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This chapter explores the devotion to Sarita Colonia, the most prominent folk saint in Peru. It examines Sarita’s biography in relation to myth formation; compares Sarita’s story of virginity and (attempted) rape to the hagiography of several canonized saints; and discusses contemporary devotion to Sarita at her shrine in Callao (Lima).

This concluding chapter argues that although the close connections that gave life to tragedy were severed as the major thinkers drifted apart and turned to other concerns by 1807, in an important sense, the history of the tragic had not yet begun. Friedrich Hölderlin's largely unread and totally uncomprehended “Notes” to Sophocles was the only substantial publication directly concerned with the tragic to emerge during this period, and Friedrich Schiller remained by far the most prominent theorist of tragedy. At the same time, translation of Greek works accelerated and improved, while productions of Schiller's The Bride of Messina (1803) across Germany as well as of romantic “tragedies of fate” contributed to a broad interest in high tragedy.

In the late eighteenth century, conversations about nature and natural history entered the public sphere through natural disasters such as the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Messina and Calabria earthquakes of 1783. In constructing an idea of nature as purposed and ordered, many natural histories imposed a kind of providentialism on the operations of the natural world that did not necessarily require an active or intervening deity. That providentialism was often affirmed by responses to natural disasters; although natural crises problematized the idea of an ordered universe, they also fostered an optimism that asked observers to have faith in a future, if as-yet-unforeseen, good. Natural histories and responses to natural disasters accustomed a broader public to naturalized language and analogies, and made more commonplace this vision of nature as an ordering and purposed, even if sometimes destructive, entity. This chapter argues that the diffusion of natural knowledge, the establishment of the idea of a self-regulating and purposed natural world, and the theodicies emerging in the wake of natural disasters all fostered the development of a secular providentialism that would come to define the natural history of the French Revolution.

The complex entanglement of Norman Italy and crusading has long underpinned research on the region for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This chapter re-examines one notable case of such entanglement: the encounter between the citizens of Messina in Sicily and the Anglo-Norman contingent stationed nearby during the winter of 1190–91 on its journey on the Third Crusade. To date, the scholarship has primarily explored this encounter at Messina from the external perspective presented by the (mostly) Anglo-Norman narratives associated with the crusading parties. This chapter instead examines the encounter from the urban perspective. While the sources offer insight into religious, cultural and Anglo-French tensions, viewed from a different angle and situated alongside other sources, they also allow us to see how these tensions could be shaped by the dynamics of an encounter between an increasingly assertive urban community and powerful external forces. The chapter finds that, while Messina was often a pawn in higher diplomatic struggles, its multicultural urban community, civic autonomy and public ritual all presented a framework within which the crusaders had to be accommodated somehow. Crucially, the fluctuating relationship between precedent and memory played a central formative role: to the Messinesi, the crusaders were prima facie the sort of transient visitors whom they had encountered for decades. In 1190–91, however, the combination of the magnitude, pre-eminence and difference of those visitors also brought a cultural threat which proved volatile at a time when the eyes of the wider Latin Christian world were watching.

This chapter focuses on Agathokles’ involvement in eastern and central Sicily, which was the core of his domain throughout his reign. It argues that Agathokles rose to power largely from conflicts particular to the domestic situation in Syracuse after Timoleon and that the driver of Agathokles’ establishment of a large kingdom in Sicily was not primarily the example of the Diadochoi in the East. Rather it was the interlocked nature of civic conflict in Sicily and the model for dealing with this provided by earlier Sicilian history.

Chapter 3 focuses on Bembo’s complex motivations for leaving Venice for Messina in 1492, and particularly on four individuals who shaped his humanism both before and during his time in Sicily. It is surely no coincidence that Pietro departed for Sicily soon after assisting Angelo Poliziano, that revolutionary figure in philological method, in collating, during the great man’s visit to Venice in summer 1491, the celebrated ancient manuscript of Terence that belonged to the Bembo family. Constantine Lascaris’ reputation as a teacher was far reaching, but Giorgio Valla, Lascaris’ former pupil from his Milan days and later Pietro’s teacher in Venice, may well have helped Bembo toward Messina. The naturalistic interests in De Aetna were perhaps partly nurtured by Lascaris; they also bear the imprint of another major influence on the young Pietro in Venice: Ermolao Barbaro. He was appointed Venetian ambassador to Rome in 1490; scandal estranged him from the Republic in 1491.

