Any discussion of the intellectual life in fourteenth-century Italy is inevitably directed by the personality and achievement of Petrarch. Although we no longer believe that a whole new age begins with him, although we recognize considerable medieval elements in his work, we still regard him as the father of the strongest movement in the Renaissance–humanism. After his long years of succesful work, that was at once well publicized and well remunerated, there could be no inversion of the hour-glass. From him there proceeded the splendid parade of Boccaccio, Salutati, Guarino, and Bruni. There can be no quarrel with the general truth of this Petrarchan primacy, but, as in all historical abstractions, there are some unfortunate results. These are particularly prevalent in the decades before Petrarch. His shadow is over the whole period. We have difficulty in appreciating his predecessors as anything but precursors. If we resist the temptation to dismiss them all as unimportant, we are nonetheless constrained to deal with them as relative to a later Petrarch, as the very term prehumanism implies. The period is obscure enough without adding this element of ambiguity to it. Unable to jettison the term, we can still underline its inadequacy and establish the substantial nature of the movement, even without reference to Petrarch.

By some inexplicable accident of literary history, The Orchard of Syon, in the nearly five hundred years of its existence, has not found its critical editor, nor is there any study of it available to readers. The first to rescue it from oblivion was Sir Richard Sutton, steward of Syon Monastery in the early sixteenth century, who, as Wynkyn de Worde informs us, found it ‘in a corner by it selfe’ and deemed it worthy of costly publication. Although it belongs to a body of medieval literature which has been in recent years the object of much critical research by medievalists, the work has, so far as modern readers are concerned, continued for over four centuries to lie ‘in a corner by it selfe.’ The energetic surge of vernacular devotional prose in the fourteenth century, not only in England, but in Italy, Germany, and Flanders — countries whose spiritual climate must have been especially favorable to mysticism — did not recede in the fifteenth century. Following upon the age of Chaucer, this century may seem to some present-day scholars literarily poor and unproductive, but it was a great age of English prose; an age, that is, when translations and experiments with original prose in the vernacular were building on the past, borrowing from other languages to meet the needs of the present, and shaping the prose of the future. The Orchard of Syon is an important specimen of this emerging prose, as well as of current devotional literature. Its connection with Syon Monastery, renowned in the history of England and of the Church, gives it added prestige.

From the earliest times the Roman pontiffs exercised the right of sending envoys - by dispatching their legates to synods and councils, by maintaning from the time of Leo the Great their apocrisiarii at the imperial court of Constantinople and later still in the kingdom of the Franks, by appointing bishops and metropolitans as vicars apostolic, and by entrusting at times even to secular princes a kind of legatine power. While the theoretical basis of their claim to this right may be said to have received its final formulation at the hands of John XXII in the year 1316, it was nonetheless more penetratingly analyzed and expounded by Pius VI and Leo XIII. It is upon the pronoun cements of these popes that the definition of this claim in the Code of Canon Law is based:

ius … a civili potestate independens, in. quamlibet mundi partem legatos cum vel sine ecclesiastica iurisdictione mittendi.

The following checklist includes work published in the quarter-century between 1935, the twelve-hundreth anniversary of Bede's death, and 1960, inclusive. It lists editions, studies and translations into Modern English of his Latin works; it omits translations into other languages, including Old English, and studies of these, as well as the Old English poems sometimes attributed to Bede. Most reviews of the listed books have also been omitted, although some which make substantial modifications have not. A universal writer like Bede is mentioned in many studies; only those that deal directly with him, or that seem to make real contributions to Bede scholarship, are in this checklist, which would otherwise have been many times its present length. The grouping is by topic, chronologically within each topic, alphabetically within each year. An asterisk marks those works which I have not been able to see.

The establishment of a chronology of Saint John Chrysostom's early life is beset with difficulties arising not from a lack of sources, but from a relative abundance of incomplete accounts, which sometimes contradict one another and which are of uncertain reliability. The fifth chapter of Palladius’ Dialogue is generally considered to be our most valuable source. Yet even in the use of this document some caution is advisable. Palladius knew Chrysostom during the last years of the latter's life; consequently his account of the events in Constantinople is of great value. But what were his sources for the saint's early life? Two in particular have been proposed: Chrysostom himself, and his aunt, the deaconess Sabiniana. Our own experience of human nature should warn us that a man in his late fifties or early sixties does not always remember accurately the details of his youth, and that the testimony of elderly aunts about the early years of their famous nephews is never entirely above question. Moreover, it should be remembered that Palladius’ Dialogue had an apologetic purpose.

