From an administrative point of view the Roman Empire in the West did not come to an end when Romulus Augustulus was deposed in A. D. 476 Generally speaking, the kingdoms of Odoacer and Theoderic were administered by the same agencies that had managed the empire since the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine. It is not surprising that there should have been much apparent continuity between late imperial and barbarian rule. The bureaucratic apparatus of empire, no matter how corrupt and cumbersome, was at least adapted to the needs of a civilized state, and it made sense to gratify the traditional ambitions of the senatorial establishment by maintaining ancient offices for its tenure. No wonder that an anonymous chronicler could remark that Theoderic ‘maintained the civil service for the Romans as it had been under the emperors.’

Some great men receive their due from historians late. Caesarius of Arles is one of these, in good part perhaps because the established mold for writing and teaching about the tradition of spirituality and intellectuality which Roman culture contributed to early medieval Europe had its heroes defined for it early. The patterns thus set up have tended to resist the admission of intruders brought to the fore by more recent historical investigations.

The extraordinary productivity of John Wycliffe and his followers is evident in the number of their extensive projects that despite ecclesiastical condemnation survived to modern times: the large corpus of Wycliffe's own Latin treatises and the grand-scale undertakings he inspired including the translations of the Bible, the Glossed Gospels, the vernacular sermon cycle, the multiple versions of the Floretum, and the numerous Lollard tracts. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writers in England would inevitably have been aware of these Wycliffite resources, and the present study will indicate that the compiler of the orthodox collection of Middle English tracts known as The Pore Caitif (PC), ca. 1395–1402, used several of the great Lollard reference works in assembling his materials. In four sections below, evidence is presented that links The Pore Caitif to the Glossed Gospels, an Early Version of the Wycliffite Bible (EV), the Lollard translation of the pseudo-Augustinian De salutaribus documentis, and possibly the Floretum.

The year 1321 is crucially important in the history of the development of French constitutional and political activity, for it was then that Philip V, the most inventive and imaginative of the sons of Philip the Fair, attempted to utilize assemblies of different sorts for an unprecedented purpose, to secure from the kingdom of France a grant of funds in time of peace to support a program of administrative and economic reform. His predecessors had had some success in securing levies for the defense of the realm, and, like them, Philip had raised money for campaigns against the Flemings. Neither Philip nor the kings who had ruled before him had, however, tried to obtained the active cooperation of the kingdom in advancing the welfare of France by introducing improvements which were totally unrelated to the needs of defense. It is a testimony to Philip's vision that he made such an attempt, abortive though it proved to be, for in the end his work came to nothing, and early in 1322 Philip died. While the complete failure of Philip's plans, which have fittingly been termed his ‘Grand Design,’ meant that 1321 would not become a landmark in French constitutional history, it does not make the brief episode any the less interesting. Its details illustrate the practical difficulties involved in the execution of such a project, and help explain why the evolution of viable institutions to facilitate cooperation between ruler and ruled to promote the common good were so halting, and why instances of such cooperation are so rare.

As historians of medieval theology and philosophy increasingly turn to study intellectual developments in the early fourteenth century, it is natural that Robert Holcot, O.P. († 1349), should come to stand out as an Oxford master worthy of further investigation. During his own lifetime, when he was associated with the household of Richard de Bury, the famous bishop of Durham, and on even into the early years of the sixteenth century, when several editions of his major works were printed, Holcot was held in high regard as a commentator on the Sentences, as a biblical exegete, and as a supplier of moralizing sermon exempla. His view of predestination was carefully studied by John Eck, and the Parisian master Jacques Almain devoted a treatise to his Sentence commentary.

Cuatro son los comentarios de los canonistas a las constituciones del Concilio IV Lateranense cuya noticia ha Ilegado hasta nosotros: el de Vincentius Hispanus, el de Juan Teutónico, el apparatus Si persistant in contumacia y el apparatus Quoniam omnes questionum articuli. Antes de ocuparnos de cada uno en particular, incluímos algunas observaciones acerca de la transmisión manuscrita del texto de dichos cánones, cuya lectura definitiva está todavía sin hacer.

If an apology for renewed textual study of a familiar, fairly well preserved and not extraordinarily difficult book (from the textual point of view) be called for, the writer hopes the following will suffice. It seems evident that we are still a good many years away from a definitive edition of that part of the Septuagint which includes the Book of Wisdom (‘Wisdom of Solomon‘). Yet for no book which has not been published with an exhaustive apparatus do we have a more comprehensive supply of text-critical material than we have for Wisdom;1 and none gives less scope for an expectation that future collations will in any way transform our knowledge or appreciation of the text. It seems, therefore, a suitable time for stock-taking; and the writer has been impelled to submit his results partly because they go somewhat beyond the data currently offered by editors and commentators, and partly as the appropriate foundation for a revised rendering soon to be published.

