In sixteenth-century France, the viol emerged as a symbol of cultural refinement enjoyed by men of virtue and as a tool to shape bourgeois leisure to reflect noble ideals of a moral and virtuous life. Viols appeared at the French court alongside the transalpine migration of artists, artisans and musicians, the acquisition of prized Italian string instruments and the recruitment of the luthier Gaspar Duiffoprugcar, master of the latest innovations in Italian instrument building. Learning to play viol and lute became essential for the education of nobles because of the belief that they could elevate the soul through the emulation of the ratios present in musica mundana. Philibert Jambe de Fer, in one of the first French music treatises, affirms that by the middle of the century viols were played by both the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie when he claims it is ‘an instrument with which gentlemen, merchants and other men of virtue pass their time’. For the bourgeoisie – the targeted readership of the earliest published tutors – luthiers, musicians and religious reformers founded music schools to teach lute and viol under a moral philosophy aimed at limiting the idle time of urban youths through humanistic and religious curricula.

This article surveys the subscriptions to the Gospel of Mark in 157 Greek manuscripts, noting their gradual development from being identical to the title in the earliest phase to becoming more and more elaborate and significant for the history of interpretation. Early on, as reflected in the title, the Second Gospel was associated with Mark, known to be Peter's disciple and interpreter. In the fourth or fifth century, an editor added the information that it was written (or spoken) by Mark in Latin in Rome as reflected in the Peshitta and later Byzantine manuscripts. At some point between the seventh and ninth centuries, an unknown editor added dates for each of the four Gospels from a source which has been attributed to Hippolytus’ Chronicle, and in the process made a cascading error which resulted in too early dates for Mark, Luke and John. In the archetype of Family 13, these traditions were combined which suggests that the archetype of Family 13 is no earlier than the eighth century. A main factor behind this gradual growth of the subscriptions is authentication and authorisation – in the case of the Second Gospel, the association with Mark and Peter legitimates its claim of apostolicity and orthodoxy. Moreover, the situating of each Gospel in time and space through the subscriptions not only satisfies human curiosity but contributes to the construction of an ancient Christian ‘landscape of memory’, reflecting the collective memory of the early Christians, thus shaping and enhancing their identity.

Historians of Islamicate intellectual practices in pre-colonial South Asia have long argued that authoritative knowledge was located in persons rather than books, and that religious texts were thus typically transmitted in the context of face-to-face meetings between teacher and student. While it has been noted that some early modern Sufi networks engaged in the remote transmission of authoritative knowledge by means of letters, with reduced emphasis on face-to-face meetings, the causes for this development are still debated.

Looking at the correspondence, theoretical treatises, and authorisations (ijāzas) produced in the circle of the celebrated eighteenth-century Naqshbandi reformer Shah Wali Allah of Delhi, this article argues that the willingness to engage in the transmission of remote knowledge was not simply a product of the changing material conditions of late-Mughal India, but rather was underwritten by emergent spiritual and psychological ideas about the nature of personhood. Because a person was not merely a material entity bounded by a corporeal (living) body, bodily proximity between two individuals was less valuable than their spiritual congruence. This congruence could be strengthened during periods of face-to-face companionship but could also be generated and maintained through letters alone. Indeed, these scholars sometimes assert the superiority of the letter over physical companionship because it allowed for a coming together of two spirits without the intrusion of the gross material body. Working within this intellectual framework, scholars in this network regularly exchanged books of all genres as well as ijāzas remotely (often over vast distances).

This article examines the revision of liturgical chant manuscripts at a single Premonstratensian house in the Low Countries, with focus on a period of religious upheaval in the seventeenth century. Sint-Catharinadal, founded in Vroenhout in 1271 for a community of sisters, had a difficult history. Between its founding and the seventeenth century, the house relocated more than once: first to Breda, and then to its present location in Oosterhout. During this period, its chant books also underwent substantial revision. Its surviving manuscript sources that contain music for the Divine Office show textual and notational changes that coincide with later publications of the Premonstratensian antiphoner; however, unlike manuscripts from other houses, these revisions are partial and at times inconsistent. Taking stock of the surviving collection of sources preserved at Sint-Catharinadal, this article charts the process of revising older chant sources. This process was gradual, complicated and at times non-linear. Scribes often adopted individual approaches when revising their chants, including the use of notational systems commonly used for other repertoires, such as secular or keyboard music. What emerges is a location-specific and context-dependent picture of chant sources, where scribes exercised individual autonomy in the revision of repertoires, despite the calls for conformity and consistency that defined the early modern period.

With the United States’ entrance into the First World War, linguistic and cultural cohesiveness became imperative, compelling everyone—from immigrants with foreign accents to people with speech problems and hearing loss—to “sound American” by fluently speaking the language of their flag.

This article examines lip-reading, speech, and auricular training prescribed to deaf and hard-of-hearing children as well as for servicemen deafened in the war to demonstrate how World War I demanded all Americans to contribute to and participate in shared national soundscapes, regardless of their hearing status. Use of American Sign Language was considered a conspicuous sign of one’s failure to integrate into hearing society, and it shared parallels with immigrants who failed to learn English and fully assimilate into American culture. Indeed, rehabilitation of deafened soldiers of the First World War through speech training and lip-reading instruction at Hospital No. 11 at Cape May, New Jersey, coincided with broader national efforts to improve Americans’ speech and language use, and in turn, their patriotism and productivity.

This article examines the language of seed reception within the Parable of the Sower in Mark and Luke. The paper argues that Mark's diction introduces reproductive terms into the seed figure and that Luke edits Mark to include even more distinctively gynaecological and reproductive terminology. The result is a parable in Luke that turns the audience into uterine receptacles of the seed/logos.

This article examines Tiburcio Campe's newspaper El Español, a brief yet concerted effort by exiled Spanish liberals in New Orleans that drew on the Cádiz constitutional experiment to demand the return of imperial rule in Mexico in the late 1820s. Exiled from Mexico as a consequence of the expulsion laws against Spaniards (españoles), Campe used his newspaper to criticize republican exclusionary policies and to militate against a possible expansion of abolitionism, ethnic conflict, and anti-white proposals in the Caribbean, promoting imperial constitutionalism as the only guarantor of the coexistence of Spaniards and Americanos and racial hierarchies in the Americas. Discussions regarding political and racial equality in Mexico and the United States, and the community's experience of exile in New Orleans, shaped these ideas, revealing how the banishment of Campe and other Spanish liberals renewed their advocacy of empire. Moreover, their exile in the United States facilitated their participation in the transatlantic public sphere and the circulation of their work, illustrating how the United States became a platform for envisioning and propagating imperial endeavors. Thus a study of El Español and Tiburcio Campe's actions allows us to comprehend the intricacies between exile and pro-monarchical discourses, as well as the nature of political and racial equality in the post-independence Americas.