Powerful Patrons Research Articles

Reviving the Eternal City: Rome and the Papal Court, 1420–1447 by Elizabeth McCahill (review)

Reviewed by: Reviving the Eternal City: Rome and the Papal Court, 1420–1447 by Elizabeth McCahill Carol M. Richardson Reviving the Eternal City: Rome and the Papal Court, 1420–1447. By Elizabeth McCahill. [I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History.] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2013. Pp. 302. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-674-72453-2.) Reviving the Eternal City is a very welcome addition to the limited number of studies in English that consider the first half of the fifteenth century in Rome. Here the focus is the humanists, men devoted to classical learning and generally frustrated at having to earn a living to support their habit. Through an array of the works they produced at the papal court, Elizabeth McCahill has produced a rich and rewarding insight into the relationships that made the Roman papal machine work. The problematic papacies of Martin V and Eugenius IV are established as the threshold between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Well before Nicholas V, there were signs that the city would be reborn, its future deeply rooted in its classical past. [End Page 600] Each of the six chapters views papal Rome through the work of writers or humanists. Niccolò Signorilli’s Descriptio urbis Romae, the main focus of chapter 1, flatters Martin V by stressing Rome’s permanence. As a member of the upwardly mobile nobiles, Signorilli had a great deal to lose if the popes deserted their city again. Chapter 2 turns to humanists’ attempts to ingratiate themselves with powerful patrons at the papal court by celebrating—and selling—their new humanist curriculum. At the same time they bemoaned their lot at the papal court: Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II) described the inferior wine served to curialists while the pope enjoyed the best. Who would want to be a prince, Matteo Vegio argues, when all they can do is make enemies? Overall, whether prince or servant, the human condition finds more failure than fortune. It was ever thus. Humanists did not merely observe but helped shape the reforming agenda led by Pope Eugenius IV. But very often they appear as both partisans and as critics. In chapter 3 Leon Battista Alberti and Poggio Bracciolini represent “the curial humanist as an elegant tightrope walker” (p. 96). They were, at one and the same time, irreverent critics and loyal servants of the Church. Chapter 4 examines the thorny issues of reform. Although humanists described clerical abuses and immorality, they also celebrated and promoted models of the personal reform (in membris) that balanced conciliar focus on the pope (in capite). But as a result, McCahill suggests, reform was destined to fail at an institutional level. Chapter 5 turns to the rich area of papal ceremony, and in particular the void it often filled between the myth and reality of the Renaissance papacy. Codifying and preserving the long tradition of curial ceremonial, the humanists improved the liturgies and protocols that continue to bear on the public performance of papal power to this day. Chapter 6 continues the argument that papacy and humanists were interdependent: the popes needed Rome’s classical past, and the humanists needed the popes to believe in their agenda. Reviving the Eternal City is a great deal more than the story of the scholars who sought to earn a living at the papal court. It provides a useful overview of two neglected papacies, a rich insight into the key sources for Renaissance Rome and an astute analysis of humanist writings. McCahill wears her erudition lightly; her book is a pleasure to read and will be as essential to students as it is to professors. [End Page 601] Carol M. Richardson University of Edinburgh Copyright © 2014 The Catholic University of America Press

Privatization and elite defection in de facto states: The case of Transnistria, 1991–2012

What factors determine the timing of elite defection in conditions of post-Soviet personalistic presidentialism? How do relations with a powerful patron state affect this process? This article analyzes these questions on the basis of a case study of Transnistria, a de facto state with strong links to Russia. It argues that privatization processes involving actors from the patron state provide a unique opening for elite defection by heightening tensions between the rent-seeking interests of the personalistic president and those of new owners; direct or indirect signals from the patron state may also affect elite's perceptions of incumbent durability and their corresponding decisions.

