The later Middle Ages was the high moment of the popular, vernacular sermon, yet relatively few examples of extraliturgical sermons can be recovered from the written evidence. Latin collections of sermon cycles—those preached in the context of the mass liturgy and saints' days—were produced in large quantities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, functioning more or less directly as exemplars for the actual sermons that would then be preached in the local vernaculars of western Europe. In England, such Latin sermon collections of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries often include some vernacular materials, especially lyrics, and many treatises are extant that provide priests with the materials to make sermons on a wide range of topics and for an indefinite number of occasions. Of the relatively few English sermons and sermon collections extant from the period, however, by far the greatest number are, like the Latin cycles, those keyed to the cycle of Sunday texts and to saints' days, whose very formality militates against a sense of them as representative of the most common forms and themes of vernacular sermons, particularly those earnestly preached on the occasions like that which Chaucer satirically describes in the Summoner's Tale, when “ther wente a lymytour aboute / To preche, and eek to begge, it is no doubte” (3.1711–1712). With so few examples of non-liturgical sermons extant, our sense both of the reality and of the satire is incomplete.

Sidonius Apollinaris needs no introduction as by far our best informant for the history of Roman Gaul in the late fifth century and as one of the most accomplished practitioners of the complicated literary style so admired in his age and so often contemned in ours. Because his poems and letters provide abundant evidence for political and social history, most historians have until recently tended to see him as a predominantly secular figure. That impression is heightened by the literary genres he chose for his writings and whose accepted rules and forms he meticulously followed. However, a handful of studies since mid-century, and recently a political biography, have drawn attention to one or another neglected religious dimension of his life. Gradually a hidden Sidonius has been emerging from between the lines of reluctant sources that are not autobiographical by nature or by his intent.

The Somnium of John of Legnano, the great Bolognese lawyer of the fourteenth century, was first properly brought to the attention of scholars by G. W. Coopland in 1926. Professor Coopland's chief concern was with the relationship between this work and the much more famous Somnium Viridarii, composed about 1375 at the court of King Charles V of France, whose author made some substantial borrowings from John's slightly earlier work. Though he supplied a synopsis of its content, Coopland gave it as his opinion that John's work was not in itself of any great interest, apart from the section in it which is devoted to a defence of papal monarchy, a section which, as the author makes clear, incorporates into the Somnium a tract on this matter which he had composed previously. This probably is the most interesting part of John's much larger and more ambitious work, which seems to have been written in 1372, but our opinion is that the other sections have rather more in them to reward the reader than Coopland suggested. This is the justification for an attempt to describe the work in more detail than he did and to discuss briefly some parts of its content and arguments.

Vor einiger Zeit machte Carlos Steel auf einige neue Proclus-Fragmente aufmerksam. 1m dritten Band der Ausgabe der Tria Opuscula von Daniel Isaac, erschienen 1982, stellte er drei griechische Fragmente aus De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam und eines aus De providentia vor. Diese Fragmente hatte er in einer Handschrift der Loci communes des Ps.-Maximus gefunden, dem Kodex aus der Niedersächsischen Landesbibliothek Hannover mit der Signatur IV 546, dessen Abschrift am 7. Mai 1311 von Eugenios Choumnos beendet wurde. Eine neuerliche Durchsicht der Handschrift ergab, daß, neben einem Fragment aus De providentia, sich nicht drei sondern acht Fragmente aus De decem dubitaiionibus circa providentiam hierin befinden.

Many years ago Hans Bekker-Nielsen charted the influence of Caesarius of Aries on Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian religious prose in a series of groundbreaking articles. Professor Bekker-Nielsen was quick to acknowledge his debt to Dom Germain Morin, whose lifelong study of the works of Caesarius, culminating in the monumental edition of his sermons, restored to their true author a vast number of misattributed ‘pseudo-Augustinian’ homilies. In Bekker-Nielsen's words, ‘Morin's edition has restored to us an important corpus of ecclesiastical writings, and … it is our duty to tidy up the mess of references to Augustine or pseudo-Augustine in the scholarly literature wherever Caesarius is the genuine author.’ It goes without saying that, following Bekker-Nielsen's example, we should endeavour to do the same whenever someone else can be named as the genuine author of a ‘pseudo-Augustinian’ text. In this paper I should like to draw attention to two further examples of the use by medieval Icelandic authors of Latin sources mistakenly attributed to Augustine.

The end of the fifteenth century witnessed the dissolution of the medieval kingdom of Georgia. The three kingdoms — of Georgia proper (Iberia= K'art'li), of Imeretia (Abasgia), and of Kakhetia — and the five sovereign principalities, into which that ancient and once powerful realm had found itself divided, were ill prepared now to face the onslaught of the Islamic imperialism of the Osmans and the Safawis or, finally, to prevent the nearest Christian empire, to which they had turned for aid, from absorbing them.

In one of the very few essays in English on Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, Eleanor Shipley Duckett calls him a prince of the Church, a statesman, an administrator, a scholar who rises far above the other figures she surveys and who stands out in the company of Charles the Great and Pope Nicholas I in the historical records of the ninth century. His long life, from his birth in northern France in 806, his entry into the monastery of St. Denis in 814, his consecration as archbishop in 845, to his death in 882 at Epernay while fleeing from the Danish invasion, was one long series of combats calling for a variety of talents. He revealed a deep knowledge of canon law in his various ecclesiastical disputes with recalcitrant clergy and laity, an astute diplomatic talent in his attempts to knit together the rapidly unraveling unity of the empire, a broad but unoriginal scholarship in his theological controversies over predestination and the Trinity which brought him to grips with the leading thinkers of the Carolingian renaissance, especially the redoubtable Saxon Gottschalk, monk of Orbais. It is with this last controversy that this paper will be concerned.

