Rund fünfzig Jahre sind es her, dass in die bis dahin fast einhellige Meinung über die Lebenszeit und Heimat Commodians in Afrika des dritten Jahrhunderts durch die Veröffentlichungen Heinrich Brewers ein solch revolutionärer Einbruch geschah, dass trotz vereinzelter Einsprüche der von Brewer gegebene Zeitansatz im fünften Jahrhundert auf Grund einer nicht immer besonders kritischen Nachprüfung auch heute noch die meisten Anhänger zu haben scheint. So ist Karl Büchner 1951 in dem Bericht über Lateinische Literatur und Sprache in der Forschung seit 1937 der Meinung, feststellen zu können, dass Pierre Courcelle in einem auf Brewer fussenden Aufsatze gezeigt habe, Commodian habe im Carmen 805–822 seine Prophezeiung über die Endverfolgung unter Abänderung der Apokalypse nach Orosius und nach Salvian gestaltet; und auch auf dem zweiten patristischen Kongress in Oxford 1955 hatte ein ‘master theme’ die gleiche Tendenz, Commodians Lebenszeit im fünften Jahrhundert zu erweisen. Da scheint es mir an der Zeit, noch einmal eine Überprüfung des ganzen Materials zu unternehmen, um feststellen zu können, was sich nun wirklich über Commodian und seine Gedichte mit Sicherheit aussagen lässt.

However much Procopius' judgment of Byzantine diplomacy must be corrected, his outraged statement cannot be said to be entirely without justification. Subsidies did form one of the principal tools of Byzantine relations with the barbarians, and the results obtained therefrom were seldom commensurate with the sums expended.

Among the many disputed episcopal elections of the twelfth century, there are few that present both as many problems and as many points of interest as that at Langres in 1138. The diocese of Langres had since the time of the Carolingian emperors been among the most important in France. As early as 872 Charles the Bald, at the request of bishop Isaac, granted jointly to the cathedral of St. Mamas at Langres and to St. Stephen at Dijon the right, previously held by the local count, to coin money. In 967, the lay count was officially replaced by the bishop, although most of his rights were subinfeudated to a vidame. ‘Par Langres,’ wrote Ferdinand Lot, ‘suzeraine du Langogne, du Dijonnais et de ses annexes (Atuyer, Oscheret, Mémontois), du Boulenois, du Bassigny, du Lassois, du Tonnerrois, etc., c'est-à-dire de la moitié de la Bourgogne française, le roi pouvait exercer, à l'occasion, une grande influence en cette région.’ In 1179, the bishop recovered direct control over his rights as count and became tenant-in-chief of the crown for all his lands and powers, whereas among his own vassals he numbered the duke of Burgundy and the count of Champagne. Later, between 1179 and 1356, he rose to the rank of duke and was recognized as the third ecclesiastical peer of the realm, taking precedence over his own metropolitan, the archbishop of Lyons, at the coronation of the king. Already in the first half of the twelfth century, the diocese of Langres compared in power and size to the great ecclesiastical principalities of the Holy Roman Empire. It included practically all the present bishoprics of Langres and Dijon and extended almost to the towns of Troyes and Auxerre to the north and west and beyond Dijon to the south. Within its boundaries lay not only the great old Benedictine abbeys of Bèze and of St. Bénigne and St. Stephen at Dijon, but also Molesme, the mother-house of Cîteaux, and the newly-founded Cistercian monasteries of Clairvaux and Morimund.

The saying of Terentianus Maurus, habent sua fata libelli, may well be applied to the Latin text here edited. Out of my studies of Berthold of Zwiefalten's Chronicle grew my thesis for the Ph. D. degree of the University of Tübingen, Studien zur Chronik Bertholds von Zwiefalten, published in Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens 51 (1933) 83–101 and 183–195. The subsequent work on the Chronicle and the relevant studies that appeared between 1933 and 1938 are described below in the Introduction. The political developments in Germany prevented me from bringing out the planned edition of the reconstructed Chronicle, and compelled me to be satisfied with the presentation in the Revue Bénédictine 50 (1938) 141–145, of the synopsis of my reconstruction with the first edition of 1852 in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. In 1946–47 my fortune led me to Cornell University where the work in its present form was written. When preparing in 1953 the MS for the printer, I noticed in Wattenbach-Levison, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter I (Weimar 1952) 29 note 106, the edition by Erich König and Karl Otto Müller, Die Zwiefalter Chroniken Ortliebs und Bertholds (Schwäbische Chroniken der Stauferzeit 2; Stuttgart-Berlin 1941). Upon inquiry the W. Kohlhammer Verlag at Stuttgart informed me that their stock of the book had been destroyed during the war. Professor Dr. P. Gehring of the University Library at Tübingen then kindly mailed the surviving library copy of the book to Ithaca, New York, in January 1955. The examination of both Chronicles plainly showed me,