William of Sherwood (or Shyreswood) was an English logician of the thirteenth century. Little is known of his life. He possibly taught logic at Paris from about 1235 to about 1250. By 1252 he was active as master at Oxford. Between 1254 and 1258 he became treasurer of the Cathedral of Lincoln, an office he seems to have retained until his death. He was rector of Attleborough (Buckinghamshire) from about 1257 and prebendary of Aylesbury (Lincolnshire) by 1266. He died between 1266 and 1272.

Though Cicero's authority helped elevate the ideal orator's dexterity and discipline to the status of cliche, the vital link between theory and practice that his dialogues advocate did not long survive him. As professional rhetoricians of the next century became increasingly preoccupied with declamation, practical oratory developed and rewarded other qualities. Eloquence of the old kind could be thought a vanishing art. This then is how the younger Pliny would describe one of the most successful speakers of the late first century, the notorious (and long-lived) delator M. Aquilius Regulus.

William of Auvergne became a master of theology in the University of Paris in 1223 and was appointed bishop of Paris by Gregory IX in 1228. William governed the church of Paris until his death in 1249, while continuing to write the works which constitute his immense Magisterium divinale et sapientiale. Despite the fact that he was the first of the thirteenth-century theologians to appreciate the value of the Aristotelian philosophy that poured into the Latin West during the last half of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, his writings have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Étienne Gilson has sketched well the impact of the influx of Greek and Arabian philosophical works into the Christian West:

The notion that the pursuit of self-interest can ultimately bring universal good used to be widely held, but with the demise of the Manchester School of economics and of Herbert Spencer's philosophy it has almost completely gone out of favor. We are apt to forget that trial by jury, due process, and the rest of the beneficent heritage of medieval law originated in royal courts which were primarily interested in defending and promoting the king's interests, whatever the cost to others' rights or ideas of justice. For many years necessities of government warped the growth of English law where the king's needs were most closely engaged. His requirements shaped the remedies, his prerogatives shaped the possibilities of defense, while those who might stand in his way received nothing for their protection but the right to petition, and those who did not affect his immediate interests might be sent elsewhere to find their justice. At no time was this more evident than when the interests of the medieval clergy in their ecclesiastical benefices, already eroded by papal provisions, were attacked anew by the Common Law to aid the royal treasury.

Probably not long before the middle of the thirteenth century, Richard of Fournival, cleric, physician, and author, sent to an unnamed lady the autograph copy of his richly illustrated Bestiaire d'amours. In the prologue, Richard goes to some lengths to explain and justify the inclusion of pictures: hearing (oir) and vision (veir) are the doors through which collective knowledge is transmitted to the individual mind and memory (memoire), and word (parole) and picture (peinture) are the paths to these doors. Either one or the other route could have been chosen — in principle, they represent equivalent alternatives — but Richard is sending both words and pictures, because he wants to make doubly sure that the lady will indeed remember, that is to say, make his love the object of her own memory. The common denominator for word and picture is ‘image,’ and that is the notion on which the illustrator of one of the fourteenth-century copies of the Bestiaire based his introduction to the corresponding modes of reception: on folio 86v he depicted a reader who imagines what he reads (fig. 1); battle-ready warriors of romance stand before this seated figure in the privacy of his own room (indicated by the drapes), before his mind's eye, as it were, conjured up by the words of the text.

The development of sophisticated and complex techniques of literary interpretation was among the greatest achievements of those twelfth-century thinkers who have come loosely to be called ‘Chartrian.’ Chartrian literary allegoresis grew from a reawakened interest in the natural sciences, and a spiritual optimism about man's rational capacity to understand the Creator through his creation. These literary commentators made a habit of encyclopedic digression, using single words or brief passages from their texts to introduce whole chunks of allegorically or literally relevant information from the trivium, the quadrivium, mythology, and natural philosophy. They thus sought to find in their books the whole world of knowledge and the course of spiritual development, even as they had learned to see their world itself as a book. Intimately connected to this was the idea of the arts as a discipline for regaining lost knowledge of divine truths, and education as part of a symbolic spiritual pilgrimage.

The grammatical allegory of Piers Plowman C, Passus 3, has aptly been designated ‘the ugly duckling of the C revision.’ Since Skeat's day the passage has been described as ‘tedious and puerile,’ ‘irrelevant,’ ‘unintelligible and barren of all interest.’ More recently, John Alford's admirable article on the history of grammatical metaphor has situated the passage in a long literary tradition, and thus opened the way for an appreciation of its virtues, however strange they may seem to moderns. From the goliardic song to the sermon, from venality-satire to the Donatus moralizatus, authors throughout the Middle Ages built wordplays and metaphors, sometimes extended ones, on the technical terms of Latin grammar. For the medieval preacher, various kinds of pride go before a casus, or fall: pride of name (nominative), pride of descent (genitive), pride of wealth and munificence (dative), and so on; for the goliard, one becomes genitivus as a result of too much bedroom conjugation For Langland's grammatical allegory, though, critics have had less success explaining the use of grammatical terms and doctrines. Alford gives a brief five-page treatment to the passage, focusing mainly on the analogy between grammatical rules and the rule of law; although he aptly notes the punning use of terms such as ‘kynde’ for the Incarnation and ‘case’ for a legal suit, he does not address the use of ‘relacion rect and indirect’ or ‘adiectyf and sustantyf’ around which the passage is built. On the other hand, the article which gives the most detailed explanation of Langland's grammatical doctrines still has trouble relating them to the exempla of husband and wife, master and laborer, and son and servant, and even to the key notions of meed and mercede, confessing in places that ‘Conscience's precise intentions must remain a mystery.’

