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The raw materials of letter-writing in the early modern world were multiple and specific; their effective use took time, skill, and labour. While a handful of other playwrights did put letter-writing on stage, generally to comic effect, William Shakespeare chose not to, or at least not in a literal sense. This chapter argues that Shakespeare instead embues his plays with the language and experience of the material letter-writing process — what one might call the grammar of early modern letter-writing — and turns it into something richly theatrical. For Shakespeare's Jack Cade, parchment is still the skin of a lamb while wax comes from a bee, and contains the bee's sting. Elsewhere, pens are goose quills, ink is gall. The raw materials of writing possessed vivid associations for their early modern users, in part no doubt because they often prepared them themselves.

Scholars have long questioned whether the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, which feature prominent female characters, could have been written by or for women. This chapter argues against such a claim on the basis of the physical features of the textual remains—on papyri and parchment—of these books: the features of handwriting, quality of papyrus and parchment, and so forth show that the readers for these texts were not qualitatively different from reader of other texts in early Christianity.

A small fragment of the Coptic Life of Benjamin was preserved in a single parchment page in Paris. It relates to how the patriarch one day entered a monastery church, probably that of the Monastery of St. Macarius, in which there was a painted program not dissimilar from that at the Church of St. Antony. The saints' and angels' welcome makes it clear that Benjamin was a true monk, priest, and confessor of the faith, a genuine heir of the great Alexandrian patriarchs. A specifically Egyptian church, freed from increasingly problematic ties to Constantinople, creates its distinctive forms of life and witnesses within the new Islamic world order. It is not surprising that the principal history of the medieval Coptic Orthodox Church is called the History of the Patriarchs: the patriarchs serve as an instantiation—one might even say as “icons”—of the community as a whole.

For some time, from the 16th century at least, the prevailing view has been that lawsuits in Rome during the classical period were begun by a contract — a vadimonium or bail. The discovery of the lex Irnitana in 1981 brought to light a very substantial amount of new evidence on civil procedure, and most strikingly, revealed a system of in iure-postponements. In a iudicium legitimum, a party gives notice of the postponement (intertium denuntiare), according to the lex Irnitana. There is a very brief fragment of roughly 30 words, probably by Ulpian, which is preserved on a piece of parchment dating from the fourth century. It speaks about intertium denuntiare and gives a set of facts showing intertium denuntiare in use in litigation. The fragment shows that one who has missed an appointment but has had notice of intertium may have difficulty getting praetorian relief.

This chapter looks more broadly at the implications of archaeology for understanding the patterns of usage of a broader category of writing, documents of everyday life in the Hellenistic world on papyrus and parchment. It argues that even a limited understanding of the role of writing in ancient societies will not be reached without serious reflection about the archaeology of papyrology. The chapter discusses two main lines of approach: First, it demonstrates that the surviving documentation of Hellenistic Egypt is fundamentally misleading about what was committed to writing in that society; the second that the use of written documents elsewhere in Greece and the Greek East during the Hellenistic period can be revealed more. It notes that although the juxtaposition of what sound like both a pessimistic and an optimistic argument may appear paradoxical, they are closely related.

This chapter discusses Silas House's Crow County trilogy, which demonstrates binding connections to both family and place: Clay's Quilt (2001), A Parchment of Leaves (2002), and The Coal Tattoo (2004). All three novels trace four generations of several families in fictional Crow County, Kentucky, portraying their struggles and triumphs in one of the northwesternmost extremities of the mountain South. Raised in the Pentecostal Church, House places important metaphysical emphasis on spiritual relationships with nature and one's native land. A closer examination of his Crow County trilogy reveals the ties and disparities between Pentecostal Christianity and meaningful spiritual links to land. Emphasizing the spiritual and religious beliefs of his characters, House demonstrates the significant role the natural environment plays in Appalachian culture. While he explores the importance of traditional religion, he juxtaposes those customary expressions with the spiritual significance of the natural surroundings.

Virtually all constitutions codify amendment rules. But why? What are the uses and purposes of constitutional amendment rules? Amendment rules of course create a legal process for reformers to alter the constitution. But amendment rules serve important purposes even if the constitution is never amended at all because they have essential uses beyond the obvious one of textual alteration. Amendment rules have three categories of uses: formal, functional, and symbolic. Their formal uses include repairing imperfections, distinguishing constitutional from ordinary law, entrenching rules against easy repeal or revision, and establishing a predictable procedure for constitutional change. Their functional uses include checking the court, promoting democracy, heightening public awareness, pacifying change, and managing difference. Symbolically, amendment rules can be used to express constitutional values. This chapter explains all of these many uses of amendment rules and illustrates each of them with examples drawn from constitutions around the world. This chapter also interrogates the symbolic uses of amendment rules: How can we know whether the values expressed in constitutional amendment rules reflect authentic political commitments? This chapter explains with reference to the German Basic Law that it is possible to evaluate the authenticity of the values in amendment rules by investigating the design of amendment rules and their subsequent interpretation. This chapter considers constitutions from Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Central African Republic, Chad, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Saint Lucia, South Africa, Spain, the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union, Ukraine, the United States, and Yugoslavia.