The Greek and other early renderings of Hebrew ḥèsed and its adjective ḥāsîd only complicate the exegesis the more because of the contradictory renderings given, e.g. in Greek ἔλεος, ὅσιος, ὁσιότης, in Latin ‘misericordia,’ ‘sanctus.’ With fine sense the translators of the English Bible invented a new word for the noun, ‘lovingkindness.’ Similarly the Christian word χάρις = Latin ‘gratia,’ coming down from the New Testament, has had its many-faceted history. The modern use of the word is complicated by the concurrence of Classical and Biblical tradition. The Christian asks for God's grace, and yet renders Him grace at meals, and indifferently speaks of the grace of physical form and bearing, while ‘gratitude’ and ‘graciousness’ have their particular denotations.

On the death of Hædde, bishop of the West-Saxons (676–705) with his see at Winchester (Ha), the West-Saxon diocese as then constituted was subdivided; in Freeman's words this was “the great ecclesiastical event of the reign of Ine,” king of Wessex from 688 to 726. The simplest, earliest and really most authoritative statement of the matter in general is that of Bede:

Quo [Haeddi] defuncto, episcopatus prouinciae illius [Occidentalium Saxonum] in duas parrochias divisus est. Una data Daniheli,…altera Aldhelmo.

Nowhere has Dante offered more ample evidence of his faith in the Roman imperium and admiration of the Emperor Henry VII than in a brief passage of six lines in the thirtieth canto of the Paradiso. There, beyond the limits of the corporeal spheres in the heaven which is pure light, surrounded by the saintly splendors of the City of God, Beatrice directs the poet's gaze to a vacant seat among the thrones of the blessed:

E'n quel gran seggio a che tu li occhi tieni

Per la corona che già v' è su posta,

Prima che tu a queste nozze ceni

Sederà l' alma (che fia giù agosta)

De l' alto Arrigo, ch' a drizzare Italia

Verrà in prima che ella sia disposta.

(vv. 133–138)

And the power of these lines is consolidated by contrast with the bitter condemnation of Pope Clement V, which directly follows them.

Source of half a hundred medieval popular romances, the Greek version of the Barlaam and Ioasaph legend has been variously ascribed to three different authors widely separated in time: to St. John of Damascus (c. 676–749), to an anonymous author supposed to have flourished about 600, and to St. Euthymius (d. 1028), a monk of Mount Athos. All three attributions are at present current; it now seems clear that we must discard the first two, and that we are justified in naming Euthymius as the author of this Greek version. The oriental language from which he derived this version we can now identify as Georgian. A brief summary of the evidence which may be adduced for all three attributions is in order here.

In Coptica, III (Copenhagen, 1922), W. E. Crum and H. I. Bell published the Coptic and Greek texts found at Wadi Sarga, a site some fifteen miles south of Asyut, in the excavations carried on during the winter of 1913–1914. A chance reading of some of the texts enabled me recently to identify one of them as a part of the Homily on the Passion by Melito of Sardis.