The more spectacular a prediction is, the more frustrating it becomes when the prescribed date passes and nothing happens. This essay will discuss not so much the predictions of yesterday but rather the awakening of the morning after. False predictions left a gap and created the need for explicit or implicit responses to the failed prediction, a need that could be filled by modifying the calculations or condemning fresh speculation. This essay shows how people managed to reconceptualize the order of the world after a.d. 800 = a.m. [annus mundi] 6000, the beginning of the supposed seventh, ultimate millennium. As we consider the intellectual progress of the ninth century, we also need to look at the link between the Carolingian reform and the release of apocalyptic tension or post-apocalyptic exhaustion. This investigation builds on recent contributions to the field of medieval eschatology, especially those of Wolfram Brandes, Richard K. Emmerson, Johannes Fried, Richard Landes, Bernard McGinn, and others. It focuses on selected sources, and particularly on exegetical texts, to show that overcoming the eschatological crisis caused more than a shift in the system of counting years, from annus mundi to ab incarnatione Domini. Questions about dates led to general reflections about time, the past and the future. The significant shift, therefore, was from counting time to a philosophy of time.

A singular merit of John Boswell's provocative Same-Sex Unions has been to refocus the attention of a wide range of scholars from differing disciplines on the significance of manuscript sources for adelphopoiesis, a Christian ceremonial in the eastern Mediterranean for the ‘making of a brother'. It seems fair to say that the balance of scholarly opinion has rejected his claim that these rites were, in effect, marriage ceremonials for men. The ceremonials seem to have been used to create a ritual brotherhood in which one man ‘adopted’ another as his ‘brother’. This still leaves a large question to be considered: precisely what kinds of social institutions or arrangements did these rituals seek to confirm? I propose to investigate this problem in the context of evidence relating to the social structures of Roman and post-Roman societies, both to elucidate the social bonds reflected in the rites of adelphopoiesis and to suggest why this peculiar type of personal attachment is strikingly absent from the annals of western Roman imperial society.

That medieval culture included misogynous aspects has long been recognized. Only through the study of its specific lineaments in particular works, however, can the nature of that misogyny at particular junctures be understood. The content of antifeminist or misogynistic rhetoric varied greatly over time and space during the Middle Ages, although most medieval writing that directly attacked women drew on the classical and patristic traditions exemplified by Juvenal and Jerome. Misogyny, of course, was never the whole story, only a part of a complex cultural valuation of the feminine. Nevertheless, it clearly was an important theme in much medieval writing. Medieval writers used misogynistic topoi for purposes other than attacking women, but in doing so they perpetuated conventions that had an impact on women in medieval society. This article looks at the misogynistic aspects of one work, John of Bromyard's Summa predicantium.

In the third question of the Prologue to his Lectura secunda, Adam Wodeham asks whether intuitive cognition can be naturally produced or conserved when its object is either non-existent or absent. This question was written in reply to Peter Aureol, and in it Adam argues that Peter's definition of intuitive cognition has skeptical consequences. In fact, as Wodeham knew, Aureol held that intuitive cognition was unerring, and he was arguing not for skepticism, but merely against Scotus' definition of intuitive cognition.

All primitive decretal collections composed in England are conventionally classified in three main groups, described as the English, Bridlington, and Worcester Families respectively. These names are admittedly matters merely of convenience, and are open in all cases either to question or qualification. The Worcester Family (the most advanced of English primitive collections in technical construction) is named after the Worcester Collection, on the mistaken assumption that this, authentically Worcester, composition is the oldest surviving member of the group; whereas in fact a hitherto undiscussed manuscript in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, reveals an earlier derivation from their common origin, and there are good reasons for doubting if the family archetype was dependent in any way on the Worcester school of canon lawyers. Six members of this once-numerous family are known at present in manuscript, and two of these are also familiar in published analyses. All are technically primitive in composition, being either divided into books or libri simply, or in the most mature examples subdivided also into titles or tituli, but without the systematic device of dismemberment of the longer decretals. In systematic collections the longer letters, dealing frequently with several different and quite unrelated topics within the limits of a single decretal, are dissected into their component chapters, which are arranged analytically according to subject matter and distributed under various headings. None of the Worcester Family is systematic in this sense, though some record an advanced stage of technical development within the primitive conventions.

