bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Vanni Fucci and Laocoon: Servius as Possible Intermediary Between Vergil and Dante
Authors: Gibaldi Joseph , LaFleur Richard A.
Published: August 2016

That Dante in his depiction of the seventh bolgia of Circle Eight (Inferno 24-25) was particularly reliant upon the Aeneid for plot materials and classical analogies is indicated by the poet's inclusion of Cacus among Vanni Fucci's tormentors: another figure of murderous bestiality, like his progeny in crime ‘Vanni Fucci bestia’ himself, guilty of a notorious sacrilegious theft, the savage, fire-breathing monster is, with little debate, drawn principally from Aeneid 8.185-275. Yet in examining the traditionally cited sources for the seventh bolgia (and the Vanni Fucci episode in particular: Inf. 24.79-25.33), while one encounters nearly every relevant notice of serpents and metamorphoses in ancient Latin literature (e.g., Ovid, Lucan, Pliny, even the Georgics), a very serious omission is apparent. Absent from the catalogue, except for one or two no more than perfunctory observations, is any reference to probably the most celebrated victim of reptilian torture in all Western literature: Laocoon. Another glance at that justly famous passage from the Aeneid (2.201-27) will perhaps cast some new light not merely upon the Vanni Fucci episode but upon the complex nature of Dante's literary debt to Vergil as well.
Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Bibliothek der Phil.-Theol.-Hochschule der Diözese Linz
Authors: Quain Eduino A.
Published: August 2016

The creation of the Austrian diocese of Linz and St. Pölten out of territories which had been parts of the diocese of the prince-bishops of Passau marks an important part of the ecclesiastical policy of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II (1765-1790). The sanction by Pope Pius VI in 1785 recognized the creation of the diocese of Linz, which was to be supported in part by revenues from properties belonging to several recently suppressed monasteries. The Priesterseminar of the diocese of Linz and its library date from the creation of the diocese; and, at the direction of the emperor, a selection of manuscripts and early printed books from the libraries of the suppressed monasteries was presented to the library of the Priesterseminar.
The Scholia on Strabo
Authors: Diller Aubrey
Published: August 2016

Strabo'sGeographywas not well known in ancient and medieval times. It was never the subject of literary or scientific study. There was no need to write commentaries on it as on the poets, orators, and philosophers. Nevertheless the medieval manuscripts of Strabo do contain meagre scholia, and for one reason or another some of them are valuable. Moreover as a whole they throw light on the history of Greek scholarship in an important but obscure period. It seems desirable therefore to edit them entire, to examine their relationships, and point out their significance.
Christian Caucasia between Byzantium and Iran: New Light from Old Sources
Authors: Toumanoff Cyril
Published: August 2016

1. The story of how one of the two great Caucasian nations, the Armenians, came to form a national Church, while the other, the Georgians, remained for several centuries longer within the unity of the Church Universal, is still to be written. Practically all that has been said on the subject stands in need of revision. This is due to several factors in connection with Caucasian sources. In the first place, these sources were for a long time unsatisfactorily evaluated. It is within but the last half-century or so that the correct floruit of some of the important Armenian historians was established — for instance that of Moses of Khoren: sometime between the seventh and the ninth century and not, as was formerly held, in the fifth — and that many other, especially Georgian, historical works came to be critically studied and dated. Secondly, many of the invaluable sources — such as the Book of Letters or the Queen Anne Codex of the Georgian Royal Annals — were only quite recently published and have not been made use of, even to this day, by some scholars dealing with Caucasian history. Finally, some Armenian historians that have always been known and held in esteem have not always been recognized as afflicted with what was once called la maladie de Froude and, consequently, prone, in serving the cause of national religion, to overlook some facts of history and to alter others.
La tradition des textes et les problèmes de l'édition diplomatique
Authors: Dekkers Eligius
Published: August 2016

Rares sont, parmi les lecteurs de plus en plus nombreux des textes patristiques et médiévaux, ceux qui se rendent compte de toutes les sinuosités de la route que ces textes ont parcourue avant d'arriver jusqu'à nous. Souvent le lecteur d'une commode édition moderne de saint Augustin ou de Boèce, de saint Anselme ou d'Aelred, ne se doute guère qu'il y a eu bien des problèmes à résoudre avant d'en arriver là, et moins encore soupçonne-t-il les problèmes qui attendent toujours une solution.
Some Recent Publications on the Classical Tradition in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and on Byzantium
Authors: Ladner Gerhart B.
Published: August 2016

Professor Hanfmann's publication of the season sarcophagus of Dumbarton Oaks is also a monograph on season sarcophagi in general and on the symbolism of theHoraeand seasons in literature and art. The appearance of two important reviews by Professor Doro Levi and by Miss Marion Lawrence affords this writer an opportunity of re-evaluating his first impression of the book in the light of criticism by others.
Chaucer's Parson's Tale and the ‘Moralium dogma philosophorum'
Authors: Hazelton Richard
Published: August 2016

