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:

In early medieval Ireland, the cosmos was conceived as tripartite, composed of the heavens, earth's surface, and underearth and undersea. Harmonious relations with cosmic forces were assured by just royal rule. Crossing this vertical coordinate, which also had implications for the human hierarchies of rank and function, were the manifold phenomena as known to human life. This external reality was mentally organized as a vast set of homologies, the recognition and maintenance of which contributed to the prosperity and fertility of the kingdom. The literate record displays multiple taxonomies and categories, often expressed in numerical values. Among these are the pentad and, in spatial terms, the quincunx. This fivefoldness and the order it represented were recognized and replicated on a variety of scales: the five provinces of Ireland, the family farm and its neighbors, the house and its outbuildings. Also implicated as mesocosms were the interior arrangements of royal banquet halls, hostels for kings on circuit and other travelers, and law courts. The quincuncial organization of interior space reflects and promotes macrocosmic order but in the great corpus of literate works is the setting for disruptive human dynamics — the stuff of story — often associated with themes of the heroic life and royal rule. This conception of interior space was elaborated in the pagan period and, in formal terms, was readily accommodated in subsequent Christian centuries, with new hierarchies and the perdurable conception of the kingship as stabilizing factors.

The Alphabet of Words (AW), a Latin alphabet text with an interlinear Old English gloss, occurs among the additions made to the Durham Collectar (D) by the priest Aldred in the tenth century. Previously thought to be extant only in D, and possibly by Aldred himself, AW also survives (without the OE gloss) in a Kassel manuscript (K) from the second half of the eighth century, as well as in a defective twelfth-century copy in Karlsruhe (Kr). Most of AW is also incorporated in a Latin treatise on the alphabet (“Audiuimus multos”: AM) compiled probably in the ninth century. AW belongs to the genre of “parenetic alphabet,” widely attested in Greek but also sporadically in Latin, including in a ninth-century Paris manuscript (P: BNF, lat. 2796) that shares lemmata and glosses with AW for the letters X, Y, and Z. We provide the first critical edition and translation of AW from D, K, and Kr, with variants from AM and P, together with a discussion of AW’s genre and relation to other alphabetical texts as well as a full commentary on the biblical, apocryphal, and patristic lore transmitted by AW’s lemmata and glosses on each letter.

During the twentieth century scholarly attention has turned increasingly to Severian of Gabala with new attributions, editions, and commentaries. Many researchers have contributed to this dramatic growth, but three in particular have been in the forefront: J. Zellinger with his Genesishomilien and Studien, H. D. Altendorf with his Untersuchungen, and S. J. Voicu with his many contributions culminating in his magisterial article on Severian in the Dictionnaire de spiritualité, We have reached the point where an index to Severian's scriptural references may be of considerable help to researchers in identifying homilies referred to in other homilies, in determining the authorship of homilies that might be attributed to Severian, and in gaining a better general understanding of Severian's thought and the tradition in which he worked.

Die Lehre von den Elementarqualitäten gehört auch zu den Grundlagen der antiken griechischen Medizin und Biologie. Dies gilt sowohl für die Hippokratiker als auch für Galen aus Pergamon (129–ca. 200 n. Chr.). Der Pergamener entwickelte die Aristotelische Qualitätenlehre zu einem der wichtigsten Prinzipien seines philosophisch-biologischen Systems, so dass er selbst in der neueren Forschung “Qualitativist” und sein System “Qualitativismus” genannt werden.

