The relatively clear-cut distinction between the subjective and objective meanings of ᾄτη which appears in Aeschylean tragedy tends to disappear in Sophocles' extant work. The use and meaning of ᾄτη in Sophocles, rather, is marked by ambiguity. He shows himself conscious of the differences in meaning which Aeschylus had so sharply emphasized, but in a brilliant extension of his propensity for dramatic irony Sophocles most often employs ᾄτη in contexts where it carries the overtones of both blindness' and ‘ruin.’ This is, of course, quite consonant with so much else in Sophocles' dramatic style and way of thought.

The following study is an examination of selected aspects of the mythical paradigms presented in Sophocles' Philoctetes and Euripides' Orestes in an attempt to define the concerns that are shared by these two very different dramas. The first part deals with the characterization of Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes and discusses how the dramatist departed from the customary view of this character and appears to have been influenced by the figure of Telemachus in the Odyssey. The following section advances the thesis that in a number of significant regards Euripides' Orestes can be construed as a response to the paradigms of conduct presented in the Philoctetes the year before. Since the approach I will employ, while not new, differs from ‘standard’ procedure, in these prefatory remarks I would like to comment on why I have done so. Most current studies of individual dramas or the genre as a whole are relatively conservative in their approach; interpretation is, for the most part, restricted to the direct evidence of the text, analogies with other texts, and studies of particular techniques such as examinations of plot types and different forms of dramatic action. While this restraint has placed our understanding of the genre on a secure footing, I believe that there are certain important aspects of the medium for which it is not totally suited. The most important of these in my opinion concerns the evocation of mythical paradigms which, while they may lie beyond the immediate context of the drama, nevertheless shaped the author's conception and the audience's response to the characters on stage.

For St. Augustine the saeculum—the sum total of earthly human existence — was malignant. Not only was it so, he thought, since Adam's fall, but it would remain so until the Last Judgment. Since the Fall this world was no place in which to rejoice; only otherworldly liberation could be had ‘from this life of misery, a kind of hell on earth.’ Historical events, aside from the Incarnation, remained for Augustine ‘a chaos of human sin divided by acts of divine power.’ With Christ, history had entered into its sixth and last earthly age and there was no hope for any greater earthly future. In the City of God (20.7) Augustine rejected as a ‘ridiculous fable’ the view that the thousand-year kingdom of Christ in Revelation (20.1-6) would be a future earthly kingdom, interpreting it instead as a figure for the life of the Church in the present. ‘There are no verbs of historical movement in the City of God,’ Peter Brown assures us, ‘no sense of progress to aims that may be achieved in history.’

The two novelties to be discussed in this article are the Euripidean association of ἄτη and μοĩϱα at Medea 976–988 and at Electra 1301–1307. Briefly stated, these two novelties, or new concepts, are as follows: first, in Medea 976–988, for the first time in extant Greek literature, μοĩϱα is associated with ἄτη not in the latter's subjective meaning of ‘blindness,’ ‘infatuation,’ or ‘folly,’ but rather in its objective meaning of ‘ruin,’ ‘calamity,’ or ‘disaster’; secondly, an entirely new meaning for ἄτη is introduced at Electra 1301–1307, inasmuch as in this passage ἄτη means μοĩϱα, ‘fate’ or ‘destiny,’ again for the first time in extant Greek literature.

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 reform of rhetoric is an integral part of the great program of moral reform undertaken by Plato, and the intensity with which he pursues the subject is a measure of the importance it assumed in his thought. This importance is only partly a result of the enormous and perverse influence wielded by rhetoric on politics and the ethics of the individual. The basic reason for Plato's hostility to sophistic rhetoric was that it took the side of appearance in the conflict between appearance and reality which lay behind much of the Socratic–Platonic philosophy. Rhetoric as it was developed by the great teachers of the late fifth century and exercised in the early fourth was concerned, not with knowledge, but with the appearance of knowledge. It did not care for truth, only for what was probable (εἰϰός) or persuasive (πιθανόν). ‘To seem’ (δοϰεĩν, ϕαíνεσθαı) rather than ‘to be’ (εἷναı) was its goal.

Der von K. G. Goetz unternommene Nachweis, dass der von Hartel in seiner Ausgabe der Werke Cyprians unter die Spuria aufgenommene kleine Brief ‘Credo te retinere …’ der ursprüngliche Anfang des cyprianischen Traktates Ad Donatum sei, fand seiner Zeit die Billigung H. von Sodens und A. Harnacks. C. Weyman dagegen hat den Versuch als völlig verfehlt bezeichnet, O. Bardenhewer spricht von einem Monolog, und G. Krüger vermisst im Verlaufe des Monologs jede Andeutung dafür, dass es sich um einen Dialog handelt, während er später den Traktat als einen Dialog erklärt, ‘wie sich aus dem Anfang und dem Ende der Schrift deutlich ergibt,’ um allerdings gleich darauf wieder festzustellen, dass jede Andeutung dafür fehle, dass es sich um einen Dialog oder Scheindialog handle.

