Wie wohl alle grossen Epen der europäischen Antike, so enthält auch die Thebais des Statius eine ausführliche dichterische Darstellung von Wettspielen. Wie wohl alle grösseren Partien der Thebais, so hat auch diese in der Forschung der letzten Generationen Kritik und Tadel gefunden. Man meinte zu sehen, dass hier nicht die Poesie, sondern gelehrte Tradition bestimmend gewesen sei. Man meinte, den Passus als unselbständige Imitation ablehnen, als unoriginale Nachahmung abtun zu können. Natürlich handelt es sich bei der Schilderung der Spiele, die zu Ehren des ersten Toten auf dem Zuge der Sieben gegen Theben, des Opheltes/Archemorus, veranstaltet wurden (Theb. 6.249–946), um eine offenkundige Nachahmung der Darstellung der Leichenspiele, von denen im dreiundzwanzigsten Gesang der Ilias und im fünften Buch der Aeneis berichtet wird. Natürlich genügt dieser Bezug allein aber nicht, um ein Verdammungsurteil zu rechtfertigen. Ist doch gerade Wiederaufnahme und Neugestaltung überlieferter Motive eine tragende Gegebenheit antiken Dichtens. Die Aufgabe, durch Einzelvergleich mit den Vorbildern die wesentlichen Eigenschaften dieser statianischen Dichtung zu bestimmen, kann im Rahmen dieses Aufsatzes nicht in Angriff genommen werden; das genauere Studium einer so umfangreichen Partie mit 700 Versen muss einer Monographie vorbehalten bleiben. Hier können darum nur einige wichtigere Sonderfragen erörtert werden, die jedoch von grundsätzlicher Bedeutung für den Passus selbst wie auch für die dichterische Technik des Statius zu sein scheinen.

Of all the ways in which the serpent has been employed in literature for moral purposes one of the most striking is found in two passages of Gregory of Nyssa in which the serpent appears once again as a symbol of pleasure, and in particular of its insidiousness. It is very easy for a serpent to creep into an opening, we are told, but the arrangement of its scales is such that it becomes very difficult for someone to pull it out by the tail; in the, same way pleasure enters easily into the soul, but since it has brought with it a whole train of different pleasures (like scales) it is now difficult to remove it by the last part to enter. The meaning of the two passages is quite clear, but the text has raised serious problems for the respective editors.

Like the undergraduate who read Macbeth twice in high school — ‘once for the truth and once for the beauty’ — modern scholars seem content to restrict their reading of Pearl to an isolated consideration of either its artistry and appeal to emotion or its theology and appeal to the intellect, in spite of impressive efforts of Professors Fletcher and Wellek to resolve the elegy-allegory dispute. Even the poem's most recent editors betray their partisanship: E. V. Gordon, who repeatedly refers to the narrator-dreamer as ‘the father,’ maintains that ‘Without the elegiac basis and the sense of great personal loss which pervades it, Pearl would indeed be the mere theological treatise on a special point, which some critics have called it’; and Sister Mary Vincent Hillmann, in a veiled though determined effort to defend Sister Madeleva's view that Pearl is not a mere pathetic elegy, as some critics have implied, offers a disarmingly literal interpretation—asserting, rightly I believe, that Pearl is ‘an homiletic poem teaching that the soul must not be attached to earthly treasure if it is to attain the Kingdom of God.’ We have returned to the position of Sir Robert Cotton's librarian, who, out of touch with the sensibilities of late nineteenth-century scholars, characterized the first poem in MS. Cotton Nero A. x. as ‘Vetus poema Anglicanum, in quo sub insomnii figmento multa ad religionem et mores spectantia explicantur.’ I will attempt to show that the poet's treatment of ‘many things concerning religion and morals’ is, like Dante's Comedy (never to my knowledge categorized as either a mere theological treatise or a mere elegy for Beatrice), a carefully structured poetic account of a spiritual itinerary culminating in an ecstasy of mystical contemplation.

The Crusade vow has long been recognized as an important, indeed a central feature in the history of the whole Crusade movement, for, as Michel Villey pointed out, it was the vow which enabled the papacy to convert the momentary zeal of would-be Crusaders into a permanent obligation which could be enforced, if need be, by legal compulsion. Thus while the volatile enthusiasm of a crowd fired by a Crusade preacher might quickly evaporate, the mechanism of the vow made it possible for the Church to convert this enthusiasm into a binding and enduring commitment which did not disappear easily, quickly, or cheaply. The vow, then, was a juristic mechanism which was a major factor in the success of the Crusade and the perception of its potential usefulness was one of Pope Urban II's most significant innovations in framing his plans for the first Crusade in 1095.