Contesting Consensus. Disputing Inequality: Agonistic Subjectivities in Rural Bihar

The literature on the politics of the ‘poor’ has pointed to the manner in which the disputes they are embroiled in are about access to and control over resources, or defending what little they have from encroachments and infringements by the rich and the powerful. Other strands in the literature have drawn attention to their incorporation into ‘identity’ politics, mediated through categories of caste, religion and community. While the analytic salience of these approaches may be justifiably questioned, I contend that they are also motivated by a desire to assert their social equality and accomplish their political imaginaries. To attain their objectives, the ‘poor’ supposedly draw on their cultural resources—such as the language of fictive kinship, the moral claims on socially ‘superior’ individuals or pleading with powerful patrons—to advance their claims or defend their interests. Specific variants of this argument stress that their interaction with the state tends to be fragmentary and, as a result, they seek evasion from the law- either through autonomy or exemption. While it is not entirely untrue that cultural resources are sometimes deployed, or that access to the state is often fragmented, I suggest that these do not deter the ‘poor’ from seeking greater, not lesser, access to the state and its de jure versions. In this paper, I intend to discuss the manner in which the rural poor in one of India’s most impoverished regions engage with and in politics. I will do this by analyzing the way in which a landless Yadav couple tries to forestall the perpetuation by their wealthy Rajput neighbour of, and eventually contribute to the rupture of, elite-based consensus in their neighbourhood. I find the framework of ‘agonism’ vitally useful to make sense of these tensions fruitfully. On the one hand, the dispute between the neighbours reflects the failure of deliberative, cooperative and cooptive strategies. On the other hand, antagonism is eschewed or invoked only momentarily. While the couple rejects the authority of the panchayati, they find their ability to access the formal state fractured and fragmented. Even as they seek to be counted by the state and society, it is unclear as to whether they want to do so in the image of liberal citizens of ‘modernist’ conception. An ‘agonistic’ framework serves us well in order to understand the dilemmas of these emerging socialities and the ongoing struggles of the world’s impoverished to concretize and substantiate their political imaginaries.

Island Leverage: Vanessa Quai, Vanuatu, and Transnational Career Performance

Performers from non-Western locations have a number of options when attempting to access Western music markets. This case analyzes the manner in which a performer from a tiny national market, remote from the Western music industry's North Atlantic center, succeeded in deploying her heritage and location to gain a foothold in regional and international markets without the involvement of a powerful Western company and/or patron to mold and mediate her access.

The ILS as Outreach: Cataloging Campus Partner Collections

Although libraries tend to see the integrated library system (ILS) as a very “library” system, it is actually a powerful inventory and patron management system that can be used much more broadly. At American University, the library has many campus partner collections that it has added to the library catalog. Some collections contain books and media, like traditional library holdings, and some are made up of audiovisual and computer equipment. This article describes the process of cataloging these collections, the challenges of conceiving the ILS as a campus-wide system, and the benefits that these partnerships have brought to the library.

Jean Lemaire de Belges's Rhetorical Masks in L’Amant Vert and “Les Regretz de la Dame Infortunée”

A prominent feature of the poetry of Franco-Burgundian poet and rhetorician Jean Lemaire de Belges (1473–1524) is his use of a rhetorical mask—a persona—through which to proffer his utterances and assert his identity. Because the early sixteenth-century court poet's financially and politically subservient position vis-à-vis powerful aristocratic patrons demands an encomiastic rhetoric that leaves little room for the poet's self-assertion within the body of the poetic text, Lemaire must employ the indirect means of a narrative mask to assert his own existence and concerns. This article examines first the narrative mask of the parrot-lover in the 1505 Epîtres de l’Amant Vert, through which Lemaire is able to voice concerns about his precarious position as a writer almost entirely at the mercy of his patron's good health and good will. A discussion of “Les Regretz de la Dame Infortunée” (1506) follows, in which Lemaire takes an intriguing narratological stance that unites his voice to that of his patroness, Margaret of Austria (1480–1530), ultimately forging an authorial je that speaks for both poet and patron. This nearly mystical union of narrative voices allows Lemaire to express his own concerns about the volatility of the patronage system while concomitantly giving voice to Margaret's mourning at the death of her brother, Philip the Handsome (1478–1506).