An essoniatus de malo lecti is dispensed from appearing in court for a certain time, to wit, for a year. How is this time to be computed, if in its course there occurs the additional day of a leap-year? If e.g. the year, given to an essoinee, began on January 20th of a leap year, does the year end on the next 20th of January (so that the essoinee has a time of 366 days) or on the next 19th of January (so that the essoinee has a time of 365 days, as in a normal year)? Bracton discussed this question, on which there was a lively dispute among English lawyers of his time, in a long chapter of his treatise (fol. 359–360). Everybody who attempted to read this text unprepared, would soon push it aside in despair of finding any sense in this abstruse discussion. In fact Bracton's text has been spoilt by numerous ruthless interpolations which have rendered it entirely unintelligible. Such a text is of eminent value for everybody who is interested in the problem of the Bractonian text, for the process of deterioration is here more evident than elsewhere. Nevertheless nobody has hitherto tried to disentangle the ravelled skein and to reconstruct what Bracton actually wrote. The latest editor of the treatise, Professor Woodbine, has, according to his principle, abstained from emending what he believed to be the best text of our manuscripts. The inevitable result of this conservatism is, that the chapter is in his edition entirely unreadable just as in the older editions. At first sight it may seem hopeless to find a way through the jungle, but a minute and patient examination shows that the genuine Bractonian text may still be traced. We are fortunate enough to possess an unusually rich store of material for our inquiry, and by methodically using it we may confidently hope to reach our goal.

A fresh attempt on the two most formidable puzzles in the Divina Commedia, by one who cannot even profess to be a Dantist, may seem peculiarly open to what a contemporary scholar has called ‘the mild raillery that attends those who persist in offering solutions of problems apparently worked to death.' Yet a survey of the massive bibliography surrounding Dante's DXV and Veltro produces the strong impression that no explanation proposed for either of them so far has won for itself any real core of acceptance. If this one-sentence summary of six hundred years' scholarship is accurate, it suggests that a fruitful approach is less likely to emerge from comparative re-assessments of the existing theories, than from an exploration of some of the all-but-forgotten corners of medieval Christian tradition, in search of an interpretation that will fit the two prophecies and their contexts more precisely. In the present study, Part I will offer an interpretation of the DXV which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been proposed; Part II will demonstrate the compatibility of this interpretation with other crucial parts of the Commedia; Part III will offer a somewhat less original interpretation of the Veltro; and Part IV will examine the relationship between the two prophecies as I have interpreted them.

Boccaccio's first work, the Caccia di Diana, is generally considered a playful allegory of ‘courtly’ love. Although the poem's literal content cannot be reconciled with its allegedly amorous message, critics have cited the discrepancy as a characteristic example of the youthful author's failure to appreciate the importance of narrative unity. There is, however, reason to believe that we have been mistaken both in our understanding of the Caccia's meaning and in our evaluation of its artistic merit. Like Dante's Commedia, Vita nuova, and lost sirventese, Boccaccio's primary models for this early narrative, it is, in fact, a carefully planned numerical composition. The symbolic implications of the numbers hidden in the text suggest, moreover, that Diana's hunt and the miraculous triumph of her rival, Venus, form a fictional veil designed to conceal an emblematic victory of virtue over vice and an allegory of conversion from bestial lust to Christian love.

The historical work of the Premonstratensian canon Robert of Auxerre († 1211) was one of the most influential of medieval chronicles. Vincent of Beauvais († 1264) borrowed heavily from it in Speculum historiale, the final section of his great encyclopedia. The content of the Auxerre chronicle, extant in its independent version in relatively few manuscripts, thus contributed to an essential element in the textual foundation of later medieval education. The shape of Robert's narrative, however, differed from that of Vincent's treatment of history. The canon of Auxerre wrote in an old genre and for a traditional end. His was the kind of monastic chronicle that had for centuries affirmed for Benedictine and reform congregations their connection to venerable tradition, and traced for them the workings of providence in time. Vincent's work, on the other hand, set the record of human experience alongside compendia about the divine and natural worlds. It thus represented the historiographical fulfillment of the thirteenth century's ambition to systematize knowledge.

A strong attachment to education and scholarship very early distinguished the orders of friars established in the thirteenth century. Although Francis of Assisi had made no provision for such activities in the new religious movement which he founded, nevertheless, not long after his death in 1226 the Franciscans had already begun to show a pronounced intellectualist bent. In a sermon delivered in 1229, Odo of Châteauroux noted the influx of scholars into the Order and the prominence of the Franciscans in the Paris schools. Subsequently, some of the finest minds in Europe were converted to the Franciscan style of Christian life; and the enthusiasm and aptitude of the friars minor for teaching became very apparent — transforming them into almost a separate universitas.

