Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405–64), the man who succeeded Calixtus III to the apostolic chair in 1458, was destined to become one of the best known pontiffs of the later Middle Ages. His popularity not only rests upon his own extensive literary and historical production, but upon the extensive historical literature subsequently devoted to this fifteenth-century figure. Multiple interpretations and assessments of his character and contributions abound. Caught up in the severe conceptualization of nineteenth-century renaissance scholarship, Aeneas Sylvius emerged as a slightly tarnished dilettante who only partially exemplified the typical Renaissance man with his clear-cut and self-reliant aesthetic and moral characteristics. In this spirit Georg Voigt raised grave suspicions as to Aeneas' integrity in both his private and public life. Jacob Burckhardt, who could only appreciate the pope's multiplicity from the standpoint of the representative artistic types exemplifying Italian humanism, failed to find the ‘whole man’ in the versatile Italian. As historiography moved towards a more diffuse view of the Renaissance and saw it as a shift of balance and change in emphasis rather than an abrupt change, the image of Aeneas Sylvius was gradually freed from such narrow interpretations. The struggle was long and intense for the scholarly tyranny of Voigt, though not always verified by a re-examination of the documents, was argumentatively infectious. Today, a half century of detailed research has added many additional perspectives to our knowledge of Aeneas Sylvius and has clarified many particular problems related to both his earlier life and later pontificate. Future studies will not differ too substantially from this pattern. The inconsistency accompanying the maturation of human character; the conflict between the theological-political values of any one man and the current aspirations of domestic and international ambition; the transitory character of the age—all these factors will continue to hamper assessments of Aeneas Sylvius.

Despite G. R. Owst's important studies, medieval English sermons have been examined only sporadically, and too often, as Siegfried Wenzel has noted, such investigations have treated sermons merely as structural analogues for the works of Chaucer and others. Fortunately, in recent years Wenzel himself and others have reaffirmed Owst's principal concept: sermons are mirrors reflecting the social and literary milieu of their time. This renewed interest in the sermon as historical document, however, may encounter a criticism made of Owst's own procedure, namely, a tendency to select items of significance from a wide range of material without adequate attention to the immediate context of each. The printing of a complete sermon, with its mixture of historical allusion, literary motif, and social commentary—a potpourri of the interesting, the dull, the unusual, and the commonplace—provides not only a necessary balance in method, but a better perspective of the sermon as a literary construction in its own right.

Sulcard, a monk of Westminster in the eleventh century, is the author of the first history of his monastery, the unprinted Prologus de construccione Westmonasterii. In this brief tract he describes the foundation of Westminster in the days, as he claims, of King Æthelberht of Kent, and the patronage and endowment extended by various benefactors, notably Archbishop Dunstan of Canterbury and King Edward the Confessor. Sulcard also records the marvellous dedication of Westminster by St. Peter, patron of the church, and two other miracles worked in Westminster by the prince of the apostles. Another chapter is devoted to King Æthelred II and Alfred the Ætheling. It has nothing to do with Westminster and was obviously inserted to bridge the gap in the history of the monastery between the reigns of Kings Edgar and Edward the Confessor. It does, however, contain some information on Æthelred's siege of Rochester in 986 and a brief reference bearing on the question whether Edward or Alfred was the elder of Æthelred's two sons by Emma. The purpose of this paper is to examine the content of Sulcard's Prologus and to print for the first time the entire text.

Es ist eine bekannte Tatsache, dass das Mittelalter zahlreiche, oft weitreichende und den Gang der Geschichte beeinflussende Fälschungen hervorgebracht hat. Die lange Reihe der Falsifikate reicht von den spätantiken Symmachianischen Fälschungen über die Konstantinische Schenkung, die Pseudo-Isidorischen Dekretalen, bis zu den zahllosen gefälschten Urkunden bekannter und unbekannter Verfasser des hohen Mittelalters und den gefälschten Viten zur Erhöhung des Ruhmes einer Kirche oder eines Klosters, Fälschungen, die aus betrügerischen Absichten, aus politischen Erwägungen, aus genealogischen Bestrebungen, aus Nachahmungssucht und dem Wunsche, echte oder falsche Reliquien zu deuten, aber auch aus edleren Motiven erwachsen sind. Das discrimen veri ac falsi ist deshalb zu einer der vornehmsten Aufgaben der kritischen Geschichtswissenschaft geworden und wurde vor allem in der Urkundenlehre zu höchster Feinheit entwickelt.

