Introduction

Religion and spirituality are part and parcel of all cultures of every human society. Religion gives humans and their societies shape and a sense of purpose. Religious culture entails the way of life of a particular people or community in connection with the divine. In Africa, religion and spirituality are important elements of the cultural fabric of the society. Notably, African peoples are notorious for their belief systems. As author John Mbiti once observed:

Whenever the African is, there is religion. He carries it to the fields where he is sowing seeds or harvesting a new crop; he takes it with him to the beer party or to attend a funeral ceremony; and if he is educated, he takes religion with him to the examination room at school or in the university; if he is a politician, he takes it to the house of parliament.

Spirituality in Africa was originally premised on beliefs and traditions associated with African Traditional Religion (ATR). The principles or tenets of African spirituality are essentially the same across various groups, notwithstanding the diversity of religious practices and beliefs connected to various indigenous religious organizations and denominations. African spirituality manifests itself in a variety of ways, including divination, ancestor veneration, nature worship, rites and ceremonies, observance of taboos and holy days, and more. The import of foreign religions – Christianity and Islam – into Africa following the success of Islamic Jihads and Christian proselytization in the region might have altered the prevailing religious dynamics in Africa; however, some of the tenets of African spirituality are still being observed in contemporary times, not only in limited fashion among the ATR-faithful, but also in different manners of expressions amongst African Christians and Muslims.

The news of the accident on the lake had left Franziska deeply shaken. But Josephine, by the time she left the room half an hour later, had succeeded in restoring the equilibrium in her mistress's mind, at least to the extent that the events she had recounted now seemed as if they had taken place in the last century, or far away in some land beyond the seas. In any case Franziska refused to let the incident disrupt her plan for the day, which read simply: letter to Countess Judith.

She had written to the countess as soon as she had arrived, though only a short note, which had neither expected a reply nor received one. It therefore was now truly incumbent on her to write.

“For several days now, my dear Countess, I have been meaning to follow my first note to you with a longer letter, but always found myself hindered in carrying out my intention.

“And today, a serious accident on our lake, in which the priest from Nagy-Foros lost his life—even the Eucharist sank into the waters—seemed likely to keep me from staying true to my intention, yet again. But I shall set aside the feelings arising from this, and write to you.

“I have now been at Arpa Castle for forty days, and this long and short amount of time lies behind me like a dream.

In the earliest Christian narratives, many saints worked with their hands. The apostles Peter, Andrew, James, and John worked on the water as fishermen (Mt 4:18–23, Mk 1:16–20). Paul made tents (Acts 18:3). Martha served food at her table (Lk 10:38–42, Jn 12:2). Apocryphal texts represented the Virgin as a highly skilled textile worker, spinning and weaving the embroidered linen and silk veil for the temple described in Exodus 26:1–12. According to The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Mary worked in wool (lanificio), praying before ‘she engaged in weaving’ (textrino se in opere occupabat). Christ himself was trained by Joseph, a carpenter (Mk 6:3, Mt 13:55), and performed miracles while helping his foster-father build wooden furniture:

In 2016 Dr Suzanne Paul drew my attention to a project on parchment species identifcation initiated in the Department of Archaeology, University of York. With the permission of Scott Mandelbrote, Fellow Librarian, Peterhouse, I selected Peterhouse, MSS 92 (large folio) and 181 (regular folio) for identifcation, the two manuscripts representing two diferent stages of the Fish Scribe's career. The work was carried out by Emma Nichols, CUL conservator and analysed by Sarah Fiddyment, Department of Archaeology, University of York. I am grateful to Fiddyment for permission to cite her report, which follows.

For the prisoners, there was, of course, always the idea of escape, but it was not as simple or easy a thing to achieve as many of the contemporary accounts by British escapees might seem to indicate. Though some British prisoner accounts tell of escapes from the fortresses by climbing out of windows or leaping down walls, most escapees were British officers who were on parole, a privilege not available to most American seamen. These officers were already outside the fortress, having permission to live in town, and were allowed to stroll or ride, even to hunt, outside of the town's perimeters. Many of these British officer escapees simply went out for a stroll one day and did not return. They also used ruses and hired carriages, wore costumes and obtained false papers, had paid tutors to teach them to speak French, all of which cost more money than the American seaman prisoner ever could have hoped to have.

Most importantly, for the British escapee, home was not all that far away; once he reached the coast, he needed only a fishing boat to take him out to the Royal Navy's blockading vessels and he would be free.

For the American seaman escapee, he would have to get to a port without detection and find an American vessel to take him home by a route that would avoid not only French harbour patrols but also the Royal Navy vessels, which could have impressed him. Nevertheless, between sixty and seventy American prisoners escaped, of whom just twenty-one may have successfully escaped the French Empire.

