This paper presents the results of my research into the scriptural text which St. John Chrysostom used as the basis of his Homilies on Acts. These results give a good indication of the text-type of Acts known to Chrysostom and, as a corollary, provide evidence bearing on the textual tradition of the Homilies themselves.

The French royal genealogy compiled by Giles of Paris (1160? – before 1224) has received little scholarly attention, but it is an important source for the historical views of Capetian circles at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The work is an elaborate family tree which traces the royal succession from the legendary origins of the Franks to the contemporary heir to the throne, the future Louis VIII, who is identified on the chart as Ludouicus puer. Giles begins with a narrative of the history of Sicambria and of the entry of the Franks into Gaul which he illustrates with a table of the first Merovingians. The family tree then continues, indicating the length of each king's reign and giving historical notes on some rulers. The genealogy is traced in detail from Clovis through the sons of Louis the Pious, but afterward there appear only kings, and rarely their queens, except for the family of Louis VI, whose sons and eldest grandsons are shown. In addition, Giles traces the supposed Merovingian descent of the Carolingians, the descent of the Capetians from Robert the Brave, and the lines of many of the descendants of William the Conqueror. Giles's selection, presentation, and reworking of materials from his sources reveal a view which in some respects is original and in others, while derivative, is an unusually clear sketch of the dynastic schematization of the national history. The genealogy is an outline history of France which, although written at the beginning of a period of great historiographical activity and itself unlike other works of the time, has remained unedited and has never been seriously studied.

A common view of medieval thought focuses on the separation of speculative thought from biblical exegesis which occurs with the rise of the universities. Whereas in the patristic era and the early Middle Ages theology and exegesis formed a unity, the introduction of Aristotle and the techniques of quaestio and disputatio detached theology from the study of scriptural texts. The results were twofold: theology attained a new autonomy and a distinctive form in the summa, and exegesis — free of the demands of theological speculation — could pursue a more literal and historical style of interpretation. Whatever the historical accuracy of this view, it has certainly shaped modern scholarship on medieval thought. Theologians and philosophers have focused on summae and disputed questions to such an extent that the Leonine edition of Thomas Aquinas has yet to publish his major Commentary on the Gospel of John. Since Thomas is considered first of all a theologian, not an exegete, his biblical commentaries have been accorded less interest and attention than his systematic works. In contrast, students of medieval exegesis may so emphasize literal and historical interpretation that they exclude or dismiss commentaries that are speculative or mystical. Beryl Smalley's The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages represents this trend, as it devotes little attention to Bernard of Clairvaux but concentrates on commentators like Guerric of St. Quentin, who gave ‘his attention to the literal sense first and foremost.’

The establishment of a chronology of Saint John Chrysostom's early life is beset with difficulties arising not from a lack of sources, but from a relative abundance of incomplete accounts, which sometimes contradict one another and which are of uncertain reliability. The fifth chapter of Palladius’ Dialogue is generally considered to be our most valuable source. Yet even in the use of this document some caution is advisable. Palladius knew Chrysostom during the last years of the latter's life; consequently his account of the events in Constantinople is of great value. But what were his sources for the saint's early life? Two in particular have been proposed: Chrysostom himself, and his aunt, the deaconess Sabiniana. Our own experience of human nature should warn us that a man in his late fifties or early sixties does not always remember accurately the details of his youth, and that the testimony of elderly aunts about the early years of their famous nephews is never entirely above question. Moreover, it should be remembered that Palladius’ Dialogue had an apologetic purpose.

Any discussion of the intellectual life in fourteenth-century Italy is inevitably directed by the personality and achievement of Petrarch. Although we no longer believe that a whole new age begins with him, although we recognize considerable medieval elements in his work, we still regard him as the father of the strongest movement in the Renaissance–humanism. After his long years of succesful work, that was at once well publicized and well remunerated, there could be no inversion of the hour-glass. From him there proceeded the splendid parade of Boccaccio, Salutati, Guarino, and Bruni. There can be no quarrel with the general truth of this Petrarchan primacy, but, as in all historical abstractions, there are some unfortunate results. These are particularly prevalent in the decades before Petrarch. His shadow is over the whole period. We have difficulty in appreciating his predecessors as anything but precursors. If we resist the temptation to dismiss them all as unimportant, we are nonetheless constrained to deal with them as relative to a later Petrarch, as the very term prehumanism implies. The period is obscure enough without adding this element of ambiguity to it. Unable to jettison the term, we can still underline its inadequacy and establish the substantial nature of the movement, even without reference to Petrarch.

Sauf erreur, on ne possède aucune publication intégrale de plaidoiries médiévales, et la littérature savante qui les concerne est aussi mince que vieillie. Nous espérons que la présente édition contribuera à ranimer ces études, d'un intérêt incontestable pour l'histoire du droit et des mœurs du moyen âge.

