This appendix aims to provide brief descriptions of significant manuscripts mentioned in this book, being more than an index of manuscripts, with a specific focus on those manuscripts which exist in digital facsimile. Manuscripts primarily transmitting Herbal material are not generally included unless their contents have been specifically discussed in Chapter 1. Where the language of a manuscript is explicit in its shelf mark, no further remarks are necessary, but it will be noted where this information is not explicit.

Belgium

*Louvain-la-Neuve, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Centre General de Documentation, Fragmenta H. Omont 3. s. ix, Old English This single leaf of medical cures was discovered only in the late twentieth century. It dates to the ninth century and is written in an Anglian dialect, most likely Mercian, according to Cameron and Schauman, who published a transcription and translation of the recipes. The relationship of this text to other Old English medical texts has been discussed by Meaney.

Czech Republic

Prague

Narodni knihovna Česke republiky, MS XIV. A. 12 s. xv, Latin

This medieval Bohemian manuscript was produced in Prague in the second half of the fifteenth century. It contains of Pliny's Historia naturalis followed by the Physica Plinii Florentino-Pragensis in three books from folio 324v, with several other texts wrongly attributed to Pliny. Excepting the epistles of Pliny the Younger (item 10), the remaining contents are strictly medical and unusually old for a medieval Bohemian manuscript.

Since his death in 1881, Benjamin Disraeli has been reimagined many times: as a social reformer, a democrat, an imperialist, and more recently as a Tory wet and a Jewish seer. This essay explores his earliest reinvention, before any of those better-known efforts began. This was the one engineered immediately after his death by a quartet of high-spirited Tory MPs known as the Fourth Party, and particularly by the Fourth Party's founder and least-known member, Henry Drummond Wolff. It is argued here that Wolff developed a coherent strategy for perpetuating Disraeli's politics. He had known Disraeli since he was a teenager in the 1840s. He shared his preoccupations with high society, with diplomacy and particularly with the Near and Middle East (or ‘the East’ as I shall call it here, following most Victorians). This essay interprets Wolff's political activities in the 1880s in the light of Disraeli's writings and actions. It argues that understanding Disraeli's priorities is the way to make sense of Wolff, but also that by making sense of Wolff we can understand Disraeli better.

Wolff made a number of contributions in that decade. He was Lord Randolph Churchill's right-hand man – his ‘jackal’, according to Joseph Chamberlain – in the Fourth Party, which harassed the Liberal government of William Gladstone and exposed the torpor of the official Conservative leader, Stafford Northcote. In 1883, he founded the Primrose League to commemorate Disraeli's name and provide a focus for Churchillian Conservatism. He was posted to Constantinople and Egypt between 1885 and 1887 with a plan to solve Britain's greatest foreign policy crisis since the Crimean War, its fraught military entanglement with Egypt and Sudan.

In addition to delays caused by storm damage, groundings, fire and ravages by pirates, country traders could also be impeded by imprisonment, detention, embargoes and other forms of harassment. Surprisingly, these interruptions to trade did not result solely from altercations with wartime enemies, such as the French, but arose also from the different agendas of the Malay States or from clashes with that ostensible defender of the country traders, the British Royal Navy. The following Protests have been divided into these different groupings where belligerence could result in loss of life, goods and time.

The Protests (nine cases)

Capture by the Malays

On a slightly different plane to the European notion of wartime capture there was also the possibility of capture by the Malays as an extension of their custom of maritime raiding. The murder of Captain Thomas Sadler at Mempawah in 1795 falls into this category.

The event has previously been described in some detail. In summary, however, the Protest, in English, signed by Thomas Groube, first mate, and other officers of the country trader vessel Transfer, reported the murder of their captain. It was presented to the Dutch notary on 5 August 1795 when the Transfer called at Malacca. Sadler was an experienced, highly regarded country captain who had traded around the archipelago for at least twelve years, including to Mempawah. On the particular voyage in question, the Transfer arrived at Mempawah on Sunday 12 July 1795 and Sadler spent the next few days ashore while cargo was being traded.

Song Accompaniment – A Marginalised and Gendered Profession

Collaborative piano work, and art-song accompaniment in particular, is a marginalised profession. Singers tend to have the more powerful agent and higher fees; their names sell the tickets and critics focus on them. Unlike their partners at the keyboard, singers never fear being left out of a song recital programme, standing awkwardly by themselves in green rooms after concerts, or being unlisted on a YouTube video in which they are visibly performing.

This disparity seems particularly odd given that the core art-song literature was composed by pianists, not singers. Johannes Brahms, Benjamin Britten, Francis Poulenc, Maurice Ravel, Franz Schubert, Clara and Robert Schumann, Richard Strauss, and Hugo Wolf were all keyboardists. To cite pianist Iain Burnside, in fact, ‘in Lieder, it is the pianist who leads’.

