The Bedford Hours (British Library MS Additional 18850) has been called one of “the very finest examples of French art of the earlier half of the fifteenth century….” Its lavish use of gold and bright colors, its beautifully conceived calendar pages and large miniatures, its connection with the marriage of John of Lancaster, the duke of Bedford, to Anne of Burgundy, and its fascinating history as a manuscript have received much attention. Scholars, however, have virtually ignored the almost 1,250 marginal illustrations that decorate the manuscript's 289 folios. These tiny pictures are generally woven into the ivy-leaf border, painted within roundels of approximately one inch in diameter. Thematically related, they are usually placed two to a folio side, one within the left or right border, and one within the lower border. The roundels, furthermore, are accompanied by one-line Old French texts. These are always placed together below the lower border and are arranged so that the first text, written in blue, identifies the roundel within the side border, whereas the second text, written in gold, explains the roundel painted within the lower border.

The unedited Canticum amoris of Richard Rolle is a Latin poem of one hundred fifty-two lines addressed to the Virgin Mary. Written after he had become a hermit and while, it seems, he was still a youth, the work is of considerable interest for itself, for the light it sheds on the author as man and artist, and for a study of the confluence of the currents in the stream of English literature at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The signature, woven into the poem, leaves no doubt about its being a genuine work of one who in England was probably the most influential English writer of the late middle ages. It was listed among the Latin works of Rolle which Horstmann intended to edit, discussed by Miss Hope Emily Allen in her indispensable canon of the hermit's work, and singled out by Mr. Raby as a work that should be published.

L'histoire byzantine est peut-être parmi toutes les branches de la science historique celle qui est effleurée occasionnellement par le nombre le plus grand d'historiens, et en même temps celle dont le nombre des adeptes cent pour cent est peut-être le plus petit; d'autre part, ces travailleurs, si peu nombreux qu'ils soient dans notre champ d'études, diffèrent entre eux, plus qu'il n'arrive dans les autres branches historiques, par la conception de leur tâche commune, par les buts derniers qu'ils se proposent et par les méthodes qu'ils emploient pour y parvenir. Cette situation triplement paradoxale s'explique par le peu de précision qu'a comporté longtemps et que comporte toujours, sous certains rapports, la notion qu'on se fait, jusque dans les rangs des spécialistes, du terme de byzantin, et, d'autre part, précisément par ce qui constitue à mon avis la particularité la plus saillante de l'histoire byzantine et qui lui confère son véritable intérêt. J'ai toujours professé la maxime térentienne adaptée aux recherches de l'historien, du nihil historici a me alienum puto, mais à une époque oò l'ensemble des connaissances historiques est devenu depuis longtemps beaucoup trop vaste pour pouvoir être embrassé par un seul, j'ai cru trouver dans le domaine de l'histoire byzantine celui oò l'on peut mieux que dans tout autre s'adonner au goût de l'histoire universelle tout en servant modestement une branche spéciale, comme tout autre historien de nos jours.

It is not without reason that Harnack calls St. Gregory the Great ‘Doctor angelorum et diaboli.’ The misery of Gregory's times, occasioned by the incessant attacks of the Lombards, made him convinced that the end of the world was at hand. Thus it is that his thought has a definitely eschatological stamp. The terrors of death and the fierce onslaughts of the devil were popular themes with St. Gregory the Great.

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 *.

It is difficult to deduce the Aristotelian scientific procedure — to take his abstract statement of the nature of science and to show that his actual method in a particular work is adequately explained by the initial definition. Yet Aristotle's actual method is worth getting at. It provides insight into Aristotle and into Greek thought, and it sheds light on the course of ideas during the centuries which have been scientifically Aristotelian. In the following pages, I have tried to discover and to describe the method at work in a particular scientific treatise. The unit chosen for study is the first book and a half of the De caelo. Here it is that Aristotle develops his highly influential science of the celestial bodies.

