The cultural contacts between early medieval England and the Continent developed at various levels and assumed different forms. In the complex network of relationships between North Sea peoples, a notable part was played by those English monks whose missionary activity was decisive for the affirmation and consolidation of Christianity in the Frankish Kingdom from the second half of the seventh century. They had taken up the legacy of Irish missionaries who had expanded Celtic Christianity in Scotland, Anglo-Saxon England and across territories of the Frankish domain during the sixth century.

The history of English missions in the regions east of the Rhine is not always studded with successes. Symbolic of a setback in the conversion of the heathen peoples living on the Continent is the almost legendary tale of the unsuccessful baptism of the Frisian king Redbad. In the Life of Saint Wulfram (ch. 9), it is told how, while entering the baptismal font, the king asked if he would ever meet his ancestors in heaven. Following Bishop Wulfram's negative response, Redbad withdrew his foot from the font, stating that he preferred to spend eternity in the torments of hell with his forefathers, rather than in the celestial company of his enemies, especially the Franks.

Despite their occasional failures, the evangelising activities on the Continent of such eminent figures as Wilfrid, Wihtberht, Willibrord (the ‘apostle of Frisia’), Leofwine, Willehad and of course Wynfrith-Boniface (the ‘apostle of Germany’) eventually bore fruit, thanks in particular to the financial and military support of the Frankish political authority.

The Guild of Catholic Teachers was founded in Glasgow in 1934. It was placed under the patronage of St John Bosco and had two principal aims: the social, cultural and religious formation of Catholic teachers and the development of Religious Instruction in schools.1 Study of the relevant archival material for the early years of the Guild (1934–36) reveals a heightened sense of collegiality and a related determination by lay people to achieve the Guild's ambitious aims.2 The present chapter will examine the extent to which the aims of the Guild reflected, or were influenced by, the principles of Catholic Action. It will first offer some initial thoughts on Catholic Action in Scotland before focusing on the development of Catholic education in Scotland in the aftermath of the First Word War, in order to understand the varied contexts from which the Guild emerged in 1934. The third section will draw on available archival material to present some of the key moments in the first two years of the Guild. This period offers evidence of the Catholic community's growing selfconfidence and a related desire to advance teacher formation in practical ways. The final part will show how ‘Religious Knowledge’ textbooks,3 which were underpinned by some new thinking in pedagogy, were one of the early fruits of the Guild.

When, in August 2022, the Supreme Court convened to hear the case of Raila Odinga and Others vs William Ruto and Others, the stakes could not have been higher. The 2022 presidential election had finished in a near-dead heat. According to the declared results, William Ruto had edged out Raila Odinga by 50.49% to 48.85%. The elections had been marked by familiar accusations of irregularities, ballot-stuffing, vote-rigging, errors in transmission of results from the polling booths, and – somewhat novel – electoral interference by some mysterious ‘Venezuelans’ who had apparently been in charge of the software for the voting machines. More spectacularly, when the Chairperson of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), Wafula Chebukati, wanted to declare the results, he found himself facing a rebellion from four of his own fellow-commissioners, who dissociated themselves from the process and held a press conference denouncing him. Chebukati went ahead and declared the results anyway – more grist for the mill of those who believed that William Ruto's electoral victory was irredeemably tainted.

Whichever way the Supreme Court ruled – and under the 2010 Constitution it had to rule, one way or another – it was bound to upset, even enrage, a very large number of people. Not that the Supreme Court was any stranger to such a situation.

Bristol Archives

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

• • P.AS/B/11. William Peraldus, Sermones, etc. 15 1/2

• • P.AS/B/10. Gerard Zerbolt, De spiritualibus ascensionibus, etc. 15 1/2, the

• main portion pre-1432

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

Bristol Central Library

• • MS 1. Bible. 13 1/2

• • MS 2. Missal. 15 4/4 or 16 1/4

• • MS 3. Anthology of Isidore and Augustine. Pre-1242

• • MS 5. Jacob Voragine, Sermones quadragesimales. 15 2/2

• • MS 6. Devotional Compilation. 1502

• • MS 11. Book of Hours. 1479

• • MS 12. Psalter. 12 3/4

• • MS 14. Book of Hours (The Ruddok-Clyve Hours). 14 4/4 with additions

• 15 1/4 and 1/2

In my Introduction, I emphasized the fluid, shifting nature of sexual desire. It is now time to consider other, similarly fluid desires on the part of the protagonist who has played a more significant role than any other in how issues of sexuality and gender in music have been investigated in recent decades: the listener. Us, the authors of reception history. The author is dead, leaving us as the custodians of their work today. But as we have seen, the reception history of a work can narrow its impact and ossify its meaning, with one interpretation nudging out others like a cuckoo in a nest. And if we impose our preferred meaning in this fashion, we condemn composers to a second death by denying them their voice, negating their desires in favor of our own. The reception history of the composers investigated here is one in which they have repeatedly been denied agency, even to the point of being portrayed a victim, supposedly tossed about by either circumstances or hormones beyond their control.

