The unedited Canticum amoris of Richard Rolle is a Latin poem of one hundred fifty-two lines addressed to the Virgin Mary. Written after he had become a hermit and while, it seems, he was still a youth, the work is of considerable interest for itself, for the light it sheds on the author as man and artist, and for a study of the confluence of the currents in the stream of English literature at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The signature, woven into the poem, leaves no doubt about its being a genuine work of one who in England was probably the most influential English writer of the late middle ages. It was listed among the Latin works of Rolle which Horstmann intended to edit, discussed by Miss Hope Emily Allen in her indispensable canon of the hermit's work, and singled out by Mr. Raby as a work that should be published.

The problem of St. Patrick the Missionary centers upon two assumptions. One is that both the Letter to Coroticus and the Confession were written by the same person. This assumption would explain why the two have so many points in common but does not explain their differences. The similarities could be caused by the copying of one by the other: the differences by the fact that there were two authors. The other assumption is that the King Lughaid in whose reign the deaths of Patrick and some of his followers occurred was the Lughaid of the fifth century rather than the king of the same name in the third century. The alternative possibilities will be examined in this short study.

Robert I of Dreux, third surviving son of Louis VI of France, is a little-known figure. The causes of this obscurity lie in part in the fragmentary and dispersed nature of the sources on Robert but also in the lack of interest which historians have shown regarding both him and the baronial dynasty which he founded. Indeed, no significant work on the counts of Dreux and Braine has appeared since the publication, in 1631, of André Duchesne's antiquarian history of that family. Numerous broader studies of the Capetian monarchy mention Robert in passing, because of the cession of Dreux to him by Louis VII and because of his aborted conspiracy, in 1149, to seize the throne; but it is symptomatic of the state of the scholarship on him that the first event has consistently been misunderstood, while the second is so poorly documented that judgments have ranged from calling it a major crisis for the monarchy to dismissing it as a trivial episode, with inadequate evidence for either view.

The development of the pre-Carolingian seigneurie has received little attention, although this neglect is due in large part to a scarcity in source material. This lack may be supplemented by relying on other material, such as that supplied in the Lex Baiuvariorum. The latter, the Bavarian code, was promulgated within the first half of the eighth century and slightly before the appearance of the Carolingian estate organization. The development of manorial obligations in eighth-century Bavaria is illustrated by one major law in the Lex Baiuvariorum, and this law is I, 13. However, the study of the seigneurie in Bavaria is complicated by differing interpretations of the evidence. What follows is an attempt to re-evaluate the evidence as supplied in L. Baiu. I, 13 and to show its relationship with the Carolingian estate organization.

It is difficult to deduce the Aristotelian scientific procedure — to take his abstract statement of the nature of science and to show that his actual method in a particular work is adequately explained by the initial definition. Yet Aristotle's actual method is worth getting at. It provides insight into Aristotle and into Greek thought, and it sheds light on the course of ideas during the centuries which have been scientifically Aristotelian. In the following pages, I have tried to discover and to describe the method at work in a particular scientific treatise. The unit chosen for study is the first book and a half of the De caelo. Here it is that Aristotle develops his highly influential science of the celestial bodies.

The anonymous compiler of the fourteenth-century Middle English treatise known as The Pore Caitif made extensive use of three works of Richard Rolle. His borrowings are from Emendatio vitae, The Form of Living, and The Commentary on the Canticles, and appear in eight tracts of a special group of ten pieces he calls ‘summe short sentencis exciting men to heuenli desiir’ (fol. 1v). Passages from Rolle's Form of Living were used in PC, ‘Desiir of Ihesu,’ ‘Of Mekenes,’ and ‘Of Actif Liif and Comtemplatif Liif.’ Sections from Emendatio vitae appear in PC, ‘Of Vertuous Pacience,’ ‘ϸe Councel of Christ,’ ‘Of Temptacioun,’ and ‘Desiir of Ihesu.’ A brief section of Rolle's Commentary on the Canticles is the source of the entire PC tract ‘ϸe Name of Ihesu,’ as Hope Emily Allen suggested in her monumental study of Rolle. A portion of this same source served for the first half of PC, ‘Of Mannes Wille,’ as Michael G. Sargent recently pointed out. The purpose of the present article is to suggest that the compiler of The Pore Caitif was indebted to Rolle not only for specific passages, but for the very schema and arrangement of his ten tracts of short sentences. It is my belief that Rolle's Emendatio vitae and The Form of Living, the two works of which the PC compiler made the most substantive use, were the governing influence on the order and arrangement of the ten short sentences.

