In an essay entitled “Church History and the Bible,” Karlfried Froehlich once distinguished between the many biblical texts that have had a history and the few which have really made history. His point was that, in the history of their effects, the different books and even individual verses of the Bible have had a very uneven influence. Some have been relatively neutral or unproductive in their visible historical impact. Others can almost be said to have brought into being whole movements, institutions, ideas, and conflicts.

Sidonius Apollinaris needs no introduction as by far our best informant for the history of Roman Gaul in the late fifth century and as one of the most accomplished practitioners of the complicated literary style so admired in his age and so often contemned in ours. Because his poems and letters provide abundant evidence for political and social history, most historians have until recently tended to see him as a predominantly secular figure. That impression is heightened by the literary genres he chose for his writings and whose accepted rules and forms he meticulously followed. However, a handful of studies since mid-century, and recently a political biography, have drawn attention to one or another neglected religious dimension of his life. Gradually a hidden Sidonius has been emerging from between the lines of reluctant sources that are not autobiographical by nature or by his intent.

An essoniatus de malo lecti is dispensed from appearing in court for a certain time, to wit, for a year. How is this time to be computed, if in its course there occurs the additional day of a leap-year? If e.g. the year, given to an essoinee, began on January 20th of a leap year, does the year end on the next 20th of January (so that the essoinee has a time of 366 days) or on the next 19th of January (so that the essoinee has a time of 365 days, as in a normal year)? Bracton discussed this question, on which there was a lively dispute among English lawyers of his time, in a long chapter of his treatise (fol. 359–360). Everybody who attempted to read this text unprepared, would soon push it aside in despair of finding any sense in this abstruse discussion. In fact Bracton's text has been spoilt by numerous ruthless interpolations which have rendered it entirely unintelligible. Such a text is of eminent value for everybody who is interested in the problem of the Bractonian text, for the process of deterioration is here more evident than elsewhere. Nevertheless nobody has hitherto tried to disentangle the ravelled skein and to reconstruct what Bracton actually wrote. The latest editor of the treatise, Professor Woodbine, has, according to his principle, abstained from emending what he believed to be the best text of our manuscripts. The inevitable result of this conservatism is, that the chapter is in his edition entirely unreadable just as in the older editions. At first sight it may seem hopeless to find a way through the jungle, but a minute and patient examination shows that the genuine Bractonian text may still be traced. We are fortunate enough to possess an unusually rich store of material for our inquiry, and by methodically using it we may confidently hope to reach our goal.

In one of the very few essays in English on Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, Eleanor Shipley Duckett calls him a prince of the Church, a statesman, an administrator, a scholar who rises far above the other figures she surveys and who stands out in the company of Charles the Great and Pope Nicholas I in the historical records of the ninth century. His long life, from his birth in northern France in 806, his entry into the monastery of St. Denis in 814, his consecration as archbishop in 845, to his death in 882 at Epernay while fleeing from the Danish invasion, was one long series of combats calling for a variety of talents. He revealed a deep knowledge of canon law in his various ecclesiastical disputes with recalcitrant clergy and laity, an astute diplomatic talent in his attempts to knit together the rapidly unraveling unity of the empire, a broad but unoriginal scholarship in his theological controversies over predestination and the Trinity which brought him to grips with the leading thinkers of the Carolingian renaissance, especially the redoubtable Saxon Gottschalk, monk of Orbais. It is with this last controversy that this paper will be concerned.

A fresh attempt on the two most formidable puzzles in the Divina Commedia, by one who cannot even profess to be a Dantist, may seem peculiarly open to what a contemporary scholar has called ‘the mild raillery that attends those who persist in offering solutions of problems apparently worked to death.' Yet a survey of the massive bibliography surrounding Dante's DXV and Veltro produces the strong impression that no explanation proposed for either of them so far has won for itself any real core of acceptance. If this one-sentence summary of six hundred years' scholarship is accurate, it suggests that a fruitful approach is less likely to emerge from comparative re-assessments of the existing theories, than from an exploration of some of the all-but-forgotten corners of medieval Christian tradition, in search of an interpretation that will fit the two prophecies and their contexts more precisely. In the present study, Part I will offer an interpretation of the DXV which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been proposed; Part II will demonstrate the compatibility of this interpretation with other crucial parts of the Commedia; Part III will offer a somewhat less original interpretation of the Veltro; and Part IV will examine the relationship between the two prophecies as I have interpreted them.