Beethoven's Fidelio exemplifies how what we desire to see in a work today can cloud our vision as to what is actually there. Since the end of the Second World War, interest in Beethoven's erotic life has intensified, ranging from claims that his nephew was really his son to the never-ending arguments about the identity of the “Immortal beloved,” with Josephine von Brunsvik currently the most likely candidate and her daughter Minona yet another possible scion of the genius.

Recently, hydrology has become a significant academic discipline as major environmental, economic, and geopolitical issues point to the crucial role rivers and other water bodies play in development. Emerging global issues such as climate change, food scarcity, and sustainability of aquatic life cannot be effectively addressed without recourse to hydrological processes and the impact of rivers in addressing these issues. Much of the existing literature has focused on recurring themes in hydrological research, including the cultural histories of rivers and their contributions to the political and economic development of specific communities and human civilizations at large. This book expounds on these fundamental issues by delimiting research focus to the African continent while expanding on topical issues.

African rivers – not only major international rivers such as Nile, Congo, and Zambezi, but also local or regional rivers – are vital components of the continent's ecology and culture, playing a crucial role in shaping landscapes, supporting ecosystems, and sustaining human life. Reflecting Africa's geological history, climate variability, and ecological diversity, these rivers hold significant ecological, political, economic, and sociocultural importance. However, their exploitation and sustainability face numerous challenges due to human activities, transboundary conflicts, and climate change. Organized into three sections, each of which explores a major theme related to the study of rivers, this book presents a detailed exposition of the cultural histories of African rivers and their contributions to the transformation of human civilizations in pre-modern history as well as contemporary developments in sociocultural, economic, and political spheres at both national and international levels.

I. Introduction: the German and Catholic Origins of the Term Katholische Aufklärung

Sebastian Merkle's 1908 lecture at an International Congress of Historical Sciences in Berlin on Katholische Aufklärung is now regarded as a kind of founding historiographical event, the initiation of a process which eventually saw the term ‘Catholic Enlightenment’ move from the peripheries to the scholarly mainstream. Merkle's thesis was diffused through his subsequently published Die Katholische Beurteilung des Aufklärungszeitalters (Berlin, 1909). Over the last fifty years, the concept of a Catholic Enlightenment has become an established historiographical tool for the study of intellectual and ecclesial changes in myriad linguistic and national contexts during the long eighteenth century. ‘Catholic Enlightenment’ and ‘enlightened Catholic’ are terms commonly applied to actors and phenomena as diverse as mid-eighteenth- century Italian scholars under the patronage of Prospero Lambertini (Pope Benedict XIV), Josephinism in Austria, and Bishop John Carroll (1736– 1815) in the early United States.

Merkle's Katholische Aufklärung and its variants have been very widely employed, their use ranging from casual Schlagwörter to historiographical categories employed to frame studies in early modern Catholicism. The importance of the early twentieth-century context in which Merkle coined the term ‘Catholic Enlightenment’, however, has perhaps been underestimated, at least in English-language scholarship. The national context of Merkle, a Catholic, was post-Bismarck Germany. The ecclesial context in the first decade of the twentieth century saw the highwater mark of the Roman ‘anti-Modernist’ crusade. As an academic engaged in critical scholarship who was also an ordained priest, Merkle was particularly vulnerable to an accusation of ‘Modernism’.

The author of Ipomedon and Protheselaus explicitly identifies himself as such at three separate points in the former text, and twice in the latter, in each case employing the name “Hughe” or “Hue de Rotelande”. In terms of sheer volume, he contributes more substantially to the extant tradition of French-of-England romance than any other single writer. Together, Ipomedon and Protheselaus (which is presented as a sequel to Ipomedon) run to over 23,300 lines, which is equivalent to a quarter of the entire corpus of such texts. However, out of the dozen or so extant romances that were composed in the French of medieval England (as opposed to any of the other regions in which French was in extensive use as a literary language during this period), Ipomedon and Protheselaus are the only two that have not been available in a complete modern English translation up to now.

Given how much of his work survives, it is fortunate that Hugh is both a highly capable narrator, and an attractively astute witness to the values and assumptions of the society in which he lived. His narratives are distinguished by an energetic and inventive enthusiasm for extended action-sequences featuring the exploits of knights in battle; a consistent, clearly realised and colourful setting in a distinctly imagined fictional world; a knowing, amused, and somewhat “quizzical” attitude towards “elegant society”; and a penchant for amusingly dry and incisive irony. This irony is in most cases directed at his characters, but sometimes at particular contemporaries, or at himself.11 He regularly describes the private thoughts of his characters, often in the form of dramatised conversations between voices representing competing impulses. These interior debates astutely portray the tension between reason and emotion, and they do so in ways that seem psychologically plausible, as well as entertaining.