Near the end of the twelfth century, the scholar and statesman Peter of Blois felt compelled to bring together the wisdom of ancients and moderns on the subject of love and friendship. He was reluctant to publish his synthesis, for he was afraid that his reliance on other authors would bring charges of fraud. Sure enough, it has. Unfortunately, he relied too heavily on one modern in particular, St. Ailred of Rievaulx; and, like many undergraduate papers, his treatise is a better example of plagiarism than of synthesis.

In characteristic fashion, the Iter Italicum of Paul Oskar Kristeller reveals the richness of Renaissance thought on seafaring. The literature on seafaring conserved in manuscripts cataloged in the Iter Italicum ranges from commentary on ancient seafaring to eulogies of contemporary heroes to works on mechanics and engineering with unusual proposals for naval weaponry. Those manuscripts likewise highlight the Renaissance conceptualization of seafaring as an art and a creative tension in Renaissance scholarship between looking back to the past and looking forward to the future.

The scholarship on the literary genre of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy (henceforth Consolatio) proposes a surprising interpretation: the Consolatio is not a consolation in spite of its title and overt goal. Typically, scholars of the consolatory genre simply note that the Consolatio should not be considered together with ancient and medieval consolations. Scholars of the Consolatio, however, offer specific reasons as to why Boethius's text is not a consolation. One is stylistic: some interpreters (Curley, Dronke, Marenbon, Pabst, Payne, Relihan) argue that the prosimetric style in which the Consolatio is written is typical of a “Menippean satire” and does not befit a consolation. The content of the Consolatio is also considered to be at odds with the consolatory genre: Boethius's text is interpreted as promising a consolation that either is not delivered (Payne, Relihan) or is only partially achieved (Marenbon). Finally, some scholars (O'Daly, Gruber, Rand, Reiss, Shanzer) hold that because the Consolatio presents features that are typical of several literary genres (i.e., Menippean satire, philosophical dialogue, exhortation to philosophy, etc.) it is impossible to classify Boethius's last work as belonging exclusively to one genre or another — the text should, thus, be regarded as an “eclectic” work.

Si presenta qui l'edizione critica del breve testo De sigillis attribuito dalla tradizione ad Arnaldo di Villanova. Esso fu pubblicato insieme agli altri suoi scritti per la prima volta nell'Opera omnia Arnaldi a Lione nel 1504.

On 7 March 1277, étienne Tempier, bishop of Paris, issued a decree condemning 219 ”errors“ that were henceforth not to be taught in the university under threat of excommunication. So much has been written about this episode, from the thirteenth century onwards, that it scarcely needs introducing. Indeed, a leading scholar in the field has implied that nothing remains to be said about the events themselves since the standard problems either have been solved or are insoluble owing to the absence of documents. Yet the continuing speculation is a clear sign that the episode is poorly understood. Major studies of the last twenty-five years have offered markedly different interpretations of the intentions of those involved and the effects of their actions. Much effort has gone into condemning or excusing Tempier, but we still have little idea of where, and in what context, the condemned articles originated, rendering such judgments at best premature. The present study will attempt to address this problem by reexamining the text of the condemnation and other related sources to argue that they contain important evidence that has so far been overlooked.

During late antiquity, an interesting doctrinal shift can be observed: Aristotelian logic and its Neoplatonic complements, in particular the teachings of Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry's Isagoge, were progressively accepted as a tool in Christian theology. This acceptance met drawbacks and was never unanimous. Among the authors who used concepts that originated in logic in order to support their theological thinking, we can mention, on very different accounts, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, John Philoponus, Leontius of Byzantium, Maximus the Confessor, Theodore of Raithu, and John of Damascus, the author of an important Dialectica. In the Byzantine context, handbooks of logic were written specifically for Christian theologians, showing that logic was perceived to be an important tool for theological thinking.

It is right to know, indeed, that everyone should prepare for the certain meeting and the uncertain meeting which is before him — namely, the meeting with death. For its coming is certain; it is uncertain, however, at what hour or what time one will go. Everyone should prepare for the two companies which come to meet every soul, namely, the company of God with beauty and magnificence and brightness, and the company of the devil with its darkness and with its baseness and its evil counsel. (The Two Deaths, 1)