Anglo-Saxon scribes were compilers and organizers as well as copyists. Each major Old English literary manuscript gives evidence of editorial planning. The Beowulf codex was apparently designed as a collection of marvelous tales; the Vercelli Book as a collection of legendary and homiletic matter; and the first three poems of the Exeter Book (Christ I, II, and III) were arranged in proper chronological sequence.

The polemics of the investiture contest, both those of German and those of Italian origin, in most cases owe their survival to the copying activity of scribes in the monasteries and cathedral chapters of Germany during the twelfth century. This survival is in itself unexpected: the Libelli de lite continued to be copied at a period when their argumentation and critical apparatus must have appeared unsophisticated by comparison with the canonical and theological textbooks of the mid-twelfth century. The polemics seem to have been preserved not for their erudition but for their literary qualities. Thus the two most famous twelfth-century collections of eleventh-century libelli — that of the Codex Udalrici and that transcribed in the sixteenth-century codex, Hanover, Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek XI. 671 — are found to exploit the polemics for teaching purposes: not for the elucidation of the rights of King Henry IV or of Pope Gregory VII (as their contents might suggest), but as models of epistolary style for the instruction of the twelfth-century pupils of the cathedral school of Bamberg. ‘Codex I’ of the composite Hanover letter collection — which, like the Codex Udalrici, seems to have originated in Bamberg — contains an important group of pro-Henrician and anti-papal materials: the only extant exemplar of the Defensio Heinrici IV regis of Petrus Crassus, the decrees of the imperialist synods of Worms and Brixen, the encyclical of 1089 of the antipope Wibert of Ravenna, and the treatise of Pseudo-Udalric in favour of clerical marriage. However, ‘Codex I’ also includes pro-papal materials: the two letters of Archbishop Gebhard of Salzburg in support of Gregory VII, letters of Gregory VII himself concerning German ecclesiastical politics, a well-known letter of Urban II and the decrees of the reforming council of Piacenza of 1095. The eclectic nature of the compilation of ‘Codex I’ suggests that the polemical works were regarded by the compiler primarily as model performances in the rhetorical art of the trivium.

Paulinus of Nola (ca. 355–431)—the wealthy aristocrat from Aquitaine and once governor of Campania who converted to asceticism, sold his and his wife's property, went to Nola to live as a monk at St. Felix's shrine, and was eventually elected bishop of Nola—is remembered not so much for any single great achievement as for a number of smaller ones. His contemporaries admired his asceticism, and he is counted among the earliest Christian Latin poets. His descriptions of the buildings at Nola are important to Christian archaeology, and he was known to many Latin fathers, including Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome. Of his works, about fifty letters and thirty poems are extant. Paulinus is also known through other writers, both contemporary and later; and what follows is an attempt to trace him in the literary tradition from his own day through to the Carolingian age.

Most scholars who have studied the medieval adaptations of Virgil's epic masterpiece agree that the principal change introduced to the story by the Roman d'Eneas and Heinrich von Veldeke's Eneit involves the Dido and Lavinia episodes. In general terms, the first four books of the Aeneid have been reduced in scope to the story of Dido, whereas Virgil's brief references to Lavinia in later books have been expanded into an independent love intrigue several thousand lines in length, creating a bipartite epic which anticipates the structure of Arthurian romance. There is considerably less unanimity of opinion concerning the nature and function of these two episodes in Veldeke's Eneit. The argument has circled for the most part around the question whether the loves of Dido and Lavinia for Eneas can be differentiated in terms of ‘unrehte’ and ‘rehte minne’ or in terms of fate and external circumstances. The following study focuses on a basic element of the work which has largely been ignored but could clarify the dispute: the distribution and roles of the gods of love in the two episodes.

In the Exeter Book, the poem now known as The Descent into Hell begins with an account of the women finding the empty sepulcher on Easter morning (1–16); describes Christ's resurrection and descent into hell (17–55), including a brief anticipatory speech by John the Baptist (26–32); and then reports a longer speech by John the Baptist (56ff.), apparently extending without interruption through the final lines of the poem:

Swylee ie pe halsige, hælend user,
fore [.]inum cildhade, cyninga selast,
120 ond fore ϸære wunde, weoruda dry[….
…….] ϸinum æriste, æϸelinga wyn,
ond fore ϸinre me[… ……….]ian nama,
ϸa ealle hellwara hergað ond lof[….
………….]lum ϸe ϸe ymb stondað,
125 ϸa ϸu ϸe lete sittan [……………] hond,
ϸa ϸu us on ϸisne wræcsið, weoroda dryhten,
ϸurh ϸines sylfes geweald secan woldest,
ond fore Hierusalem in Iudeum,
(sceal seo burg nu ϸa bidan efne swa ϸeah,
130 ϸeoden Ieofa, ϸines eftcymes),
ond for Iordane in Iudeum,
(wit unc in ϸære burnan baϸodan ætgædre),
oferwurpe ϸu mid ϸy wætre, weoruda dryhten,
bliϸe mode ealle burgwaran,
135 swylce git Iohannis in Iordane
mid ϸy fullwihte fægre onbryrdon
ealne ϸisne middangeard. Sie ϸæs symle meotude ϸone!
(118–37)