A constant thorn in the side of those who try to understand courtly love is Andreas Capellanus' De Amore. This disconcerting treatise provides us with the only true art of courtly love that we possess, but it also contains a very harsh attack against love. The antithetical attitude towards love is all the more astonishing because Andreas, although a churchman, devoted far more space to the instruction on how to love and the praise of love than to the attack on it. Explanations for this anomaly have ranged from one extreme to the other: Andreas was sincere only in the section devoted to the praise of courtly love (Books I and II), whereas the third book represents a later—forced or willing—recantation; or, Andreas had been obliged for unknown reasons to compose a treatise on love, and appended the third book to correct any misunderstanding regarding his personal opinion on the matter. Recently some scholars have tried to find explanations for the treatise that deny in effect the existence of a conflict between the two parts. D. W. Robertson, Jr., for example, finds ironic overtones in Books I and II that betray Andreas' disapproval of courtly love; the third book is a forthright condemnation. I shall return to Robertson's thesis below. In the most thorough analysis to date of Andreas' treatise, Felix Schlösser has come to the conclusion that there is in fact no compromise between the two parts, and that Andreas did not really try to find one; the type of love attacked in the Reprobatio is totally different from the courtly love described in the rest of the treatise. Schlösser concludes that Andreas did not seek to reconcile courtly love with the teachings of the Church, but rather let the world of courtly love and the world of Christian dogma stand side by side, each absolute in its own sphere; both are confined to predetermined areas and do not overlap. Thus the attack from the point of view of the Church in Book III is directed against the same type of love Andreas condemns in Book I when he considers peasants, prostitutes, gold diggers, and the like.

These pages continue the inventory of Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries which was begun in Traditio 23 (1967) 313–413. The commentaries have been arranged alphabetically according to the author's first name, with a brief bio-bibliographical note and indication of manuscripts and editions.

What was Dante's interpretation of the third Aristotelian disposition of Nicomachean Ethics 7, which he calls ‘la matta bestialitade’ and how does it function in the structure of the Inferno? Correlatively, what range of meaning did Dante assign the second disposition, ‘malizia’? The problem is difficult at best and, from a modern point of view, apparently literarily unrewarding. What is more, after a long tradition of scholarly discussion and dispute a kind of consensus has emerged. With the solution which it proposes most are willing to rest content and indeed many simply take its correctness for granted. It is the thesis of this study that the consensus is based on an improvisation and that the high probability of an alternative solution can be effectively demonstrated. Underlying this is the conviction that this is not a scholarly quibble, of interest only to the ‘experts’ or merely a matter of interest for the history of ideas. Rather it is a problem with profound significance for the total structure of the Inferno both intellectual and literary.

Of all the international military monastic orders of the Middle Ages only the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem have left reasonably complete records. The publication of documents from their archives has not, however, evenly represented the great historical epochs of the order's past; for the Holy Land period (ca. 1096–1291) we have almost everything, for the Rhodian era (1310–1522) we have almost nothing. This situation has not gone unnoticed, but it has remained uncorrected. Twenty-five years ago John La Monte reported that documents pertaining to the Hospitallers after 1310 were among the important lacunae of crusade historiography, and, more recently, James Brundage has called attention to the fact that nothing has been done to fill this gap. With the exception of a handful of documents published by Joseph Delaville Le Roulx one must still turn to Sebastiano Pauli's eighteenth-century miscellany for original records of the Hospitallers during the two centuries they held Rhodes. The proceedings of the Montpellier Chapter General published here represents a modest attempt to advance beyond the current state of affairs.

In the mid-thirteenth century, Louis IX of France established the enquêteur, a roving commissioner whose assignment was to hear complaints against the local officers of the crown and take remedial action. This new official, known variously as the enquêteur-réformateur or (later) simply as réformateur, was an outgrowth of Louis' desire to protect the rights of his subjects against all encroachments. Although they were originally intended as a check upon royal fiscal officers, historians have long agreed that these enquêteurs were employed quite differently under subsequent French kings. By the reign of Philip IV (1285–1314) their assignments often stressed the investigation of alleged usurpations of royal rights. Perverting the function envisioned by St. Louis, they now sought to remedy abuses by the king's subjects as well as those by royal officials. They became another arm of the fiscal administration, searching for new or neglected sources of revenue for the crown.

