bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Henry of Ghent on Anselm's Proslogion Argument
Authors: Teske Roland J.
Published: August 2016

In Summa theologiae 1a.2.1, St. Thomas Aquinas asked “whether that God exists is self-evident” and argued that it is not. His response is generally taken as a rejection of St. Anselm's argument for the existence of God in the Proslogion. In his Summa quaestionum ordinarium (hereafter SQO) 22, Henry of Ghent asks as his second question: “whether that God exists is naturally self-evident to a human being,” and like St. Thomas, he argues that the proposition that God exists is not self-evident. Neither Thomas nor Henry mentions the Archbishop of Canterbury in these questions, although they both use expressions that are clearly borrowed from the argument in the Proslogion. Moreover, both Thomas and Henry also cite in the arguments to the contrary St. John Damascene's statement in De fide orthodoxa that “the knowledge that God exists is naturally implanted in all,” as well as Aristotle's definition from the Posterior Analytics of what it means for a proposition to be self-evident. Henry, however, regards the Proslogion argument quite favorably and examines it at length in SQO 30.2 in an article on the immutability of God in which he asks whether God can be thought not to exist and argues that God cannot be thought not to exist, at least if one has a proper concept of God. Hence, Henry holds both that God cannot be thought not to exist and that the proposition that God exists is not naturally self-evident to a human being, and that would seem to be contradictory or at least to require some careful distinctions.
“Abominable Mixtures”: TheLiber vaccaein the Medieval West, or The Dangers and Attractions of Natural Magic
Authors: Van Der Lugt Maaike
Published: August 2016

In hismagnum opuson the history of magic, Lynn Thorndike devoted a few pioneering pages to theLiber vaccaeorBook of the Cow.He identified and described several of the manuscripts of this singular Arabic compilation of magical experiments, pointed out the many different titles under which it was known in the medieval West, and discussed its false attribution to Plato, Galen, and Hunayn ibn Ishâq. By contrast, given his habit of paraphrasing the texts he examined at great length, Thorndike's account of the content of the work is uncharacteristically patchy. He hastily referred to “elaborate experiments in unseemly generation and obstetrics,” the aim of which was “to make a rational animal from a cow or ape or other beast, or to make bees.” In his opinion, the experiments of theLiber vaccaewere, in fact, “unmentionable,” and “hardly such as can be described in detail in English translation.”
Richard Lavenham's De causis naturalibus: A Critical Edition
Authors: Keele Rondo
Published: August 2016

A work of natural science dating from the second half of the fourteenth century, Richard Lavenham's De causis naturalibus (henceforth DCN) is a theoretically simple, brief, and sometimes fanciful compendium of lore, Aristotelian science, and Christian authority on a variety of meteorological topics. A fair range of authorities and subjects is discussed in this relatively short work, from Augustine to Aristotle and from the cause of rainbows to the source of the tides. Neither an in-depth treatise nor a focused commentary, DCN is rather a summary of the mechanics of sun-caused exhalations in the sublunar region and of the various phenomena these exhalations produce.
For Pastoral Care and Political Gain: Ælfric of Eynsham's Preaching on Marital Celibacy
Authors: Upchurch Robert K.
Published: August 2016

Writing early in the last decade of the tenth century, the Anglo-Saxon monk Ælfric begins his Second Series ofCatholic Homilieswith a sermon for Christmas Day. The second of five Old English sermons he wrote for the Nativity, it combines dense doctrinal matters with concrete advice about how Christians should commemorate the birth of Christ. After discussing Christ's Incarnation and Virgin Birth, and the Old Testament prophecies anticipating his appearance, Ælfric concludes the sermon with a series of instructions directing believers how to conduct themselves at Christmas. Of particular interest is his singling out ofclænnyss, an Old English word for “chastity” or “purity,” as the virtue to be most highly prized among the laity:

We sceolon eac cristes acennednysse. and his gebyrdtide mid gastlicere blisse wurðian. and us sylfe mid godum weorcum geglengan. and us mid godes lofsangum gebysgian. and ða oing onscunian. ðe crist forbytt. pæt sind leahtras. and deofles weorc. and ða ðing lufian ðe god bebead. pæt is eadmodnys. and mildheortnys. rihtwisnys. and soðfæstnys. ælmesdreda. and gemetfræstnys. gepyld and cleennyss; pas ðing lufað god and huru ða clænnysse ðe he sylf ðurh hine. and ðurh pæt clæne mreden his modor astealde; Swa eac ealle his geferan ðe him filigdon ealle hí weeron on clænnysse wuniende. and se mæsta dæl prera manna pe gode geðeoð purh clsennysse hi geðeoð. (CHII.1.277–87)

[We ought also to honor the birth and nativity of Christ with spiritual joy, and adorn ourselves with good works, and occupy ourselves with songs of praise to God, and shun those things which Christ forbids, which are sins and works of the devil, and love those things which God commanded, that is humility and mercy, justice and truth, almsgiving and self-control, patience and chastity. These things God loves, and especially chastity, which he established through himself and the chaste virgin, his mother. So also all of his companions who followed him were living in chastity, and the greatest portion of those men who achieve favor with God achieve it through chastity.]
Das Exzerpt aus Macarius Magnes' Apocriticus
Authors: Larrain Carlos J.
Published: August 2016