The reign of Philippe II, known as Philippe Auguste (r.1179–1223), marked a pivotal turning point in the relationship between the French crown and the nobility, in part facilitated by the king's response to, and intervention in, conflict and rebellion. In common with his father and grandfather's reigns, Philippe Auguste's rule was punctuated by conflict with the northern French nobility. Their power and vast wealth, as well as the geographic proximity of their lands to the royal domain, made them a very real threat to the king of France, meaning that conflict and rebellion were common. Thus, throughout his reign, Philippe utilised conflict and rebellion to redefine his relationship with the nobility, facilitating the rapid expansion of royal power and influence.

Through an examination of significant disputes in the reign of Philippe Auguste involving his kin and closest advisors, it is possible to chart the changing nature of conflict and reconciliation in Capetian France and, in turn, the evolving relationship between the king and the nobility. Philippe Auguste frequently used periods of conflict to his advantage, taking the opportunity to extend royal influence over the nobility. He also intervened in intra-noble conflict, often exacting concessions from the nobility in return for royal intervention. And yet, this was not purely a period of conflict, but also one of co-operation, in which both the king and the nobility mutually benefited from their relationship. This essay will thus explore the ways in which the king and the nobility used conflict and reconciliation to define their relationships and ultimately the balance of power in Capetian France.

Fiona Tolhurst accomplished a good deal more than most researchers do even though her academic career was cut far shorter than it should have been. She made meaningful contributions to many diverse but related fields: she was a Malorian scholar par excellence; she contributed to scholarship on the alliterative Morte Arthure; she was an expert in key areas of medieval history (especially Eleanor of Aquitaine); she wrote about medievalism and modern treatments of the medieval world; and she regularly took up the mantle of public medievalist. However, it is the contributions that she made towards the study of Geoffrey of Monmouth which are likely to be judged as her most influential. In her two books on the subject – Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Feminist Origins of the Arthurian Legend (2012) and Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship (2013) – alongside her many other scholarly articles and talks, Fiona Tolhurst made the case for a contentious but very compelling reading of the twelfth-century Latinist Geoffrey of Monmouth. While most scholarship on Geoffrey's literary works tends to focus on their colonial and ethnic implications, Tolhurst shifted the conversation to his portrayal of females, and she offered this argument: ‘The varied, complex, and predominantly positive images of women Geoffrey creates in all three of his extant works distinguish him from most male authors of the Middle Ages and support the claim that he is a “feminist” for his time’.

How do books circulate in times of crisis? The first edition of the Complete Works of Voltaire, printed in Kehl, in Germany, between 1781 and 1789 is a good example of what war can do to books, and how our comprehension of Enlightenment fluctuates depending on the approach chosen. This book history is strongly anchored in the Enlightenment project as defined by Diderot and D’Alembert in the Discours préliminaire of the Encyclopédie. The aim is to spread to a wider public Voltaire's texts thanks to a new edition whose classification and presentation help the non-specialist reader to apprehend these vast and complex works. Voltaire is not only an exceptional writer, but his complete works are encyclopedic, spanning history, politics, society, culture, literature, arts, etc. It seems more than ever relevant to study real circulation of books and ideas related to the Enlightenment project, and to situate this concept as it is, nowadays, challenged by decolonial thought. Enlightenment is neither a static concept nor a permanent phenomenon. It is the contrary, and intrinsically dynamic. It is a permanent movement of books, ideas, and people, a constant reemergence of commitment, of synergies, of resistances. Book history's political background and social conditions can allow us to pull together how contingent this experience could be.

Beaumarchais's project of this posthumous edition was developed precisely at the time when France was once again at war with Great Britain. On February 6, 1778, France signed a treaty of trade with the Insurgents of America, thereby recognizing, implicitly, their United States.

In the field of architectural history, few primary sources offer as intimate and comprehensive an insight as the diary of a practitioner. While architectural plans and drawings can explain what was designed and when, personal accounts such as diaries can help us understand why. William George Footitt (1865–1936) was an architectural draughtsman in the office of Charles Hodgson Fowler. As architect to the Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral, Fowler had a successful practice specialising in the design and restoration of churches. Between 1897 and 1914, Footitt kept a diary to document his professional and personal life and to record his impressions of a rapidly changing world. This manuscript passed to his son John and eventually came down to the present Lord Shipley of Gosforth, the nephew of John's wife Elizabeth. By kind permission of Lord Shipley, this volume publishes the full text of Footitt's diary for the first time.

This unique text illuminates in rich and compelling detail the workings of an important architectural practice during a transformative period in history. Spanning nearly two decades, the diary is a fascinating record of the professional practice, creative challenges and daily life of an individual immersed in the production and restoration of ecclesiastical architecture during the later stages of the Gothic Revival.