The study of Hiberno-Latin exegesis is a young medieval discipline. As the name suggests, it deals with the exegesis of the Bible by Irishmen writing in Latin. In practice, this discipline is confined to the period from the coming of Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century to the Carolingian Renaissance in the ninth. Furthermore, it deals almost exclusively with texts from Irish circles on the continent because so few texts survive from Ireland itself. Scholars had long known of Irish exegetes like Sedulius Scottus and Aileran the Wise who were usually well-known or at least unquestionably Irish. The works of many Hiberno-Latin exegetes simply languished in anonymity — until 1954.

A unique set of ritual prayers from tenth-century Northumbria offered the means to protect fields and crops from birds, vermin, and other demonically inspired threats to the agricultural community. They were part of a series of additions made to the Durham Collectar or Ritual (Durham, Cathedral Library A.IV.19) around 970 by the Chester-le-Street scriptorium of St. Cuthbert's community, under the direction of Aldred, the eccentric glossator of the Lindisfarne Gospels. These five Latin prayers glossed in Old English use exorcistic and benedictional formulas, invoke the assistance of an Archangel Panchiel, and contain atypical references to the Book of Tobit, among other unusual characteristics. This seemingly heterodox material has received scant attention from scholars assessing the Durham Ritual manuscript and the work of Aldred. These prayers, however, may reflect the particular interests of the cult of St. Cuthbert, as well as Irish influences in Northumbrian religious practice. Also, a comparable example of one prayer appears in a contemporary Mainz text related to the early development of the Romano-Germanic Pontifical, suggesting that these prayers were part of a larger process, often invisible, of liturgical experimentation during a period of reform and regularization. The prayers read:

It is an accepted paradox of late Roman studies that modern students have been more concerned to find culprits for the ‘fall of the Roman empire’ than were the people who actually lived through it. Gibbon, who believed the empire of the Antonines to be the apogee of human accomplishment, knew perfectly well what he was doing: chronicling the triumph of barbarism and religion. His approach influenced scholarship for centuries. Many more culprits have been found, including population decline, homosexuality, and (for a somewhat delayed fall) the Moslems.

It has long been believed that pictures of the creator marking out the universe with a compass, common in late-medieval manuscripts, were inspired by Wisdom 11.21 which says of God: ‘Omnia in mensura, et numero, et pondere disposuisti.’ Yet anyone who examines the forty-odd creation scenes with compass extant in psalters, horae, picture Bibles and other manuscript books will see quite clearly that only seven of these pictures illustrate literally the processes of weighing with scales, measuring, and numbering, as mentioned in the Book of Wisdom. The majority simply show God holding a compass with his handiwork before him, and seem to have been inspired by the opening chapters of Genesis — in which there is no compass — or by Proverbs 8.27, where God sets not a compass but a circle upon the face of the deep.

The dispute between the Durham Benedictine Uthred of Boldon and members of the mendicant orders on the issue of ecclesiastical possessions was only one in a series of intra-clerical controversies in England during the later fourteenth century. Spanning a decade from the early 1360s to the early 1370s, it occupies a crucial area between the attack on mendicant privileges by Richard FitzRalph, the archbishop of Armagh, and Wyclif's denunciation of the endowed church. C. H. Thompson first pointed to the importance of this period between the activities of FitzRalph and those of Wyclif for the development of political thought. The issue has recently become more pressing with Wendy Scase's identification of the development of a “new anticlericalism” in the later fourteenth century. Older traditions of anticlericalism, she claims, had as their targets specific classes of cleric. These traditions, however, were established during this period on a new basis that allowed them to become anticlerical in the fullest sense of the word. “The old traditions of opposition to clerics were developed and unified in a new polemic which opposed all clerics. This was the essential strength and danger of the new anticlericalism.” The present study concentrates on one central aspect of this extension of the anticlerical polemic: the attack on ecclesiastical endowment.

