According to legend the Constantinian Order is the oldest chivalric institution, founded by Emperor Constantine the Great and governed by successive Byzantine Emperors and their descendants. While this chronology was supported by multiple writers even into the twentieth century, it has little historical basis. Nonetheless, the Angeli, Farnese and Bourbon families which held the Grand Mastership could legitimately claim Byzantine imperial descent, albeit in the female line, and the Order’s cross replicates that seen by Constantine in the vision recorded by both Lactantius and Eusebius, writing very soon after Maximian’s defeat at the battle of the Milvian Bridge. The Order’s emergence in the middle of the sixteenth century, when Christian Europe was under assault from a militant Ottoman empire, gained Papal support almost immediately and by the end of the seventeenth century the Order had mem-bers across the Italian peninsular, in Spain, Bavaria, Austria and Bohemia, Croatia and Poland. Today the majority of the Order’s members are found in Italy and Spain but there are also members in Portugal, France, Belgium, Great Britain and Luxembourg, with smaller groups in the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden as well as an expanding membership in the United States. This work examines the conversion of Constantine and the histories of the Angeli, Farnese and Bourbon Grand Masterships, with extensive reference to hitherto unpub-lished documents in the Vatican archives and in the Farnese and Bourbon archives in Naples. These serve to confirm the close relationship the Order had with the Church and the high regard in which it was held by successive Popes, as well as its autonomy as a subject of canon law independent from any crown or temporal sovereignty. This unique status has enabled its hereditary Grand Masters to maintain this dignity after the absorption of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies into a united Italy. The Order’s autonomy, coupled with the Grand Master’s close links to the Spanish Crown, has meant that Spanish and Italian citizens (as well as the citizens of several other states which have accorded the Order recognition) may obtain official permission to wear the Order’s decorations. 2018 is the three hundredth anniversary of the Papal Bull Militantis Ecclesiae which confirmed and approved the previous Papal acts concerning the Order and laid out the rights and privileges of the Order, its Grand Masters and members. In the early 20th century Pope Saint Pius X and Benedict XV conferred further privileges on the Order, ap-proving the statutes, while the then future Pope Pius XII had been admitted to the Order in 1913. Today the Order is engaged in works of charity, in conformity with the Church’s teachings, and includes among its members some thirteen Cardinals as well as some thirty members of reign-ing or former reigning families.

Morgan Perincall's marriage is already disintegrating when her husband volunteers for service in France. Dazed by his desertion, she sends their children west to safety, and leaves London for the dubious sanctuary of her childhood home, the Villa Rouge. Situated on the East coast, it is vulnerable to German attack. Caught between the open hostility of her father's housekeeper and the suffocating affection of Charlie, who for all his enthusiasm is not fit for service, Morgan's days are brightened by the arrival of an R.A.F. squadron - a chance to relive the romances of her wilder youth. But the fall of Dunkirk brings a sobering taste of defeat, and the Battle of Britain soon sees the once-carefree pilots fighting for their lives, their country. With danger drawing ever closer, and the secrets of her past beginning to unravel, Morgan discovers that sometimes the best intentions can leave the darkest legacies.

This book explores the principles of the display of art in the magnificent Roman palaces of the early modern period, focusing attention on how the parts function to convey multiple artistic, social, and political messages, all within a splendid environment that provided a model for aristocratic residences throughout Europe. Many of the objects exhibited in museums today once graced the interior of a Roman Baroque palazzo or a setting inspired by one. In fact, the very convention of a paintings gallery— the mainstay of museums—traces its ancestry to prototypes in the palaces of Rome. Inside Roman palaces, the display of art was calibrated to an increasingly accentuated dynamism of social and official life, activated by the moving bodies and the attention of residents and visitors. Display unfolded in space in a purposeful narrative that reflected rank, honor, privilege, and intimacy. With a contextual approach that encompasses the full range of media, from textiles to stucco, this study traces the influential emerging concept of a unified interior. It argues that art history—even the emergence of the modern category of fine art—was worked out as much in the rooms of palaces as in the printed pages of Vasari and other early writers on art.

This investigation offers new perspectives on Giuseppe Verdi’s attitudes to women and the functions which they fulfilled for him. The book explores Verdi’s professional and personal relationship with women who were exceptional within the traditional socio-sexual structure of patria potestà, in the context of women’s changing status in nineteenth-century Italian society. It focusses on two women; the singers Giuseppina Strepponi, who supported and enhanced Verdi’s creativity at the beginning of his professional life and Teresa Stolz, who sustained his sense of self-worth at its end. Each was an essential emotional benefactor without whom Verdi’s career would not have been the same. The subject of the Strepponi-Verdi marriage and the impact of Strepponi’s past deserve further detailed and nuanced discussion. This book demonstrates Verdi’s shifting power-balance with Strepponi as she sought to retain intellectual self-respect while his success and control increased. The negative stereotypes concerning operatic ‘divas’ do not withstand scrutiny when applied either to Strepponi or to Stolz. This book presents a revisionist appraisal of Stolz through close examination of her letters. Revealing Stolz’s value to Verdi, they also provide contemporary operatic criticism and behind-the-scenes comment, some excerpts of which are published here in English for the first time.

A truly groundbreaking book, presenting a portrait of Alfonso X, monarch and medieval intellectual "par excellence," and the extraordinary cultural history of Spain at that time.