In the quest for the source of Chaucer's Parson's Tale investigators have discovered a number of texts that contain elements identical or similar to parts of Chaucer's treatise, though it is now generally conceded that none of the works thus far examined is in any sense a direct source of Chaucer's ‘Tale.' Among the larger units of the treatise Chaucer translated, none have so successfully eluded attempts to discover derivation as the remedia against the vices, contained in the tractate on the seven deadly sins (X[I]387-957). Earlier researchers have found in the postulated sources almost nothing that bears a close resemblance to the materials and their ordering in these sections. But these remedia contain, for the most part, doctrine that was established in the ethical tradition during the twelfth century and that proliferated widely during succeeding centuries: the ultimate source of this doctrine is the well-known Moralium dogma philosophorum, a treatise whose influence on ethical thinking during the late Middle Ages, particularly in the matter of the virtues and their ramifications, is enormous.
‘Ηννσται καί τετέλεσται: An Echo from Traditio I
Authors: Strittmatter Anselm
Published: August 2016

In the medieval Latin translation of the two Liturgies of Constantinople — ‘St. Basil’ and ‘St. John Chrysostom’ —published from the twelfth-century Paris MS, Nouv. acq. lat. 1791, in 1943, the concluding prayer of the first of these two formularies, “‘Ηννσται καί τετέλεσται, contains a clause which, as was noted at the time, had not been found in any Greek MS. Now, after more than twelve years, two Greek MSS have been discovered — Sinait. 961, of the late eleventh or early twelfth century, and the liturgical roll No. 2 of the Laura, of the early years of the fourteenth century — neither of which indeed contains the interpolation of the Latin version in its entirety, but sufficient to warrant publication and study, for we have here the first trace — and more than a mere trace — of the clause, Si quid dimisimus, which has for so long been a baffling problem. Not unnaturally, this discovery has been the occasion of a re-examination of both the Latin version and the attempted reconstruction of the Greek original, with the result that more than one textual problem overlooked in the preparation of the first edition now stands out more clearly defined. This is especially true of the interesting rendering, ‘nutrimentum’ concerning which more is said below (Text, line 11 and Note 5).
The Quality of Fiction: The Rhetorical Transmission of Literary Theory
Authors: Trimpi Wesley
Published: August 2016

This is the second of several essays investigating the continuity of literary theory and of the principles which may account for its development. In the first, ‘The Ancient Hypothesis of Fiction: An Essay on the Origins of Literary Theory,’ I described how the nature and sources of literary terminology might indicate the premises upon which a theory of literature, in the sense of fiction or poesis, was conceived and defended. The adoption of terms from medicine, politics, ethics, geometry, dialectic, and rhetoric by those who first discussed the purposes and deficiencies of fiction reveals the way in which a theory of literature may have been forming in its borrowed vocabulary prior to the recorded documents, as well as the ways in which later theorists would perceive, define, and defend their critical principles. Since the premises of its emergence were to determine its methods of survival and transmission, I shall briefly recapitulate my previous analysis of them as an introduction to the present essay.
Pattern and Theme in Chrétien's ‘Yvain’
Authors: Schweitzer Edward C.
Published: August 2016

Yvain, Chrétien's masterpiece, has been conventionally seen as a counterpoise toErec et Enide, attempting to reconcile the conflicting claims of love and chivalry. The several versions of this interpretation are misleading, if not quite wrong, because they divert our attention from what is special aboutYvainto what it has in common withErec. In all of them the lion is peripheral, although for Chrétien himself the lion gave the romance its name:Le Chevalier au lion. I intend to argue thatYvainis rather a critique of the Arthurian ideal, using patristic — or, if one prefers, Christian — psychology to show its hero fall victim to the sins ofsuperbia, invidia, andirain the first part and triumph over them in the second. Chrétien, I propose, made the lion a symbol ofiraas a power of the soul and as ambivalent emotion, so that the two-part figure of the Chevalier au Lion — Yvain with his lion — dramatizes the restoration of ideal order within Yvain himself. Since the story ofYvainderives almost certainly from a Celtic source, Chrétien's originality consists not in the main events but in their disposition and in the emphasis assigned them in order to reveal their psychological and moral significance. I shall use comparisons with the Welsh story of Owein and the Lady of the Fountain to set that originality in relief, for whether the Welsh romance itself is the ultimate source ofYvainor both develop from some common source, it very likely approximates the form of the story prior to Chrétien's revision. It contains all the essential elements of Chrétien's romance — except Yvain's meeting with the hermit and the dispute between the daughters of the Lord of Noire Espine — masterly in detail but loosely connected, without moral focus or thematic coherence.Yvain, on the other hand, is distinguished, as this essay will try to show, by Chrétien's use of a progression of parallel incidents, together with the symbolic figure of the lion, to reveal gradually the meaning of the whole.
Customary Aids and Royal Fiscal Policy under Philip VI of Valois
Authors: Brown Elizabeth A. R. , Henry M.
Published: August 2016

