This essay explores the Inquisition’s persistent interest in converts, and descendants of converts, from Judaism to Catholicism. Spanish inquisitors believed those converts, called conversos, were prone to the heresy of Judaizing, which was continuing to follow Mosaic Law despite Christian baptism. The essay addresses the ambiguity of defining who exactly was a converso, and examines the kinds of accusations made against Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants in the first four decades of the Spanish Inquisition’s activity, from approximately 1484 to 1525. It considers the gendered nature of those accusations as well as the potential motivations of accusers. After weighing the veracity of inquisition records about Judaizing, the essay moves to a comparison of trials from earlier and later periods of inquisition history, from the mid sixteenth century onward. These trials demonstrate the complicated, ongoing interactions among Jews, New Christians, and so-called “Old Christians” throughout the Spanish empire and around the world.

The first set of chapters operates at the level of patrons and their communities—imperial and local—to grapple with architectural rebuilding as a mechanism through which shared pasts, presents, and futures were articulated and substantiated. Chapter 1 examines architectural rebuilding as an ideological virtue. In particular, it looks to evidence from Roman and late antique histories, coins, and inscribed statue bases to chart the place and shape of architectural rebuilding (in comparison with and juxtaposition to new construction projects) within the broader commemorative landscape of honor and virtue in cities across the Mediterranean.

In every human relationship there is a tension, or perhaps better say a dynamic, between what is and what is desired by the parties involved, and in this the relations between medieval kings and the upper nobility were no different. When these factors coincided, the relationship tended to work well; when they did not, it could break down. To understand how this relationship played out between medieval English kings and their nobilities, we first need to understand how the structure of that relationship evolved. We can then examine how it manifested itself in areas such as the king’s role in maintaining the nobility, in service and cooperation between kings and his nobles, the interplay of ideas of wealth and power, favouritism, political instability and in some cases the removal of monarchs.

This chapter examines how the head of the Safavid order, originally a Sufi master, came to acquire the mantle of kingship. Using sociolinguistics to analyze the political language, the chapter explores how the Safavid leader maintained his ties with the Qizilbash tribal chiefs. Their power dynamic was underpinned by a set of moral codes, with the concept of shukr al-niʿma (obligation of gratitude) being central. The chiefs viewed their loyalty as a debt owed to the Safavid leader, who provided them with both material and spiritual benefits.

By tracing the origin and evolution of the Safavid order, the book offers fresh insights into how religious and sociopolitical forces merged to create a powerful Shiʿi empire. Iran remains the only Shiʿi nation in the world today. Ideal for readers interested in Middle Eastern history, religious studies, and political thought, Mantle of the Sufi Kings is essential for anyone seeking to understand the complex roots of Iran’s identity.

‘Mayors’ and village chiefs figure prominently in the iconographic and administrative record of ancient Egypt as key representatives of the pharaonic authority. Moreover, there also existed other local actors (wealthy peasants, ‘great ones’, etc.) whose occasional appearance in the written and archaeological record points to the existence of paths of accumulation of wealth and power that crystallised in the emergence of potential local leaders who owed little (or nothing) to the state in order to enhance their social role. The aim of this contribution is to explore how mayors and informal leaders ‘built’ their prominent local position in ancient Egypt, how it changed over time (especially in periods of political turmoil) and how they mobilised their contacts, family networks, wealth and official duties in order to consolidate and transmit their privileged position to the next generations. Inscriptions from Elkab, Akhmim and elsewhere, references in administrative texts and archaeological evidence (houses, etc.) related to a ‘middle class’ provide crucial clues about these themes.

Chapter 3 tests the book’s theory in Brazilian mayoral elections, drawing on evidence from fieldwork, secondary sources, and administrative data. Consistent with theoretical expectations for a setting with wide scope and low capacity, Brazilian incumbents suffer from a large incumbency disadvantage. While fiscal institutions structurally condition incumbent capacity and generate persistent levels of incumbency bias, exogenous shocks to capacity lead to changes in incumbency bias over time and across subnational units. This chapter illustrates that changes in fiscal transfers lead to variations in incumbency bias. It also exploits Brazil’s Fiscal Responsibility Law of 2000 as a natural experiment to determine how institutional shocks shape capacity. Using a differences-in-differences design,it demonstrates that incumbency disadvantage only emerged in municipalities running deficits – where the law was binding. This appears to reflect changes in public goods spending rather than in personnel spending – a proxy for patronage. The chapter also establishes that term limits increase incumbency disadvantage by attenuating performance voting and increasing costs of ruling.

Chapter 5 examines incumbency bias in settings where incumbents have high capacity: Argentina and Brazil. Though governors wield high levels of responsibility, they do so with far less severe fiscal restrictions than Brazilian mayors. In both cases, revenue flows are fairly stable and fund a high proportion of spending. At the same time, Argentine governors reportedly often win elections by disbursing patronage and buying votes, making them a least likely case for my theory. However, the analysis indicates that in both cases, spending on public goods is just as effective as spending on personnel for building an incumbency advantage. The contrast between Brazil and Argentina also helps examine the theory’s predictions regarding how party organizations affect the type of incumbency bias. While strong yet nonprogrammatic parties allow parties and candidates to benefit from incumbency advantage in Argentina, high levels of personalism restrict Brazilian candidates’ incumbency advantage. Lastly, the chapter shows that in Argentina public goods spending has a stronger effect on incumbency bias that proxies for patronage and clientelism.

Chapter 6 investigates a setting with a narrow policy scope and low expectations. Unlike their Brazilian counterparts, Chilean mayors are not expected to implement important policies; the national government controls most public goods provision. Consistent with the book’s theory regarding settings with low expectations, mayors in Chile enjoy an incumbency advantage. The chapter also establishes that the ayors’ ability to obtain a return from holding office hinges on fiscal transfers and public goods spending. Chile also offers a natural experiment for examining theoretical expectations about the sources of personal versus partisan incumbency bias. During the most recent electoral cycle, some mayors were subject to term limits, while others were allowed to seek reelection. The chapter analyzes the impact of this institutional change using a differences-in-differences design. The results suggest that Chilean mayors’ incumbency advantage is strictly personal, as the theory predicts for settings with personalistic parties.

From this chapter, the discussion moves to Aristides’ lyric reception by focusing on his self-fashioning as a superior and divinely inspired speaker. Besides pointing to his knowledge of a super-elite genre, lyric shaped, and was shaped by, Aristides’ self-presentation agenda. Through a close reading of cornerstone texts of Aristidean self-fashioning (e.g. Platonic Orations, To Sarapis, Sacred Tales), this chapter offers the first comprehensive discussion of Pindar as the perfect lyric counterpart to Aristides’ superior persona. It reveals the role of epinician values and Pindaric metapoetics in Aristides’ negotiation of his rivalry with Plato and with poets of hymns, Pindar included. It also shows how discourses of divine inspiration and patronage fed into his self-positioning in relation to imperial power. Far from engaging only with Pindar, however, Aristides’ self-fashioning also built on other, very different lyric models, if only to reject their voices or to turn them on their heads so that they could fit his exceptional self-portrait.

This chapter surveys the workings of the British Board of Longitude in the period from the mid-1770s, which saw expenditure and bureaucracy increase. The Longitude Act of 1774 cut rewards and tightened the criteria for success. Managed through a permanent secretary, the Board more resembled an office of state, while personal and patronage relations still played vital roles in its conduct. Both Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne and Joseph Banks exploited the Board to further their own interests in policy and organisation in projects including management of the Nautical Almanac and its computers, supply of instruments to survey voyages, and trials of new kinds of optical glass. The chapter explains how Maskelyne used the Board to extend networks centred on the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, while Banks used his position as a Commissioner of Longitude to mend relations with the Admiralty and extend patronage. Although there were major tensions and conflicts with Maskelyne, Banks was able effectively to make the Board of Longitude an integral component of his system of public administration over the sciences.

Papal patronage has often been limited to the question of whether this or that pope loved art. Yet, the pontiff was only one of several actors involved in the realization of artistic projects symbolizing the Church’s cultural, religious, and political power. Papal patronage, in the sense of conflating the roles of initiator, commissioner, and financial backer, only came into its own after 800. At the same time, a long-lasting debate, rooted in the Classical discourse on luxuria and magnificentia, focused on the legitimacy of spending Church money on material beauty. This was resolved around 1500 when papal patronage became framed as magnificentia and charity, in line with the concept of “evergetism,” or collective service to society. This led to an active papal policy to use the arts, in conjunction with Counter Reformation visual propaganda, to strengthen the Faith, with an important impact on artistic developments primarily during the early modern period.

This chapter evinces that the engagement of Spanish imperial officials with distant societies utterly foreign to them was only possible thanks to the clever use of their networks of patronage. Patrons, clients, and brokers played a vital role in shaping the officials’ activities. By looking at some of these networks from an imperial perspective, new light is shed on how the culture of bounty and clientelism, which was based on personal and local linkages, adapted to the global dynamics and new geographies, thus facilitating the government of the empire, even in regions thousands of miles away from the core of those networks. Furthermore, the chapter shows that royal service was a familial endeavor, including, of course, the wives. Although often contradictory, the networks, goals, and means of the officials’ kin and those of the monarchy were interwoven and became almost indistinguishable.

Chapter 4 looks at the Patriarch Lorenzo Priuli’s inspections of the parishes of Venice in the 1590s. The documentary evidence shows that this visitation actively encouraged the commissioning of ever more devotional artworks for the city’s churches. It also gave resolute institutional backing to the parish confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament. A variety of sources show that Priuli’s orders were frequently carried out swiftly by these Scuole, leading to radical transformations to the churches of Venice.