bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Coronation Oath of 1308: The Background of ‘Les leys et les custumes’
Authors: Hoyt Robert S.
Published: August 2016

Few problems in medieval constitutional history, and perhaps none in English constitutional history, have occasioned more irreconcilably different interpretations than the problem of the meaning and significance of the coronation oath of 1308. Divergent interpretations began in the seventeenth century, and they have continued to provide the substance of an interesting historiographical problem ever since. It is doubtful whether complete agreement on all of the specific questions raised by the oath will ever be reached, but at the present stage of debate there are still questions which have neither been raised nor answered. The purpose of this paper is to raise one of these questions and, by providing an answer, to narrow further the limits within which there is still disagreement concerning the oath which Edward II swore at his coronation.
Hisperic Latin: ‘Luxuriant Culture-Fungus of Decay’
Authors: Herren Michael
Published: August 2016

The pejorative phrase of the title, penned by Eóin MacNeill in his article ‘Beginnings of Latin Culture in Ireland’ has clung tenaciously to the study of Hisperic texts. Indeed, it was repeated some twenty-odd years later by Bieler in his ‘Hibernian Latin’. However, the belief that Hisperica Famina and the texts related to them — the Lorica of Laidcenn, the Rubisca (possibly by Máeldub of Malmesbury), the St. Omer Hymn, some of the writings of Aldhelm, and a few other works — are the products of a literary decadence rests squarely on the assumption that they spring from southwestern Britain, especially Wales, around the middle of the sixth century; to cite MacNeill:

The destruction of the cities of Britain and the exposure of the eastern and southern regions of the island to Germanic raiders must have caused a kind of congestion of such academic worthies in the western parts where Irish aggression had ceased and where the Britons, under new tyranni, had learned to defend themselves or, like Coroticus, had become aggressors. Gildas looks back to a lengthy period of security and degeneracy under these conditions. There, and not in Ireland of that time, we may recognise the fitting environment of the decadent Latin culture exemplified in the Hisperica Famina.
The Architect's Compass in Creation Miniatures of the Later Middle Ages
Authors: Friedman John Block
Published: August 2016

It has long been believed that pictures of the creator marking out the universe with a compass, common in late-medieval manuscripts, were inspired by Wisdom 11.21 which says of God: ‘Omnia in mensura, et numero, et pondere disposuisti.’ Yet anyone who examines the forty-odd creation scenes with compass extant in psalters,horae, picture Bibles and other manuscript books will see quite clearly that only seven of these pictures illustrate literally the processes of weighing with scales, measuring, and numbering, as mentioned in the Book of Wisdom. The majority simply show God holding a compass with his handiwork before him, and seem to have been inspired by the opening chapters of Genesis — in which there is no compass — or by Proverbs 8.27, where God sets not a compass but a circle upon the face of the deep.
Hippocrates Latinus: Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the Latin Middle Ages (VII)
Authors: Kibre Pearl
Published: August 2016

The Repertorium of Hippocratic Latin Writings in the Middle Ages begun in Traditio 31 (1975) 99–125, and continued annually in the issues following, here resumes with XLV, Prognostica or Liber prognosticorum, as it was entitled in the Latin manuscripts.

Acknowledgment and thanks should here be accorded for the continued help of Mlle Marthe Dulong on Paris manuscripts and for the courtesy and assistance of librarians and conservators of manuscripts.
‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ and the Sins of the Flesh
Authors: Scattergood V. J.
Published: August 2016

Though the Green Knight describes his challenge before Arthur's court as ‘a Crystemas gomen’ (283), and though some scholars have responded to this and other references in the poem and treated it as an entertainment or as essentially about games, most modern studies of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight concentrate on the difficult questions of moral behaviour which the poem raises. Though it is certainly full of violent movement and physical action, though it sets forth a world of arresting concrete specificity and colourful variety, the poem's most crucial moment (if it can be said to have one) occurs in the early morning quiet of the hero's bed-chamber when Gawain accepts the green girdle and agrees to ‘lelly layne’ (1863) it from Bertilak. It is a point at which the hero makes a clear moral decision to drop his skilful verbal defence against the Lady's propositions and to allow himself to be acted upon: ‘he Jmlged with hir ‘repe …] ooled hir to speke … he granted … hym gafe with a goud wylle …] oe leude hym acordez’ (1859-63). Most scholars agree with Gawain's own subsequent judgment that his moral behaviour was, to a greater or lesser degree, ‘fawty and falce’ (2382); but how his moral faultiness is to be measured and assessed, and how in conceptual terms it is to be analysed and described, are more difficult questions.
Traditional Exegesis and the Question of Guilt in the Old English ‘Genesis B’
Authors: Burchmore Susan
Published: August 2016

