While the Mozarabic Rite has been the subject of numerous and important studies, the riches of its hymnody have never been adequately displayed. Abounding in interest for the inquirer in the field of early medieval religious poetry, it is equally rewarding to the historian who would be acquainted to some extent with ways of thinking familiar to Visigothic and Moslem Spain. The English scholar, Frederic Raby, was aware of this when he wrote of Mozarabic hymns, ‘They form the raw material for an important research which would help to elucidate the state of religious and intellectual culture during the obscure centuries of the early Middle Ages.’ Clemens Blume, the great Jesuit hymnologist, a generation earlier had reached the same conclusion when he published his edition of Hymnodia Gothica in the twenty-seventh volume of the Analecta hymnica medii aevi.

Studies of medieval literature have evinced a growing concern with the effect of an exegetical milieu on imaginative writing. Although the Middle English period provides an extensive field for allegorical and typological excursions, Old English poetry forms a smaller corpus and makes less conspicuous use of scriptural and patristic allusions. Readers are, therefore, not always alert to the deftness with which an Anglo-Saxon poet has utilized typology. Poems like Andreas, however, are as deeply rooted in typological traditions as in the more obvious traditions of the Germanic epic and can be fully appreciated only if their typological echoes are heard.

A constant thorn in the side of those who try to understand courtly love is Andreas Capellanus' De Amore. This disconcerting treatise provides us with the only true art of courtly love that we possess, but it also contains a very harsh attack against love. The antithetical attitude towards love is all the more astonishing because Andreas, although a churchman, devoted far more space to the instruction on how to love and the praise of love than to the attack on it. Explanations for this anomaly have ranged from one extreme to the other: Andreas was sincere only in the section devoted to the praise of courtly love (Books I and II), whereas the third book represents a later—forced or willing—recantation; or, Andreas had been obliged for unknown reasons to compose a treatise on love, and appended the third book to correct any misunderstanding regarding his personal opinion on the matter. Recently some scholars have tried to find explanations for the treatise that deny in effect the existence of a conflict between the two parts. D. W. Robertson, Jr., for example, finds ironic overtones in Books I and II that betray Andreas' disapproval of courtly love; the third book is a forthright condemnation. I shall return to Robertson's thesis below. In the most thorough analysis to date of Andreas' treatise, Felix Schlösser has come to the conclusion that there is in fact no compromise between the two parts, and that Andreas did not really try to find one; the type of love attacked in the Reprobatio is totally different from the courtly love described in the rest of the treatise. Schlösser concludes that Andreas did not seek to reconcile courtly love with the teachings of the Church, but rather let the world of courtly love and the world of Christian dogma stand side by side, each absolute in its own sphere; both are confined to predetermined areas and do not overlap. Thus the attack from the point of view of the Church in Book III is directed against the same type of love Andreas condemns in Book I when he considers peasants, prostitutes, gold diggers, and the like.

Bede believed in miracles. They were basic to him, both as a practicing Christian and as a working historian. Without accepting this we can understand him neither as a man of the seventh and eighth centuries ncr as the author who carefully constructed the Ecclesiastical History.

One of Bede's warmest admirers, the late Bertram Colgrave, was rather embarrassed by what seemed to be the naíveté of his hero. To rescue Bede from the charge of being either overly credulous or simply simple-minded, Colgrave did a useful study of the use of miracle stories in Bede's works, particularly in the Ecclesiastical History. And yet, despite himself, he always remained a little uneasy. His comments to the British Academy reflect a continuing ambivalence, and his last words on the subject were still apologetic in tone.

Sophocles' Trachiniae has provoked among the critics a broad variety of responses ranging from strong censure and denial of Sophoclean authorship at one extreme to expressions of approval and great praise at the other. In recent years the literature on the play has tended to approach the drama in a more sympathetic vein and critics have displayed a much more positive stance to both the contents and dramaturgy of the play. Although the debates about such questions as those of date, structure, purpose, theme, characterization, and unity continue, elements of the drama which earlier writers had tended to pass over, treat in an apologetic view, or even ascribe to the presence of textual flaws have been examined in a frank and open manner with positive results. The fact remains, however, that despite these advances there still persists a considerable reluctance to accept the figure of Heracles as he is presented in the drama. There can be no doubt that the characterization of Heracles is the fundamental reason why the Trachiniae has long been regarded as the great problem play of the Sophoclean corpus, and while for the most part we have moved from the blanket condemnation of this character that marked many earlier studies, the tendency to regard Heracles and consequently the Trachiniae as anomalies persists.

