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.

Two days before Charlemagne was crowned ‘Emperor of the Romans,' Pope Leo III swore an oath in order to affirm his innocence of any crimes attributed to him by his enemies. Sound reasons exist for making an assumption that there was a close relationship between these two events. Since there is no indisputable evidence in the sources concerning the motives that led to Charles' coronation, every important event prior to this act has been analyzed by historians for its potential bearing on the matter. Further, the two most important individuals, pope and king, were participants in both affairs. The hand that bore the Gospels when an oath of purification was sworn in the presence of the Frankish king was the same hand, the pope's, which placed the crown of empire on a Frankish head. Thus it has been argued that Leo gave Charlemagne the new dignity in order that the Frank might use his imperial power to chastise the papal enemies. Against this view the countering argument has been made by some historians that Leo's oath was humiliating, a fact which reduces to an absurdity the thesis that the main initiative could come from the papal Curia. Thus the oath has been considered the key to a proper evaluation of the coronation itself.

Cette nouvelle enquête sur I'allégorie de la spoliatio Aegyptiorum pourra paraître de prime abord désuète vu le nombre d'auteurs qui en ont déjà parlé. Nous avions nous-même, il y a plus de cinquante ans, rédigé une brève note intitulée “Les dépouilles des Égyptiens” dans le volume Le magistère chrétien, éd, et trade Gustave Combes et Jacques Farges, Bibliothèque augustinienne, 11 (Paris, 1949), 582–84, à propos d'un passage du De doctrina christiana 2.40.60–61, aù Augustin commente l'épisode biblique relatant la fraude des Israélites à leur départ d'Égypte. Par la suite nous n'avons cessé de nous intèresser à ce thème et d'enrichir notre propre dossier par des enquêtes personnelles tout en prêtant attention aux publications s'y rapportant et dont nous donnons la liste dans une première note qui révèle le succès littèraire et historique de cette allégoric biblique.

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.

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.

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.

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.’

That women felt and men thought has long been the predominant lens through which medieval Christian writing has been analyzed. The work of the religious women vernacular theologians, or Beguines, who emerged across North Europe from the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries has therefore often been dismissed as affective mysticism. Recent scholarship has begun to re-appraise this work and re-evaluate its place within the Christian tradition. This paper looks at the work of Hadewijch, a thirteenth-century mystical poet from Brabant in the Netherlands who, though less well known than other Beguines such as Hildegaard of Bingen and Marguerite Porete, may, as John Arblaster and Paul Verdeyen argue, “rightly be called the greatest poetic genius in the Dutch language.” It is probable that her work was not widely known during her lifetime (not, that is, directly), but research is strengthening the argument that her theology was transmitted via the works of John of Ruusbroec. This paper will attend both to Hadewijch's poesy and her theology and ask what the dynamic structure in her verse — its shifts of perspective, gender perspective, and non-linear narrative — might lead us to grasp about her theology.

In the sixth canto of the Inferno Dante depicts the punishment of the gluttonous. They are represented as lying in the mire under a continuous heavy storm of hail and snow. Three-headed Cerberus keeps barking over them and rending them apart:

Msgr. Devreesse, well known to every Church historian for his successful researches on Theodore of Mopsuestia, on Greek catenae and other subjects, reveals in a recent publication his mastery in a field in which he had previously published only various minor essays. By its rich documentation and lucid presentation the new work, a historical and geographical description of the Patriarchate of Antioch, will remain for a long time the standard work on the subject. Based upon a scrupulous and intelligent investigation of the original sources and the author's perfect familiarity with all problems related in any way to the topic, his work deserves the admiration and appreciation of all who are interested in the history and institutions of the Ancient Church. My own studies in the same field, pursued during some twenty-five years, perhaps enable me to recognize more than many other critics the extraordinary qualities of Devreesse's work—a fact which I want to stress all the more as in the following I shall mention many details about which I cannot agree with the author; for my objections and additions could easily be misinterpreted as a sign that I underrate the incontestable merits of the work as a whole.

