Coming upon his niece, Lavinia, “her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravished,” Marcus asks, “Who is this? My niece, that flies away so fast?” Marcus's initial inability to recognize Lavinia is caused not by her gruesome maiming but by her flight from his sight. His next lines confirm his inability to gaze on her properly, as he does not comment on her physical condition, but attempts to detain her again, asking: “Cousin, a word, where is your husband?” (2.4.12). At this point, presumably, Lavinia reveals herself to him, as Marcus's next lines indicate an immediate, instinctual negation of what he sees: “If I do dream, would all my wealth wake me! / If I do wake, some planet strike me down, / That I may slumber an eternal sleep” (2.4.13–14)! Employing two syntactically parallel hypothetical clauses, Marcus equalizes the experiences of dreaming and waking—and finds that neither condition provides ocular refuge. Momentarily without words to describe the aftermath of violence, Marcus finds that the experience of gazing necessitates negotiation between what is perceived and what is articulated. The weight of Lavinia's representation is at stake, as she is literally unable to speak for herself.

This book analyzes various ways in which sixteenth-century Spanish cultural elites constructed a pre-national collective identity – an autochthonous Renaissance – by reinventing those cultural principles which, in Italy, had originally created the concept of the Renaissance as a selfexplanatory category.

Those of us who study the Spanish early modern period – whether we look at its literary and artistic production or analyze and interpret its social, economical and political landscape – are familiar with the tensions embedded in the competitive relationship that the Spaniards, seeking to shape national models for their culture, instituted with the Italian Renaissance. This competition permeated numerous facets of cultural definition in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the private display of riches that conferred social status to the construction of the image of imperial Spain. My study is largely concerned with describing, analyzing and assessing those cultural mechanisms which, in early modern Spain, led to the translation, imitation and selective adoption of the values that made the Italian Renaissance come to symbolize the very definition and, to a lesser extent, the origin of culture. These cultural mechanisms served to delineate an autochthonous tradition that would address the needs of a distinct society, and gave to the Italian interpretation of knowledge and its practices a “Spanish” physiognomy that ultimately contributed to the construction of a category in many aspects as productive as the Italian Renaissance: the Golden Age.

Rutebeuf's Miracle de Théophile is a work connected to translation on a number of different levels. As the essays in this collection attest, translatio (and its vernacular cognates) had a broad range of meanings in the Middle Ages that could be used to refer to textual or linguistic translation but that also denoted non-textual forms of movement, relocation and transfiguration. Rutebeuf's play, in addition to translating and adapting other versions of the Theophilus legend, participates in this expanded notion of translatio; along with other religious or moralizing works examined in this volume, this text also demonstrates the close relationship between such notions of translation and the sacred. Commissioned by the bishop of Paris and thought to have been performed in 1263 (or 1264) as part of the festivities for the Nativity of the Virgin, Rutebeuf's play, like other religious works, aims to translate between the human and the divine for the benefit of the author's and the community's souls. Translatio in Rutebeuf's text – insofar as it is related to the mediation between human subjects inclined towards sin and the divine forces that might save them – is thus inevitably related to Christian ethics.

IN A MODERN WORLD bombarded with information, how does the public acquire a view of the role and status of the architect? Given the deluge of news from the press, television and, of course, the Web, today it is almost impossible not to know about construction projects and their often ‘celebrity’ architects. A canny potential client will inspect a practice's previous and current projects, if possible in situ, while a visit to the office – its location, style, staffing – will provide an insight into professional business acumen and financial acuity. If the architect arrives at every meeting in yet another chauffer-driven Rolls-Royce, the client sees only success on wheels. Whether current stars of the architects’ firmament will be remembered five minutes after their demise is another matter. In the recent past, the more astute have commissioned their portrait in oil or print, while others inscribed their names somewhere on the main façade, a popular practice in late-Victorian and Edwardian times. Some have become eponymous with their work: Palladio's villas, the Gibbs building in Cambridge, the Eiffel Tower, numerous worldwide projects by Frank Lloyd Wright and almost anything remotely connected with Le Corbusier.

Were we to project ourselves back to the Middle Ages, how would we be able to judge the status of architects or ‘master masons’ in the society of their day? No architect that we know of was ennobled in the period, but then neither was any goldsmith, painter or sculptor. They all belonged to the ‘paid’ or ‘rewarded’ class of servants, not to the politically useful or financially ‘touchable’.