a) that the text of Berthold's Chronicle edited by Erich König is basically the text of my first reconstruction, the MS of which I had turned over to E. König before I left Germany in August 1939, and

b) that the Introduction to Berthold by Karl Otto Müller, also his re-evaluation of Ortlieb, often follow in word and contents my Tübingen Ph. D. Thesis of 1932.

One of the most significant and influential figures of the ‘renaissance of the twelfth century,’ though not mentioned by Charles Haskins in his monumental work of that title (Cambridge 1927), was the Calabrian Joachim of Flora, a man who contributed nothing directly to the revival of science, to a knowledge of Greek or Latin antiquity, or to the rise of a secular attitude. Long before the date of the appearance of Haskins' work, however, since Michelet in fact, Joachim's name was associated with the Renaissance, and in the early years of this century this link was emphasized by Burdach and his followers. He is supposed to have done more to orient men's minds towards, and to have aroused expectations of, a coming new age in the later Middle Ages than anyone else. Whether one wishes to go as far as Burdach went (and I myself certainly do not wish to do so), it is at least true that his works and the works associated with his name helped to create the ferment that was eventually, in a few centuries, to make men feel that they were in a new era of rebirth and that a period of darkness lay behind them.

Among the medieval hagiographical writings derived from the British Isles none enjoyed greater popularity throughout the Middle Ages than the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (= NB). This celebrated prose work, a typical product of the Othonian period, has come down to us in more than a hundred MSS in various versions. It embodies the adventurous sea-story of the Irish Abbot St. Brendan, one of the great sixth-century founders of monasteries. In structure, the NB consists actually of three parts: a brief introduction comments on St. Brendan's descent, youth, ascetic life, and early monastic foundations; the main body reports some twenty-six adventures which he and his fourteen companions encountered in their search for the terra repromissionis or paradisum terrestre, the tír tairgirne of the ancient Celts; finally, a terse epilogue narrates his life after his return and subsequent happy death. While the main body of the NB, the sea-voyage proper, is uncompounded and has been modeled after Old Irish sea-tales, known in Celtic literature as immrama, both the introduction and epilogue, necessary to give the story the appropriate frame, represent incidents culled from the Vita Sancti Brendani (= VB), which has come down to us in various Irish and Latin recensions. These two narratives have over the centuries been combined by several medieval compilers into a single story in a more or less artistic way. Consequently, the student of the NB is ultimately confronted with that much feared and confusing type of Brendaniana, called conflated texts, which in view of the absence of clearly drawn lines between the contents of the VB and NB, have for centuries offered vexing problems to researchers. One of the minor, but nevertheless irritating, results of these fusions is the misleading caption ‘Vita’ Sancti Brendani, exhibited by a goodly number of NB-MSS, which has misled many cataloguers, medieval and modern, to list the Navigatio as a Vita. Thus, not less than half of all NB-MSS sail in the maelstrom of medieval literature under a false flag. A most peculiar Latin NB-MS, showing the same misleading caption Vita Sancti BrendaniAbbatis, is codex 256 of the Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal. This MS, hitherto unavailable to research, is of signal importance for the history of the Vita, the Navigatio, and above all, for the Old French translations of the Navigatio with their re-translations into Latin, so unique in medieval literature.