The romanesque façade of the abbey church of St.-Gilles in the diocese of Nlmes has been a subject of debate among art historians for many years. This controversy has been centered on the design of the church's façade [Fig. 1]. In addition to a series of colonnettes supporting archivolts that surround the tympana over its three western doorways, the St.-Gilles façade also possesses two free-standing columns flanking the central doorway that support nothing, a peculiarity which has led scholars to conclude that the plan of the façade was changed during the remodeling of the church in the twelfth century. The debate has focused on the dating of this change. A number of dates have been suggested, based on the façade's sculptural style, on dated inscriptions in the crypt, and on documents dealing with the church fabric. The art historians of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries dated the redesigning of the façade between 1116 and the middle of the thirteenth century, though the tendency of more recent scholarship has been to narrow the range of dates to between 1116 and the 1140s.

The following Latin version, hitherto unpublished, of the Byzantine Liturgies of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom was generously placed at my disposal by my confrère, the late lamented Dom André Wilmart, O.S.B., who about seventeen years ago discovered and transcribed it from a manuscript purchased at London in 1899 by the Bibliothèque Nationale: Nouv. Acq. lat. 1791 Since the manuscript was written in the second half of the twelfth century, this translation is—to put it roughly—at least as old as that of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (= X) made at Constantinople about 1180 by the Pisan interpreter, Leo Tuscus, or that of the Liturgy of St. Basil (= B) made shortly afterward by Nicholas of Otranto. But it is important to note at the outset that the present translation represents a considerably earlier redaction of the Liturgies than do the two aforesaid versions, for we have here, as in the earliest of our manuscripts, the Barberinum S. Marci (= BSM), and several others, the prayers of the celebrant only and a corresponding minimum of rubrics. Of special significance, moreover, are the two following facts: first, the precedence given to B, an arrangement found in comparatively few manuscripts, among them the oldest which we know; and secondly, the occurrence in this same Liturgy of ancient rubrics and of the ancient form of at least one exclamation of the deacon, which point to a very early recension as the original from which the translator worked. On the other hand, over against this ancient form stands a relatively modern text, for not only are certain prayers which appear in the most ancient manuscripts only, missing from this translation, but in those few prayers also in the tradition of which it is possible to distinguish an older from a more recent set of readings, it is the latter which are almost invariably found. Similarly, the indication of certain acclamations by the initial words only (an ancient trait) and the writing out of the ἐκΦωνήσ∊ις in full (a very late practice) constitute another combination of ancient and recent features. But to attempt on the basis of these characteristics to fix the date of either the original or the translation, is to face possibilities only, concerning which it would be useless to speculate.

A strong attachment to education and scholarship very early distinguished the orders of friars established in the thirteenth century. Although Francis of Assisi had made no provision for such activities in the new religious movement which he founded, nevertheless, not long after his death in 1226 the Franciscans had already begun to show a pronounced intellectualist bent. In a sermon delivered in 1229, Odo of Châteauroux noted the influx of scholars into the Order and the prominence of the Franciscans in the Paris schools. Subsequently, some of the finest minds in Europe were converted to the Franciscan style of Christian life; and the enthusiasm and aptitude of the friars minor for teaching became very apparent — transforming them into almost a separate universitas.

Congesta, written about the middle of the fifteenth century in England and only partially preserved, is a massive sermon commentary, originally in five volumes, covering the Sundays of the church year, some feast days and common sermons for saints, and two special occasions (“In Time of Persecution” and “For Religious”). Of the entire cycle only forty-six sermons are extant in two manuscripts (Oxford, Magdalen College MSS 96 and 212). The commentary deals at great length with the Epistle or Gospel lection of the respective Mass. Its anonymous author, probably an English Carthusian, excerpted long passages from over 130 named authors and anonymous works, including Petrus Berchorius, Saint Brigid of Sweden, and the Imitatio Christi. The sermons, which are basically moral postillation of the lections and show much concern with the qualities of a good pastor, can be seen as part of the reforming tendencies in the English church marked especially by Thomas Gascoigne. The article describes and discusses the sermon cycle, analyzes the sermon for 23 Trinity, and discusses the structure of the sermons and some of the authors of the later Middle Ages that are quoted or excerpted. An appendix lists the authors and anonymous works quoted in alphabetical order.