In scene 4 of Christopher Marlowe's Massacre at Paris (1593), his dramatization of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants, which took place in 1572 and formed a central moment in the French wars of religion, Queen Mother of France, Catherine de Medici, asks the Duke of Guise: “What order will you set down for the massacre?” The Duke of Guise gives a typically smooth answer, detailing the “white crosses” and “white linen scarfs” to be worn by his men taking part in the massacre, and the “peal[s] of ordnance” that will mark the beginning and the end of the slaughter (4.30–39). In the very next scene we witness precisely that: Anjou, Dumaine, Retes, Gonzago, and Mountsorrell appear with “argent crosses” “to kill all that [they] suspect of heresy,” as cannon-fire signifies that the action has begun (5.1–3). The clockwork precision with which we see these events unfold in accordance with Guise's initial predications is not only chilling but also carried out with a swiftness that invites a dark comedy to preside over the macabre events that follow. Providing the foundations for this oddly decorous mass slaughter is the art central to all early modern intellectual modi operandi: logic.

The Festival of Britain concerts

For six years after the end of the war London had no purpose-built concert hall and, as noted in Chapter 10, that void caused acute difficulties for those attempting to arrange Toscanini's abortive visit and recordings in 1946. Plans for a modern hall on the south bank of the Thames were, however, drawn up in the late 1940s as part of a site for a festival to take place in the spring of 1951, named by the sponsoring Labour government the Festival of Britain. Hence the title Royal Festival Hall, which was perpetuated despite the premature demolition of other structures surrounding it, following elections in October 1951 that brought in a new government determined to expunge positive memories of life under its predecessor.

In 1950 the hall's commissioning authority, the London County Council (LCC), appointed Owen Mase as its Concerts Adviser for the new hall, in effect its programme planner wielding the authority to solicit bookings and determine priorities among the various orchestras and other organisations competing to appear. From the outset Mase made clear that only one conductor, Toscanini, was fitted to start the hall's life and he had no difficulty in persuading the management to agree: opening concerts conducted by the world's most famous maestro would secure its future as the country's most prestigious concert venue. In March the hall's prospective general manager, John Shove, contacted the BBC to notify them of the LCC's intention to promote concerts conducted by Toscanini immediately following the hall's ceremonial opening.

In 1599, the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, and the Bishop of London, Richard Bancroft, ordered the Stationers' Company to call in and burn various collections of satires. They further imposed a ban on satire in general, prohibiting future publication. A variety of theories have been proposed to account for the bishops' ban. Noting that a number of satires included in the order were of a gross sexual nature, John Peter suggests that the Bishops were motivated out of a concern for public morals. Richard McCabe, observing that these satires often attacked identifiable individuals, argues that the bishops were troubled by their libelous or seditious nature. Annabel Patterson contends that these satires violated the rules of “functional ambiguity” and were, in effect, excessively candid in their criticism of the Elizabethan state. And Cyndia Clegg, who argues that Elizabethan censorship practices are ad hoc in their application, finds a specific incident that explains the bishops' actions against satire and the other works identified in the Order. Pointing to the Earl of Essex's ill-fated trip to Ireland and his tenuous relationship with the Queen, Clegg contends that the ban is best understood as a protective measure on behalf of Essex by his “friend and ardent supporter,” Archbishop Whitgift.

I will begin my short reflection on this timely, varied and innovative collection with a simple generalisation: history is how we explain the past; heritage is how we preserve it. Preserving the past comes in many forms, from acts of personal recollection to collective rites of public commemoration. In terms of sport this can range from memories of great matches or players to putting up statues outside stadia which themselves have become a focus of sporting heritage.

A simple distinction between history and heritage, however, is complicated by the fact that much popular ‘history’ is probably better characterised as ‘heritage’ in the sense that it evokes or records the past rather than analyses it. History as an academic discipline restricted to a relatively small readership is very different from heritage as a way of bringing the past to life through memory and material culture. Hence the heritage approach tends to reach a wider audience and have more influence on popular understandings of the past than conventional history. Few works of sporting heritage – the term itself was rarely used – appeared before the 1950s, when publishers such as Stanley Paul realised there was a lucrative market in the formulaic sports biography or the adulatory club history. The sheer volume of such work is striking, even if the literary or historical standards are low. The heritage of sport has frequently been conveyed in a simple biographical form that focuses narrowly on the experience of the player rather than the response of the fan.