Sometime between 1070 and 1077, Anselm, then prior of the monastery of Bec in Normandy, wrote to his friend Maurice, a former Bec monk residing at Christ Church, Canterbury, and asked him to seek out copies of various texts, including Bede's De temporibus and the Regula of St. Dunstan — presumably the Regularis concordia, the platform-document of the English Benedictine reform of the tenth century. Shortly thereafter, Anselm wrote again to Maurice, indicating that another text had been added to his desiderata:

Philip V's negotiations with his subjects to secure subsidies and support in 1318 and 1319 significantly affected the evolution of royal policies and general attitudes toward taxation and consultation in fourteenth-century France. Though many aspects of these governmental activities have been studied, the precise nature of the monarchy's aims and plans, and the complex interrelationship of the reactions of different groups and different regions are still not fully understood. The work which has been done has concentrated on analysis as a prelude to synthesis: the various stands taken by townspeople, by nobles, and by ecclesiastics have been treated, and the responses of various areas have been considered. Much of the material necessary for a comprehensive assessment has been examined and ordered, yet there remain problems, relatively restricted in nature and scope, which demand consideration before the meaning and implications of the events of 1318 and 1319 can be adequately comprehended.

This study documents the discovery of Peter Lombard's long-thought-to-be-lost lectures on the Old Testament, which were hidden in plain view in the Old Testament lectures of Stephen Langton, who lectured on the Lombard's lectures. The presence in the Lombard's lectures on Genesis of the logical theory of supposition, the single greatest advance in logical theory during the High Middle Ages, means that those lectures not only postdate the Sentences but also represent the beginning of a radical advance in speculative theology that would continue to develop through the end of the High Middle Ages. This means in turn that lectures on the Bible from the 1150s to 1200, and in particular those of the School of Paris, headed by Peter Lombard, play a central role in one of the greatest speculative developments — logical, philosophical, and theological — of the Middle Ages.

En présentant cette contribution à l'examen critique de l'œuvre de Hugues de Saint-Victor, nous avons d'abord à rendre hommage à B. Hauréau qui, au siècle dernier, entreprit une étude analogue, en 1859, sous le titre, Hugues de Saint-Victor: Nouvel examen de l'édition de ses oeuvres, puis, en 1886, sous le titre, Les oeuvres de Hugues de Saint-Victor. Compte tenu des travaux parus depuis lors et des résultats de nos propres recherches nous devons faire un certain nombre d'additions aux constatations faites par Hauréau, et un certain nombre de corrections aux jugements qu'il prononça. Il n'empêche que notre étude comme la sienne a un caractère provisoire et appelle à son tour additions, perfectionnements et corrections. Puissions-nous du moins être quelque peu utile aux chercheurs qui s'intéresseront à ce grand penseur du XIIe siècle.

Nous voudrions, dans ces quelques pages, terminer le dépouillement commencé jadis (il y a dix ans déjà) des qq. contenues dans le MS Bamberg, Staatsbibl. Can. 17 [P.I. 11]. Nous avions laissé de côté les collections III1 (fol. 127–133r) et III4 (fol. 171–177). Ces deux séries reprennent un certain nombre de qq. publiées jadis par F. Thaner d'après le MS Stuttgart, Landesbibl. HB VI 62 (H 72) fol. 58v-71r (q. 1–30) et 120v-123v (q. 31–36) et dont quelques-unes se retrouvent dans le MS Cambridge, Univ. Libr. Addit. 3321 vol. 2 fol. 26v-31v. Nous y joindrons, en complément, l'énoncé (la seule partie qui nous ait été conservée) d'une q. du MS Vatican, Pal. lat. 678 fol. 98rv. On pourra le comparer avec celui que nous avons déjà publié. C'est bien le měme thème, mais la tournure en est autre. Nous trouverons d'ailleurs le měme procédé dans la série dont nous allons proposer l'analyse.

Karl Jost first noted the use of a passage from Atto of Vercelli, De pressuris ecclesiasticis, in Archbishop Wulfstan's Latin composition De Christianitate. Dorothy Bethurum, however, in her essay on the group of manuscripts associated as representatives of Wulfstan's “Commonplace Book,” suggested that an extract in one of these, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 190, pp. 96–97, was an intermediary between the original work of Atto and Wulfstan's De Christianitate. Jost and Bethurum used the edition of Atto by d'Achery, reprinted in Migne. Now Joachim Bauer has re-edited Atto's tract and, finding early manuscripts rare, has read CCC 190 and identified more quotations from Atto in this English manuscript.

