Two days before Charlemagne was crowned ‘Emperor of the Romans,' Pope Leo III swore an oath in order to affirm his innocence of any crimes attributed to him by his enemies. Sound reasons exist for making an assumption that there was a close relationship between these two events. Since there is no indisputable evidence in the sources concerning the motives that led to Charles' coronation, every important event prior to this act has been analyzed by historians for its potential bearing on the matter. Further, the two most important individuals, pope and king, were participants in both affairs. The hand that bore the Gospels when an oath of purification was sworn in the presence of the Frankish king was the same hand, the pope's, which placed the crown of empire on a Frankish head. Thus it has been argued that Leo gave Charlemagne the new dignity in order that the Frank might use his imperial power to chastise the papal enemies. Against this view the countering argument has been made by some historians that Leo's oath was humiliating, a fact which reduces to an absurdity the thesis that the main initiative could come from the papal Curia. Thus the oath has been considered the key to a proper evaluation of the coronation itself.

Karl Jost first noted the use of a passage from Atto of Vercelli, De pressuris ecclesiasticis, in Archbishop Wulfstan's Latin composition De Christianitate. Dorothy Bethurum, however, in her essay on the group of manuscripts associated as representatives of Wulfstan's “Commonplace Book,” suggested that an extract in one of these, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 190, pp. 96–97, was an intermediary between the original work of Atto and Wulfstan's De Christianitate. Jost and Bethurum used the edition of Atto by d'Achery, reprinted in Migne. Now Joachim Bauer has re-edited Atto's tract and, finding early manuscripts rare, has read CCC 190 and identified more quotations from Atto in this English manuscript.

Wie wohl alle grossen Epen der europäischen Antike, so enthält auch die Thebais des Statius eine ausführliche dichterische Darstellung von Wettspielen. Wie wohl alle grösseren Partien der Thebais, so hat auch diese in der Forschung der letzten Generationen Kritik und Tadel gefunden. Man meinte zu sehen, dass hier nicht die Poesie, sondern gelehrte Tradition bestimmend gewesen sei. Man meinte, den Passus als unselbständige Imitation ablehnen, als unoriginale Nachahmung abtun zu können. Natürlich handelt es sich bei der Schilderung der Spiele, die zu Ehren des ersten Toten auf dem Zuge der Sieben gegen Theben, des Opheltes/Archemorus, veranstaltet wurden (Theb. 6.249–946), um eine offenkundige Nachahmung der Darstellung der Leichenspiele, von denen im dreiundzwanzigsten Gesang der Ilias und im fünften Buch der Aeneis berichtet wird. Natürlich genügt dieser Bezug allein aber nicht, um ein Verdammungsurteil zu rechtfertigen. Ist doch gerade Wiederaufnahme und Neugestaltung überlieferter Motive eine tragende Gegebenheit antiken Dichtens. Die Aufgabe, durch Einzelvergleich mit den Vorbildern die wesentlichen Eigenschaften dieser statianischen Dichtung zu bestimmen, kann im Rahmen dieses Aufsatzes nicht in Angriff genommen werden; das genauere Studium einer so umfangreichen Partie mit 700 Versen muss einer Monographie vorbehalten bleiben. Hier können darum nur einige wichtigere Sonderfragen erörtert werden, die jedoch von grundsätzlicher Bedeutung für den Passus selbst wie auch für die dichterische Technik des Statius zu sein scheinen.

When William Langland revised his poem Piers Plowman for the second time, he added a long, intricate analogy to the third passus. In all three versions of Piers, the dreamer, Will, finds himself in this early passus at a king's court and witnesses a debate between two figures, Lady Meed and Conscience, about the appropriateness of their possible marriage. The B text, the one scholars most often discuss, presents the would-be bride, Lady Meed, arguing that regardless of their nature the gifts she dispenses at court are integral to the smooth operation of society. These gifts, then, are honorable, and Lady Meed's nature need not prevent her marriage to Conscience. The reluctant Conscience, however, distinguishes between two kinds of meed, one holy and one corrupt. He holds that Lady Meed represents only the corrupt meed and so is intrinsically immoral. Her ‘gifts’ and ‘payments,’ he says, are not proportionate to desert, as she claims, but are instead bribes and payoffs. Rather than easing the functioning of society, they subvert it. On these grounds, Conscience refuses to marry Lady Meed. The king before whom Lady Meed and Conscience argue is initially torn about the nature of Lady Meed, as indeed readers of the poem have remained. In what appears to be an effort to clarify Conscience's argument, Langland adds almost a hundred lines to the debate in the C text.