Saint Augustine “hath gret compassioun / Of this Lucresse,” declares a couplet early in Chaucer's retelling of the story of the Roman rape victim and suicide Lucretia — prompting the majority of modern commentators to conclude that the poet either never read Augustine's treatment of the story directly, or subsequently forgot what it says, or speaks here with deliberate irony. How, they ask, could anyone familiar with that text (City of God 1.19) judge it to be compassionate? But a second look reveals that the question has some positive answers, particularly when one attends not merely to the single chapter that names Lucretia but also to the surrounding thirteen-chapter discussion of rape and suicide in general. There Augustine shows compassion in several concrete ways that later summarizers omit and most modern readers overlook; the text even includes “compassion” in the strictest etymological sense of an attempt to feel-and-suffer-with a rape victim by imagining her inner world. Close attention to Chaucer's poem (the fifth in the Legend of Good Women) then uncovers more positive evidence for direct knowledge of Augustine, namely several apparent Chaucerian innovations in the story — most dramatically the fact that his Lucretia swoons just before the rape rather than “yielding” — that are easy to explain if the author was influenced by the City of God but are unnecessary or simply puzzling if not. A brief conclusion suggests points at which Chaucer's direct knowledge of Augustine's text might affect our interpretations of other poems.

Ideas and opinions about communication and intellectual exchange underwent significant changes during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The rediscovery of parrhesia by the humanists of the Quattrocento is one of the least studied of these changes, and at the same time, paradoxically, one of the most fascinating. My main argument in these pages is that the recovery of Hellenistic “freedom of speech” was a process that took place from the thirteenth century through the first decade of the sixteenth century; thus it began well before the term παρρησία was common currency among humanists. This is the most important and counterituitive aspect of the present analysis of early modern parrhesia, because it means that the concept did not develop at the expense of classical and biblical tradition so much as at the expense of late-medieval scholastic speculation about the sins of the tongue and the legitimation of anger as an intellectual emotion. To illustrate this longue durée process, I have focused on three stages: (i) the creation, transformation, and assimilation by fourteenth-century humanism of the systems of sins of the tongue, and especially the sin of contentio; (ii) the synthesis carried out by Lorenzo Valla between the scholastic tradition, the communicative presumptions of early humanism, and the classical and New Testament ideas of parrhesia; and (iii) the systematization and transformation of this synthesis in Raffaele Maffei's Commentariorum rerum urbanorum libri XXXVIII. In closing, I propose a hypothesis. The theoretical framework behind Maffei's encyclopaedic approach is not only that he was attempting to synthesize the Quattrocento's heritage through the prism of classical sources; it was also that he was crystallizing the communicative “rules of the game” that all of Christianitas implicitly accepted at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Taking the three ways of manifesting the truth considered by Maffei and fleshing them out in the figures of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Celio Calcagnini, and Martin Luther just before the emergence of the Protestant Reformation could help to explain from a communicative perspective the success and pan-European impact of the Reformation.

This article is focused on Angelo Poliziano's general attitude to philosophy as a discipline and on his specific accounts of scholastic philosophy, found mainly in his four opening lectures to his courses on Aristotle's logic and ethics that were held in the Florentine Studium between 1490 and 1494, in the light of his overall exclusive classical approach. It shows, among other things, that philosophy was more important to Poliziano than common expressions such as “the humanist interest in philosophy” may suggest. Poliziano's important definition of history presented in his Panepistemon, together with other pieces of evidence, can reveal the moment in which disciplines associated with the “humanities” (in the modern sense of this term) began to be separated from the natural sciences — at a point just preceding the massive critique of Aristotelian science during the sixteenth century — through Poliziano's notion of a philosophical literature to which also the Aristotelian texts belong.

