Praising Elizabeth I in Latin at Norwich (1578)

When Elizabeth I visited the city of Norwich, she was publicly praised as a virgin queen for the first time in her reign. Although this image of Elizabeth becomes important to later historiography, this essay argues that there is a more sustained strand of royal myth-making in this visit that gives her even greater independent and specific political authority: that of an educated queen. At Norwich, Elizabeth was addressed more frequently in Latin than during any other visit during her reign, except for her visits to the universities. This essay analyzes the Latin texts to show how Norwich’s civic officials used this image to praise Elizabeth as a queen so individually powerful that she should commit more firmly to remaining a distinctly unmarried goddess of wisdom, a champion of Norwich, and the Nurse of God’s True (Protestant) Church. What goes unspoken is that she has no need for a foreign Catholic husband in the French Duke of Anjou—the context that underwrites the praise of her as a virgin queen. These Latin texts convey Elizabeth as a queen who has already the specific authority and nurturing care that give her distinctly peaceful nation all it needs to remain strong, prosperous, and religiously unified.

The ‘Great’ Progress of 1633

Chapter 2 explores Charles’s 1633 progress to Scotland for his belated coronation as Scottish king. Following a route which echoed that of James I’s 1617 progress to Scotland, and culminating in Charles’s royal entry to Edinburgh, the king used the progress not only to display his majesty but to promote the order and ceremonialism he favoured in the church. During the progress, Charles was fêted by many hosts, including William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, and the city of Edinburgh. Keen to impress his monarch, Cavendish commissioned Ben Jonson to write a show especially for the occasion: The King’s Entertainment at Welbeck. Like many Elizabethan progress entertainments, Jonson’s seeks to flatter and counsel the monarch. Equally keen to please and influence Charles, Edinburgh’s civic officials welcomed the king with a series of pageants, celebrating Charles but also promoting the wishes and concerns of his Scottish subjects. This chapter analyses both entertainments.

U.S. Readies Health Response for the Next Big Eruption

Forty years after the explosive eruption of Mount St. Helens, scientists, communities, and civic officials are evaluating plans to best protect public health before, during, and after an eruption.

Methods of Contesting Authority

This chapter studies the methods that individuals and communities used to thwart popes and their agents. Bishops, civic officials, and devotees often fought hard to keep a saint's cult viable once a majority reached consensus that the person was holy. In some notable cases, they did not fear inquisitors and rejected their authority. Muzio di Francesco of Assisi, an antipapal rebel in the early fourteenth century, purportedly remarked, “I would not fear sentences of excommunication and interdict, any more than I would fear the tail of a donkey.” This evidently was a popular saying in late medieval Italy, for it echoed testimony from inquisitorial deponents in Bologna given twenty years prior. This blasé attitude toward papal authority was expressed through citizens routinely contesting inquisitors, who represented papal authority. Sometimes it took the form of riots and physical violence. In cases of disputed saints who were facing possible condemnation, individuals often sought legal means to beat the system instead, in a process which can be defined as oppositional inquisitorial culture. The chapter also considers two other methods, canonization inquiries and questioning legitimacy, through which various members of a community colluded to challenge inquisitorial authority on a larger scale and protect local saints' cults.

A Forensic Pathology Investigation of Dismembered Domestic Cats: Coyotes or Cults?

Dismembered cats ( Felis catus) have been found in North American schoolyards, parks, walkways, or lawns and sometimes result in local media attention. When a member of the public encounters these cats, they commonly report finding either the cranial or caudal half of a cat in a prominent location. Such findings cause public consternation and pose difficulties to investigators in identifying whether animal abuse has occurred and whether to concentrate resources on the investigation. This report describes necropsy results from 53 cats involved in such instances in the cities of Edmonton and St. Albert, Canada, from 2007 to 2016. We evaluated these results in relation to 2 hypotheses: that the dismembered cats were the result of human activity, or predation and scavenging by coyotes ( Canis latrans). The main postmortem features were canine tooth wounds in the neck accompanied by tearing of the subcutaneous structures, skin avulsion, broken claws, and removal of internal organs with the colon and intestine attached to and trailing from the carcass. Based on the nature of the lesions, along with other circumstances of the deaths of the cats in this study, we concluded that these dismembered cat remains resulted from coyote predation on living cats and scavenging of the bodies of cats that died of other causes. We offer additional information to assist veterinarians, veterinary pathologists, and civic officials in identifying the probable cause of death for cat carcasses provided by members of the public.