Preface

Preface David H. J. Larmour, Editor Every subject's duty is the king's;but every subject's soul is his own. Henry V, iv.1 From time to time, AJP publishes Special Issues on topics of current interest in Classics and of broad relevance to literary scholarship. Classical Courts and Courtiers was proposed to me by David Potter and Richard Talbert and I am pleased to present it as a contribution to our understanding of the mechanics of literary patronage and the "discourse of connection" (to borrow Linda Levy Peck's term from her work on the Stuarts) which accompanies it. The Special Issue engages with previous scholarship and enlarges upon it in significant ways, as the contributors examine the complex relationships in several classical courts between rulers and the poets and artists whose creativity was facilitated, directed or restrained by their powerful patrons. There are, of course, as many paradigms for this relationship as there are poets and patrons—Ludwig II's fervid devotion to Wagner, the long arm of the Russian Tzar (and his censors) reaching into the lives of Pushkin or Dostoyevsky, or the intricate dance of court poets and courtiers in Elizabethan circles. Whether one reads Virgil's Aeneid or Spenser's Faerie Queene, the networks of informal power and the language of patronage continue to fascinate. I am grateful to the Guest Editors for assembling this Special Issue so efficiently, to the anonymous readers of the manuscript, and to my Editorial Assistant Rachel Steiner and Carol Hamblen at The Johns Hopkins University Press for their assistance along the way. [End Page vi] Copyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Figuring Eros in Byzantine Fiction: Iconographic Transformation and Political Evolution

AbstractEros’s conniving nature in conjunction with his sadistic temperament is the single most important attribute of his character—indeed, it remains intact after some 800 years of iconographic and literary evolution. In medieval Byzantium Eros emerges as a formidable sovereign, toying with his subjects’ desires as he asserts his cosmic dominion from the grounds of his utopian castle. This remarkable transformation reveals a rich discourse on the merits of sovereignty—a discourse that raises significant questions about the dynamics of Byzantine imperial commissions and the paradoxical role of court intellectuals as sovereign propagandists and political critics. In linking the role of Byzantine intellectuals in the aftermath of political upheaval to the figurations of sovereignty showcased in Byzantine fiction, the author reveals an ambitious interplay of literary and political interests that calls into question the view of Byzantine intellectuals as dutiful followers of powerful patrons.

Forestry's Conundrum: High Value, Low Relevance

Abstract Forests have never been more valuable or more at risk. So why isn't public attention riveted on forests? Why isn't Forestry's relevance increasing? The Journal is full of laments about Forestry being misunderstood by the public and misrepresented by media. This is a legitimate concern. However, a bigger problem exists: the declining political and economic power of Forestry's traditional patrons. Forestry is a service-oriented profession that emerged and evolved to meet the needs of powerful patrons; and several of these patrons—government agencies, forest industry, and commodity producing landowners—have declining power and influence. Forestry's future lies with new patrons: environmental nongovernment organizations, residential forest investors, and the working green infrastructure. Servicing these groups will require Forestry to develop new tools and tactics.

Hidalgos contra oficiales. Trasfondo ideológico y social de la polémica entre Cervantes y Lope

La enemistad entre Lope de Vega y Cervantes, y las disputas que ambos mantuvieron durante los primeros años del siglo XVII, además de ser la expresión de una desavenencia literaria, tienen su origen en la distinta posición que cada uno de ellos ocupaba dentro de la sociedad española de 1600, en que los orígenes familiares y la inserción de un autor dentro del orden estamental eran hechos que influían de manera decisiva en su trayectoria profesional, y en la mayor o menor protección que recibían. Lope, hidalgo y cristiano viejo, vivió cómodamente instalado en aquella sociedad, y contó con numerosos amigos y mecenas poderosos; mientras que Cervantes, hombre de linaje oscuro, que tuvo que ejercer oficios considerados indignos, fue un personaje marginado, y nunca se le aceptó plenamente en los cenáculos literarios ni en las casas nobiliarias.

