This study reconstructs the previously unknown history of the most important dissident group within France before the French Reformed Church formed during the 1550s. From edited and unpublished literary, institutional, diplomatic, and epistolary sources from across Europe, the dissertation demonstrates that King Francis I's sister, Marguerite of Navarre (1492-1549), and a network of more than two hundred nobles, royal officers, humanists, literary writers, and prelates collaborated to promote a reformation of the French church based on their evangelical views. To this end, they attempted to steer Francis I into alliances with Henry VIII, the Protestant powers of the Empire and Switzerland, as well as, for a time, the Pope that favored the adoption of their reform agenda. Within France they strove to disseminate their beliefs by exploiting their administrative powers, sponsoring evangelical preaching, and publishing hundreds of vernacular books, including many adaptations of German Reformation tracts. An opposing conservative party stymied these efforts, yet Marguerite and her network managed, in turn, to prevent it from unleashing full-scale persecution, thereby enabling a broad dissenting movement to grow. Meanwhile, French reformers in exile, led by Guillaume Farel and John Calvin, former members of Marguerite's network, became critical of their erstwhile colleagues and called on French evangelicals to reject the "papal" church. After Marguerite's death, members of her network and their heirs joined two successor parties during the Wars of Religion (1562-1598): the irenic royalists and the unyielding Calvinist Huguenots. Ultimately, the confessional historiographies of the Calvinist and Catholic 'victors' effaced the record of Marguerite and her network's campaign for moderate evangelical renewal. This account revises the received interpretations of Marguerite and the early Reformation in France. Although Marguerite is well-known as a literary figure with heterodox beliefs, her leadership of a dynamic evangelical network has never been seen or reconstructed. This network's actions reveal, moreover, that early sixteenth-century France was not, as it is universally portrayed, a period of "magnificent religious anarchy." These evangelicals were not divergent in their beliefs, disunified, and hence hopelessly ineffective. Amidst growing persecution they failed to secure the adoption of their beliefs, but they did disseminate them and obtain a foothold for religious dissent without which the Reformed churches could not have emerged.

After the comunero revolution of 1520-1521, Charles I (1516-1555) defended Castilian constitutional law and institutionalized executive and judicial platforms that the Cortes and comuneros formulated in order to transform royal government into a meritocracy. Charles centralized the Spanish executive and judiciary, and he established a bureaucracy that functioned to secure municipal liberties and to supervise judicial procedures and management reforms. He did not change the structure of Spanish government and he did not introduce administrative categories. He transformed government---an executive of councils and a judiciary of chanceries, audiencias, and over sixty corregimientos---into a dependable mechanism for litigation and for contesting royal policies. In his negotiations with the cities, Charles learned how to execute five strategies of state formation: preserving the assets of the nobility; defending municipal privileges and constitutional law; rationalizing and hispanicizing the executive; overhauling the judiciary and establishing appointment and management standards and auditing procedures; and restructuring and hispanicizing the royal household. Between 1522 and 1528 (and before he could be crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope), Charles used his absolute power in order to reward subjects, to pardon the majority of the comuneros, to change parliamentary agenda for the benefit of the cities, and to institutionalize procedures of recruitment and audits. The Empress and Juan Tavera, president of the Council of Castile from 1524 to 1539, governed the Castilian empire according to the principles devised by the Cortes, made merit-based recruitment and auditing procedures routine, and forged a network of reformists. The Cortes compensated the monarchy with revenues in return for the implementation of parliamentary accords affecting the bureaucracy. Charles gained the trust of the Castilian cities, incorporated Castilian elites into his judicial and executive administration, and digested the cultural and civic traditions of Castile. With Castilian financial support, the military assistance of the nobility, and the judicial expertise of ecclesiastics and university graduates, Charles secured domestic peace throughout the Spanish empire, especially after 1522, becoming the founder father of Hispanic town councils in Spain and the Americas, while seeking to reform the institutions of the medieval church.

This document presents a holistic view of the saxophone in Germany from 1924 to 1935. A "wide field" view is presented in order to examine the saxophone within its social and historical contexts. Chapter One contains a general political and cultural history of Germany and a description of the saxophone in Germany before 1924. Chapter Two offers a definition of jazz in Germany and surveys the music's prominent saxophonists. Chapter Three documents and interprets portrayals of the saxophone in literature, art, and the press that might clarify its position within German society at the time. The instrument's journey through the turbulent period of Hitler's early government is followed. Chapter Three ends with a discussion of the references to the saxophone in the writings of philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. Finally, Chapter Four examines the role of the saxophone in the medium of serious concert music in Germany between the two World Wars.