No Longer the Arsenal of Democracy, 1951–1952

During the Korean War, autoworkers experienced persistent layoffs while inflation increased the cost of living. Government allocations of raw materials did not favor the auto industry, and most military contracts did not to go to Detroit factories. Despite dire warnings from industrialists, union leaders, and civic officials, tens of thousands of people, motivated by memories of Detroit as the Arsenal of Democracy during WWII, migrated to the city. At one point in 1952, 10 percent of all unemployment in the nation was in metro-Detroit. Then the 1952 steel strike eliminated auto production. In the background, automation continued to eliminate jobs. Nevertheless, the auto industry revived in late 1952 and there was suddenly a labor shortage.

The Society of Jesus and Academia in Nova Cæsarea: Robert I. Gannon, S.J. & the Re-Birth of St. Peter’s College, 1930-1936

The rebirth of St. Peter’s College during the early years of the Great Depression gave rise to an uncommon renaissance that took shape mainly through the handiwork of Robert I. Gannon, S.J., who became the first dean in 1930, spearheading reorganization of a college that had been closed since 1918. In the process, Father Gannon developed an academic curriculum that would not only accommodate Catholic tradition, but keep pace with the era of practical educational offerings that could help the local youth population advance in economic and social status. This included individual students who were recruited regardless of religious, ethnic, and racial origin, but based solely on the promise of top level academic performance. St. Peter’s had to overcome different tests from religious superiors and civic officials alike in order to serve a focused constituency that arose amongst the ranks of the poor yet academically inclined of Northern New Jersey. This vision of providing an opportunity for local students who thought higher education might be out of their reach had an impact on the creation of St. Peter’s College from its re-opening in 1930, and still bears the pedagogical, commercial, and diplomatic imprint of Father Gannon.

Ceremony and Civility

London’s civic ceremonies marked the relationships between the mayors and the crown, but also between denizens and their government, gild wardens and members, masters and apprentices, and parishioners and their church. London, like all premodern cities, was made up of immigrants. The number of people who were citizens (who enjoyed the “freedom of the city”) was a small proportion of the inhabitants. The newly arrived had to be taught the civic culture of the city so that the city could function peacefully. Ritual and ceremony played a key role in the acculturation process. In a society in which hierarchical authority was most commonly determined by the inheritance of title and office or sanctified by ordination, elected civic officials relied on rituals to cement their authority, power, and dominance. Since the term of office was a year, the election and inauguration of city officials had to be very public, and the robes of office had to distinguish the officers so that everyone would know who they were. Apprentices entering the city to take up a trade were educated in civic culture by their masters. Gilds also provided experience in leadership through gild governance. Again, rituals, oath swearing, and distinctive livery marked their belonging. Those who rebelled against authority and who broke the civic ordinances were made spectacles of through ritual humiliations so that others could learn from their example. At the parish level, and even at the level of the street, civic behavior was taught through example, proclamations, and ballads.

UnSearching for Rue Simon-Crubellier: Perec Out-of-Sync

Is it possible to bring something that does not exist into existence by searching for it? This is the ‘pataphysical’ question posed by artists Norie Neumark and Maria Miranda in relation to their 2004 work Searching for Rue Simon-Crubellier. These Australian artists play at tourists abroad, reading George Perec’s La Vie mode d’emploi. Via a series of recorded meanderings through the streets of Paris, interviews with passers-by, civic officials and eventually Marcel Bénabou, the artists come close to tricking the world of actuality into believing in the existence of an imaginary place. The collision of the apparent ‘truth’ of video testimony and the fabulation of Perec’s fictional world is central to this work. This chapter proposes to dis-engage Neumark’s and Miranda’s Perec-inspired exploration of the real and imagined relations to location. Through a series of imposed constraints, inspired by the formalist construction of Searching for Rue Simon-Crubellier itself, this chapter will postulate leaving only a rhetorical that is the antithesis or dark matter of Perec’s novel: Is it possible to dematerialize something that does exist by unsearching for it?

The Letter Collection of Barsanuphius and John

The voluminous letter collection of Barsanuphius and John of Gaza contains 850 letters written by the two sixth-century anchorites who lived in cells near the monastery of Abbot Seridos in Tawatha a village a few miles southwest of Gaza. Barsanuphius and John, referred to as the Old Men of Gaza, were ascetic colleagues who wrote letters of spiritual direction to a wide group of disciples. The earliest manuscripts containing this correspondence date to the eleventh century; however, the collection was originally compiled by a member of Barsanuphius and John’s own monastic community (perhaps Dorotheos of Gaza) shortly after the death of John and the complete seclusion of Barsanuphius. The monk who compiled the collection followed a traditional practice among ancient editors, grouping the letters according to addressees, rather than chronologically. The collection begins with letters to individually named monks and continues with letters addressed to unidentified monks or the brothers of community collectively. The collection contains a series of letters to Aelianos, a layman newly elected as abbot of the monastery, and a large group of letters to lay Christians who sought spiritual guidance from the anchorites. The collection concludes with letters concerning episcopal elections in Gaza and Jerusalem and correspondence to civic officials and bishops in the region.