The history of the early Germans is controversial terrain. This is known, though not invariably admitted. A few years ago, Klaus von See summed up the underlying predicament:

It seems to have been something of a Christian commonplace, at the turn of the fifth century, to taunt the ancient pagan oracles for being unable to predict their own demise. “Where are the frightening and shadowy spectres of Hecate,” asked Gregory of Nazianzus in his Epiphany sermon of 380 or 381, “and the subterranean tricks and prophecies of Trophonius, or the mutterings of the oak of Dodona, or the sophistries of the Delphic tripod, or the prophetic drink of Castalia? The only thing they could not prophesy was this: their own falling into silence.” Commenting, some thirty years later, on the stinging challenge to the prophetic powers of the pagan gods in Isaiah 41:22, Jerome observed “that after the coming of Christ all the idols have fallen silent. Where is Delphic Apollo and Loxias, Delian and Clarian [Apollo], and the other idols that promised knowledge of the future and deceived mighty kings? Why were they able to foretell nothing about Christ, nothing about his apostles, nothing about the ruin and abandonment of their temples? If, then, they were not able to foretell their own downfall, how could they foretell the good or bad fortunes of others?”

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Lat. 2342 begins with a list of works by an anonymous monk of the abbey of Bec, in Normandy, who seems to have lived there during the first half of the twelfth century. Dom André Wilmart, who first published this list, characterized the author of these works as a writer “de troisième rang,” who nevertheless possessed a kind of encyclopedic knowledge. Approximately two thirds of the works mentioned in the list are preserved in the same manuscript. Among the works now lost must be counted:

The observation has been made frequently enough in the recent and, indeed, not so recent scholarly literature to have assumed the status of a received truth: the Venerable Bede, esteemed for both his saintliness and his scholarship, simply did not like Isidore of Seville. Although Bede knew Isidore's major works, at least, and used them extensively, he was less respectful of Isidore, we are told, than he was of his other authorities. On only three occasions does he refer to Isidore by name, and each time it is to correct him. Part of the explanation, it has been suggested, lies in their sharply differing attitudes towards antique literary culture. Whereas Isidore was a product of the ancient world, says Riché, Bede decisively turned against its cultural and educational legacy, rejecting the approach, sanctioned by both Augustine and Gregory the Great, that enlisted the liberal arts in the service of Christian thought. He also, Riché goes on to say, was distrustful of the broadly-based scientific curiosity evinced in Isidore's works. Despite his acknowleged accomplishments, Bede's own scientific interests were, like those of other educated Anglo-Saxons, strictly limited. Natural philosophy writ large was suspect because of the irreligious aberrations to which it might lead. To C. W. Jones and a number of more recent commentators, the crux of the matter is Isidore's incompetence, not his excessive zeal. In Bede's view, Isidore simply did not work to a high enough standard. Hence he turned to other authorities, scarcely containing his disdain of the Sevillian. “The weakness of Isidore's treatment of cycles is manifest to the elementary student,” Jones points out; “it would be more than irritating to Bede.”

Les premiers qui pensèrent avoir trouvé dans les écrits du Moyen Age un antécédent au Cogito cartésien furent probablement les auteurs de l'Histoire littéraire de la France. Voici ce qu'ils écrivent au sujet d'Heiric d'Auxerre: “Il ne possédoit pas moins parfaitement la Philosophie que les autres sciences. Il poussa en effet ses réflexions sur cette faculté de Litérature, jusqu'à découvrir le doute méthodique de M. des Cartes, qu'il explique fort clairement.” Pour étayer cette affirmation, nos Bénédictins citaient une glose, placée par Heiric lui-même en marge de sa Vita Sancti Germani. Stimulé par cette remarque, Barthélemy Hauréau s'intéressa àla glose citée. Avec plus d'enthousiasme encore que les Mauristes, il y salua le Cogito cartésien: “Rien ne manque, en effet, àcette démonstration, et Descartes, il faut le reconnaître, ne l'a pas donnée en des termes plus rigoureux, plus énergiques, plus concluants.” Hauréau, cependant, eut le mérite de reconnaître en cette glose un extrait du Periphyseon (I, 490 AB) d'É rigène, un texte sur lequel nous aurons l'occasion de revenir. Le vrai précurseur de Descartes, selon lui, est Érigène; Heiric d'Auxerre n'est qu'un écho du maître irlandais.

The life of Philip the cleric, younger brother of Louis VII of France, is meagerly documented. Philip died young, without having attained high rank in the church — indeed, having refused election to the see of Paris. The documents concerning him are unevenly distributed. The greatest concentration of them is the record of his attestation as a child or youth to charters emanating from the bishop or from the cathedral chapter of Paris, where he had been placed for education as a canon. From his youth or adulthood, there are several references, chiefly in letters, to disputes in which he was involved. He is mentioned in few of the extant acts of Louis VII and almost never in the narrative sources. Only three of his charters and a single reference to a lost act have previously been known.