Georgia was, at the time of the Russian annexation at the beginning of the last century, the only country in Christendom whose socio-political and cultural development dated uninterruptedly from Classical times. Yet hers are perhaps the only important history and culture that are almost totally unknown to the West. Needless to say, this lack of familiarity extends to the Georgian historical writings as well. However, whereas Georgian history and culture are simply little known, regarding the Georgian historical sources there exist also misunderstanding and misinformation. Nevertheless, the value of these sources and their importance, not only for the history of Caucasia, but generally for that of the Christian East, have now found universal recognition among specialists. Therefore, a presentation of a systematic account, based on the latest research, of these monuments of Georgian historical literature, should be of interest to Western scholars. But no such presentation has, to our knowledge, ever been attempted. To do this is the aim of the present study.

The following study is an examination of selected aspects of the mythical paradigms presented in Sophocles' Philoctetes and Euripides' Orestes in an attempt to define the concerns that are shared by these two very different dramas. The first part deals with the characterization of Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes and discusses how the dramatist departed from the customary view of this character and appears to have been influenced by the figure of Telemachus in the Odyssey. The following section advances the thesis that in a number of significant regards Euripides' Orestes can be construed as a response to the paradigms of conduct presented in the Philoctetes the year before. Since the approach I will employ, while not new, differs from ‘standard’ procedure, in these prefatory remarks I would like to comment on why I have done so. Most current studies of individual dramas or the genre as a whole are relatively conservative in their approach; interpretation is, for the most part, restricted to the direct evidence of the text, analogies with other texts, and studies of particular techniques such as examinations of plot types and different forms of dramatic action. While this restraint has placed our understanding of the genre on a secure footing, I believe that there are certain important aspects of the medium for which it is not totally suited. The most important of these in my opinion concerns the evocation of mythical paradigms which, while they may lie beyond the immediate context of the drama, nevertheless shaped the author's conception and the audience's response to the characters on stage.

The relations between Gregory, metropolitan of Tours, and Felix, suffragan of Nantes, were not always felicitous. O. M. Dalton in the monumental introduction to his translation of the Historiae commented (1.12):

In his own province, too, even before Chilperic's tragic end, a source of discord had been removed by the death of one of his suffragans with whom his relations had never been harmonious.

The appearance of Hans Urs von Balthasar's corpus of Maximian studies in a new and reworked edition, after the lapse of more than twenty years, deserves more than usual attention. I must confess that I am a little embarrassed in undertaking the task. For, having myself written on Maximus after he had published his work, I had it constantly before me and more than once have criticized some of his positions, without fully grasping all that he wished to convey or the breadth of the background against which he was operating, even though, as he himself suggests (KL 14), we are in basic agreement in our understanding of Maximus and of the Maximian synthesis. Nonetheless, our approaches to Maximus do differ. A clear understanding of that difference will facilitate, I think, a surer appreciation of von Balthasar's own work and will also lead to a better grasp of the significance of Maximus and of the problems that confront the student of the Confessor. May their number increase!

The importance of the manuscript pontificals for the study of the medieval evolution of the Latin liturgy needs no reaffirmation here. The state of the published descriptions and classifications of these manuscripts, however, is not commensurate in all cases with what their importance would lead one to expect.

Ehrensberger has provided a full description of the manuscript pontificasl preserved in the Vatican Library; although this is no longer recent, it is invaluable in the absence of a complete catalogue of the Vatican manuscripts. The monumental work of Leroquais describes in detail the manuscript pontificals extant in the public libraries in France; as most of the pontificals in France appear to be in public libraries, this work is fairly comprehensive in its coverage. Dom Anselm Strittmatter has listed and classified the liturgical manuscripts preserved in the United States. For pontificals in other countries, however, there exist no such reference works. Professor Richard Kay of the University of Kansas is currently compiling a handlist in which all the manuscript pontificals extant throughout the world will be cited and briefly identified, but not fully described. Until this appears, anyone working on pontificals or on ordines normally included in pontificals will quite likely have to work systematically through innumerable catalogues of manuscript collections to cover every library, city by city, for a frequently minimal return.

