Modern analyses of the course of Roman politics in the years 62–60 b.c. reveal a high level of agreement in comparison with the welter of conflicting theories that have emerged from studies of the political activity of the fifties.

The dismissal of his army at Brundisium and certain seemingly conciliatory gestures toward the conservative elements of the Roman aristocracy have led most scholars to conclude that in 62 b.c. Pompey, at heart a conservative, was eager for closer ties with Rome's oligarchs, and willing to accept the notion of government by the senate if his immediate but modest needs were met.

Although more and more readers have come to recognize the literary sophistication of some Old English poems, only a very few have discussed Cynewulf's Elene in terms of this sophistication. A few studies have appeared in recent years which argue, in one way or another, for the complexity and richness of the poem, but many assumptions on which the older criticism is based remain to be challenged. Although the earlier commentators usually protested that the poem is no mere versification of its source, the Invention of the Cross-legend, they almost always discussed Cynewulf's achievement in terms of departure from or amplification of his source, and ultimately dismissed the poem as an extremely good versification of the legend.

The role of the English mercenaries in the Byzantine army has long been under dispute. A. A. Vasiliev, writing in 1937, gave a very full summary of what was known at that time, and tended to stress their importance to Byzantium in the later eleventh century. However, his article came under brief but formidable attack from the German scholar, F. Dölger, who published a review of Vasiliev's work in 1938. A year later, Dölger's arguments were repeated and amplified by S. Blöndal. Since then, the dispute has hung fire, and a recent historian of the Byzantine army, A. Hohlweg, was justified when, in 1965, he wrote of the problem of the role of the English as umstritten — disputed. What follows is an attempt to reassess the problem and my conclusion is akin to Vasiliev's: there was a significant migration of Anglo-Saxons to the Byzantine Empire around 1080, and in the early years of Alexius Comnenus‘ reign. Further, there is evidence of diplomatic contact between the Empire and the rulers of England, and groups of Anglo-Saxons may have continued to migrate eastward later than has previously been thought. But the value of the English was probably greatest in the early years of Alexius Comnenus’ reign, and may even be compared with that of the Russians who had come to the rescue of the emperor Basil II nearly a hundred years earlier, in about 988.

These pages complete the inventory of Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries published in Traditio 23 (1967) 313–413, 24 (1968) 149–245, 26 (1970) 135–216, 27 (1971) 251–351, and 28 (1972) 281–396. 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. It is to be noted, however, that mention of the manuscripts has been omitted in the entry for Thomas Aquinas in view of the publication now in progress by H. F. Dondaine and H. V. Shooner of Codices manuscripti operum Thomae de Aquino (Rome 1967ff.).

The Karolinus of Egidius Parisiensis, a twelfth/thirteenth-century poem in five books on the life and virtues of Charlemagne, has attracted the interest of a host of scholars, among them, M. J. J. Brial, Gaston Paris, Joseph Bédier, Paul Lehmann, Gaston Duchet-Suchaux, R. B. C. Huygens, and Paul Beichner. Only excerpts, however, have been printed, even though complete publication has been noted as an urgent desideratum. The full text both of the poem proper and of closely related annexes found in the manuscripts is presented hereunder, together with a study of the author and his work.

Of the numerous real and hypothetical experimental illustrations invoked against the existence of natural and artifical vacua during the Latin Middle Ages, two may be singled out as especially prominent: the clepsydra and the separation of two surfaces. The descriptions and explanations of these two popular experiments will serve as the focus of this paper, since they strikingly exemplify the kinds of arguments and the often ad hoc character of the medieval defense of Aristotle's contention that nature is a material plenum. Medieval authors, with perhaps one exception, denied the actual existence in the world of separate, continuously extended vacua, however small or large.

The legate and legation have long interested medievalists, the general focus being on papal legation approached by pontificate, by region, or by historical era. Although study has fluctuated over the years, the past decade has witnessed a renewed interest. This recent work underlines the subtlety and the complexity of medieval thought concerning both legation and the larger topic under which it may be subsumed, representation. Among recent students of papal legation is Professor Frances Underhill, who has inspected the administrative devices utilized by papal legates in England during the reign of Henry III. Of special interest is the work of Professor Richard Schmutz, who has examined the classification of legates by earlier students of papal representation and has found their categorization of legates wanting. Secular legation has received some notice as well. Professor Donald Queller, for example, has reaffirmed and expanded his earlier suggestions that legatine practices did not play a prominent role in developing secular diplomacy and that there was a sharp legal distinction between ambassadorial nuncii and procuratores as regards legal volition and power. In addition, some attention has been directed lately to the problem of legal terminology and to the place that terminology has in descriptions of power and in descriptions of the transfer of power. Most of these legatine studies discuss to a greater or lesser degree both the theory and the practice of legation. Many consider, however cursorily, the possible influences which Roman practices and Roman legal theory may have had both on the theory and on the practice of papal and secular legation in medieval Western Europe. Yet none has taken up in detail either the character of the legate or the theory of legation in medieval Roman law. It is accordingly the purpose of this paper to analyze legatus both in the Corpus Iuris Civilis and in Accursius' synthesis of legistic opinion and interpretation, the Glossa ordinaria.

The life-span of Gerald of Wales embraces the reign of Stephen in England and the predominance of Owain Gwynedd in Wales at one end, and the early years of Henry III and Llywelyn ap Iorwerth at the other. He lived longer in England than ever he did in Wales. Yet it is his connection with Wales which accounts for much of his undiminished popularity throughout the past centuries. He is remembered as the man who wrote about Wales and who fought for a Welsh bishopric. The name by which he is known implies more than merely his origin; it stands for the deepest commitment of his later years, though not apparently his earlier life.

The importance of the manuscript pontificals for the study of the medieval evolution of the Latin liturgy needs no reaffirmation here. The state of the published descriptions and classifications of these manuscripts, however, is not commensurate in all cases with what their importance would lead one to expect.

Ehrensberger has provided a full description of the manuscript pontificasl preserved in the Vatican Library; although this is no longer recent, it is invaluable in the absence of a complete catalogue of the Vatican manuscripts. The monumental work of Leroquais describes in detail the manuscript pontificals extant in the public libraries in France; as most of the pontificals in France appear to be in public libraries, this work is fairly comprehensive in its coverage. Dom Anselm Strittmatter has listed and classified the liturgical manuscripts preserved in the United States. For pontificals in other countries, however, there exist no such reference works. Professor Richard Kay of the University of Kansas is currently compiling a handlist in which all the manuscript pontificals extant throughout the world will be cited and briefly identified, but not fully described. Until this appears, anyone working on pontificals or on ordines normally included in pontificals will quite likely have to work systematically through innumerable catalogues of manuscript collections to cover every library, city by city, for a frequently minimal return.