Henry III's role in the creation of a new and powerful visual culture in thirteenth-century England remains uncontested, as does the dominant position of Westminster Abbey as its architectural centerpiece. Rivaling the soaring magnificence of the most splendid cathedrals, the thirteenth-century rebuilding of the Benedictine abbey church provided a dramatic setting for the anointing and coronation of English kings as well as for the new shrine of St. Edward the Confessor (see figs. 1 and 2). The Gothic rebuilding of Westminster Abbey is usually thought to have been financed entirely by a single ruler, but there may in fact have been two agents of patronage, abbot as well as king. Rather than having been initially determined in 1245, when Henry III's rebuilding plan is first documented, the project more probably developed and changed over a much longer period, from 1220 to 1245. Fundamental to the problem of Henry's role as patron, then, is the question of whether the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey was conceived as a single project in 1245 or whether the undertaking began earlier and became more ambitious in the course of time. Indeed, we might ask whether the royal persona of Henry III as patron was itself a calculated representation constructed by his advisors and the abbots of Westminster and documented by such biased chroniclers as Matthew Paris.

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 French Franciscan, Peter Aureoli, was born shortly before 1280 near Cahors in the south of France. He studied in Paris, but the date of his arrival there, 1304, quite likely would have made him too late to hear the lectures of Duns Scotus on books 1 and 4 of the Sentences. After teaching at Bologna (1312) and Toulouse (1314), Peter finally returned to Paris where he lectured from 1316–20. In July 1318, his friend John XXII sponsored him for the licentiate in Theology. The request was granted and Aureoli took the oath of Magister actu regens on 13 November 1318. Elected provincial of the Aquitaine Franciscans toward the end of 1320, he was nominated archbishop of Aix-en-Provence before he exercised the former office. Pope John XXII consecrated him on 14 June 1321, but before Peter could settle into his new task he died, probably on 10 January 1322.

Worcester Cathedral MS F.10 forms a random collection of Latin, English, and macaronic sermons which were gathered and copied by a fairly large number of scribes in the middle of the fifteenth century. These sermons, most of them anonymous, are for a variety of occasions and audiences and have been entered in no particular liturgical order, even if, as the presence of several sets of quire numbers indicates, the individual quires were reordered several times in the medieval period. The collection contains a number of pieces that were evidently preached to a university audience, as is shown by their addressing “magistri” and by internal references to a university milieu. Their locale was presumably Oxford. Besides such general university sermons, the collection also includes two that are labeled “Introitus Sententiarum” and three other pieces that agree with these in form — the scholastic sermon structure — and content — praise of theology or holy Scripture and Peter Lombard. These five pieces are introitus, academic speeches or sermons which, according to university statutes, bachelors as well as masters (or doctors) of theology were required to deliver as they began their courses on the Bible or on Peter Lombard's Sentences. In addition, the manuscript contains an item that is very similar to the introitus sermons in that it follows the scholastic sermon structure and praises its subject. The latter, however, is not theology but philosophy, and the thema on which the piece is based is not a biblical text but a quotation from Aristotle. A sermon on a secular text itself is a rarity in medieval sermon literature, certainly from England; and appearing as it does in a sermon collection, the piece seems to be a rarissima avis stuck in the wrong flock.

Our knowledge of school education in medieval England has been immeasurably advanced during the last fifty years or so by the study of school textbooks. When the topic of medieval English schools was first identified in the 1890s, by A. F. Leach and others, it centered chiefly on their organization. Scholars collected references to their existence and continuity, together with the rather sparse records of their constitutions, masters, and pupils. Then, in the 1940s, the late R. W. Hunt drew attention to the manuscripts by which Latin and English were taught and studied in schools, a source that has since been explored by other writers. The study of manuscripts, it is now clear, enables us to understand much of what the schools taught, to gauge better the objectives and standards of school education, and to measure the similarities and differences between schools. Some of the surviving manuscripts cannot be attributed to particular schools, masters, or pupils, and therefore form a guide to education only in general. Others can be more exactly located. Dr. David Thomson, who has studied twenty-four fifteenth-century school manuscripts that contain material in Latin and English, is able to link at least half to particular schools, including Basingwerk Abbey (north Wales), Battlefield College (Shropshire), Beccles (Suffolk), Eton College (Bucks.), Exeter (Devon), St. Anthony's School (London), Magdalen College School (Oxford), St. Albans (Herts.), and Winchester College (Hants.). Other manuscripts can be attributed to Barlinch Priory (Somerset), Newgate School Bristol (Gloucs.), and Lincoln or its vicinity. This is a wide selection of places, geographically and institutionally. There are schools connected with monasteries (Barlinch and Basingstoke), fee-paying town grammar schools (Beccles, Exeter, and St. Albans), and the free grammar schools endowed during the later Middle Ages, such as Eton, St. Anthony's London, Magdalen College Oxford, and Winchester.