Nach der Erstveröffentlichung des Exzerptes in Traditio 57 (2002): 85–127, erfuhr ich von der Existenz einer anderen Kopie, aus der J. Whittaker in Scriptorium 33 (1979): 59–62 “incipit” und “explicit” (= Abschnitt 7 Seite 1, 1–3 und Abschnitt 58 Seite 21, 23–24) sowie zwei Sätze (aus Abschnitt 49 Seite 16, 17–22 bis Abschnitt 50 Seite 17, 1–7 und aus Abschnitt 41 Seite 11, 8–12) an der genannten Stelle wieder gegeben hat. Es handelte sich um die Hs. paris. graec. 1918, deren Lesarten in der darin enthaltenen Kopie von Psellos, Paraphr. In Arist. De interpr. Verbindungen zu anderen Handschriften aufweisen, die in dieselbe Gruppe wie florent. laur. 71, 3 gehören.
Walter Burley Über das Vorwissen des Schlusswissens. Eine provisorische Edition von Prolog und Kap. 1 der Expositio super librum Posteriorum
Authors: von Perger Mischa
Published: August 2016

Einleitung

Der Kommentar zu den Analytica posteriora im Óuvre Walter Burleys

Walter von Burley lebte von 1275/76 bis 1344/45,1 seine frühesten datierten Werke schrieb er zu Anfang des 14. Jahrhunderts in Oxford.2 In den 1330er Jahren, nachdem er etwa zwanzig Jahre lang an der Pariser Universität studiert und gelehrt hatte, lebte er wieder in England und gehörte zum Gelehrtenzirkel um den Bischof von Durham, Richard von Bury.3 Zu jener Zeit plante er, ein “compendium de dictis in logica” zusammenzustellen, worunter wohl eine Sammlung von bündigen Kommentaren zum erweiterten Aristotelischen Organon (ars vetus und logica nova) zu verstehen ist. Hiervon sind die Kommentare zur ars vetus in vielen Handschriften und frühen Drucken verbreitet: zu Porphyrios' Isagoge, Aristoteles' Kategorienschrift, Ps.-Gilbertus Porretanus' Liber sex principiorum und Aristoteles' De interpretatione.4 Der letzte Kommentar dieser Gruppe, der zu De interpretatione, ist auf den 5. August 1337 datiert.5 All diese Bücher der ars vetus hatte Burley bereits früher, z.T. mehrfach, kommentiert.
Prayers from the Field: Practical Protection and Demonic Defense in Anglo-Saxon England
Authors: Jolly Karen Louise
Published: August 2016

A unique set of ritual prayers from tenth-century Northumbria offered the means to protect fields and crops from birds, vermin, and other demonically inspired threats to the agricultural community. They were part of a series of additions made to theDurham CollectarorRitual(Durham, Cathedral Library A.IV.19) around 970 by the Chester-le-Street scriptorium of St. Cuthbert's community, under the direction of Aldred, the eccentric glossator of theLindisfarne Gospels.These five Latin prayers glossed in Old English use exorcistic and benedictional formulas, invoke the assistance of an Archangel Panchiel, and contain atypical references to the Book of Tobit, among other unusual characteristics. This seemingly heterodox material has received scant attention from scholars assessing theDurham Ritualmanuscript and the work of Aldred. These prayers, however, may reflect the particular interests of the cult of St. Cuthbert, as well as Irish influences in Northumbrian religious practice. Also, a comparable example of one prayer appears in a contemporary Mainz text related to the early development of the Romano-Germanic Pontifical, suggesting that these prayers were part of a larger process, often invisible, of liturgical experimentation during a period of reform and regularization. The prayers read:
The Vision of “John, Hermit of the Asturias”: Lucas of Tuy, Apostolic Religion, and Eschatological Expectation
Authors: Lerner Robert E. , Morerod Christine
Published: August 2016

Although the study of high- and late-medieval eschatological prophecy has gained considerable momentum in the last few decades, much ground-level work remains to be done. A case in point is the state of knowledge concerning a prophetic vision attributed to “John, Hermit of the Asturias,” published in 1941 in Alsace by the Franciscan scholar Livarius Oliger. Because no sustained treatment of this thirteenth-century text has appeared since then, Oliger's publication has remained the sole point of reference. But it is inadequate. Oliger was unable to identify the author of the text or to come within decades of a correct dating. He was also unaware of much relevant data. Whereas he knew of only two independent manuscript copies of the vision and a version included in a life of Saint Dominic, I have identified four more manuscript copies, as well as a misplaced one and a substantial passage from the vision in a fourteenth-century treatise. Given that the text is a revealing document concerning the religious history of the second quarter of the thirteenth century, it is time to return to it.
Distinctions in the Metaphysics of Henry of Ghent
Authors: Teske Roland J.
Published: August 2016