In my mercy dispaire thou noght,
Sen I the so dere haue boght,
And ensaumple thou take
Of synfull Mary maudelayne,
That with syn was gastly slayne
And sythen gan it for-sake.

Monseigneur Duchesne's study of the legend of the coming of Saint Mary Magdalen to Gaul left very little to be said on the subject.' Jean Misrahi has opened with this statement a brief note followed by an unpublished version of an early legend of Mary Magdalen and this can indeed be applied mutatis mutandis to many areas of the Magdalen traditions. Still, other features connected with this cult are insufficiently investigated and this is true, in the first place, of the rich and extensive group of medieval Latin hymns celebrating Mary Magdalen.

The more we learn about the quantity and diversity of the copies, commentaries, and adaptations of Ciceronian rhetoric that have survived from the medieval period, the more we are led to ask why these materials were preserved and how they were used. The question of practical utility has especially concerned those students of medieval commentaries on the De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium who are faced with the task of explaining why these treatises continued to be copied and studied long after the demise of both the Roman law courts and the Roman schools. While the use to which the ars dictaminis was put is considerably more evident, there is still much to be learned about the circumstances in which it was taught. Since twelfth-century teachers of dictamen generally saw themselves as the heirs of Cicero, study of their works and the curricula in which they found their place often casts light on the status of rhetoric instruction as a whole. Nowhere is this complementarity so manifest as in central France, by the mid-twelfth century widely regarded as the foremost center for study of the auctores. During the second half of the twelfth century, even as the concise, functional artes dictandi from Italy were rapidly establishing themselves alongside the more traditional commentaries on the classical rhetorics, the French grammar masters were busy refining the synthesis of ars grammatica and ars rhetorica, of Horace and Cicero, preserved in Matthew of Vendôme's Ars versificatoria (ca. 1175).

Since the Old English poem Vainglory is generally considered mediocre, and since no source has been found, critics usually dismiss it with terms such as ‘homiletic,’ ‘didactic,’ and ‘reflective.’ Because the poem is an admonition against pride and related sins, these terms are all applicable, but they do little to explain the nature of the tradition in which the poet writes. In both its content and form Vainglory bears a striking resemblance to specific teachings of the Church Fathers. Though an analysis of Vainglory in the light of these patristic writings will not transform the poem into an artistic work, it will illustrate the degree to which the poet depends on the teachings of the Church Fathers; moreover, I believe that this analysis may suggest an approach to the understanding of other Old English poems. When I cite passages from the Fathers I am not suggesting that they are the poet's conscious source, but rather that they are representative of the teachings which he knew and by which he was influenced.

In two early medieval manuscripts, Vat. Pal. lat. 220 and Vat. Pal. lat. 212, there are contained seven short sermons or homilies which provide convincing evidence of being Irish in character. They are worthy of publication because the amount of homiletical literature coming from Irish circles at this early time is not very great, and because a careful consideration of them is apt to throw light on the Irish literary method. They reveal various internal characteristics which are known to be symptomatic of the Hiberno-Latin element; and they present sufficient material to allow one to study closely how the Irish used sources in the preparation of their homilies. The approach of our anonymous author to Scripture stands in the Antiochene rather than the Alexandrian tradition. Thus his interest is in the literal more than in the spiritual sense of the text; and in this he shows a certain affinity with the Irish exegetes of this period. I should like to reproduce here the text of these sermons and to elucidate their character by relating them in parallel fashion to other contemporary works that are known to be part of the Hiberno-Latin tradition.