For many years, scholars felt that the unusual elements in Genesis B exonerated Adam and Eve by portraying them as innocent victims of a diabolical deception. In particular, the tempter's apparent disguise as an angel, Eve's vision of heaven, and the consistent emphasis throughout the temptation scene on Adam's and Eve's wholehearted loyalty to God made it difficult to confirm their guilt or to identify their sin. For some time, therefore, Genesis B's sympathetic portrayal of the first parents was accepted as one of the poem's strange unorthodoxies, yet another puzzle in a maze of puzzles. However, the more recent studies of the poem have shown its treatment of guilt to be both less unorthodox and, at the same time, more complex than was earlier suspected. Rosemary Woolf, for example, suggests that Eve was motivated, not by innocent loyalty, but by pride ‘directed towards emulation and envy of Adam’; that she succumbed to the tempter's persuasions because she ‘listened with a willful credulity springing from nascent vanity’; and that the poet's insistence upon Eve's ‘wacra hyge’ and good intentions was an apology necessary to mitigate the impression of Eve as a nagging wife. For her, Genesis B thus portrays a variation on Genesis 3.5, which in familiar commentary was sometimes interpreted to stress Eve's desire to be like Adam.
Abbot Suger and the Nuns of Argenteuil
Authors: Waldman Thomas G.
Published: August 2016

In the early spring of 1129, the priory of Notre-Dame at Argenteuil, a house for women some thirteen kilometers northwest of Paris on the Seine, was ‘restored’ to the abbey of Saint-Denis. This restitution took place at a council held by the papal legate in France, Matthew, cardinal bishop of Albano, at the Parisian abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The nuns of Argenteuil, accused of scandalous living, were replaced by monks of Saint-Denis. Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis (1122–51) considered the recovery of Argenteuil one of his foremost achievements.
Olivi, Apocalyptic Expectation, and Visionary Experience
Authors: Burr David
Published: August 2016

If Peter John Olivi was given less than his due by previous generations of scholars, the present generation seems bent on making it up to him. Recent writers have identified him as a father of fourteenth-century nominalism, as a major architect of the dogma of papal infallibility, as a trail-blazer in economic thought, and as an astute reformer whose advice, if heeded, would have saved the church a good deal of subsequent trouble. In the process, Olivi's image has been substantially refurbished.
The Authorship of the ‘Northern Homily Cycle’: The Liturgical Affiliation of the Sunday Gospel Pericopes as a Test
Authors: Heffernan Thomas J.
Published: August 2016

In the north of England, as the thirteenth century was drawing to a close, an enterprising and pastorally zealous cleric was engaged in the composition of the most extensive preaching codex in the English language since Aelfric's Catholic Homilies. The text now known as the Northern Homily Cycle (hereafter NHC) was left untitled by an anonymous author who wrote in his native dialect and was well versed in the lore of the north country. He used a rhymed octosyllabic line throughout. His plan encompassed a free rendering of the Gospel pericope for the particular Sunday (the homilies are chiefly dominical), a complementary exegesis drawn from the Fathers, and an exemplum, reflecting a shrewd sense of his audience and the fashion of the time. In these exempla he revealed a catholic taste by selecting stories of saints and monks, stories from antiquity and the east, pieces of local Northumbrian folklore, legends of the Virgin, accounts of miraculous beasts, risqu6 fables, and child-like pious tales.
The Two Redactions of Michael Scot's ‘Liber introductorius’
Authors: Edwards Glenn M.
Published: August 2016

Michael Scot was a translator of Arabic treatises in the early thirteenth century who was credited by Roger Bacon with introducing parts of the Aristotelian corpus to the Latin West. He was associated with Emperor Frederick II and left a reputation as a wizard and necromancer that endured until the nineteenth century. In spite of this prominence, we know very few facts about his life. This lack of evidence did not deter nineteenth-century antiquarians from writing whole books about him, using conjecture to fill in what is otherwise lacking.
Fulgentius and His Sources
Authors: Baldwin Barry
Published: August 2016

Any late writer who quotes from an alleged Jokebook of Cornelius Tacitus is doomed to incur suspicion, and the culprit Fulgentius has duly met his fate. In the words of one distinguished scholar he was ‘something of a fraud; many of the learned titles he quotes he had certainly never read, many never even existed,’ whilst another characterises his work as ‘a curious mixture of genuine citation and cool forgery, none of it trustworthy without external confirmation.’ Both were writing on other matters, which enhances the need for a full consideration of Fulgentius‘ methods. The problem has been looked into before, but not in the wider context required. Thus, for easy instance, editors of Petronius still print the fragments of their author cited by Fulgentius without reflecting upon their authenticity. And devotees of that more famous fraud, the Historia Augusta, could profit more than they have done from a closer look at our man.
Figure, Character, and the Glorified Body in the Carolingian Eucharistic Controversy
Authors: Chazelle Celia
Published: August 2016

While certain of the faithful say that in the mystery of the body and blood of Christ, daily celebrated in the church, nothing takes place under a figure, under a veil, but it is performed with a naked manifestation of truth itself, others bear witness, however, that these elements are contained beneath the figure of a mystery, and that it is one thing which appears to the bodily sense but another which faith beholds. No small divergence is to be distinguished between them.
Le Commentaire inédit de saint Albert le Grand sur les Noms divins: Présentation et Aperçus de Théologie Trinitaire
Authors: Ruello Francis
Published: August 2016

Spécialement consacré à l'examen de quelques thèmes doctrinaux de théologie trinitaire que développe saint Albert dans son Commentaire des Noms divins de Denys le pseudo-Aréopagite, ce travail comprendra en fait deux parties. Parce qu'il s'agit, en effet, d'une pensée qui s'exprime dans un texte encore inédit, il a paru bon, en se bornant à l'essentiel, de présenter au lecteur l'inédit lui même: authenticité et date du commentaire, situation parmi les autres œuvres de l'auteur et parmi les commentaires dionysiens d'autres auteurs, tradition manuscrite, objet, méthode, importance, études auxquelles ce commentaire a donné lieu ou études qui s'y sont référées. Viendront ensuite l'exposé de la doctrine et la transcription des textes qui la fondent. Un vocabulaire dionysio-albertinien terminera cette analyse.
Plato's Eros and Dante's Amore
Authors: Mazzeo Joseph Anthony
Published: August 2016

