes seems inherently improbable for such a small volume, and Kurvinen noted that some hands looked very similar, yet her estimation has not been much questioned. Gisela Guddat-Figge accepted the total of nineteen while repeating the caveat about the similarity of some hands.