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.

In the following I offer a sequel to an earlier article on the source for the Remedia sections in Chaucer's Parson's Tale. There I presented extracts from a Latin treatise on the virtues referred to as Postquam, which treats seven virtues in the same order as the Parson's remedies against the Seven Deadly Sins and furnishes precise verbal parallels to a large portion of the relevant passages in the Parson's Tale, passages for which no convincing source had previously been suggested. I also noted that in several manuscripts Postquam is preceded by a similar treatise on the vices and that the latter provides interesting parallels to Chaucer's treatment of the Seven Deadly Sins. The relation between this Latin treatise and Chaucer's text, however, is unfortunately not as simple as it was in the case of the Remedia. It is complicated, first of all, by the fact that much material concerning the Seven Deadly Sins in the Parson's Tale derives — as has been known for some time — from Peraldus's Summa de vitiis. Hence, my pointing at a different Latin treatise on the vices and claiming for it a greater closeness to the Parson's Tale than Peraldus has will involve a comparison between this treatise and Peraldus in their relation to the Parson's Tale. In addition, the discussion grows even more complicated because of the fact that not one but two new treatises on the vices must be considered. I shall refer to them by their initial words, Quoniam and Primo respectively. They are both abbreviations of Peraldus's Summa de vitiis, clearly made in England in the third quarter of the thirteenth century. Quoniam rearranges the Seven Deadly Sins found in Peraldus (Gula — Luxuria — Avaritia — Accidia — Superbia — Invidia — Ira — Peccatum linguae) in the more normal order (Superbia — Invidia — Ira — Accidia — Avaritia — Gula — Luxuria, with several sins of the tongue distributed among other chief vices), selects material from Peraldus, and adds much material not found in Peraldus, including several English verses. Primo in its turn appears to be a revision of Quoniam. It reduces the Peraldian as well as the non-Peraldian material found in Quoniam. Despite slight changes in the wording, it contains no significant material which is not also present in Quoniam. The English origin of both works is shown by the English verses in Quoniam, by several references to England, and by an interesting exemplum against greed and the overly zealous pursuit of the law, which is preserved in both treatises.

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

Greece, once the mother at whose feet European civilization sat and learnt, has ever quickened to the inspiration of her own past. When at intervals her learning and literature have languished and all but died out, her steadfast awareness of her ancient glory has always stirred in her a new impulse and a new life. How like her, then, on the morrow of her emancipation from the Turk, to look back to the period of her greatness for an answer to the problem confronting her! Reborn Greece needed desperately a common tongue. She had at her disposal only local patois, and possessed neither a national literature nor a national language. It had been preeminently the strong sense of a history, the reawakening of the age-old urge to vie with antiquity, that had kindled her to revolt against her overlord. To revive the idiom of classic Athens, to make it the symbol and bond of a resurgent Hellas appealed irresistibly to the enthusiastic patriotism of the victors. Others with equal ardor espoused the cause of the vernacular. Thus arcse the strife over the katharevousa and the demotike, an ever-recurrent conflict of never reconciled elements in the nation's psychology, the tug of the past over against the insistence of the present.

On sait fort peu de choses sur le frère mineur Jean de Ripa. Selon quelques manuscrits (Rome, Vatican latin 1083 et 6738; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, latin 15369, tous les trois du XIVème siècle), on hésita entre ce nom et celui de Jean de la Marche. En ce qui concerne sa vie, les historiens laissent insatisfait leur lecteur. Lucas Wadding, dont le premier tome des Annales (1650) couvre la période allant de 1301 à 1350, se fonde sur une épitaphe pour le présenter comme un “homme docte.” Il signale que vers 1350 on érigea le couvent de Ripa Transone et il précise qu'au couvent de Paris “brilla Maître Jean de Ripa Transone, vulgairement appelé Ripa, qui n'eut pas son pareil en son temps, ainsi qu'en témoignent ces monuments que sont sa Lectura sur les quatre livres des Sentences et son Commentaire du Livre de l'Ame.” De son côté, le frère Félix Peretti de Montalio, vicaire général, voit en lui un “théologien et philosophe très illustre.” Outre les deux précédents ouvrages, il lui attribue un Traité des Vices et des Vertus. Le manuscrit Vatican latin 1083 lui attribue également des Sermones de tempore et sanctis et un traité De formalitatibus.