In 1332 Philip VI of Valois set in motion a campaign to levy traditional aids in his kingdom. Although for a number of reasons the effort failed, the episode casts significant light on the development of royal fiscal policy in France. Its importance lies chiefly in the fact that it terminated, at least temporarily, a period of experimentation and indecision lasting since the time of Saint Louis, who had claimed as legally due to him by the general custom of the realm various traditional aids. These customary payments were fundamentally arbitrary levies which kings and other lords collected from their vassals and subjects on occasions and in amounts determined essentially by customary practice and by the extent of the lord's power over his dependents, rather than by the lord's evident and undeniable need for help. Some aids — those taken for crusading and to ransom the lord — were easier to justify than others—those collected for marrying a daughter or knighting a son, for example. The legitimacy or illegitimacy of the aids was not, however, of central importance, since custom was their chief justification, and it was long usage that Saint Louis emphasized in claiming the aids he sought. His success in implementing his demands was not great, thanks to the manipulability and vagueness of custom. Still, the conviction with which he voiced his claims was impressive.
Jean Gerson: The ‘Ecclesia Primitiva’ and Reform
Authors: Pascoe Louis B.
Published: August 2016

Recent studies on the history of reform in the early and medieval church have been highly influenced by the works of Gerhart Ladner. In his writings Ladner stresses primarily the ideological foundations of reform. He distinguishes, moreover, the idea of reform from other types of renewal. In contrast with cosmological, vitalistic, and millenaristic renewal, reform implies conscious intention and finality. Church reform, consequently, both in its personal and institutional dimensions necessarily involves some concept of what a church should be. For this reason in most reform ideologies the idea of the ecclesia primitiva has played an important role. The primitive Church is regarded as a privileged moment in the history of the Church since it was in immediate personal contact with its founder and the direct recipient of his message.
What Happens in Sophocles' ‘Philoctetes’?
Authors: Hoppin Meredith Clarke
Published: August 2016

Great disagreement over the plot of Sophocles' Philoctetes makes the terrain of critical discussion very slippery. Some critics argue that Odysseus knows from the beginning that both Philoctetes and his bow are the object of the voyage to Lemnos, while Neoptolemus realizes this fact only later; others, however, believe that Odysseus never realizes the need for Philoctetes himself but that Neoptolemus eventually does. A few argue that the audience understands clearly, from the beginning and throughout the play, that Odysseus and Neoptolemus are both aware of the need for Philoctetes as well as his bow. Different perceptions of the plot may lead to very different interpretations of the play. For instance, the critics who believe that Neoptolemus at first thinks he must bring only the bow to Troy often concentrate on Neoptolemus' alleged realization that Philoctetes is necessary, too, while those who believe that Neoptolemus is aware all along of the need for Philoctetes obviously center their analyses elsewhere. Some critics even try to make a virtue out of the confusion over the plot, though in different ways: believing that we cannot determine until late in the play what Neoptolemus and Odysseus perceive their mission to be, a few argue that the question must be irrelevant to understanding Sophocles' purposes; another finds the moral lesson of the play in the fact that a muddle exists.
The Manuscripts of Cassiodorus' ‘Expositio Psalmorum’
Authors: Halporn James W.
Published: August 2016

In a.d. 538 Cassiodorus left office as praetorian prefect in the regime of the Ostrogoth kingdom under Witiges. He remained in Ravenna and sometime in that year published his De anima. Between 538 and the capture of Ravenna by Belisarius (beginning of 540), Cassiodorus began his Commentary on the Psalms. He had completed at least the ‘praefationes’ and a commentary on the opening Psalms before he was sent, together with Witiges, Matasontha, and other members of the Ostrogoth court, to Constantinople.
Notes On the Prologue of St. Aelred of Rievaulx's ‘De spirituali amicitia,’ with a Translation.
Authors: McEvoy James
Published: August 2016

The brief prologue to Aelred of Rievaulx's De spirituali amicitia is written with a disarming simplicity that allows the reader to follow it and feel its charm the very first time he comes across it. Aelred invites his reader into the intimacy of his own early life and shares with him the experiences from which his reflections on friendship, and his book, were to grow. It is a confidence which he is sharing, one that he must have revealed to many of his friends, and the reader is made aware of the privilege from the very first line: ‘Cum adhuc puer essem in scholis ….’ Nothing holds an audience or a reading public like a story, as Aelred well knew; and if the story is of the speaker or writer, it is of double value: it is an invitation to relax in the presence of the storyteller, the friend. Aelred's instinct is unerring. He is a skilled communicator, he is confident of his audience, he knows himself, and he wants his public to know him. How many medieval books have such an appealing incipit as this one- or rather, how few? How many writers of that, or any, period have presented the emotional upheavals of adolescence with such clarity and compassion in a mere dozen lines? And how many writers on the very subject of friendship have scored their overture in such a masterly fashion? The direct Augustinian quality is there unmistakably from the very start of this work; much as it will indeed owe to Cicero, its first tones have the vibrant, experiential directness of the author of the Confessions, from whom the opening four words are drawn (Conf. 1.11.17).
‘Vocans temporales, faciens aeternos’: St. Augustine on Liberation from Time
Authors: Teske Roland J.
Published: August 2016