Both Dante and Plato inherited from the past a complex of attitudes, legends and literature about love, and in both cases it was a special kind of love, love as an ennobling passion. Plato confronted the problem of so-called Dorian love, imported into cultured Attica from the Dorian regions of Greece where it had formed part of the ethos of a warrior class. It soon became a widespread practice, and in its most refined form it was conceived of as a passion which made the warrior brave and engendered civic as well as military virtues. The stories of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Cratinus and Aristodemus, the later versions of the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus, all testify to the military and civic heroism which was believed to emerge from this form of masculine affection.
Commodianus
Authors: Martin Von Josef
Published: August 2016

Rund fünfzig Jahre sind es her, dass in die bis dahin fast einhellige Meinung über die Lebenszeit und Heimat Commodians in Afrika des dritten Jahrhunderts durch die Veröffentlichungen Heinrich Brewers ein solch revolutionärer Einbruch geschah, dass trotz vereinzelter Einsprüche der von Brewer gegebene Zeitansatz im fünften Jahrhundert auf Grund einer nicht immer besonders kritischen Nachprüfung auch heute noch die meisten Anhänger zu haben scheint. So ist Karl Büchner 1951 in dem Bericht über Lateinische Literatur und Sprache in der Forschung seit 1937 der Meinung, feststellen zu können, dass Pierre Courcelle in einem auf Brewer fussenden Aufsatze gezeigt habe, Commodian habe im Carmen 805–822 seine Prophezeiung über die Endverfolgung unter Abänderung der Apokalypse nach Orosius und nach Salvian gestaltet; und auch auf dem zweiten patristischen Kongress in Oxford 1955 hatte ein ‘master theme’ die gleiche Tendenz, Commodians Lebenszeit im fünften Jahrhundert zu erweisen. Da scheint es mir an der Zeit, noch einmal eine Überprüfung des ganzen Materials zu unternehmen, um feststellen zu können, was sich nun wirklich über Commodian und seine Gedichte mit Sicherheit aussagen lässt.
Aelfric and the Early Medieval Homiliary
Authors: Smetana Cyril L.
Published: August 2016

‘… hit stod gefyrn awriten on Ledenbocum

peah pe pa laewdan men paet nyston.’

Aelfric,Lives of the Saints

The suggestion of a possible dependence of Aelfric'sCatholic Homilieson a medieval collection of patristic sermons is neither new nor startling. John Earle, writing in 1884, remarked that Aelfric had most probably used ‘some standard collection of homilies now lost’. Max Förster, commenting on Earle's suggestion that Aelfric's source may have been similar to the homiliary of Eusebius of Emesa, pointed out that theCatholic Homilieshave more in common with the Homiliary of Paul the Deacon as printed in Migne PL 95. Förster readily admitted that Aelfric may have used such a collection, but he contended that theCatholic Homiliesrepresented a translation from a number of sources. His own study of Aelfric's sources is based on this assumption. It is the purpose of this paper to show that while Aelfric may not have used the medieval homiliary as his sole source, the two volumes of hisCatholic Homiliesgive evidence of a very real dependence on the homiliary, and that almost all of his patristic sources can be traced to one or other version of a collection of homilies generally known as the Homiliary of Paul the Deacon.
The Manuscripts of Cassiodorus' ‘De anima’
Authors: Halporn James W.
Published: August 2016

In the preparation of a text-critical edition of the De anima of Cassiodorus, I have made and here offer to the public a list of the extant manuscripts known to me. These number approximately 160 and the oldest date from the ninth century. I hope shortly to publish the text and with it an adequate description and classification of the codices. Since it is too much to expect that my present list is without errors or omissions, I would be most grateful to any reader who might supply me with additional information.
Introduction to Christian Caucasian History II: States and Dynasties of the Formative Period
Authors: Toumanoff Cyril
Published: August 2016

Part One of thisIntroductionwas concerned with the historical background of Caucasian Society; it dealt, accordingly, in some detail with the genesis and structure of that society, more particularly of its creative minority, the nobility, and in especial the spearhead of the nobility, the group of the dynastic princes. That study investigated also the ethos of this important and restricted group, a caste in fact, and its juridical status: the sovereign rights of the Princes, who were, under the presidency of kings, the real rulers of Caucasia; their internationally recognized position of minor kings; the ethno-political self-sufficiency and self-determination of their States, of which Armenia and to a large extent also the other Caucasian countries were little more than federative unions; the dependence of the Princes on other and greater monarchs; and the superadding of feudalistic features, resulting from this dependence, to the fundamentally dynasticist régime of Caucasia. Here, in the present study, it is proposed to consider this group in the concrete: to examine it, that is, as so many individual historical-genealogical-geographical (and often also ethnic) units. The preponderant role of the Caucasian dynastic aristocracy in the history of the formative centuries made, especially in Armenia, of this history, and of that of the following centuries as well, largely the history of these princely houses. This fully justifies our interest in this particular aspect of the Caucasian social development.
The Earliest ‘Difiniciones' of the Order of Calatrava, 1304–1383
Authors: O'Callaghan Joseph F.
Published: August 2016

The major sources for an inquiry into the customs of the Spanish military Order of Calatrava are the difiniciones or statutes enacted in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The difiniciones were formulated by the Cistercian abbots of Morimond, or by their representatives, and, on two occasions, by the masters of Calatrava.

