Critical approaches to alliterative poetry can and do include all the approaches imposed on literature in general. But to these must be added approaches particular to the fact that we confront a body of literature defined by a distinctive, some would say peculiar, metrical form. Alliterative poetry has been accorded a separate status precisely because it is alliterative, flourished in a relatively short time-frame, and is associated with a geographic region. For most of this century, the Alliterative Revival has reigned as an historical fact — a nationalistic metrical response, fostered by the North West Midlands baronial families, to the increasing power of the Court in the East Midlands and the pernicious influence of foreign, mainly French fashions, particularly poetic. In the last fifteen years, and at a galloping pace in the last ten, we have seen one of the massive certainties of literary history first quietly mined by the late Elizabeth Salter, and then besieged, assaulted, and overrun by an increasing band of scholarly invaders numbering among them Norman Blake, Derek Pearsall, T. Turville-Petre, and David Lawton. The Theory of the Alliterative Revival, once a Castle of Truth, now lies in ruins, picked over by its destroyers for useful material with which to build a new Tower on a Tofte. While the orthodox view of the alliterative revival has been disestablished, and no single creed has yet emerged as an authoritative substitute, there is currently underway a major re-assessment of alliterative poetry, which has both been caused by and also generated a substantial increase in scholarly knowledge of the field. The questions that have been posed and continue to be explored are mainly of the following kind: Was there a revival or simply a continuation? How and where was this revival/continuation generated and located? Should we distinguish sub-groups of alliterative poetry according to metrical variants? How do we scan alliterative verse? What are the origins of or influences on the metres and rhythms of the great alliterative works of the late fourteenth century?

In a recent article on the Florentine synodal constitutions of 1327, I took note of the rubric de testamentis et ultimis uoluntatibus, which ordered executors to pay directly to the bishop one-third of all legacies left indistincte ad pias causas seu pro anima. Another third of such bequests was to be paid directly to the testator's parish rector, while the remainder supposedly was to be distributed by the executors to pious causes. Under pressure from the commune, this mandate was struck in 1330. I stated the reasons for communal opposition, and made a limited attempt to show the canonical background of the bishop's unsuccessful ordinance. Citing the European-wide use by the secular clergy of the decretal Super cathedram (1300) to recoup income lost to the friars, the article concluded that Florence's demand for direct payment of a third on indistincte was an extreme — but not unique — formulation of a trend within one contemporary school of jurisprudence to amplify the testamentary rights of the secular clergy. The bishop's attempt was bad law, and even the lawyers whose opinions had encouraged the bishop in his formulation — before all, the great canonist Giovanni d'Andrea — crushed such attempts on indistincte with strong and decisive consilia.

Malgré les plus importants travaux, les bibliothèques britanniques sont encore riches de nouveautés pour l'histoire des Droits savants à l'époque des glossateurs. On y trouve en abondance les commentaires de l'école de Bologne transmis par plusieurs générations d'étudiants, ou les œuvres des glossateurs anglais, qui formèrent à partir du milieu du XIIe siècle une école florissante dont l'originalité se laisse deviner à quelques signes extérieurs : attachement à des genres déterminés, prédilection pour certaines méthodes, révérence particulière de plusieurs maîtres italiens. Pour une période plus récente, les documents ne manquent pas non plus et l'histoire juridique françalse ferait parmi eux une ample moisson. Nous ne saurions donner ici les conclusions d'une enquète, encore loin de son achèvement, entreprise sur les conseils que nous donnait peu de temps avant sa mort F. De Zulueta. Délaissant mêrne son objet principal, nous réduirons cette note à la présentation de quelques Ceuvres et fragments canoniques. Cette modeste contribution à l'enrichissement du répertoire des sources se propose de donner une première liste de nouveaux manuscrits (I) ainsi que I'édition de textes caractéristiques (II).