Some twenty years ago Canon Étienne Delaruelle and Janine Povill wrote a history of the parishes of Toulouse from their origins to 1160. My design is to review their findings for the mid-twelfth century and carry the history forward until about 1250. The limitation of 1250 is imposed essentially by a change in the nature of the documentation of Toulousan local history, which among other things involved a great diminution in preserved private documents.

An oath was sworn by Pope Leo III at St. Peter's on December 23 of the year 800 before a synodal assembly at which Charlemagne presided; it occupies a central place among the events that culminated, only two days later, in the coronation of the Frankish king as Imperator Romanorum. The document customarily known as the text of this ‘oath’ was in 1899 edited by Karl Hampe, and in 1906 by Albert Werminghoff, who followed his predecessor ad verbum usque, as he says. The apparatus of both editions establishes the insertion of a slightly reedited oath in the Decretum of Burchard of Worms. Ivo of Chartres and, in an apologetic treatise, Gerhoh of Reichersberg follow Burchard without major changes. The variants listed by Hampe and Werminghoff indicate that they both distinguished between the basic text of the oath in the oldest, ninth-century MS, Würzburg M. p. theol. fol. 46 (and its descendants, the Monacenses 6241 and 27246, saec. x-xi), and the oath's transmission by Burchard and the above-named authors who depend on Burchard. And Hampe assigns the twelfth-century Vaticanus 1348 to the Burchard tradition, when he says that its readings largely correspond with Burchard's (‘paene omnibus conveniunt Burchardi Wormat. decret. …’). Both scholars are fully conversant with the textual history of the document; they reprint in the notes the abbreviated version of the oath in Gratian's Decretum, and the text in a Roman Ordo which represents a version re-written in accordance with certain concepts of Roman law. The Burchard-tradition has been discussed in a recent study. Some of the changes made by Burchard in the original text of the oath are readily understandable. The variant in … conspectu, instead of in … basilica, probably resulted from a scribal dittography, because the same expression occurs in the oath of purgation in the lines preceding and following the correct reading. The variant adversum, instead of adversus, is an emendation of the original text. Burchard evidently recognized the resemblance between the original reading, ‘qualiter homines mali adversus me insurrexerunt and Psalm 53.5 ‘quoniam alieni insurrexerunt adversum me.’

The following checklist includes work published in the quarter-century between 1935, the twelve-hundreth anniversary of Bede's death, and 1960, inclusive. It lists editions, studies and translations into Modern English of his Latin works; it omits translations into other languages, including Old English, and studies of these, as well as the Old English poems sometimes attributed to Bede. Most reviews of the listed books have also been omitted, although some which make substantial modifications have not. A universal writer like Bede is mentioned in many studies; only those that deal directly with him, or that seem to make real contributions to Bede scholarship, are in this checklist, which would otherwise have been many times its present length. The grouping is by topic, chronologically within each topic, alphabetically within each year. An asterisk marks those works which I have not been able to see.

John Trevisa, fourteenth-century scholar and translator, was born in Cornwall, studied at Oxford University, and served as vicar of Berkeley and chaplain to Thomas IV, Lord Berkeley, in Gloucestershire. He died sometime prior to May 21, 1402. The main facts of Trevisa's life and works were collected by the late Professor A. J. Perry of the University of Manitoba, who visited England in the summer of 1914, and reported the results of his research there in the Introduction to his edition of Trevisa's minor works, published by the Early English Text Society in 1925.

