Late antiquity and the early Middle Ages witnessed a change in the Christian attitude toward the remains of the saints. Holy bodies came to be treated less and less as normal corpses, worthy of special veneration but still subject to many of the laws and customs which had regulated the treatment of human remains in pagan Antiquity. They came rather to be viewed as cult objects which could be moved or even divided up according to the demands of religion with little regard for earlier prohibitions of these practices. This change occurred relatively early in the Greek, eastern portion of the Roman Empire. In the mid-fourth century the Caesar Gallus translated a saint's body from one tomb to another, and less than two centuries later Justinian asked Pope Hormisdas for portions of the bodies of the apostles. Despite some outstanding exceptions such as the translations performed by St. Ambrose, the Christians of the West were more conservative in these matters. Nevertheless, by the ninth century at the very latest, western Christians had followed the lead of the eastern church in both translating and dismembering holy bodies.

The intensification of intellectual endeavour which characterises the twelfth century is manifested in the art of rhetoric no less than in the other fields of learning. Two new types of theoretical manual represent the trends of twelfth-century rhetoric: the artes dictandi, which apply rhetorical doctrine to the composition of letters and documents, and the artes poetrie, which are primarily concerned with the writing of verse. This creative momentum continued after 1200, particularly in Italy, where dictamen underwent rapid development. There the ars notarie emerged as a semi-autonomous discipline, which was exclusively devoted to the composition of legal documents. Moreover, Italian dictatores of the thirteenth century began to turn their attention to secular speeches, creating a new offshoot of dictamen which is sometimes called the ars arengandi. Boncompagno of Signa's Rhetorica novissima (finished in 1235) is by far the most ambitious of these new treatises on public speaking. Most of the early works on oratory are collections of models, consisting either of exordia or of entire speeches. The Rhetorica novissima, however, not only provides models, but attempts to lay out a completely new theoretical foundation for the art of speech-making.

The earliest text of The Dream of the Rood consists of a few lines of runic inscriptions carved around the edges of a North English high cross now at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire. It represents no more than a fragment of the text as we find it in the Vercelli MS, a short passage describing the Crucifixion and the ordeal of the Cross. The precise relationship between the Ruthwell runes and the Vercelli poem is a matter of conjecture and dispute. To some critics the Ruthwell inscriptions represent an ‘earlier poem,’ of which the Vercelli text is an expansion or a later revision or both. It is a question to which I shall wish to devote some attention in due course. For the present, I would suggest that the runic inscriptions provide a valuable clue to the interpretation of the Vercelli poem along lines so far left unexplored; for the runes form a part of a rich iconographic program, developing a unified meaning closely connected with the figurative meaning of The Dream of the Rood.

Virtually all who have written on Piers Plowman B agree that one's interpretation of the pardon in Passus 7 is central to one's understanding of the entire poem. Unfortunately, no similar agreement prevails concerning the details of the scene or its general significance, a fact we might infer from the widely discrepant interpretations of the entire poem's subject and outlook. Nevertheless, most who have written on the subject of the pardon may be grouped into one of two categories, depending on their assessment of the episode's general rhetorical slant.

It is well known that in the Middle Ages mathematics had little part in the study of nature. Natural philosophy, which had in its purview all of nature and natural things, was considered fundamentally distinct from mathematics, both in subject matter and in method. Yet there was a handful of sciences in which mathematics and natural philosophy came together, sciences that were to have a very significant role in later scientific thought. These were what Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, called the ‘intermediate sciences’ (scientiae mediae), since they were thought of as in some way intermediate between the natural and the mathematical; they included astronomy, optics, harmonics, and sometimes mechanics. They were also known as the ‘subalternate sciences,’ since they were considered under, or subalternate to, pure mathematics, and sometimes to natural philosophy as well.

These pages complete the inventory of Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries published in Traditio 23 (1967) 313–413, 24 (1968) 149–245, 26 (1970) 135–216, 27 (1971) 251–351, and 28 (1972) 281–396. The commentaries have been arranged alphabetically according to the author's first name, with a brief bio-bibliographical note and indication of manuscripts and editions. It is to be noted, however, that mention of the manuscripts has been omitted in the entry for Thomas Aquinas in view of the publication now in progress by H. F. Dondaine and H. V. Shooner of Codices manuscripti operum Thomae de Aquino (Rome 1967ff.).