In several texts Augustine speaks of the Word of God as becoming man in order to make men eternal or to free men from time. Though this theme may well be a relatively minor one in Augustine's treatment of the purpose of the Incarnation, it is one that is interesting both in itself and also, I believe, in terms of what it reveals about Augustine's Plotinian understanding of the Christian faith. In this paper I shall first set forth the texts that I have found in which Augustine deals with this liberation of men from time by the Word. Then, after pointing out some problems with this theme, I shall try to show how it is intimately tied to several other themes in Augustine's thought that bear a decidedly Plotinian stamp, especially those of the fall of the soul, the ‘heaven of heavens,’ and the definition of time. Finally I shall argue that though Augustine's claim that the Word came as man to free man from time can be understood in a quite orthodox sense, some of the oddities surrounding this idea are quite likely due to the Plotinian conceptual framework within which the theme is articulated.
Fourteen Charters of Robert I of Dreux (1152-1188)
Authors: Lewis Andrew W.
Published: August 2016

Robert I of Dreux, third surviving son of Louis VI of France, is a little-known figure. The causes of this obscurity lie in part in the fragmentary and dispersed nature of the sources on Robert but also in the lack of interest which historians have shown regarding both him and the baronial dynasty which he founded. Indeed, no significant work on the counts of Dreux and Braine has appeared since the publication, in 1631, of André Duchesne's antiquarian history of that family. Numerous broader studies of the Capetian monarchy mention Robert in passing, because of the cession of Dreux to him by Louis VII and because of his aborted conspiracy, in 1149, to seize the throne; but it is symptomatic of the state of the scholarship on him that the first event has consistently been misunderstood, while the second is so poorly documented that judgments have ranged from calling it a major crisis for the monarchy to dismissing it as a trivial episode, with inadequate evidence for either view.
Literary and Philosophical Perspectives on the Wheel of the Five Senses in Longthorpe Tower
Authors: Casagrande Gino , Kleinhenz Christopher
Published: August 2016

The medieval wall paintings of Longthorpe Tower (near Peterborough, England), discovered by fortunate accident over thirty years ago, have been the object of several critical investigations; because of their delicate and fragmentary condition, however, it has been impossible to arrive at an exact interpretation of the entire program. Two of these fourteenth-century paintings appear to treat the Seven Ages of Man and the Labors of the Months. Of particular interest is a third large painting (see plate), which depicts the wheel of the five senses. Much attention has been given to elucidating the significance of the five animals positioned on the rim of the wheel and to interpreting the meaning and function of the male figure who stands behind the wheel and appears to govern its motion. The problem of interpretation is not new. Indeed, the unknown artist provided a written guide to these wall paintings, but unfortunately the remnants of these inscriptions, found by the circumference and spokes of the wheel, are now indecipherable. Critics are in general agreement that the painting represents the five senses, and most cite the passage in Thomas of Cantimpré's Liber de natura rerum, which pairs specific animals with individual senses.
The Metamorphosis of Sodom: The Ps-Cyprian ‘De Sodoma’ as an Ovidian Episode
Authors: Hexter Ralph
Published: August 2016

The mysteries and challenges presented by the Latin poem known as De Sodoma are many and varied. The identity of its author will likely never be known. Date and place of composition can only be expressed in terms of probabilities, and portions of the poem are extremely difficult to read and interpret. I am currently involved in the preparation of a critical edition, with translation and commentary, of both De Sodoma and its shorter, perhaps superior companion-piece De Iona, in the hope that this might pave the way for easier reading. In the present discussion I also address problems of readability, returning to that aspect of the poem which first attracted my attention and which, on balance, seems to offer the greatest help comprehending it: its relation to Ovid's Metamorphoses. While the poet of De Sodoma makes explicit and dramatic reference to the tale of Phaethon as told by Ovid, Ovid's text functions at a yet more basic level. In my view, the defining characteristic of De Sodoma is its structure as an Ovidian episode. This structure sets it apart from earlier Latin Biblical epics, canonical school texts by the time De Sodoma was composed. Read against the backdrop of its Ovidian model, the poem reveals a unity and coherence which has previously not been recognized, and extends our appreciation of the interests of some early medieval audiences and of the learning and artistry of at least one early medieval poet.
The ‘Variegated Obit’ as an Historiographic Motif in Old English Poetry and Anglo-Latin Historical Literature
Authors: Hill Thomas D.
Published: August 2016

The object of this paper is to identify a particular stylistic feature in the Old English Genesis A, to point out its affinities in Anglo-Latin historical literature (particularly in the historical writings of Byrhtferth of Ramsey), and to discuss the implications of those affinities. In conclusion I propose to discuss the literary history of this motif and some occurrences in other Old English poems — notably in Beowulf. I will thus move from fairly mechanical problems of source-study and stylistic affinity to some important ideological and literary issues, but unfortunately the more important issues are also more difficult to resolve.
In Search of a Name and Its Significance: A Twelfth-Century Anecdote about Thierry and Peter Abaelard
Authors: Mews Constant J.
Published: August 2016