Like the Preacher, son of David, Nicholas of Cusa knew that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness and he gave his heart to search it out. In phrases reminiscent of the classical definition of philosophy, the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, and medieval venery, he pictured his intellectual life as a venatio sapientiae and himself as a keen and pious hunter. Virtually all his important philosophical and theological works, from the De docta ignorantia of 1440 to the De venatione sapientiae of 1463, document the chase. Wisdom is the principal subject of the dialogues Idiota de sapientia. And when the Pseudo-Petrarch incorporated most of the first of these two dialogues in his De vera sapientia (put together around 1470 and printed in all the collected editions of Petrarch's works), his definition of wisdom was given added publicity and authority.

Das Verzeichnis der Römerbriefkommentare der lateinischen Kirche bis zu Nikolaus von Lyra war ursprünglich als Anhang einer Dissertation beigegeben worden, die sich mit der mittelalterlichen Exegese von Röm. 13. 1–7 befasst. Das Verzeichnis wurde überarbeitet und ergänzt. Notwendig wird sich auf weite Strecken Übereinstimmung mit dem Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi F. Stegmüllers ergeben, dem ich vor allem für die Handschriften wertvolle Ergänzungen verdanke. Mit einigen Ausnahmen sind hier nur die Autoren aufgenommen worden, deren Kommentare durch Handschriften sicher bezeugt sind, während in dem Repertorium F. Stegmüllers auch alle unsicheren Daten verwertet worden sind. Aus der griechischen Kirche ist der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes verzeichnet, weil er in der Übersetzung Rufins eine bedeutende Rolle in der exegetischen Tradition der lateinischen Kirche spielt. Sofern die behandelten Autoren ausser dem Römerbrief auch andere paulinische Briefe kommentierten, sind die Angaben über Handschriften, Drucke etc. auch auf diese Kommentare ausgedehnt worden. Die Literaturangaben beziehen sich in erster Linie auf Fragen der Paulinenkommentare und der exegetischen Methode. Für die Incipits und Explicits verweise ich auf das Repertorium von F. Stegmüller.

Mr. Thomas E. Marston, Curator of the Classical Collection in the Yale University Library, having already been the owner of three 15th-century manuscripts of Juvenal and Persius, which he donated in 1936 to the Yale University Library, acquired in 1953 a much older copy of Juvenal alone. This manuscript, having remained for five hundred years in private collections in Italy, first at Osimo, then at Iesi, had never been collated. Now, with Mr. Marston's generous permission, it has at length been studied and it is the findings of this study that this paper presents. It seemed best, inasmuch as the manuscript affords little new light on the tradition of the text, to restrict this report to sample readings, sufficient to establish the character of the manuscript; a complete collation, however, will be deposited for use in the Yale University Library, as well as with Mr. Marston.

The text of the comedies of Terence has been transmitted to us in two families of manuscripts, known as the Bembine (A) and the Calliopian (ω). The sole representative of the first is Vaticanus latinus 3226, IV-V century, in Rustic Capitals. The second family is composed of a number of manuscripts of Carolingian times and after; these have been subdivided into two groups (γ, δ) according to several characteristics which permit such a distinction, among them illustrations and lacunae. The indication of a new scene in the two families of manuscripts follows a method which seems to be diverse, and it is the purpose of this study to examine the principles involved. The investigation will not be limited to the manuscripts alone but will consider other sources of the Terentian tradition which help to clear up certain obscurities.

Tradition and habit over many centuries have led Western civilization to take for granted the idiom, throwing pearls before swine. Yet, as numerous interpreters of its source, Matt. 7.6, have puzzled, why pearls? The principal exegetic difficulty of the passage, in other words, consists in the analysis of the literal rather than the idiomatic meaning. The conventional semantic rationalizations can be illustrated by quotations from two of many commentators: J. P. Lange calls the act of casting pearls before swine ‘foolish’; O. Baumgarten et al. consider the expression ‘ein derb volkstümliches Gleichnis: man wird doch nicht den Säuen Perlen als Futter vorwerfen.’ Various attempts have been made to change the reading of the passage: while these provide no satisfactory solution to the problem, they are, obviously, expressions of dissatisfaction. The present note is a suggestion that the correct interpretation may be reached by a study of the stylistic pattern of the passage.