The object of this paper is to identify a particular stylistic feature in the Old English Genesis A, to point out its affinities in Anglo-Latin historical literature (particularly in the historical writings of Byrhtferth of Ramsey), and to discuss the implications of those affinities. In conclusion I propose to discuss the literary history of this motif and some occurrences in other Old English poems — notably in Beowulf. I will thus move from fairly mechanical problems of source-study and stylistic affinity to some important ideological and literary issues, but unfortunately the more important issues are also more difficult to resolve.

It is no doubt a commonplace to state that Western Civilization is an heir, one among several, of an anterior unity: Christian Mediterranean Civilization. In that earlier unity all the local cultures that had sprung up round the great central sea — Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Aegean, Syrian, Iranian, Hellenic, Italic — had coalesced in three successive and increasingly comprehensive phases within the corresponding imperial frameworks of the pax achaemenia, the pax macedonica, and the pax romana. With the advent of Christianity this political and cultural amalgam passed into still another phase, that of the pax christiana, which fell heir also to the hitherto seclusive cultural tradition of the Jews. But, before this last phase was reached, the rhythm of history had changed from gathering to scattering; Iran, which once itself had contributed to the cultural syncretism of the Mediterranean world, and which can be regarded as that world's easternmost bastion, withdrew from it under the impact of the ‘neo-Achaemenian’ and anti-Hellenic reaction which inaugurated the Sassanian age. Iran was to remain hostile to the pax romana and, although Christian enclaves were to be established in its territory, outside the new unity of Christendom. But, even though withdrawn back to the pre-Hellenistic phase of history — as if Alexander the Great had never lived — New Iran exercised, chiefly through Syria, a profound influence, especially in art, upon the rest of the Mediterranean world, both before and after the ushering in of the pax christiana. With time, the disintegration begun in Iran spread. Christian Mediterranean Civilization was broken up and succeeded by several others that derived from it: that of the West was one, that of Byzantium another, and so also that of Christian Caucasia.

Michael Scot was a translator of Arabic treatises in the early thirteenth century who was credited by Roger Bacon with introducing parts of the Aristotelian corpus to the Latin West. He was associated with Emperor Frederick II and left a reputation as a wizard and necromancer that endured until the nineteenth century. In spite of this prominence, we know very few facts about his life. This lack of evidence did not deter nineteenth-century antiquarians from writing whole books about him, using conjecture to fill in what is otherwise lacking.

This article investigates how civic discourse connects the virtue of citizens and the fortunes of cities in a variety of late antique and early medieval sources in the post-Roman west. It reveals how cities assume human qualities through the rhetorical technique of personification and, crucially, the ways in which individuals and communities likewise are described with civic terminology. It also analyzes the ways in which the city and the civic community are made to speak to one another at times of crisis and celebration. By examining a diverse range of sources including epideictic poetry, chronicles, hagiographies, and epigraphic inscriptions, this article addresses multiple modes of late antique and early medieval thought that utilize civic discourse. It first explores how late antique and early medieval authors employed civic discourse in non-urban contexts, including how they conceptualized the interior construction of an individual's mind and soul as a fortified citadel, how they praised ecclesiastical and secular leaders as city structures, and how they extended civic terminology to the preeminently non-urban space of the monastery. The article then examines how personified cities spoke to their citizens and how citizens could join their cities in song through urban procession. Civic encomia and invective further illustrate how medieval authors sought to unify the virtuous conduct of citizens with the ultimate fate of the city's security. The article concludes with a historical and epigraphic case study of two programs of mural construction in ninth-century Rome. Ultimately, this article argues that the repeated and emphatic exhortations to civic virtue provide access to how late antique and early medieval authors sought to intertwine the fate of the city with the conduct of her citizens, in order to persuade their audiences to act in accordance with the precepts of virtue.

