The only instance in which the present-day Roman liturgy refers to Moses as a saint is the beginning of the entry for September 4th in the Martyrologium, which says: ‘In Monte Nebo terrae Moab sancti Moysis legislatoris et prophetae.’ This entry is found in Baronius' edition of 1586. In the annotated edition, Baronius commented on this entry: ‘Agunt de eodem hoc die non tantum Latini omnes, sed et Graeci in Menologio.’

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 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.

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.

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.

During the second half of the fourteenth century most of France and many parts of Italy faced a social problem of massive proportions in the activities of the routiers, unemployed and rampaging mercenary soldiers. The popes of the period, Innocent VI, Urban V, and Gregory XI, took a leading role in attempts to deal with this daunting problem, and the purpose of this article is to examine one of the chief instruments which they employed, the crusade. The place of the mercenary companies in the crusading movement was paradoxical. On several occasions from 1357 onwards the popes issued crusading indulgences to those who fought against the routiers on the grounds that they presented a serious threat to the well-being of the Christian community, the populus christianus. But the popes also hoped to use the companies in the service of Christian Holy War by persuading them to travel to the eastern Mediterranean, to Hungary or to Granada, to fight the Muslims. Both approaches sprang from long-established papal policy towards those considered as Christendom's internal foes. When the curia tried to bring about the destruction of the routiers by offering spiritual rewards to their opponents it placed the mercenaries in the roll-call of Christian rebels and excommunicates combatted by means of the crusade, alongside the emperor Frederick II, Peter II of Aragon, the Visconti, and others. And when it attempted to send the companies beyond the frontiers of Christendom, it was adopting a strategy which dated back at least as far as the First Crusade. So both aspects of papal policy towards the routiers were highly traditional. They were also unsuccessful, which raises important questions about the way the later Avignon popes thought about and exercised their power. In the mid-thirteenth century the popes successfully resisted the ambitions of the Staufen and destroyed their might; a century later they proved unable to contain the companies. Was this because the Avignon papacy was out-of-date in its policies, because it failed to appreciate and adjust to the profound changes which had occurred in society and government? In broader terms, does traditionalism in this instance betoken the ideological bankruptcy which some scholars have seen as a leading characteristic of the papacy in the fourteenth century? In order to answer these questions I shall first examine the nature of the threat which was posed by the companies, then look in detail at the two aspects of the policy adopted by the curia in response to it.

Studies dealing with the attitudes of various writers of the patristic period towards Hellenism, including the aspect of paideia, have tended to concentrate, up to the present, on a specific writer or time-span. It is no accident that fourth-century writers have loomed large in recent investigations in this area, since the fourth century was pivotal in determining Christian attitudes to pagan literary traditions. Here it is my aim to draw attention not to a single writer or period but rather to the representatives of a Christian literary genre, and to discuss their stance with regard to Hellenism, in particular paideia. My choice falls on the Greek ecclesiastical historians; although they have been scrutinised increasingly in the past twenty years, their collective attitude to Hellenic culture or Greek letters has not yet received a separate study. Those early Greek historical works that have survived to us more or less intact — the histories of Eusebius of Caesarea, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret of Cyrus, and Evagrius Scholasticus — provide us with a more reliable overall picture of the Hellenism of their composers than, for example, the fragmentary Church Histories of Philostorgius and Theodore Lector; taken together, they give us at the same time a useful chronological spread from the early fourth to the late sixth century. The crucial questions to be posed are to what extent these writers deemed Hellenism to be compatible with ecclesiastical historiography, and how typical their perspective on Hellenism was of their own times. Where appropriate, we shall also try to ascertain how these church historians stand with regard to using classical citations and references in their narratives, how they view the classical past, and what their attitude is towards non-Greek culture.