The legislative authority of the abbots of Morimond resulted from the incorporation of Calatrava into the Order of Citeaux in 1187. At that time, the Cistercian general chapter affiliated Calatrava with the abbey of Morimond. Henceforth, the abbots of this monastery possessed the right of visiting the knights and of regulating their observances. Oftentimes this right was delegated to the abbots of Spanish Cistercian monasteries affiliated with Morimond.
Joachimist Influences on the Idea of a Last World Emperor
Authors: Reeves Marjorie
Published: August 2016

The question of the dramatis personae in the last great act of history was a subject of perennial interest in the Middle Ages. Parts, both good and bad, had to be cast and it is not surprising that national hopes and rivalries frequently crept into the various attempts to assign these tremendous cosmic roles. Although both the pessimistic expectation of a mounting crescendo of evil and the hope of a millennium had existed in Christian thought since its beginning, it was the Joachimist structure of history which most clearly brought together the final crisis of evil and the final blessedness in a last great act which was yet within history, separated from eternity by the Second Advent. The concept of an age of blessedness had three strands in it: first, the idea of the millennium, derived from the Apocalypse (20.1–3), in which Satan is bound for a thousand years; secondly, the concept of a Sabbath Age, symbolized in the Seventh Day of Creation when God rested from His labors; thirdly, the Trinitarian interpretation of history, finally worked out by Joachim, in which history was expected to culminate in the Third Age of the Holy Spirit. The first two ideas did not necessarily lead to the expectation of a last age of blessedness within time: the millennium was frequently interpreted as covering the whole period between the First and Second Advents, or again, as constituting a rule of Christ and His Saints beyond history; the Sabbath Age could be seen as a Sabbath beyond the Second Advent and Last Judgment and therefore also beyond history. It was only when these two concepts became linked with the Trinitarian view of history that they clearly symbolized a crowning age of history, set in the future and therefore not yet attained, whilst unmistakably within the time process, preceding the winding-up of history in the Second Advent and Last Judgment. The full force of Joachim's concept of the Third Age was rarely grasped, appearing usually in a much-debased form, but the program of Last Things, as worked out by Joachites of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, profoundly influenced the form which these expectations took in the later Middle Ages and, indeed, right down to the end of the sixteenth century.
Canonical Implications of Richard III's Plan to Marry His Niece
Authors: Kelly H. A.
Published: August 2016

One of the many charges leveled against Richard III after his downfall was that of attempted or intended incest with his niece Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of his brother Edward IV. Richard's opponents had proposed a match between Elizabeth and Henry Tudor (who as Henry VII eventually married her); and, in order to circumvent this plot, so the rumor went, Richard desired to marry her himself, once his own wife (Anne Neville) was out of the way. Queen Anne did in fact die in March of 1485, and whatever his intentions had been, Richard soon felt constrained to put an end to the speculation by denouncing it as a slander.
On the Name of Urban II
Authors: Claxton James H.
Published: August 2016

When, on election to the papacy in 1088, Odo of Ostia selected the name Urban II, he did so in acknowlegment of the clerical reforms then attributed to the obscure Urban I (†. 230). A careful investigation would clearly indicate the association — albeit on spurious grounds — of the memory of this ancient pope with clerical reform and the canons regular during the eleventh century. And the vigorous role of Odo-Urban as patron and reformer of the canons regular is readily documented. However, while they probably are apparent to certain specialists, no historian seems to have indicated the implications of Urban II's name in a detailed and explicit fashion.
The English and Byzantium: A Study of Their Role in the Byzantine Army in the Later Eleventh Century.
Authors: Shepard Jonathan
Published: August 2016

The role of the English mercenaries in the Byzantine army has long been under dispute. A. A. Vasiliev, writing in 1937, gave a very full summary of what was known at that time, and tended to stress their importance to Byzantium in the later eleventh century. However, his article came under brief but formidable attack from the German scholar, F. Dölger, who published a review of Vasiliev's work in 1938. A year later, Dölger's arguments were repeated and amplified by S. Blöndal. Since then, the dispute has hung fire, and a recent historian of the Byzantine army, A. Hohlweg, was justified when, in 1965, he wrote of the problem of the role of the English as umstritten — disputed. What follows is an attempt to reassess the problem and my conclusion is akin to Vasiliev's: there was a significant migration of Anglo-Saxons to the Byzantine Empire around 1080, and in the early years of Alexius Comnenus‘ reign. Further, there is evidence of diplomatic contact between the Empire and the rulers of England, and groups of Anglo-Saxons may have continued to migrate eastward later than has previously been thought. But the value of the English was probably greatest in the early years of Alexius Comnenus’ reign, and may even be compared with that of the Russians who had come to the rescue of the emperor Basil II nearly a hundred years earlier, in about 988.
Latin Manuscript Pontificals and Benedictionals in England and Wales
Authors: Brückmann J.
Published: August 2016

The importance of the manuscript pontificals for the study of the medieval evolution of the Latin liturgy needs no reaffirmation here. The state of the published descriptions and classifications of these manuscripts, however, is not commensurate in all cases with what their importance would lead one to expect.