Venantius Fortunatus is the last major Latin poet of late antiquity. Born near Treviso in northern Italy, he studied grammar and rhetoric in the still thriving schools of Ravenna before moving in 566 to Gaul, where he sought to employ his literary education and talents in the service of Merovingian and Gallo-Roman patrons. Fortunatus's poetry gives ample evidence of his early studies: he shows familiarity with classical poetry, especially Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius, and with the main Christian poets of late antiquity. In a passage at the beginning of his verse Life of St. Martin, Fortunatus lists Juvencus, Sedulius, Orientius, Prudentius, Paulinus, Arator, and Alcimus Avitus as preeminent in Christian poetry, thereby naming all of his most important Christian Latin predecessors.

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.

Writing early in the last decade of the tenth century, the Anglo-Saxon monk Ælfric begins his Second Series of Catholic Homilies with 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 of clænnyss, an Old English word for “chastity” or “purity,” as the virtue to be most highly prized among the laity:

Studies dealing with the attitudes of various writers of the patristic period towards Hellenism, including the aspect of paideia, have tended to concentrate, up to the present, on a specific writer or time-span. It is no accident that fourth-century writers have loomed large in recent investigations in this area, since the fourth century was pivotal in determining Christian attitudes to pagan literary traditions. Here it is my aim to draw attention not to a single writer or period but rather to the representatives of a Christian literary genre, and to discuss their stance with regard to Hellenism, in particular paideia. My choice falls on the Greek ecclesiastical historians; although they have been scrutinised increasingly in the past twenty years, their collective attitude to Hellenic culture or Greek letters has not yet received a separate study. Those early Greek historical works that have survived to us more or less intact — the histories of Eusebius of Caesarea, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret of Cyrus, and Evagrius Scholasticus — provide us with a more reliable overall picture of the Hellenism of their composers than, for example, the fragmentary Church Histories of Philostorgius and Theodore Lector; taken together, they give us at the same time a useful chronological spread from the early fourth to the late sixth century. The crucial questions to be posed are to what extent these writers deemed Hellenism to be compatible with ecclesiastical historiography, and how typical their perspective on Hellenism was of their own times. Where appropriate, we shall also try to ascertain how these church historians stand with regard to using classical citations and references in their narratives, how they view the classical past, and what their attitude is towards non-Greek culture.

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.

While it is true for most literature, theological and otherwise, that an informed awareness regarding antecedents provides valuable perspective toward its interpretation, this is especially true for the theology of the Carolingian period. The Carolingians often used their source material in verbatim citations which remained unacknowledged. One has the impression of a kind of homemade theology, constructed out of bits and pieces of materials that were chosen partly because they were convenient or familiar. The result at its best had an appeal not unlike the patchwork quilt which has a unity and charism all its own even though it is cut predominantly from pieces which were not themselves the work of those designing the quilt. In order to appreciate the final effect achieved by such literature, it is crucial then to be able to identify not only the authors upon whom the writer is relying, but the precise patches of material which have been cut from each, so that we may observe the final effect as the result of a complex of decisions to select, combine, juxtapose, add to, adjust, comment upon, and otherwise utilize a large body of literary fragments.

Francesc Eiximenis' (1340?-1409?) discussion of wine and wine-drinking is part of a moral treatise on the sin of gluttony found within the Terç del Crestià (1384). This work is the third book of an extensive encyclopedia entitled Lo Crestià (The Christian) which Eiximenis never completed. Of its thirteen projected books, to be written in honor of Christ and the Apostles, only four, the Primer, Segon, Terç, and Dotzè, materialized. The size and scope of this proposed work were to be comprehensive, covering all areas pertinent to the improvement of the moral character of the Christian. Within Lo Crestià the Terç, in itself a work of vast proportions, occupies a prominent place owing to its style and content. As F. Martí correctly pointed out, ‘… the Terç is the most important and extensive of the four books of Lo Crestià completed by Eiximenis, as well as the most interesting and remarkable of all.’

During the Middle Ages, Christians largely accommodated themselves to the small number of Jews who lived amongst them. Augustine (354–430) explained that God had punished the Jews after their rejection of Jesus by destroying the Temple and sending them into exile. Their survival was divinely guaranteed, however, because the presence of the Jews, Augustine believed, testified to the authenticity of Scripture and the fulfillment of the prophecies upon which Christianity built its faith. The Jews themselves, of course, argued that God had never truly rejected his chosen people. By claiming the Jews as their witnesses, Christians inadvertently accepted the Jews' identity as the descendants of the biblical children of Israel.