Richard Jasper Durling (1932–1999) made many important contributions to the study of the Latin tradition and critical edition of the works of Galen (AD 129–216), the Greek physician who was a notable figure in the history of medicine from late antiquity to the eighteenth century.

When in late 1399 Henry Bolingbroke (1367–1413) took the English throne as Henry IV from his cousin Richard II (d. 1400), the deposed king's poet John Gower (ca. 1330–1408), who had been long in Henry's favor too, wrote extensively in support of the revolution by which the Lancastrian regime was installed. Aged and probably infirm, Gower had been quiet since finishing with the Confessio amantis in the early thirteen-nineties: “A bok for king Richardes sake” (∗24), Gower had called it, written “upon his comandynge” (∗54). Then came suddenly the substantial body of Gower's Lancastrian apologetics, within a period of a few weeks or months, between late 1399 and early 1400: the some three-hundred line inaugural panegyric, in rhyme royal stanzas, now usually called “In Praise of Peace” — re vera, “ad laudem et memoriam serenissimi principis domini Regis Henrici quarti'” — the Lancastrian Carmen saeculare, celebrating Henry's installation, and Gower's last writing in English; possibly some of the shorter Latin verse as well; and, most grand, his account of the revolution's advent in the Cronica tripertita, in three books, 1062 Leonines, covering precisely the chronological span embedded in the official “Record et proces del renunciacion du roy Richard, le second apres Ie conquest, et de lacceptacion de mesme la renunciacion, ensemblement oue la deposicion de mesme le roy Richard,” enrolled in the rolls of parliament in late 1399, on which Gower based his verse enarration.

Writing early in the last decade of the tenth century, the Anglo-Saxon monk Ælfric begins his Second Series of Catholic Homilies with a sermon for Christmas Day. The second of five Old English sermons he wrote for the Nativity, it combines dense doctrinal matters with concrete advice about how Christians should commemorate the birth of Christ. After discussing Christ's Incarnation and Virgin Birth, and the Old Testament prophecies anticipating his appearance, Ælfric concludes the sermon with a series of instructions directing believers how to conduct themselves at Christmas. Of particular interest is his singling out of clænnyss, an Old English word for “chastity” or “purity,” as the virtue to be most highly prized among the laity:

Chaucer's character descriptions contain details from the medieval science of physiognomy which create a stratum of meaning hidden to the modern reader. Curry and others have pointed out a number of these details; for instance, the significance of the physical traits ascribed to the Pardoner; the very different implication of those assigned to the Miller; the Wife of Bath's ‘gat-tothedness.’ in knowledge of physiognomy was widespread in the Middle Ages, Chaucer's contemporaries presumably recognized not only the details which modern scholars have identified but quite possibly many more also.

The subject of penance and confession is central in the writings of Alcuin of York (†804), and found in many different literary genres: e.g., liturgical writings, devotional works, letters, and small treatises. The genius of Alcuin, as well as the principal thrust of his work at the court of Charlemagne, lay in pedagogical concerns. Within the school reform, however, we find traces of theological thought, most notably his ideas regarding penance. His overriding interest was pastoral rather than theoretical. He was concerned about the well-being of his pupils and it was for them that he composed his most important treatise on confession and penance, Ad pueros sancti Martini.

Die Berliner, aus dem Besitze von Phillipps erworbene Sammelhandschrift Lat. oct. 199 enthält unter ihren 65 Blättern auch 7 zusammengehörige Pergamentblätter aus dem 12. Jahrhundert mit Bruchstücken eines Lucankommentars, so dass auf fol. 1 sich zunächst einmal ein Stück über die Verse 1.412-4 findet; es folgt dann auf fol. 6 und 7 und fol. 2ra ein grösseres Stück über kosmologische Anschauungen, entwickelt an Lucan; eine Vorgesetzte Überschrift vor diesem Teil ist weggeschnitten, fol. 2rb und 2v sind nicht beschrieben. Über die Herkunft der Blätter vermuten die in der Anmerkung genannten Mitteilungen: ‘Sie [die Hs.] wird wohl aus einem westfälischen Kloster stammen. Man würde auf Corvey schliessen, wenn die Bruchstücke des Lucankommentars als aus Vacca's Kommentar stammend zu erweisen wären, von dem im Mutterkloster Corbie im 12. Jahrhundert eine Handschrift vorhanden war.’ Diese Vermutung und weiter das Zitat in Zeile 243: ‘alluditur in Alexandro, ubi ait: vetitumque mari se mergere plaustrum,’ wo die Mitteilungen an eine antike Alexander-dichtung denken, rechtfertigen das Interesse des Philologen. Ich lasse zunächst den Text folgen.

