In the year 1053, at the request of the Byzantine patriarch, Michael Kerullarios (1043–58), Archbishop Leo of Ochrid denounced the “priesthood of the Franks and the reverend pope” for observing Jewish rites through their celebration of the Eucharist with azymes, the same kind of unleavened bread used for Passover. Leo made these accusations in a letter addressed to John, archbishop of Trani in southern Italy, a region of coexisting Latin and Greek religious traditions that had been destabilized by the recent invasion of the Normans. The epistle was subsequently passed along to papal confidante Humbert of Silva Candida, who translated it into Latin and presented it to Pope Leo IX (1048–54). Around that same time, the two churchmen also heard news that the Greek patriarch had anathematized all those observing the Latin rite in Constantinople. A flurry of inconclusive correspondence ensued between the pope, the patriarch, and the Byzantine ruler, Constantine IX Monomachos (1042–55). In response to this persistent crisis, Pope Leo dispatched a legation to Constantinople that included Humbert, Frederick of Lorraine, and Peter of Amalfi. On 16 July 1054, after a series of acrimonious debates, the legates deposited a bull of excommunication against Kerullarios and his supporters on the high altar at Hagia Sophia. The patriarch responded in kind by excommunicating Humbert and his followers.

The story of Susanna and the Elders, found in the apocryphal thirteenth chapter of Daniel, part of the Greek version of the Book of Daniel, is richly suggestive of its likely appeal to poets and artists. It is set during the Babylonian Captivity and recounts events concerning the Jewish community within Babylon. Susanna is the beautiful and chaste wife of a wealthy man, Joachim, whose home serves as a seat of justice for his fellow Jews. While bathing in their garden, Susanna is spied upon and accosted by two judges of Israel who frequent her husband's house. They invite her to satisfy both of them or suffer the penalty for a charge of adultery, which they will bring against her. She refuses, saying that she would rather fall into their hands than sin in the sight of God. She is tried unveiled before the people. Led off to execution, Susanna calls out to God, who stirs up the spirit of the young Daniel. Daniel's skill in separating the elders before asking for details of their evidence against Susanna reveals their perjury, and they are put to death by the crowd. The tale is certainly courtroom drama, but it is also a narrative of transgressions — of female chastity and modesty, of the household and property, of justice itself.

Zu Aristoteles' Physik hat Walter Burley drei Kommentare verfasst: eine umfangreiche, selbständige Quästionenreihe und zwei Texterklärungen ad modum commenti mit eingestreuten Quästionen. Der erste Literalkommentar entstand vor 1316, der zweite in zwei Schüben 1324–27 (zu den Büchern 1–6) und 1334–37 (zu den Büchern 7 und 8). Die Quästionenreihe stammt nach der hier vorgeschlagenen Datierung aus der Zeit vor Abfassung des ersten Literalkommentars.

The Breton Lays in Middle English is an enigmatic label customarily used to designate eight or nine brief narratives: Sir Orfeo, Sir Degaré, Lay le Freine, “The Franklin's Tale,” Sir Launfal, The Earl of Toulouse, Emaré, and Sir Gowther. The label is awkward because it may seem to suggest that the poems are consistently derived from or inspired by Breton or Old French sources and thus are a sort of stepchildren, little more than translations or, worse, misunderstandings of a multi-media heritage. Most scholars have seen the grouping as traditional and artificial, passed along in uncritical reception, not resting on substantial generic similarities that distinguish the poems from other literary forms. John Finlayson, for instance, concludes, “In fact, considered coldly, shortness and adventure or ordeal would seem to be the only things that can really be isolated as universal characteristics.” Some scholars have accounted for the poems as a set. The distinctions they discuss commonly include the lays' close relation to the conventions of the folk-tale, relationship to provincial audiences, and a growing sophistication of the craft of fiction.

John Keats was one of the last English poets to lyricize a venerable tradition when, in his “The Eve of Saint Agnes,” the narrator describes

The passage of time has not been kind to materials related to the cathedral of Saint David's in Wales. In particular, few medieval liturgical texts used in the commemoration of Welsh saints have survived the vicissitudes of time and the ardor of Reformation zealots. In 1940 Silas Harris lamented the “complete destruction of the Menevian [Saint David's] service books,” and noted that “the almost total destruction of Welsh MSS and service books in the course of the centuries leaves a woeful gap” in our knowledge of the liturgical celebration of the feasts of Welsh saints. So thorough was the destruction of Welsh service books, according to Harris, that our current knowledge of the liturgy for Saint David derives largely from texts preserved outside of Wales. The destruction was nowhere more thorough than at the cathedral of Saint David's itself, two of whose bishops, William Barlow (1536–48) and Robert Ferrar (1548–53), were willing participants in the destruction. On 31 March 1538, Barlow wrote to Thomas Cromwell for instructions on how to dispose of certain of the cathedral's relics and “a worm-eaten book covered with silver plate” which he had confiscated. Some twelve years later, Barlow's successor, Bishop Robert Ferrar, following the king's command, “burnt all ye Martyrologies, portiforiums, & antient Mis-sales of ye Cathedral Church of Saint David, with their calenders, wherein were entered ye names of ye Bishops & ye days and years of their entrance & death or translation.” Later, in 1571, “certain ungodly popish books: as masse books, hympnals, Grailes, Antiphons, and suche lik” belonging to the cathedral, but which had been hidden away by a church sexton named Elis ap Howel, were seized by a “Mr. Chanter” (= the Precentor, Thomas Huett?), who “caused the said ungodly books to be canceled and torn in pieces in the Vestrie before his face.” Not everything was lost however. Owain Tudor Edwards's publication in 1990 of the services for Saint David's feast in the Penpont Antiphonal did much to close the “woeful gap” in our knowledge of the liturgical celebration of the feast of Saint David. Two more texts connected with Saint David's cathedral have recently come to light, preserved in BL MS Royal 13 C.i. The first of these, five lecciones (lessons or readings) based on episodes in the life of Saint Nonita, the mother of Saint David (sixth century), the patron saint of Wales, was intended to be read at a service for Saint Nonita (or Non) on her feast day. These five lecciones Sancte Nonite, consisting of a heading and thirty-eight lines of text, provide the only surviving material from an office for the feast of Saint Nonita. The second text, consisting of eleven accounts of posthumous miracles effected by Saint David between about 1215–29 and 1405, is the subject of this study.

