This chapter consists of three sections. First, I analyze PIJ’s view of the state as outlined in its political philosophy with the perceived need to control it. I then proceed to analyze the constituents of the state, the political and democratic processes as outlined by PIJ, and the framework in which these processes take place. We see that there are inherent democratic deficiencies and limitations to its outline of a just society. The future society of PIJ can, at best, be described as one that is non-liberal, yet rights based. Third, after assessing the conception of a just society, I conclude this chapter by arguing that PIJ’s desire to return to a perceived ideal past is reflected in its analysis of violence, which is of a conservative nature.

Chapter 5 brings to the fore Manasses’ activities as a teacher in Constantinople and focuses on the so-called Astrological poem, the Origins of Oppian and five grammar exercises, known as schede, attributed to Manasses. Dedicated to Sebastokratorissa Eirene, the Astrological poem offers a basic introduction to the workings of the stars and planets along with the zodiac. While the Astrological poem may seem to teach rather untraditional knowledge, the Origins of Oppian and the schede express the very basis of Byzantine education: grammar, Christianity and the ancient heritage. The Origins of Oppian at the same time contains references to Manasses’ own situation as a writer on commission, offering yet another important connection between patronage and education. The schede are all on Christian topics, drawing attention to the significance of hagiographical and biblical texts as a complement to the ancient heritage, and for comparative reasons the Sketches of the mouse is brought into the discussion.

Chapter 7, the concluding chapter, discusses the literary production of Manasses in light of the observations made in the close readings throughout the monograph. Returning to the theoretical considerations of the functions of occasional literature, special attention is here devoted to certain aspects of Manasses’ production: the recycling of Graeco-Roman and biblical material and his own verses within and across genres. The economy of reusing motifs, words, expressions and verses is considered from the perspective of occasional literature written on commission or in the hope of achieving commissions, but also from an aesthetic viewpoint. The ways in which Manasses comments upon his own situation as a writer and inscribes his own authorship into his texts are seen as the conscious creation of an individual voice, but also as a reflection of the Komnenian trend towards poetic self-assertiveness.

With reference to an impressive range of examples from across European genres and repertoires, Suzanne Aspden illustrates ways in which dance has been embodied within Western ‘art’ music. Exploding the myth of ‘the music itself’, Aspden notes a significant historical swing in both aesthetics and compositional practice during the nineteenth century, as musical representations of dance gradually morphed from being overtly ornamental and elaborate to more straightforwardly transparent in their dependence upon a long-established vocabulary of musical topics. While tracing this historical shift, Aspden offers a nuanced critical commentary on some of the shop-worn assumptions about dance that have marked traditional textbook histories of European music, especially negative associations between dance and the anti-intellectual, the ‘low’, the feminine and the ‘Other’.

An analysis of MacMillan’s The World’s Ransoming presents an underlying conflict between modernity and tradition, observed on three levels, and focused to form the chapter’s main issue: how to configure MacMillan’s relationship with modernism, particularly given his characteristic stylistic mixture of modernist and traditional elements. Dominic Wells’s label for MacMillan (‘retrospective modernism’) highlights two questions: do the modernist and traditional co-exist as comfortably as this suggests? Can modernism be ‘retrospective’ so easily? I propose ‘conflicting modernities and a modernity of conflict’ as a better description. ‘Conflicting modernities’ highlights the centrifugal aspects of MacMillan’s style in three ways: the conflict between modernist and traditional elements, categorising them as examples of conflict first, before they are rapprochements with modernity; the inclusion of traditional elements stems from a modernist impulse, evidenced in MacMillan’s essay ‘Music and Modernity’; and the multiplicity of modernist influences in MacMillan’s style. ‘Modernity of conflict’ suggests a conclusion that conflict in MacMillan must be defined overall as modernist, explored through two strands of Adorno: meaning as contradiction; and Adorno’s aim to expose totalitarian tendencies, restrictions, and blindspots. In MacMillan this takes the form of a desire to turn modernity’s critique onto itself, exposing its atheistic elements and nihilistic worldview.

Clooney focus on Ramanuja on religious experience as based in the contemplation of Hindu scripture, in tradition, and in ritual practice, and as offering a vision of the divine and of union of the human self with the divine. He suggests that Ramanuja’s work provides an “integrated Vedanta” that supplies the cognitive and affective components for one to move toward an intense spiritual existence in life.