In 1332 Philip VI of Valois set in motion a campaign to levy traditional aids in his kingdom. Although for a number of reasons the effort failed, the episode casts significant light on the development of royal fiscal policy in France. Its importance lies chiefly in the fact that it terminated, at least temporarily, a period of experimentation and indecision lasting since the time of Saint Louis, who had claimed as legally due to him by the general custom of the realm various traditional aids. These customary payments were fundamentally arbitrary levies which kings and other lords collected from their vassals and subjects on occasions and in amounts determined essentially by customary practice and by the extent of the lord's power over his dependents, rather than by the lord's evident and undeniable need for help. Some aids — those taken for crusading and to ransom the lord — were easier to justify than others—those collected for marrying a daughter or knighting a son, for example. The legitimacy or illegitimacy of the aids was not, however, of central importance, since custom was their chief justification, and it was long usage that Saint Louis emphasized in claiming the aids he sought. His success in implementing his demands was not great, thanks to the manipulability and vagueness of custom. Still, the conviction with which he voiced his claims was impressive.

The following Notes are concerned with Summae of which editions have been undertaken by members of the Institute, or which otherwise have been discussed in previous issues of the Bulletin.

In the sixth canto of the Inferno Dante depicts the punishment of the gluttonous. They are represented as lying in the mire under a continuous heavy storm of hail and snow. Three-headed Cerberus keeps barking over them and rending them apart:

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.

The subject of penance and confession is central in the writings of Alcuin of York (†804), and found in many different literary genres: e.g., liturgical writings, devotional works, letters, and small treatises. The genius of Alcuin, as well as the principal thrust of his work at the court of Charlemagne, lay in pedagogical concerns. Within the school reform, however, we find traces of theological thought, most notably his ideas regarding penance. His overriding interest was pastoral rather than theoretical. He was concerned about the well-being of his pupils and it was for them that he composed his most important treatise on confession and penance, Ad pueros sancti Martini.

The traditional account of the development of theology in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is that the emerging “academic” discipline of theology was separated from the Bible and its commentary, that the two existed on parallel but separate courses, and that the one developed in a “systematic” direction whereas the other continued to exist as a separate “practical” or “biblical-moral” school. Focusing largely on texts of an allegedly “theoretical” nature, this view misunderstands or, indeed, entirely overlooks the evidence issuing from lectures on the Bible — postills, glosses, and commentaries — notably the biblical Glossa “ordinaria.” A witness to an alternative understanding, Peter Comestor, master and chancellor of the cathedral school of Paris in the second half of the twelfth century, shows that theology was created as much from the continued study of the Bible as from any “systematic” treatise. Best known for his Historia scholastica, a combined explanation and rewrite of the Bible focusing on the historical and literal aspects of sacred history, Comestor used the Gloss as a textbook in his lectures on the Gospels both to elucidate matters of exegesis and to help him deduce doctrinal truth. Through a close reading of Comestor's lectures on the Gospel of John, this essay reevaluates the teaching of theology at the cathedral school of Paris in the twelfth century and argues that the Bible and its Gloss stood at the heart of this development.

Richard Jasper Durling (1932–1999) made many important contributions to the study of the Latin tradition and critical edition of the works of Galen (AD 129–216), the Greek physician who was a notable figure in the history of medicine from late antiquity to the eighteenth century.

When in late 1399 Henry Bolingbroke (1367–1413) took the English throne as Henry IV from his cousin Richard II (d. 1400), the deposed king's poet John Gower (ca. 1330–1408), who had been long in Henry's favor too, wrote extensively in support of the revolution by which the Lancastrian regime was installed. Aged and probably infirm, Gower had been quiet since finishing with the Confessio amantis in the early thirteen-nineties: “A bok for king Richardes sake” (∗24), Gower had called it, written “upon his comandynge” (∗54). Then came suddenly the substantial body of Gower's Lancastrian apologetics, within a period of a few weeks or months, between late 1399 and early 1400: the some three-hundred line inaugural panegyric, in rhyme royal stanzas, now usually called “In Praise of Peace” — re vera, “ad laudem et memoriam serenissimi principis domini Regis Henrici quarti'” — the Lancastrian Carmen saeculare, celebrating Henry's installation, and Gower's last writing in English; possibly some of the shorter Latin verse as well; and, most grand, his account of the revolution's advent in the Cronica tripertita, in three books, 1062 Leonines, covering precisely the chronological span embedded in the official “Record et proces del renunciacion du roy Richard, le second apres Ie conquest, et de lacceptacion de mesme la renunciacion, ensemblement oue la deposicion de mesme le roy Richard,” enrolled in the rolls of parliament in late 1399, on which Gower based his verse enarration.