The development of the pre-Carolingian seigneurie has received little attention, although this neglect is due in large part to a scarcity in source material. This lack may be supplemented by relying on other material, such as that supplied in the Lex Baiuvariorum. The latter, the Bavarian code, was promulgated within the first half of the eighth century and slightly before the appearance of the Carolingian estate organization. The development of manorial obligations in eighth-century Bavaria is illustrated by one major law in the Lex Baiuvariorum, and this law is I, 13. However, the study of the seigneurie in Bavaria is complicated by differing interpretations of the evidence. What follows is an attempt to re-evaluate the evidence as supplied in L. Baiu. I, 13 and to show its relationship with the Carolingian estate organization.

It is of course generally recognized that the carvings on medieval misericords, in England as elsewhere, are preponderantly secular in subject, including only a slight sprinkling of biblical and other religious motifs; according to a recent study, ‘only about 4.5 per cent of Britain's almost 8,600 surviving centrepieces and supporters have primarily religious significance, and 1.5 per cent are Scriptural, as compared with over twice that in France.’ To this basic situation we must add that of all medieval art forms, misericords are among those most completely lacking in context, and so are likely to be among the most mute about their own intended meanings. As M. D. Anderson remarks on another of their enigmatic aspects, ‘Between the clearly identifiable subjects and those as clearly not intended to convey any particular meaning lies a mass of work presenting a wide variety of iconographical puzzles’; and while she is referring to the difference between the purely decorative and the iconographically significant in any way, a similar no-man's land must surely be allowed to exist between the clearly non-biblical and the biblical or possibly biblical. An instructive example can be found in a fifteenth-century French misericord now in the church of St.-Cernin, which shows a ‘handsome dancing man with … oriental turban and earrings’ and is identified by its editors — attractively though by no means conclusively — as David dancing before the Lord in 2 Kings (Vulgate) 6.14–16.

The disease of love (amor hereos) proved a topic of longstanding interest at the medical school of Montpellier between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries. From Arnald of Villanova and Bernard of Gordon in the late thirteenth century to Valescus of Taranta and Jacques Angeli in the fifteenth, generations of Montpellier masters and students studied, expounded, and debated the lover's malady. Gerard of Solo, who received his master's degree in medicine from Montpellier in 1335, and who remained at the university to become a leading figure of medical scholasticism, compiled a university exercise on lovesickness, the Determinatio de amore hereos. Though best known to students of lovesickness as the author of a commentary on the ninth book of al-Rāzī's Liber ad almansorem, Gerard's Determinatio, which is probably his magisterial version of a disputation on love, treats the subject more systematically than does the commentary on al-Rāzī. The Determinatio, which represents how the topic of lovesickness was taught outside the framework of textual commentary, provides a useful summary of fourteenth-century scholastic medical doctrine on love.

In 343 A. D. the Synod of Sardica, speaking of priests to be sent by the pope e latere suo or, in the equally authoritative Greek version, used a figure of speech which, in its Latin form as a latere or de latere—both variants are already attested in the early transmission of the Sardican canons — became in time an important canonical concept. Although the bishops assembled at Sardica might at first seem to have coined a striking neologism, the phrase employed by them actually echoes certain passages of the Greek and Latin Bibles and the use made of those passages in some of the homilies of the Fathers. As we listen to the biblico-patristical overtones with which the term a latere resounds, the theological source of early canonical language becomes, for this one instance, perceptible again.

The ingenuity of early Christian artisans in turning a host of pagan symbols and images to the service of a new ideology is one of the most conspicuous features of Christian art during the second and third centuries after Christ. It is responsible for the art of the catacombs in which Orpheus the charmer of wild beasts represents Christ the Good Shepherd, and the eagle, peacock, Dionysiac grapes, sun, stars, and other pagan funerary symbols of long standing express the state of the Christian soul after death. Yet as Christianity grew stronger in the Roman empire, as councils were held and creeds formulated, and as a distinctively Christian view of history evolved in which Old Testament figures replaced pagan heroes, we find a curious lag in the visual arts. The old pagan imagery continues to appear in Christian funerary monuments, often in conjunction with newer, wholly Christian, motifs, but significantly not replaced by them. This phenomenon is not due simply to the conservatism of the artisans, but owes much to the vigor of the old motifs and the persistence of the ideas they represented. It also points up the fundamental difference between a verbal statement, made up of words which may be freely rearranged and whose connotations shift mercurially from year to year, and a visual statement, which is less flexible and able to retain its symbolic appeal for a very long time. The difference, practically a commonplace in the study of the history of ideas, is nonetheless often overlooked in the study of the ideas and motifs of late antiquity, when words and pictures ostensibly representing the same ideas were often straining in opposite directions. Thus, while the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon sought to settle for all time the relation between the human and divine in the person of Jesus, Christian artisans were still depicting Christ the Good Shepherd in the aspect of Orpheus.