Venetian glass, especially that of the Renaissance, has been admired for centuries due to its quality workmanship and overall visual appeal. In addition, a certain mystique surrounds the glassmakers of Venice and their products. This dissertation research undertakes a comprehensive view of the culture and technology of Renaissance Venetian glass and glassmaking. Particular attention is paid to luxury vessel glass, especially those made of the "colorless" material typically referred to as cristallo. This segment of the industry is seen as the primary locus of substantial technological change. The primary question examined in this work is the nature of this technological change, specifically that observed in the Renaissance Venetian glass industry circa 1450-1550. After providing an appropriate social and economic context, a discussion of Venice's glass industry in the pre-Renaissance is given. Industry and guild trends and conditions which would be influential in later centuries are identified. In addition, the sudden expansion of Venice's glass production in the mid-15th century is described as a self-catalyzed phenomenon in response to prevailing cultural and economic conditions. Demand is identified as a necessary precursor to the production of luxury glass. Building on this concept, activities and behaviors relevant to demand, production, and distribution of Venetian glass are examined in depth. The interaction between the Renaissance consumer and producer is treated along with the position of Venice's glass industry in the overall culture and economy of the city. It is concluded that the technological changes observed in Venice's Renaissance luxury glass industry arose primarily out of perceived consumer demand. Social and economic circumstances particular to Renaissance Italy created an environment in which a technological development such as cristallo glass could take place. The success of the industry in the 15th and 16th centuries can be found in the fruitful interplay between consumers and producers, the manner in which the industry was organized, coupled with the skill of the Venetian glassmakers to make and work new glass compositions into a variety of desired objects.

Botticelli's Portrait of a Lady (Smeralda Brandini ) (c. 1471) is representative of a largely uninvestigated tendency in Italian Renaissance portraiture to depict female sitters without sumptuous clothing, jewelry, and heraldic devices. Traditionally, these visual cues had been used to construct the elevated social identity of portrait sitters. This study scrutinizes a work within a neglected portion of Botticelli's oeuvre, examining the ways in which its modest, and somewhat ambiguous, visual cues also construct its sitter's elevated social identity, while simultaneously protecting it. This analysis seriously considers a portrait of a woman who is not famous, nor an idealized beauty, nor an allegorical figure. It explores her image, its functions, and its multiple layers of meaning within the confines of late-fifteenth century social relationships, gender roles, and the original domestic viewing context of Renaissance portraits (considering their public display, as well as their relationship to Marian imagery, within the home).

Montado landscapes are agro-silvo-pastoral systems where pastures and crops occur under the canopy of trees. They are specific to the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. In Alentejo, two types of montado with different origins, geographic distribution, and economy can be distinguished: the Holm Oak Montado and the Cork Oak Montado. Changes in Alentejo's socioeconomic situation have led to montados, until recently the most profitable land use for the poor soils of the region, being currently in danger of extinction either by abandonment or substitution. This thesis seeks to identify the structure, dynamic evolution, and possible future of montados. It demonstrates, within an historical perspective, that these landscapes can assume different forms, corresponding to varying degrees of intensity and uses. Therefore, the preservation of their productive, ecological, and cultural values necessitates redefinition of their form in relation to the evolving socioeconomic context.

<p> Remember, remember the Fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason, and plot,I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason,Should ever be forgot. </p><p> This verse, first recorded in Britain in the mid-1820s, makes a plea for the remembrance of November 5, 1605&mdash;the date of the discovery and suppression of a conspiracy to assassinate King James I; detonate Westminster Palace, the house of Parliament; and, ultimately, substitute the anti-Catholic monarchy of England with a protectorate that would favor the Church of Rome. In early 1606, weeks after the collapse of the Plot, the king endorsed and the Parliament passed "An Act for a Public Thanksgiving to Almighty God Every Year on the Fifth Day of November"; some sixty years later the legislative assemblies of the American colonies started doing the same. So was the official memory of "gunpowder, treason, and plot" born on both sides of the Atlantic, first as Guy Fawkes Day in England and then as Pope's Day in America. </p><p> This dissertation provides a new political history&mdash;and a new study of popular religion&mdash;in British North America and the early United States. I construct a long history of the anniversary&mdash;and the historical memory of the Plot, in a variety of texts&mdash;in early America, ca. 1605-1865. I close-read almanacs, diaries, instructionals, letters, newspapers, novels, sermons, and textbooks as a means of understanding the process by which the memory of November 5 was appropriated, reconstructed, and re-politicized. Turning to the mid-eighteenth century, I assess the influence of the Fifth on the Great Awakening and the American Revolution and vice versa. I investigate what became of November 5 after 1783, and I scrutinize the many ways in which the creative arts and the partisan press made frequent use of the memory of the events of 1605. I consider both how that memory arose in new places after the Revolution and in what ways the parties of the republic, like the crowds of the colonies, evoked the Fifth as a warning against absolutism. Finally, I examine what became of "1605" the coming, and the waging, of the American Civil War.</p>

