Riddle 26 depicts an animal being killed by a human craftsman – the feond ‘enemy’ of its opening line – and its skin being used to make a Bible. Neville calls the treatment of the animal and its hide ‘a successful exercise of human power over the natural world’, and the dominant actions of the human over the passive hide – submerging, cutting, binding and depriving the animal of strength – certainly suggest this. Rather than discussing Riddle 26 in terms of an active–passive postlapsarian relationship between humanity and nature, however, my ecological reading will focus on what I see as the riddle's more immediate concern with animal origins and materiality. I propose that Riddle 26 prioritises the animal and the material element of book production above the human and the spiritual, offering an inversion of the traditional colophon, with its information about the scribe and his endeavors, and challenging anthropocentric views on the nature of the book-making craft. It is hard to disagree with Bruce Holsinger when he writes that Riddle 26's Bible ‘originates not from the words of the prophets, or from the inspiration of God, but from the flayed hide of the animal who gave its life and endured only as the ink-stained page of the book’.

Bibles were often beautiful works of art, created by craftsmen whose contribution was sometimes recorded in a colophon. With its adornments of gold, silver and jewels, Riddle 26 calls its Bible the wrætlic weorc smiþa ‘wondrous work of craftsmen’ (Riddle 26, 14a), similarly paying tribute to its human makers. However, in order for the beautiful object to be made, an animal must first be skinned and that skin put through various stages of treatment, including wetting, drying and the removal of impurities. So, whilst the riddle acknowledges the work of the craftsman, it also promotes the book's animal origins, placing its focus first on the animal rather than on human achievement. In doing so it both complies with Buell's notion that, in an ecocritical text, the ‘human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest’, and playfully contests Ambrose's assertion that ‘principium artis ars ipsa, ex qua artificum diuersorum deinceps coepit operatio’ (‘The beginning of a work of art lies in the craft itself, which is the source of the individual skills of a series of craftsmen’).

AS the Festival passed over its third new-century boundary, it was becoming clear to some within the organisation that the model that had served it so well for so long was perhaps beginning to creak. For how long could the Festival remain as tripartite as it was, with its three local committees operating almost entirely autonomously under the delegated authority from the legal entity – the Three Choirs Festival Association? Granted, the Artistic Directors met from time to time, over a slap-up lunch in the Feathers in Ledbury, and the Association fulfilled its legal oversight functions in signing off both Festival programmes and budgets, but the music world was changing. Costs, both artistic and logistical, were rising, and the Festival was beginning to ask itself where the money was going to come from in the future, and indeed how best to manage itself. As annual budgets ticked past half a million pounds, with a little over half of that coming in as ticket revenue, key to the Festival's future was not only sponsorship, but also the prudent management of Festival resources.

The Festival Society held the organisation's reserves, which were not insubstantial, but which were very unevenly distributed, mainly down to substantial legacies given for the benefit of one or other city. Understandably, of course, local volunteer treasurers, who were taking on the direct management of very large sums, were defensive about ‘their’ money, and local committees tended to work in their own way, towards their own festival. This is not to say that the cities were hostile to each other, simply that their focus was continually on their own year, in their own milieu, with their own people. This is what had worked for many years, and arguably what made Three Choirs the entity that it was, with the clear individuality of each city and cathedral, and a particular identity recognised by audience and volunteer alike. However, there was a growing feeling that there could be potential benefits from more integration.

Traditionally, historians have been interested in the food of the early modern deep-sea sailor in its relationship to operational effectiveness in European navies, the ability (or inability) to conduct long-distance voyages of trade or discovery, and the history of nutritional diseases. These are worthy topics and the literature is extensive. The present study addresses the question: what were the cultural meanings of a scarce and regulated commodity – food – within the virtually all male, hierarchically structured society of the eighteenth-century British sailor? It draws primarily upon first-hand narratives, designed to be read by Britons who were ‘landlubbers’, separated (it was assumed) by geography and culture from the authors’ own seagoing communities. Three authors will be emphasized: Matthew Bishop of the Royal Navy (1702–6); George Marshall of the East India Company (1769–78); William Spavens of the Royal Navy and East India Company (1755–66). A contextual study of their writings concludes that the cultural meanings ascribed to food at sea, on board these large ships operated by powerful institutions, resided firmly in the discourse over manly virtue.

Matthew Bishop

The Life and Adventures of Matthew Bishop of Deddington in Oxfordshire appeared in London in 1744. The author began his narrative in the year 1701, when Bishop stated that he left his birthplace of Deddington to become a junior clerk in a merchant's counting-house in Canterbury, Kent. However, being ‘of a rambling Disposition’, he enlisted as a sailor in the Royal Navy in February 1702 just as England was about to enter the War of the Spanish Succession. Over the course of seven chapters, Bishop described his service in the Navy, in various theatres of the conflict. In 1706, he entered the Army, served as a corporal at the Battle of Oudenarde and the siege of Douai, and later participated in the Canadian expedition of 1711. The memoir concluded in 1713 when Bishop's regiment was disbanded and he returned to Deddington. The substantial message throughout is of the valour of the common, rightthinking, Englishman in martial duty. Bishop never asked directly what constituted manliness in service to one's country in the Navy or Army, but his readers were left in no doubt.