Chapter 8 moves from the Norman kingdom of the twelfth century to the newly changed situation in the early thirteenth century, as the demise of the Hauteville dynasty and the minority of the young king Frederick II Hohenstaufen (r. 1198–1250) created an opportunity for Pope Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) and his successors to enforce their authority in southern Italy. Meanwhile, the Latin conquest of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (1204) created an imperative for the papacy to develop a coherent policy towards the integration of Greek Christians into the Roman church’s administrative and legal structures. The chapter discusses how the papacy formulated this policy at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the resulting increase in papal interventions in the legal affairs of the southern Italian Greeks. It then looks at Pope Honorius III’s (r. 1216–1227) short-lived effort to organise Byzantine-rite monasteries into an Order of St Basil under Grottaferrata (a predecessor to Eugenius IV’s more successful fifteenth-century order). It examines the Grottaferrata Nomocanon (Marc. gr. 171), a manuscript produced at the monastery in c. 1220–1230 that was apparently intended to provide a legal guide for the new order yet was still entirely Byzantine in character. The chapter finishes by focusing on the conflict between the Holy Saviour monastery of Messina and the papacy in the 1220s–1230s as an important example of the papacy’s efforts to bring the royal monasteries of the Kingdom of Sicily under episcopal control.

This chapter looks at the future of the European Union beyond Brexit and analyses the plan, precedents, and prospects for the Conference on the Future of Europe. The establishment of the Conference on the Future of Europe is potentially an innovative model and path-breaking initiative to reform the EU and make it more effective and legitimate, along the lines of prior, out-of-the-box initiatives such as the Conference of Messina and the Convention on the Future of Europe. The Covid-19 pandemic has delayed the start of the Conference on the Future of Europe, but has also increased its urgency. Yet, the chances of success of this initiative are closely connected to the mechanics of treaty reform. As such, the chapter suggests that the Conference should consider channelling its output into a Political Compact, subject to an entry into force rule that do away with the unanimity requirement, as it has been done previously in the field of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Clearly, success cannot be taken for granted and there are many difficulties ahead, but the EU is facing a decisive moment.

Several important political consultants emerged from the 1980s through the 2000s. General consultants that came to prominence include Dick Morris, James Carville and Paul Begala, Karl Rove, David Plouffe, and Jim Messina. The important polling consultants include Joel Benenson, John Anzalone, David Binder, Paul Harstad, Tony Fabrizio, Linda DiVall, Whit Ayres, and Jan van Lohuizen. Polling for presidents Clinton through Obama was undertaken by Stan Greenberg, Dick Morris, Mark Penn and Doug Schoen for Clinton; Jan van Lohuizen and Fred Steeper for Bush II, and Joel Benenson for Obama. Among the media consultants that did important work over these years are Fred Davis, Mark McKinnon, Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer, Greg Stevens, Scott Howell, Bob Wickers, Bill Knapp, Tad Devine, Jim Margolis. The Tea Party entrepreneur Sal Russo took on important roles for Ronald Reagan and others. Women and minority consultants also gained ground during these years, with important roles in numerous campaigns.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton’s primary team suffered from internal dysfunction, while Barack Obama’s team was successful in picking off delegates, rather than seeking out popular victories. The Obama team was headed by David Plouffe and David Axelrod, and they made inventive use of technology, online communication, and social media. On the Republican side, John McCain struggled in the primaries, faced with the difficulties of succeeding the then unpopular George Bush. Fundraising was at an all-time high, with support from the Koch brothers and others. McCain made a surprising pick for vice president, Alaska governor Sarah Palin. The 2012 Obama re-election team, headed by Jim Messina, used their long lead time to plan and build their strategy. Mitt Romney’s campaign was headed by Matt Rhoades, Katie Packer Gage, Russ Schriefer, and Stuart Stevens. The technological prowess of Obama team proved to be a powerful strategic weapon in the campaign.

Medieval works of urban panegyric, some of which adhered to the so-called laus civitatis paradigm, ostensibly represented initiatives formed to praise and promote the profile of a given city. This literary genre flourished particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and can be connected to fundamental transformations that were occurring in medieval urban life. Indeed, while in many cases these works served unexpressed agendas, they were not simple pieces of fiction and rhetoric. Their power lay in their reapplication of Classical and Christian traditions, in their reflection of some of the deep realities of urban living, and in their association with the heated conceptual debates surrounding the very idea of the medieval city. In this context, the inclusion of material which could lament or dishonour the name of a city, or which could imply a threat to its integrity may seem both incongruent and significant. Focusing primarily on Bonvesin della Riva’s celebrated De Magnalibus Mediolani (1288), this chapter thus explores the dissonant presence of lamentation and critique presented in works of urban panegyric in order to produce a more nuanced and holistic understanding of this literary genre as well as a new appreciation of the evidence it can offer for understanding medieval urban mentalities at a crucial point in the process of European urbanization.