The intentional distinction is commonly and rightly recognized as one of the hallmarks of the metaphysics of Henry of Ghent. Raymond Macken, for example, says, “Comme Ton sait, la distinction intentionnelle est une théorie bien caractéristique de Henri de Gand.” He adds that it bears the influence of Avicenna and contributes to the view of John Duns Scotus. On the contrary, he notes, “La distinction réelle est une doctrine tout aussi charactéristique de S. Thomas.” Certainly the real distinction between essence and existence in creatures is characteristic of the metaphysics of St. Thomas, but Henry too has real distinctions in his metaphysics. However, what Henry means by a real distinction is something quite different from what St. Thomas and his followers mean by a real distinction. So too, it is not really helpful to say that Henry considers the intentional distinction “comme une sorte de distinction intermédiaire entre la distinction réelle et la distinction de pure raison,” unless one is clear about what a real distinction and a purely rational distinction are in the thought of the philosopher in question. It is also commonly recognized, as Macken notes, that “Henri, dans ses questions consacrées à cette distinction intentionelle entre l'essence et l'existence, n'attaquait pas en premier lieu Thomas d'Aquin, mais bien Gilles de Rome, ou plutôt, qu'il répondait à ses attaques.” Macken even goes so far as to claim that “la distinction intentionnelle est donc une sorte de distinction réelle,” although he admits that “elle a donc un certain lien avec la distinction de raison.”
Pulchrum esse: The Beauty of Scripture, the Beauty of the Soul, and the Art of Exegesis in Hugh of St. Victor
Authors: Coolman Boyd Taylor
Published: August 2016

Pondering the narrative of creation given in Genesis in hisDe sacramentis Christianae fidei, Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1142) raises the question of whether creation was instantaneous or required a literal six days. Hugh opts for the latter. Though instantaneous creation was of course possible, he argues that God created in six days, proceeding gradually through increasing degrees of form and beauty, so that the rational creature “might discern how great was the difference betweenesseandpulchrum esse,” between “being” and “beautiful being.” God's intention, Hugh declares, was that rational creatures would be “warned not to be content with having received being [esse] from the Creator,” but would strive for “beautiful being” (pulchrum esse). The primary task of the human being in Eden, therefore, was twofold: first, a discernment, an exegesis that rightly interpreted thepulchrum esseof creation to be a manifestation of divine Beauty; second, a realization ofpulchrum essewithin itself. In large measure, for Hugh, the ensuing Fall entailed a failure to fulfill this original exegetical and ethical calling.
Christian Viaticum: A Study of its Cultural Background
Authors: Grabka Gregory
Published: August 2016

Two ideas, the Divine and the Other-World, seem to have dominated much of the life of the ancient Greeks and Romans and to have claimed their best energies. To a great extent the culture of classical antiquity is the natural expression of these two predominant religious convictions. When Christianity entered the Graeco-Roman world and gathered its adherents from among both the cultured class and the unlettered masses, it made no violent break with ancient culture but preserved whatever was best in it. On the one hand, the Church sought to suppress whatever militated against its own teaching in these matters; on the other, it readily embraced a number of purely folk customs and practices of virtually spontaneous growth and gave them a new orientation in conformity with Christian principles. In a word, some of the pagan usages and rites were purified and, whenever possible, adapted to Christian worship.
Chronology of the Fourth-Century Metropolitans of Seleucia-Ctesiphon
Authors: Higgins Martin J.
Published: August 2016

The metropolitans of Seleucia-Ctesiphon for the fourth century comprise Papa, Simeon bar Sabbae, Shahdost, Barbashmin followed by a long vacancy, Tomarsa, Qayuma, and Isaac. The parallel Sassanids were Sapor II (309-379), Ardashir II (379-83), Sapor III (383-88), Bahram IV (388-99) and Yezdegerd I (399-420).

The list of catholici is preserved in a number of different writers: PsEN (c. s. x), ChrS (c. 1036), Mari (c. 1150), PsED (c. 1260), BarH (1286), Amri (c. 1350), Sliba (c. 1350), and others.

The chronology has already been studied by G. Westphal in connection with his investigation of the sources and reliability of Mari, Amri and Sliba. He bases his dates principally on the Syriac acts of the Persian martyrs, but, as the present paper attempts to prove, this cannot be done: we must work the other way around, settle first the succession of the catholici and then turn to the acts. Furthermore, since the publication of his excellent work, the very valuable ChrS has been discovered and a critical edition of PsEN has appeared.
The Second Crusade as Seen by Contemporaries
Authors: Constable Giles
Published: August 2016

The years between 1146 and 1148 were signalized in the annals and chronicles of Medieval Europe by Christian campaigns on all fronts against the surrounding pagans and Moslems. The most important of these was directed towards the Holy Land, against the Moslems, who had recently seized Edessa. It consisted of no less than five expeditions. The two largest armies, commanded by the Emperor Conrad III and King Louis VII of France, followed the same route overland across the Balkans to Constantinople; both met with crushing defeats in Asia Minor and finally reached the Holy Land, as best they could, by land and sea. A third force, under Amadeus III of Savoy, moved down Italy, crossed from Brindisi to Durazzo, and joined the army of Louis at Constantinople late in 1147. In August of the same year a naval expedition led by Alfonso of Toulouse left the South of France and arrived in Palestine probably in the spring of 1148. At the same time, a joint Anglo-Flemish naval force sailed along the north coast of Europe, assisted the King of Portugal in the capture of Lisbon, proceeded around the peninsula early in 1148, attacked Faro, and presumably reached the Holy Land later that year. Meanwhile, in the northeast, four armies co-operated in a campaign against the pagan Wends across the river Elbe: a Danish army joined the Saxons under Henry the Lion and Archbishop Adalbero of Bremen in an attack on Dubin; another, larger, army led by Albert the Bear of Brandenburg and many other temporal and spiritual lords advanced against Demmin and Stettin; a fourth expedition, finally, under a brother of the Duke of Poland attacked from the southeast. In 1148, on the south shore of the Mediterranean, a powerful fleet under George of Antioch extended the control of Roger II of Sicily over the entire littoral from Tripoli to Tunis. In the West, four campaigns were directed against the crumbling power of the Almoravides. The Genoese in 1146 sacked Minorca and besieged Almeria. During the following year, the Emperor Alfonso VII of Castile advanced south through Andalusia and captured Almeria with the aid of a strong Genoese fleet, which in 1148 sailed north and joined the Count of Barcelona in his campaign against Tortosa. In the previous year, Alfonso Henriques of Portugal had captured Santarem and secured the assistance of the Anglo-Flemish fleet for an attack on Lisbon, which fell late in 1147.
Two Notes on Nationalism in the Middle Ages
Authors: Post Gaines
Published: August 2016