It also cannot be argued that collaborative pianists follow a shorter or less intensive educational path. They have as long a training route as piano soloists or singers, and one that is often more interdisciplinary. They must sight-read, study poetry and foreign languages, and master a great deal of repertoire, while developing essential soft skills. Pianist Anna Tilbrook attests that these pianists must develop a ‘sixth sense, knowing when singers are going to have a memory lapse, when they’re going to come in a bar early or even skip a whole verse… and [learn to] cover all that with their playing, so smoothly that no one notices’

Two powerful metaphors found in the literature of the early medieval English peoples are the weaving of peace and the weaving of death. Both metaphors have generated a long history of argument and discussion, a history which this chapter and the next necessarily address. In this chapter, I begin with an overview of critical opinion on the potential definitions to date for “peaceweaver/peaceweaving,” and then follow with the definitions considered here. Meanings considered in this work take into account all of the elements of the word “peaceweaving,” including the often under-considered second half of the metaphor: “-weaving.” Anglo-Latin evidence has also rarely been taken into account in this conversation, and I do so here, documenting previously unaddressed evidence. After assessment of this full range of evidence, the chapter will also examine potential analogical influences in the development of the early medieval English metaphor for weaving peace.

It is not comfortable to be an individual, and it is not easy being the best. This is the wisdom of Achilles in Madeline Miller's modern imagining of the greatest of all Greek warriors, who demands the following of his lover Patroclus:

Part of what makes Miller's novels (The Song of Achilles, Circe) compelling is the self-conscious quality of her characters: they are more than literate in their own mythos, and understand with sometimes painful precision the roles they are to play. Achilles knows the sort of man he is to become; myth is a living, dynamic force in this storyworld, informing the decisions he makes (and thus the shape of the plot). Achilles looks back at the great heroes of his culture, and sees that great fame goes hand in hand with pain, and that adventure is the product of difficulty and disaster. Like the superlative tragedy faced by Amis and Amiloun discussed in Chapter 1, there is a sense that such a superfluity of anything must teeter on the edge of dismay. Fame – being known of – is not the same as being known (the unspoken preoccupation of the romance characters I discussed in Chapter 2).

The Sonnleithner and Schubert salons described in Chapter 3 evolved from intimate domestic quartet rehearsals into vibrant centres of musical innovation. What began as simple gatherings among friends and family soon expanded into the arrangement of overtures, symphonies, and even accompanied operas and oratorios in private and semi-private settings. In the Viennese musical salons of the 1810s, such developments required technical skill and the organisational acumen typical of a professional Kapellmeister. As Sonnleithner recalls:

This chapter explores the private world of gentlemen's music-making in Schubert's Vienna, focusing specifically on the compositional opportunities available to amateurs – opportunities that often took the form of arranging existing works rather than composing entirely original pieces. By engaging in these practices, musical amateurs enriched their leisure and contributed to the broader cultural fabric, fostering a sense of artistic citizenship among middle-class men. Although early nineteenth-century Vienna is known today mainly for Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, Viennese amateur performers in this era often transcended the role of interpreter to become composers in their own right. This chapter examines the amateur performer-composers in Schubert's Vienna, shedding light on their influence, challenges, and contributions to the musical milieu.

Introduction

Robert Grosseteste stands out, even among so illustrious a group as the medieval bishops of Lincoln, as an exceptional character. In modern times he has been celebrated as a pioneer of scientific method, as the first chancellor of the University of Oxford and as an energetic reformer of the Church who defied both pope and king. Grosseteste's career was certainly remarkable. For most of his adult life he was a student, teacher and scholar at the nascent university of Oxford, with, possibly, a period of study at Paris, the predominant centre of theological study in Europe. By 1213 or 1214 he was master of the schools at Oxford, a position generally agreed now to be the chancellorship in all but name. Here he established an international reputation as a theologian and philosopher and produced a substantial body of works on theology, biblical exegesis and natural philosophy (what we might call science), as well as writing on pastoral instruction and composing poetry. He was in his late sixties when, evidently to his surprise, and likely as a compromise candidate in a contested election, he was chosen as Bishop of Lincoln, a position which he was to hold for eighteen years (1235–53). Rising to the challenge of such a momentous change at this age, he went on to become an extraordinarily energetic proponent of reform in the diocese, his tenure characterised in particular by his strenuous and indefatigable efforts to improve the standards of pastoral care in his diocese, striving constantly to ensure the provision of suitable priests, to correct abuses, and to encourage preaching.