When do you follow the (national) leader? Party switching by subnational legislators in Japan

In 1993, after 38 years of single-party control, more than 20% of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) House of Representatives members left the party to form new alternatives and create an anti-LDP coalition government. However, despite substantial popular support, the new parties attracted few subnational politicians. The effect of this lack of subnational party switching was substantial since the relatively small pool of subnational defectors meant that the new parties had difficulty forming the strong subnational bases of support that would help them to compete with the LDP in the future. In this paper, we consider why so few subnational politicians were willing to switch to these new party alternatives. Using case studies and conditional logit analysis of party affiliation pattern among prefectural assembly members in Japan, we find that party switching was most common among subnational politicians who had powerful patrons who had also left the LDP and had maintained especially good access to central government largesse. We also find that subnational politicians from urban areas, which depend less upon central government pork, were considerably less likely to switch parties, than their rural counterparts.

The Paradox of Sovereignty from Pindar to Byzantium

This essay traces the contradictory nature of sovereignty from its initial statement in Pindar's controversial ode in fr. 169 (Nomos basileus) to its medieval manifestation in the Greek novels surviving from medieval Byzantium, namely, Rhodanthe and Dosikles, Drosilla and Charikles, Aristandros and Kallithea, and Hysmine and Hsyminias. To unravel the paradoxical nature of Byzantine kingship in the novels, the author draws on two influential paradigms of sovereignty, Pindar's nomos basileus and Giorgio Agamben's bio-political paradox of homo sacer. The iconography of desire as it emerges in the medieval Greek narratives showcases the repression of a quasi-legitimate sovereign that mirrors Pindar's nomos basileus and Agamben's sovereign exception. Both posit Eros as a formidable ruler, revered and abhorred for his violent interventions, who stands simultaneously within and outside the law. This striking figuration of Eros as tyrannos and basileus is the byproduct of powerful patrons' propagandistic aspirations and the ingenuity of the authors of the novels themselves. In their narrative exploration of passion and sovereignty, Byzantine court writers in twelfth-century Constantinople reconcile the political interests of their patrons with the civic concerns of their times.

Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual, and Politics in Sri Lanka (review)

Susan Reed, Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual, and Politics in Sri Lanka. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009, 328 pp. In many places in the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, practices formerly associated with ritual have been secularized, severed from their ritual contexts, and transformed into performances of heritage. This transformation, whether described as folklorization, aestheticization, cultural objectification, or the invention of tradition, always involves assimilation to new values as the newly conceived performances are inserted into new contexts and new hierarchies of power. Susan Reed's historical ethnography of Kandyan dance clearly illustrates this process, documenting how a local ritual-based dance form was transformed into a symbol of Sinhala ethnicity and Sri Lankan culture. The anthropological importance of the book lies in its consideration of the effects of this transformation on the community of traditional dancers and on new groups of performers, particularly women. The book is based on the author's extensive field research, conducted for several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including her own study of Kandyan dance with teachers from the traditional dancing community and stage performers. The book is accompanied by a DVD with extensive footage of a traditional kohomba kankariya ritual and demonstrations of Kandyan dance technique and performance. What is today known as Kandyan dance is derived from the kohomba kankariya, traditionally a post-harvest ritual performed to propitiate the local deities of the Kandyan region of Sri Lanka. As a ritual complex, the kankariya included not only dance, but singing, prose recitation, drumming, drama, and comedy, all based loosely on the central origin myth of the Sinhala people. The first chapter of Dance and the Nation details the kohomba kankariya ritual and the dances that traditionally took place as part of it. The second chapter describes the traditional community of dancers, the Beravas, who were one among a group of service castes, and their relationship to their traditional patrons, the Kandyan elites. The third chapter situates transformations of Kandyan dance in the political and cultural context of Sri Lanka in the late-19th and early 20th centuries, with particular regard to British colonialism and the cultural renaissance in Colombo, both of which began the process of defining and recontextualizing Kandyan dance apart from the ritual. The fourth chapter focuses on the history of the dance in Sri Lanka's post-independence period, when rising Sinhala nationalism spurred the redefinition of Kandyan dance as a specifically Sinhalese tradition, opposed to Tamil dance traditions. During this period, the state directly intervened in the transformation of the dance, becoming the most powerful patron and sponsoring the establishment of numerous dance schools. The last three chapters of the book consider the new contexts of the dance and their effects on groups of performers and the meaning of the dance itself. The fifth chapter considers the plight of the traditional Berava dancers in the new context of dance schools, cultural heritage performances, and international tours-contexts which are defined around middle-class values of respectability. Ironically, while Beravas have been recognized as bearers of national tradition, that recognition, by both Sri Lanka's middle classes and by the state, comes at a price: Berava dancers must conform to middle-class notions of respectability or risk being marginalized or forgotten. …