In an excellent article, ‘Pro patria mori in Medieval Political Thought,’ Ernst H. Kantorowicz has recently called attention to the importance of the concept of patria in the rise of the national monarchy and state in the later Middle Ages. No correction is needed, nor, perhaps, any addition. But since he modestly admits that he did not mean to exhaust the subject and does not examine the two laws, and since I had begun to note occasional remarks in the canonists and legists about the patria in association with theories of public law and the state, I wish to add some illustrations of the legal thought on the subject in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. These illustrations will supplement, moreover, the essay by Halvdan Koht on nationalism in the Middle Ages.
Medical Spirits and the Medieval Language of Life
Authors: Bono James J.
Published: August 2016

The termorspiritushas a long history in Western natural philosophy. Its extensive use and elaboration in the Graeco-Roman world formed the background for medieval and Renaissance treatments. Although the Stoic and Neoplatonic traditions, as well as such authors as Vergil, Macrobius, Nemesius, and Augustine, are important, the present article will attempt only to survey some medieval understandings of the Aristotelian and Galenicspiritus, which provided the basis for medicine and biological speculation.

The earliest moments of medieval Latin theoretical medicine are marked by the assimilation of Greek medicine and natural philosophy from the living tradition of Arabic medicine and philosophy. With respect tospiritus, Arabic modifications which mediated the assimilation of Aristotle's and Galen's views led to a multiplicity of meanings being attached to the termspiritus, especially where the ancient resources were applied to problems generated by the mingling of diverse cultural and religious systems. A second result was the attempt to fix, through critical interpretation, the specific medical meaning attributable to the termspiritus, to define the domain of animate beings to whichspiritusbelonged, and to justify philosophically and theologically the quite restricted nature of the termspiritus.If the former tendency was the legacy of the broader and more fluid concerns of the twelfth century, the latter, we shall see, was the standpoint bequeathed to later medieval and Renaissance medicine by authors like Albertus Magnus.
Feuding and Peace—Making in the Touraine Around the Year 1100
Authors: White Stephen D.
Published: August 2016

The conflicts commonly known as feuds, private wars (guerres privées), or vendettas constituted an important type of recurrent political process in Northern France during the later eleventh and earlier twelfth centuries, as well as in earlier and later periods. Because the conflicts to which medievalists have applied these terms could take different forms and cannot be routinely distinguished from other sorts of disputes and because at least one of the most common medieval terms for ‘feud’ — namelywerraorguerre— covered such a wide and variable field of meaning, no rigorous definition of the medieval French feud for our period can now be formulated, or, perhaps, should ever be proposed. Nevertheless, the conflicts analyzed in this study of feuding and peace–making in the Touraine during the years around 1100 had several identifiable traits in common. The combatants were adult or at least adolescent males who came from relatively restricted and elevated social circles. A few were the lords of castles. The others, at least some of whom were explicitly identified as ‘noble,’ can generally be identified as the tenants or clients of castellans and/or as the men of a particular castle. All these men carried on feuds as members of armed groups, not as isolated individuals. While taking many different actions in feuds and striving for various goals through this political process, their avowed objective throughout these conflicts was to gain revenge for an alleged injury. This they tried to achieve by expressing, in conventionalized and well–understood ways, their hatred and loathing for their enemies and their anger. Nevertheless, because the opposing parties to feuds were never complete strangers to one another, but belonged to the same loosely defined regional community, conflicts of this kind could, in theory, be ended or at least temporarily halted in such a way as to create or restore amicable relations between groups that had previously been at war. Whether in practice such settlements could actually be established and create real social peace is another matter.
The Medieval Fortunes of ‘Theatrica’
Authors: Olson Glending
Published: August 2016

Early in the twelfth century, Hugh of St. Victor in his Didascalicon divided philosophical knowledge into four areas: theoretical, practical (i.e., moral), mechanical, and logical. He further divided mechanical knowledge into seven arts, parallel to the liberal arts, giving last place to theatrica, which he defined briefly as ‘scientia ludorum.’ It proved to be the most controversial of his seven categories. Some twenty years ago W. Tatarkiewicz studied Hugh's idea, its sources, and its appearance in a few subsequent texts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance; later Nancy Howe added a reference from Petrarch. Since then, the concept of theatrics has seldom been treated in itself, although we now have substantially more evidence of its pervasiveness in medieval thinking, as a result of further scholarship on the Didascalicon and on the history of the mechanical arts. Drawing on these sources and on previously unreported material, this study attempts to describe in some detail the progress of theatrica during roughly the first three hundred years after its appearance in the works of Hugh. The medieval history of this idea does not tell us much about the theater, but it does tell us quite a lot about medieval attitudes toward play, entertainment, and performance, topics that learned circles did not often discuss extensively or dispassionately.
What Is Boncompagno‘s ‘Newest Rhetoric’?
Authors: Tunberg Terence O.
Published: August 2016