In 1912 A. E. Anspach, who was then beginning to prepare an edition of the works of Isidore of Seville for the Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, published, from a Paris manuscript of Isidore, a short treatise, entitled Institutionum disciplinae, which he had been the first to notice. The subject of the treatise is the education of the young nobleman. It gives the immediate impression of being a series of quotations, excerpted from a variety of sources, and put together in a somewhat haphazard way. This impression turns out upon examination to be an accurate one.

The late Edmund Bishop's suggestion that Merovingian liturgical circles had possibly been influenced by a ‘Gregorian’ type of Service Book seems to have remained unnoticed and unappreciated. Yet it has appeared to me to be important for the early history of the Gregorianum. Scholars have always had a sense of frustration about this Sacramentary since no manuscript earlier than that of Cambrai 164, written about 811 or 812, for Bishop Hildoard of that see, has come down to us. To get behind this text has always been their goal, and it has often been assumed that the ninth-century Sacramentary of the Chapter Library of Padua did in fact contain such a text. Whether this is so or not (and Rev. Klaus Gamber has recently shown there are grounds for rejecting it), the series of documents here examined would seem to point to the years circa 680, as marking the terminus ad quem of the Gregorianum.

After the intensive studies of Ermini and Daniel on the parallels in Christian Latin literature — religious and secular — to the form and content of the Dies irae, it may seem presumptuous to suggest that its thirteenth-century author may have carried over into the composition of this hymn — or (to be more accurate) sequence — some recollections of his youthful reading of Virgil.

The commission of subdelegation here transcribed is one of a large number surviving, in the original or in transcript, from a jurisdictional dispute between the archbishop of York and the prior and convent of Durham. The case was tried before various benches of papal judges delegate between the years 1281 and 1286. This commission is a good, clear example of its type. It reflects the structure and phraseology of the papal mandate. Its particular distinction lies in its bearing on its dorse a certification, a dated note of receipt, in the hand, presumably, of one of the subdelegates, Master Robert Merley, a canon of Dunblane in Scotland. Beyond its obvious interest for antiquarians involved with Dunblane, the certification, particularly in conjunction with another endorsement on the commission, helps date, place, and make real, if not simple, activities within a peculiarly elusive and involved legal mechanism where fiction is everywhere a possibility.

Jean Birel, prior general of the Carthusian order (1346–1360), is now remembered for the most part as an unsuccessful candidate for the papal throne in December 1352, following the death of Clement VI. From the early history of the order by Petrus Dorlandus (1454–1507) to the most recent biographical articles, this remains his chief claim to fame. The story of his candidacy can be found, however, in only one source, an anonymous history of the Carthusian order upon which Dorlandus and later writers have relied.

As in previous Bulletins, bibliographical references are limited (1) to the first notice given of a manuscript not recorded in the Repertorium, and (2) to significant corrections or amplifications concerning previously known and new manuscripts (such references being preceded by ‘cf.’). Details of descriptions given in the Repertorium are not repeated, and new manuscripts are marked by the symbol *.

Neither of the two general councils of the western Church held between the Second and Third Lateran (1139, 1179) produced a large body of legislation: the genuine canons of the Council of Rheims (1148) number eighteen; those of Tours (1163) about ten. But in the great collection of Mansi this meagre store is eked out by an equal weight of additional canons, sixteen for Rheims and ten for Tours. Mansi looked on them with no great favor, but offered no criterion by which their validity and value might be judged. The Rheims canons, so far as I am aware, have never been submitted to critical study. The Tours canons, on the other hand, were examined and shown to be spurious by Seckel in a valuable appendix to his article on the sources of the canons of the English council of 1175, which he published in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Kirchenrecht in 1899.

Nous présentons la suite du dépouillement des MSS Bamberg Staatsbibl. Can. 17 (collections II, II et I), Leipzig, Stadtbibl. 247 (II, III, IV, IV) et de la petite collection Barcelone, Arch. Corona de Aragon, S. Cugat 55, fol. 62v-66. Nous groupons les questions qui y sont contenues en deux séries: la première (III) contient généralement, en plus du thème, les références pro et contra de chaque subdivision (sigle R), l'énoncé de la solution (S), souvent obtenue par le moyen d'une distinction (Sd), et la discussion des arguments avancés (A). Les sigles employés dans la table permettent au lecteur de se rendre compte du développement de chaque question.