Conflicts involving armed non-state armed actors challenging states and each other have become the main form of warfare thus far in the new millennium. The main actors are insurgents and counterinsurgents. Their conflicts are primarily internal, though they occasionally cross borders. The conflicts are carried out with a type of brutality that can be expected when countrymen turn on each other and the institutions responsible for upholding law and order and protecting the population begin to fail. In addition, whereas states may carry out wars from the sky or sea, or at least from a distance, with the aid of satellites, long-range missiles and other sophisticated technologies, the armed non-state actors fighting in the present century’s armed conflicts do so primarily on the ground and at close range. The patterns of their use of terrorist tactics vary over time within the context of wider-scale warfare. In this study, the authors explore and seek to understand why this is the case.

Chapter 10, on political epigrams, examines the dynamics of political satire in manuscript poetry and the limits of political comment in printed epigrams books, with a special focus on Thomas Bastard's Chrestoleros. Certain moments of intense political controversy often provoked numerous topical epigrams and individual prominent political figures were often the subject of libellous attack in the genre. The chapter offers an extended of case study of epigrams on the life and career of the prominent legal and political figure Sir Edward Coke. Many of these were savagely partisan, but the final part of the chapter turns to epigrams by Robert Ayton, Richard Corbett and George Herbert that were nuanced and stoic in their political explorations.

In order to evaluate the changes in the treatment of exhibitionists introduced since 1992 by the penal system, we should briefly consider their fate under the aegis of the old Article 330. According to Érnest Dupré, beyond sexual perversions, there exists a perverse condition that expresses itself from childhood in aggressive conduct and with a deplorable malignance. In 1967, in his thesis in medicine, Jacques Stéphany proposed a typology of exhibitionists, in which he retained only the "semi-mad", that is, those convicted of criminal sanctions, while discarding cases caused by delirium or epilepsy. In that first category, he distinguishes between two large groups: neurotics and perverts. Certainly, without being exhibitionists, some individuals will fall under the heel of the violation either by challenge, or because of the relative vagueness that the law creates in the matter of exhibition in public spaces.

This introduction presents an overview of Thomas Becket's life, background to the Lives of St Thomas and his biographers. The book tells the story of Thomas Becket's turbulent life, violent death and extraordinary posthumous acclaim in the words of his contemporaries. Both medieval and modern commentators have tended to take more interest in Thomas of Canterbury than in Thomas of London. Thomas's rift with his former friend the king, and the progress of the dispute which led to public confrontation and prolonged exile, was keenly followed all over the Christian world. Martyrdom is a willingly-undertaken sacrifice, and throughout, Thomas is shown to have known of his death, and to have embraced it. Thomas and his biographers claimed that he was advancing the cause of the Church, but this was a multifaceted phenomenon with overlapping and some-times conflicting components.

This chapter republishes a review of Amelia Fauzia’s book Faith and the State: Islamic philanthropy in Indonesia, originally published in the Asian Journal of Social Science in 2014. Most research published in English since 2000 on Islamic philanthropy and humanitarianism has concentrated on the Middle East, South and Central Asia, and Europe and the USA. Fauzia’s impressive monograph on Indonesia bears comparison with any of this research. She explores how zakat (the Islamic tithe) and sadaqa (optional charity) have been implemented in various ways in Indonesia. Her guiding theme is the tension between the private or personal imperatives of the Islamic revelation and public conduct where persuasion or coercion can be effective, including that exerted by the modern state. She gives special attention to the "modernist" Muhammadiyah, founded in 1912. The Chapter proposes an angle for historical research: to what extent did Christian institutions introduced by colonial powers affect the development of Islamic charities in Indonesia and elsewhere?

Both Waldensian and Cathar heretics made considerable use of texts. In the case of southern France, there are three important textual survivals. The first is an early fourteenth-century manuscript in the Occitan vernacular. The second is a copy and its authentication, made by Cathars in the 1220s, of a charter relating to their 'Council' of St-Felix in 1167. The third is a Cathar theological tract, sizeable extracts from which survive in its refutation in a treatise by the former Waldensian, Durand of Huesca.