In the late third century Eusebius of Caesarea, better remembered now for his work as a historian of the church, produced an apparatus for the reconciliation of the disagreements found in the four Christian gospels. It was a remarkable work in its own right for it preserved, as the tradition demanded, the plurality of the gospels, while allowing them to be presented and studied as a single entity, “the gospel,” and so succeeding in Tatian's aim in his Diatessaron — as exegesis and apologetics demanded. Moreover, though now largely forgotten, it remained an important element within theology for centuries. This paper's aim is to locate the significance of Eusebius's work in its original setting in the world of late antiquity and the Christian defense of pagan challenges to the gospels' integrity, and then to follow the influence of his work within just one strand of the tradition: that which forms the background of western, Latin theology. So it will note how that work was adopted and adapted by Jerome, how it then passed on to the late-patristic Latin schoolmasters who sought to transform all learning into convenient modules of defined value, and then was taken up by others in just one region of the Latin West, the insular world, such as the anonymous scribes of the Book of Kells, the Stowe Missal, and the Book of Deer, for whom Eusebius's work was a mystery that they could not simply abandon, even when they could not understand it. Throughout this period, the Eusebian Apparatus roused the intellect of scholars, teachers, and scribes, but in each milieu the significance and perceived utility of the Apparatus was different. The history of ideas is about changes within intellectual and textual continuities, and with the Apparatus we have a clearly identifiable scholarly tool that does not in itself change over the period, but whose reception and exploitation vary greatly.

The Earthly Paradise was a favorite topic of medieval theologians, philosophers, poets, and artists. Drawn as much from the biblical paradisus voluptatis (Gen. 2:8–14) and hortus conclusus (Song of Sol. 4:12) as from Greek and Roman accounts of a locus amoenus, the general outlines of paradise were well established by the patristic period: it is a garden or garden-like natural place, on Earth but set aside by God, perfect in every attribute, wholly uncorrupted, temperate in its climate, gently watered by rivers and fountains, ever fertile in its soil, rich in fruits and beasts of every kind; its inhabitants do not experience exertion, passion, illness, pain, or shame; in short, it is a place free of the consequences of sin. These attributes were frequently applied to both the Garden of Eden enjoyed by the first parents and the Heaven enjoyed by the blessed after death, so “paradise” could be understood in both terrestrial and celestial forms, overlapping spiritually and materially.

The story of Susanna and the Elders, found in the apocryphal thirteenth chapter of Daniel, part of the Greek version of the Book of Daniel, is richly suggestive of its likely appeal to poets and artists. It is set during the Babylonian Captivity and recounts events concerning the Jewish community within Babylon. Susanna is the beautiful and chaste wife of a wealthy man, Joachim, whose home serves as a seat of justice for his fellow Jews. While bathing in their garden, Susanna is spied upon and accosted by two judges of Israel who frequent her husband's house. They invite her to satisfy both of them or suffer the penalty for a charge of adultery, which they will bring against her. She refuses, saying that she would rather fall into their hands than sin in the sight of God. She is tried unveiled before the people. Led off to execution, Susanna calls out to God, who stirs up the spirit of the young Daniel. Daniel's skill in separating the elders before asking for details of their evidence against Susanna reveals their perjury, and they are put to death by the crowd. The tale is certainly courtroom drama, but it is also a narrative of transgressions — of female chastity and modesty, of the household and property, of justice itself.

The Collectio ex opusculis sancti Augustini in epistulas Pauli apostoli is an exegetical commentary on the Pauline letters that consists of 457 fragments from the works of Augustine of Hippo. The Collectio was compiled by the Northumbrian scholar Beda Venerabilis (672/73–735), whose biblical commentaries heavily rely on patristic exegesis and theology, and, as such, function as an important mediator between patristic and medieval exegesis and theology. Though many scholars have stressed the importance of the Collectio for the study of the transmission and reception of Augustine's writings and thinking in Anglo-Saxon England, the commentary has never been edited nor have its contents been thoroughly studied. The following contribution offers the first detailed study of the Collectio’s contents by analysing the ways in which Bede presents Augustine's Pauline exegesis in his own commentary on Paul's letters. Specifically, this article will study Bede's compilation methods by means of a close analysis of one of the Collectio’s fragments, fr. 315, which offers an exegetical commentary of Eph. 3:17–18. By studying the textual channels through which Bede had access to Augustine's writings as well as by considering other passages in Bede's biblical commentaries that discuss Eph. 3:17–18, this contribution seeks to demonstrate how Bede uses, adapts, and presents Augustine's exegesis of this pericope.

When Christian Friedrich Kling published Berthold des Franziskaners deutsche Predigten in 1824, he opened the study of the great thirteenth-century preacher to theologians, historians, and Germanists alike. Although Berthold had never been completely forgotten, was his fame rather than his actual sermons that were recorded by poet and chronicler. The sermons themselves remained, as most of them do still today, in manuscripts accessible to only a few scholars.

In his well-known article, “Pourquoi saint Thomas a critiqué saint Augustin,” Etienne Gilson remarked concerning William of Auvergne,