The standard, and practically the only, study of the genera dicendi in classical rhetoric, ‘The Origin and Meaning of the Ancient Characters of Style,’ was published in 1905 by G. L. Hendrickson. In it Hendrickson argued that the plain style or genus tenue originated in and remained firmly associated with philosophical dialectic, while the oratorical style (including both the genus grande and genus medium) descended from sophistic and, in particular, Isocratic prose. The effect of this paper has been two-fold: a simultaneous exaltation of the plain style as the only rhetorical expression of serious and original thought and the conflation of the other two genera, these being criticized on the grounds that they appealed to the ear rather than the mind and were designed to exploit the emotions rather than inform reason. This effect can be observed most clearly in the subsequent scholarship on English prose style, particularly in the seminal essays of Morris Croll, who (to simplify a good deal) basically treats Renaissance prose style as the triumph of an introspective, searching, plain style over the musical formalism of Ciceronian concinnitas. Since Croll, the term plain style has generally become an honorific appellation in English scholarship at the expense of an inadequately differentiated grand and middle style (these in turn being identified with Ciceronianism).

Nowadays we define Giants as persons suffering from scientifically defined physiological disorders. Since Western culture has a short memory for obsolete scientific discourse, however, the simplicity of our contemporary understanding of gigantism makes it difficult for us to understand previous attitudes toward Giants, especially as expressed in literature. As Donald Frame has remarked, ‘When most Western readers think of giants in literature, they think of Rabelais and Swift; when they think of Rabelais and Swift, they think of giants.’ However, the actual importance of Rabelais and Swift would be seriously misrepresented were we to imagine them as exponents of the traditional Western attitude toward Giants and gigantism. What is more, Rabelais, who is the source of most early modern speculation about Giants, is a particularly problematic case. His combination of agile parodic wit and extreme philosophical and theological literacy is only beginning to be satisfactorily understood. Thus his treatment of gigantological themes has until now been almost completely misrepresented because of an insufficient understanding of the cultural significance of gigantism before his time. In fact, he is at least two removes from a coherent tradition of gigantological discourse running from the Old Testament through Judaic and patristic commentary and historiography, straight into the era of humanism. While the scope of this article will not permit an intensive analysis of Rabelais' own gigantology, an analysis of the two traditions upon which he depended will implicitly demonstrate the inadequacy of the conventional wisdom which sees Pantagruel and Gargantua as a direct outgrowth of medieval French folklore, the Grandes chronicques, and the literary romances of Pulci and Folengo.

The term or spiritus has a long history in Western natural philosophy. Its extensive use and elaboration in the Graeco-Roman world formed the background for medieval and Renaissance treatments. Although the Stoic and Neoplatonic traditions, as well as such authors as Vergil, Macrobius, Nemesius, and Augustine, are important, the present article will attempt only to survey some medieval understandings of the Aristotelian and Galenic spiritus, which provided the basis for medicine and biological speculation.

The earliest moments of medieval Latin theoretical medicine are marked by the assimilation of Greek medicine and natural philosophy from the living tradition of Arabic medicine and philosophy. With respect to spiritus, Arabic modifications which mediated the assimilation of Aristotle's and Galen's views led to a multiplicity of meanings being attached to the term spiritus, especially where the ancient resources were applied to problems generated by the mingling of diverse cultural and religious systems. A second result was the attempt to fix, through critical interpretation, the specific medical meaning attributable to the term spiritus, to define the domain of animate beings to which spiritus belonged, and to justify philosophically and theologically the quite restricted nature of the term spiritus. If the former tendency was the legacy of the broader and more fluid concerns of the twelfth century, the latter, we shall see, was the standpoint bequeathed to later medieval and Renaissance medicine by authors like Albertus Magnus.

The Spanish reconquest was a complex process, consisting of at least two aspects, the military seizure of Muslim territory and the occupation of that land. Although many historians prefer to regard only the military actions as constituting the Reconquista proper, it is possible that the process of resettlement exerted the greater long-term effect on Spanish society. From this point of view the reconquest can be seen as a centuries-long process of internal migration, in which the Christians continually pressed into the depopulated zones that the Muslims vainly attempted to maintain along their frontiers. Military successes or reversals could temporarily accelerate or arrest the process, but the constant tendency of at least some elements of Christian society to seek their fortune along the frontier was a force which the Muslims were unable in the long run to resist.