Kinship networks and social hierarchies provide an important key to the Byzantine Empire's tenacious survival over the course of more than a millennium. This study concentrates on one such social networking strategy, that of ritual brotherhood. No investigation of ritual brotherhood can overlook the Byzantine evidence, for Byzantium is unique among medieval societies in having formally incorporated into its ecclesiastical ritual the ceremony by which the priest's prayers and blessing make ‘brothers’ of two men. Further, the history of the empire provides ample evidence for the concrete implementation of this bond. Hagiographical and historical narratives as well as regulations of secular and ecclesiastical authorities attest to the importance of ritual brotherhood as it was practiced by holy men and patriarchs, aristocrats and emperors. The Byzantine evidence is, unsurprisingly, at the core of John Boswell's argument in his Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe,' Boswell drew attention to this interesting and multi-faceted relationship, but he did not explore the full range of sources for ritual brotherhood, nor did he attempt to show how this relationship related to others within Byzantine society.

The question of the dramatis personae in the last great act of history was a subject of perennial interest in the Middle Ages. Parts, both good and bad, had to be cast and it is not surprising that national hopes and rivalries frequently crept into the various attempts to assign these tremendous cosmic roles. Although both the pessimistic expectation of a mounting crescendo of evil and the hope of a millennium had existed in Christian thought since its beginning, it was the Joachimist structure of history which most clearly brought together the final crisis of evil and the final blessedness in a last great act which was yet within history, separated from eternity by the Second Advent. The concept of an age of blessedness had three strands in it: first, the idea of the millennium, derived from the Apocalypse (20.1–3), in which Satan is bound for a thousand years; secondly, the concept of a Sabbath Age, symbolized in the Seventh Day of Creation when God rested from His labors; thirdly, the Trinitarian interpretation of history, finally worked out by Joachim, in which history was expected to culminate in the Third Age of the Holy Spirit. The first two ideas did not necessarily lead to the expectation of a last age of blessedness within time: the millennium was frequently interpreted as covering the whole period between the First and Second Advents, or again, as constituting a rule of Christ and His Saints beyond history; the Sabbath Age could be seen as a Sabbath beyond the Second Advent and Last Judgment and therefore also beyond history. It was only when these two concepts became linked with the Trinitarian view of history that they clearly symbolized a crowning age of history, set in the future and therefore not yet attained, whilst unmistakably within the time process, preceding the winding-up of history in the Second Advent and Last Judgment. The full force of Joachim's concept of the Third Age was rarely grasped, appearing usually in a much-debased form, but the program of Last Things, as worked out by Joachites of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, profoundly influenced the form which these expectations took in the later Middle Ages and, indeed, right down to the end of the sixteenth century.

In Section 1 of the present essay I present evidence that in the early twelfth-century nominalists were called vocales, a name that only later was replaced by nominales. In Section 2 I argue that ‘vocalism' arose about 1080, one generation of scholars before Roscelin. Since Garlandus' vocalistic Dialectica could be thought to provide evidence of an even earlier origin of the theory, Section 3 will deal with the date of this work, which has wrongly been assigned to the mid-eleventh century or earlier. Sections 4–6 will present a number of unpublished texts by vocalist authors, and the Appendix will supply editions of vocalist texts commenting on or otherwise discussing Porphyry's Isagoge.

Sometime around the year 1090, the monks of Saint-Aubin of Angers became involved in an unusually well-documented dispute when some vineyards previously quitclaimed to them by a man called Vivianus the Rich became the subject of a calumnia or challenge by Vivianus' wife, Aremburgis; his son and heir, Rigaldus; and his daughter's husband, Sevinus. These three calumniae were discusssed at Le Lude before two prominent lords of the region, whose joint decision favored the monks and apparently left the three challengers empty-handed. About three decades earlier, a similar outcome was reached in another well-documented case in which a lay person contested a gift that a relative of his had made to a religious establishment. When Nihardus became involved in a multi-faceted lawsuit concerning a mill that his kinsman Guismandus II had given to the abbey of Marmoutier, Count Guy of Vendôme (1050–66) and others decided in Vendôme at the dwelling of another lord of the region that the first of Nihardus' two calumniae regarding the disputed mill was unjust. In the late eleventh century, however, a third case of the same general type led to a different result. After a youth called Hugo of Sourches had challenged his father Burchardus' gift to the abbey of Saint-Vincent of Le Mans, Hamelinus the forester, Patricius Pertica, and the entire court of Sourches decided that while the monks should keep the gift of Burchardus, they should also give some money to Hugo.

