The object of this paper is to identify a particular stylistic feature in the Old English Genesis A, to point out its affinities in Anglo-Latin historical literature (particularly in the historical writings of Byrhtferth of Ramsey), and to discuss the implications of those affinities. In conclusion I propose to discuss the literary history of this motif and some occurrences in other Old English poems — notably in Beowulf. I will thus move from fairly mechanical problems of source-study and stylistic affinity to some important ideological and literary issues, but unfortunately the more important issues are also more difficult to resolve.

It is no doubt a commonplace to state that Western Civilization is an heir, one among several, of an anterior unity: Christian Mediterranean Civilization. In that earlier unity all the local cultures that had sprung up round the great central sea — Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Aegean, Syrian, Iranian, Hellenic, Italic — had coalesced in three successive and increasingly comprehensive phases within the corresponding imperial frameworks of the pax achaemenia, the pax macedonica, and the pax romana. With the advent of Christianity this political and cultural amalgam passed into still another phase, that of the pax christiana, which fell heir also to the hitherto seclusive cultural tradition of the Jews. But, before this last phase was reached, the rhythm of history had changed from gathering to scattering; Iran, which once itself had contributed to the cultural syncretism of the Mediterranean world, and which can be regarded as that world's easternmost bastion, withdrew from it under the impact of the ‘neo-Achaemenian’ and anti-Hellenic reaction which inaugurated the Sassanian age. Iran was to remain hostile to the pax romana and, although Christian enclaves were to be established in its territory, outside the new unity of Christendom. But, even though withdrawn back to the pre-Hellenistic phase of history — as if Alexander the Great had never lived — New Iran exercised, chiefly through Syria, a profound influence, especially in art, upon the rest of the Mediterranean world, both before and after the ushering in of the pax christiana. With time, the disintegration begun in Iran spread. Christian Mediterranean Civilization was broken up and succeeded by several others that derived from it: that of the West was one, that of Byzantium another, and so also that of Christian Caucasia.

The more we learn about the quantity and diversity of the copies, commentaries, and adaptations of Ciceronian rhetoric that have survived from the medieval period, the more we are led to ask why these materials were preserved and how they were used. The question of practical utility has especially concerned those students of medieval commentaries on the De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium who are faced with the task of explaining why these treatises continued to be copied and studied long after the demise of both the Roman law courts and the Roman schools. While the use to which the ars dictaminis was put is considerably more evident, there is still much to be learned about the circumstances in which it was taught. Since twelfth-century teachers of dictamen generally saw themselves as the heirs of Cicero, study of their works and the curricula in which they found their place often casts light on the status of rhetoric instruction as a whole. Nowhere is this complementarity so manifest as in central France, by the mid-twelfth century widely regarded as the foremost center for study of the auctores. During the second half of the twelfth century, even as the concise, functional artes dictandi from Italy were rapidly establishing themselves alongside the more traditional commentaries on the classical rhetorics, the French grammar masters were busy refining the synthesis of ars grammatica and ars rhetorica, of Horace and Cicero, preserved in Matthew of Vendôme's Ars versificatoria (ca. 1175).

Michael Scot was a translator of Arabic treatises in the early thirteenth century who was credited by Roger Bacon with introducing parts of the Aristotelian corpus to the Latin West. He was associated with Emperor Frederick II and left a reputation as a wizard and necromancer that endured until the nineteenth century. In spite of this prominence, we know very few facts about his life. This lack of evidence did not deter nineteenth-century antiquarians from writing whole books about him, using conjecture to fill in what is otherwise lacking.

In two early medieval manuscripts, Vat. Pal. lat. 220 and Vat. Pal. lat. 212, there are contained seven short sermons or homilies which provide convincing evidence of being Irish in character. They are worthy of publication because the amount of homiletical literature coming from Irish circles at this early time is not very great, and because a careful consideration of them is apt to throw light on the Irish literary method. They reveal various internal characteristics which are known to be symptomatic of the Hiberno-Latin element; and they present sufficient material to allow one to study closely how the Irish used sources in the preparation of their homilies. The approach of our anonymous author to Scripture stands in the Antiochene rather than the Alexandrian tradition. Thus his interest is in the literal more than in the spiritual sense of the text; and in this he shows a certain affinity with the Irish exegetes of this period. I should like to reproduce here the text of these sermons and to elucidate their character by relating them in parallel fashion to other contemporary works that are known to be part of the Hiberno-Latin tradition.