At first sight Aelfric's Vocabulary appears to be a well-ordered word list, topically arranged under appropriate Latin subtitles. In this it differed none from the Nominale, which was really a Latin-English lexicon largely used in England to teach boys Latin during the Middle Ages. The Nominale, or Vocabulary, contained Latin words together with the English meanings topically arranged: names of trades, herbs, plants, animals, etc. There was no alphabetical arrangement except in a few isolated instances. The Glossary differed from the Nominale or Vocabulary in that it was a collection of glosses which originated as marginal or interlinear explanations of words or phrases in the Latin authors. Any schoolboy who writes the meanings of the Latin words between the lines or on the margin of his Caesar or Vergil is perfectly familiar with the glossing process. However, the analogy stops here: the present-day schoolboy employs this gloss but momentarily. Should he forget the meaning of the Latin word when it occurs again, he is not required to go over the glossed portion of his text to find it; he turns instead to the vocabulary at the end of his book, or goes to a dictionary.

I shall begin with a definition. I am dealing with ‘secular historians,’ and thus I am excluding ecclesiastical history, and chronography. The second of these two genres, chronography, continued a tradition which goes back as far as Thucydides' contemporary, Hellanicus, but under a Christian empire it acquired a Christian bias and dropped any pretence of literary style. ‘Ecclesiastical history,’ which, as far as we know, was invented by Eusebius of Caesarea, and displays a somewhat unclassical passion for documentation, dealt with the church and history as it affected the church. Its presuppositions about historical causation were Christian. The secular historians, on the other hand, continued the classical traditions of historiography begun by Herodotus and Thucydides, and their subject matter was war and politics, and the cross between the two, which was diplomacy.

In recent decades, transformations in medieval Christian liturgical practices have been explored for what they can tell scholars about cultural change. Shifts in ritual can indicate changing values and beliefs as well as mark the power of external influences. One relatively momentous shift in liturgical practice was the decision of Alfonso VI, king of Castilla-León at Burgos in 1076, after years of pressure from Pope Gregory VII, to begin the transition from the use of the Old Spanish liturgy (also called the Mozarabic, Visigothic, or Hispanic rite) within his domain in favor of the Roman liturgy used in the rest of Latin Christendom. This innovation is viewed as but one manifestation of a much broader “Europeanization” of medieval Spain that took place in the eleventh century, a movement that began in other Iberian Christian kingdoms, but reached its culmination in the reign of Alfonso VI, with his French brides, Cluniac monks, and receptivity to papal influence.

The first half of the twelfth century was, by any account, a remarkable time in the intellectual history of the medieval West. During this period the development and expansion of schools located in urban centers took place at an accelerating pace. Within these schools, masters forged new tools for organizing, analyzing, and presenting materials for their students. Not only was the rich harvest gleaned from the writings of authorities from past centuries subjected to a more organized sifting and evaluation; the results of contemporary intellectual debate were incorporated into texts that made their way into the curricula of the schools. One can see the effects of this sifting, organizing, discussing, and presenting in a wide variety of works from the half-century: the theological sententiae from the “school” of Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux, the accessus ad auctores literature in the arts curriculum, the Sic et non of Abelard, collections of canon law, and glossed Bibles and biblical commentaries. Although the contents of these works are quite diverse, in general they were produced within a common cultural situation: the medieval school.

Throughout the Paedagogos, the Stromata, and the Quis dives salvetur? Clement of Alexandria uses the term ‘indifferent’ (ἀδιάφοϱος) or one of its derivatives. In all of these instances except three, the term is found in the moral sense redolent of Stoic usage. The present study attempts to treat by a comprehensive analysis of the term the meaning of ‘indifferent’ in Clement, its significance for his moral ascesis, and certain problems that arise from its use. Because of the marked similarity between Clement's usage of this term and that of the Stoics a brief discussion of the Stoic notions of indifference is necessary as a background to Clement's teachlng. It is hoped that such a study will provide a concrete example of the adaptation of Stoic morality to practical Christian asceticism.