Any discussion of the intellectual life in fourteenth-century Italy is inevitably directed by the personality and achievement of Petrarch. Although we no longer believe that a whole new age begins with him, although we recognize considerable medieval elements in his work, we still regard him as the father of the strongest movement in the Renaissance–humanism. After his long years of succesful work, that was at once well publicized and well remunerated, there could be no inversion of the hour-glass. From him there proceeded the splendid parade of Boccaccio, Salutati, Guarino, and Bruni. There can be no quarrel with the general truth of this Petrarchan primacy, but, as in all historical abstractions, there are some unfortunate results. These are particularly prevalent in the decades before Petrarch. His shadow is over the whole period. We have difficulty in appreciating his predecessors as anything but precursors. If we resist the temptation to dismiss them all as unimportant, we are nonetheless constrained to deal with them as relative to a later Petrarch, as the very term prehumanism implies. The period is obscure enough without adding this element of ambiguity to it. Unable to jettison the term, we can still underline its inadequacy and establish the substantial nature of the movement, even without reference to Petrarch.

Nous voudrions, dans ces quelques pages, terminer le dépouillement commencé jadis (il y a dix ans déjà) des qq. contenues dans le MS Bamberg, Staatsbibl. Can. 17 [P.I. 11]. Nous avions laissé de côté les collections III1 (fol. 127–133r) et III4 (fol. 171–177). Ces deux séries reprennent un certain nombre de qq. publiées jadis par F. Thaner d'après le MS Stuttgart, Landesbibl. HB VI 62 (H 72) fol. 58v-71r (q. 1–30) et 120v-123v (q. 31–36) et dont quelques-unes se retrouvent dans le MS Cambridge, Univ. Libr. Addit. 3321 vol. 2 fol. 26v-31v. Nous y joindrons, en complément, l'énoncé (la seule partie qui nous ait été conservée) d'une q. du MS Vatican, Pal. lat. 678 fol. 98rv. On pourra le comparer avec celui que nous avons déjà publié. C'est bien le měme thème, mais la tournure en est autre. Nous trouverons d'ailleurs le měme procédé dans la série dont nous allons proposer l'analyse.

Sauf erreur, on ne possède aucune publication intégrale de plaidoiries médiévales, et la littérature savante qui les concerne est aussi mince que vieillie. Nous espérons que la présente édition contribuera à ranimer ces études, d'un intérêt incontestable pour l'histoire du droit et des mœurs du moyen âge.

In the Commentary of Remigius of Auxerre on the De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae of Martianus Capella, which was written at the end of the ninth century, there occurs an unusual tale of the origin of the seven liberal arts. According to this account, the three sons of Noah, upon learning of the impending destruction of the world, took two columns, one of brick and one of stone, and inscribed upon them the knowledge of the seven liberal arts to preserve it from oblivion. The stone column survived the Flood and long after was found in Egypt by Abraham who was thus enabled to restore the arts. From Egypt the arts were transmitted to Greece. Although this story was not commonly related in the Carolingian period, other tales of the discovery of the arts were current. Generally speaking, Cicero's claim for Mercury as the inventor and even the more prosaic accounts of Egyptian and Greek wise men as the discoverers were being superseded by the account of Hebrew discoverers that had been made popular by Isidore. It is not reasonable to think that Remigius, who in his commentary was constantly cautioning his pupils against taking Martianus' tales literally and pointing out for them the allegorical or poetic significance of the narrative, would accept at its face value any one of the versions of the invention of the arts. Actually, in discussing the origin of the arts he gives a philosophical explanation that would at once negate any account of an inventor. ‘The liberal arts,’ he says, ‘are naturally inherent in the soul and cannot be thought of as coming from elsewhere.’

‘Abaelard,’ ‘Abelard,’ ‘Baiolard’ …? Twelfth-century scribes were as uncertain of the exact spelling and pronunciation of the famous philosopher's cognomen as scholars have been in more recent centuries. Trivial as it might seem, correct pronunciation provides the key to understanding a short anecdote copied onto the opening folio of a twelfth-century manuscript (MS Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm. 14160 = M), formerly belonging to the Benedictine abbey of St. Emmeran, Regensburg. It tells the reader that the peripatetic philosopher wanted to supplement his studies of the trivium by following the lectures of master Thierry on mathematics, but then found the subject too difficult. Thierry gave Peter the name ‘Baiolard’ because he was like a greedy dog who had eaten his fill yet still wanted to lick (given as the meaning of baiare) lard, here used as an image of the quadrivium. The word lardum may itself be a pun on artium. The story-teller goes on to claim that Peter changed ‘Baiolard’ (‘lick-lard’) to ‘Abelard’ (‘have-lard’) because he came to master geometry and arithmetic. The patent absurdity of a number of details in this anecdote — such as, that Abelard was an Englishman or that he wrote on geometry and arithmetic — has led most scholars to dismiss the story as a spurious invention. In this study I shall examine whether there are any historical insights to be gained from the anecdote, the text of which is given here with an attempt at a translation.