Ehrensberger has provided a full description of the manuscript pontificasl preserved in the Vatican Library; although this is no longer recent, it is invaluable in the absence of a complete catalogue of the Vatican manuscripts. The monumental work of Leroquais describes in detail the manuscript pontificals extant in the public libraries in France; as most of the pontificals in France appear to be in public libraries, this work is fairly comprehensive in its coverage. Dom Anselm Strittmatter has listed and classified the liturgical manuscripts preserved in the United States. For pontificals in other countries, however, there exist no such reference works. Professor Richard Kay of the University of Kansas is currently compiling a handlist in which all the manuscript pontificals extant throughout the world will be cited and briefly identified, but not fully described. Until this appears, anyone working on pontificals or on ordines normally included in pontificals will quite likely have to work systematically through innumerable catalogues of manuscript collections to cover every library, city by city, for a frequently minimal return.
The Date and Purpose of Vegetius' ‘De re militari’
Authors: Goffart Walter
Published: August 2016

The treatiseDe re militariby Flavius Vegetius Renatus was the bible of warfare throughout the Middle Ages — the soldier's equivalent of the Rule of St. Benedict. The surviving manuscripts exceed 140; there were five separate translations into French within the century following 1284, many more into other languages, and nine incunabula. In contrast to Byzantium, where a succession of authors since Urbicius (ca.500) strove to keep military literature up to date, the Latin civilization of the West was content with a single book. Vegetius, who explicitly omitted cavalry from his exposition, became the philosopher-schoolmaster of Western chivalry. Hrabanus Maurus, John of Salisbury, and Egidius Colonna copied large extracts into works of their own, and so did Machiavelli. Vegetius is among the authors whose popularity in the Renaissance more than equalled their medieval fame. The testimonials continued to mount up through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an epoch that was perhaps the highest point of Vegetius‘ influence, and reached even to the Napoleonic age, when Marshall de Ligne (best remembered for a witticism about the Congress of Vienna) pronounced a memorable encomium: ‘A god, says Vegetius, inspired the legion, and I say that a god inspired Vegetius. It is he who by his seven orders of battle made us understand the warfare of the Ancients and taught the greatest generals of our time to imitate them.’ What other book without literary distinction was as prized in the Age of Enlightenment as it had been by Bede?
Monasticism, Lordship, and Society in the Twelfth-century Hesbaye: Five Documents on the Foundation of the Cluniac Priory of Bertrée
Authors: Constable Giles
Published: August 2016

The present town of Bertrée lies about mid-way between Liège and Louvain on the undulating plateau of Hannut, toward the center of the ancient region of the Hesbaye, where the rich soil, temperate climate, and relative flatness have attracted settlers since the earliest times. It lies south of the Roman road (later known as the chaussée Brunehaut) between Boulogne and Cologne and is surrounded by the remains of Roman and Gallo-Roman habitations, tombs, and cemeteries. Nearby there were roads to Nivelles and Bavay. In the Middle Ages it belonged both politically and ecclesiastically to the province of Liège, though it was situated almost in an enclave between the counties of Louvain to the north and west, Looz to the north and east, and Namur to the south and west. Nothing specific is known about its history, however, before Walter of Trognée established a priory there in 1124.
Hippocrates Latinus Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the Latin Middle Ages (III)
Authors: Kibre Pearl
Published: August 2016

The pages that follow continue the ‘Repertorium’ begun inTraditio31 (1975) 99–126, and continued with the translations of theLiber AphorismoruminTraditio32 (1976) 257–292. Included in this issue are the commentaries on theLiber Aphorismorum, arranged in the case of those that are anonymous, by the first principal word of the incipit of the commentary; and where the commentator is named, alphabetically by the first name of the commentator. In each instance, the commentator will be identified briefly, where possible, and provided with bibliographical references for further information. Then follow the manuscripts, withincipitanddesinitof the text, where applicable, and of the commentary.
Remigian Commentaries on the ‘Consolation of Philosophy’ and Their Sources
Authors: Bolton Diane K.
Published: August 2016

The Consolation of Philosophy may have owed its popularity to its theme of the search for the summum bonum, the eternal verity beyond the vicissitudes of everyday life, a theme particularly appealing in a period of upheaval and danger such as the tenth and eleventh centuries. But it was much more than a work of conventional piety or Christian philosophy. It was essentially a classical work and its collection of verses in different metres, its mythological allusions and Neoplatonic cosmology, as well as its more Christian discussions of fate and free will, made it a key work in the intellectual ferment of the time. But it was a difficult work, requiring a critical apparatus of elucidation and explanation before its riches could be fully appreciated. This apparatus, in the form of glosses and scholia, necessarily had to draw upon a variety of sources.
Witelo's Recension of Euclid's ‘De visu’
Authors: Theisen Wilfred
Published: August 2016

Witelo, the thirteenth-century author of an extensive treatise on optics entitled Perspectiva, was thoroughly acquainted with most of the optical works available in the Latin West at that time. Among the works he studied was Euclid's Optica (in a Latin translation under the title De visu). It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that in fact Witelo had produced an earlier recension of Euclid's treatise, a work not generally attributed to him. Although this earlier investigation into optics is also entitled Perspectiva, to avoid confusion it will be referred to here as the Recension. This Recension is found in the following manuscripts:

Florence, Bibl. Riccardiana, MS 885 (s. xiv) fols. 132r–143v (Props. 1–15, 18, 17–23, 26–28, 16).