Marsilio Ficino is one of those scholars of whose habits and methods we can now form a fairly complete picture, thanks to the increasing accessibility of library materials. Besides autograph copies of his own work, we possess a great many books he used, and in most cases annotated extensively. The number of Greek manuscripts known to have been handled by him rose from seven in 1937 (Kristeller's Supplementum Ficinianum) to sixteen in 1962, when M. Sicherl reported on the state of the question in Scriptorium. Prof. Sicherl is continuing his research and preparing a comprehensive study of the subject; the present article, a by-product of my occupation with the text of Olympiodorus and Damascius, is concerned only with Ficino's marginalia to the commentaries on Plato's Phaedo and Philebus in Riccardianus gr. 37. For a correct understanding of the character of these texts and the relationship between them, a short outline of their history will be useful.

Thomas More, humanist, statesman, and martyr, was one of the most prolific apologists for the Catholic Church in the early years of the Reformation. In numerous polemical and apologetic works he ranged widely over the issues raised by the controversy. But if his scope was large, he possessed one sure foundation to which all his arguments inevitably returned. This was the faith of the early Church Fathers, those men who interpreted the life and faith of the Church from the time of the Apostles to the end of the pontificate of Pope Gregory I in 604.

Every epoch sings its own song of Simeon, its spirit mirrored in the figure of the old man who is but a step distant from death. T. S. Eliot in 1928 wrote ‘A Song for Simeon’ expressing the disillusionment, the hollow weariness of the years following the Great War. A pallid, cold lifelessness envelops his poem, which heavy with death proceeds through images of ‘the mountain of desolation,’ ‘winter sun,’ ‘snow hills’ and ‘dust in sunlight.’ Simeon looks wearily backward as he waits ‘for the wind that chills towards the dead land.’

It is an anomaly that most readers of the Chanson de Roland seem to side with the villain, not the hero. Improbable as it is that the poet would have sympathized with this condemnation of his hero, the usual verdict seems to be that of Ganelon–that Roland is guilty of overweening pride. For example, the introduction to a new translation speaks of Roland's ‘presumptuous folly,’ and regards him as a ‘tragic’ hero who sins through pride and ‘impetuosity,’ barely redeeming himself by admitting his error (‘three mighty blasts of Roland's oliphant … proclaim his admission of error’) and dying in sanctity because he is penitent. The translator seems to agree, noting in her preface that ‘Roland's words of repentance [are] so convincing that he, who might well have sinned the same way again, can be carried off to heaven with angelic and human rejoicing’ (p. x). But an odd note creeps into the same sentence, for, she says, his ‘words of repentance are imprecise enough to leave his heroic stature untouched.’ Is heroism, then, incompatible with repentance? Perhaps this depends on what the hero repents. If Roland must repent because he has wickedly caused the slaughter of his own men, then he would seem to be more villain than hero.

Near the end of the twelfth century, the scholar and statesman Peter of Blois felt compelled to bring together the wisdom of ancients and moderns on the subject of love and friendship. He was reluctant to publish his synthesis, for he was afraid that his reliance on other authors would bring charges of fraud. Sure enough, it has. Unfortunately, he relied too heavily on one modern in particular, St. Ailred of Rievaulx; and, like many undergraduate papers, his treatise is a better example of plagiarism than of synthesis.

In a revolutionary paper read in the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1965, the foremost expert on the history of the crusaders' states, Joshua Prawer, has completely altered our outlook on, and considerably enlarged our knowledge of, the medieval communes established in the Holy Land during the time of the crusaders. This is not the place to discuss the merits of Prawer's paper in all details, especially as I have done this briefly elsewhere. Let it suffice here to say that by placing the history of the communes in the general context of the institutional history of the Latin Orient rather than by viewing them as isolated phenomena, as had been done by the late and regretted John L. La Monte, Prawer demonstrated ably and beyond any doubt that in the constitutional history of the Latin Kingdom and of the crusaders' states in general there were definite traces of Estates, elements of a development towards a Ständestaat This transition from a strong monarchy to a representative system of Estates, which is so familiar in European history, is hard to detect in the history of the Latin Orient because the reconquest of the Holy Land by the Muslims cut short this line of constitutional development. Thus, although the weakness of the monarchy in the thirteenth century was clearly seen, a true representative system never came into being in the East. But Prawer showed that the crusaders' states were well on their way towards such a goal and that from about A.D. 1240 the masters of the knightly orders and the administrative heads of the exempted Italian merchant colonies, as well as representatives of the urban brotherhoods (fraries), took part in the proceedings of the Haute Cour, the highest body of legislation and jurisdiction, although they did not formally vote. Under the procedure followed in the Haute Cour, the nobility debated separately and afterwards notified the representatives of the orders, the merchants, and the urban Frankish population of their decisions. But it is obvious that the latter by their mere presence must have influenced the proceedings because it was the orders, the merchants, and the bourgeois who controlled the military establishment and the economy. The fraternities, like any reasonably organized group, became part and parcel of the institutional framework of the state. In all likelihood Prawer's final conclusion is correct: had the crusaders' states survived for another hundred years, these representatives would have been transformed from advisory groups into well established and separate Estates with full power to vote in the Haute Cour.

