Strabo's Geography was not well known in ancient and medieval times. It was never the subject of literary or scientific study. There was no need to write commentaries on it as on the poets, orators, and philosophers. Nevertheless the medieval manuscripts of Strabo do contain meagre scholia, and for one reason or another some of them are valuable. Moreover as a whole they throw light on the history of Greek scholarship in an important but obscure period. It seems desirable therefore to edit them entire, to examine their relationships, and point out their significance.

Kαλós in acclamation has a continuous life throughout Hellenic, Hellenistic, Roman and early Byzantine times. The history belongs, for the most part, to the fields of ancient pagan culture, with Christian materials accruing to its later stages. The interest of the following study, for the author at all events, has lain as much in the subject-matter itself as in inferences that may be drawn from it. Readers bent on the severe pursuit of a thesis will not find it here.

Only since 1932 has the existence been known of the Bridlington Dialogue — or, more properly, Colloquium magistri et discipuli in regulam beati Au- gustini de uita clericorum — a conversation between master and student on the Augustinian Rule. In that year the Bodleian Library of Oxford acquired from the bookdealer E. P. Goldschmidt what is now Bodleian MS. Lat. th. d. 17, a codex which was executed about 1200 and contains the Dialogue on folios 1 to 97v. Nearly twenty years later J. C. Dickinson published some excerpts from the work and discussed it in his The Origins of the Austin Canons and their Introduction into England. Later, Sister Penelope, C.S.M.V., under-took to edit the complete Dialogue. Her edition was well advanced when, in 1955, she learned from Winfrid Hümpfner, Ο.S.A., of another medieval manuscript of the text: Durham College Library MS. Β III 8, folios 222v to 253v, written about 1300. In 1960, she published an edition based upon a study of both manuscripts.

The work which is the subject of this article marked a major advance in the history of medieval political thought. Its significance, although perhaps not widely enough perceived, is well known to scholars specializing in the origins of conciliarism. This is not to suggest that William Durant the younger's contribution to the nascent conciliar theory has been exhaustively interpreted. On the contrary, it is probable that the systematic legal and political argument underlying his pointed demands has never been as fully understood as would have been possible or desirable. But Durant's theories lie beyond the scope of this article. It is instead addressed to the more fundamental question whether the available texts of the treatise are sound. It is somewhat surprising that this question has never been studied before, since the early modern printed editions, on which all previous work on Durant has relied, do not give the impression of being trustworthy. Upon inspection of the extant manuscripts it must be concluded that the unsuspecting faith put in these editions was ill-advised, to say the least. It is the thesis of this article that every known printed edition of the Tractatus de modo generalis concilii celebrandi is seriously flawed, and, furthermore, that the deficiencies have prevented scholars from arriving at an adequate interpretation of the nature and the scope of Durant's plan for reform.

No law of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and few incidents in its constitutional history have received so much attention from recent historians as the Assise sur la ligece and the establishment of the Commune of Acre. But perhaps for the reason that a great achievement of the last few years has been the delineation of the twelfth-century monarchy, the later history of the Assise and its practical application in a series of disputes between the government and the baronage have not received much attention. The sources for the Assise all date from the middle years of the thirteenth century, by which time the Palestinian jurists' interpretation of it was at the end of a long period of development; and there is something to be said for trying to trace its history from that moment towards the end of the twelfth century when it became the basis for baronial resistance to the crown. In this paper, therefore, I will study the law's development from the reign of Aimery (1198-1205). I will argue that it was in the course of a dispute between that king and Ralph of Tiberias that the Assise was interpreted in such a way as to justify open opposition to arbitrary acts by the king; that this interpretation was used with most success early in 1229, during the Crusade of the Emperor Frederick II; but that, as far as the Kingdom of Jerusalem was concerned, the creation of the Commune of Acre in 1231-2 coincided with its final failure, and events at that time revealed inherent weaknesses in its use as an instrument of resistance. It follows that the detailed treatment of the law by Philip of Novara and John of Jaffa some decades later is a further demonstration of their fascinating but essentially unrealistic vision.

Any late writer who quotes from an alleged Jokebook of Cornelius Tacitus is doomed to incur suspicion, and the culprit Fulgentius has duly met his fate. In the words of one distinguished scholar he was ‘something of a fraud; many of the learned titles he quotes he had certainly never read, many never even existed,’ whilst another characterises his work as ‘a curious mixture of genuine citation and cool forgery, none of it trustworthy without external confirmation.’ Both were writing on other matters, which enhances the need for a full consideration of Fulgentius‘ methods. The problem has been looked into before, but not in the wider context required. Thus, for easy instance, editors of Petronius still print the fragments of their author cited by Fulgentius without reflecting upon their authenticity. And devotees of that more famous fraud, the Historia Augusta, could profit more than they have done from a closer look at our man.