Since the Old English poem Vainglory is generally considered mediocre, and since no source has been found, critics usually dismiss it with terms such as ‘homiletic,’ ‘didactic,’ and ‘reflective.’ Because the poem is an admonition against pride and related sins, these terms are all applicable, but they do little to explain the nature of the tradition in which the poet writes. In both its content and form Vainglory bears a striking resemblance to specific teachings of the Church Fathers. Though an analysis of Vainglory in the light of these patristic writings will not transform the poem into an artistic work, it will illustrate the degree to which the poet depends on the teachings of the Church Fathers; moreover, I believe that this analysis may suggest an approach to the understanding of other Old English poems. When I cite passages from the Fathers I am not suggesting that they are the poet's conscious source, but rather that they are representative of the teachings which he knew and by which he was influenced.

This article investigates how civic discourse connects the virtue of citizens and the fortunes of cities in a variety of late antique and early medieval sources in the post-Roman west. It reveals how cities assume human qualities through the rhetorical technique of personification and, crucially, the ways in which individuals and communities likewise are described with civic terminology. It also analyzes the ways in which the city and the civic community are made to speak to one another at times of crisis and celebration. By examining a diverse range of sources including epideictic poetry, chronicles, hagiographies, and epigraphic inscriptions, this article addresses multiple modes of late antique and early medieval thought that utilize civic discourse. It first explores how late antique and early medieval authors employed civic discourse in non-urban contexts, including how they conceptualized the interior construction of an individual's mind and soul as a fortified citadel, how they praised ecclesiastical and secular leaders as city structures, and how they extended civic terminology to the preeminently non-urban space of the monastery. The article then examines how personified cities spoke to their citizens and how citizens could join their cities in song through urban procession. Civic encomia and invective further illustrate how medieval authors sought to unify the virtuous conduct of citizens with the ultimate fate of the city's security. The article concludes with a historical and epigraphic case study of two programs of mural construction in ninth-century Rome. Ultimately, this article argues that the repeated and emphatic exhortations to civic virtue provide access to how late antique and early medieval authors sought to intertwine the fate of the city with the conduct of her citizens, in order to persuade their audiences to act in accordance with the precepts of virtue.

Western Europe in the first half of the twelfth century was witnessing a great intellectual and cultural revolution. One manifestation of this was the hordes of ambitious youths seeking instruction, not only in the traditional ‘seven liberal arts,’ but also in the more specialized fields of law, medicine, and theology. In consequence, old educational centers were being revitalized and new ones were appearing. For centuries, of course, most monasteries and some cathedrals had maintained schools. Previous to the twelfth century, however, the monastic schools had played a more conspicuous role in education than those of the cathedrals. The period with which we are concerned saw a notable reversal in this situation. Usually located in rural areas, monasteries were unprepared to supply the needs of large numbers of students. Nor was the presence of a transient and turbulent body of adolescents conducive to monastic discipline. Cathedrals, on the other hand, situated in the rapidly growing towns, could supply the students in their schools with the necessities of life, while providing elementary and often advanced instruction through a corps of teachers supervised by the cathedral scholasticus. Thus the early progress of the ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’ can frequently be best observed in a study of the history of this or that cathedral school. In the long run Paris, Laon, and Chartres were to exert the greatest influence. Yet there were many other schools in the period, 1100-1150, which could boast a famous master or two and which produced notable scholars. One of these was Reims, which under Master Alberic enjoyed for nearly twenty years a prestige in theological studies equalled by no contemporary school.