The following Latin version, hitherto unpublished, of the Byzantine Liturgies of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom was generously placed at my disposal by my confrère, the late lamented Dom André Wilmart, O.S.B., who about seventeen years ago discovered and transcribed it from a manuscript purchased at London in 1899 by the Bibliothèque Nationale: Nouv. Acq. lat. 1791 Since the manuscript was written in the second half of the twelfth century, this translation is—to put it roughly—at least as old as that of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (= X) made at Constantinople about 1180 by the Pisan interpreter, Leo Tuscus, or that of the Liturgy of St. Basil (= B) made shortly afterward by Nicholas of Otranto. But it is important to note at the outset that the present translation represents a considerably earlier redaction of the Liturgies than do the two aforesaid versions, for we have here, as in the earliest of our manuscripts, the Barberinum S. Marci (= BSM), and several others, the prayers of the celebrant only and a corresponding minimum of rubrics. Of special significance, moreover, are the two following facts: first, the precedence given to B, an arrangement found in comparatively few manuscripts, among them the oldest which we know; and secondly, the occurrence in this same Liturgy of ancient rubrics and of the ancient form of at least one exclamation of the deacon, which point to a very early recension as the original from which the translator worked. On the other hand, over against this ancient form stands a relatively modern text, for not only are certain prayers which appear in the most ancient manuscripts only, missing from this translation, but in those few prayers also in the tradition of which it is possible to distinguish an older from a more recent set of readings, it is the latter which are almost invariably found. Similarly, the indication of certain acclamations by the initial words only (an ancient trait) and the writing out of the ἐκΦωνήσ∊ις in full (a very late practice) constitute another combination of ancient and recent features. But to attempt on the basis of these characteristics to fix the date of either the original or the translation, is to face possibilities only, concerning which it would be useless to speculate.

Les collections que nous présentons aujourd'hui ne sont conservées que dans deux MSS: Zwettl, Stiftsbibl. 162 (Zw) et Wien, Nationalbibl. 2163 (Wi). St. Kuttner, qui les a signalées il y a plus de vingt ans, estime qu'elles pourraient provenir de l'école de Vicence. Il a relevé l'attribution d'un grand nombre de solutions à Ber. qu'il estime être Bernard de Compostene l'Ancien. Nous n'avons aucun motif de discuter ces deux points, qui nous paraissent convenablement établis.

In one of the very few essays in English on Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, Eleanor Shipley Duckett calls him a prince of the Church, a statesman, an administrator, a scholar who rises far above the other figures she surveys and who stands out in the company of Charles the Great and Pope Nicholas I in the historical records of the ninth century. His long life, from his birth in northern France in 806, his entry into the monastery of St. Denis in 814, his consecration as archbishop in 845, to his death in 882 at Epernay while fleeing from the Danish invasion, was one long series of combats calling for a variety of talents. He revealed a deep knowledge of canon law in his various ecclesiastical disputes with recalcitrant clergy and laity, an astute diplomatic talent in his attempts to knit together the rapidly unraveling unity of the empire, a broad but unoriginal scholarship in his theological controversies over predestination and the Trinity which brought him to grips with the leading thinkers of the Carolingian renaissance, especially the redoubtable Saxon Gottschalk, monk of Orbais. It is with this last controversy that this paper will be concerned.

During the last decade the works of Professor Guido Kisch have made an outstanding contribution to our knowledge of the legal thought of the sixteenth century, particularly to the school represented by the University of Basel. His articles and monographs have dealt with the biographical and literary history of significant scholars as well as with the rival schools of interpretation represented by ‘mos italicus' and ‘mos gallicus.' Building on these earlier studies, Professor Kisch has now produced a major work of more comprehensive scope, which goes beyond biographical and methodological questions to the analysis of significant change in substantive legal doctrines. Convinced that the age of humanism and the reception of Roman law saw the formation of some of the most important modern legal concepts, he centers his research on the evolution of the theory of equity with due attention, on the one hand, to the relationship between sixteenth-century innovation and the historic western tradition and, on the other, to the interaction between the academic profession and the practicing lawyers.