It is over a decade since a study of legends of St. Peter in medieval Latin hymns appeared (Traditio 10 [1954] 275–322), followed not only by a number of other monographs but also by a more comprehensive investigation of the history of medieval Latin hymnody, now completed. The questions raised in that article in Traditio have still their significance and the search for a suitable method, or methods, in hymnology is not yet ended. Successive investigations in this field have gradually revealed some of the possibilities in hymnological research; we have noted that the study of legends and narrative sources reflected in hymn-texts may result in concrete discoveries which aid the analytic investigation of medieval hymns. Through them we often come to learn something about the contemporary intellectual trends and the ideas that were lingering in the minds of the people of those times. We also discover echoes of popular beliefs and cults by analyzing certain elements of the hymns. Further investigations in the terminology and style of the hymns can lead us to medieval exegetic and homiletic literature, to patristic sources and the like, which, too, left their imprint on Latin hymnody.

The earliest text of The Dream of the Rood consists of a few lines of runic inscriptions carved around the edges of a North English high cross now at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire. It represents no more than a fragment of the text as we find it in the Vercelli MS, a short passage describing the Crucifixion and the ordeal of the Cross. The precise relationship between the Ruthwell runes and the Vercelli poem is a matter of conjecture and dispute. To some critics the Ruthwell inscriptions represent an ‘earlier poem,’ of which the Vercelli text is an expansion or a later revision or both. It is a question to which I shall wish to devote some attention in due course. For the present, I would suggest that the runic inscriptions provide a valuable clue to the interpretation of the Vercelli poem along lines so far left unexplored; for the runes form a part of a rich iconographic program, developing a unified meaning closely connected with the figurative meaning of The Dream of the Rood.

Among the seven deadly sins, none is more interesting to study for its historical development and the complexity of its meaning than the sin of acedia. For while its companions — with the possible exception of avarice — remained fairly static through the centuries of medieval thought, and indeed have remained so to the present, acedia presented a variety of faces and changed in its very nature, from the moment when it entered Christian teaching in the West to the fifteenth century. In Christian thinking, pride has always been pride; its psychological roots may have been explained in agreement with different philosophical and psychological systems, and its manifestations may vary according to changing attitudes and experiences, but its nature has remained essentially unchanged. The same is true of envy, wrath, lust, and the others. But not so with acedia. A reflection of the complexity which this concept acquired during its medieval lifetime can still be seen in the totally different connotations which its names have for the cognoscenti of today. The ancient term acedia fascinates because it suggests such phenomena as spiritual dryness, ennui or WeItschmerz, while its vernacular equivalent sloth, as everyone readily agrees, stands for something so common and ordinary that it hardly deserves a second thought.

Hadrian I's synodica of 785 (JE 2448), addressed to the Byzantine Emperors Irene and her son Constantine VI, which encouraged the rulers in their planned restoration of image-worship, is one of the most important official Latin documents of the eighth century. In the East it became in 787 the basis of the discussions at the Seventh Ecumenical Council (II Nicaea), which restored the worship of images in Byzantium. In the West, the Franks and Charlemagne based their rejection of image worship and of II Nicaea on certain sections of the synodica which were critically discussed in the Frankish Capitulare adversus synodum of c. 788/9, as well as in Hadrian I's refutation of this lost capitulary, whose text is extensively cited in the chapter headings of the so-called Hadrianum (JE 2483) of c. 791. Greek and Latin testimonia invoked in JE 2448 in favor of image worship are rebuked in Charlemagne's Libri Carolini, the official Frankish protest against II Nicaea. Finally, numerous merous fragments of the synodica's text, especially from its catena of patristic testimonia, were inserted into the Libellus synodalis of the Paris Synod of 825.

Eadmer of Canterbury, companion for many years and biographer of St. Anselm of Canterbury, is best known for his two intimate records of Anselm's episcopate and personality: the Historia Novorum in Anglia and the Vita Anselmi. He is also the author of various devotional works, among them a minor classic on the Immaculate Conception, and of several saints' lives. As a hagiographer he recorded the lives and miracles of saints whose relics were preserved in his house, Christ Church, Canterbury, or the priory of the Holy Trinity, as it was known in the Middle Ages. Apart from his longer lives of St. Wilfrid, St. Oda, St. Dunstan, and St. Oswald, Eadmer wrote some shorter hagiographical works, one of them on Bregwine, archbishop of Canterbury in the eighth century. The life of Bregwine has never been printed in its entirety. It is my purpose in the following pages to edit the complete text of this work.

In the eleventh century, all over Christendom, government was in a rudimentary stage. Because it was rudimentary there is not much evidence to show how rudimentary it was. A danger is that modern scholars are tempted to read what scraps of evidence they have with a prejudice they are only partly aware of; and to see chancellors and chanceries in the light of what they would expect them to have been, much as their colleagues have done with parliaments and popular liberties.