‘Abaelard,’ ‘Abelard,’ ‘Baiolard’ …? Twelfth-century scribes were as uncertain of the exact spelling and pronunciation of the famous philosopher's cognomen as scholars have been in more recent centuries. Trivial as it might seem, correct pronunciation provides the key to understanding a short anecdote copied onto the opening folio of a twelfth-century manuscript (MS Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm. 14160 = M), formerly belonging to the Benedictine abbey of St. Emmeran, Regensburg. It tells the reader that the peripatetic philosopher wanted to supplement his studies of the trivium by following the lectures of master Thierry on mathematics, but then found the subject too difficult. Thierry gave Peter the name ‘Baiolard’ because he was like a greedy dog who had eaten his fill yet still wanted to lick (given as the meaning of baiare) lard, here used as an image of the quadrivium. The word lardum may itself be a pun on artium. The story-teller goes on to claim that Peter changed ‘Baiolard’ (‘lick-lard’) to ‘Abelard’ (‘have-lard’) because he came to master geometry and arithmetic. The patent absurdity of a number of details in this anecdote — such as, that Abelard was an Englishman or that he wrote on geometry and arithmetic — has led most scholars to dismiss the story as a spurious invention. In this study I shall examine whether there are any historical insights to be gained from the anecdote, the text of which is given here with an attempt at a translation.
Alliterative Narrative Poetry: The Control of the Medium
Authors: Finlayson John
Published: August 2016

Critical approaches to alliterative poetry can and do include all the approaches imposed on literature in general. But to these must be added approaches particular to the fact that we confront a body of literature defined by a distinctive, some would say peculiar, metrical form. Alliterative poetry has been accorded a separate status precisely because it is alliterative, flourished in a relatively short time-frame, and is associated with a geographic region. For most of this century, the Alliterative Revival has reigned as an historical fact — a nationalistic metrical response, fostered by the North West Midlands baronial families, to the increasing power of the Court in the East Midlands and the pernicious influence of foreign, mainly French fashions, particularly poetic. In the last fifteen years, and at a galloping pace in the last ten, we have seen one of the massive certainties of literary history first quietly mined by the late Elizabeth Salter, and then besieged, assaulted, and overrun by an increasing band of scholarly invaders numbering among them Norman Blake, Derek Pearsall, T. Turville-Petre, and David Lawton. The Theory of the Alliterative Revival, once a Castle of Truth, now lies in ruins, picked over by its destroyers for useful material with which to build a new Tower on a Tofte. While the orthodox view of the alliterative revival has been disestablished, and no single creed has yet emerged as an authoritative substitute, there is currently underway a major re-assessment of alliterative poetry, which has both been caused by and also generated a substantial increase in scholarly knowledge of the field. The questions that have been posed and continue to be explored are mainly of the following kind: Was there a revival or simply a continuation? How and where was this revival/continuation generated and located? Should we distinguish sub-groups of alliterative poetry according to metrical variants? How do we scan alliterative verse? What are the origins of or influences on the metres and rhythms of the great alliterative works of the late fourteenth century?
The Origins of a Tradition: King David‘s Tomb on Mount Zion
Authors: Limor Ora
Published: August 2016

One of the most difficult objectives of research into sacred traditions is to reveal their underlying origins. For early periods, about which we have scanty and sporadic information, the scholar must be content with indicating the earliest piece of historical evidence that connects a tradition with a specific site, though the reasons for this connection often remain unexplained. The tradition that locates the tomb of King David on Mount Zion, the southwestern hill of ancient Jerusalem, has often been considered one such case. Nevertheless this case seems to be exceptional. In this study I shall attempt to show that it is possible not only to indicate the connection between a site and a tradition, but also to explain the circumstances of the emergence of this tradition.
The Information of Alan of Lille's ‘Anticlaudianus’: A Preposterous Interpretation
Authors: Simpson James
Published: August 2016

For the Methode of a Poet historical is not such, as of an Historiographer. For an Historiographer discourseth of affayres orderly as they were donne … but a Poet thrusteth into the middest, euen where it most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the thinges forepaste, and diuining of thinges to come, maketh a pleasing Analysis of all.

Spenser, The Faerie Queene

Letter of the Authors.

In his account of twelfth-century ‘cosmologists,’ Winthrop Wetherbee has pointed to an essential problem in the interpretation of Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus (1182–1183). He argues that the major theme of the poem is ‘the working out of the relation of the Arts to Theology that culminates in Prudentia's vision of God’; given this, Wetherbee argues that there is ‘something gratuitous and anticlimactic about the ensuing psychomachia and the new earthly order to which it leads,’ especially when the ‘virtues associated with the New Man are largely secular.’ The conclusion to which these observations lead is ineluctable: ‘Whatever its significance, the idealism of the “triumph of Nature,” as Alan calls it, is difficult to reconcile with the radical subordination of earthly knowledge in the central books of the poem.’
The Problem of St. Patrick the Missionary
Authors: Russell Josiah Cox
Published: August 2016

The problem of St. Patrick the Missionary centers upon two assumptions. One is that both the Letter to Coroticus and the Confession were written by the same person. This assumption would explain why the two have so many points in common but does not explain their differences. The similarities could be caused by the copying of one by the other: the differences by the fact that there were two authors. The other assumption is that the King Lughaid in whose reign the deaths of Patrick and some of his followers occurred was the Lughaid of the fifth century rather than the king of the same name in the third century. The alternative possibilities will be examined in this short study.
Byzantine Policy in the West under Tiberius II and Maurice: The Pretenders Hermenegild and Gundovald (579–585)
Authors: Goffart Walter
Published: August 2016

So then, the Romans being at peace with the whole world, … Justinian kept bringing all the barbarians into collision with one another, and summoning the leaders … for no good reason, he handed over to them with amazing prodigality huge donatives…. And they, even after having received the money, would send some of their fellow leaders together with their followers, bidding them overrun and ravage the Empire's land, so that they too might be able to sell peace to the man who for no good reason wished to purchase it.