Patents, Pictures and Patronage: John Day and the Tudor Book Trade (review)

Reviewed by: Patents, Pictures and Patronage: John Day and the Tudor Book Trade Ian Green Patents, Pictures and Patronage: John Day and the Tudor Book Trade. By Elizabeth Evenden. [St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. Pp. xii, 247. $99.95. ISBN 978-0-754-65480-3.) There have been a number of accounts of the life and career of John Day (c. 1522–84), perhaps best known for his printing of the first four editions of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (first publ. 1563), but this monograph provides much the most complete and up-to-date. The author, a lecturer in English literature at Brunel University who has a special interest in the development of printing and publishing in the second half of the sixteenth century, has managed to unearth new evidence on Day’s early life when, with the help of foreign workmen in London, he was in the vanguard of publishing the rapidly expanding number of evangelical works under King Edward VI, and also some on his later life when, financially protected by lucrative monopolies of staple items such as the ABC and catechisme and the metrical psalms, Day was able to experiment with larger works, including Foxe’s mammoth martyrology, and the use of different typefaces and layouts and better-quality illustrations than had appeared in previous works. There remains very little hard evidence of his personal piety or the exact nature of his commitment to Protestantism. Day was regularly perceived as a reliable printer and seller of Protestant works—a perception he may well have encouraged. But after publishing clandestine works under Queen Mary I in 1553–54, his spell in jail was short, and on his release he not only printed some Catholic works for John Wayland but also later would use conservative materials and images in the devotional works he produced under Queen Elizabeth I. What does come across in this and other accounts is Day’s assiduous pursuit of and cooperation with powerful patrons such as secretary William Cecil and Archbishop Matthew Parker, and his commercial ambition and ruthless opportunism, which provoked considerable hostility from fellow members of the print trade and led to the near collapse of his empire before his death. Six of the eight chapters consist of analyses of groups of Day’s publications in chronological sequence, from which deductions are drawn about his intentions and conclusions on his achievements. These are almost entirely flattering to Day: the number and variety of his publications, the size of his business, and the enormous advances in typography and illustration he nurtured. However, to put Day on so high a pedestal as the leading printer of the English Protestant regime risks downgrading the contributions of Edward Whitchurch, Richard Grafton, William Seres, Reyner Wolfe, and Christopher Barker, who, with help in high places, published thousands of copies of different versions of the Bible [End Page 558] (with lavish title pages) and the Book of Common Prayer, as well as repeated editions of works such as Desiderius Erasmus’s Paraphrases (1517–23), John Jewel’s Apologia (1562), and Alexander Nowell’s Catechism (1549). There were not many printers in England with the confidence and resources to take on substantial projects, but there were some, such as Thomas Vautrollier, a Huguenot refugee who built up a considerable reputation in London as an accomplished printer, and published a number of editions of Lutheran and Calvinist works in English or Latin, including John Calvin’s massive Institutes (1536). Moreover, the shortcomings of Day’s output, even in some editions of prestige projects such as the Acts and Monuments—the poor quality of the paper and sometimes illegible type, the sloppy cross-referencing, the repeated use of the same illustrations within the covers of one book—are explained away as due to circumstances beyond his control or the assistants he used, such as his son, Robert. This monograph offers a most useful and informative account of a pivotal figure in the Tudor book trade, but Day’s reputation might be served as well by acknowledging the blemishes on his record, and his achievement be put in sharper perspective by comparing it with that of...