<p> This dissertation examines the development of Germany's municipal theatres from an institutional perspective, focusing on the ways in which formal and informal agreements such as laws, contracts, and social conventions formed the institutional framework that characterizes this type of theatre. Since local government support is a defining feature of municipal theatres, the question why German cities started subsidizing theatres in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries receives close attention throughout this study. </p><p> The introductory chapter reviews theoretical arguments for and against public arts subsidies and develops a rigorous typology of theatres in nineteenth and early-twentieth century Germany. Chapter 2 traces the development of the theatre industry in Germany between 1875 and 1929 based on the annual publications of the German Stage Workers' Union (Genossenschaft deutscher B&uuml;hnen-Angeh&ouml;riger). Statistical analysis of the relationship between the emergence of publicly subsidized theatres and variables such as population size, employment, religion, and geographic location informs the selection of a diverse set of case studies. </p><p> The case studies are presented in paired comparisons in chapters 3, 4, and 5. Chapter 3 examines two major commercial centers, Hamburg and Frankfurt a.M.; chapter 4 focuses on two industrial cities, Krefeld and Chemnitz; and chapter 5 compares two smaller municipalities, Bautzen and Passau. Each chapter begins with an overview of the cities' respective theatre histories, which is followed by detailed analyses of the debates that took place at key turning points in the institutional development of the municipal theatres. To close, each chapter highlights factors that significantly shaped the developments in each case. </p><p> The final chapter concludes that subsidized municipal theatres were not introduced as part of a cohesive cultural policy; rather, municipal governments granted support for theatres in response to specific, local predicaments. Funding decisions were often reached as short-term solutions to immediate concerns, with little thought given to theoretical justifications or long-term consequences. Organizational deficiencies in joint-stock theatre companies, the growing influence of labor unions, heightened nationalism and the controlled economy during World War One, and the political rise of the working class all significantly contributed to the institutional development of municipal theatres.</p>

On May 2, 1925, Benito Mussolini said in a speech to the Italian Senate: It is necessary to guarantee not only the Rhineland frontier but the Brennero frontier. On this point I wish to make the opinion of the Italian Government perfectly plain, especially in face of the propaganda which is being made in favour of the Anschluss in both Austria and Germany. It cannot be permitted. Thirteen years later, the Giornale d'Italia carried Mussolini's Genoa speech of May 14, 1938, which read in part: "Fascist Italy could not indefinitely assume what was the odious and useless task of the old Austria of the Habsburgs and Metternich---that of opposing the movement of nations towards their unity." This work will be an attempt to determine the factors which led Mussolini from the former to the latter position, from a virtual protectorate over the Republic of Austria to the complete elimination of Italian influence in the Danube area. Such a study lends itself to a critique of the events in Austria between 1933 and 1938 and to an examination of the wider international developments of the same period as reflected in Austrian and Italian policies. The organization of the events of the Austrian tragedy can be delineated into three distinct acts. These acts are the coup d'etat of July 25, 1934, with the death of Federal Chancellor Dollfuss; the Austro-German Agreement of July 11, 1936; and the Einmarsch of March 11, 1938. Immediately preceding each of these three principal acts are three seemingly secondary ones: the February revolt of 1934, the collapse of the Stresa front in May 1935, and the Berchtesgaden Protocol of February 1938, respectively. These latter events are in effect the direct result of Italian influence and policy, and carry an importance not apparent at first, being the causes of the more prominent occurrences in Austria. Implicit, then, in the course of developments leading to the Austrian Anschluss with Germany is the influence of the foreign policy of Mussolini and Fascist Italy. The significant circumstances of Austria's position prior to the Second World War are generally well-known, and the conflicts and frequently highly emotional drama of the First Republic have been subjected to critical investigation. However, these studies have confined themselves largely to Austrian internal developments, frequently biased or written to justify some party or principle. That these domestic developments are intrinsically due to external motivation is not so apparent. These external factors are obscured by their less publicized knowledge, by their overshadowing predominance in other spheres of international power politics, and by the portentousness of still greater factors crowding upon one another in this period.

Hard Core Urbanism is the tendency to produce corporate enclaves within the fluid city. The garrison mentality denies the complex and interwoven processes exemplified by the history of Potsdamer Platz. Breaking the completeness of the corporate plan, the project initiates the process of diversification; enabling a reoccupation by the city.