The intensification of intellectual endeavour which characterises the twelfth century is manifested in the art of rhetoric no less than in the other fields of learning. Two new types of theoretical manual represent the trends of twelfth-century rhetoric: the artes dictandi, which apply rhetorical doctrine to the composition of letters and documents, and the artes poetrie, which are primarily concerned with the writing of verse. This creative momentum continued after 1200, particularly in Italy, where dictamen underwent rapid development. There the ars notarie emerged as a semi-autonomous discipline, which was exclusively devoted to the composition of legal documents. Moreover, Italian dictatores of the thirteenth century began to turn their attention to secular speeches, creating a new offshoot of dictamen which is sometimes called the ars arengandi. Boncompagno of Signa's Rhetorica novissima (finished in 1235) is by far the most ambitious of these new treatises on public speaking. Most of the early works on oratory are collections of models, consisting either of exordia or of entire speeches. The Rhetorica novissima, however, not only provides models, but attempts to lay out a completely new theoretical foundation for the art of speech-making.
‘In civitate Pisana, in monasterio Sancti Domnini’: Algunas observaciones sobre la estancia de Ramon Llull en Pisa (1307–1308)
Authors: Reboiras Fernando Domínguez
Published: August 2016

Entre las ciudades que jalonan el itinerario del incansable viajero que fue Ramon Llull, Pisa ocupa un lugar especial. Al contrario de Génova, Montpellier, París etc. el encuentro de Ramon con Pisa fue casual y no estaba en los planes y afanes de su larga y azarosa vida. La estancia de Llull en Pisa fue relativamente corta, no llegó a durar un semestre, y sin embargo fue una época fecundísima en la producción literaria luliana. En Pisa escribió o terminó de escribir Ramon Llull una serie de obras de gran importancia y que, a juzgar por el número de manuscritos en que se conservan, pertenecen al grupo de obras lulianas más leidas en los siglos posteriores: Ars brevis, Ars generalis ultima, Liber disputationis Raimundi christiani et Homeri Saraceni, Liber clericorumy Liber de centum signis Dei.
The Word Eclipsed? Preaching in the Early Middle Ages
Authors: Mclaughlin R. Emmet
Published: August 2016

The modern interest in and study of medieval sermon literature was first driven by a combination of confessional acrimony and professional scholarship. L. Bourgain, Albert Lecoy de la Marche, Richard Albert, Rudolf Cruel, Anton Linsenmayer, and G. R. Owst combed through the archives to uncover the written remains of medieval preaching, and what they discovered came as a surprise to those who had been raised on the Protestant black legend of a mute medieval Church. For quantity and variety the period from the twelfth century to the Reformation must count as one (or several) of the great ages of pulpit activity. In fact, on the eve of the Reformation there was some concern that too much was being preached too often. For example, as a result of complaints by laity and clergy alike, in 1508 the Bishop of Breslau ordered a limit on the number of sermons preached in the city. To be sure, modern judgments concerning the quality of that preaching in both style and content vary with the confessional stance and aesthetic preferences of the individual scholar. But of the late medieval dedication to preaching in season and out there can be no doubt.
The Invention of Transubstantiation
Authors: Goering Joseph
Published: August 2016

‘The origin of the notions transubstantiatio and transubstantiare has frequently been sought.’ With this classic understatement Ludwig Hödl began a section of his magisterial study ‘Der Transubstantiationsbegriff in der scholastischen Theologie des 12. Jahrhunderts.’ Interest in the origins and the originator of this influential idea, however, has cooled in recent decades. In part, this is due to changing fashions in scholarship. The philosophical and confessional interests that fueled much of the earlier research into Eucharistic doctrines hold less attraction in an ecumenical age.
A Guide to the Medical Manuscripts Mentioned in Kristeller's ‘iter italicum’ IV
Authors: Durling Richard J.
Published: August 2016

Paul Oskar Kristeller's rich compilation Iter Italicum IV (Alia Itinera II) (London-Leiden 1989) covers manuscripts in libraries from Great Britain to Spain. It is provided with a copious index, but since the medical items are only sparsely indicated, a summary such as that supplied here is more than called for. It is modeled on those published in Traditio 41 (1985) 341–365, covering volume III, and 44 (1988) 485–536, covering volumes I–II of the Iter.
The Organization of the Latin Patriarchate of Constantinople, 1204–1261: Social and Administrative Consequences of the Latin Conquest
Authors: Wolff Robert Lee
Published: August 2016

Ecclesiastical problems naturally loom large in any investigation of relations between Greeks and Latins after the conquest of Constantinople in 1204. The story of the negotiations between the Popes and the Patriarchs at Nicaea-the diplomacy and debate with regard to a union of the Churches-has been well told by Walter Norden; except for materials discovered by Schillmann and Heisenberg, little important information has become available since he wrote. I have therefore not re-examined this range of problems here. The purpose of this study is two-fold: first, to investigate within the Empire itself certain of the local ecclesiastical relationships between Greeks and Latins; and, second, to discover the modifications in ecclesiastical organization brought about by the Roman Church in the newly-conquered Byzantine territories which, from 1204 on, formed part of the Latin patriarchate. It is, then, the social and administrative rather than the theological and diplomatic aspects of the subject which engage our attention here.
Saint Thomas and Avicenna in the ‘De Potentia Dei’
Authors: Zedler Beatrice H.
Published: August 2016

A student of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas once made the comment that if the Summa theologiae is, as its prologue indicates, the book of the pupil, then the Quaestiones disputatae is the book of the master. And with equal enthusiasm another scholar remarked that though he was eighty years old and had been devoted to study from his youth, he had drawn more profit from the three or four years devoted to the study of the Quaestiones disputatae than from the rest of his life. The rich and detailed treatment of the Disputed Questions has not lacked admirers, yet in the history of Thomistic literature that admiration has been tempered by a difficulty in understanding the unity and organization of certain groups of those questions, notably the Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei.
The Theological Structure of ‘Pearl’
Authors: Blenkner Louis
Published: August 2016

Like the undergraduate who read Macbeth twice in high school — ‘once for the truth and once for the beauty’ — modern scholars seem content to restrict their reading of Pearl to an isolated consideration of either its artistry and appeal to emotion or its theology and appeal to the intellect, in spite of impressive efforts of Professors Fletcher and Wellek to resolve the elegy-allegory dispute. Even the poem's most recent editors betray their partisanship: E. V. Gordon, who repeatedly refers to the narrator-dreamer as ‘the father,’ maintains that ‘Without the elegiac basis and the sense of great personal loss which pervades it, Pearl would indeed be the mere theological treatise on a special point, which some critics have called it’; and Sister Mary Vincent Hillmann, in a veiled though determined effort to defend Sister Madeleva's view that Pearl is not a mere pathetic elegy, as some critics have implied, offers a disarmingly literal interpretation—asserting, rightly I believe, that Pearl is ‘an homiletic poem teaching that the soul must not be attached to earthly treasure if it is to attain the Kingdom of God.’ We have returned to the position of Sir Robert Cotton's librarian, who, out of touch with the sensibilities of late nineteenth-century scholars, characterized the first poem in MS. Cotton Nero A. x. as ‘Vetus poema Anglicanum, in quo sub insomnii figmento multa ad religionem et mores spectantia explicantur.’ I will attempt to show that the poet's treatment of ‘many things concerning religion and morals’ is, like Dante's Comedy (never to my knowledge categorized as either a mere theological treatise or a mere elegy for Beatrice), a carefully structured poetic account of a spiritual itinerary culminating in an ecstasy of mystical contemplation.
The 1330 Chapter General of the Knights Hospitallers at Montpellier
Authors: Tipton Charles L.
Published: August 2016

Of all the international military monastic orders of the Middle Ages only the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem have left reasonably complete records. The publication of documents from their archives has not, however, evenly represented the great historical epochs of the order's past; for the Holy Land period (ca. 1096–1291) we have almost everything, for the Rhodian era (1310–1522) we have almost nothing. This situation has not gone unnoticed, but it has remained uncorrected. Twenty-five years ago John La Monte reported that documents pertaining to the Hospitallers after 1310 were among the important lacunae of crusade historiography, and, more recently, James Brundage has called attention to the fact that nothing has been done to fill this gap. With the exception of a handful of documents published by Joseph Delaville Le Roulx one must still turn to Sebastiano Pauli's eighteenth-century miscellany for original records of the Hospitallers during the two centuries they held Rhodes. The proceedings of the Montpellier Chapter General published here represents a modest attempt to advance beyond the current state of affairs.
A Byzantine Song for Simeon: The Fourth Kontakion of St. Romanos
Authors: Topping Eva Catafygiotu
Published: August 2016

Every epoch sings its own song of Simeon, its spirit mirrored in the figure of the old man who is but a step distant from death. T. S. Eliot in 1928 wrote ‘A Song for Simeon’ expressing the disillusionment, the hollow weariness of the years following the Great War. A pallid, cold lifelessness envelops his poem, which heavy with death proceeds through images of ‘the mountain of desolation,’ ‘winter sun,’ ‘snow hills’ and ‘dust in sunlight.’ Simeon looks wearily backward as he waits ‘for the wind that chills towards the dead land.’
A Listing of the Printed Editions of Nicolaus de Lyra
Authors: Gosselin Edward A.
Published: August 2016

Nicolaus de Lyra (ca. 1270–1349) is a figure of great importance for the history of Bible study. Regarding Nicolaus' origins and background, as well as over the dates of his birth and death, there has been much confusion. It is only in this century that the research of scholars has lifted the veil which shrouded the life of this eminent Franciscan, so that now we are able to present a brief but accurate chronology of his career.
The Assise Sur La Ligece and the Commune of Acre
Authors: Riley-Smith Jonathan
Published: August 2016

No law of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and few incidents in its constitutional history have received so much attention from recent historians as the Assise sur la ligece and the establishment of the Commune of Acre. But perhaps for the reason that a great achievement of the last few years has been the delineation of the twelfth-century monarchy, the later history of the Assise and its practical application in a series of disputes between the government and the baronage have not received much attention. The sources for the Assise all date from the middle years of the thirteenth century, by which time the Palestinian jurists' interpretation of it was at the end of a long period of development; and there is something to be said for trying to trace its history from that moment towards the end of the twelfth century when it became the basis for baronial resistance to the crown. In this paper, therefore, I will study the law's development from the reign of Aimery (1198-1205). I will argue that it was in the course of a dispute between that king and Ralph of Tiberias that the Assise was interpreted in such a way as to justify open opposition to arbitrary acts by the king; that this interpretation was used with most success early in 1229, during the Crusade of the Emperor Frederick II; but that, as far as the Kingdom of Jerusalem was concerned, the creation of the Commune of Acre in 1231-2 coincided with its final failure, and events at that time revealed inherent weaknesses in its use as an instrument of resistance. It follows that the detailed treatment of the law by Philip of Novara and John of Jaffa some decades later is a further demonstration of their fascinating but essentially unrealistic vision.
Innocent III and the First Political Crusade: A Comment on the Limitations of Papal Power
Authors: Kennan Elizabeth
Published: August 2016

On November 24, 1199, Innocent III sent an extraordinary letter to the Sicilian people announcing the appearance of another Saladin in the German adventurer Markward of Anweiler. By his alliance with the Saracens of Sicily and his atrocities against Christians, Markward had set himself against the Cross and opened a way for the conquest of Italy by the Infidel. So desperate was the situation that the Holy Land itself would best be relieved by defense of the Regno, for if southern Italy should fall to the Saracens, who could believe in Christian power to restore Jerusalem? The pope, therefore, granted to all who would resist Markward the same indulgences won hitherto only by Crusaders in Palestine.
Robert Holcot's Quodlibeta
Authors: Gillespie Richard E.
Published: August 2016

As historians of medieval theology and philosophy increasingly turn to study intellectual developments in the early fourteenth century, it is natural that Robert Holcot, O.P. († 1349), should come to stand out as an Oxford master worthy of further investigation. During his own lifetime, when he was associated with the household of Richard de Bury, the famous bishop of Durham, and on even into the early years of the sixteenth century, when several editions of his major works were printed, Holcot was held in high regard as a commentator on the Sentences, as a biblical exegete, and as a supplier of moralizing sermon exempla. His view of predestination was carefully studied by John Eck, and the Parisian master Jacques Almain devoted a treatise to his Sentence commentary.
Refreshment of the Saints: The Time after Antichrist as a Station for Earthly Progress in Medieval Thought
Authors: Lerner Robert E.
Published: August 2016

For St. Augustine the saeculum—the sum total of earthly human existence — was malignant. Not only was it so, he thought, since Adam's fall, but it would remain so until the Last Judgment. Since the Fall this world was no place in which to rejoice; only otherworldly liberation could be had ‘from this life of misery, a kind of hell on earth.’ Historical events, aside from the Incarnation, remained for Augustine ‘a chaos of human sin divided by acts of divine power.’ With Christ, history had entered into its sixth and last earthly age and there was no hope for any greater earthly future. In the City of God (20.7) Augustine rejected as a ‘ridiculous fable’ the view that the thousand-year kingdom of Christ in Revelation (20.1-6) would be a future earthly kingdom, interpreting it instead as a figure for the life of the Church in the present. ‘There are no verbs of historical movement in the City of God,’ Peter Brown assures us, ‘no sense of progress to aims that may be achieved in history.’
The Cult of Relics in the Letters and ‘Dialogues’ of Pope Gregory the Great: A Lexicographical Study
Authors: McCulloh John M.
Published: August 2016

Late antiquity and the early Middle Ages witnessed a change in the Christian attitude toward the remains of the saints. Holy bodies came to be treated less and less as normal corpses, worthy of special veneration but still subject to many of the laws and customs which had regulated the treatment of human remains in pagan Antiquity. They came rather to be viewed as cult objects which could be moved or even divided up according to the demands of religion with little regard for earlier prohibitions of these practices. This change occurred relatively early in the Greek, eastern portion of the Roman Empire. In the mid-fourth century the Caesar Gallus translated a saint's body from one tomb to another, and less than two centuries later Justinian asked Pope Hormisdas for portions of the bodies of the apostles. Despite some outstanding exceptions such as the translations performed by St. Ambrose, the Christians of the West were more conservative in these matters. Nevertheless, by the ninth century at the very latest, western Christians had followed the lead of the eastern church in both translating and dismembering holy bodies.
The Old English Epic of Redemption: The Theological Unity of MS Junius 11
Authors: Hall J. R.
Published: August 2016

Anglo-Saxon scribes were compilers and organizers as well as copyists. Each major Old English literary manuscript gives evidence of editorial planning. The Beowulf codex was apparently designed as a collection of marvelous tales; the Vercelli Book as a collection of legendary and homiletic matter; and the first three poems of the Exeter Book (Christ I, II, and III) were arranged in proper chronological sequence.
La Stabilisation de la monnaie par la création du franc (décembre 1360) — blocage d'une société
Authors: Cazelles Raymond
Published: August 2016