The standard, and practically the only, study of the genera dicendi in classical rhetoric, ‘The Origin and Meaning of the Ancient Characters of Style,’ was published in 1905 by G. L. Hendrickson. In it Hendrickson argued that the plain style or genus tenue originated in and remained firmly associated with philosophical dialectic, while the oratorical style (including both the genus grande and genus medium) descended from sophistic and, in particular, Isocratic prose. The effect of this paper has been two-fold: a simultaneous exaltation of the plain style as the only rhetorical expression of serious and original thought and the conflation of the other two genera, these being criticized on the grounds that they appealed to the ear rather than the mind and were designed to exploit the emotions rather than inform reason. This effect can be observed most clearly in the subsequent scholarship on English prose style, particularly in the seminal essays of Morris Croll, who (to simplify a good deal) basically treats Renaissance prose style as the triumph of an introspective, searching, plain style over the musical formalism of Ciceronian concinnitas. Since Croll, the term plain style has generally become an honorific appellation in English scholarship at the expense of an inadequately differentiated grand and middle style (these in turn being identified with Ciceronianism).

Horace opens his Ars poetica with several comparisons between the arts to illustrate the 'structural’ decorum which all unified works must share. Later, he develops an extended analogy between painting and poetry, introduced by the phrase ut pictura poesis, to illustrate the nature of the 'stylistic’ decorum necessary to please, and to continue to please, the critical reader. In an earlier essay entitled ‘The Meaning of Horace's Ut Pictura Poesis,’ I tried to show how this analogy (361–5) concludes the preceding discussion of faults which may and may not be overlooked in a long work (347–60). In the present paper, in addition to collecting further evidence for this interpretation, I shall argue that the lines in question (361–5) form, at the same time, a transitional introduction to the following analysis of the kind of pleasure appropriate to poetry and of how it may best be protected (366–90).

1. The Conspiracy against the Protovestiarios George Muzalon. — In August of 1258 the Emperor of Nicaea, Theodore II Lascaris, died after a reign of less than four years. One of Theodore's final acts had been to draw up his testament naming his boyhood friend, the Protovestiarios George Muzalon, regent of the Empire and guardian of his eight year old son and heir, John IV Lascaris. This disposition of the Empire, in particular the assignment of the regency to a man of low birth, was extremely unpopular with the Nicene nobles. Their attitude, however, had been anticipated by Theodore, who, shortly before his death, had secured confirmation for his testament from those nobles who were at hand.

La Question inédite de Jean de Ripa dont Mgr. André Combes et son collaborateur au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Francis Ruello, apportent l'édition critique vient compléter de remarquable façon le dossier jadis établi par le regretté Alexandre Koyré sur le vide et l'espace infini au XIVe siècle. La dernière partie de ce dossier révèle chez le grand oxonien Thomas Bradwardine ‘l'affirmation d'un espace infini’ et pose le problème: Dieu et l'espace dont le měme historien, à la fois de la pensée scientifique et de la pensée religieuse, devait montrer l'importance en analysant, du xve au xviie siècle, le passage du monde clos à l'univers infini. La discussion et la solution de ce problème font l'un des principaux intérěts du texte de 1354 ou 1355 ci-dessous publié. On le retrouverait chez Nicole Oresme traitant en français ‘du Ciel et du Monde,’ parlant — au témoignage de Pierre Duhem — d’ ‘une espace vuide, incorporèle … qui est hors le ciel,’ disant de ce ‘lieu ymaginé vuit et infini: c'est l'immensité de Dieu meisme …’; immensité cependant ‘indivisible et sans extension,’ une ‘position’ de Dieu comparable à la ‘duration’ qui ‘est éternité indivisible et sans succession.’ Pareilles expressions évoquent la problématique ultérieure analysée par Koyré; il cite les Méditations chrétiennes de Malebranche. Citons les Entretiens sur la Métaphysique; au huitième, Théodore dit à Ariste: ‘je prétends vous donner quelque connaissance de l'immensité de Dieu en la comparant avec son éternité,’ et ajoute: ‘… vous n'entrez point dans ma pensée, si vous croyez que … les espaces imaginaires soient, pour ainsi dire, le lieu qu'occupe la substance infinie de la Divinité’; les formules de Jean de Ripa évoquent aussi des ‘espaces que l'on conçoit au-delà du monde’ et un Dieu ‘infini en tout sens’ n'existant ‘qu'en lui-měme’ dans ‘son immensité.’

Anonymous vernacular homilies of the later Anglo-Saxon period have recently proved a fruitful field of investigation for scholars. Work in this area has enabled the investigator to recover themes and topoi available to the Old English writer, and has helped reconstruct the intellectual milieu in which he worked. Indeed, late composite homilies may reveal how homilists such as Ælfric were received and understood by subsequent generations.

The transitus — the crossing of the Red Sea — is beyond question the central episode of the Old English Exodus poem. Like other episodes of that difficult work, it presents several very curious features which have long been the subject of scholarly attention. One such feature is that the Israelites, mustered in their divisions on the shore of the Red Sea, are described as beginning to move forward into the sea as if they were going into a battle. Not only the direction of this readiness to fight but the readiness itself seems incongruous: their enemies are behind them and not in front; in well known fact the Israelites are fleeing from the Egyptians.

