Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.

"In the nineteenth century a new type of mystic emerged in Catholic Europe. While cases of stigmatisation had been reported since the thirteenth century, this era witnessed the development of the 'stigmatic': young women who attracted widespread interest thanks to the appearance of physical stigmata. To understand the popularity of these stigmatics we need to regard them as the 'saints' and religious 'celebrities' of their time. With their 'miraculous' bodies, they fit contemporary popular ideas (if not necessarily those of the Church) of what sanctity was. As knowledge about them spread via modern media and their fame became marketable, they developed into religious 'celebrities'"--

This major study provides the first comprehensive assessment of an important European institution, the Stadholderate of the Dutch Republic. Professor Rowen looks at the career of each Prince of Orange in turn, from William I ('The Silent'), to the last and saddest, William V, examining their roles as Stadholder and interweaving their personal lives and characters with the development of the institution. Without engaging in psycho-history, Rowen treats the individual personality of each Stadholder as a significant factor, and shows how the Stadholderate contributed to a distinctive political and constitutional coloration that rendered the United Provinces unique in Europe. The work assesses the contribution of the Stadholderate to the rise and subsequent fall of the Dutch Republic as one of the great powers of early modern Europe, and analyses each prince within his contemporary context, avoiding the highly present-minded approach of many of the Republic's subsequent historians. The Princes of Orange is thus neither a work of hagiography, glorifying the Dutch royal house, nor a piece of destructive iconoclasm, but an authoritative account of a most unusual political, dynastic and diplomatic institution.