Procopius, Anecdota 11.5–6.

However much Procopius' judgment of Byzantine diplomacy must be corrected, his outraged statement cannot be said to be entirely without justification. Subsidies did form one of the principal tools of Byzantine relations with the barbarians, and the results obtained therefrom were seldom commensurate with the sums expended.
The Lisbon ‘Vita sancti Brandani abbatis’: A Hitherto Unknown Navigatio-Text and Translation from Old French into Latin
Authors: Selmer Carl
Published: August 2016

Among the medieval hagiographical writings derived from the British Isles none enjoyed greater popularity throughout the Middle Ages than the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (= NB). This celebrated prose work, a typical product of the Othonian period, has come down to us in more than a hundred MSS in various versions. It embodies the adventurous sea-story of the Irish Abbot St. Brendan, one of the great sixth-century founders of monasteries. In structure, the NB consists actually of three parts: a brief introduction comments on St. Brendan's descent, youth, ascetic life, and early monastic foundations; the main body reports some twenty-six adventures which he and his fourteen companions encountered in their search for the terra repromissionis or paradisum terrestre, the tír tairgirne of the ancient Celts; finally, a terse epilogue narrates his life after his return and subsequent happy death. While the main body of the NB, the sea-voyage proper, is uncompounded and has been modeled after Old Irish sea-tales, known in Celtic literature as immrama, both the introduction and epilogue, necessary to give the story the appropriate frame, represent incidents culled from the Vita Sancti Brendani (= VB), which has come down to us in various Irish and Latin recensions. These two narratives have over the centuries been combined by several medieval compilers into a single story in a more or less artistic way. Consequently, the student of the NB is ultimately confronted with that much feared and confusing type of Brendaniana, called conflated texts, which in view of the absence of clearly drawn lines between the contents of the VB and NB, have for centuries offered vexing problems to researchers. One of the minor, but nevertheless irritating, results of these fusions is the misleading caption ‘Vita’ Sancti Brendani, exhibited by a goodly number of NB-MSS, which has misled many cataloguers, medieval and modern, to list the Navigatio as a Vita. Thus, not less than half of all NB-MSS sail in the maelstrom of medieval literature under a false flag. A most peculiar Latin NB-MS, showing the same misleading caption Vita Sancti BrendaniAbbatis, is codex 256 of the Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal. This MS, hitherto unavailable to research, is of signal importance for the history of the Vita, the Navigatio, and above all, for the Old French translations of the Navigatio with their re-translations into Latin, so unique in medieval literature.
The Marston Manuscript of Juvenal
Authors: Anderson William S.
Published: August 2016

Mr. Thomas E. Marston, Curator of the Classical Collection in the Yale University Library, having already been the owner of three 15th-century manuscripts of Juvenal and Persius, which he donated in 1936 to the Yale University Library, acquired in 1953 a much older copy of Juvenal alone. This manuscript, having remained for five hundred years in private collections in Italy, first at Osimo, then at Iesi, had never been collated. Now, with Mr. Marston's generous permission, it has at length been studied and it is the findings of this study that this paper presents. It seemed best, inasmuch as the manuscript affords little new light on the tradition of the text, to restrict this report to sample readings, sufficient to establish the character of the manuscript; a complete collation, however, will be deposited for use in the Yale University Library, as well as with Mr. Marston.
Pearls Before Swine? A Reinterpretation of Matt. 7.6
Authors: Kahane Henry , Kahane Renée
Published: August 2016

Tradition and habit over many centuries have led Western civilization to take for granted the idiom,throwing pearls before swine.Yet, as numerous interpreters of its source, Matt. 7.6, have puzzled, why pearls? The principal exegetic difficulty of the passage, in other words, consists in the analysis of the literal rather than the idiomatic meaning. The conventional semantic rationalizations can be illustrated by quotations from two of many commentators: J. P. Lange calls the act of casting pearls before swine ‘foolish’; O. Baumgartenet al.consider the expression ‘ein derb volkstümliches Gleichnis: man wird doch nicht den Säuen Perlen als Futter vorwerfen.’ Various attempts have been made to change the reading of the passage: while these provide no satisfactory solution to the problem, they are, obviously, expressions of dissatisfaction. The present note is a suggestion that the correct interpretation may be reached by a study of the stylistic pattern of the passage.
An Endorsed Subdelegation: 1284
Authors: Brentano Robert
Published: August 2016