The Excerpta Latina barbari, also known as the Barbarus Scaligeri, is a peculiar and unfairly neglected text that has been compared to a Russian nested doll. It survives alone in Parisinus latinus 4884 of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, a manuscript of sixty-three folios, usually dated to the late seventh or early eighth century. The nature of the text demonstrates that it was translated from a Greek exemplar, usually dated to the second half of the first quarter of the fifth century, which was lavishly illustrated. Although spaces were left for illustrations in the Latin translation, no attempt was ever made to undertake them. Little is generally known about the origins or purpose of this Latin translation or the Greek original, in spite of a magisterial study by Carl Frick in 1892, and recent renewed interest in this text makes it imperative that it be subjected to a careful analysis in the light of modern paleographical research and a better understanding of the sources of its Greek exemplar.

The life-span of Gerald of Wales embraces the reign of Stephen in England and the predominance of Owain Gwynedd in Wales at one end, and the early years of Henry III and Llywelyn ap Iorwerth at the other. He lived longer in England than ever he did in Wales. Yet it is his connection with Wales which accounts for much of his undiminished popularity throughout the past centuries. He is remembered as the man who wrote about Wales and who fought for a Welsh bishopric. The name by which he is known implies more than merely his origin; it stands for the deepest commitment of his later years, though not apparently his earlier life.

While the Mozarabic Rite has been the subject of numerous and important studies, the riches of its hymnody have never been adequately displayed. Abounding in interest for the inquirer in the field of early medieval religious poetry, it is equally rewarding to the historian who would be acquainted to some extent with ways of thinking familiar to Visigothic and Moslem Spain. The English scholar, Frederic Raby, was aware of this when he wrote of Mozarabic hymns, ‘They form the raw material for an important research which would help to elucidate the state of religious and intellectual culture during the obscure centuries of the early Middle Ages.’ Clemens Blume, the great Jesuit hymnologist, a generation earlier had reached the same conclusion when he published his edition of Hymnodia Gothica in the twenty-seventh volume of the Analecta hymnica medii aevi.

Studies of medieval literature have evinced a growing concern with the effect of an exegetical milieu on imaginative writing. Although the Middle English period provides an extensive field for allegorical and typological excursions, Old English poetry forms a smaller corpus and makes less conspicuous use of scriptural and patristic allusions. Readers are, therefore, not always alert to the deftness with which an Anglo-Saxon poet has utilized typology. Poems like Andreas, however, are as deeply rooted in typological traditions as in the more obvious traditions of the Germanic epic and can be fully appreciated only if their typological echoes are heard.

The liturgical ceremony for the taking of the crusading cross did not develop until well into the twelfth century. Texts which reveal how the cross was bestowed are relatively rare from the period 1095 to 1200. It was not until the thirteenth century that pontificals commonly contained such a ceremony. It is not clear why the rite for taking the cross took so long to develop, but two twelfth-century Italian pontificals from the Graz University library shed some light on how the liturgical ceremony evolved on the continent.

Bede believed in miracles. They were basic to him, both as a practicing Christian and as a working historian. Without accepting this we can understand him neither as a man of the seventh and eighth centuries ncr as the author who carefully constructed the Ecclesiastical History.

One of Bede's warmest admirers, the late Bertram Colgrave, was rather embarrassed by what seemed to be the naíveté of his hero. To rescue Bede from the charge of being either overly credulous or simply simple-minded, Colgrave did a useful study of the use of miracle stories in Bede's works, particularly in the Ecclesiastical History. And yet, despite himself, he always remained a little uneasy. His comments to the British Academy reflect a continuing ambivalence, and his last words on the subject were still apologetic in tone.

The Anglo-Norman Manuel des Pechiez, one of the more important works in that language, and one of the more influential literary monuments of thirteenth-century England, has never been carefully edited, and, until recently, had never been studied in detail. Dr. E. J. Arnould's survey of the poem and of its place in English letters provides us with a revealing study of the sources of the work, and of its subsequent influence, with a consistent, if debatable, history of the text. Since I, also, have examined the manuscripts with a view to determining the history of the Manuel, using material and methods somewhat different from those employed by Doctor Arnould, my findings may be useful, especially in validating his conclusions, in so far as we agree.

In the Middle Ages, the destiny of the historical process was a subject of intense thought, fueled by an overarching notion of historical change and the impending final age. Of the many theologians who contributed to this discussion none stands out in more colorful form than the Cistercian abbot, Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202). Joachim made his mark by describing history as a process of patterns unfolding according to the relationships of the Trinity. For Joachim, history was an ongoing work of the living God, and he sought to elucidate the innermost mystery of the trinitarian relationships in the working-out of history. The whole process of history, he maintained, was progressing toward a higher spiritual level that would be characterized by the image of the mystical body of Christ in the final age, an age that he held would take place in this world. Although Bonaventure dismissed Joachim early in his academic career as ignorant and simplex, his rise to minister general in an order divided by radical Joachimism may have influenced his view of the abbot's theology. E. Randolph Daniel has shown that Bonaventure borrowed one of Joachim's patterns of history to define his eschatology more clearly in terms of Christocentricity. Like Joachim, Bonaventure held that the final age would take place in this world, and would be characterized by mystical peace. Potential Joachimist influence may also be detected in Bonaventure's Legenda maior.