A notable feature of theological studies in the past decade has been a new and widespread interest in the subject of Tradition. Long considered as a peculiarly Roman Catholic problem to be solved, as it had been created, by the theologians of the ‘post-Reformation papal communion,' Tradition has now suddenly overleaped the walls of Rome to become the concern and serious preoccupation of theologians of widely differing backgrounds and convictions. Indeed, the new interest in Tradition is so closely associated with non-Catholics that it has almost become a commonplace to contrast recent theological developments among Protestants and Catholics by remarking, with some justice if some exaggeration, that now Protestants are going back to Tradition and Catholics going back to Scripture.

Some twenty years ago, when few major books of Galen were available in modern English, one of his lesser writings, the treatise Περὶ μαρασμοῦ was published in translation. Even while this translation was in press, Pearl Kibre unearthed in the Vatican Library a text De marasmode secundum sententiam Galieni, which was composed by Bernard of Gordon at Montpellier in the early 1300s and is the only systematic discussion of marasmus in the medical literature for some fifteen centuries after Galen. By further coincidence, these two texts made their appearance just as several historians of science and of medicine were drawing attention to the ancient and medieval interpretations of life as the interaction between ‘innate heat' and ‘radical moisture'—precisely the paradigms in which the concept of marasmus was rooted. In 1974, in a seminal article on the Humidum radicale in thirteenth-century medicine, Michael McVaugh offered a first assessment of Bernard's discussion. His positive appraisal suggested that the text was worth editing and analyzing on its own terms, an enterprise that became more feasible with the recognition of additional manuscripts, references, and implications. A critical and annotated edition is presented here, together with an effort to collate Bernard's treatment of marasmus with his other works, with the teachings of his colleagues, and with the Galenic tradition.

Of the numerous real and hypothetical experimental illustrations invoked against the existence of natural and artifical vacua during the Latin Middle Ages, two may be singled out as especially prominent: the clepsydra and the separation of two surfaces. The descriptions and explanations of these two popular experiments will serve as the focus of this paper, since they strikingly exemplify the kinds of arguments and the often ad hoc character of the medieval defense of Aristotle's contention that nature is a material plenum. Medieval authors, with perhaps one exception, denied the actual existence in the world of separate, continuously extended vacua, however small or large.

The Latin Empire of Constantinople was established by an agreement drawn up in March 1204 between the Venetian and non-Venetian Crusaders of the fourth Crusade, before they captured the city for the second and last time. According to the agreement, each side would appoint six electors; these would elect an Emperor; thereafter the party whose candidate for Emperor had been unsuccessful would choose Latin clergy to serve as a cathedral chapter for Santa Sophia, and would name the Latin Patriarch. The Venetians were chiefly interested in the commercial opportunities in Byzantine territory; and, especially since they had stipulated that the Doge would not be a vassal of the Latin Emperor, they were willing to see the imperial throne go to a non-Venetian, and to establish an economic monopoly, at the same time taking control of the most important church offices. They therefore secured the election of Count Baldwin of Flanders as the first Latin Emperor, and themselves chose a Venetian cleric, Thomas Morosini, as first Patriarch. In April 1205 Baldwin was captured by the forces of Ioannitsa, King of the Vlachs and Bulgars. Sometime thereafter, Ioannitsa had Baldwin murdered in prison. This deed was in all probability committed in a fit of rage at the act of certain Latin forces who had burned down the quarter of the Bogomile supporters of Ioannitsa in Philippopolis, and who had persuaded the Greeks of the place, formerly allied with Ioannitsa, to desert him.