Milan, Bibl. Ambrosiana, MS R. 47 sup. (s. xiii) fols. 133r–148r (Props. 1–23, 26–61).

Paris, Bibl. Nat., MS lat. 7366 (s. xiv) fols. 90v–97v (Props. 1–23, 26–34).

Paris, Bibl. Nat., MS lat. 10252 (a.d. 1476) fols. 159 (154)v–172 (167)r (Props. 1–23, 26–30).

Toruń, Ksiąžnica, Miejska im. Kopernika, MS Gymnasialbibl. R.4°.2 (s. xiv) pp. 3–30 (Props. 1–23, 26–61).

Vatican, Bibl. Apost. Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 3102 (s. xiv) fols. 37v–50r (Props. 1–23, 26–61).

Vienna, Österr. Nat. Bibl. MS 5303 (s. xv–xvi) fols. 32r–41v (Props. 1–23, 26–30).
Sacred Calligraphy: The Chi Rho Page in the Book of Kells
Authors: Lewis Suzanne
Published: August 2016

The Book of Kells was probably made at the monastery of Iona at the end of the eighth century. Sometime between 807 and 814, in the wake of a series of devastating raids on the island sanctuary, ‘the giant Gospel of Columkille, chief relic of the Western world,’ was taken to the new headquarters of the Columban community at Kells. Intended as a large liturgical Gospel codex to be displayed on an altar, the Book of Kells was perhaps the last and most ambitious production undertaken by this great Hiberno-Saxon scriptorium. Its sumptuous ornamentation and magisterial format suggest that the manuscript may have been initiated but not finished in time to celebrate the second centenary of St. Columba's death in 797.
The Military Orders in the Crusading Proposals of the Late-Thirteenth and Early-Fourteenth Centuries
Authors: Forey A. J.
Published: August 2016

The most outstanding event in the history of the military orders at the end of the thirteenth and start of the fourteenth centuries was, of course, the dissolution of the Temple. This was not, however, an isolated happening. Although the accusations which led to the abolition of that order had been publicly voiced only shortly before the Templars‘ arrest, the proceedings against the Temple took place at a time when criticism of the military orders in general was mounting, and this growth of hostile opinion no doubt facilitated Philip IV's attack on the Templars. Ever since their foundation the military orders had been subjected to some criticism, but much early censure had been of a kind which might be directed against any religious establishment, especially by members of the secular clergy who found that their authority and resources were being impaired by the privileges which the military orders and other religious institutions enjoyed: it was not primarily concerned with the orders’ contribution to the struggle against the infidel. But as the fortunes of the crusading states declined, the military orders became increasingly criticised for their inadequacies as defenders of Christendom. Defeat in the Holy Land had to be explained by faults on the Christian side rather than in terms of Muslim superiority, and the military orders were an obvious target for attack. The authors of the numerous crusading proposals which were put forward in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries were inevitably influenced by this growing criticism, and many crusading plans therefore included suggestions concerning the military orders. Those who drew up proposals did not themselves provide a reasoned or detailed account of the orders' faults or attempt to judge to what extent these failings contributed to Christian defeats, but the criticisms on which they based their plans were clearly not altogether groundless: although some strictures were ill-informed or excessive, the policies which the orders themselves pursued certainly provided a starting-point for the growth of hostile opinion. Yet some writers did not seek merely to remedy existing defects in the orders; they sought also to discuss what the role of the military order should be in the struggle against the infidel, and thus viewed the subject in a rather wider context.
Hippocrates Latinus: Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the Latin Middle Ages (VI)
Authors: Kibre Pearl
Published: August 2016

The Repertorium of Hippocratic Latin texts in the Middle Ages, begun inTraditio31 (1975) 99–126 and continued in the issues following, here resumes with a number of tracts clearly labelled as by Hippocrates in medieval Latin manuscripts. In general, these texts contain traditional or characteristic features of Hippocratic medical theory and practice, particularly the emphasis upon the relation of climate and seasons to health, upon the four humors and the importance of maintaining a harmonious relation between food and exercise. They also, especially in theOath(Iusiurandum) and theLaw(Lex), reveal the importance placed on ethics and the moral and correct professional conduct of the physician. The fact that most of these treatises were available in the Latin West before the close of the fourteenth century should serve to modify traditional views regarding the lack of direct knowledge of Hippocrates before the so-called Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Antichrist, Simon Magus, and Dante's ‘Inferno’ XIX
Authors: Emmerson Richard Kenneth , Herzman Ronald B.
Published: August 2016