In that flowering of new monasticism which began in the eleventh century and continued into the twelfth, along with so many other rich and complex developments, to make the twelfth century a great one, the new Order of Citeaux was the most influential and significant. This was no less true in England than on the continent; in fact, the Cistercian Order very probably enjoyed even greater advantage and renown in England than those other orders founded contemporaneously. Its ‘great and powerful influence over the religious and social life of the country,’ even until the dissolution, is beyond doubting. Starting with Waverley (1128) in Surrey, Rievaulx (1132) and Fountains (1132) in Yorkshire, and, for Wales, Tintern (1131) and Whitland (1140) in Monmouthshire and Carmarthenshire respectively, the Order spread with such astonishing rapidity that it numbered 40 in England and Wales by the end of 1153, not counting the abbeys of the Order of Savigny, which became part of the Cistercian Order in 1147 and numbered 12 in England and Wales, with Furness (1123) in Lancashire greatest among them. Beyond this era of settlement, between 1164 and the end of 1198, 11 were established (if we include the short-lived Wyresdale), and between 1201 and 1281 an additional 12 abbeys. But the expansion was then at dead end, and the two remaining abbeys were founded much later in an environment sharply contrasting with that sought by early Cistercians: St. Mary Graces (1350), near the tower of London, so strange a location for a Cistercian abbey, and St. Bernard's College, Oxford (1437), for Cistercian scholars who formerly used Rewley (1281) while studying at the University. In all, including the two latecomers, the abbeys numbered 77 in England and Wales.

In the Commentary of Remigius of Auxerre on the De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae of Martianus Capella, which was written at the end of the ninth century, there occurs an unusual tale of the origin of the seven liberal arts. According to this account, the three sons of Noah, upon learning of the impending destruction of the world, took two columns, one of brick and one of stone, and inscribed upon them the knowledge of the seven liberal arts to preserve it from oblivion. The stone column survived the Flood and long after was found in Egypt by Abraham who was thus enabled to restore the arts. From Egypt the arts were transmitted to Greece. Although this story was not commonly related in the Carolingian period, other tales of the discovery of the arts were current. Generally speaking, Cicero's claim for Mercury as the inventor and even the more prosaic accounts of Egyptian and Greek wise men as the discoverers were being superseded by the account of Hebrew discoverers that had been made popular by Isidore. It is not reasonable to think that Remigius, who in his commentary was constantly cautioning his pupils against taking Martianus' tales literally and pointing out for them the allegorical or poetic significance of the narrative, would accept at its face value any one of the versions of the invention of the arts. Actually, in discussing the origin of the arts he gives a philosophical explanation that would at once negate any account of an inventor. ‘The liberal arts,’ he says, ‘are naturally inherent in the soul and cannot be thought of as coming from elsewhere.’

L'Essai que nous présentons constitue le premier chapitre d'une étude plus compréhensive sur l'Idée d'évolution chez S. Irénée. Encore qu'elles soient amputées d'une introduction aux fins de définir ce terme d'évolution, nous croyons que les pages qu'on va lire ont un sens par elles-mêmes et que leur intelligence reste entière, même si l'on ajourne provisoirement le contexte total où les situer. Notre propos se donne donc comme une enquête sur la mentalité d'Irénée et ses orientations théologiques possibles. Si prévenu qu'on puisse être contre le critère psychologique en critique, nous le croyons cette fois urgent et nous tentons de lui attribuer la fonction précise de caractériser une oeuvre dont les sources demeurent, par ailleurs, hypothétiques et plus ou moins invérifiables.

The Life of the Peloponnesian saint, Peter of Argos, which was first published in the original Greek in 1888, is very little known in spite of its historical interest. If I am not mistaken, I was the first among scholars to make use of it, in 1898 in my Russian study, The Slavs in Greece. In 1908 a monograph in Modern Greek came out in Athens on the subject of Peter of Argos, written by Ch. Papaoi-konomos: . This monograph has remained entirely unknown to European scholars; strangely enough, it was mentioned neither in the detailed bibliography of the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, nor in the Vizantisky Vremennik, nor in the , where Greek publications are listed with reasonable accuracy. For myself, I was unable to find the book anywhere in America, and it was only recently that I received it directly from Greece. Since 1915 the indefatigable Greek scholar Nikos A. Bees has employed the Life of Peter of Argos in several studies, of which I shall speak later. Up to this time, nothing on the Life of Peter of Argos has been written in English.

The figure of Louis IX of France is frequently surrounded by an aura of the unreal. Since he has been honored by the Church and succeeding generations as St. Louis, the tendency has often been to place him on a pedestal and to make of him a plaster statue rather than the vigorous king who ruled France for 44 eventful years in the midst of the thirteenth century. Above all, it is often imagined that a saint-king would surely be something of a pawn in the hands of the clerics, and especially the papacy.

In the late winter of 378–7, the Athenian assembly passed a decree on the motion of Aristoteles which formalized the results of much earlier diplomatic activity and invited those states concerned with their freedom and autonomy to join Athens and her allies in a novel and permanent alliance. This Decree is often called the ‘Charter of the Second Athenian Confederacy,’ and it is rightly regarded as ‘the Queen of Fourth Century Inscriptions’ for the crucial information which it provides on one of the most important political and diplomatic developments of that epoch, a development that soon led to a resurgence of Athenian imperialism. The detailed provisions of the Decree are of inestimable value, particularly as the only extant contemporary history of this period, the Hellenica of Xenophon, contains not so much as a passing reference to the Decree itself or to most of the significant steps which led up to it. This glaring omission in Xenophon's account has attracted both the curious attention and often the unfavorable criticism of virtually every modern scholar who has investigated fourth century Greek history. The only other major extant account of the establishment of the confederacy, that of Diodorus, provides some details, but it contains inaccuracies, especially errors of chronology. The modern historian therefore must seek to recover the origins and background of the confederacy from a variety of sources which are often incomplete and sometimes biased. A century of scholarship has elucidated many problematical aspects of this Decree, but several questions connected with it still demand discussion. It is my purpose in this article to examine some of these questions with reference to Greek diplomacy, propaganda, and imperialism in the early fourth century.

In the past three decades, the origins of Renaissance humanism have received much sensitive scholarly analysis. Although the novelty of humanism is still rightly stressed, the real contribution of medieval thinkers to its evolution has been brought into sharp focus. In no sphere has so high a claim been made for intellectual continuity as in political ideas, with Walter Ullman's assertion that Renaissance civic humanism owed its shape to its medieval antecedents. It is not my purpose to judge how far such a claim is justified. But since almost all historians would now agree that scholastic political thought made at the least a small contribution, there is a point in tracing the means by which Aristotelian ideas percolated into the schools of rhetoric, the cradles of civic humanism. It is in this context that Guido Vernani's commentary on the Politics should be examined.

William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris from 1228 to his death in 1249, was one of the first theologians of the thirteenth century to take into serious account the philosophical works that poured into the Latin West during the last half of the twelfth and the early decades of the thirteenth century. William showed a great deal of openness toward the works of those to whom he referred as “Aristotle and his followers,” and obviously drew upon them, even going so far as to adopt the Avicennian arguments for the existence of God as the being that is necessary through itself, and to claim that the Avicennian expression, “necesse esse per se,” is the proper name of the first principle. On the other hand, he also firmly rejected many Aristotelian doctrines when he found them to be in opposition to the faith.

Le terme ‘mozarabe’ (musta'rib = arabisé) n'apparaît qu'au xie siècle, dans le Léon. Il désigne un phénomène limité d'influence culturelle — notamment en art — par suite de l'émigration vers le Nord de Chrétiens ayant d'abord vécu dans le Sud de la Péninsule ibérique, sous le pouvoir musulman. C'est improprement que l'on a étendu ce terme à tous les Chrétiens d'Espagne durant la période qui précède les premiers succès décisifs de ce qu'il est convenu de nommer la reconquista. Non seulement ceux des royaumes du Nord, qui n'ont assimilé que quelques thèmes décoratifs, quelques éléments musicaux et quelques symboles culturels arabes, mais une partie de ceux qui sont restés dans les régions islamisées et qui se sont cramponnés durant un certain temps à leur culture latine, n'ont pas à être qualifiés de la sorte.

‘Non solamente pe’ piani ma ancora per le profondissime valli mi sono ingegnato d'andare.’ Boccaccio defends the Decameron from envious critics, in the Introduction to the Fourth Day, by denying ambition. He is writing, he says, in the humblest style, in the vernacular, in prose; his little stories have no titles; his readers are idle women: in short, far from attempting any literary heights, as he writes the Decameron he walks through valleys. Some valleys, though, are gardens. At the end of the Sixth Day, the seven women of the story-telling brigata seem to act out Boccaccio's metaphor for his own project. They slip away from their male companions and walk to a secluded spot which Elissa knows about, the Valle delle Donne. Before returning to the rule of king Dioneo, the ladies amuse themselves in the circular valley, admiring its natural beauty and swimming naked in the pool at its center. The excursion is, like the very different Introduction to the Fourth Day, a brief digression from the sequence of one hundred stories, yet it provides a unique point of entrance into the poetics of the Decameron.