In a time when the Royal courts started using the means of magic to ensure the delivery of their messages, the old ways were being outlawed. One kingdom refused to let go of one of their own. Now given the most important mission of his life, standing in the way of corrupt kingdoms and treacherous nobles lies the Last Royal Messenger. King Charles sends his most trusted, his last messenger on a mission that will change his life and unravel intrigue and treasonous plots. Jared, he is the last of his kind; he is the Last Royal Messenger.
The absorbing tale of how this legendary rogue became the champion of parliamentary monarchy and changed the course of English history. At first light on July 6, 1685, the last battle ever fought on English soil was almost over. On one side of the watery pasture at Sedgemoor was the dashing thirty-six-year-old Duke of Monmouth, the charismatic son of Charles II, adored by the people. A reformer, a romantic, and a Protestant, he was fighting the army he had once commanded, in opposition to his uncle, King James II. Yet even before he launched his attack, Monmouth knew he would die. Born in the backstreets of Rotterdam in the year his grandfather Charles I was executed, Monmouth was the child of a turbulent age. His mother, the first of Charles II's famous liaisons, played courtesan to the band of raw and restless young royalists forced abroad by the changing political current. Conceived during a revolution and born into a republic, Monmouth, by the time he was twelve, was the sensation of the most licentious and libertine court in Europe. Adored by the king and drenched in honors, he became the greatest rake and reprobate of the age. On his path to becoming "the last royal rebel," Monmouth consorted with a spectacular list of contemporaries: Louis XIV was his mentor, William of Orange his confidant, Nell Gwyn his friend, the future Duke of Marlborough his pupil, D'Artagnan his lieutenant, John Dryden his censor, and John Locke his comrade. Anna Keay expertly chronicles Monmouth's life and offers splendid insight into this crucial and dramatic period in English history.
This monograph on the Royal Messengers of the Great Chamber in early modern Britain explores the rules and regulations, privileges and duties and, ultimately, the enduring structure of the Messengers' establishment.
The academy has not been kind to Malachi. Indeed, some of the most influential and seminal studies on the book denigrate its style, message, and overall artistry. This negative assessment proves extensive in the history of scholarship. Furthermore, the studies demonstrating a more positive assessment of Malachi do so without offering serious challenges to these long-standing denigrations. Complicating the matter is the observation that critical study has proffered numerous suggestions for what Malachi contains while failing to provide a viable model of what Malachi actually is. A Message from the Great King presents serious challenges to the guild’s prior assessments and conclusions about the book. Through an interdisciplinary approach that synthesizes insights from literary theory, thorough historical reconstruction, and a close reading of the biblical text, R. Michael Fox makes a formidable case that a root messenger metaphor pervades the entire text of Malachi. Viewed and read through this new lens, Malachi’s artistry becomes more readily apparent and its theological message more intense and demanding. A Message from the Great King provides serious reassessment of the academy’s long-standing denigrations of the book and a compelling answer to what Malachi actually is. Accompanying these insights into Malachi are new methodological procedures and exercises that merit further attention and reflection.
While it now attracts many tourists, the Colca Valley of Peru’s southern Andes was largely isolated from the outside world until the 1970s, when a passable road was built linking the valley—and its colonial churches, terraced hillsides, and deep canyon—to the city of Arequipa and its airport, eight hours away. Noble David Cook and his co-researcher Alexandra Parma Cook have been studying the Colca Valley since 1974, and this detailed ethnohistory reflects their decades-long engagement with the valley, its history, and its people. Drawing on unusually rich surviving documentary evidence, they explore the cultural transformations experienced by the first three generations of Indians and Europeans in the region following the Spanish conquest of the Incas. Social structures, the domestic export and economies, and spiritual spheres within native Andean communities are key elements of analysis. Also highlighted is the persistence of duality in the Andean world: perceived dichotomies such as those between the coast and the highlands, Europeans and Indo-Peruvians. Even before the conquest, the Cabana and Collagua communities sharing the Colca Valley were divided according to kinship and location. The Incas, and then the Spanish, capitalized on these divisions, incorporating them into their state structure in order to administer the area more effectively, but Colca Valley peoples resisted total assimilation into either. Colca Valley communities have shown a remarkable tenacity in retaining their social, economic, and cultural practices while accommodating various assimilationist efforts over the centuries. Today’s population maintains similarities with their ancestors of more than five hundred years ago—in language, agricultural practices, daily rituals, familial relationships, and practices of reciprocity. They also retain links to ecological phenomena, including the volcanoes from which they believe they emerged and continue to venerate.
This volume is a tribute to the career of Professor Mirjo Salvini on the occasion his 80th birthday, composed of 62 papers written by his colleagues and students. The majority of contributions deal with research in the fields of Urartian and Hittite Studies, the topics that attracted Prof. Salvini most during his long and fruitful career.