“Two angels shall lead him,” predicts The Prophecy of the True Emperor, offering signs by which the people will recognize a foreordained holy leader, sent to restore a divided, besieged, and weakened Christendom. Although this prophecy, which was translated from Greek into Latin in the second half of the thirteenth century, spoke only of an emperor, western Christians soon came to ignore or even change the word “emperor,” preferring to read the text as a prophecy concerning the papacy. The peculiar reception of that prophecy cannot be understood apart from a crucial conceptual development that occurred in Italy during the years surrounding the turn of the fourteenth century. Whereas many thirteenth-century hopes and fears of the future were expressed through the medium of prophetic writings, these texts mainly emphasized the influence of the emperor and other secular rulers on the future course of history, for better or for worse. However, the election of the hermit Peter of Murrone as Pope Celestine V in 1294 offered unprecedented hope — especially among groups of Spiritual Franciscans — that the papacy would become the vehicle of social, moral, and spiritual reform. So great the hope, so great the disillusionment, for Celestine stepped down a few months later. He was replaced and imprisoned by Boniface VIII (r. 1294–1303), who shared none of his predecessor's sympathy for the Spirituals or their ideals. In the wake of this turmoil was born a prophetic narrative according to which the papacy first had to be usurped by one or more wicked popes before finally being restored by a particularly virtuous one. The latter would be no ordinary pretender to the throne of Peter, subject to the political machinations of cardinals and barons, for he would be elected by divine providence and crowned by an angel (Fig. 1). Thus originated the concept of the angel pope, the pastor angelicus, which was to remain a powerful image of dissent and reform in the following centuries.

Philip V's negotiations with his subjects to secure subsidies and support in 1318 and 1319 significantly affected the evolution of royal policies and general attitudes toward taxation and consultation in fourteenth-century France. Though many aspects of these governmental activities have been studied, the precise nature of the monarchy's aims and plans, and the complex interrelationship of the reactions of different groups and different regions are still not fully understood. The work which has been done has concentrated on analysis as a prelude to synthesis: the various stands taken by townspeople, by nobles, and by ecclesiastics have been treated, and the responses of various areas have been considered. Much of the material necessary for a comprehensive assessment has been examined and ordered, yet there remain problems, relatively restricted in nature and scope, which demand consideration before the meaning and implications of the events of 1318 and 1319 can be adequately comprehended.

This study documents the discovery of Peter Lombard's long-thought-to-be-lost lectures on the Old Testament, which were hidden in plain view in the Old Testament lectures of Stephen Langton, who lectured on the Lombard's lectures. The presence in the Lombard's lectures on Genesis of the logical theory of supposition, the single greatest advance in logical theory during the High Middle Ages, means that those lectures not only postdate the Sentences but also represent the beginning of a radical advance in speculative theology that would continue to develop through the end of the High Middle Ages. This means in turn that lectures on the Bible from the 1150s to 1200, and in particular those of the School of Paris, headed by Peter Lombard, play a central role in one of the greatest speculative developments — logical, philosophical, and theological — of the Middle Ages.

Cette nouvelle enquête sur I'allégorie de la spoliatio Aegyptiorum pourra paraître de prime abord désuète vu le nombre d'auteurs qui en ont déjà parlé. Nous avions nous-même, il y a plus de cinquante ans, rédigé une brève note intitulée “Les dépouilles des Égyptiens” dans le volume Le magistère chrétien, éd, et trade Gustave Combes et Jacques Farges, Bibliothèque augustinienne, 11 (Paris, 1949), 582–84, à propos d'un passage du De doctrina christiana 2.40.60–61, aù Augustin commente l'épisode biblique relatant la fraude des Israélites à leur départ d'Égypte. Par la suite nous n'avons cessé de nous intèresser à ce thème et d'enrichir notre propre dossier par des enquêtes personnelles tout en prêtant attention aux publications s'y rapportant et dont nous donnons la liste dans une première note qui révèle le succès littèraire et historique de cette allégoric biblique.