In the recent massive sweep of in-depth research on the hymns and prayers to St. Mary Magdalen, one little Middle English poem of the second half of the fourteenth century has been overlooked. It should now be added to the total European corpus as the English representative, the sole versified prayer to this saint before 1500. The poem is written as prose on a blank page (fol. 100v) in Harley MS 667, a collection of over eighty Latin (and French) statutes and charters, local as well as national, like Custume de Gavelkynde (fol. 84r, in French), Tractates de Bastardia (fol. 213r), Statutum de Scaccario (fol. 248r), or Officium Senescalli sive Ballivi (fol. 275v), and is followed by a Latin collect and a Latin rubric for a pardon.

The Church of the Nativity of the Virgin at Madley (about six miles west of Hereford), widely admired for its architecture, its unusual crypt, and the rich stained glass of its east window, houses another piece of medieval art which to date has remained virtually unknown: a sizable group of paintings on the upper part of the wall above the chancel arch. So far as I am aware, the existence of such paintings at Madley has been acknowledged only in a vague and rather inaccurate notation by C. E. Keyser in 1883: ‘Over the chancel arch; Our Lord in Glory, and in Humiliation. Traces of painting elsewhere throughout the church. Probably about 1300.’ W. E. H. Clarke, writing in 1916, refers to Keyser's description and adds, ‘It is very much to be regretted that restorations have removed every trace of these mural paintings.’ The inventory of the Royal Commission reports simply, ‘Painting: Over chancel-arch, traces of large figure-subject, probably a Doom’ — a reference which seems to underlie Nikolaus Pevsner's ‘painting. Traces above the chancel arch.’ The inclusive volumes of E. W. Tristram on English medieval wall-painting, and the more recent ‘Selective Catalogue’ compiled by A. Caiger-Smith, make no mention whatever of Madley. This continuing unawareness of a substantial group of paintings not hidden under whitewash or plaster, during a time of increasing general interest in the discovery and preservation of medieval wall-painting, must be blamed partly on the condition of the paintings themselves, which are rather faint and can be fairly described as dilapidated. A more important factor, however, is the exceptional height and narrowness of the nave, particularly above the clerestory; an inevitable effect of this architectural feature is to bury the upper part of the wall over the chancel arch in permanent deep shadow, which—together with the distance from which the paintings must be viewed, and an incidental visual obstacle created by the easternmost tie-beam of the nave and its shadow — makes them normally impossible to see (Fig. 1).

Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405–64), the man who succeeded Calixtus III to the apostolic chair in 1458, was destined to become one of the best known pontiffs of the later Middle Ages. His popularity not only rests upon his own extensive literary and historical production, but upon the extensive historical literature subsequently devoted to this fifteenth-century figure. Multiple interpretations and assessments of his character and contributions abound. Caught up in the severe conceptualization of nineteenth-century renaissance scholarship, Aeneas Sylvius emerged as a slightly tarnished dilettante who only partially exemplified the typical Renaissance man with his clear-cut and self-reliant aesthetic and moral characteristics. In this spirit Georg Voigt raised grave suspicions as to Aeneas' integrity in both his private and public life. Jacob Burckhardt, who could only appreciate the pope's multiplicity from the standpoint of the representative artistic types exemplifying Italian humanism, failed to find the ‘whole man’ in the versatile Italian. As historiography moved towards a more diffuse view of the Renaissance and saw it as a shift of balance and change in emphasis rather than an abrupt change, the image of Aeneas Sylvius was gradually freed from such narrow interpretations. The struggle was long and intense for the scholarly tyranny of Voigt, though not always verified by a re-examination of the documents, was argumentatively infectious. Today, a half century of detailed research has added many additional perspectives to our knowledge of Aeneas Sylvius and has clarified many particular problems related to both his earlier life and later pontificate. Future studies will not differ too substantially from this pattern. The inconsistency accompanying the maturation of human character; the conflict between the theological-political values of any one man and the current aspirations of domestic and international ambition; the transitory character of the age—all these factors will continue to hamper assessments of Aeneas Sylvius.