Luca Signorelli's frescoes portraying the last days and the end of the world which decorate the Cappella di San Brizio in Orvieto Cathedral are often described as reflecting Dante'sCommediaor as having a Dantesque quality. Commissioned in 1500 to complete the decoration of the cathedral begun by Fra Angelico half a century before, Signorelli painted — along with such scenes traditionally associated with the Last Judgment as the Resurrection of the Dead, the Damned in Hell, and the Saved in Paradise — two frescoes which portray the deeds of Antichrist and the signs of the end. Together with his illustrations from Dante'sPurgatorio, also at Orvieto, these frescoes depict the key events of Christian eschatology. The entire cycle reflects, in other words, the artist's awareness of eschatology as encompassing not only the fortune of the soul after death, but also the events which occur in the last days of the earth's history, a view of eschatology which is both personal and cosmic. It is certainly appropriate to see Dante's influence upon the artist's representation of such scenes as the ‘anti-Inferno’ and the suffering of the damned in hell. Although the subject matter need not have been drawn exclusively from Dante, a knowledge of theCommediahelps one to understand these frescoes better. Both Dante and Signorelli reflect a concern with the last events which is typical of their times, and along with other artists and poets, they share a common background in Christian eschatology. In some respects, therefore, their individual achievements are analogous, so that an understanding of the frescoes can also help us to understand theCommedia, even though the painter worked a century and a half after the poet. Particularly, Signorelli's ‘Fatti dell’ Anticristo,’ a portrayal both of the traditional Christian beliefs concerning the great deceiver of the last days and of late medieval apocalypticism, provides insights into Dante's description of the contemporary church inInferno19 (Fig. 1). The artist and the poet each draw upon long-established Christian iconography and symbolism to infuse their work with an apocalyptic expectancy which, by placing contemporary scenes in a cosmic perspective, underscores its religious significance and ultimate consequence.
Poetry and Equity: Aristotle's Defense of Fiction
Authors: Eden Kathy
Published: August 2016

Reading the Poetics in light of Aristotle's most complete statements of equity in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Rhetoric, this essay undertakes to demonstrate how and why Aristotle develops an art of poetry within the context of a science of ethics. It seeks to show, that is, how in direct response to Plato's epistemological and ethical objections to tragedy, Aristotle's argument for the preservation of the literary arts follows from a fundamental conviction that poetry shares not only its object of inquiry but also its method of inquiry with the ethical and legal sciences. Like moral philosophy or ethics, tragedy investigates human action. To this end, it relies on the mechanism of ‘fiction’ (πoíησις), which clearly emerges in the course of the Poetics as the literary counterpart to ‘equity’ in the disciplines of ethics and law. As logical constructs, both fiction and equity are designed to qualify ethical action by negotiating between universal propositions — the general ethical presuppositions of the poet's audience or the advocate's legal code — and particular circumstances — the details of the plot or the events of the individual legal case.
The Venerable Bede's Knowledge of Greek
Authors: Lynch Kevin M.
Published: August 2016

Unlike today, when he is mostly remembered for his historical work, the Venerable Bede's renown in the Middle Ages was founded on his biblical exegesis. One reason that his comments on the Bible had such prominence was that Bede referred to both the Latin and Greek texts, and in western Europe outside of Italy during the eighth century; the ability to read Greek marked one as practically unique. Two eighth-century lives remark on Bede's Greek. In the Brevis commemoratio de Venerabili Beda, probably written by a disciple named Antonius, we learn that Bede studied both Latin and Greek: ‘Et cum in Latina erudiretur lingua, Graecae quoque peritiam non mediocriter percepit.’ Also, in an anonymous life, we read: ‘Cumque Latinae aeque ut vernaculae linguae in qua natus est percepisset notitiam, Graecae quoque non parva ex parte attigit scientiam.’ This belief, that Bede was able to read Greek, was uncritically accepted for centuries.
Rolle and the Pattern of Tracts in ‘The Pore Caitif’
Authors: Brady M. Teresa
Published: August 2016

The anonymous compiler of the fourteenth-century Middle English treatise known as The Pore Caitif made extensive use of three works of Richard Rolle. His borrowings are from Emendatio vitae, The Form of Living, and The Commentary on the Canticles, and appear in eight tracts of a special group of ten pieces he calls ‘summe short sentencis exciting men to heuenli desiir’ (fol. 1v). Passages from Rolle's Form of Living were used in PC, ‘Desiir of Ihesu,’ ‘Of Mekenes,’ and ‘Of Actif Liif and Comtemplatif Liif.’ Sections from Emendatio vitae appear in PC, ‘Of Vertuous Pacience,’ ‘ϸe Councel of Christ,’ ‘Of Temptacioun,’ and ‘Desiir of Ihesu.’ A brief section of Rolle's Commentary on the Canticles is the source of the entire PC tract ‘ϸe Name of Ihesu,’ as Hope Emily Allen suggested in her monumental study of Rolle. A portion of this same source served for the first half of PC, ‘Of Mannes Wille,’ as Michael G. Sargent recently pointed out. The purpose of the present article is to suggest that the compiler of The Pore Caitif was indebted to Rolle not only for specific passages, but for the very schema and arrangement of his ten tracts of short sentences. It is my belief that Rolle's Emendatio vitae and The Form of Living, the two works of which the PC compiler made the most substantive use, were the governing influence on the order and arrangement of the ten short sentences.
Light Metaphysics, Dante's ‘Convivio’ and the Letter to Can Grande Della Scala
Authors: Mazzeo Joseph Anthony
Published: August 2016