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.

One of the most surprising but least known results of the Crusaders' conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 was a sudden change of the place assigned to the Temple Mount in the ‘holy geography’ of Jerusalem. The Mount became almost overnight, because of the number of holy traditions concentrated there, one of the most important centres of sanctity in Jerusalem, and therefore one of the most conspicuous holy places on the path of the pilgrims in the Crusader capital.

In recent years renewed interest has been shown in the history of the military orders in the Iberian peninsula, and a considerable number of studies have been published both in Spain and elsewhere. Yet most of the works that are concerned with the medieval period treat of a single order, and little attempt has been made to provide general surveys. Obviously much detailed research still needs to be undertaken before definitive conclusions can be formulated, and the nature of the evidence makes the discussion of some topics more difficult than that of others. The surviving sources supply more direct information about rights and privileges than about the orders' role in the struggle against Islam. But, as the function of the military orders was to fight against the infidel, their contribution to the reconquista is a subject that merits investigation, despite the limitations of the evidence.

The grammatical allegory of Piers Plowman C, Passus 3, has aptly been designated ‘the ugly duckling of the C revision.’ Since Skeat's day the passage has been described as ‘tedious and puerile,’ ‘irrelevant,’ ‘unintelligible and barren of all interest.’ More recently, John Alford's admirable article on the history of grammatical metaphor has situated the passage in a long literary tradition, and thus opened the way for an appreciation of its virtues, however strange they may seem to moderns. From the goliardic song to the sermon, from venality-satire to the Donatus moralizatus, authors throughout the Middle Ages built wordplays and metaphors, sometimes extended ones, on the technical terms of Latin grammar. For the medieval preacher, various kinds of pride go before a casus, or fall: pride of name (nominative), pride of descent (genitive), pride of wealth and munificence (dative), and so on; for the goliard, one becomes genitivus as a result of too much bedroom conjugation For Langland's grammatical allegory, though, critics have had less success explaining the use of grammatical terms and doctrines. Alford gives a brief five-page treatment to the passage, focusing mainly on the analogy between grammatical rules and the rule of law; although he aptly notes the punning use of terms such as ‘kynde’ for the Incarnation and ‘case’ for a legal suit, he does not address the use of ‘relacion rect and indirect’ or ‘adiectyf and sustantyf’ around which the passage is built. On the other hand, the article which gives the most detailed explanation of Langland's grammatical doctrines still has trouble relating them to the exempla of husband and wife, master and laborer, and son and servant, and even to the key notions of meed and mercede, confessing in places that ‘Conscience's precise intentions must remain a mystery.’

The term carruca (or carruga), like many other terms in medieval Latin, acquired a new and different meaning in the Middle Ages in place of its original classical meaning. There is no confusion over the meaning of carruca in Roman historical and literary sources: it clearly means a four-wheeled wagon or carriage. However, its original meaning was modified during the medieval period so that by the early ninth century carruca denoted a wheeled plow. Although the medieval plow is often called a carruca (whereas the Roman plow is called an aratrum), one should not infer that all references to carruca in medieval sources signify a plow, particularly if these sources are datable to that transitional period during which the classical meaning of the word was beginning to be transformed into its medieval one. Characteristic of the sources which fall within this period are the Germanic tribal laws (leges barbarorum), and of these, three individual laws in particular are of interest: the Pactus legis Salicae 38.1, Lex Ribuaria 47.2, and Lex Alamannorum 93.2.

Die Bedeutung der Schriften Maximus des Bekenners für das Denken von Johannes Scottus Eriugena ist mehrfach und aus verschiedener Blickrichtung hervorgehoben worden. Zunächst und vor allem als übersetzer von Maximus, der für den Ihren hauptsächlich als Kommentator der areopagitischen Schriften ins Blickfeld rückte, dann aber auch durch das Viele, was aus dem Gedankengut des griechischen Kirchenvaters in sein eigenes œuvre einfloß, wurde Johannes Scottus zu einem Vermittler der Geistigkeit und des Denkens von Maximus an das lateinische Mittelalter.