The commission of subdelegation here transcribed is one of a large number surviving, in the original or in transcript, from a jurisdictional dispute between the archbishop of York and the prior and convent of Durham. The case was tried before various benches of papal judges delegate between the years 1281 and 1286. This commission is a good, clear example of its type. It reflects the structure and phraseology of the papal mandate. Its particular distinction lies in its bearing on its dorse a certification, a dated note of receipt, in the hand, presumably, of one of the subdelegates, Master Robert Merley, a canon of Dunblane in Scotland. Beyond its obvious interest for antiquarians involved with Dunblane, the certification, particularly in conjunction with another endorsement on the commission, helps date, place, and make real, if not simple, activities within a peculiarly elusive and involved legal mechanism where fiction is everywhere a possibility.
Canons of English Church Councils in the Early Decretal Collections
Authors: Brooke C. N. L.
Published: August 2016

Neither of the two general councils of the western Church held between the Second and Third Lateran (1139, 1179) produced a large body of legislation: the genuine canons of the Council of Rheims (1148) number eighteen; those of Tours (1163) about ten. But in the great collection of Mansi this meagre store is eked out by an equal weight of additional canons, sixteen for Rheims and ten for Tours. Mansi looked on them with no great favor, but offered no criterion by which their validity and value might be judged. The Rheims canons, so far as I am aware, have never been submitted to critical study. The Tours canons, on the other hand, were examined and shown to be spurious by Seckel in a valuable appendix to his article on the sources of the canons of the English council of 1175, which he published in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Kirchenrecht in 1899.
Meister Eckhart's Teaching on the Birth of the Divine Word in the Soul
Authors: Kertz Karl G.
Published: August 2016

It has been said of Meister Eckhart, the most eloquent proclaimer of German mysticism, its deepest thinker and its only creatively gifted speculative mind, that his genius lay in his being imbued with but one single truth, a truth ‘monumental in its simplicity, profound in its implications, impressive in its sincerity.’ This one central idea, from which all others of the Master are derived and towards which all are orientated, is that of the generation or birth of the Divine Word, or Son, in the soul. Anyone who has not grasped that the generation of the Son through the Father in the Tittle spark of the soul’ (‘daz vünkelîn’) constitutes the sole motive, subject-matter and purpose of Eckhart's sermons and gives to them in various formulations, which are merely variants of the one great theme, a certain grand one-sidedness, has failed to understand the Master. To him there is lacking the knowledge of the unitive and orientating centre of Eckhart's intellectual heritage, whose meaning, inaccessible to him, becomes ever more and more entangled in an inextricable medley of contradictions and obscurities, until he is unable to see the wood for the trees. He does not comprehend that all the tracks of this mystic's speculative thought lead toward one predetermined goal: the mystic union of the intellect and will of man with the Godhead through the birth of the Divine Logos in the soul.
The Meaning of Prudence in Bodin
Authors: Tentler Thomas N.
Published: August 2016

Historians generally agree that Jean Bodin is the most important French political theorist of the sixteenth century. But there seems to be no hope of reconciling the disagreements that arise when authorities try to determine the exact meaning of his work. J. W. Allen has remarked that ‘it is impossible to separate Bodin's political from his religious thought.' And because of this entanglement it is difficult to place Bodin in a definite intellectual tradition. At times Bodin's political analysis seems to be completely secular, without any moral considerations. In the Republic, for example, there are passages analyzing sovereignty that resemble the absolutism of Hobbes. And the Republic's theory of the origin of the state is further evidence of the secularism of his political thought. Of course Bodin follows the traditional conception of the family as the primary human group and a natural organization. But men form city-states or republics only after ambition has driven them to conflict. This transition from family to state occurs when the chief of a victorious company of warriors continues to rule his followers as subjects, and his captives as slaves:

Then that complete and natural liberty of living as one wished was completely taken away from the conquered; and it was even diminished somewhat in the victors by the one whom they had elected chief, because it was necessary to recognize the sovereignty (summum imperium) of another. This change was the origin of slaves and subjects, citizens and foreigners, prince and tyrant. From here reason itself leads us to the fact that governments and republics first grew up out of force (imperia scilicet ac Respublicas vi primum coaluisse).
Two Anglo-Norman Summae
Authors: Tierney Brian
Published: August 2016

The Summa Prima primi and the Summa Quamvis leges seculares were described by Kuttner and Rathbone in 1951 as two intimately related works of the Anglo-Norman school which were deserving of closer examination in future studies. These summae were significant, it was pointed out, as introducing a new stage in the literary output of the English schools, a stage marked by the reception of Bernard of Pavia's Breviarium and by a close dependence on Huguccio as the principal guide for the interpretation of the Decretum. The texts of the two summae have now been transcribed and collated in preparation for an eventual edition. This work makes it possible to explain their relationship to one another and to Huguccio. It also opens up a fresh set of problems concerning the connection between the Summa Prima primi and a little-known Summa Duacensis in MS Douai 649, fol. 96ra-140vb (D).
‘Causa debendi’ und ‘causa petendi’ bei Glanvill sowie im römischen und kanonischen recht seiner zeit
Authors: Kaufmann Horst
Published: August 2016

