Commenting on the verse which reports the devastation of Jerusalem by Nabuzaradan, that ‘he burnt the house of the Lord, and the king's house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great man's house,’ the Midrash makes the following remark:

— the verb used is teni, which means not only to recite but to study and to teach. To translate shebah by the neutral word ‘praise’, is to miss the real intent of the statement. Shebah in the present sentence, as in a great many others in talmudic-midrashic literature, is clearly δόξα; and one of the traditional commentators on our midrashic passage has already correctly explained it: in Johanan ben Zakkai's academy they were engaged in the Creation and Merkabah (Chariot) speculations. The parallel passage in the Palestinian Talmud bears him out.

In the whole field of mediaeval hagiography, one of our most urgent needs is the establishment of trustworthy critical texts of James of Voragine's Legenda aurea, and of the Latin's various vernacular translations. Very soon after its first publication, the Legenda began to be copied throughout Western Christendom at a great rate, very often by professional scribes working for stationers who would expect them to write at speed while reproducing this encyclopaedia of the saints' deeds and marvels. Thus, from the beginnings of its manuscript tradition, corruptions and errors were introduced; and we still lack the means to correct them. For want of anything better, scholars must still refer to the edition of the Latin by Johann G. T. Graesse; but this cannot be used with any confidence. As Jacobus J. A. Zuidweg has observed in a summary of his findings, ‘Force nous était donc de nous servir de l’édition … quelque défectueuse qu'elle fût. Le texte de cette édition, qui fourmille de fautes se rapportant tant au texte même qu'à la ponctuation, est basé sur un exemplaire imprimé, datant du 15e siècle.’ Elsewhere, Zuidweg points out that Graesse's edition is incomplete, without, for example, James's chapter 73, dealing with Bede. The preparation and presentation of such critical texts would be a vast undertaking, more, probably, than could be achieved by any one person. Several gifted and zealous scholars have announced preliminary studies towards it, but have in the end found themselves defeated by the scope of the task and by its complexities. Not long ago, Konrad Kunze announced the inauguration of a card-index catalogue at Freiburg, which is to comprise all the Latin and vernacular manuscripts and printed texts of the Legenda aurea. This would now be indispensable for any proposed critical editions; but it does not seem that such editorial work is intended (Analecta Bollandiana 95 [1977] 168).

The Prague Sacramentary is the only complete example of this important early-medieval liturgical book to survive from eighth-century Bavaria. But, as the name implies, its present home is in the Czech Republic. The manuscript (Praha, Knihovna Metropolitní Kapituli, O. LXXXIII) was acquired in 1776 for the old metropolitan chapter library in Prague from a Czech private library, and nothing certain is known about its earlier location. That volume contains three works: the Sacramentary itself (fols. 1–120) together with an abridged lectionary (121–30), to which an incomplete penitential (131–45) in a different hand was added at an early date, almost certainly before autumn, 792. The page size is 247 × 165 mm (9.75 × 6.5 inches), and the gatherings of the volume vary between three and five sheets with four sheets predominating. The first 84 folios are written in a single column of 21 lines across the entire page, but folios 85–120 are written in two columns also of 21 lines each with marginal bounding lines drawn in an arrangement that is characteristic of Bavarian scriptoria in the Carolingian period. Four folios are now missing from the Sacramentary, three from the lectionary, and two from the penitential.

Die neue Liste der von Simon von Bisignano in seiner Summa zitierten Extravaganten, welche T. P. McLaughlin in den Medieval Studies 20 (1958) 167–176 veröffentlicht hat, gibt die Möglichkeit, die Dekretalensammlung, welche Simon benutzt hat, mit ziemlicher Sicherheit zu bestimmen. Wenn sich dabei die Vermutung auf eine Sammlung der ‘italienischen Gruppe' der Primitiven vor 1Comp. richtete, so lag das nach dem, was J. Juncker in seiner grundlegenden Abhandlung über die coll. Berolinensis ausgeführt hatte, von vornherein rein nahe. Aber als Juncker die Ber. als älteste und primitivste Sammlung in die Literaturgeschichte der kanonistischen Quellen einführte, hatte er von der Existenz weiterer, teils noch altertümlicher, teils umfangreicherer Sammlungen, die sich mit der Ber. zu einer Familie oder Gruppe zusammenfassen lassen, noch keine Kenntnis. Weitgehende Übereinstimmung im mitgeteilten Material, Gleichlauf in der Reihenfolge der einzelnen Stücke auf kürzere oder längere Strecken, textkritische Einzelheiten berechtigen methodisch zu dieser Gruppierung; ihr Wachstum von Sammlung zu Sammlung ist kein Gegenargument angesichts der rechtsschöpferischen Tätigkeit der Kurie, welche in Schule und Kirchenverwaltung gleichermassen das Bedürfnis wacherhielt, die jeweils neueste und vollständigste Sammlung zur Hand zu haben. Diese Entwicklung innerhalb der Gruppe kann erst durch die ausführliche Analyse jeder einzelnen Sammlung sichtbar gemacht werden; für den Nachweis, dass zu fast allen zu der von McLaughlin nachgewiesenen Dekretalen die Texte in den Sammlungen der italienischen Gruppe zu finden sind, wird die Zusammenstellung im Anhang genügen. Da aber vier von fünf in Frage kommenden Sammlungen kaum mehr als dem Namen nach, bekannt sind, müssen über sie einige Bemerkungen vorausgeschickt werden.