Treatises de modis significandi are known to have been a favorite genre of scholastic literature. One of them, by Martinus de Dacia, has lately been made the subject of a thorough study by Father Heinrich Roos, S.J., and will be briefly discussed in these pages. The text of this treatise, and commentaries on it, are found in a fairly large number of manuscripts, of which Fr. Roos presents a list, and which he endeavors to determine in their mutual relation in order to lay the groundwork for a future edition, apparently — as much as any one not himself familiar with the manuscripts can judge — with thoroughness and reliablity (chs. I, II). In some of the manuscripts and in certain other sources the treatise is ascribed to one Martinus de Dacia (Denmark). Very convincingly Fr. Roos demonstrates (ch. III) that this bit of information is correct and that the author was identical with a high-ranking Danish cleric of that name, who at one time was the chancellor of King Eric VI Menved. It is likely that Martinus composed his treatise while he was a professor in the Liberal Arts Faculty of the University of Paris, probably around 1250. The treatise seems to have enjoyed a great reputation, which would be accounted for if Fr. Roos is right in assuming that Martinus set the model for the entire type. In the last two chapters (IV, V) Fr. Roos describes the character and basic ideas of the tractate against the background of the development of scholarship and higher education during the Middle Ages. This historical outline is very interesting and instructive indeed. Nevertheless it provokes criticism regarding two interrelated points, namely, the characterization of scholastic grammar and its position in the history of linguistic studies.

In the following pages the Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the Latin Middle Ages, begun in Traditio 31 (1975) 99–126 and continued in succeeding issues, concludes with a number of brief tracts. These are for the most part spurious, but they circulated under the name of Hippocrates of Cos and appear to have reflected aspects of the Hippocratic tradition. They comprise: XLVI. Regimen sanitatis (salutis); XLVII. Secreta (Practicae) de curis universalibus totius corporis humani; XLVIII. Secreta (Signa sanitatis et signa mortis); XLIX. De septimanis; L. De situ regionum; LI. De minis; LII. De victus ratione; LIII. De visitatione infirmorum; LIV. De vita; and LV. De vulneribus capitis.

Book five of Avitus' biblical epic De spiritalis historiae gestis (hereafter SHG) is entitled De transitu maris rubri. The book tells the story of the Israelites' release from servitude in Egypt, following in broad outline the narrative of Exodus 1–15.1. The present study will concentrate on the concluding and culminating section of the book, the account of the march out of Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea (5.371–702). Avitus here elaborates the biblical narrative most freely and makes full use of the techniques of rhetorical and poetic amplification.

Great disagreement over the plot of Sophocles' Philoctetes makes the terrain of critical discussion very slippery. Some critics argue that Odysseus knows from the beginning that both Philoctetes and his bow are the object of the voyage to Lemnos, while Neoptolemus realizes this fact only later; others, however, believe that Odysseus never realizes the need for Philoctetes himself but that Neoptolemus eventually does. A few argue that the audience understands clearly, from the beginning and throughout the play, that Odysseus and Neoptolemus are both aware of the need for Philoctetes as well as his bow. Different perceptions of the plot may lead to very different interpretations of the play. For instance, the critics who believe that Neoptolemus at first thinks he must bring only the bow to Troy often concentrate on Neoptolemus' alleged realization that Philoctetes is necessary, too, while those who believe that Neoptolemus is aware all along of the need for Philoctetes obviously center their analyses elsewhere. Some critics even try to make a virtue out of the confusion over the plot, though in different ways: believing that we cannot determine until late in the play what Neoptolemus and Odysseus perceive their mission to be, a few argue that the question must be irrelevant to understanding Sophocles' purposes; another finds the moral lesson of the play in the fact that a muddle exists.

The manuscript tradition of the tragedies of Sophocles has never been fully investigated although many meritorious contributions were made towards this end. There exists, first of all, no complete list of the pertinent manuscripts. In former times several lists, far from being complete, were published by Fabricius-Harles, Blaydes, Campbell, Papageorgiou. The present writer has compiled, from all the known printed catalogs of Greek manuscript collections, a new list which will be presented in this study. Thus the groundwork will be laid for all further research aiming at the establishment of a complete genealogy of the extant mss. of Sophocles. This desideratum has been pointed out by Richard Jebb.