Suchergebnisse

The Contemplacioun of Synnaris, by the Observant Franciscan William Touris, written c.1494 and evidently intended for King James IV of Scotland, is a significant and much copied work of Older Scots, although the earliest surviving witness is the English print by Wynkyn de Worde (1499). The Contemplacioun was the very first work of Older Scots literature to be translated and to be printed. The poem's seven sections comprise a course of meditations for Holy Week. Richard Fox, bishop of Durham, commissioned the English print, in which the stanzas were preceded by Latin sententiae, biblical, medieval and ancient. The work retained sufficient interest to re-emerge in separate versions in both Scotland (1568) and England (1578), drastically revised for Protestant readers

In the long-debated transition from late antiquity to the early middle ages, the city of Ravenna presents a story rich and strange. From the fourth century onwards it suffered decline in economic terms. Yet its geographical position, its status as an imperial capital, and above all its role as a connecting-point between East and West, ensured that it remained an intermittent attraction for early medieval kings and emperors throughout the period from the late fifth to the eleventh century. Ravenna's story is all the more interesting because it was complicated and unpredictable: discontinuous and continuous, sometimes obscure, sometimes including bursts of energetic activity. Throughout the early medieval centuries its flame sometimes flared, sometimes flickered, but never went out.

This article serves as an introduction to this special issue as well as a self-standing contribution. Using the lens of technology, we situate European integration (typically viewed as a political process) as an emergent outcome of a process of linking and delinking of infrastructures, as well as the circulation and appropriation of artefacts, systems and knowledge. These processes carried, shaped, flagged, and helped to maintain a sense of Europeanness, bringing out tensions in Europe and tensions about Europe. We call this 'hidden integration.' Yet the story of integration does not point to a seamless and inevitable process, a grand project with a set agenda. Instead it was a contested process throughout the 20th century leading to fragmentation as well as to integration. Our approach is contrasted with standard interpretations of European integration that treat European integration as an episode in international relations between nation-states.