Chapter Four focuses on the new identity that the Virgin's retrieval and return of the contract make possible. Unlike the negative images that we studied in Chapter Two, this new identity is positive and requires positive activity. It will now be associated with the bishop, with the church (both as building and as the community of the faithful), with the sacraments (both technically and broadly conceived), and with a sustained performance of faith on the part of Theophilus. Together these actions permit Theophilus to undergo a “transfiguration” that transforms him from an apostate into an exemplar for others. It is as if the “intensely sacramental view of the world” that “speculation supplies” has allowed Theophilus to reach a kind of cosmological self-awareness that leads him to see and actualize his role as exemplar in the wider community. This continuation of the legend still fits broadly within the dissemblance–resemblance dynamic with which we have viewed it. But as Theophilus moves into the positive space of resemblance, especially when that space extends beyond the Virgin, we would do well to look at a more practical or more practice-based approach to the medieval challenge of accessing one's resemblance to God. Hugh of St. Victor's vision of the practical steps a monk can take to re-form his postlapsarian de-formation will help us understand the last few actions of the legend and to see them as essential to the more global meditation on the medieval self-image.

The Virgin's miracle

After the Virgin successfully returns the contract to Theophilus, one could easily conclude that the “miracle de Notre Dame” is essentially done. Of the fifty-two manuscripts that illustrate some aspect of the intervention of the Virgin, only nine supply further images of the legend after the intervention. For those images, typical of the psalters, that encapsulate the whole legend in one scene, we should not be surprised that the return of the contract can stand as a kind of token for the whole “miracle.” For those more sustained narrative sequences, like the Ingeborg Psalter, the Lambeth Apocalypse, the Taymouth Hours, or The Hague KB 71 A 24, the rationale for ending the legend at the Virgin's return of the contract is more complex and has larger implications that I would like to consider briefly.

THE BUILDING OF ERITREA's DEFENCE AND FIGHTING CAPABILITY

Theoretically, the decision of the post­independence Eritrean government to adopt and implement a universal and compulsory national service was legitimate and groundbreaking. There were a number of reasons for this. Firstly, for a small country with limited resources and small popula­ tion recovering from a devastating thirty years’ war (1961–1991), it was prudent to limit the size of the standing army and boost its defence and fighting capability through compulsory conscription, provided the duration of the latter is limited and strictly regulated by law. Secondly, the remarkable victory of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) over sub-Saharan Africa's largest army was chiefly due to the devotion of the volunteer combatants who served their country, not only without any remuneration, but also at the expense of their interests, including their lives. Although the realities of the two periods, namely the liberation struggle and the post-independence era, are fundamentally different, the government's attempt to build a defence capability based on the historical success of the liberation struggle is an innovative idea. Justifiably, one of the central aims of the Eritrean National Service (ENS) is to establish a strong defence force by drawing on the experiences gained during the liberation struggle. All things being equal, the approach might have provided an opportunity for safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country cost-effectively.

Nevertheless, in spite of this initially worthy endeavour (which later went woefully wrong, partly due to the fact that, rhetoric notwith­ standing, the ruler of the country, Isias Afwerki, is not committed to the development of an autonomous, professional and institutionalised military), the findings of the study based on the perceptions of the conscripts interviewed show that the national service has failed to build Eritrea's defence and fighting capability.

As the earlier chapters of this book have illustrated, Islam was established in Ede at the town and compound level by individuals committed to contributing to the town, dramatically so in the figure of Buremo, the town's first Muslim, who helped the Tìmì save Ede by miraculously defeating the Ibadan army (see chapters 2 and 3). While the conversion to Islam of individuals created difficulties in many families and compounds, the creation of new and explicitly Muslim compounds helped to resolve these. And although the reign of the town's first Muslim Tìmì met with resistance, it nonetheless contributed to the acceptance of Islam as the dominant religion. While the later emergence of competing Muslim groups illustrates the tensions internal to the town's Muslim community, it is fair to say that by the early twentieth century Islam was firmly rooted in Ede both at the town and compound level.

In contrast, Christianity arrived in Ede through missionaries whose primary aim was to convert individuals, whom they offered often exclusive access to educational and spiritual resources. These resources were usually linked to the wider networks of their particular church, which provided the initial funds required to set them up. Understanding individual change as the basis for communal progress rather than vice versa, the overall wellbeing of the town, or even the formation of an ecumenical Christian community at town level, was a secondary concern for many Christian missionaries. But if the low degree of inclusion into local structures disadvantaged the development of a Christian community, it did not always disadvantage Christian individuals, who were drawn into networks beyond the town through their educational achievements. As a result, the early Christian groups in Ede experienced a strong tension between loyalty to the individual churches, which often provided the resources that made Christianity attractive, and the need to be embedded in the town's relevant forms of social and political organisation.

In towns like Ede, this perceived Christian emphasis on individual success rather than the public good thus challenged notions of town politics in which all sections contributed to communal progress.