From the earliest times the Roman pontiffs exercised the right of sending envoys - by dispatching their legates to synods and councils, by maintaning from the time of Leo the Great their apocrisiarii at the imperial court of Constantinople and later still in the kingdom of the Franks, by appointing bishops and metropolitans as vicars apostolic, and by entrusting at times even to secular princes a kind of legatine power. While the theoretical basis of their claim to this right may be said to have received its final formulation at the hands of John XXII in the year 1316, it was nonetheless more penetratingly analyzed and expounded by Pius VI and Leo XIII. It is upon the pronoun cements of these popes that the definition of this claim in the Code of Canon Law is based:

ius … a civili potestate independens, in. quamlibet mundi partem legatos cum vel sine ecclesiastica iurisdictione mittendi.

En présentant cette contribution à l'examen critique de l'œuvre de Hugues de Saint-Victor, nous avons d'abord à rendre hommage à B. Hauréau qui, au siècle dernier, entreprit une étude analogue, en 1859, sous le titre, Hugues de Saint-Victor: Nouvel examen de l'édition de ses oeuvres, puis, en 1886, sous le titre, Les oeuvres de Hugues de Saint-Victor. Compte tenu des travaux parus depuis lors et des résultats de nos propres recherches nous devons faire un certain nombre d'additions aux constatations faites par Hauréau, et un certain nombre de corrections aux jugements qu'il prononça. Il n'empêche que notre étude comme la sienne a un caractère provisoire et appelle à son tour additions, perfectionnements et corrections. Puissions-nous du moins être quelque peu utile aux chercheurs qui s'intéresseront à ce grand penseur du XIIe siècle.

This study documents the discovery of Peter Lombard's long-thought-to-be-lost lectures on the Old Testament, which were hidden in plain view in the Old Testament lectures of Stephen Langton, who lectured on the Lombard's lectures. The presence in the Lombard's lectures on Genesis of the logical theory of supposition, the single greatest advance in logical theory during the High Middle Ages, means that those lectures not only postdate the Sentences but also represent the beginning of a radical advance in speculative theology that would continue to develop through the end of the High Middle Ages. This means in turn that lectures on the Bible from the 1150s to 1200, and in particular those of the School of Paris, headed by Peter Lombard, play a central role in one of the greatest speculative developments — logical, philosophical, and theological — of the Middle Ages.

That women felt and men thought has long been the predominant lens through which medieval Christian writing has been analyzed. The work of the religious women vernacular theologians, or Beguines, who emerged across North Europe from the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries has therefore often been dismissed as affective mysticism. Recent scholarship has begun to re-appraise this work and re-evaluate its place within the Christian tradition. This paper looks at the work of Hadewijch, a thirteenth-century mystical poet from Brabant in the Netherlands who, though less well known than other Beguines such as Hildegaard of Bingen and Marguerite Porete, may, as John Arblaster and Paul Verdeyen argue, “rightly be called the greatest poetic genius in the Dutch language.” It is probable that her work was not widely known during her lifetime (not, that is, directly), but research is strengthening the argument that her theology was transmitted via the works of John of Ruusbroec. This paper will attend both to Hadewijch's poesy and her theology and ask what the dynamic structure in her verse — its shifts of perspective, gender perspective, and non-linear narrative — might lead us to grasp about her theology.

Admiration for the achievements of the thirteenth-century Catalan mystic Ramon Lull ran deep in many currents of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was during this period that Lullism became a potent force in the intellectual life of Western Europe, being blended with mysticism by Lefèvre, with philosophical encyclopedism by Lavinheta, and with occultism and symbolism by Agrippa and Bruno. The penetration of Lull's thought into diverse areas of intellectual life was in agreement with his own contention that the Ars was universally applicable, but at the same time it obscured Lull's fundamental apologetic aims, his eremitic ideals, missionary wanderings, and his martyrdom.