The question of Hildegard's influence and reputation in the centuries following her death is an elusive and vexing one for scholars. We do know that the medieval prophetic tradition is one of the few spheres in which her writings and her reputation sustained anything like their original high profile. To a large extent this popularity was the direct result of two things: first of all, a compilation of extracts from her prophecies made by Gebeno of Eberbach around the year 1220; and secondly, the association of Hildegard's name and a few of her genuine writings with the tradition of anti-mendicant propaganda. These two survivals give us a different but not unrelated view of how Hildegard was known to the later Middle Ages, and in particular what she was best known for: that is, for her prediction of a coming chastisement of the clergy to be brought about partly through the agency of a group of pseudo-prophets. The testimony of Gebeno in his prologue to his compilation of her prophetic works and the testimony of various contemporary chroniclers all agree on one thing: Hildegard had succeeded in scaring the wits out of the local clergy, and even decades after her death they feared the chastisement she had predicted.

In a recent article on the medieval dogma of transubstantiation, Gary Macy builds upon the works of Hans Jorissen and James F. McCue to question the validity of Jaroslav Pelikan's claim that “at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist achieved its definitive formulation in the dogma of transubstantiation.” Macy demonstrates that through most of the thirteenth century, the majority of theologians did not, in fact, consider Lateran IV's decree the final word on eucharistic theology. The debate over precisely how the real presence of Christ occurred in the eucharist was far from closed.

Some time ago, while I was working on the life of William Lily, the Grammarian, my attention was directed to the state of letters and learning in the Rhodes of early Renaissance times. George Lily, William's son, tells us that his father, when a young man, stayed at Rhodes a certain length of time for the sake of letters, and that he learned there the elements of Greek and Latin. Objection may be made to the second part of this statement: since the senior Lily already had his B.A. from Oxford when he began his foreign travels, presumably he had learned there a fair amount of Latin, and quite possibly some Greek; the choice of the word “elements” was surely not a happy one. However, on the face of things, there would seem to be no good reason for doubting the main assertion: that William Lily went to Rhodes “for the sake of letters.” Later biographers of Lily incorporate George's statement in their own accounts, some of them adding a detail or two of their own. But we must wait until the eighteenth century before we are given a reason for believing in any noteworthy culture in Renaissance Rhodes. Philip Morant, in the article which he wrote on Lily for the Biographica Britannica, says: “At his [Lily's] return from thence [Jerusalem], he studied some time at Rhodes; where, after the taking of Constantinople, several learned men had taken refuge.” Bliss's edition of Anthony à Wood carries this statement about the learned men, quoting the Biographica Britannica as source. Morant, although he did take occasion to drive home the point in correcting an earlier biographer, Thomas Fuller, had offered no support for his assertion.

In modern society, enmeshed with confrontations involving the individual, military service and the state, historians are often inclined to make comparisons with the distant past which offer relief from the pressures of contemporary history. Regarding military service, the Middle Ages are occasionally suggested as an age when combat was sporadic, when only the small feudal aristocracy encountered a martial obligation, and when the remainder of society could concentrate on the other burdens of life, free of the paraphernalia of war, hot or cold. As with many romantic generalizations concerning the period, the comparative bliss of the medieval non-combatant is open to question. Many would note, however, that the feudal classes did possess a monopoly on warfare for several centuries in parts of Continental Europe, and would tend to place all discussion of military institutions within a feudal context.

Sometime after November 20, 1483, William Caxton published his English translation of Jacobus de Varagine's Legenda Aurea. This is the famous medieval compilation of saints' lives which Emile Mâle names among the ten books most useful to one seeking a just appreciation of the Middle Ages and which Henry Adams ranks with the Roman breviary as a guide to the stone carvings and stained glass of medieval cathedrals. Caxton's publication, augmenting by about one-third the original treatise, was his most ambitious work as translator, editor, and printer.