From the beginning of the Divine Comedy — ‘where the sun is silent’ — to the final vision of light, the poem is a carefully ordered hierarchy of light and shadows. We are not only asked to see clearly but we are asked to see qualitatively, to distinguish degrees of light and kinds of vision. It is in the last canto of the Paradiso that the degree of light is most intense and that our attention is called to a unique kind of seeing. With extraordinary insistence, Dante repeats some form of the verb vedere (to see) or a derivative there-of every few lines. The transition from time to eternity and from the finite to the infinite makes all the more sophisticated resources of language inadequate, and one must revert to a childlike form of emphasis, mere repetitions. This simplest of rhetorical devices is, by some miracle of art, adequate for the expression of the most unimaginable of possible experiences. In every line we feel something of Dante's joy in the possession of a ‘novella vista’ and his rapture in the divine vision, an effect conveyed by the very struggle to express the inexpressible. The struggles of course are those of Dante the pilgrim; Dante the poet is in perfect control of his artistic resources, and it is through the masterly rendering of inadequacy that the whole presentation becomes — paradoxically — adequate.
Saint John Chrysostom's Rhetorical Use of the Socratic Distinction between Kingship and Tyranny
Authors: Carter Robert E.
Published: August 2016

The voluminous writings of St. John Chrysostom reflect the influence of the important movements and controversies of the fourth century: the spread of monasticism, the final conflict between Christianity and paganism, and the struggle between Nicene orthodoxy and Arianism, which came to an end, at least in the Eastern Empire, with Theodosius the Great and the first Council of Constantinople in 381. Each of these Christian groups — monks, Arians, and Nicene orthodox — had, as George Huntston Williams has clearly shown, its own distinctive attitude towards the imperial state.
Iter Helveticum
Authors: Stickler A. M.
Published: August 2016

Die weitausholende und verheissungsvolle internationale Zusammenarbeit zur Erforschung und Ausgabe der Werke der klassischen Kanonistik lässt es wunschenswert erscheinen, dass die handschriftlichen Bestände an noch nicht oder nur unbefriedigend ediertem Material immer luckenloser und im einzelnen genauer erfasst werden. Viel ist diesbezüglich schon geleistet worden. Manches bleibt aber noch zu tun.
‘Peccatrix quondam femina’: A Survey of the Mary Magdalen Hymns
Authors: Szövérffy Joseph
Published: August 2016

In my mercy dispaire thou noght,Sen I the so dere haue boght,And ensaumple thou takeOf synfull Mary maudelayne,That with syn was gastly slayneAnd sythen gan it for-sake.

Monseigneur Duchesne's study of the legend of the coming of Saint Mary Magdalen to Gaul left very little to be said on the subject.' Jean Misrahi has opened with this statement a brief note followed by an unpublished version of an early legend of Mary Magdalen and this can indeed be applied mutatis mutandis to many areas of the Magdalen traditions. Still, other features connected with this cult are insufficiently investigated and this is true, in the first place, of the rich and extensive group of medieval Latin hymns celebrating Mary Magdalen.
Cacciaguida's Prophecy in ‘Paradiso’ 17
Authors: Hardie Colin
Published: August 2016

In face of the uncompromising condemnation of divination in Inferno 20 some disquiet may be felt that Dante should have allowed himself any unfulfilled prophecies in the Comedy. If Dante began the Comedy in 1307–8, as is widely held, and penned the prophecy of the ‘515,’ referring to Henry VII, in Purg. 33 before Henry VII's failure became obvious, as it did after July 1312 at latest, the prophecy of Clement V's death in Inf. 19.79–84—that he would be dead before 1323 — must have been made ante eventum, before April 1314. But, it is argued, it was a safe bet for Dante to venture on, in view of Clement's poor health and the average length of recent papal reigns. But in the world of politics as well as in poetry Dante allowed himself about this time (31 March 1311) a confident prophecy which was very soon utterly falsified. In Epistle 6 to the Florentine ‘Scoundrels within the city’ he forecast the imminent fall of the city to Henry, § 4: ‘et si praesaga mens mea non fallitur, sic signis veridicis sicut inexpugnabilibus argumentis instructa praenuntians, etc. (cf. § 6 ‘infusa praesagia’). What then was Dante thinking of prophecy in real life or in poetry, when in Purg. 23.109 he put into the mouth of Forese Donati an Italian counterpart of his phrase in Epistle 6,

se l'anteveder qui non m'inganna?
‘Crux Fidelis …’ Prolegomena to a History of the Holy Cross Hymns
Authors: Szövérffy Joseph
Published: August 2016

It is over a decade since a study of legends of St. Peter in medieval Latin hymns appeared (Traditio 10 [1954] 275–322), followed not only by a number of other monographs but also by a more comprehensive investigation of the history of medieval Latin hymnody, now completed. The questions raised in that article in Traditio have still their significance and the search for a suitable method, or methods, in hymnology is not yet ended. Successive investigations in this field have gradually revealed some of the possibilities in hymnological research; we have noted that the study of legends and narrative sources reflected in hymn-texts may result in concrete discoveries which aid the analytic investigation of medieval hymns. Through them we often come to learn something about the contemporary intellectual trends and the ideas that were lingering in the minds of the people of those times. We also discover echoes of popular beliefs and cults by analyzing certain elements of the hymns. Further investigations in the terminology and style of the hymns can lead us to medieval exegetic and homiletic literature, to patristic sources and the like, which, too, left their imprint on Latin hymnody.