Simultaneously with the preparation by the present writer of his article on ‘Medieval Georgian Historical Literature (VIIth–XVth Centuries)’ the Historical Institute of the Georgian Academy of Sciences published the long-awaited text of the Queen Anne Codex of The Georgian Annals, the oldest version of that historical corpus so far discovered. This publication necessitates a few additions to, and corrections of, the above-mentioned article. This is the reason for this note.

Of all the international military monastic orders of the Middle Ages only the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem have left reasonably complete records. The publication of documents from their archives has not, however, evenly represented the great historical epochs of the order's past; for the Holy Land period (ca. 1096–1291) we have almost everything, for the Rhodian era (1310–1522) we have almost nothing. This situation has not gone unnoticed, but it has remained uncorrected. Twenty-five years ago John La Monte reported that documents pertaining to the Hospitallers after 1310 were among the important lacunae of crusade historiography, and, more recently, James Brundage has called attention to the fact that nothing has been done to fill this gap. With the exception of a handful of documents published by Joseph Delaville Le Roulx one must still turn to Sebastiano Pauli's eighteenth-century miscellany for original records of the Hospitallers during the two centuries they held Rhodes. The proceedings of the Montpellier Chapter General published here represents a modest attempt to advance beyond the current state of affairs.

Msgr. Devreesse, well known to every Church historian for his successful researches on Theodore of Mopsuestia, on Greek catenae and other subjects, reveals in a recent publication his mastery in a field in which he had previously published only various minor essays. By its rich documentation and lucid presentation the new work, a historical and geographical description of the Patriarchate of Antioch, will remain for a long time the standard work on the subject. Based upon a scrupulous and intelligent investigation of the original sources and the author's perfect familiarity with all problems related in any way to the topic, his work deserves the admiration and appreciation of all who are interested in the history and institutions of the Ancient Church. My own studies in the same field, pursued during some twenty-five years, perhaps enable me to recognize more than many other critics the extraordinary qualities of Devreesse's work—a fact which I want to stress all the more as in the following I shall mention many details about which I cannot agree with the author; for my objections and additions could easily be misinterpreted as a sign that I underrate the incontestable merits of the work as a whole.

Venantius Fortunatus is the last major Latin poet of late antiquity. Born near Treviso in northern Italy, he studied grammar and rhetoric in the still thriving schools of Ravenna before moving in 566 to Gaul, where he sought to employ his literary education and talents in the service of Merovingian and Gallo-Roman patrons. Fortunatus's poetry gives ample evidence of his early studies: he shows familiarity with classical poetry, especially Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius, and with the main Christian poets of late antiquity. In a passage at the beginning of his verse Life of St. Martin, Fortunatus lists Juvencus, Sedulius, Orientius, Prudentius, Paulinus, Arator, and Alcimus Avitus as preeminent in Christian poetry, thereby naming all of his most important Christian Latin predecessors.

The only instance in which the present-day Roman liturgy refers to Moses as a saint is the beginning of the entry for September 4th in the Martyrologium, which says: ‘In Monte Nebo terrae Moab sancti Moysis legislatoris et prophetae.’ This entry is found in Baronius' edition of 1586. In the annotated edition, Baronius commented on this entry: ‘Agunt de eodem hoc die non tantum Latini omnes, sed et Graeci in Menologio.’

Das große abendländische Schisma (1378–1449) brachte zahlreiche Abhandlungen zum Thema Konzil hervor, aus denen die Konzilsidee des Spätmittelalters gewonnen werden kann. Namen wie Dietrich von Niem, Konrad von Gelnhausen, Heinrich von Langenstein, Pierre d'Ailly, Jean Gerson, Jean Courtecuisse, Juan Torquemada u.a. verdeutlichen das Gemeinte. Im Umkreis der Literatur zum zweiten Nicaenum (787), vor allem in den Libri Carolini, ist andererseits die spätpatristische Konzilsidee greifbar. Zwischen dem großen abendländischen Schisma und dem zweiten Nicaenum aber liegt ein Zeitraum von 500 Jahren und damit ein halbes Jahrtausend Entfaltung der Konzilsidee. Wie denkt man in dieser Zeitspanne über Konzilien? Auf welche Momente und Aspekte konzentriert sich das Interesse? Wo liegen die wesentlichen Unterschiede im Vergleich zur patristischen Phase der Entfaltung dieser Idee? Die entscheidende Vorfrage lautet natürlich: Welche Quellen stehen uns für den genannten Zeitraum zur Beantwortung unserer Frage zur Verfügung? Wie für die patristische Periode kommen auch für die mittelalterliche wieder einzelne Autoren in Frage. Männer wie der streitbare Bischof Hinkmar von Reims und der Unionstheologe Anselm von Havelberg, vielleicht auch Gerbert von Aurillac, der nachmalige Papst Silvester II., sind hier zu nennen.