In preparing his Golden Legend the English printer asserts that he has used the original Latin and two translations, one French and one English. This last work is extant in nine manuscripts, more or less complete, all copies, and all representing one version. Although several critics have declared that this translation surpasses Caxton's in accuracy and beauty, some of its special peculiarities have not hitherto been considered. Who was its author? Apparently he remembered the warning of the Imitation: ‘For all man's glory, all temporal honor, and all worldly highness, to thine eternal glory compared is but as foolishness and vanity.’ His version of the Legenda is declared to be the work of ‘a synfulle wretche’ by whom it was ‘drawen out of Frensshe into Englisshe, the yere of our lorde a.M.CCCC. and. XXXVIII.’ The motive for this anonymity is revealed by the words which follow his humble self-designation: ‘whos name I beseche Jhesu Criste bi his mentis of his passioune and of alle these holis seintes afore written, that hit mai be written in the boke of everlastinge life.’

The Gothic choir of Le Mans Cathedral was consecrated by Bishop Geoffroy de Loudun on April 24, 1254, while Saint Louis was still in the Holy Land and before the windows had been completely glazed. So much is established by the story related in the chronicle about the winegrowers who, arriving late and thus unable to carry a torch in the procession, decided to donate a window which would provide more permanent illumination instead. Their gift, now Bay c on the north side of the upper ambulatory, is datable ca. 1255 on the basis of this story (see fig. 1). Another window nearby (Bay a) was the gift of Guillaume Roland, then precentor of the cathedral, who is named in an inscription and depicted as a priest; since he became bishop before September 1255 another firm date is established for the glazing. The axial window (Bay g) depicts a knight who was present at the 1254 consecration: Rotrou de Montfort, shown with banner and heraldic surcoat de gueules à 2 léopards d'or passants (fig. 2). His arms are known to us from the Bigot Roll, which records the Angevin forces marshaled by the Capetian prince Charles d'Anjou for his campaigns in Flanders in the same year. Directly above Rotrou's window, the prestigious axial clerestory was the gift of Bishop Geoffroy de Loudun himself, builder of the new choir and dead by August 1255. His arms appear eight times in the borders: gueules à la bande d'or. And Bay C in the north clerestory depicts two knights and a canon of the family de Cormes with their arms. The canon is no doubt Geoffroy de Cormes, dead in 1263. The warriors who flank him are his father Guillaume ‘Major’ de Cormes and his uncle Jean, and they too are known to us from the Bigot Roll which gives their arms: ‘l'escru blanc a III jumelles noires.’

The miracle of the Apostle of Ireland leading to the expulsion of noxious reptiles from the Emerald Isle is, if not one of the best attested, at least one of the most widely known. In a brief study published some time ago, the writer pointed out that similar miracles are credited to quite a number of other holy men, the scene of their actions being, significantly enough, the Channel Islands and some islands on the French Riviera. The list might be considerably extended.

In a preceding article, we have tried to show that important features of the relationship between St. Augustine and Plotinus still call for some investigation: that, in fact, one of the latter's most telling treatises (Ennead VI 4–5) had hitherto virtually escaped the notice of those interested in tracing his influence on Augustine's thought. To one possible implication of that study we alluded only briefly, but its importance for the history of Christian spirituality impels our returning to it now. Augustine, we suggested, from his earliest extant writings up to and including the Confessions, may well have been thinking in terms of a Plotinian fall of the soul into the body.

Die weitausholende und verheissungsvolle internationale Zusammenarbeit zur Erforschung und Ausgabe der Werke der klassischen Kanonistik lässt es wunschenswert erscheinen, dass die handschriftlichen Bestände an noch nicht oder nur unbefriedigend ediertem Material immer luckenloser und im einzelnen genauer erfasst werden. Viel ist diesbezüglich schon geleistet worden. Manches bleibt aber noch zu tun.

The pages that follow continue the ‘Repertorium’ begun in Traditio 31 (1975) 99–126, and continued with the translations of the Liber Aphorismorum in Traditio 32 (1976) 257–292. Included in this issue are the commentaries on the Liber Aphorismorum, arranged in the case of those that are anonymous, by the first principal word of the incipit of the commentary; and where the commentator is named, alphabetically by the first name of the commentator. In each instance, the commentator will be identified briefly, where possible, and provided with bibliographical references for further information. Then follow the manuscripts, with incipit and desinit of the text, where applicable, and of the commentary.