In dem Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Angliae, der gegen Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts geschrieben wurde und unter dem Namen des damaligen obersten englischen Richters Ranulph de Glanvill bekannt geworden ist, spielt der Begriff der causa debendi bei der Darstellung des Schuldrechts eine beachtenswerte Rolle. Er hat hier eine augenfällig hervortretende technische Bedeutung. Ihm kommt die Funktion des systematischen Oberbegriffs zu, unter dem im 10. Buch des Werkes das materielle Schuldrecht vorgetragen wird.
The Correspondence of Rodolfo de Sanctis, Canon of Patras, 1386
Authors: Dennis George T.
Published: August 2016

In the winter of 1384–1385 Rodolfo de Sanctis, who had recently received his doctorate in Canon Law, set sail from Venice to take up residence as a member of the cathedral chapter of Patras in Greece. Before his death four years later, Rodolfo had accomplished nothing of great importance and would be of little interest to scholars were it not for a few letters he wrote from Greece to a friend in Venice. Although these letters deal chiefly with personal matters, they contain several items of historical interest and, more important, they provide a glimpse into the life and activities of a Latin cleric in Greece during the late Middle Ages. Not only do they paint a portrait of Rodolfo himself, but they also tell us a great deal about the type of man who staffed the remote Eastern dioceses. In this lies their value, for our knowledge of the Western Church in the Levant during this period is so imperfect that any added documentation assumes an importance sometimes out of proportion to its intrinsic worth.
Pythagoras and Monachism
Authors: Jordan Placidus
Published: August 2016

The biography of Pythagoras of Samos is embroidered with legend, and what the Neo-Pythagoreans tell us is interwoven with Platonic and Aristotelian ideas. His very name — he whose birth was foretold by the Pythian god, Apollo, or he who utters oracles as does Apollo — gives a hint of the mystery enveloping his personality. This at least is certain, that he was born about 580 B.C. as the son of a well-to-do merchant, Mnesarchus. Tradition has it that as a young man he spent a fairly long period in Egypt in order to familiarize himself with the cults of Isis and Osiris. There, too, so runs the tale, he acquired his mathematical knowledge from which he later developed his system of numbers. Upon his return to Greece, he visited first of all such religious centers as Delphi, Delos and Crete with a view to initiation in their mystic rites. In his native island, Samos, he then began to teach, but dissastisfied with the rule of Polycrates the tyrant, he soon resolved to seek out the Greek colonies of Southern Italy.
John Maunsell and the Castilian Treaty of 1254: A study of the Clerical Diplomat
Authors: Baylen Jospeh O.
Published: August 2016

Henry Ill's absolutist pretensions made his conduct of English foreign affairs almost as personal as his domestic policy. But since the heir of John Lackland was chronically dependent on others for ideas, there remain the questions as to (1) how much of the mercurial king's policy was his own or that of his advisers and (2) whether Henry selected his counsellors from that class of administrative clerks who were ‘most dangerous to the welfare of the state’ because they encouraged their master's foreign adventures. Or, were these men, as the executors of the king's personal designs, committed to carry out a course of action ‘dramatically opposite to the interests of the [Angevin] kingdom’ as interpreted by the barons of the realm?
Notes on Manuscripts
Authors: Nörr Knut W.
Published: August 2016

The following Notes are concerned with Summae of which editions have been undertaken by members of the Institute, or which otherwise have been discussed in previous issues of the Bulletin.
Syncretism and Allegory in the Jerusalem Orpheus Mosaic
Authors: Friedman John Block
Published: August 2016

The ingenuity of early Christian artisans in turning a host of pagan symbols and images to the service of a new ideology is one of the most conspicuous features of Christian art during the second and third centuries after Christ. It is responsible for the art of the catacombs in which Orpheus the charmer of wild beasts represents Christ the Good Shepherd, and the eagle, peacock, Dionysiac grapes, sun, stars, and other pagan funerary symbols of long standing express the state of the Christian soul after death. Yet as Christianity grew stronger in the Roman empire, as councils were held and creeds formulated, and as a distinctively Christian view of history evolved in which Old Testament figures replaced pagan heroes, we find a curious lag in the visual arts. The old pagan imagery continues to appear in Christian funerary monuments, often in conjunction with newer, wholly Christian, motifs, but significantly not replaced by them. This phenomenon is not due simply to the conservatism of the artisans, but owes much to the vigor of the old motifs and the persistence of the ideas they represented. It also points up the fundamental difference between a verbal statement, made up of words which may be freely rearranged and whose connotations shift mercurially from year to year, and a visual statement, which is less flexible and able to retain its symbolic appeal for a very long time. The difference, practically a commonplace in the study of the history of ideas, is nonetheless often overlooked in the study of the ideas and motifs of late antiquity, when words and pictures ostensibly representing the same ideas were often straining in opposite directions. Thus, while the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon sought to settle for all time the relation between the human and divine in the person of Jesus, Christian artisans were still depicting Christ the Good Shepherd in the aspect of Orpheus.