In September 1656 Henry Cromwell, the head of the English administration in Ireland, wrote from Dublin to the admiralty in London about the activities of pirates in the Irish Sea. He complained that ‘severall Pyratts whoe are newly come uppon these Coastes, and for want of a sufficient guarde of shipps of force they doe us much mischeiff; they have alreadie taken many men tradeing hither; and indeed will wholly spoyle our trade if you doe not apply a speedie remedie’. His complaint echoes one made fourteen years earlier that warned of the dangers posed by Wexford privateers who ‘profess openly they will make another Dunkirk and infest us in all the parts of the coasts of the kingdom’. For much of the seventeenth century piracy and privateering was a major problem for the English navy off the Irish coast. The nature of the danger varied over time, from pirates operating from Irish harbours, especially in the first two decades of the century, to privateers and ‘Barbary corsairs’ from Europe and North Africa. In the 1640s and early 1650s, however, the maritime situation in Ireland changed markedly. The outbreak of a rebellion in Ireland, followed by civil war in England, led to an increase in, and more complex, naval activity and privateering enterprises operating on the Irish seaboard, whether flying under the colours of confederates, parliamentarians or royalists. Instead of dealing with relatively isolated incidents of piracy, the English navy was confronted with a largescale well-organised privateering organisation based in some of the principal port towns in Ireland.

Near the beginning of book IX of the Fall of Princes, Lydgate narrates the encounter between Bochas and the Frankish queen Brunhilde (d. 613), who wishes to tell her story and to defend her good name to the poet. Much of Brunhilde's story is recorded in Gregory of Tours's Historia Francorum, although Gregory did not live to see the queen killed by Lothar II, son of Chilperic and Fredegund, who dragged her behind a wild horse until she died. Bochas is sceptical, and tells Brunhilde he is certain that, like most women, she will tell her tale so that it shows her at her best:

Brunhilde assures him he is basing his scepticism on an inaccurate idea of what women are like, and Bochas relents, telling her he will endeavour to do her justice with his pen. After exhorting Bochas to ensure that he sticks to the truth of the matter (‘“Tak heed,” quod she, “& with riht good auis / Fro the trouthe bewar that thou nat varie!”’ (IX.225–6)), she begins to tell her tale.

Among the thousands of names in the Durham Liber Vitæ, there are a number of memoranda, including a late tenth-century record of the manumission of a group of slaves:

It is tempting to assign this manumission to the troubled reign of Æthelred II, the subject of a biography by Ann Williams, published in 2003. That said, the ‘evil days’ mentioned may have been the result of famine induced by natural disaster, rather than the consequences of the return of the Viking armies in Æthelred's reign.

Leaving aside the name of God, the memorandum names seventeen individuals, including Cuthbert, the Northumbrian saint and patron of the Church of Durham, who had died in 687, Geatfleda, the woman in whose name the manumission was made, and fifteen named men.

This chapter examines the political relevance of love and spiritual friendship in Clemence of Barking's La Vie de St Catherine d'Alexandrie. Her Catherine extends the work of the Barking La Vie d'Edouard le confesseur (Edouard) by using the conventions of romance to explore the sacramental love that holds the body politic together and binds it to Christ in friendship. I argue that Clemence derives her model of friendship from Aelred of Rievaulx's De spirituali amicitia, a widely circulated revision of Cicero's De amicitia (Laelius) for the monastic life. I also posit that Clemence's emphasis on spiritual friendship can be seen as a response to the tensions caused by the Becket controversy, which were further amplified by some of the literature and liturgies composed to commemorate his martyrdom. Becket's death had a direct impact on the abbacy at Barking and provides an essential context for Clemence's Catherine. This impact is visible in Henry II's appointment of Mary Becket to the abbacy (1173–5) and in the commissioning of Guernes of Pont-Sainte-Maxence's La Vie de St Thomas le martyr de Cantorbrie at Barking during her tenure. As I discuss below, Clemence's Catherine emphasizes issues of coordinate power central to this controversy. In doing so, Clemence's revision could be seen as a corrective to penitential, images that place Becket (and, by extension, the English episcopacy) in the light of God's favour and the secular court in a secondary, submissive position vis-à-vis episcopal authority.