As a monk at the famous Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede (673–735) produced a body of exegetical work that enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the Middle Ages. Something of that spirit seems to have reawakened in recent years, as Bede's commentaries are increasingly being studied and made available to wider audiences in English translation. One distinctive feature of this development is a growing awareness that Bede's reputation as an exegete is more multifaceted than has been previously realized, that it goes beyond what Beryl Smalley called “his faithful presentation of the tradition in its many aspects. Whereas earlier interpreters were content to regard Bede as a mere compiler reputed for his good sense and able Latinity, scholars are now paying homage to him as a penetrating and perceptive biblical commentator who did more than reproduce the thought of the fathers who preceded him. As I intend to show in what follows, Bede's treatment of prayer and contemplation in his exegesis attests well to this quality of his thought. The topic to date has received only minimal commentary, mainly on what Bede actually taught about prayer. My approach will be different. I begin with a discussion not of Bede's exegetical method but of his occupations and aims as a spiritual writer. Neither Bede's spirituality nor his role as spiritual writer have received the attention they deserve, and it is hoped that the reflections offered here will help rekindle interest in these neglected subjects. I then consider four prayer-related themes in his exegesis that bring his aims as a spiritual writer into view. Patristic tradition had commented widely on prayer, and Bede, we will see, did not set out to summarize this tradition in its entirety but rather to highlight and distill certain themes within it, those that best suited the needs of his Anglo-Saxon audience.

These pages continue the inventory of Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries published in Traditio 23 (1967) 313–413 and 24 (1968) 149–245. The commentaries have been arranged alphabetically according to the author's first name, with a brief bio-bibliographical note and indication of manuscripts and editions.

In the discussion of the Christian elements in Beowulf, it seems to have escaped the notice of scholars that the character of Unferth may provide an example of Christian allegory consciously employed by the poet. If the name Unferth means mar-peace or strife, an important clue to his significance in the poem is being ignored. I wish to suggest that the author of Beowulf is employing, or at least thinking of, Unferth as an abstract personification in the manner of Prudentius, Martianus Capella or Sedulius, and that the poem has even closer connections with the Christian tradition than has hitherto been perceived. If we can accept Unferth as, say, Discordia, we shall find how well this interpretation fits in with the suggestion Schücking made some years ago that the character of Beowulf has been molded, to some extent at least, by the Christian ideal of the perfect ruler, the rex justus, as set forth by St. Augustine, Gregory the Great and others, and that the ethical ideal set up by the epic is that of ordinata concordia or mensura.

Perhaps not unnaturally, but disastrously for itself, Byzantine historiography has so far, if at all, tended to view the role played by the Caucasians, especially Armenians, in the history of the Eastern Empire with somewhat parochial, or microcosmic, eyes. To those eyes, Armenia, and Caucasia in general, remain largely a terra incognita, despite occasional inroads into that unknown territory. Thus, even when, as of late, the importance of, especially, the Armenian element for Byzantine history has at last been recognized, insufficient acquaintance with the historical, cultural, and social background of the part of the world where that element originated and whence it came to the Empire is nevertheless still too much in evidence. And yet, precisely because of the importance for Byzantine history of the element in question, its background ought to be of interest to the Byzantine scholar, for it alone can fully explain the nature of the role which was played by that element. This is precisely the scope of this study: not merely to repeat what has at last been admitted, but also to supplement it and bring it into focus; in other words, to describe the background in order more fully to explain the role.

Master Bernard, archdeacon of Compostella, and a member of the Canon Law School of Bologna in the early thirteenth century, is generally known as the author of a collection of decretals which he compiled in 1208 at the Roman Curia, with the aid of Pope Innocent III's registers, covering the first ten years (February 22, 1198–February 21, 1208) of that pontificate. Bernard's contemporary, the celebrated master Tancred, further tells us that the Spaniard's compilation was used by the school for some time as Collectio Romana, until in 1210 Pope Innocent promulgated an official collection of his decretals, arranged by his subdeacon and notary, Petrus Collivaccinus of Benevento. One of the Pope's reasons for issuing the authentic law book—the first of its kind in Church history—had been the fact that some of the decretals in Bernard's work, though genuine papal letters, were not considered by the Curia as universally binding. The new official collection, commonly known as Compilatio tertia, at once superseded Bernard's private collection, and for centuries the latter was known only from hearsay until rediscovered in modern times.