Among the many disputed episcopal elections of the twelfth century, there are few that present both as many problems and as many points of interest as that at Langres in 1138. The diocese of Langres had since the time of the Carolingian emperors been among the most important in France. As early as 872 Charles the Bald, at the request of bishop Isaac, granted jointly to the cathedral of St. Mamas at Langres and to St. Stephen at Dijon the right, previously held by the local count, to coin money. In 967, the lay count was officially replaced by the bishop, although most of his rights were subinfeudated to a vidame. ‘Par Langres,’ wrote Ferdinand Lot, ‘suzeraine du Langogne, du Dijonnais et de ses annexes (Atuyer, Oscheret, Mémontois), du Boulenois, du Bassigny, du Lassois, du Tonnerrois, etc., c'est-à-dire de la moitié de la Bourgogne française, le roi pouvait exercer, à l'occasion, une grande influence en cette région.’ In 1179, the bishop recovered direct control over his rights as count and became tenant-in-chief of the crown for all his lands and powers, whereas among his own vassals he numbered the duke of Burgundy and the count of Champagne. Later, between 1179 and 1356, he rose to the rank of duke and was recognized as the third ecclesiastical peer of the realm, taking precedence over his own metropolitan, the archbishop of Lyons, at the coronation of the king. Already in the first half of the twelfth century, the diocese of Langres compared in power and size to the great ecclesiastical principalities of the Holy Roman Empire. It included practically all the present bishoprics of Langres and Dijon and extended almost to the towns of Troyes and Auxerre to the north and west and beyond Dijon to the south. Within its boundaries lay not only the great old Benedictine abbeys of Bèze and of St. Bénigne and St. Stephen at Dijon, but also Molesme, the mother-house of Cîteaux, and the newly-founded Cistercian monasteries of Clairvaux and Morimund.

Hildegard of Bingen, a twelfth-century religious visionary and head of a convent, wrote extensively and frankly about sex difference and sexual behavior in her general treatise in medicine. Gender differences, sexuality, and reproduction were subjects by no means proscribed in twelfth-century Europe. Whether we look at canon law, which prohibited various forms of sexual behavior, or vernacular literature, which sometimes celebrated them, we find no unwillingness to acknowledge the existence of human sexuality. Yet aside from tracts addressed specifically to gynecological and reproductive disorders, most works of twelfth-century naturalists and medical authors treat such matters only cursorily. Hildegard was an exception, and her treatment of sexuality was both wide-ranging and undogmatic. It is the purpose of this study to explicate Hildegard's ideas on these subjects — especially on the sexual characteristics and reproductive contributions of women and men — and to evaluate the significance of the content and extent of her exposition.

Because depositions lie at the heart of that process through which England developed a limited monarchy, historians have long studied them. Nevertheless, this scholarly attention has been unequally bestowed. Edward II and Richard II are familiar figures in the depositional literature, but one seldom encounters Henry VI, and Edward V is never mentioned at all.

The reasons for these differences are readily comprehensible. Edward II and Richard II had significant reigns, and in the very process of their depositions the limits of legitimate monarchical power were defined. The fall of Henry VI offers few similar opportunities: if his policies also led to revolt, they were sui generis, no more than a byproduct of his lamentable mental state and, as such, of no lasting concern to those studying the growth of the constitution.

The Latin sermon ‘Legimus in ecclesiasticis historiis’ has been considered by Anglo-Saxonists a number of times within the past two decades. In 1958 I noted the contact between Ælfric's sermon on All Saints and the only version of the Latin sermon which is printed in modern and accessible text. This version, in PL 94.452–455, unfortunately is an incomplete text with extensive omissions. In 1959 C. L. Smetana independently recorded the same source for Ælfric's sermon, while adding that the Latin sermon was included within augmented versions of Paul the Deacon's homiliary. My minor opposition to one deduction in this important paper took the opportunity of refining my previous comments by illustrating that Ælfric used a complete version of the Latin sermon such as that in the printing of Paul the Deacon's homiliary by Eucharius Cervicornus in 1539. Further contacts with the sermon over the range of Old English prose have convinced me of the general dissemination of this sermon in our period (probably within homiliaries) and, as I hope to argue here, of its value in helping to date the ‘original’ version of the Old English Martyrology.