Francesc Eiximenis' (1340?-1409?) discussion of wine and wine-drinking is part of a moral treatise on the sin of gluttony found within the Terç del Crestià (1384). This work is the third book of an extensive encyclopedia entitled Lo Crestià (The Christian) which Eiximenis never completed. Of its thirteen projected books, to be written in honor of Christ and the Apostles, only four, the Primer, Segon, Terç, and Dotzè, materialized. The size and scope of this proposed work were to be comprehensive, covering all areas pertinent to the improvement of the moral character of the Christian. Within Lo Crestià the Terç, in itself a work of vast proportions, occupies a prominent place owing to its style and content. As F. Martí correctly pointed out, ‘… the Terç is the most important and extensive of the four books of Lo Crestià completed by Eiximenis, as well as the most interesting and remarkable of all.’

Many of the surviving texts associated with seventh-century Ireland deal with eschatology. In general, these texts convey assumptions on the fate of the soul after death that are consistent with the traditional Christian view in late antiquity in the West, namely, that the ultimate destiny of most Christians will not be determined till the great universal judgment at the end of time. To illustrate this point I will adduce the theological treatise Liber de ordine creaturarum and the moral treatise De XII abusiuis saeculi, as well as religious poetry and hagiographical works, and set them in their likely liturgical context. In contrast, the Vision of Fursey and Adomnán's Life of Columba stand out as revealing the strong influence of concepts originating in the early Christian ascetic circles of Egypt. Irish Christians were thus also exposed to the idea that the fate of all individual souls will be determined immediately after death. Awareness and even endorsement of this point of view will have prepared the way toward accepting the novel teaching that a finite period of painful purification immediately follows the death of most Christians. The survival of these two texts demonstrating the presence in seventh-century Ireland of the belief that the final determination of an individual's fate occurs at the time of death draws attention to the radical change in perspective that must have been an essential initial step in the very formulation of the doctrine of purgatory.

In the first book of De doctrina Christiana, Augustine of Hippo famously teaches that only the Trinity is to be enjoyed; all other things and even people are to be used toward this singular end. The brevity of Augustine's passing remarks on the Trinity gives no hint that he will later devote many pages to the topic. He writes:

The Virgin Mary, as Mother of the Word, has long been associated with early literacy training in the medieval West, an association that, as this article argues, connects her to The Marriage of Philology and Mercury's Lady Grammar. While Gary P. Cestaro has demonstrated the ways in which representations of Lady Grammar became more maternal throughout the medieval period, this article demonstrates how and why the Virgin Mother took on the persona of Lady Grammar in both verbal and material arts from the High to the Late Middle Ages. It explores the famous sculptures of the Virgin and Lady Grammar on the Royal Portal at Chartres Cathedral, the writings of grammatical theorists that led to these depictions, and the thirteenth-century artes poetriae that portray Mary as a Christian Grammatica. From St. Augustine's declaration that grammar is a “guardian” to the claims of Gervais of Melkley, John of Garland, and Eberhard the German that Mary is the mother of beautiful expressions, grammatical thought and practice in the medieval West led to a characterization of the Virgin, guardian of the Word in her womb and parent to Wisdom, as the supreme teacher and exemplar of Latin. Adopting Lady Grammar's iconography of the nourishing breast, classroom text, and punitive whip, the Virgin Mary is not only connected to basic Latin instruction but also comes to embody its principles.