In a recent Traditio article, Cary J. Nederman has added another valuable study to the series of papers he has been publishing over the past few years. This body of work has the laudable goal of showing that, across the twelfth century, thinkers were taking an increasingly Aristotelian line in the fields of ethics and political theory, on the basis of ideas transmitted indirectly via works available in Latin well before the appearance of the integral Latin translations of the texts of the Stagirite deemed to have launched the “Aristotelian revolution” of the thirteenth century in these fields. Throughout this burgeoning oeuvre, Nederman has been quite successful in supporting his case for a more gradual and less cataclysmic reception of Aristotle in the Latin West than the standard accounts acknowledge. It is not the purpose of this paper to challenge that larger argument. Nonetheless, with respect to the Aristotelian doctrine of habitus on which Nederman focuses in his Traditio article, we would like to suggest that his analysis needs to be reconsidered. We offer the following pages as an amplificatio of his thesis, with the aim of adding nuance to it by bringing forward material that he omits. Our intention here is not so much to criticize Nederman's reading of the texts on habitus in the twelfth century that he does adduce, and certainly not to object to his larger project, but rather to indicate that there is more to the story, and so to refine his analysis in the hope of strengthening it.

In the entire course of the Middle Ages no movement surpasses, in enduring importance and absorbing interest, that known as the Gregorian Reform, or, less correctly, the War of Investitures. It is the movement that had its most determined leader in Pope Gregory VII.

Plato's Cratylus has been studied so thoroughly and by such competent scholars that a reexamination might appear an enterprise as superfluous as it is daring. It seems to me, however, that previous treatises failed to bring out the precise linguistic value of the ideas expounded in this dialogue and to determine its precise place in the development of the theory of language. This holds even for those scholars who attempted an appraisal of Plato's work from a linguistic standpoint. Steinthal saw the decisive facts, but did not see their theoretical importance, since he like most investigators was exclusively or, at least, chiefly interested in what Plato thought about the epistemological value of language.

Fulcoius was one of the most distinguished literary figures of the eleventh century, a writer who, in the words of Dom André Wilmart, ‘a laissé des œuvres poétiques assez importantes, encore mal connues.' Apart from the poet's own works, there are three sources of information on his life: the epitaphs in his honor which are found in MS Paris, B.N. lat. 16701; the biographical notice in MSS Beauvais 11 and Paris, B.N. lat. 5305; and references in a letter of St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusians, to Raoul le Verd, provost of the Reims cathedral and future archbishop.

As part of giving an account of the incarnation, Thomas Aquinas states that Christ is a composite person:

Before the invention of printing and of easy multiplication of copies of a text, memory inevitably played a greater part in education, and basic textbooks were often expressed in verse in order to aid the memory. Of such works a number by named and known authors has come to us entire: in the field of elementary Latin grammar, the Doctrinale of Alexander of Villa Dei, written in 1199; in arithmetic, the Carmen de algorismo in 284 hexameters by the same author, who further wrote on computus; in botany and materia medica, the post-Carolingian poem of ‘Macer,’ consisting of 2269 lines on 77 herbs; on gems, the eleventh-century Liber lapidum of Marbod, in which sixty stones are described in 734 hexameters. Some of these texts were added to by succeeding generations, as in the case of the Regimen sanitatis ascribed to the medical school of Salerno. For the most part this last is in rhymed hexameters:

Hec bona sunt ova — longa, parva, quoque nova;
Et gallinarum tibi sint et non aliarum.

Boni sunt pisces, si cum vino bene misces;
Quod si non misces, forsan damnum adipisceris.

Salvia cum ruta faciunt tibi pocula tuta;
Adde rosam florem, minuit potenter amorem.

But sometimes not, as when a pick-me-up is advised for the morning after:

Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini,
Hoc tu mane bibas iterum et fuerit medicina.

Sometimes the practice of versification was extended to indicating the author of the text. A copy of the exposition of the Microtegni of Galen which Urso of Todi delivered at Avignon in 1198 says at the start:

… Quare Ursus vocetur indicat versus,
Laudensis medicus medicisque fidelis amicus,
Quos super hanc partem Avenione duxit in artem.

Previous research into the sources of the Vercelli Homilies has established that Caesarius of Arles is an influence on some of the pieces in the collection. Rudolph Willard has shown that a Caesarian homily on the last judgment is a source for a part of Homily VIII (untitled) and that Homily XI (spel to forman gangdaege) is for the most part dependent on Caesarius' De natale sancti Felicis with the opening statement based on one of the bishop's Rogationtide sermons. Prof. Willard has also noted that although no specific source has been found, Homily XII (spel to ðam oðrum gangdaege) may very well have been written with one of the homilies of Caesarius in mind. J. E. Cross has demonstrated that a part of Homily XIII (spel to priddan gangdaege) is a close rendering of a paragraph in Caesarius' De elemosinis. Caesarian influence, however, is not limited to these homilies and can be seen in several of the Vercelli Homilies not yet published.