When in late 1399 Henry Bolingbroke (1367–1413) took the English throne as Henry IV from his cousin Richard II (d. 1400), the deposed king's poet John Gower (ca. 1330–1408), who had been long in Henry's favor too, wrote extensively in support of the revolution by which the Lancastrian regime was installed. Aged and probably infirm, Gower had been quiet since finishing with the Confessio amantis in the early thirteen-nineties: “A bok for king Richardes sake” (∗24), Gower had called it, written “upon his comandynge” (∗54). Then came suddenly the substantial body of Gower's Lancastrian apologetics, within a period of a few weeks or months, between late 1399 and early 1400: the some three-hundred line inaugural panegyric, in rhyme royal stanzas, now usually called “In Praise of Peace” — re vera, “ad laudem et memoriam serenissimi principis domini Regis Henrici quarti'” — the Lancastrian Carmen saeculare, celebrating Henry's installation, and Gower's last writing in English; possibly some of the shorter Latin verse as well; and, most grand, his account of the revolution's advent in the Cronica tripertita, in three books, 1062 Leonines, covering precisely the chronological span embedded in the official “Record et proces del renunciacion du roy Richard, le second apres Ie conquest, et de lacceptacion de mesme la renunciacion, ensemblement oue la deposicion de mesme le roy Richard,” enrolled in the rolls of parliament in late 1399, on which Gower based his verse enarration.

Vor kurzem habe ich den Cod. 5461 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Wien, beschrieben, in dem unter anderem die Quaestiones super arte veteri des Henricus (Totting) de Oyta († 1397 in Wien) überliefert sind. Einem Hinweis auf einen zweiten Textzeugen folgend, habe ich inzwischen auch die Mainzer Hs I 613 (= M) untersucht, was wertvolle Ergebnisse zutage gebracht hat: Dieser Codex enthält eine Fülle von 26 bzw. 28 Texten hauptsächlich aus den Gebieten der Philosophie (Nr. 1–12 u. 26), der Astronomie bzw. Komputistik (Nr. 13–17) und der Medizin (Nr. 18–22); nur der Block Nr. 23–25 ist anderen Inhalts (Grammatik, Kirchenrecht, Poesie). Die wichtigeren Ergebnisse schicke ich hier voraus, für Einzelheiten verweise ich auf die Anmerkungen zu den jeweiligen Texten in der folgenden Beschreibung.

During the Middle Ages, collections of hagiography were among the most widely circulated texts, serving as both inspirational and instructional stories. The legends of virgin martyrs were some of the most popular. These young women were venerated for their ability to withstand torture in defiance of tyranny and served as models for medieval piety. One of these accounts, the legend of Saint Dorothy, is extant in at least three different Middle English versions, including select manuscripts of the 1438 Gilte Legende and Osbern Bokenham's 1447 Legendys of Hooly Wummen. The earlier history of the legend of Saint Dorothy, unknown in Greek tradition and venerated in the West since the seventh century, has been well described by Kirsten Wolf in her edition of the Icelandic redaction. Despite its relationship to many of the other fictitious hagiographical legends that came into existence in the fourth and fifth centuries based on the various calendars and martyrologies, and its development as a virgin martyr legend, Jacobus de Voragine (ca. 1230–1298) did not include the legend of Saint Dorothy in his Legenda aurea, compiled between 1252 and 1260.

El sistema de facultades internas elaborado por la medicina y la filosofía medievales proporcionó una explicación de los más variados procesos fisiológicos y psicológicos del hombre que resultaba especialmente atractiva para poetas y escritores, pues ofrecía una serie de conceptos y descripciones que permitían enriquecer considerablemente el tratamiento de asuntos tan fundamentales como, por ejemplo, las sucesivas etapas del amor. La presencia de este bagaje conceptual propio de la filosofía natural no se redujo, de todos modos, a la literatura. Textos religiosos, políticos, didácticos o de crítica o teoría sobre las artes incorporaban, con diferentes objetivos, referencias puntuales o exposiciones pormenorizadas de estas facultades psicológicas.

A large part of the literary production of humanist physicians consists of Latin translations of Greek medical texts. They considered these translations the first and necessary approach to ancient Greek medicine, which in turn was viewed as having ensured scientific and therapeutical progress against the barbarisms of dominant Arabic medical culture. In a passage from a work entitled De Plinii et plurium aliorum medicorum in medicina erroribus, the humanist physician Nicolò Leoniceno (1428–1524), who taught for sixty years at the University of Ferrara, attacks Avicenna's doctrine as chaotic, obscure, and dangerous to life. He then presents his own medical program, which is first of all based on translations: “Nos sane ad hanc amovendam atque extirpandam et nostrae aetatis hominibus lucem aliquam veritatis aperiendam, partim librorum Galeni medicorum principis translationibus, partim in eosdem commentationibus, die noctuque laboramus.” Leoniceno was actually a prolific translator of Galen.