From 1803 to 1814, more than 1500 Americans were held as prisoners of war in France. Nearly all of them were merchant seamen. They were taken prisoner when the vessels on which they were working were captured at sea by French privateers or were shipwrecked on French shores. They were taken in to French ports, held in local jails, then marched to prison camps, or depots, in the interior, where they were held with and as if they were British prisoners of war, les prisonniers de guerre anglais.

France (like Britain) followed the custom of, when a vessel flying the flag of an enemy country was captured in time of war, the crew were to be treated as if they had the same nationality as the vessel's flag. Thus, these American seamen went to prisoner of war depots because they had taken work on a British merchant vessel which was then captured by the French. Additionally, during part of this time, Napoleon issued decrees targeting American shipping specifically, seizing American vessels in French ports or encouraging French privateers to capture them at sea. As France had no prison depot designated for Americans, the crews of those vessels were also sent to the depots used for British prisoners of war.

For the entirety of the period, the American Minister Plenipotentiary and consuls in France struggled to obtain their countrymen's release, on the grounds that the United States was neutral in Europe's wars and so, American citizens could not justifiably be held as prisoners of war.

The widespread adoptions of the handwritten codex on the one hand and of the printing press on the other hand seem to dominate modern media histories.

Yet, between these two historical milestones, medieval scribes witnessed an explosion of different types of information technologies in many forms. While the codex became a dominant form of mediating knowledge in the European Middle Ages, the particular forms of books that exist from the period demonstrate a more nuanced media ecology. For example, abundant evidence survives to show that loosely-collected gatherings of booklets were just as widely used as bound codices. Similarly, there was no standard form for books, as they ranged in physical size, quality, and contents. Some are so massive that several people are required to move one, while others are little enough to fit into a satchel or even a small pocket; some are thin like modern-day notebooks, while others are nearly as thick as they are tall or wide.

Even more, the very forms of the contents of medieval books reveal much more about the media diversity of the Middle Ages. Medieval books contain countless different types of texts, glosses, images, charts, diagrams, infographics, and other types of information. The manuscripts held in Bristol libraries contain a similar diversity of manuscript media, which we may understand as varying expressions of medieval information technologies. These manuscripts therefore offer an opportunity to reflect upon how information is categorised, systematised, and organised – essential issues in understanding media across the many centuries of the longue duree.

Medieval theologians generally understood fear as morally ambiguous. Their ambivalence about fear's moral value stemmed from the Bible, which includes some passages celebrating holy fear, e.g. timor Domini sanctus permanens in saeculum saeculi (‘The fear of the Lord is holy, enduring for ever and ever’), and others suggesting fear's incompatibility with crucial virtues like caritas (‘love’), e.g. timor non est in caritate sed perfecta caritas foras mittit timorem (‘Fear is not in charity, but perfect charity casteth out fear’). In an effort to resolve the apparent inconsistency between such passages, patristic theologians like Augustine of Hippo distinguished between two types of fear of God (timor Dei): servile fear (timor servilis) of punishment, which is cast out by charity, and chaste fear (timor castus) of sundering one's soul from God through sin, which endures forever. Although they valued chaste fear above servile fear, they understood both as spiritually salutary, though servile fear must be cast out by love. During the High Middle Ages, scholastic theologians like Peter Lombard expanded this dichotomy into elaborate taxonomies of fear. These generally included natural fear (timor naturalis: an automatic and morally neutral fear that occurs when one is suddenly frightened or anticipates pain), as well as spiritually detrimental fears like human fear (timor humanus: excessive fear of bodily harm that discourages moral behaviour) and worldly fear (timor mundanus: fear of losing worldly goods that discourages moral behaviour), the last of which was angrily attributed to the propertied Church by John Wycliffe.

The National Eisteddfod of Wales, and its attendant robed ‘Gorsedd’ of bards, ovates, and druids, are the most visible legacy of eighteenth-century revivalism in twenty-first century Welsh culture. The first an annual cultural festival, and the second a ceremonial academy of Welsh luminaries in bardic dress, both were institutions creatively reconstructed by revivalists in the 1790s, embodying the movement's attempts to weave aspects of Welsh history and identity into forms that would thrive in modernity. Initially separate institutions – though created within the same revivalist network – the Gorsedd and eisteddfod were eventually united at the Carmarthen Eisteddfod in 1819. This eisteddfod was the first of the so-called ‘Provincial Eisteddfodau’, organized primarily by Wales-based ‘Cambrian Societies’, as distinct from the London-centric revivalism that dominated the movement throughout the eighteenth century: Carmarthen therefore has some claim to witnessing the end of the Welsh revivalist period covered by this book, and the birth of the Welsh National Eisteddfod in its current form. At Carmarthen, Iolo Morganwg unexpectedly performed some of his radically inflected pseudo-druidism outside the eisteddfod venue, inducting new members into his revived druido-bardic order, and establishing a still ongoing partnership between these two symbols of revivalist Welshness.