Die nachstehenden Ausführungen beschränken sich auf ein Detail im Verhältnis Maximus–Johannes Scottus: ein Zitat aus den Quaestiones ad Thalassium im zweiten Buch von Periphyseon.

In a recent article on the study of Boethian logical works during the Middle Ages, Osmund Lewry discusses the revival of logical studies at the end of the tenth century, focusing on the period after ca. 970 when Abbo of Fleury and Gerbert of Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II) renewed the teaching and study of dialectical works, and when Notker Labeo translated some logical texts into German. To this small group of tenth-century scholars known to have been concerned with dialectic and philosophy may be added the name of Heriger, schoolmaster and abbot (990–1007) of the Belgian monastery of Lobbes. The present study begins with the identification of quotations by Heriger from dialectical and philosophical works, then discusses Heriger's use of dialectic in theological argumentation, and finally considers the influence of his philosophical teaching at Lobbes. Heriger's interest in dialectic is revealed by quotations in his Vita Remacli from Boethius' In Topica Ciceronis and Apuleius' Peri Hermeneias. These quotations are identified for the first time in the present study. The application of dialectical learning to theological questions, specifically his use of logical principles in his tract De corpore et sanguine domini (PL 139.179–88), indicates that Heriger's quotations from logical texts reflect more than bookish antiquarianism; the study of dialectic was useful to him in theological argumentation. The evidence of Heriger's philosophical pursuits provides the first clear indication that Lobbes was one of the important Lotharingian centers for philosophical studies.

The six anonymous poems published here for the first time belong to a tradition of Latin satire usually described as ‘Goliardic’ and best known through the moralistic pieces in the Carmina Burana. Preserved in a unique manuscript in the Cistercian monastery of Rein in Styria, they are among the oldest Austrian examples of this genre. Despite their early date and literary interest, until now they have been known by title and first line only to the readers of Anton Weis's catalogue of the Rein manuscripts from 1891 and to the combers of Walther's alphabetical register of medieval Latin verse incipits. In my introductory remarks to an edition of the Carmina Runensia, as the verses may be called (abbreviated CR), I should like to discuss the following subjects: 1) contents and appearance of the manuscript (Rein, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 20), 2) date of writing, 3) style and themes of the poems, 4) sources and analogues, and 5) authorship. Though perhaps not of the caliber of the works of the contemporaneous Hildebert of Lavardin, whose best epigrams long passed as products of antiquity in the eyes of editors, or equal in satiric force to the barbs

Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale MS E. v. 9 (749), contains sermons for Lent by Jacobo da Voragine (fols. 1-168v old foliation, 1-167v new foliation), and, at the end of the codex, on fols. 169-75 (168-74, new foliation), a work which is headed 4 Incipit tractatus magistri Petri Abaielardi de sacramento altaris quod sit essentialiter ipsa Veritas carnis Christi et sanguinis et contra.’ The Tractatus, hereafter referred to as S, was identified by the late Nikolaus Haring as being question 117 of Abelard's Sic et Non, but was not known to Blanche Boyer and Richard McKeon when they were working on their definitive edition of the Sic et Non. S belongs to the versio prima of the Sic et Non, the ZTCEB group of manuscripts; within this group, Z is the very earliest surviving version, while TCEB, and with them S, form in effect a separate recension from Z. Before examining S's relation with TCEB it would be best to look at it on its own.

More than fifty years have now passed since M. R. James published his British Academy lectures on the Apocalypse in medieval art under the title The Apocalypse in Art (London 1931). As we approach the coming of the second millennium, the last few decades have witnessed an exponential rise in the number of scholarly publications dealing with apocalyptic imagery in the Middle Ages, particularly with regard to illuminated manuscripts. An increasing number of scholars entering this fascinating field of research each year has created a genuine need for more direct and convenient access to the wealth of material that now exists on this rich and complex subject. The project for the present census and bibliography of manuscripts containing Apocalypse illustrations, c. 800–1500, was developed from the authors' individual research and was prompted by the recognition that every medievalist who wishes to work with this material must first invest considerable time and energy in gathering this sort of data and bibliography before any serious research can begin. Our compilation is therefore designed to serve primarily as a helpful starting point for scholars from all disciplines in medieval studies with a research interest in some aspect of medieval Apocalypse illustrations.