Sobre las virtudes medicinales de las partes y de las sustancias del cuerpo del buitre nos han llegado tres breves escritos procedentes de la Antigüedad y de la Alta Edad Media: el capítulo correspondiente del Liber medicinae ex animalibus atribuido a Sexto Plácido, el del libro 3 de las Cyranides, y la Epistula uulturis, de autor anónimo, que, en sus distintos testimonios, parece incorporar bastante de la tradición anterior. A ellos hay que añadir las indicaciones que, diseminadas a lo largo de los libros 29 y 30, ofrece Plinio en su Naturalis historia, y algunas otras de obras médicas tardías, derivadas en parte del enciclopedista latino. El segundo y el tercero de los textos citados nos han llegado escritos en griego, pero fueron también objeto de traducciones latinas.

In recent decades, transformations in medieval Christian liturgical practices have been explored for what they can tell scholars about cultural change. Shifts in ritual can indicate changing values and beliefs as well as mark the power of external influences. One relatively momentous shift in liturgical practice was the decision of Alfonso VI, king of Castilla-León at Burgos in 1076, after years of pressure from Pope Gregory VII, to begin the transition from the use of the Old Spanish liturgy (also called the Mozarabic, Visigothic, or Hispanic rite) within his domain in favor of the Roman liturgy used in the rest of Latin Christendom. This innovation is viewed as but one manifestation of a much broader “Europeanization” of medieval Spain that took place in the eleventh century, a movement that began in other Iberian Christian kingdoms, but reached its culmination in the reign of Alfonso VI, with his French brides, Cluniac monks, and receptivity to papal influence.

For over a century, liturgical manuscripts from the Augustinian priory at Klosterneuburg have tended toward a misleading androgyny. While scholars have long known that Klosterneuburg was a double house, with separate precincts for men and for women, many have been content to regard the liturgical manuscripts preserved there as reflecting the institution as a whole, or of the men in particular. To be sure, some manuscripts have always been recognized as women's books. For other manuscripts, though, such gendered associations have proven elusive. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in discussions of Klosterneuburg's twelfth-century antiphoners (A-KN 1010, A-KN 1012, and A-KN 1013). Among the earliest musical manuscripts in German-speaking Europe to show pitches on a staff, these manuscripts have been seen by many scholars as reflecting the use of Klosterneuburg generally, if at all, while a few scholars have associated them with the women of Klosterneuburg specifically. Whether the result of an unusual placement for the feast of the Dedication of the Church or the conformance of the musical notation with that of manuscripts known to be associated with the women, the occasional assignments of the twelfth-century antiphoners to Klosterneuburg's women were more a consequence of what was not known about the women and their liturgical practice (the date for their church's dedication, for example) than of what was known. The very lack of information about the liturgical practice of Klosterneuburg's women, moreover, has cloaked an even larger obstacle to understanding the liturgical manuscripts used by the women and the liturgy that was expressed within them. For all the attention given these manuscripts, and for all the consideration given to the possible connection between these manuscripts and the canonesses, few scholars have considered the possibility that the liturgy celebrated by Klosterneuburg's women might have been independent from that of the men.

The Middle English verse “Life of St. Egwine” is one of the many hagiographic poems affiliated with the so-called South English Legendary or Legendaries (SEL), a widely copied collection of vernacular devotional texts whose earliest compilation has been dated to the thirteenth century, and whose latest manuscripts date to the first half of the fifteenth. A minor saint, Ecgwine was the third bishop of Worcester and the founder of the monastic community at Evesham Abbey. One of the most striking features of his early hagiography is that the earliest version of his vita contains the only surviving account of a dispute between a monastery and a tenant to be dated to the Anglo-Saxon period. This is indicative of his cult's close association with the endowed properties of Evesham, an aspect of his hagiographic tradition that is also discernible in the SEL legend.

As is well known, the three “Peoples of the Book” have in common versions of the tale of Abraham: the “Father of Faith,” who, in return for his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, was promised descendants as numerous as the stars (Exod. 32:13; cf. Qur'an 2:131–33).1 It is less well known that, in the Middle Ages, the three religions shared versions of a legend about Jesus dating from late antiquity: the tale that Jesus once brought clay birds to life.2 The locus classicus for this legend, which is not found in the New Testament, is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (hereafter IGT), an apocryphal text that focuses on the childhood of Christ, particularly his amazing deeds and words. This text is believed to have been composed in Greek in the second century, though it circulated in many languages and was variously appropriated in the late-antique and medieval periods.3 An examination of the motif of Jesus bringing clay birds to life reveals the complex transmission history of the IGT and its derivatives, in both East and West, over the course of many centuries.4 More broadly, this story about the legendary Christ Child (an adult in the Jewish version, actually) and his command over the animal kingdom specifically shows the different faiths' understanding of the source and extent of Jesus's power and suggests a reaction to one or both of the other groups. The appropriation of the legend in each case tells us something about each faith's convictions about the way God's power could work in Jesus, and something about how each group viewed Jesus's childhood.

In 1425, Jean Gerson wrote a letter to his brother Jean the Celestine, in which he attacked the Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu of Ubertino de Casale. A passage toward the end of the letter mentions a lost work of Gerson:

Es asunto de sobra conocido que la obra del autor galorromano Sidonio Apolinar (430/431–c. 487 d. C.) gozó de una amplísima e ininterrumpida difusión durante todo el Medievo, reflejo palmario de su éxito e influencia a lo largo de dicho período. Sin embargo, los sofisticados textos de este poeta lionés, tan admirados e imitados durante siglos, pronto habrían de enfrentarse a una nueva forma mentis, que avanzaba poco a poco por la escena intelectual europea, hasta llegar a hacerse hegemónica: se trata, como es obvio, del primer Humanismo, que apenas comenzaba a despuntar sobre el solar itálico del Trecento. De ahí que la opinión que sobre este autor tardoantiguo se forjase un personaje tan influyente como Petrarca (1304–1374), auténtico abanderado de ese cambio de paradigma intelectual, habría de condicionar sobremanera el modo en que sus obras iban a ser juzgadas y percibidas a lo largo de todo el Renacimiento. La fortuna de Sidonio Apolinar y la propia pervivencia de su trabajo, hasta entonces libres de toda amenaza, entraban en una fase problemática, que habría de ser determinante para explicar sus futuros vaivenes.