If one takes standard overviews of the history of natural science or natural philosophy as his measure, the object appearing in the title of this study would literally appear not to exist. For, apart from a few scattered encyclopedia entries — which are always of necessity rather summary in character — one searches in vain for studies on the medieval interest in the natural sciences. For the contemporary cosmologist, be he first and foremost philosopher or physicist, the Middle Ages lie in a very deep darkness indeed.

Worcester Cathedral MS F.10 forms a random collection of Latin, English, and macaronic sermons which were gathered and copied by a fairly large number of scribes in the middle of the fifteenth century. These sermons, most of them anonymous, are for a variety of occasions and audiences and have been entered in no particular liturgical order, even if, as the presence of several sets of quire numbers indicates, the individual quires were reordered several times in the medieval period. The collection contains a number of pieces that were evidently preached to a university audience, as is shown by their addressing “magistri” and by internal references to a university milieu. Their locale was presumably Oxford. Besides such general university sermons, the collection also includes two that are labeled “Introitus Sententiarum” and three other pieces that agree with these in form — the scholastic sermon structure — and content — praise of theology or holy Scripture and Peter Lombard. These five pieces are introitus, academic speeches or sermons which, according to university statutes, bachelors as well as masters (or doctors) of theology were required to deliver as they began their courses on the Bible or on Peter Lombard's Sentences. In addition, the manuscript contains an item that is very similar to the introitus sermons in that it follows the scholastic sermon structure and praises its subject. The latter, however, is not theology but philosophy, and the thema on which the piece is based is not a biblical text but a quotation from Aristotle. A sermon on a secular text itself is a rarity in medieval sermon literature, certainly from England; and appearing as it does in a sermon collection, the piece seems to be a rarissima avis stuck in the wrong flock.

Ever since Giorgio Valla printed his edition and commentary of the Satires of Juvenal, for nearly five hundred years now, scholars have realized the importance of large portions of the commentary. Before putting together his notes and publishing them in 1486, Valla combined them with the material he had gleaned from a mutilated MS, which he for some reason believed the work of Probus. After Valla, nobody ever saw his ‘Probus,’ and it is to be assumed that, having taken what he wanted from the MS, Valla saw no objection to destroying it. A hundred years later, Pithou's discovery of his excellent MS, containing both a superior text of the Satires and a full set of scholia, confirmed the value of Valla's ‘Probus,’ but also revealed the fragmentary manner of its preservation, whether because of its condition when found or because of Valla's omissions. Still another witness on behalf of theses good scholia, also full, appeared at St. Gall and was published by Cramer (Hamburg 1823). During the next century, much work was done to establish an edition of the older and more reliable scholia, first of all by study of Pithou's MS (known as P and so referred to hereafter), the MS of St. Gall (S in most editions and so referred to hereafter), and of ’Probus’ (to which I shall hereafter refer without quotation marks) as elicited from the comments of Valla; then by research into the later, contaminated ‘secondary scholia.’ In the excellent edition by Paul Wessner, the labors of many scholars bore fruit.

The reform of Diocletian did away, as much as possible, with the interference of the government in fiscal matters of the Egyptian metropoleis (poleis after 297). The entire administration of each district was entrusted to the council of the cities and supervision was exercised only through the provincial governors.

In the Romance languages of the Iberian peninsula, the French word nuance in the meaning ‘a gradation, a barely perceptible degree of difference in a color’ is translated today by the word matiz (Catalan matis), a term which has enjoyed continuous usage since the early fifteenth century. Until now, the origin of the word matiz has remained unsolved: none of the several etymologies which have been suggested for it are convincing, and no comprehensive attempt has ever been made to analyze its meaning or to trace its semantic evolution. It is the purpose of the present work to determine the etymology of this word and to describe its history.

Fulcoius was one of the most distinguished literary figures of the eleventh century, a writer who, in the words of Dom André Wilmart, ‘a laissé des œuvres poétiques assez importantes, encore mal connues.' Apart from the poet's own works, there are three sources of information on his life: the epitaphs in his honor which are found in MS Paris, B.N. lat. 16701; the biographical notice in MSS Beauvais 11 and Paris, B.N. lat. 5305; and references in a letter of St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusians, to Raoul le Verd, provost of the Reims cathedral and future archbishop.