By some inexplicable accident of literary history, The Orchard of Syon, in the nearly five hundred years of its existence, has not found its critical editor, nor is there any study of it available to readers. The first to rescue it from oblivion was Sir Richard Sutton, steward of Syon Monastery in the early sixteenth century, who, as Wynkyn de Worde informs us, found it ‘in a corner by it selfe’ and deemed it worthy of costly publication. Although it belongs to a body of medieval literature which has been in recent years the object of much critical research by medievalists, the work has, so far as modern readers are concerned, continued for over four centuries to lie ‘in a corner by it selfe.’ The energetic surge of vernacular devotional prose in the fourteenth century, not only in England, but in Italy, Germany, and Flanders — countries whose spiritual climate must have been especially favorable to mysticism — did not recede in the fifteenth century. Following upon the age of Chaucer, this century may seem to some present-day scholars literarily poor and unproductive, but it was a great age of English prose; an age, that is, when translations and experiments with original prose in the vernacular were building on the past, borrowing from other languages to meet the needs of the present, and shaping the prose of the future. The Orchard of Syon is an important specimen of this emerging prose, as well as of current devotional literature. Its connection with Syon Monastery, renowned in the history of England and of the Church, gives it added prestige.

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.

‘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.

From the earliest times the Roman pontiffs exercised the right of sending envoys - by dispatching their legates to synods and councils, by maintaning from the time of Leo the Great their apocrisiarii at the imperial court of Constantinople and later still in the kingdom of the Franks, by appointing bishops and metropolitans as vicars apostolic, and by entrusting at times even to secular princes a kind of legatine power. While the theoretical basis of their claim to this right may be said to have received its final formulation at the hands of John XXII in the year 1316, it was nonetheless more penetratingly analyzed and expounded by Pius VI and Leo XIII. It is upon the pronoun cements of these popes that the definition of this claim in the Code of Canon Law is based:

ius … a civili potestate independens, in. quamlibet mundi partem legatos cum vel sine ecclesiastica iurisdictione mittendi.

Some twenty years ago Canon Étienne Delaruelle and Janine Povill wrote a history of the parishes of Toulouse from their origins to 1160. My design is to review their findings for the mid-twelfth century and carry the history forward until about 1250. The limitation of 1250 is imposed essentially by a change in the nature of the documentation of Toulousan local history, which among other things involved a great diminution in preserved private documents.

An oath was sworn by Pope Leo III at St. Peter's on December 23 of the year 800 before a synodal assembly at which Charlemagne presided; it occupies a central place among the events that culminated, only two days later, in the coronation of the Frankish king as Imperator Romanorum. The document customarily known as the text of this ‘oath’ was in 1899 edited by Karl Hampe, and in 1906 by Albert Werminghoff, who followed his predecessor ad verbum usque, as he says. The apparatus of both editions establishes the insertion of a slightly reedited oath in the Decretum of Burchard of Worms. Ivo of Chartres and, in an apologetic treatise, Gerhoh of Reichersberg follow Burchard without major changes. The variants listed by Hampe and Werminghoff indicate that they both distinguished between the basic text of the oath in the oldest, ninth-century MS, Würzburg M. p. theol. fol. 46 (and its descendants, the Monacenses 6241 and 27246, saec. x-xi), and the oath's transmission by Burchard and the above-named authors who depend on Burchard. And Hampe assigns the twelfth-century Vaticanus 1348 to the Burchard tradition, when he says that its readings largely correspond with Burchard's (‘paene omnibus conveniunt Burchardi Wormat. decret. …’). Both scholars are fully conversant with the textual history of the document; they reprint in the notes the abbreviated version of the oath in Gratian's Decretum, and the text in a Roman Ordo which represents a version re-written in accordance with certain concepts of Roman law. The Burchard-tradition has been discussed in a recent study. Some of the changes made by Burchard in the original text of the oath are readily understandable. The variant in … conspectu, instead of in … basilica, probably resulted from a scribal dittography, because the same expression occurs in the oath of purgation in the lines preceding and following the correct reading. The variant adversum, instead of adversus, is an emendation of the original text. Burchard evidently recognized the resemblance between the original reading, ‘qualiter homines mali adversus me insurrexerunt and Psalm 53.5 ‘quoniam alieni insurrexerunt adversum me.’

John Trevisa, fourteenth-century scholar and translator, was born in Cornwall, studied at Oxford University, and served as vicar of Berkeley and chaplain to Thomas IV, Lord Berkeley, in Gloucestershire. He died sometime prior to May 21, 1402. The main facts of Trevisa's life and works were collected by the late Professor A. J. Perry of the University of Manitoba, who visited England in the summer of 1914, and reported the results of his research there in the Introduction to his edition of Trevisa's minor works, published by the Early English Text Society in 1925.