Plato's Cratylus has been studied so thoroughly and by such competent scholars that a reexamination might appear an enterprise as superfluous as it is daring. It seems to me, however, that previous treatises failed to bring out the precise linguistic value of the ideas expounded in this dialogue and to determine its precise place in the development of the theory of language. This holds even for those scholars who attempted an appraisal of Plato's work from a linguistic standpoint. Steinthal saw the decisive facts, but did not see their theoretical importance, since he like most investigators was exclusively or, at least, chiefly interested in what Plato thought about the epistemological value of language.

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).

In the entire course of the Middle Ages no movement surpasses, in enduring importance and absorbing interest, that known as the Gregorian Reform, or, less correctly, the War of Investitures. It is the movement that had its most determined leader in Pope Gregory VII.

Western Europe in the first half of the twelfth century was witnessing a great intellectual and cultural revolution. One manifestation of this was the hordes of ambitious youths seeking instruction, not only in the traditional ‘seven liberal arts,’ but also in the more specialized fields of law, medicine, and theology. In consequence, old educational centers were being revitalized and new ones were appearing. For centuries, of course, most monasteries and some cathedrals had maintained schools. Previous to the twelfth century, however, the monastic schools had played a more conspicuous role in education than those of the cathedrals. The period with which we are concerned saw a notable reversal in this situation. Usually located in rural areas, monasteries were unprepared to supply the needs of large numbers of students. Nor was the presence of a transient and turbulent body of adolescents conducive to monastic discipline. Cathedrals, on the other hand, situated in the rapidly growing towns, could supply the students in their schools with the necessities of life, while providing elementary and often advanced instruction through a corps of teachers supervised by the cathedral scholasticus. Thus the early progress of the ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’ can frequently be best observed in a study of the history of this or that cathedral school. In the long run Paris, Laon, and Chartres were to exert the greatest influence. Yet there were many other schools in the period, 1100-1150, which could boast a famous master or two and which produced notable scholars. One of these was Reims, which under Master Alberic enjoyed for nearly twenty years a prestige in theological studies equalled by no contemporary school.

Horace opens his Ars poetica with several comparisons between the arts to illustrate the 'structural’ decorum which all unified works must share. Later, he develops an extended analogy between painting and poetry, introduced by the phrase ut pictura poesis, to illustrate the nature of the 'stylistic’ decorum necessary to please, and to continue to please, the critical reader. In an earlier essay entitled ‘The Meaning of Horace's Ut Pictura Poesis,’ I tried to show how this analogy (361–5) concludes the preceding discussion of faults which may and may not be overlooked in a long work (347–60). In the present paper, in addition to collecting further evidence for this interpretation, I shall argue that the lines in question (361–5) form, at the same time, a transitional introduction to the following analysis of the kind of pleasure appropriate to poetry and of how it may best be protected (366–90).

In a recent Traditio article, Cary J. Nederman has added another valuable study to the series of papers he has been publishing over the past few years. This body of work has the laudable goal of showing that, across the twelfth century, thinkers were taking an increasingly Aristotelian line in the fields of ethics and political theory, on the basis of ideas transmitted indirectly via works available in Latin well before the appearance of the integral Latin translations of the texts of the Stagirite deemed to have launched the “Aristotelian revolution” of the thirteenth century in these fields. Throughout this burgeoning oeuvre, Nederman has been quite successful in supporting his case for a more gradual and less cataclysmic reception of Aristotle in the Latin West than the standard accounts acknowledge. It is not the purpose of this paper to challenge that larger argument. Nonetheless, with respect to the Aristotelian doctrine of habitus on which Nederman focuses in his Traditio article, we would like to suggest that his analysis needs to be reconsidered. We offer the following pages as an amplificatio of his thesis, with the aim of adding nuance to it by bringing forward material that he omits. Our intention here is not so much to criticize Nederman's reading of the texts on habitus in the twelfth century that he does adduce, and certainly not to object to his larger project, but rather to indicate that there is more to the story, and so to refine his analysis in the hope of strengthening it.