That women felt and men thought has long been the predominant lens through which medieval Christian writing has been analyzed. The work of the religious women vernacular theologians, or Beguines, who emerged across North Europe from the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries has therefore often been dismissed as affective mysticism. Recent scholarship has begun to re-appraise this work and re-evaluate its place within the Christian tradition. This paper looks at the work of Hadewijch, a thirteenth-century mystical poet from Brabant in the Netherlands who, though less well known than other Beguines such as Hildegaard of Bingen and Marguerite Porete, may, as John Arblaster and Paul Verdeyen argue, “rightly be called the greatest poetic genius in the Dutch language.” It is probable that her work was not widely known during her lifetime (not, that is, directly), but research is strengthening the argument that her theology was transmitted via the works of John of Ruusbroec. This paper will attend both to Hadewijch's poesy and her theology and ask what the dynamic structure in her verse — its shifts of perspective, gender perspective, and non-linear narrative — might lead us to grasp about her theology.

Chaucer's character descriptions contain details from the medieval science of physiognomy which create a stratum of meaning hidden to the modern reader. Curry and others have pointed out a number of these details; for instance, the significance of the physical traits ascribed to the Pardoner; the very different implication of those assigned to the Miller; the Wife of Bath's ‘gat-tothedness.’ in knowledge of physiognomy was widespread in the Middle Ages, Chaucer's contemporaries presumably recognized not only the details which modern scholars have identified but quite possibly many more also.

Simultaneously with the preparation by the present writer of his article on ‘Medieval Georgian Historical Literature (VIIth–XVth Centuries)’ the Historical Institute of the Georgian Academy of Sciences published the long-awaited text of the Queen Anne Codex of The Georgian Annals, the oldest version of that historical corpus so far discovered. This publication necessitates a few additions to, and corrections of, the above-mentioned article. This is the reason for this note.

Msgr. Devreesse, well known to every Church historian for his successful researches on Theodore of Mopsuestia, on Greek catenae and other subjects, reveals in a recent publication his mastery in a field in which he had previously published only various minor essays. By its rich documentation and lucid presentation the new work, a historical and geographical description of the Patriarchate of Antioch, will remain for a long time the standard work on the subject. Based upon a scrupulous and intelligent investigation of the original sources and the author's perfect familiarity with all problems related in any way to the topic, his work deserves the admiration and appreciation of all who are interested in the history and institutions of the Ancient Church. My own studies in the same field, pursued during some twenty-five years, perhaps enable me to recognize more than many other critics the extraordinary qualities of Devreesse's work—a fact which I want to stress all the more as in the following I shall mention many details about which I cannot agree with the author; for my objections and additions could easily be misinterpreted as a sign that I underrate the incontestable merits of the work as a whole.

While it is true for most literature, theological and otherwise, that an informed awareness regarding antecedents provides valuable perspective toward its interpretation, this is especially true for the theology of the Carolingian period. The Carolingians often used their source material in verbatim citations which remained unacknowledged. One has the impression of a kind of homemade theology, constructed out of bits and pieces of materials that were chosen partly because they were convenient or familiar. The result at its best had an appeal not unlike the patchwork quilt which has a unity and charism all its own even though it is cut predominantly from pieces which were not themselves the work of those designing the quilt. In order to appreciate the final effect achieved by such literature, it is crucial then to be able to identify not only the authors upon whom the writer is relying, but the precise patches of material which have been cut from each, so that we may observe the final effect as the result of a complex of decisions to select, combine, juxtapose, add to, adjust, comment upon, and otherwise utilize a large body of literary fragments.

The first two hundred lines of Cynewulf's Elene deal not with Elene's finding of the Holy Cross but with the events that lead to the conversion of her son, the emperor Constantine. They recount the invasion of his kingdom by a horde of Goths, Huns, and Franks; his fear and despair at the prospect of doing battle with such a vastly superior force; his nocturnal vision of the cross with its famous promise of victory; the crushing defeat he inflicts on the invaders the next day; his triumphant return to Rome, where he learns from his counsellors that the cross is the sign of God; his evangelization by a group of Christians; and his subsequent baptism. Only after all this does the quest for the True Cross get underway, at Constantine's bidding. Although the fifth-century Inventio Sanctae Crucis, Cynewulf's principal source, narrates these events in a few lines of bare, prosaic Latin, the Old English poet has turned them into the most extensive piece of amplification in the whole work, chiefly, but not entirely, by providing detailed descriptions of the invading and defending armies, and of the battle itself, in recognizably formulaic style with much skillful repetition and variation.