Heymericus de Campo (Heymeric van de Velde) (ca. 1395–1460), Professor der Theologie in Köln und in Löwen, Vertreter der Kölner Universität auf dem Konzil von Basel, gehört zu den bedeutenderen Philosophen und Theologen des 15. Jahrhunderts. Sein besonders von Albert dem Großen und Raimundus Lullus geprägtes neuplatonisches Denken beeinflußte nachhaltig Nikolaus von Kues. Leider sind von Heymerics zahlreichen Schriften bisher nur wenige ediert. Zwei wichtige Handschriften mit meist unedierten Werken Heymerics befinden sich in der Bibliothek des Cusanus-Hospitals in Kues; es sind die Codices 105 und 106. Der letztere, der Codex Cusanus 106, hat bei den Cusanus-Forschern viel Aufmerksamkeit erregt; enthält er doch Schriften Heymerics aus der Kölner und Basler Zeit, die Nikolaus von Kues mit zahlreichen Bemerkungen versehen hat. Weniger Beachtung hat bisher der Codex 105 gefunden, der keine Spuren einer Benutzung durch Cusanus aufweist; er enthält einen Summarius dominice passionis epilogus sowie eine Stellungnahme Heymerics aus dem Jahre 1458 zu dem interessanten Phänomen der Kinderwallfahrten zum Mont St. Michel.

The Moralia is an unfortunate term for the writings that have come down to us under the name of Plutarch of Chaeronea (ca. A.D. 50–120). They discuss rhetorical topics and general philosophical issues. A few are expressedly devoted to medical themes, for example, the tract entitled De sanitate tuenda praecepta (Mor. 122B–137E). But the medical material is sadly scattered throughout the extensive oeuvre, and it is difficult to gain a clear perspective.

The martyrs whose suffering and death is recorded in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis have been revered for almost two millennia. The Church has signaled its high regard with the inclusion of Perpetua and Felicitas in the canon missae. The praise for these young Carthaginian converts was immediate. Beginning with Tertullian and including luminaries like Augustine and Quodvuldeus, leaders of the African church acknowledged these youthful Christians as models of Christian self-sacrifice; their triumph, the courage of spirit over the dread of death. For Tertullian, their act of confident self-immolation was the apogee of Christian fortitude. In his discussion of the location of the eternal dwelling place for those who die in Christ, Tertullian, in De Anima, called the young Roman woman Vibia Perpetua “the most courageous martyr” of the Church. His comment, at least partly intended to stiffen the resolve of his threatened congregation, is difficult to reconcile with the normative status accorded at this time to the figure of Stephen in Acts (cf. Acts 6–7). His remark might be a flight of characteristic hyperbole. It might suggest, however, that the traditional role of the proto-martyr Stephen was not yet canonical in Carthage. Conversely, if Tertullian has already moved from orthodoxy, it might represent a deliberate attempt on his part to elevate the narrative of the Passio over the incident in Acts, thus privileging Montanist belief in the power of the Holy Spirit's continuing revelation. There is certainly evidence for the latter position in the anonymous editor's opening remarks in the Passio itself.

Jusque dans les années 50, les historiens de la pensée parlaient de préférence de pensée ‘arabe', car la grande majorité des oeuvres qu'ils étudiaient sont écrites en langue arabe. Sous l'influence d'auteurs comme H. Corbin, qui ont souligné l'importance des textes persans, on parle maintenant de pensée ‘islamique'. Mais que dire alors de penseurs comme Yahyâ ibn ‘Adî qui est un chrétien, ou Saadia Gaon qui est un juif, ou encore Abû Bakr al-Râzî qui est un philosophe pur, sans lien avec aucun monothéisme??

In my view it will not be possible to write the detailed history of the Jewish community in Majorca until a great deal more preliminary work has been done on the sources for that history. The following sketch of the subject is limited to the period before 1500, and, except for some references to conversos, to the time before 1391. It seems best to begin with a brief discussion of the context within which the Jewish community of Majorca emerged in the later Middle Ages and of the historical background which gave it its peculiar importance.

A manuscript in the collection of the University of Chicago, which is labeled in the catalogue as Promptuarium homileticum, has turned out on closer inspection to be a partial copy of Richard Fishacre's Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the first such commentary composed at Oxford. Bearing the eighteenth-century bookplate of Edward Browne and the 1792 bookplate of the executors of the estate of Thomas Eyre, the manuscript, now catalogued as University of Chicago MS 156, was purchased from Percy Dobell and Son by Shirley Farr, class of 1904, and donated to the university in 1926. The source of the title Promptuarium homileticum can be traced back at least as far as the dealer's listing, which was subsequently tipped into the manuscript and copied uncritically by Seymour De Ricci in his 1935 Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada.