N.B. The chronology of entries in this booklet begins with Blatt 9r, goes through Blatt 27v, returns to Blatt 1r, and continues through Blatt 8v. This edition will present the entries essentially in that chronological order.

[Blatt 9r]

LICHNOWSKY [presumably at Beethoven's apartment in suburban Windmühle; possibly late morning, probably Friday, April 11]: I hear that you will receive a libretto by Grillparzer. //

Your Variations [Op. 120] are to appear from Diabelli. [//]

<Again> How is it going with [plans for] the Akademie? //

Will you go to the country this summer, and where? [//] [Blatt 9v] I’m going to Döbling. //

How is it going with [work on] the Symphony [No. 9]? [//]

Today I shall inquire in private whether it is true about Grillparzer, because your brother says that it is certain. [//] [Blatt 10r] Wallishauser [sic] is said to have the libretto as his property already; I shall ask him. // You will receive a definite answer in 2 days. [//] Your brother says that Grillparzer would write to you. [//]

[Blatt 10v]

SCHINDLER [presumably at Beethoven's apartment; probably beginning on

Friday, April 11, continuing through the evening of that day, then resuming again on Saturday, April 12]:

[Beethoven must have sent housekeeper Barbara Holzmann to the post office with a package for Dresden. Schindler encountered her there and reports to Beethoven:]

She can't do anything, because packages to Dresden can be taken only on Thursday and Tuesday mornings. // By letter mail it costs 4 fl. per piece. I have [had] it weighed, but by postal coach perhaps 20 kr., which will be paid in Dresden. // 8 kr. That will also [sentence ends]. [//] [Blatt 11r]

[a continuation of the opening sentence above:]

I just went to the post office and encountered the old woman [housekeeper Barbara Holzmann]; I immediately told her that it was already too late, but took the package and had it weighed at the letter post. I thought that since there was nothing of value in it, it would cost only a few kr[euzer]. // Just send it by postal coach, because the libretto will already be there before they study the opera. [//]

Sigmund Freud's definition of melancholia takes as its focus the loss of a loved object that, rather than being ultimately relinquished over time as with the comparable condition of mourning, is retained and internalised by the sufferer, who then manifests an ‘exclusive devotion to mourning’. Not only does Freud acknowledge our unquestioning acceptance that ‘the mood of mourning [is] a “painful” one’, he also suggests that this experience takes on a metapsychological process: ‘this tendency can become so intense that it leads to a person turning away from reality and holding on to the object through a hallucinatory wish-psychosis’. Beyond this, the sufferer is subject to a ‘detour of self-punishment’ whereby ‘the indubitably pleasurable self-torment of melancholia … signifies the satisfaction of tendencies of sadism and hatred, which are applied to an object and are thus turned back against the patient's own person’. The grieving melancholic, then, experiences an uncanny state of pain and pleasure, reliving and re-experiencing a loss which is at once agonisingly acute yet also gratifying because it symbolises a means of retaining a connection – a diachronic oneness – with the lost object of desire. The complex of melancholia, according to Freud, ‘behaves like an open wound’, drawing energies towards itself and leaving the self impoverished.

As an open wound, melancholia is therefore strikingly resonant with Judeo-Christian imagery.5 Amy Hollywood makes the connections between mourning, melancholia, and Christian mysticism explicit in her study of Beatrice of Nazareth and Margaret Ebner, arguing for a pattern that moves:

The Annunciation has always been a story of suspense. In the pacing of most narrative tellings like the ones we have examined so far, the author may briefly describe what Mary is doing before Gabriel's arrival, before moving on to the real action – their conversation and the Incarnation itself. Bernard of Clairvaux introduced the tradition of dramatic suspense in the moment between Gabriel's final words, ‘quia non erit impossibile apud Deum omne verbum’ (because no word shall be impossible with God), and Mary’s acquiescent acceptance, ‘Ecce ancilla Domini: fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum’ (Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word) (Luke 2:37–8), the whole event's climax. His Sermon IV Super missus est addresses the Virgin directly:

Bernard elaborates at length on – and thus himself effectively extends – this expectant pause. It can only be resolved by the free will of Mary to accept that ‘tu es cui hoc promissum est’ (you are the one who was promised) in the prophecies, and he implores her to ‘responde verbum, et suscipe Verbum: profer tuum, et concipe divinum’ (say the word and receive the Word: give yours and conceive God’s). Her ‘Ecce’ relieves the wait and ensures Christendom’s salvation.

Most recent discussions of the Requiem emphasize what the text does not mean by denying a Christian interpretation, but an explanation of what we are supposed to understand in place of that usually remains absent. A synopsis of the Requiem text based on information supplied by current writings would read something like this:

This may strike some as an extreme parody, but I consider it an accurate summation of recent scholarship on the Requiem.

This chapter examines how Chaucer uses acts of prayer to offer readers imaginative routes into religious alterity in The Man of Law’s Tale, The Knight’s Tale, and The Franklin’s Tale. The first of these tales is typically regarded as one of Chaucer’s “religious tales” and the other two as pagan “philosophical romances,” but these familiar critical categories obscure the fact that both piety and philosophy are important concerns in all three of these narratives. Acts of prayer and philosophical speeches feature prominently in each of them, and this chapter traces how Chaucer juxtaposes these two types of utterance and contends that prayer plays the more central role in his creative engagement with religious alterity. Chaucer’s interest in representing different religious worlds is widely recognized, but critical discussions have focused almost exclusively on his pagan settings and have privileged philosophical discourses as Chaucer’s primary representations of non-Christian belief. Rhetoric of intellectual freedom and experimentation has dominated these critical readings: pagan settings are described as “free of the specific assumptions and prohibitions of Christianity,” or as affording Chaucer an opportunity to re-open questions that had been “foreclosed by Christian dogma” in his own world. It is remarkable, however, how little Chaucer actually does with this freedom to depart from Christian tenets. All three of the tales addressed in this chapter, Christian and pagan alike, pose the same question of why a supreme providential deity allows innocent people to suffer, and all three answer it in the same orthodox but unsatisfying way, pointing out that humans cannot expect to understand God’s mysterious purposes. Chaucer does not avoid the Christian notion of a providential deity in The Knight’s Tale or The Franklin’s Tale, nor does he limit himself to complacent affirmation of it in The Man of Law’s Tale; indeed, arguably he “goes further and risks more” when he raises questions about providence in this Christian setting. I propose that the different religious worlds of these tales come into focus not primarily in how the characters think, but in how they pray.

In prayer, characters set aside the pursuit of rational explanations for their suffering and instead turn to the divine in search of hope and redress.

Introduction

In a democracy, parliaments are important institutions with three key functions – making laws, exercising oversight over the executive, and serving as representatives of the people (Johnson 2005). The extent to which parliaments effectively perform these functions has a bearing on the institutionalization of democracy and good governance in a particular country. Throughout much of Africa, there is the dearth of effective and strong parliaments that can be pillars of democracy and representational rule (UNECA n.d.).This is a major democratic deficit that has resulted in the perpetuation of authoritarian regimes, and has held back opportunities for multi-party politics and accountable governance in many parts of the continent, including among member states of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

Strong parliamentary institutions that represent wide cross-sections of the population can empower citizens to have a say in how they are governed through their legitimately elected representatives. Given the diversity of African Nations, there is a need for a broad-based and all-inclusive parliamentary representation to mitigate political instability and avoid alienating significant segments of the population. When people gain political representation, they develop a sense of belongingness and will have a stake in the system. This in turn reduces the proclivity to subvert the system, because there is some degree of satisfaction with the status quo (UNECA n.d.; Veit et al. 2008; Power 2012). The attempts by African states to institutionalize democracy and stable governance can therefore bear fruit through the instrumentality of strong parliaments that represent the interests and concerns of the broad sections of the citizenry.

Parliament and public engagement with it are important aspects of the democratic process that can help attain three important goals, viz. strengthening the representational role of parliament, availing opportunities for the electorate to provide inputs that can influence public policy, and making it imperative for elected officials to consult regularly with their constituencies. All these are important yardsticks of accountable and responsive governance that allow for public needs and concerns of diverse constituencies to be considered in the law/public policy-making process. Effective parliament-constituency interactions deliver good governance and promote accountability, which are instrumental in effective poverty reduction for a country (Merilee 2007; Aribisala n.d.).

The medieval St Michael's church at Netherton was deconstructed in 1864–6 with the chancel remaining as a mortuary chapel until about 1890. The font is said to have been taken to St Barnabas, Faccombe, and this piece of stonework noted as twelfth-century in the 1911 VCH Hants and echoed almost verbatim in the Pevsner 1967 and 2010 and elsewhere. There are no records of movement of the Netheron church's physical material in the Hants RO's documentation regarding the dismantling of St Michael’s Netherton, though this would have been at the edge of living memory at the time of the creation of the VCH Hants. Residents of the modern village of Netherton note that there are houses and walls in the area which have stonework embedded in them presumably from the deconstruction of the church in the mid-1800s but those pieces are, as of the time of this book going to press, not yet identified. A visual examination of the font in St Barnabas, Faccombe, does indicate a medieval piece, possibly but not necessarily specifically twelfth century.

Geophysical survey undertaken at the site of St Michael's Netherton churchyard in June 2018 and July 2019 with David Ashby and Thomas Hayes of the Archaeology Department, University of Winchester, identified the probable cemetery and churchyard area to the west of the churchyard, as well as the two-cell stone foundation of a likely nave and chancel, of which the chancel is evidenced in an undated photograph taken between 1864 and 1890 (Ashby forthcoming 2020, which will be archived with Archaeology Data Service, https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/; see Plate 3). Undated sketches of the church, published by Fairbrother, indicate a typically long, built-upon structure with a probable earlier chancel having added to it a nave, porch and tower. However, according to the staff at Netherton Rectory, these sketches were made in the twentieth century by the son of the then-Netherton Estate owner J. A. P. Charrington, long after the church had already been wholly deconstructed – perhaps based on the recollections of elderly villagers?

‘National prayers’ are special acts of worship on matters of national significance, which were ordered or encouraged by the sovereign, the government or the leaders of the established churches for observance on specific dates or for particular periods in all places of worship of the established church in a kingdom, or for large areas of a kingdom or its capital city, and which were ‘national’ in the multiple meanings created by consolidations of the kingdoms of the British Isles into larger units – applying both separately to England and Wales, to Scotland and to Ireland and collectively to Great Britain and to the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland. This is the most straightforward description, although there are complications that are outlined in volume 1 of this edition, pp. xlvii–xlviii, and explained further elsewhere in the Introduction to that volume and in the Introduction to volume 2. Notwithstanding these complications, from 1660 to the 1860s the ordering, nomenclature, organization and texts for special acts of national worship settled into reasonably clear patterns, shaped by precedent and long-established practices. From the 1870s, however, the character and arrangement of national prayers changed considerably, as large shifts took place in the relationships between the state, the churches and members of the nation, in the authorization and styles of worship, in the religious understandings of the established churches and in the means of communication.

Since the sixteenth century, special occasions of national worship had chiefly been ordered by the state. Although the sovereign or the government continued occasionally from the 1870s to order, authorize, organize or encourage special services or prayers, these were now more often initiated by leaders of the established churches. The number of established churches was reduced. Most notably, the Church of Ireland – for which documents and commentaries were included in the first two volumes of this edition – was disestablished at the beginning of 1871, and accordingly ceases to be a focus for this volume. The two established churches that remained, the Church of England (reduced in scope by the creation of the disestablished Church in Wales in 1920) and the Church of Scotland, became less able to claim that they encompassed all members of their ‘nations’, in conditions of increased religious pluralism and declines in church attendance and in Christian belief.

A Note about Theatricality and Historical Background on the Pervasiveness of Violent Criminal Behavior

The title of this book is The Criminal Baroque: Lawbreaking, Peacekeeping and Theatricality in Early Modern Spain. The word “theatricality” is used instead of “theater” because it offers a wider range of venues in which real and fictional crimes and punishments can take place. The next two chapters will mostly refer to spectacles outside the corral. The examples within these chapters will mainly focus on deliberate attempts to harness spectacle for social control and how these attempts could backfire. Efforts to manipulate public opinion can lead to indifference, social disturbances or, in the worst case, violent crime. In an early modern Spanish context, the term “social control” may seem to imply a situation in which the upper classes seek to quash rebellion by those below. But, as argued in the three previous chapters, those whom José Antonio Maravall would call “deviants” cannot be reduced to a single stratum of society. As we continue to move up the social hierarchy, we shall witness powerful people who employ spectacle to influence others, choosing targets among their peers and not necessarily from the masses.

Thus far, the theatrical portrayals of criminality in our study have pertained mostly to the lower classes in a fictionalized context. These have been mainly represented by the jaque protagonists of the jácara ballads and the non-noble or occasionally low-ranking gentlemen who are social climbing valentones de comedia. These portrayals may lead to the misconception that criminal behavior and efforts to prevent or channel it mainly occurred at the margins of society. The powerful image of the hampa, a seething underbelly of killing, thievery, gaming, and prostitution, may seem threatening and completely separate from the higher echelons of the nobility and a nascent middle class. As seen earlier, one feature of the Criminal Baroque is the use of confusion and combination of disparate elements as part of the aestheticization of criminal behavior and of law enforcement, found in the examples of dancing pimps, singing prostitutes, constables dressed as peacocks, et cetera.

Luke 1:26–38 preserves the only canonical telling of the Annunciation, when Gabriel arrives to announce to Mary that she will become the Mother of God, and Christ becomes incarnate in her womb. For many Christians the Annunciation is an historical event faithfully recorded by the disciple Luke, an ‘educated Greek Christian believer’, directly from Mary's telling. We learn next to nothing about the setting, situation or appearance of this young woman – only that she is a virgin, betrothed. Indeed, nothing actually happens explicitly in this passage. It is exclusively speech-act, pârole, out of which centuries of exegesis has spun the mystery of the hypostatic union, the indescribable, ineffable union of God and human.

Despite the gospel's lack of detail we can instantly picture the scene because of its nearly ubiquitous representation throughout western art history over the last two millennia. Since the episode is discourse-driven, concrete iconographic imagery helps to identify it visually. While the setting may vary from chapel to bedroom to study to garden, it is almost always Gabriel flying in, Mary with her book. Thousands of manuscript illuminations, altar paintings, sculptures, relief carvings, rood screens, wall paintings, stained glass, textiles and pilgrim badges depict the Annunciation scene, pervading pre-modern art in the West. As a representative example, the altogether typical Annunciation scene of a fifteenth-century book of hours, Walters Art Museum, MS W.249, fol. 37r (Figure 1), shows Mary in her aristocratic bedroom with one hand still on her open book, the other hand raised in greeting to the angel, while Gabriel wields the banderole of his words to the Virgin which also form the Ave Maria prayer. The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and shafts of light represent divine conception. As in many Annunciation illuminations, Mary's book contains writing that is just barely illegible: its unreadability leaves it open to interpretation and allows it to bear multiple layers of meaning. The long, rich tradition of these layers of meaning of Mary's book forms the basis for this study.

On one level Mary's reading could be the Old Testament prophecies foretelling the Incarnation, such as Isaiah 7:14, ‘ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium’ (Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son) or Psalm verses interpreted allegorically to relate to the Annunciation.

At around the age of thirty-six or thirty-seven Margery Kempe, whilst lying in bed with her husband John, hears ‘a sownd of melodye so swet & delectable, hir þowt, as sche had ben in Paradyse’ (11). So sublime is the music that upon hearing any subsequent melody or auditory ‘myrth’ she crumbles to plenteous weeping and sighing since she is now conscious of the meaning of heaven, perceiving its sensory truth. As she begins to share this revelation with her acquaintances, disclosing how ‘It is ful mery in Hevyn’, she is met with wrath, as the people challenge the audacity of a woman who claims to know about a place to which she has not been: ‘Why speke ȝe so of þe myrth þat is in Heuyn; ȝe haue not be þer no mor þan we’ (11). In attempting to articulate, in the earthly world, her knowledge and experience of the divine, Kempe reveals both her experiential polarisation from the parishioners in Lynn, and her mystical receptivity: a receptivity which bridges the divide between heaven and earth, which dissolves the borders of body and soul, and which evidences the fluid porousness of her ‘gostly’ and ‘bodyly’ vision, as we saw in Chapter 1. This new understanding of the cosmos gives Kempe claim to a metaphysical wisdom that will mark the transference of all her desires to a heavenly trajectory: ‘sche desyryd no-thyng so mech as Heuyn’ (13). In her cognition, therefore, she has ‘be þer’.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that Kempe juxtaposes this moment of ecstatic, heavenly discernment with the concomitant revulsion that ensues when she is faced with the prospect of a sexual encounter with John: it is ‘aftyr þis tyme’ that she cannot bear the prospect of ‘fleschly comownyng’ with him (11–12).