Das große abendländische Schisma (1378–1449) brachte zahlreiche Abhandlungen zum Thema Konzil hervor, aus denen die Konzilsidee des Spätmittelalters gewonnen werden kann. Namen wie Dietrich von Niem, Konrad von Gelnhausen, Heinrich von Langenstein, Pierre d'Ailly, Jean Gerson, Jean Courtecuisse, Juan Torquemada u.a. verdeutlichen das Gemeinte. Im Umkreis der Literatur zum zweiten Nicaenum (787), vor allem in den Libri Carolini, ist andererseits die spätpatristische Konzilsidee greifbar. Zwischen dem großen abendländischen Schisma und dem zweiten Nicaenum aber liegt ein Zeitraum von 500 Jahren und damit ein halbes Jahrtausend Entfaltung der Konzilsidee. Wie denkt man in dieser Zeitspanne über Konzilien? Auf welche Momente und Aspekte konzentriert sich das Interesse? Wo liegen die wesentlichen Unterschiede im Vergleich zur patristischen Phase der Entfaltung dieser Idee? Die entscheidende Vorfrage lautet natürlich: Welche Quellen stehen uns für den genannten Zeitraum zur Beantwortung unserer Frage zur Verfügung? Wie für die patristische Periode kommen auch für die mittelalterliche wieder einzelne Autoren in Frage. Männer wie der streitbare Bischof Hinkmar von Reims und der Unionstheologe Anselm von Havelberg, vielleicht auch Gerbert von Aurillac, der nachmalige Papst Silvester II., sind hier zu nennen.

The list of manuscripts dealing with the work of Cistercian writers is not the result of any systematic search into the possibilities of English libraries, but rather the by-product of work, carried out over a number of years, on the writings of Saint Bernard and Saint Ailred of Rievaulx. In scanning the pages of manuscript catalogues or in examining the manuscripts themselves, one naturally came upon a number of Cistercian texts, which, though irrelevant to one's studies at the time, were noted down on scraps of paper in case they might prove interesting later on when one had more leisure. As the notes increased and the hoped-for leisure grew less and less as the days went by, the possibility of using them within a reasonable time seemed extremely slender. On the suggestion of my friend and collaborator, Dom Jean Leclercq, they are being printed now in case they may prove useful to other students who are interested in the same group of writers and who may be glad to find, within a small compass, information that must otherwise be hunted for throughout many books.

Die Berliner, aus dem Besitze von Phillipps erworbene Sammelhandschrift Lat. oct. 199 enthält unter ihren 65 Blättern auch 7 zusammengehörige Pergamentblätter aus dem 12. Jahrhundert mit Bruchstücken eines Lucankommentars, so dass auf fol. 1 sich zunächst einmal ein Stück über die Verse 1.412-4 findet; es folgt dann auf fol. 6 und 7 und fol. 2ra ein grösseres Stück über kosmologische Anschauungen, entwickelt an Lucan; eine Vorgesetzte Überschrift vor diesem Teil ist weggeschnitten, fol. 2rb und 2v sind nicht beschrieben. Über die Herkunft der Blätter vermuten die in der Anmerkung genannten Mitteilungen: ‘Sie [die Hs.] wird wohl aus einem westfälischen Kloster stammen. Man würde auf Corvey schliessen, wenn die Bruchstücke des Lucankommentars als aus Vacca's Kommentar stammend zu erweisen wären, von dem im Mutterkloster Corbie im 12. Jahrhundert eine Handschrift vorhanden war.’ Diese Vermutung und weiter das Zitat in Zeile 243: ‘alluditur in Alexandro, ubi ait: vetitumque mari se mergere plaustrum,’ wo die Mitteilungen an eine antike Alexander-dichtung denken, rechtfertigen das Interesse des Philologen. Ich lasse zunächst den Text folgen.