Hrabanus Maurus's Commentary on Matthew provides a lens through which to view the centrality of biblical studies to Carolingian reform initiatives. The commentary sits amid a burst of interest in Matthew's Gospel in the first quarter of the ninth century. It also occupies a central place in Hrabanus's program for clerical education and renewal. Hrabanus imagined the work as a user-friendly reference guide or introductory text and structured the commentary with highly sophisticated and complementary indexing, organizing, and searching features to privilege ease of use. Hrabanus's design allows for quick appreciation and simple interpretation of the Gospel's overall narrative structure, its principal episodes, and its individual verses. Moreover, Hrabanus took painstaking effort to document the numerous patristic sources upon which he drew in building the commentary, as well as to acknowledge when he contributed thoughts of his own. The manuscript record, epistolary remarks, sermon texts, and literary references — including in the vernacular — testify to broad dissemination and use of the commentary by Hrabanus's network of patrons, peers, and students across Frankish Europe. Attention to the structure, content, and influence of the commentary expands scholarly appreciation of Hrabanus's genius beyond his achievements as an abbot and bishop or as a prolific biblical exegete, to include resourcefulness and practicality in teaching. Moreover, the study illumines the close association Carolingian leaders saw between biblical studies and broader cultural renewal along with the networks connecting leaders across the Frankish world as they reflected upon and promoted reform.

These pages complete the catalogue of early medieval Hiberno-Latin commentaries on the Bible begun in Traditio 44 (1988) 537–71.

Bei den Vorarbeiten für eine Dissertation über die bedingte Eheschliessung im kanonischen Recht, die vor allem die Entwicklung dieses Rechtsinstituts in der Zeit von 1140-1234 aufzeigen wird, hat der Verfasser unter anderem einzelne bisher unbekannte Handschriften verschiedener kanonistischer Werke aufgefunden oder bereits bekannte Handschriften näher identifiziert. Da die Drucklegung der Dissertation wohl noch einige Zeit in Anspruch nehmen wird, möchte der Verfasser die wichtigsten Ergebnisse vorläufig kurz anzeigen. Der Einzelnachweis wird in der genannten Dissertation folgen.

The fact that the question of war guilt has frequently followed in the wake of major wars has contributed little, if anything, to a clarification of the concept. The perplexing difficulties raised by it are amply illustrated by the unsuccessful attempts, made periodically at various ages and on various levels of civilization, to arrive at criteria permitting a differentiation between the bellum justum and the bellum injustum. States, unlike individuals, are not confronted with simple choices between obeying or violating the law. Determination of the initial violation of existing covenants sheds little, if any, light on the responsibility for commencing war. Nor is such responsibility necessarily incurred by launching the first attack. Nothing could be more futile than to equate this act with aggressive and unjust war. The initial attack may be a legitimate response to an existing situation, and a war of aggression, as St. Augustine already pointed out, a just war; nor is there any reason to assume that the party forced into the defensive is invariably innocent. If war guilt is to be more than a specious pretense for inflicting punishment upon the vanquished, it can be measured only in terms of the alternatives available to a state, and the choice has to be viewed in the light of historical, ethical, and political factors. The assessment of such guilt is a problem of extraordinary complexity. To confine it to formal legal considerations would result not only in gross injustice, but would tend to perpetuate international tensions.

In 1964 Professor Sesto Prete published a description of the contents of two fifteenth-century manuscripts, MS 100.42 in the Cathedral Library at Toledo and Cod. Vaticanus Barberinianus latinus 42. He called these T and B respectively, and they will be so referred to here. T contains 169 humanistic items as opposed to 76 in B. The manuscripts have 32 items in common.