It is now almost three hundred years since Dom Garet published as part of the complete works of Cassiodorus the last printed edition of Cassiodorus' treatise On the Soul. The present edition is intended to offer a critical text of the work based on a study of the manuscript evidence. The restrictions of this publication make it impossible to give an explanation of the entire history of the text transmission. The apparatus criticus does, however, represent the readings of the best specimens of the various manuscript families which constitute the major evidence for the text. It is my hope that it will be possible at some future time for me to defend in greater detail my choice of the MSS used here, and to outline the history of the transmission from the ninth through the twelfth century.

A comprehensive theory which can reduce massive amounts of detailed evidence to simple and pleasing clarity has the ability to survive long after critics have damaged or destroyed essential portions of its arguments or evidence. A radically new comprehensive thesis may arise to displace it, but even then quibbles with details of the new continue to breathe life into the old. Such is at least partially the case with study of the prophets' episode in the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman Adam (Ordo representacionis Ade). Perhaps the single most edited piece of twelfth-century literature, the play has an established importance: linguistically, dramatically, theatrically, and theologically, it deserves the close attention it has been given. And not only is it important, it is also an enjoyable and imaginative work that delights the reader as much as it fascinates the scholar. However, it is a victim of being assigned a fundamental role in a comprehensive theory regarding the development of medieval vernacular drama.

The Carolingians regarded much of Italy as a military frontier following their overthrow of the Lombard kingdom in 776. Although there was little national Lombard resistance to Frankish rule, other factors — which will be noted later — forced the Franks to keep up their military establishment in Italy. In some ways this military establishment followed the pattern of Carolingian arrangements in other conquered territories, in other ways the Italian situation was quite unique. Since the Carolingian failure to solve the problem of Italian unity was in at least a degree due to the Carolingian failure to meet the challenge of the Italian military frontier, the study of this problem throws some interesting light on the turbulent conditions in northern and central Italy before and after its incorporation in the German Holy Roman Empire.

In 1912 Prof. Ludwig Baur published among the philosophical works of Robert Grosseteste a short treatise entitled De finitate motus et temporis, which, as he pointed out, was nearly identical with the concluding section of Grosseteste's Commentary on the Physics. Baur however knew only one independent manuscript of the De finitate and based his edition upon this one manuscript and two Oxford manuscripts of the Physics commentary. In 1940 Prof. S. Harrison Thomson listed four additional manuscripts which contain De finitate as an independent work. In the course of preparing a critical edition of the Commentary on the Physics, I found it necessary to consult these manuscripts and thereby became aware of the inadequacy of Baur's treatment of De finitate.

The symbolic, or perhaps more accurately, non-numerical significance of numbers has long been an accepted factor in the religion and superstition of the western world; in particular, medieval man in his search for the divine order underlying all manifestations of the external world possessed a natural propensity for numerological interpretation. It is, therefore, no surprise to find in the literature of the Middle Ages constant reference to, and interpretation of, numbers — numbers which in many cases even today have about them a sinister, friendly, or sanctified aura. The meaning of numbers and their manner of employment vary, however, greatly in different forms of writing and it is thus important to bear in mind the advice of Hopper, that although symbolic numbers are profusely scattered through the pages of nearly all medieval writings, it is necessary to distinguish, especially in secular and unscientific literature, between the philosophical or scientific use of number, the symbolic, the imitative, and the merely naïve preference for certain commonly used numbers.’ Hopper was concerned in his work with the general meaning of numbers as they appeared in medieval writings of all kinds and not with literature per se, where, at least in Germany, a further distinction must be made on the basis of recent scholarship. For considerable interest has been evinced in recent years in the structure of medieval German literature and in particular in the arithmetically symmetrical plans which seem to have been drawn up by poets as a framework for their composition. Whilst, therefore, the use of numbers in religious and edifying works may justifiably be viewed as deriving from Christian symbolism and is therefore to be distinguished on the one hand from the scientific use of number and on the other from the ‘naïve preference for certain commonly used numbers,’ a further category must be established in that the planned arithmetical form of medieval secular literature may have in fact no symbolic meaning. To take only a few simple examples: the Goldene Schmiede of Konrad von Würzburg consists of 1,000 couplets or the perfect number 10 raised to the power of the Trinity. Gottfried's Tristan on the other hand was possibly calculated to cover 25,000 lines, by which, presumably, nothing is symbolised. The fact that Otfried writes: ‘Wangta zuein thero jaro fiarzug ni was' and ‘Thria stunton finfzug ouh thri,’ for 38 and 153 respectively, is due to the innate significance of these numbers and not to the exigencies of versification. There is no significance, however, in the Nibelungenlied's ‘Sehs unt ahzec türne,’ ‘sehs unt ahzec wip,’ and ‘Sehs unt ahzec vrouwen’ (404.1, 525.1, 572.1). Similarly, the use of the seven-line stanza may be conditioned by the symbolic significance of the number seven, but the same is presumably not the case with Wolfram's groups of thirty lines. More important perhaps than these examples: the numerical structure of the Annolied has a specific meaning in relation to the religious content of the work, but there is no meaning inherent in the symmetrical line and stanza groups in the works of Gottfried, Wolfram, and Hartmann.