This chapter explores the ambivalent role of Ṣàngó in Ede by focusing on the deity's association with the transgression of boundaries in different contexts. Connected with the foundation of the town, Ṣàngó was always an important historical and civic power in Ede, but with Tìmì Bamigbaye Ṣàngó also became closely identified with Ede's ruler (chapter 2). This association has continued to this day because the successive ọbas of a town are seen as one persona, each individual a continuation of his predecessors. As a result, Ede's Tìmìs are understood as having greater powers than ordinary mortals because they are ọbas and thus imbued with the spiritual power that derives from the history and community of the town. In this capacity, they act as the heads, or patrons, of all religions practised within the town. However, the Tìmìs also represent Ṣàngó, a transgressive deity in his own right.

Focusing on Ṣàngó's association with contradictory, ambivalent and transgressive positions in Ede, the chapter understands transgression as a site and a strategy of power and domination, on the part of both Ṣàngó and the Tìmì. It therefore highlights forms of religious encounter and engagement that challenge notions of tolerance as the only form of peaceful or productive religious coexistence. By examining transgression in the context of royal agency, the chapter also engages with Jacob Olupona's argument, based on his study of ọbaship in Ondo, that ‘the king's role as the patron of all the town's gods and religions forges the cults of these separate religious groups into a unified civil religion’, which however draws on and embraces traditional practices – such as widespread historical understandings of the ruler as the head of all religions (chapter 1).

Building on and qualifying Olupona's work, this chapter argues that in Ede ọbaship is associated both with the civic practice of multiple religious participation, which represents all religions as equally valid in their own context and, inspired by the character of Ṣàngó, with the charismatic transgression of the boundaries that separate different religions. As practices and strategies of power, both multiple religious participation and charismatic transgression reveal religious boundaries as more ambivalent than implied in the concept of tolerance.

A decade ago, I was asked to design an undergraduate course around my own research interests. The biggest challenge was finding a textbook which dealt with the social history of English seamen throughout the early modern period. I never did find anything suitable, opting instead for articles and excerpts from books written by renowned scholars in the field. Clearly, there was a need for a volume which made these writings more accessible and tracked seafarers’ experiences over centuries. To fill this historiographical void, I asked some of the leading scholars from both sides of The Pond whose work had heavily influenced my own to summarise their findings. I hoped that, taken together, their contributions would offer a nuanced portrait of seafarers’ existence, as well as providing us with some sense of what has been accomplished in the field and what remains to be done. Given the broad swath of time that constitutes the early modern period, we've produced a two-volume set: volume I, covering the Tudor and early Stuart period (1485–1649), was published in 2012. It is now time for its companion for the later era (1650–1815) to join it on bookshelves.

The prospect of editing such a project seemed rather daunting. However, I was pleasantly surprised that so many eminent scholars were willing to volunteer for this project, without any prospect of impressment. I provided them with general guidelines concerning the scope of their chapters and the contributors have chosen the content based on what they deemed most important to share with readers. Each scholar has made their reputation by either exploring the ignored aspects of maritime history, or providing fresh perspectives on oftexplored topics, or both. Throughout their academic careers, some have kept their research within the confines of the maritime world while others have published widely in early modern history. What they have in common is that each has made a major contribution to the social history of early modern seamen. I thank them for graciously giving their time, sharing their expertise, and bearing with this project to the end.

IN HIS SEMINAL ESSAY “Trauer und Melancholie” (Mourning and Melancholia, 1917), Freud defines melancholy as a coping mechanism of cathecting (incorporating and investing emotional energy in) a lost object's characteristics in one's own ego in order to cope with its loss. We find many such examples of melancholic cathexis in the work of the Austrian documentary filmmaker Ruth Beckermann, be they for a person or people, for a particular place, or correspondingly for a particular time. Beckermann (1952–), who started making documentary films in 1977, has been described as “obsessed with the past, with finding out the truth about the Shoah, victims and perpetrators.” Most of her films deal in some way with Austrian Jewish culture following the Holocaust, beginning with the film trilogy on Jewish identity Wien retour, Die papierene Brücke, and Nach Jerusalem (Toward Jerusalem, 1990), and continuing with Ein flüchtiger Zug nach dem Orient (A Fleeting Train to the Orient; in English as A Fleeting Passage to the Orient, 1999), Homemad(e), and Zorros Bar Mizwa (Zorro's Bar Mitzva, 2006). While Beckermann's work has been examined in the context of the predominant issue of memory in her films, the particular status of the city of Vienna, and re-emerging Jewish culture in Austria at the turn of the millennium, there has been no sustained discussion of the function of melancholy and nostalgia with relation to space and place in her work. This chapter will focus on three films in particular, Wien retour, Die papierene Brücke, and Homemad(e), and explore how all three deeply personal documentaries constitute an attempt to recoup, in some small way, the loss caused to Austrian Jewish culture by the destruction wrought by the Holocaust, and how the journeys that Beckermann undertakes to the places and spaces that were previously home to Jewish culture are consequently inflected with varying degrees of melancholy and nostalgia.