Of the five surviving fragments of the Exultet roll Barb. lat. 592 in the Vatican Library, one — 592 (5) — shows two striking commemoration pictures: of the pope on his throne, with a bishop or archbishop standing to his left and a deacon to his right (Plate 1), and of the emperor, likewise enthroned, on whose left sits a count on a faldistorium, holding a falcon in his right hand (Plate 2); these main figures are accompanied by other representatives of the clergy and laity. None of the figures is identified by name.

In these pages, the Repertorium of Hippocratic writings in the Middle Ages begun in Traditio 31 (1975) 99-126 is continued, with the works listed alphabetically by the first significant word of the commonly used title. As in the earlier installment, I am indebted to others, but I may under the circumstances be permitted to restrict my acknowledgments: to express in words, however inadequate to the occasion, my sincere appreciation for the encouragement and assistance of the late Father Edwin A. Quain, who gave these so generously even when he was grievously ill. His kindly presence will be sorely missed but the inspiration he provided will continue to sustain us.

Two anonymous French canonists shortly before or around 1170, the author of the Parisian Summa Magister Gratianus in hoc opere and, in his footsteps, the author of the fragmentary Summa Antiquitate et tempore, cited a book they called ‘Candela Gerlandi’ (or ‘Gelandi’). Neither Schulte nor the writer of these pages, in his Repertorium (1937), was able to make much of the citation, save for connecting it with one ‘Jarlandus Chrysopolitanus’ whose name appears in some bibliographies of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, and with a few manuscript references. To the codex Victorinus (now Paris, B. N. lat. 14618), first mentioned in 1666 by Erich Mauritius, professor at the then recently opened University of Kiel, in his dissertation De libris iuris communis, Schulte added two more manuscripts of the Candela he had noted at random in the catalogues of Troyes and Montpellier.

Le 5 décembre 1360, le roi Jean le Bon, qui a quitté l'Angleterre oò il était tenu prisonnier depuis la bataille de Poitiers, perdue quatre ans plus tôt, et qui revient de Calais à Paris par petites étapes, sans hâte particulière, s'arrête à Compiègne oò il va passer quelques jours et promulguer un texte important, édictant deux mesures inséparables l'une de l'autre: la suppression de tous impôts autres que ceux qu'il établit pour le paiement de sa rançon et la fabrication d'une bonne monnaie. Quelques jours plus tard, le roi est à Paris, se rend dans l'hôtel de Guillaume de Melun, archevêque de Sens, et déclare qu'il est désormais ‘franc’ des Anglais, terme qui ne peut manquer d'être rapproché du nom donné aux pièces d'or qui sont frappées dès le mois de décembre 1360 sous le nom de ‘francs.’ La monnaie forte est établie sur une évaluation du marc d'or fin à 60 livres tournois et du marc d'argent à 4 livres 18 sous tournois. En même temps est instaurée l‘équivalence de la monnaie réelle et de la monnaie de compte, le franc valant une livre tournois et le denier d'argent quinze sous tournois. La frappe du franc marque solennellement la stabilité de la monnaie et l'ajustement exact de la livre, monnaie de compte, aux pièces d'or ou d'argent. Jean II répudie formellement les mutations ‘par quoy nostre royaume et peuple d'icelui a esté moult diminué et gasté.’

‘To judge by the profusion of scholarly works that have appeared in the last two or three decades, Wolfram's Parzival has enjoyed an extraordinary popularity,’ says Henry Kratz in his recent book, which he calls ‘An attempt at a total evaluation.’ Wolfram's romance remains the center of interest, but any ‘total evaluation’ runs the risk that it will be considered only on certain levels of interpretation, in spite of the fact that literary works, especially those of the Middle Ages, often display a combination of interpretative levels which, though seemingly contradictory, still do not necessarily exclude one another.

Admiration for the achievements of the thirteenth-century Catalan mystic Ramon Lull ran deep in many currents of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was during this period that Lullism became a potent force in the intellectual life of Western Europe, being blended with mysticism by Lefèvre, with philosophical encyclopedism by Lavinheta, and with occultism and symbolism by Agrippa and Bruno. The penetration of Lull's thought into diverse areas of intellectual life was in agreement with his own contention that the Ars was universally applicable, but at the same time it obscured Lull's fundamental apologetic aims, his eremitic ideals, missionary wanderings, and his martyrdom.