A strong attachment to education and scholarship very early distinguished the orders of friars established in the thirteenth century. Although Francis of Assisi had made no provision for such activities in the new religious movement which he founded, nevertheless, not long after his death in 1226 the Franciscans had already begun to show a pronounced intellectualist bent. In a sermon delivered in 1229, Odo of Châteauroux noted the influx of scholars into the Order and the prominence of the Franciscans in the Paris schools. Subsequently, some of the finest minds in Europe were converted to the Franciscan style of Christian life; and the enthusiasm and aptitude of the friars minor for teaching became very apparent — transforming them into almost a separate universitas.

The romanesque façade of the abbey church of St.-Gilles in the diocese of Nlmes has been a subject of debate among art historians for many years. This controversy has been centered on the design of the church's façade [Fig. 1]. In addition to a series of colonnettes supporting archivolts that surround the tympana over its three western doorways, the St.-Gilles façade also possesses two free-standing columns flanking the central doorway that support nothing, a peculiarity which has led scholars to conclude that the plan of the façade was changed during the remodeling of the church in the twelfth century. The debate has focused on the dating of this change. A number of dates have been suggested, based on the façade's sculptural style, on dated inscriptions in the crypt, and on documents dealing with the church fabric. The art historians of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries dated the redesigning of the façade between 1116 and the middle of the thirteenth century, though the tendency of more recent scholarship has been to narrow the range of dates to between 1116 and the 1140s.

During the last decade the works of Professor Guido Kisch have made an outstanding contribution to our knowledge of the legal thought of the sixteenth century, particularly to the school represented by the University of Basel. His articles and monographs have dealt with the biographical and literary history of significant scholars as well as with the rival schools of interpretation represented by ‘mos italicus' and ‘mos gallicus.' Building on these earlier studies, Professor Kisch has now produced a major work of more comprehensive scope, which goes beyond biographical and methodological questions to the analysis of significant change in substantive legal doctrines. Convinced that the age of humanism and the reception of Roman law saw the formation of some of the most important modern legal concepts, he centers his research on the evolution of the theory of equity with due attention, on the one hand, to the relationship between sixteenth-century innovation and the historic western tradition and, on the other, to the interaction between the academic profession and the practicing lawyers.

Die Lehre von den Elementarqualitäten gehört auch zu den Grundlagen der antiken griechischen Medizin und Biologie. Dies gilt sowohl für die Hippokratiker als auch für Galen aus Pergamon (129–ca. 200 n. Chr.). Der Pergamener entwickelte die Aristotelische Qualitätenlehre zu einem der wichtigsten Prinzipien seines philosophisch-biologischen Systems, so dass er selbst in der neueren Forschung “Qualitativist” und sein System “Qualitativismus” genannt werden.

Peter Lombard's influential commentary on the Pauline Epistles, the Collectanea in omnes divi Pauli epistolas, has received little extended analysis in scholarly literature, despite its recognized importance both in its own right and as key for the development of his Sentences. This article presents a new approach to studying the Collectanea by analyzing how Lombard's commentary builds on the Glossa “Ordinaria” on the Pauline Epistles. The article argues for treating the Collectanea as a “historical act,” focusing on how Lombard engages with the biblical text and with authoritative sources within which he encounters the same biblical text embedded. The article further argues for the necessity of turning to the manuscripts of both the Collectanea and the Glossa, rather than continuing to rely on inadequate early modern printed editions or the Patrologia Latina. The article then uses Lombard's discussion of faith at Romans 1:17 as a case study, demonstrating the way in which Lombard begins from the Glossa, clarifies its ambiguities, and moves his analysis forward through his use of other auctoritates and theological quaestiones. A comparison with Lombard's treatment of faith in the Sentences highlights the close links between Lombard's biblical lectures and this later work. The article concludes by arguing that scholastic biblical exegesis and theology should be treated as primarily a classroom activity, with the glossed Bible as the central focus. Discussion of Lombard's work should draw on much recent scholarship that has begun to uncover the layers of orality within the textual history of scholastic works.

In the latter part of the twelfth century, a significant change of emphasis occurred in the art of preaching, which in turn had a profound influence on the transmission of knowledge and moral values. Whereas, in an earlier era, preachers had addressed themselves largely to clerical audiences, at this time popular audiences came to receive greater attention. Parisian masters and doctors were in the vanguard of this influential movement whose ideal, the vita apostolica, became a rallying cry to those who sought to restore the Church and its clergy to an earlier purity.

Les collections que nous présentons aujourd'hui ne sont conservées que dans deux MSS: Zwettl, Stiftsbibl. 162 (Zw) et Wien, Nationalbibl. 2163 (Wi). St. Kuttner, qui les a signalées il y a plus de vingt ans, estime qu'elles pourraient provenir de l'école de Vicence. Il a relevé l'attribution d'un grand nombre de solutions à Ber. qu'il estime être Bernard de Compostene l'Ancien. Nous n'avons aucun motif de discuter ces deux points, qui nous paraissent convenablement établis.

This article is focused on Angelo Poliziano's general attitude to philosophy as a discipline and on his specific accounts of scholastic philosophy, found mainly in his four opening lectures to his courses on Aristotle's logic and ethics that were held in the Florentine Studium between 1490 and 1494, in the light of his overall exclusive classical approach. It shows, among other things, that philosophy was more important to Poliziano than common expressions such as “the humanist interest in philosophy” may suggest. Poliziano's important definition of history presented in his Panepistemon, together with other pieces of evidence, can reveal the moment in which disciplines associated with the “humanities” (in the modern sense of this term) began to be separated from the natural sciences — at a point just preceding the massive critique of Aristotelian science during the sixteenth century — through Poliziano's notion of a philosophical literature to which also the Aristotelian texts belong.