Colin Davidson's British Indian Intelligence Operations in Japan 1915–23 and the Demise of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance

Colin Davidson was the British consular official in Japan during and after World War I delegated to run intelligence operations in the country on behalf of the British Indian security authorities. Davidson's original target, Indian revolutionaries based in Japan, soon expanded to include their clandestine links to powerful Japanese political patrons, violating the spirit of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902–23). Davidson's expertise on Japan, combined with intelligence on Japanese ultranationalist support of Indian independence, proved crucial for confirming suspicions about secret Japanese intent against the British Empire, contributing to the decision not to renew the Alliance.

The strange case of Minerva Bernardino: Pan American and United Nations women's right activist

The crucial international feminist organization in the western hemisphere in the interwar years was the Inter American Commission on Women, formed in 1928 at the Fifth Pan American Congress. Above and beyond its role in nurturing feminist politics throughout Latin America, the IAWC inspired other transnational regional groupings, pressed forward women's rights issues in the League of Nations, and provide a means for transferring the hard won experience of international feminism into the era of the United Nations. The IAWC was unlike other international organizations in that it was an official intergovernmental network. Its leaders and participants were formally appointed by their respective governments, and their careers of feminist activism required the support of their national political leaders. The subject of DuBois' and Derby's article, Minerva Bernardino, depended for her appointment to the IAWC on the good will of the dictatorial president of the Dominican Republic, Raphael Trujillo. This article considers the contradiction between Bernardino's distinguished record of international feminist service and her disturbing association with one of the period's most notorious and undemocratic strongmen. In both international feminist and Dominican national political venues, Bernardino demonstrated her superior skills at moving with and between powerful patrons. During years when there was little mass activity around feminist goals, she made her contribution to the International feminist tradition as the consummate diplomat.

Kinship, ritual kinship and political milieus in an alpine Valley in 19th century

In my paper I will present some results about ritual kinship and political mobilization of popular groups in an alpine Valley: the Val de Bagnes, in the Swiss canton of Valais. There are two major reasons to choose the Val de Bagnes for our inquiry about social networks: the existence of sharp political and social conflicts during the 18th and the 19th century and the availability of almost systematic genealogical data between 1700 and 1900. The starting point of my research focuses on this question: what role did kinship and ritual kinship play in the political mobilization of popular groups and in the organization of competing factions? This question allows us to shed light on some other uses and meanings of ritual kinship in the local society. Was ritual kinship a significant instrument for economic cooperation? Or was it a channel for patronage or for privileged social contacts? The analysis highlights the importance of kinship and godparentage for the building of homogeneous social and political networks. If we consider transactions between individuals, the analysis of 19th century Val de Bagnes gives the impression of quite open networks. Men and women tried to diversify their relations in order to avoid strong dependency from powerful patrons. Nevertheless, when we consider the family networks, we can notice that most relations took place in a structured social space or a specific “milieu”, were intense contacts enhanced trust, although political allegiances and social choices were not fully predictable on the basis of such preferential patterns. In a politically conflictual society, like 19th century Bagnes, ritual kinship interacted with kinship solidarities and ideological factors shaping dense social networks mostly based on a common political orientation. Such milieus sustained the building of political factions, which show surprising stability over time. In this sense, milieus are important factors to understand political and religious polarization in 19th century Switzerland.

