One key text, Ordo Romanus 11, is here subjected to keen scrutiny. Though always held to be Roman in origin, and, indeed, among the oldest of the ordines, it is shown that Ordo Romanus 11 is actually a Frankish reworking and enhancement of rubrics in the Gelasian Sacramentary, with minimal input of only Roman homilies and prayers. This concerns the performance of scrutinies, or pre-baptismal sessions of education and examination of the catechumens, and their godparents, that took place in Lent. Via the Gelasian of the Eighth Century, three Roman scrutinie sexpanded to seven Frankish ones. A more detailed examination of these processes comes from a North Italian Mass book, probably taken to Metz.Diverse understanding and putting into practice is seen in the expositions, or texts studying baptism.

Chapter 5 begins with similarities and differences beween Vedic and Greek sacrifice, notably the centrality to Greek sacrifice of the communal meal that was absent from Vedic sacrifice, in which the cycle of nature, the payment of metaphysical debt and the rite of passage to heaven and back each forms a cosmic cycle driven by necessity. The individualisation of the Vedic sacrifice, along with its interiorisation and automatisation, cannot be explained by ignoring the factor of monetisation. Individualisation in India and Greece has different cultural consequences.

Chapter 11 comparesthe interiorisation of the cosmic rite of passage in India (sacrifice) and Greece (mystic initiation), identifies the importance of the soul (psuche) in mystic initiation, which is interiorised in Herakleitos, in Parmenides and in Plato. This Greek interiorisation promoted ideas akin to the coalescence of mental with abstract monism promoted by the interiorisation of the cosmic rite of passage in India.

Starting with Pompeo Batoniߣs bravura portrait of The Honourable Colonel William Gordon, 1766 (Fyvie Castle), this chapter considers painted portraiture as a vehicle through which educated, socially privileged young Scotsmen like Colonel Gordon, the 8th Duke of Hamilton and James Boswell fashioned their identity while on the grand tour in Europe. Drawing on the published and unpublished accounts of travelling Scots, including Dr John Moore, the Duke of Hamiltonߣs tutor, grand tour portraits by artists including Pompeo Batoni and Nathaniel Dance are considered as potent means for representing, disseminating and reproducing familial and homosocial relations. In much the same way that the grand tour was seen as a means for transcending geographical barriers and cultural stereotypes, so we will see how Scots in Italy are imaged first and foremost as inclusively British, rather than exclusively Scottish, while engaged in this social and geographical rite of passage across cosmopolitan Europe.