Other than the labors of the clergy, the basic resource for public charity and social work was pious giving by layfolk. During the long period from the later eleventh century until around 1250, both the forms of giving changed and the sums involved grew considerably. About the year 1100, the principal ways of financing charity and social work were the founding of charitable institutions by living people and the giving of gifts during a donor's lifetime to already existing institutions. During the twelfth century, however, as the practice of drawing testaments became more widespread, testamentary bequests became increasingly significant as a means of supporting the work of charity. Later on, during the thirteenth century, a further source of wealth was more extensively tapped than had hitherto been the case. Designed specifically for social or charitable ends, confraternities, whose members were obligated to give regularly or annually, began to play an ever more important role.

A Crusader, both etymologically and historically, was a person who had ‘taken the Cross.’ The symbolic act of taking the Cross was practiced routinely from 1095 onward by all those who had made a vow to participate in the expeditions to the Holy Land and elsewhere which were proclaimed, sanctioned, and indulgenced by the papacy. In the eyes of the canonists, when they came to analyse the institutions of the Crusade, the formal taking of the Cross was viewed as a ceremony which solemnized the vow by which the Crusader bound himself, both morally and legally, to serve in the ranks of the Crusade.

Little is known of the early history of the court of audientia litterarum contradictarum. Professor Barraclough has suggested that its origins must be sought in the 1150's and 1160's, when under the popes Eugenius III and Alexander III there was considerable development of judicial procedure by rescript. To begin a suit before papal judges, the plaintiff or his proctor produced a letter to the pope announcing the petition, stating the ‘libellus’ or charge, and beseeching him for the cause to be heard at Rome, or, more frequently, for a mandate to judges delegate. It is likely that the plaintiff would have informed the charged party of his action, and that by this time the defendant's proctor, too, would have been instructed in the matter and would be ready to appear at the papal court.

Most historians agree in attributing the beginnings of modern historical thought to the humanists of the Renaissance. This view seems proper in consideration both of the well known humanist enthusiasm for history and of the technical accomplishments of the great humanist scholars, although this should perhaps be qualified by our growing appreciation of the sophistication of medieval thought, historical as well as philosophical. Nowadays many historians acknowledge that the Reformation, too, made valuable contributions to the study of history, in spite of, or perhaps because of, its polemical character.

In his third satire Juvenal vividly describes the life of the respectable poor in Rome. Unable to endure the metropolis, a place full of annoyances, frustrations, dangers, corruption and decay, Juvenal's friend Umbricius (3.21) is about to depart for a better life in the little coastal town of Cumae (3.2–3).

Mehr als dreissig Ausgaben des Octavius hat unser Jahrhundert bereits hervorgebracht. Dennoch herrscht weder hinsichtlich der Konstituierung seines Textes noch des Verständnisses seiner Aussagen Übereinstimmung — ganz zu schweigen von so dunklen Fragen wie der Datierung oder dem mehr verlegen als entschieden behandelten Problem der Umstellung innerhalb der Kapitel 21–24. Die folgenden Noten sollen darum einer eingehenderen Erklärung resp. Begründung einiger Lesarten dienen, die in einer zweisprachigen Ausgabe des Dialogs erscheinen. Artigerweise beschreibt die erste zu behandelnde Stelle das Unvermögen der menschlichen Urteilskraft.

A galaxy of enlightened bishops, inheritors and transmitters of the highly developed Hispano-Roman intellectual tradition, graced the Church in seventh-century Spain. Braulio, Taio, Ildefonsus, Eugene I, Eugene II and Julian, all depend more or less directly upon the great St. Isidore of Seville (600–636). He in turn was educated by his brother, Leander, in the last quarter of the sixth century. Lynch emphasizes the uniqueness of the system by which these men were formed in what he calls a ‘bishop's school,’ an expression which underlines the very intimate relationship which incorporated the students into the bishop's familia in contrast to the more formal cathedral school, especially as it developed in Carolingian times.

Although the theological problem of doctrinal development had to await the historical perspectives of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to receive extensive consideration and more precise formulation, it was not entirely neglected up to that time. In the twelfth century Anselm of Havelberg († 1158) undertook a remarkable discussion of the question, and other medievals, such as Abelard and Saint Thomas, indicated a certain awareness of it. Augustin Renaudet has called attention to Erasmus' efforts to come to grips with the idea of evolution or mutation in doctrine and discipline; and a recent book has described in some detail the form which the question took among the scholastics of Salamanca. Both of these studies focus our gaze upon the sixteenth century and suggest that in that period the problem intruded with some insistence upon the consciousness of Christian thinkers, although in a problematic different from that of our day. The purpose of this article is the presentation of a text of the humanist and reformer, Giles of Viterbo (1469–1532), which explicitly engages the topic and articulates it in a way which deserves notice.

In the past few years, literary studies on Humanism and the Renaissance have commanded ever-increasing attention. The research displays, broadly, two marked trends: one segment, which stations itself in the ranks of scholars such as Burckhardt, Voigt, De Sanctis, Gaspary, and others, interprets the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere of the era; the other uncovers new texts or, keeping step with the modern scientific approach to the study of manuscripts, reedits in more precise form already known texts — this group is dominated by the name of Sabbadini. In the following pages, several books which have appeared in the last few years will be assessed with a view toward their contributions in both areas.