The question of Nietzsche's use of political theory has a long and vexed history. The contributors of this book re-situate debates around the notion of difference, in relation to historical and scholarly concerns, but with a view to the current political context. Given that today we are faced with a host of political challenges of domination and resistance, the question raised in this volume is how Nietzsche helps us to think through and to address some of the problems. The authors also discuss how his writings complicate our desire for swift solutions to seemingly intractable problems: how to resist slavishness in thought and action, how to maintain hard-won civil liberties and rights in the face of encroaching hegemonic discourses, practices and forces, or how to counteract global environmental degradation, in short, how to oppose 'totalitarian' movements of homogenization, universalization, equalization, and instead to affirm, both politically and ontologically, a culture of difference.

After St. Peter's, S. Giovanni in Laterano and S. Maria Maggiore were the most important collegiate churches in Rome. Among their clergy in the 14th century were canons regular whose descent from usually prominent Roman families has been largely uninvestigated up till now. Using the prosopographic method (i.e. collating all available information on a group of persons) it is possible to reconstruct important elements of the social, cultural and economic environment of these priests. This in its turn yields new insights on the higher Roman clergy in the Middle Ages.

The Colonnas were among the most prominent families in medieval Rome. Between 1278 and 1348 three members of the College of Cardinals came from within their ranks, thus giving them a preeminent position at the curia, the Papal court. The author shows how such a family cardinal could make use of the prebend market to provide his relatives, the members of his household (the so-called familiares) and the further clientA]le of his family with sources of income from the Church. The study also extends to cover the 30 years up to the outbreak of the schism in 1378, showing how the Colonnas contrived to offset the loss of an intermediary between themselves and the curia.