The notion of natural “occult” is usually viewed by modern scholars as a tautological way of dealing with phenomena for which there was no current explanation. Consider how Molière mocks scholastic medicine in the “Intermède” of Le malade imaginaire when he gives the Bachelierus a silly answer to the question of why opium makes one sleep: “quia est in eo virtus dormitiva / Cujus est natura / Sensus assoupire.” Opium makes one sleep because it has a sleep-inducing power; its nature is to make “the senses drowsy.” The words of Molière's Bachelierus are strikingly similar to what Augustine writes in the City of God (21, 7) concerning natural things that are endowed with extraordinary properties: “So for the other cases, irksome to rehearse, in which an unusual power seems to be present contrary to nature, yet no other explanation is given except to say such is their nature. No doubt their explanation is short, and still it answers enough.” Obviously, however, the very meaning of Augustine's statement is just the opposite of Molière's. In Augustine's view, the answer is “short,” because the real and only cause is God himself; nature is only an illusory cause. For Molière, the Bachelierus's answer is inane, because it seems to give a scientific explanation but in fact says nothing and certainly does not look for the true natural causes. But between Augustine and Molière there was scholastic science, in which the virtus occulta was not a mere tautological statement but a real explanation based on a coherent conception of nature.

A unique set of ritual prayers from tenth-century Northumbria offered the means to protect fields and crops from birds, vermin, and other demonically inspired threats to the agricultural community. They were part of a series of additions made to the Durham Collectar or Ritual (Durham, Cathedral Library A.IV.19) around 970 by the Chester-le-Street scriptorium of St. Cuthbert's community, under the direction of Aldred, the eccentric glossator of the Lindisfarne Gospels. These five Latin prayers glossed in Old English use exorcistic and benedictional formulas, invoke the assistance of an Archangel Panchiel, and contain atypical references to the Book of Tobit, among other unusual characteristics. This seemingly heterodox material has received scant attention from scholars assessing the Durham Ritual manuscript and the work of Aldred. These prayers, however, may reflect the particular interests of the cult of St. Cuthbert, as well as Irish influences in Northumbrian religious practice. Also, a comparable example of one prayer appears in a contemporary Mainz text related to the early development of the Romano-Germanic Pontifical, suggesting that these prayers were part of a larger process, often invisible, of liturgical experimentation during a period of reform and regularization. The prayers read:

Plusieurs voyages d’étude, notamment en Espagne, et le dépouillement des MSS de la Compilatio prima nous permettent de présenter quelques nouvelles découvertes et les réflexions qu'elles ont suscitées. Nous les répartissons sous trois rubriques: Autour d’Yves de Chartres, Décrétales et Questiones. Nos remerciments vont au Consejo Superior de investigaciones científicas de Madrid qui, une fois encore, a subventionné notre séjour en Espagne, et à St. Kuttner, qui a apporté à notre texte de nombreuses précisions.

The modern interest in and study of medieval sermon literature was first driven by a combination of confessional acrimony and professional scholarship. L. Bourgain, Albert Lecoy de la Marche, Richard Albert, Rudolf Cruel, Anton Linsenmayer, and G. R. Owst combed through the archives to uncover the written remains of medieval preaching, and what they discovered came as a surprise to those who had been raised on the Protestant black legend of a mute medieval Church. For quantity and variety the period from the twelfth century to the Reformation must count as one (or several) of the great ages of pulpit activity. In fact, on the eve of the Reformation there was some concern that too much was being preached too often. For example, as a result of complaints by laity and clergy alike, in 1508 the Bishop of Breslau ordered a limit on the number of sermons preached in the city. To be sure, modern judgments concerning the quality of that preaching in both style and content vary with the confessional stance and aesthetic preferences of the individual scholar. But of the late medieval dedication to preaching in season and out there can be no doubt.