Music at the Court of King Oliver

This article explores the role of music at the protectoral court of Oliver Cromwell (1653–8) in three ways. First, it examines evidence for music being used in state occasions, including the Protector’s ‘entry’ into London (1654), the proclamation of treaties (1654–5) and official days of thanksgiving (1656–7). Alongside these public displays, music also played an important part in private occasions at court. In both cases there was a sophistication in form and function that has hitherto been overlooked. Second, the article identifies the musicians employed at court, the links between these professionals and the world of amateur music-making in London, and the importance of powerful patrons, including Edward Montagu, Bulstrode Whitelocke, Viscount Lisle and Cromwell himself. Third, it is suggested that this vibrant musical culture was part of a growing ‘civilian’ ethos at the Cromwellian court, and that it was no coincidence that among its patrons and supporters were those who were eager to crown ‘King Oliver’ in the spring of 1657.

The Reality of the Self-Made Man

24 Historically Speaking · May/June 2007 The Reality of the Self-Made Man Wyatt WeUs In the popular mind, the rise of "self-made" men from modest beginnings to wealth and prominence proves that the United States is indeed a land of opportunity. Critics point out that, historically, the United States has denied opportunities to African-Americans and other groups, and that parents' wealth and status have always affected children's success more than anything else. Nevertheless, the American experience abounds with successful men from modest beginnings, and every community has at least a few. The self-made man is not typical, but neither is he particular rare. Yet this raises another question: does the ascent of these men simply reflect talent and luck, or is a more subtle, systematic process at work? Americans define the self-made man subjectively. As Booker T Washington put it, "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome." The career path defines the self-made man, not a specific level of achievement. As with any ideal type, however, the self-made man is best understood through exemplars . Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, John D. Rockefeller , Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, E.H. Harriman, Henry Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton , and Washington himself all qualify as outstanding examples of the self-made man, rising from modest beginnings to spectacular heights. These twelve enjoyed varied careers in business, politics, and other areas, and their biographies contain common threads that suggest broader conclusions about the type. At first glance, their origins seem diverse. Washington, born a slave a few years before emancipation , endured grinding poverty as a boy. Andrew Carnegie started work in a textile mill at twelve to help support his family. In contrast, Harriman and Frick came from impecunious branches of well-to-do families. Although none of these men inherited riches, only a few grew up in poverty. Yet they all shared insecurity. Harriman and Frick avoided poverty largely because of relatives' generosity ; Jackson was an orphan; and Hamilton, Rockefeller, Reagan, and Clinton grew up in families desperately clinging to the middle class. None could be sure of their social or economic position. In every case, these men had difficult or nonexistent relationships with their fathers. Jackson's and Clinton's fathers died before they were born, and Washington knew nothing of his father, a white man. Reagan's father and Clinton's stepfather were alcoholics who had trouble holding jobs. Hamilton 's, Carnegie's, Harriman's, and Frick's fathers Booker T. Washington speaking in Lakeland, Florida, ca. 1890. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-1 20526]. were all failures at their chosen professions (merchant , craftsman, clergyman, and farmer, respectively ). Rockefeller's father was a bigamist and a con man who apparentiy regarded everyone as a mark, even his own children. The cases of Franklin, Lincoln , and Ford are particularly instructive. Their fathers were moderately successful, Franklin's as a craftsman and Lincoln's and Ford's as farmers. Yet all three rejected their fathers. Franklin ran away from home at the age of seventeen, rebelling as much against the older brother to whom he was apprenticed as his father, and both Lincoln and Ford despised rural life and abandoned it as soon as they could. Lincoln seems to have genuinely loathed his father, refusing even to visit his deathbed. Fathers usually introduce their sons to the world of affairs, and, as a rule, boys take their social positions and, often, their professions from their fathers. For various reasons, however, these self-made men all separated from their fathers at an early age. Lacking or rejecting paternal guidance, they found new places in society by cultivating powerful patrons and establishing ties with other ambitious young men. Benjamin Franklin relendessly pursued the favor of colonial Philadelphia's small elite and made himself the leader of the city's upwardly mobile youth. Hamilton relied on a series of patrons, most notably George Washington. Jackson's early prosperity depended heavily on his alliances with the Blounts, Tennessee's leading politicians, and...