Most historians agree in attributing the beginnings of modern historical thought to the humanists of the Renaissance. This view seems proper in consideration both of the well known humanist enthusiasm for history and of the technical accomplishments of the great humanist scholars, although this should perhaps be qualified by our growing appreciation of the sophistication of medieval thought, historical as well as philosophical. Nowadays many historians acknowledge that the Reformation, too, made valuable contributions to the study of history, in spite of, or perhaps because of, its polemical character.

In a revolutionary paper read in the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1965, the foremost expert on the history of the crusaders' states, Joshua Prawer, has completely altered our outlook on, and considerably enlarged our knowledge of, the medieval communes established in the Holy Land during the time of the crusaders. This is not the place to discuss the merits of Prawer's paper in all details, especially as I have done this briefly elsewhere. Let it suffice here to say that by placing the history of the communes in the general context of the institutional history of the Latin Orient rather than by viewing them as isolated phenomena, as had been done by the late and regretted John L. La Monte, Prawer demonstrated ably and beyond any doubt that in the constitutional history of the Latin Kingdom and of the crusaders' states in general there were definite traces of Estates, elements of a development towards a Ständestaat This transition from a strong monarchy to a representative system of Estates, which is so familiar in European history, is hard to detect in the history of the Latin Orient because the reconquest of the Holy Land by the Muslims cut short this line of constitutional development. Thus, although the weakness of the monarchy in the thirteenth century was clearly seen, a true representative system never came into being in the East. But Prawer showed that the crusaders' states were well on their way towards such a goal and that from about A.D. 1240 the masters of the knightly orders and the administrative heads of the exempted Italian merchant colonies, as well as representatives of the urban brotherhoods (fraries), took part in the proceedings of the Haute Cour, the highest body of legislation and jurisdiction, although they did not formally vote. Under the procedure followed in the Haute Cour, the nobility debated separately and afterwards notified the representatives of the orders, the merchants, and the urban Frankish population of their decisions. But it is obvious that the latter by their mere presence must have influenced the proceedings because it was the orders, the merchants, and the bourgeois who controlled the military establishment and the economy. The fraternities, like any reasonably organized group, became part and parcel of the institutional framework of the state. In all likelihood Prawer's final conclusion is correct: had the crusaders' states survived for another hundred years, these representatives would have been transformed from advisory groups into well established and separate Estates with full power to vote in the Haute Cour.

Die hier zum erstenmal im Druck erscheinende, lateinische Übersetzung des Werkes Galens De motibus dubiis ist durch eine einzige Handschrift überliefert. Es handelt sich urn Vaticanus palatinus latinus 1211. Die Übersetzung stammt aus der ersten Hälfte des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts und wurde von einern zweisprachigen Arzt aus Reggio, Kalabrien, besorgt. Er dürfte griechischsprechendem Urnfeld entstarnrnen, worauf sein Farniliennarne Deoprepio, der auch der Name eines angesehenen Notars der Gegend war, hindeutet. Dokurnente der Zeit aus dieser Gegend zeigen, daß die griechische und die lateinische Sprache und deren jeweilige Schriftzeichen abwechselnd verwendet wurden.

MS Vat. Gr. 915 (bombyc., ca. 266 × 170 mm, 258 fols.) is a most interesting collection of archaic, classical, and Hellenistic Greek poetry (from Homer and Hesiod to Pindar, from Theocritus and Lycophron down to Moschus and Musaeus) put together during the early Palaeologan Renaissance, more exactly between the last years of the thirteenth century and 1311 (the terminus ante quem is provided by the subscription on fol. 258v). The contents of this codex as well as the textual facies of several of its items have led various scholars, each from a different perspective, to conclude that it was produced in the circle of Maximus Pianudes, the most outstanding Greek scholar of his age (of which he is also in a sense the “eponymous hero”); more on this will be said below in §3.