Since the later twentieth century, one tendency in Welsh scholarship has emphasized radical, anti-British-imperialist, proto-Welsh-nationalist contexts to these events and their legacies.

South Africa's crisis through a legal lens

Ideally, a country's laws, what citizens are required to do, are in harmony with its social norms, what people actually do, or at least what they say they should do. Such harmony is never complete. There is always some gap between law and social norms; whether because of criminals and deviants or otherwise upright citizens cutting corners. However, the extent of the disparity is important. When the difference is limited society is functional, but if social practice differs significantly from law there is a crisis of social order.

There are different ways in which the disjunction between law and norms exists. It could be that the law does not consider the plurality of a society and the disjunction between law and norms is uneven within the country. It could be that law lags social norms which have moved on. If so, the law is a conservative force that assists in preserving a past status quo, and with it the entrenched power relationship of a society. It could that the law is being used to engineer social change. If so, law is ahead of hoped for social norms which it has been introduced to bring about. Likely, all three possibilities co-exist, but to what degree and in what ratio will determine the significance of these disjunctures.

Whether codified law is ahead or behind social norms is contestable since it concerns evaluating existing and desired social values and the social order that promotes, controls, or outlaws these. In South Africa, a project of progressive social engineering has been attempted following the fall of apartheid. Its failure has created a yawning gap between practised norms and law.

The Städtekrieg (Town War) from 1387 to 1389, fought between the Swabian and Rhenish Leagues of cities (Schwäbischer Städtebund and Rheinischer Städtebund), numerous major southern German princes and King Wenzel, the Roman-German monarch (Rex Romanorum), represents the climax of the violent struggle for civic autonomy in the Holy Roman Empire during the late fourteenth century. This essay questions the extent to which the conflict can be considered a rebellion from a security perspective, as the purpose of the urban alliances was to protect their members from the threats posed by both the king and the nobility. Considering its end, which led to the league's liquidation in the Landfrieden (land peace or public peace) of Eger (now Cheb in the Czech Republic) in May 1389, it might seem self-evident to interpret the war as a rebellion of the cities against their king. However, the dynamics of the conflicting parties’ security interests provide important clues showing that this conclusion is illusory.

INTRODUCTION

This case arose in Lecropt, a parish south of Dunblane, and was pursued by the presbytery of Stirling between July and September 1590. In the record it begins almost immediately after the case of Isobel Watson, edited above, but seems not to have been connected with it.

The accusation of witchcraft came from Janet Mitchell, wife of William Mayne. Mitchell complained that Marion McNab was a witch, and told a story of how McNab had bewitched her husband's malt. This initially prompted Mitchell to seek reparation and reconciliation – she told of having given McNab malt and honey in order to restore the quality of the malt. There was also mention of William Mayne's own sickness. Evidently the reconciliation attempt failed, and Mitchell then complained to the presbytery. The earliest record shows that she had already been induced to put the complaint in writing – she ‘producit in wret certane hedds of wiche craft practesit be the said Marione and of hir abwsione of the said Jonet’. This document does not survive, but the presbytery's procedurally inquisitorial response has its own interest.

McNab was then summoned. She denied most of what Mitchell had said, but her own story also told of a reconciliation attempt. She related setting out with Mitchell to seek the aid of ‘ane womane callit NcGilerss’ – probably a Highlander, whose name seems to have been a patronymic, ‘daughter of Gillies’. This woman was evidently a magical practitioner. But, McNab explained defensively, on the way she became uneasy about the mission and turned back.

The presbytery arranged for McNab to be imprisoned by the magistrates of Stirling, where she remained for two months, but they do not seem to have attempted to interrogate her there.

Sailors aboard the royal warship Vanguard, under orders from the Admiralty for a mission of high diplomatic and strategic significance, were so alarmed and angry by what was expected of them in 1625 that they moved to mutiny. Some declared that ‘they will rather be hanged or thrown overboard’ than continue as ordered. Defying chains of authority from the quarterdeck to the royal court, they challenged official instructions and refused to comply. Senior officers shared their unease, though not their intransigence. Questioning directions that seemed to him dangerous, misguided, and dishonourable, Vanguard's commander John Pennington (1584–1645) suffered bouts of ‘perplexity’ in ‘a business of very great consequence’ as he weighed obligations to his ship, to his God, and to his king.

The ensuing drama produced a stream of high-level correspondence exposing hesitations and contradictions in English foreign policy. It threatened officers and men with punishment, and tested the leadership and loyalty of Captain Pennington who had orders, in extremis, to turn his own guns against ships under his command. Facing misleading messengers and duplicitous diplomats, in a time of shifting dynastic and confessional conflict, seamen were exposed to pressures as confusing as the winds and the tides. Captains questioned their orders, mariners manufactured delays, and officers fomented refractoriness. This sorry episode at the beginning of Charles I's reign brought more embarrassment than glory, as professional ambitions and habits of obedience clashed with moral, patriotic, and religious duties.