Holy Man of the Abruzzi and the Limitations of Papal Power

HOLY MAN OF THE ABRUZZI AND THE LIMITATIONS OF PAPAL POWER Celestino V (Pietro Del Morrone) 1294: Il Papa Angelica. By Peter Herde, edited by Quirino Salomone, translated by Anna Maria Voci. (L'Aquila: Edizioni Celestiniane. 2004. Pp. vii, 373, with color photographs 16 pp.) The translator, Anna Maria Voci, presents us with a precise and very readable Italian text of Peter Herde's biography of Peter of Morrone.' The footnotes are expanded where necessary, in order to provide the reader with the latest scholarly information,2 while the insertion of new data into the text is minimal and infrequent. The brief introduction has been rewritten with the same intent in mind. Since this edition focuses on the Italian reader, the Latin index and the Latin Vita or Texte remanie of the Bollandists of the German edition are not included.3 This biography is essential reading for the uninitiated. Although the author's picture of Celestine V seems to submerge him at times in ideas and politics, the pope's reaction to this world, namely, his hesitancy to assume the papal office and his persistence in continuing his hermit ways while in office, points to the singularity of his character. Since the author deals in great detail with Peter's election and pontificate, I shall conclude with these matters and refer the reader especially to two reviews for further commentary on ideas and politics.4 Peter of Morrone, the second youngest child of humble peasants in the village of S. Angelo Limosano in the Mouse region, entered the Benedictine order at S. Maria di Faifula in 1230. As the final battle between Pope Gregory IX and Emperor Frederick II-was taking shape in the years 1235-1240, Monte Morrone became his refuge from the world. Shortly thereafter he founded a hermitage on a neighboring mountain at S. Spirito a Maiella. In a document of 1268, Pope Clement IV urged the faithful of the dioceses of Valva-Sulmona, Chieti, and (S. Benedetto dei Marsi) to support the construction of a church at S. Maria del Morrone and granted them an indulgence of one hundred days for three years if they did so. Peter's adherence to poverty and his contact with several Spiritual Franciscans, dating sometime after 1270, should not lead us astray about the nature of his growing hermit community. It did not burst the bounds of solid orthodoxy; thus, the founding of S. Spirito a Maiella and of the chief monastery, S. Spirito at Sulmona, should be seen primarily as expressions of contemporary religious ideals. In 1264 his band of hermits was incorporated into the Benedictine order, but legal uncertainties about its status led Peter to go on foot with two companions to the second Council of Lyons, in order to eliminate them.5 In 1289 he obtained a church in Rome, S. Eusebio, not far from S. Maria Maggiore. Peter took over the abbey of S. Maria di Faifula in 1276, and an inscription there indicates work on its church under Peter as abbot. In 1291 he was general prior of his congregation. The Celestines adopted the term pater abbas for their general abbot or general prior, an office known since 1287, from the Cistercians with one difference: the pater abbas served a three-year term with re-election possible, whereas the Cistercian general abbot served for life. Peter's energy and commitment to his congregation knew no bounds. He was the guiding spirit in shaping its constitution and liturgy, and in implementing discipline. Donations accrued, the first in 1252, and powerful patrons such as Charles I of Anjou and his son Charles II gave as well.6 Thus, Peter laid the foundation for the longevity of the Celestines which would survive into the early Napoleonic era.7 Upon his election as pope (July 5, 1294), which was a genuine election of inspiration, the question arose whether he should go to Rome. The Angevin king Charles II made sure that he came to Naples. Disorder reigned at the papal chancery. The granting of privileges seems to have been uncontrolled. …