Tucked away among the dubia of Migne's second volume of the writings of Alcuin is a short exposition of the seven seals of the Apocalypse. Here the seven seals first are related to seven events in the life of Christ: his nativity, baptism, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, ascension, and judgment. These in turn are shown to be analogous to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, (sapientia), for Christ was miraculously born of a virgin; understanding (intellectus), because in baptism all sins are forgiven; counsel (consilium), for, as Caiphas the high-priest said of the crucifixion, ‘it is better for one man to die than for a whole people to perish’ (John 11:50); fortitude (fortitudo), in analogy to the burial, as Christ descended into hell and overcame it; knowledge (scientia), for the resurrection, through which Christ makes us believe; piety (pietas), for the ascension, since the souls of the faithful wish to follow Christ to heaven; and fear of the Lord (timor), in anticipation of the Last Judgment. Finally, the text portrays these virtues as exemplified by seven patriarchs: wisdom in Adam, understanding in Noah, counsel in Abraham, fortitude in Isaac, knowledge in Jacob, piety in Moses, and fear of the Lord in David.

In Etymologies 8.9, Isidore presents a detailed classification of the diverse group of ritual experts he calls magi. Well organized, erudite, flexible enough to include a wide range of specialists, and, as its record of influence demonstrates, enormously useful as a template for later medieval classifications, the “De Magis” offers what can rightly be called the first definitive western Christian taxonomy of unauthorized practitioners. Although Isidore relied heavily on a wide range of pagan and Christian sources for the contents of the chapter, their selection, revision, and arrangement—the elements of his taxonomy—were all his own.

Abbot Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel elaborates on the practice of compilation in his ninth-century Liber comitis, a compendium of biblical exegesis organized around the readings used in the liturgy. In the preface to this work, he makes it quite clear that the ideas expressed are not his own, but instead derive from the works of the church Fathers:

Walter Burley's De Motu Animalium has never appeared in print. Our edition of this work was prepared from six manuscript copies: Erfurt SB Amploniana Q. 312 (XIV century) fols. 78r–81r; London Lambeth Palace 70 (XIV) fols. 144r–147v; Lambeth Palace 74 (A.D. 1390) fols. 30r–32v; Oxford Magdalen College 80 (XIV) fols. 177v–180v; Oriel College 12 (XV) fols. 115–119; Vaticana Vat. lat. 2151 (XIV) fols. 239r–244r. The Magdalen (afterwards M.) manuscript is the most complete and is followed closely by Amploniana (A.), though A. is almost impossible to read by itself owing to the crabbed and scratchy manner in which it was written. Oriel (0.) makes the most omissions; it is incomplete and anonymous. The two Lambeth Palace MSS follow each other closely. L. 70 is anonymous and L. 74 is incomplete. Vatican was the original manuscript upon which our edition was based. It is an excellently preserved text but not quite sufficient by itself to constitute a safe reading of Burley's work. Our edition can claim to be critical to the extent that six manuscripts were consulted.

Though Cicero's authority helped elevate the ideal orator's dexterity and discipline to the status of cliche, the vital link between theory and practice that his dialogues advocate did not long survive him. As professional rhetoricians of the next century became increasingly preoccupied with declamation, practical oratory developed and rewarded other qualities. Eloquence of the old kind could be thought a vanishing art. This then is how the younger Pliny would describe one of the most successful speakers of the late first century, the notorious (and long-lived) delator M. Aquilius Regulus.

The year 1321 is crucially important in the history of the development of French constitutional and political activity, for it was then that Philip V, the most inventive and imaginative of the sons of Philip the Fair, attempted to utilize assemblies of different sorts for an unprecedented purpose, to secure from the kingdom of France a grant of funds in time of peace to support a program of administrative and economic reform. His predecessors had had some success in securing levies for the defense of the realm, and, like them, Philip had raised money for campaigns against the Flemings. Neither Philip nor the kings who had ruled before him had, however, tried to obtained the active cooperation of the kingdom in advancing the welfare of France by introducing improvements which were totally unrelated to the needs of defense. It is a testimony to Philip's vision that he made such an attempt, abortive though it proved to be, for in the end his work came to nothing, and early in 1322 Philip died. While the complete failure of Philip's plans, which have fittingly been termed his ‘Grand Design,’ meant that 1321 would not become a landmark in French constitutional history, it does not make the brief episode any the less interesting. Its details illustrate the practical difficulties involved in the execution of such a project, and help explain why the evolution of viable institutions to facilitate cooperation between ruler and ruled to promote the common good were so halting, and why instances of such cooperation are so rare.