Katz examines mystical experience in relation to the tendency that its content turns out to be what the mystic desires it to be, and he suggests that this tendency is not to be accounted for by the nature of the mystical experience itself. Instead, he proposes that the ineffable and ecstatic experiences of mystics are expressed by them from within the traditions they follow, thus influencing their characterizations of their mystical experiences.

This chapter considers the council’s development of the theme of revelation in its documents, with particular attention to The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum. At the heart of the council’s teaching is an account of a God who comes to us in Christ as vulnerable, redeeming love and through the Spirit makes possible friendship with God. It is this saving offer that God reveals through the mediation of Scripture and tradition.

The chapter starts with the themes of crisis and the discovery of the future for Roman law in Europe in the form of the common legal heritage in the seminal works of Paul Koschaker. These build on the role of tradition in law and work to present a role for Roman law in the new order, first in the Nazi reign and second in the new postwar Europe. The chapter compares the conceptions of law and Europe between Nazi and fascists policies and their ideas on Roman law, the reorientation of legal education and the new role for Europe in the new order. These totalitarian and conservative visions of Europe by authors such as Salvatore Riccobono are then juxtaposed with the ideas of other Europeanists such as the Catholic Jacques Maritain or liberals, socialists and communists, such as Altiero Spinelli, behind the Ventotene declaration.

The narrative of the shared tradition of European law, the idea that the legal heritage of Europe was an inherent source of unity and was traceable all the way back to antiquity and Roman law took shape in a long process, beginning from the 1930s. This book was the story of that process.

The sixth chapter approaches the reconfiguring of the legal tradition through the work of Helmut Coing and his idea of the tradition of rights as a jurisprudential construct. This is contextualized through the rise of the rights tradition in human rights scholarship and the central role that human rights came to have in the initial stages of the European project. This emphasis, resulting in the creation of the European Convention of Human Rights, was mirrored by the commitment of the new German state to democracy and rights. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the spread of the European narrative about the role of Roman law and its greatest proponents, among them Reinhard Zimmermann.

The fifth chapter turns to the younger generation of scholars and the tortuous route by which they arrived at the idea of a European legal tradition. By looking at the so-called young lions of Nazi legal academia and their attempts at legal reform based on the racialized order, this chapter sets the stage for their conversion after the war. Through the works of Franz Wieacker, the chapter analyses the return to tradition and the discovery of Europe and Roman law among German legal historians, seeing it as a reaction to the works of Koschaker and the spread of these ideas in Europe. By tracing the careers and works of other scholars involved in the Nazi movement, it discusses the role of denazification and the continuities of Nazi policies in the formation of the role of Europe in legal culture.

The purpose of this book is to explore the emergence of this idea of a shared European legal tradition as the dominant theory of understanding the past and the future of law in Europe during the postwar period. This entails tracing the role that was given to Roman law as the foundation of European law and the shared legacy it provided. Central figures in this transformation were scholars like Franz Wieacker and Paul Koschaker, who would, based on very different positions, be instrumental in the coming resurgence of both the Roman law tradition and the idea of a shared European heritage in law.

Chapter 1 examines the tensions that erupted in the 1830s and 1840s in reaction to the Poor Law Commission’s ban on serving festive meals of roast beef and plum pudding to workhouse inmates. It demonstrates that, despite the new drive to centralize relief policies in the 1830s, local authorities frequently overrode and undermined directives that interfered with their right to dispense aid in traditional ways that they felt enhanced social stability. This chapter explores the symbolic meaning of roast beef to the institutionalized poor, the Boards of Guardians that superintended them, and the communities in which they were imbedded. It argues that a study of when and why paupers were and were not furnished with what was often termed “Old English Fare” in the early years of the New Poor Law reveals that the transition from moral economy to political economy was far from complete. The tensions that erupted amongst local and central government officials, paupers, and communities in reaction to the Poor Law Commission’s attempt to ban these meals suggests that debates over food were part of much broader negotiations about both the role of the modern state and the place of the poor within local and national communities.

This essay argues that performance must be considered in the interpretation of the Homeric epics. It outlines the ancient performance tradition and explains how it is integral to the composition, reception, and transmission of the epics.