In the first book of De doctrina Christiana, Augustine of Hippo famously teaches that only the Trinity is to be enjoyed; all other things and even people are to be used toward this singular end. The brevity of Augustine's passing remarks on the Trinity gives no hint that he will later devote many pages to the topic. He writes:

The traditional account of the development of theology in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is that the emerging “academic” discipline of theology was separated from the Bible and its commentary, that the two existed on parallel but separate courses, and that the one developed in a “systematic” direction whereas the other continued to exist as a separate “practical” or “biblical-moral” school. Focusing largely on texts of an allegedly “theoretical” nature, this view misunderstands or, indeed, entirely overlooks the evidence issuing from lectures on the Bible — postills, glosses, and commentaries — notably the biblical Glossa “ordinaria.” A witness to an alternative understanding, Peter Comestor, master and chancellor of the cathedral school of Paris in the second half of the twelfth century, shows that theology was created as much from the continued study of the Bible as from any “systematic” treatise. Best known for his Historia scholastica, a combined explanation and rewrite of the Bible focusing on the historical and literal aspects of sacred history, Comestor used the Gloss as a textbook in his lectures on the Gospels both to elucidate matters of exegesis and to help him deduce doctrinal truth. Through a close reading of Comestor's lectures on the Gospel of John, this essay reevaluates the teaching of theology at the cathedral school of Paris in the twelfth century and argues that the Bible and its Gloss stood at the heart of this development.

This article investigates the ideologies which underpinned unconsecrated burial in late Anglo-Saxon legal and religious texts. The exclusion of sinners and criminals from Christian cemeteries has typically been interpreted by scholars as a form of excommunication or an attempt to facilitate damnation. However, a reassessment of legislative, diplomatic, and ecclesiastical sources reveals that this was not so. In tenth-century laws and charters, unconsecrated burial was imposed exclusively by secular authorities; it was only prescribed by ecclesiastical authorities from ca. 1000. This suggests that it originated as a temporal punishment but later came to be used as an ecclesiastical sentence. The following analysis of the textual evidence yields two interrelated arguments. First, this article demonstrates that through the mid-eleventh century, unconsecrated burial was a penalty distinct from ecclesiastical excommunication. Where excommunication was imposed upon living sinners, to coerce them to penance, unconsecrated burial was prescribed for the unrepentant or criminal dead, whose actions placed them beyond earthly help. Second, this article contends that written prescriptions for unconsecrated burial differentiated secular from ecclesiastical jurisdictions. Although laymen and clergy collaborated in the dispensation of law and justice throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, the written evidence for unconsecrated burial shows that this penalty fell either under the authority of secular or of ecclesiastical agents, demonstrating a clearer separation between these spheres than is usually recognized in pre-Conquest England.

Gratian, the “Father of the Science of Canon Law,” had at least a passing familiarity with the scholastic theology of the early twelfth century. His Concordia discordantium canonum or Decretum displays a knowledge of many doctrines debated and discussed in the schools of northern France and also employs the dialectical method for reconciling contradictory authorities pioneered by the scholastics. How did Gratian become acquainted with these methods, doctrines, and ideas? What written sources, if any, introduced him to early scholastic theology?

Revisiting Robert Brentano's 1960 article in Traditio on “The Bishops’ Books of Città di Castello,” this contribution challenges a reigning narrative of the “documentary revolution” in medieval Italy as primarily the achievement of the thirteenth-century communal governments of the north. While these urban ruling regimes did produce prodigious numbers of documents and new documentary forms, they were not the earliest innovators. By broadening the scope of analysis to include all the early administrative codices surviving in Città di Castello — those of the city's communal government, cathedral chapter, and bishopric — the author demonstrates that the initial leap from administrative reliance on single sheet parchments to registers occurred earliest in the cathedral chapter (by 1192), then in the bishop's court (1207), and finally more than a decade later in the commune (1221). At least in this one small Umbrian town, ecclesiastical institutions were the earliest innovators. The evidence of Città di Castello also indicates that political instability and its related economic effects drove innovation, not the reform initiatives of Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran Council. Local ecclesiastical leaders, not popes, were the innovators.