Scots and Italy as seen through <i>Alba amicorum</i>, 1540s–1720s Part 2
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Part 2 of this article continues its investigation into the relationships between Scots and Italy, as seen through books of friendship, by considering additional socioprofessional categories beyond the academic and military worlds. Among the political activists considered is David Graham of Fintry, a Marian and member of the Catholic party, whose album is studied in great depth. It is a key document for our further knowledge of his activities as a courier and intelligencer for Scottish Catholic interests in Europe and adds to the scholarly understanding of his political involvement in the Counter-Reformation. More broadly speaking, friendship albums shed light on Scottish activists’ politico-religious networking processes and their connections with middle-ranking and regional intermediaries, at times in key locations or seats of power. As with the military officers studied in Part 1, it transpires from these contacts that there were lighter moments for artistic and cultural activities or edification. In correlation, the few ecclesiastical contributions studied in this paper cast light on a fluid matrix of information and networks and highlight their potential influences, both negative and positive. Indeed, there were risks involved in being in contact with dubious characters, whereas tapping into a rich circle of contacts with courtiers could present opportunities and patronage. For Scottish scientists, the genre of alba amicorum is particularly important, not so much to highlight their side activities as to lay the foundations for their subsequent careers and establish the potential links and backgrounds that underscore their subsequent scientific tasks, achievements, and modus operandi in their professional roles.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".