Fasting as a religious practice is a world-wide phenomenon, and can be found in the religions of almost all the peoples on earth. It cannot be traced back to one common motive. Nor did it come into existence within one single people or religion, and spread from there to the rest of mankind, but it sprang up independently among completely different peoples and religions. Of course, as has happened in every field of cultural life, transmissions of individual practices of fasting from one people to another, from one religion to another, took place.

The writings of Augustine pose an interesting problem for the philosopher. Very soon after one begins reading them, there appears the old and apparently non-philosophical admonition: ‘Unless you believe, you will not understand.’ Is the autonomy of philosophy being threatened by this demand? Is reason being told that it must accept certain statements as true on authority other than its own? And if so, why?

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.

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.

J. Goar (†1654) nel 1647 e J. Morin (†1659) nel 1651 e 1655 hanno pubblicato vari testi liturgici da un eucologio di Leone Allacci (†1669), loro degno amico, che il Morin aveva trattato di persona durante i nove mesi del suo soggiorno a Roma nel 1639, ed il Goar per qualche anno fra il 1637 e il 1644.

Morin nel 1639 non aveva veduto il codice, e solo nel 1642 incirca ne ricevette notizia coll’ indice dei titoli, e la profferta amichevole di fargliene trascrivere quanti desiderava; profferta che accolse procurandosi in tal modo la copia dei titoli della penitenza e delle sacre ordinazioni e della Costituzione Cipria di Alessandro IV, che poi pubblicò in gran parte. Invece Goar deve aver esaminato a suo agio il codice, perchè ne parla con sicurezza e ne dimostra una buona conoscenza.

The only instance in which the present-day Roman liturgy refers to Moses as a saint is the beginning of the entry for September 4th in the Martyrologium, which says: ‘In Monte Nebo terrae Moab sancti Moysis legislatoris et prophetae.’ This entry is found in Baronius' edition of 1586. In the annotated edition, Baronius commented on this entry: ‘Agunt de eodem hoc die non tantum Latini omnes, sed et Graeci in Menologio.’

While the older theory that in Beowulf we have the work of a pagan poet edited and patched with scraps of Christian doctrine by later hands has been generally abandoned, there is still considerable difference of opinion on the I problem of Christianity's place in the poem. The question at issue is no longer whether the poet was a Christian but rather what his Christianity was like and to what extent it affected his handling of Germanic material. Here, the influence of the older theory is still felt. The poet, indeed, was a Christian, but pagan in spirit; or his Christianity was genuine and strong, but not strong enough to cope with the pagan character of his material. The older dualism of pagan author and Christian redactor has been turned into a struggle within the poet. The poem in the last analysis is still felt to lack complete integrity of tone.

Among the various aspects of the operation of canon law in medieval England, the history of the Anglo-Norman school of canonists which flourished in the late twelfth and the early thirteenth centuries remains largely unexplored. Modern historians have frequently emphasized, to be sure, the eager interest which English churchmen of the twelfth century took in problems and issues of canon law; and it can now be considered an established fact that the English Church throughout this period was well abreast of the developments which everywhere resulted from the growing centralization of ecclesiastical procedure, from the work of Gratian and his school, and from the ever-increasing number of authoritative responses and appellate decisions rendered by the popes in their decretal letters. The importance of the system of delegate jurisdiction in the cases referred back by Rome to the country of origin has been noted, and so has the conspicuous number of twelfth-century English collections of decretals, which testifies to a particular zeal and tradition, among Anglo-Norman canonists, in supplementing Gratian's work by records of the new papal law. The problem, also, of the influence exercised by Roman and canon law on the early development of the Common Law is being discussed with growing interest among students of English legal and constitutional history.

Thomas Brampton's Metrical Paraphrase of the Seven Penitential Psalms appears in the following manuscripts:

1. S Sloane 1853, fol. 3a. Century XV

2. P Pepys 2030, fol. 1a. (Begins at v 7 of stanza 7; lacks stanzas 121-124) Century XVI

3. H Harley 1704, fol. 13a. (Stanzas 62-116 only) Century XV

4. C Cambridge University, Ff 2.38, fol. 28a. (Begins imperfectly in stanza 56). Century XV

5. Cv Trinity College, Cambridge 600, pp. 197-232. Century XV

6. Pv Pepys 1584, Art. 3. Century XV

In the sixth canto of the Inferno Dante depicts the punishment of the gluttonous. They are represented as lying in the mire under a continuous heavy storm of hail and snow. Three-headed Cerberus keeps barking over them and rending them apart:

In the discussion of the Christian elements in Beowulf, it seems to have escaped the notice of scholars that the character of Unferth may provide an example of Christian allegory consciously employed by the poet. If the name Unferth means mar-peace or strife, an important clue to his significance in the poem is being ignored. I wish to suggest that the author of Beowulf is employing, or at least thinking of, Unferth as an abstract personification in the manner of Prudentius, Martianus Capella or Sedulius, and that the poem has even closer connections with the Christian tradition than has hitherto been perceived. If we can accept Unferth as, say, Discordia, we shall find how well this interpretation fits in with the suggestion Schücking made some years ago that the character of Beowulf has been molded, to some extent at least, by the Christian ideal of the perfect ruler, the rex justus, as set forth by St. Augustine, Gregory the Great and others, and that the ethical ideal set up by the epic is that of ordinata concordia or mensura.

When after the end of the migration of nations the frontiers between the individual peoples of Central Europe began to consolidate and, speaking cum grano salis, the Elbe river gradually emerged as the borderline between the Slavs and the Germani, there also originated that embittered struggle between these two antagonists which in its latest phase is so vividly reflected in the recent de-Germanization of Eastern Prussia, the Corridor, Pomerania, Silesia, and the Sudetenland.

S. Kuttner hat in seinem grundlegenden Werk über die Kanonistische Schuldlehre von Gratian bis auf die Dekretalen Gregors IX. bereits das vermerkt, was die kanonistische Literatur der Frühzeit über die möglichen äusseren Formen des Anteiles mehrerer an der Deliktsverwirklichung bringt, und festgestellt, dass alle solche Erörterungen auf der Grundauffassung der Teilnahme als einer geistigen Schuldart und nicht — denn der consensus kann der Tat des andern auch nachfolgen — auf der Prüfung der kausalen Bedeutung des Teilnehmens ruhten. Er verweist dabei auch darauf, dass sich mannigfache Einteilungen über consensus negligentiae, cooperationis, defensionis, auxilio, licentia, approbando, auctoritate, praecepto, mandando, consilio, patrocinio finden.

In der Frühscholastik fand sich nun das Problem der fremden Sünde nicht eben häufig berührt. Was sich aber darüber findet, gewährt immerhin einen interessanten Einblick in die Behandlung des Problems ausserhalb der Kanonistik.

This is not an inventory of medieval books shelved and catalogued in modern Swedish libraries. It is something more special, in fact the material dealt with in this note seems to be a phenomenon of Sweden, not found in other countries, at least not to the same extent.

When Protestantism (of the Lutheran variety) became the creed of the king and the people, books of a different kind were needed in churches and schools. Church services were gradually altered and instead of Latin, the Swedish language was used. The number of monks dwindled, the convents became poor and finally ceased to exist. No longer were the Latin service books used, nor Latin Bibles read. The printers could soon put any amount of new books at the scholar's disposal.

The Maitland Memorial Lectures for 1948, delivered at Cambridge University by Dr. Walter Ullmann, were published in 1949, somewhat enlarged, under the title, Medieval Papalism: The Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists (London, Methuen & Co., 1949; pp. xiv, 230). In six chapters the author sets forth his views on certain fundamental problems of medieval political history which were given their doctrinal development and practical realization by the canonists jointly with the popes, that is to say, by the legislative authority and the jurisprudence of the medieval Church.

I should like to suggest an emendation for line 40 of the poem of Cerveri de Girona that has been so carefully edited by Professor Kurt Lewent in Traditio 6 (1948) 161ff. The line reads in the manuscript: C'a vetz us paucs de mars. The context is as follows (stanza IV) :

No us faça trop lau dire

acuyllimentz ne dos

ne de non dire aunire.

C'a vetz

fay tals soletz assire

cuy platz asolaçars,

mas non an temps de rire

o no y tayn messios.

Gen chastiatz gardan

per que ne com ne qui,

c'om non es d'un semblan

tot l'an ne letz can ri.

Lorsqu'on parlait devant Dom Mocquereau de Rosa vernans, on pouvait être assuré de le voir esquisser un geste de dénégation, comme s'il eût voulu, après tant d'années, désavouer la paternité de cette oeuvre, ‘un péché de jeunesse,’ avouait-il de très bonne grâce; et quand on parlait à Dom Pothier des Cantus mariales, c'était aussi un péché qu'il confessait, non de jeunesse mais de vieillesse; et il eût souhaité que, dans son monastère, on ne les chantât point.