English grammatical miscellanies, of which numerous examples survive from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are a major source of the history of education in later medieval England. We mean, by miscellanies, collections of treatises and exercises relating to the study and teaching of Latin. Works of this kind were compiled for their use by university scholars, members of the religious orders, and the masters and pupils of ordinary grammar schools. The study of such works today, most of whose contents have yet to be printed, adds greatly to our knowledge of medieval English life and thought. The Latin treatises on grammar which they contain reveal the history of the study and usage of Latin in England. They make it possible to reconstruct the grammar curriculum of the English schools and universities, for which other evidence is rarely available. They contain the earliest grammatical treatments of the English language, too, in the form of English glosses and translations of Latin grammatical works, long before the publication of the first definitive grammar of English in 1586. Of wider interest still, the miscellanies contain numerous school exercises which aimed to teach Latin to pupils through references to the speech, activities, and surroundings of everyday life. Such texts are especially valuable, since they preserve many illuminating details of English social history that have not survived elsewhere.

Comme la plupart des œuvres de Jean Chrysostome, le texte dont l'incipit est ‘Ιατρών μεν παίδες nous est parvenu à travers une tradition extrêmement riche. Sans prétendre avoir identifié tous les manuscrits qui le contiennent actuellement, je donne ici la description des soixante manuscrits que j'ai consultés, soit en lecture directe, soit en microfilms, pour établir l'édition critique de ce texte. J'ai été amenée ainsi à apporter quelques corrections et plusieurs précisions aux catalogues sur les points suivants:

Dans la tradition manuscrite du Xe au XIIe siecle, le texte qui nous intéresse fait partie d'un ensemble que les catalogues designent tantôt par Adversus Anomoeos, tantôt par De incomprehensibili. J'ai adopte uniformement cette seconde formule, pour eviter toute confusion.

The present town of Bertrée lies about mid-way between Liège and Louvain on the undulating plateau of Hannut, toward the center of the ancient region of the Hesbaye, where the rich soil, temperate climate, and relative flatness have attracted settlers since the earliest times. It lies south of the Roman road (later known as the chaussée Brunehaut) between Boulogne and Cologne and is surrounded by the remains of Roman and Gallo-Roman habitations, tombs, and cemeteries. Nearby there were roads to Nivelles and Bavay. In the Middle Ages it belonged both politically and ecclesiastically to the province of Liège, though it was situated almost in an enclave between the counties of Louvain to the north and west, Looz to the north and east, and Namur to the south and west. Nothing specific is known about its history, however, before Walter of Trognée established a priory there in 1124.

“Habent sua fata libelli.” This often-quoted line from the work of the North African grammarian Terentianus Maurus can safely be applied to two biographies of St. Augustine written by two men outstanding in the literary world of their age. They are Jordanus of Saxony (1300–1380 ca.) and John Capgrave (1393–1464).

(Barcelona, El Escorial, Gerona, Huesca, Lérida, Madrid, Montserrat, Pamplona, Poblet, Seo de Urgel, Silos, Tarazona, Toledo, Tortosa, Vallbona de las Monjas, Vich)

This article is mainly concerned with Office Books, but does not include books for the Mozarabic rite. A few books for the Mass etc. were included as a result of earlier incorrect descriptions; these were inspected and eliminated without further investigation.

In the mid-thirteenth century, Louis IX of France established the enquêteur, a roving commissioner whose assignment was to hear complaints against the local officers of the crown and take remedial action. This new official, known variously as the enquêteur-réformateur or (later) simply as réformateur, was an outgrowth of Louis' desire to protect the rights of his subjects against all encroachments. Although they were originally intended as a check upon royal fiscal officers, historians have long agreed that these enquêteurs were employed quite differently under subsequent French kings. By the reign of Philip IV (1285–1314) their assignments often stressed the investigation of alleged usurpations of royal rights. Perverting the function envisioned by St. Louis, they now sought to remedy abuses by the king's subjects as well as those by royal officials. They became another arm of the fiscal administration, searching for new or neglected sources of revenue for the crown.

One of the earliest works of the Majorcan Ramon Lull (1230/35–1315/16) was a Compendium logicae Algazelis (1271/72), a work based on the first section of the Maqâsid al-falâsifa (that is, “Opinions of the Philosophers”) of the great Muslim theologian, Abû Ḥâmid al-Ghazâlî (d. 1111). Algazel was Persian and his Maqâṣid an Arabic form of a Persian work by the celebrated philosopher Ibn Sînâ (d. 1037), known to the Latins as Avicenna. Algazel summarized the philosophy of Avicenna with the intention of refuting it in his Tahâfut al-falâsifa (that is, “Destruction of the Philosophers”). As is generally known, the Cordovan philosopher and jurist, Averroes (Ibn Rushd, d. 1198), sought to refute this latter work in his Tahâfut al-tahâfut or “Destructio destructionis.”

Modern scholars of medieval philosophy have had access to the work of Abū Ḥâmid Muhammad al-Ghāzalī (1058–1111) since 1933, when Joseph T. Muckle published an edition of the great Muslim theologian's Maqāsid al-falāsifa (“The Opinions of the Philosophers”). In this work, al-Ghāzalī (known to the West as Algazel) summarized ideas proposed by Avicenna (940–1036) in his Danesh Nameh. Algazel's Maqāsid al-falāsifa was composed of three parts, the Metaphysics, Physics, and Logic; medieval authors read and referred to Algazel's work accordingly, as three separate works.

Chaucer's Summoner tells the tale of a corrupt friar who, while trying to obtain a donation from his bedridden and irate patron Thomas, demonstrates his hypocrisy by giving Thomas's wife a very specific dinner order and immediately following it up with a long sermon on the importance of fasting. Like most medieval preachers, Friar John appeals to biblical exempla:

In this article I propose to examine the Trinitarian controversy that developed in the years 1308 to 1325 between the Dominican Durandus of St Pourçain (ca. 1275–1334) and his order, especially in the connection between this controversy and the growth of a Dominican sense of corporate identity. The connection is not at first obvious, but we shall see how the evolution of Durandus's theological thought reflects to a great degree the doctrinal transformation of his order, a transformation which is also illustrative of the doctrinal preoccupations of fourteenth-century Scholasticism.

In the quest for the source of Chaucer's Parson's Tale investigators have discovered a number of texts that contain elements identical or similar to parts of Chaucer's treatise, though it is now generally conceded that none of the works thus far examined is in any sense a direct source of Chaucer's ‘Tale.' Among the larger units of the treatise Chaucer translated, none have so successfully eluded attempts to discover derivation as the remedia against the vices, contained in the tractate on the seven deadly sins (X[I]387-957). Earlier researchers have found in the postulated sources almost nothing that bears a close resemblance to the materials and their ordering in these sections. But these remedia contain, for the most part, doctrine that was established in the ethical tradition during the twelfth century and that proliferated widely during succeeding centuries: the ultimate source of this doctrine is the well-known Moralium dogma philosophorum, a treatise whose influence on ethical thinking during the late Middle Ages, particularly in the matter of the virtues and their ramifications, is enormous.