Le 5 décembre 1360, le roi Jean le Bon, qui a quitté l'Angleterre oò il était tenu prisonnier depuis la bataille de Poitiers, perdue quatre ans plus tôt, et qui revient de Calais à Paris par petites étapes, sans hâte particulière, s'arrête à Compiègne oò il va passer quelques jours et promulguer un texte important, édictant deux mesures inséparables l'une de l'autre: la suppression de tous impôts autres que ceux qu'il établit pour le paiement de sa rançon et la fabrication d'une bonne monnaie. Quelques jours plus tard, le roi est à Paris, se rend dans l'hôtel de Guillaume de Melun, archevêque de Sens, et déclare qu'il est désormais ‘franc’ des Anglais, terme qui ne peut manquer d'être rapproché du nom donné aux pièces d'or qui sont frappées dès le mois de décembre 1360 sous le nom de ‘francs.’ La monnaie forte est établie sur une évaluation du marc d'or fin à 60 livres tournois et du marc d'argent à 4 livres 18 sous tournois. En même temps est instaurée l‘équivalence de la monnaie réelle et de la monnaie de compte, le franc valant une livre tournois et le denier d'argent quinze sous tournois. La frappe du franc marque solennellement la stabilité de la monnaie et l'ajustement exact de la livre, monnaie de compte, aux pièces d'or ou d'argent. Jean II répudie formellement les mutations ‘par quoy nostre royaume et peuple d'icelui a esté moult diminué et gasté.’
Hebrews, Israelites, and Wicked Jews: An Onomastic Crux in ‘Andreas’ 161-67
Authors: Hill Thomas D.
Published: August 2016

In the Old English poem Andreas, the narrative begins with the imprisonment and suffering of Matthew, who is blinded and forced to drink a magic potion which is intended to reduce him to bestiality. This drink, which literarily is directly descended from Circe's potion, fails to be effective in this case, and Matthew prays to God for help in his affliction. God responds directly and tells Matthew that He will bring help. God's help is mediated by the apostle Andrew, and immediately before God summons Andrew He is apostrophized in the following passage:

þa w æs gemyndig, se Ðe middangeard

gestaÐelode strangum mihtum.

hu he in ellþeodigum yrmÐum wunode

belocen leoÐubendum, þe oft his lufan adreg

for Ebreum ond Israhelum,

swylce he Iudea galdorcræftum

wiÐstod stranglice.1
Some Recent Books on Greek Patristics
Authors: Musurillo Herbert
Published: August 2016

The period 1952-1954 has seen some very outstanding achievements in the field of Greek patristic, only a small proportion of which can be discussed here. One of the most interesting works that have appeared, from the viewpoint of a general survey, is Johannes Quasten's Patrology, so far as it has progressed; and although the obvious complaint might be that no single scholar can now ever hope adequately to cover the entire patristic field, and that in a manual of this sort no author can be treated with all the detail that the specialist would desire, at the same time there is nothing in English of its kind and, as a matter of fact, Quasten's work bids fair to surpass even the German works in this category. The author's decision to include short excerpts from individual authors may seem needless to the scholar; but it is useful to the student and, at the same time, adds a certain liveliness to the book, which by its very nature would otherwise be condemned to remaining an inventory of names and dates. The strong point of the Patrology is its clarity, the fulness of its bibliography and its completeness (for the author has allowed himself a broader scale than Altaner); for example, he can spend three pages on the sixth-century papyrus, discovered in 1941, which gives apparently the stenographers' report of Origen's debate with Bishop Heracleides (A.D. 244/5) on the proper terminology to be used when discussing the Trinity (Patrology II 62ff.).
The Bishops' Books of Città di Castello
Authors: Brentano Robert
Published: August 2016

Paul Kehr, in 1909, published the volume of his Italia Pontificia that deals with Umbria. In it he wrote that there had been preserved in the episcopal archives in Città di Castello three volumes, books of the bishopric or ‘Atti della Curia vescovile' from the thirteenth and following centuries. He also said that there had been an earlier first book of acta but that it had been sought by him in vain. This sort of reference, in Kehr, suggests lost treasure, material sufficiently valuable to draw one up the Tiber to Città di Castello to see what is actually there.
An Errant Crusader: Stephen of Blois
Authors: Brundage James A.
Published: August 2016

The history of the First Crusade is, in large part, the history of mass movements of men. The deeds of any individual in the Crusade, even those of the major leaders, cannot be traced in their entirety. The part played by any individual in the Crusade can only be sketched in outline and even then, puzzling gaps in the record can be expected to show up as a matter of course. Since this is true of the tangible, external actions of the Crusading leaders, it is no great surprise to find the same thing true of their thoughts, attitudes, and plans. It is true enough, again, in this context that something can be done to characterize the attitudes of the masses of the Crusaders, as these attitudes are reflected by chroniclers, poets, and popular writers of various kinds. But to try to recover the personal thoughts and attitudes of one or another of the major leaders of the Crusade is a far more difficult problem. On a few topics, where attitudes may easily and unequivocally be reflected by external acts, it is possible to make a fairly sure estimate of the thoughts and beliefs of one or another of the Crusading princes. When one speculates on such subjects, the only conclusion which can be reached is that these questions are unanswerable or that answers to them can be deduced only with great hesitation and circumspection from data which do not bear directly upon the central question at all.
Date of Martyrdom of Simeon Bar Sabbae
Authors: Higgins Martin J.
Published: August 2016

Simeon bar Sabbae, metropolitan of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and second primate of the Persian Church, fell victim among the first to the general persecution of Sapor II. The date of his martyrdom has been the subject of considerable controversy, and it is the purpose of the present paper to prove that the saint's death occurred, not on Good Friday, as has always been supposed, but on Sept. 14, and in the year 344 A.D.