The relatively clear-cut distinction between the subjective and objective meanings of ᾄτη which appears in Aeschylean tragedy tends to disappear in Sophocles' extant work. The use and meaning of ᾄτη in Sophocles, rather, is marked by ambiguity. He shows himself conscious of the differences in meaning which Aeschylus had so sharply emphasized, but in a brilliant extension of his propensity for dramatic irony Sophocles most often employs ᾄτη in contexts where it carries the overtones of both blindness' and ‘ruin.’ This is, of course, quite consonant with so much else in Sophocles' dramatic style and way of thought.

The following study is an examination of selected aspects of the mythical paradigms presented in Sophocles' Philoctetes and Euripides' Orestes in an attempt to define the concerns that are shared by these two very different dramas. The first part deals with the characterization of Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes and discusses how the dramatist departed from the customary view of this character and appears to have been influenced by the figure of Telemachus in the Odyssey. The following section advances the thesis that in a number of significant regards Euripides' Orestes can be construed as a response to the paradigms of conduct presented in the Philoctetes the year before. Since the approach I will employ, while not new, differs from ‘standard’ procedure, in these prefatory remarks I would like to comment on why I have done so. Most current studies of individual dramas or the genre as a whole are relatively conservative in their approach; interpretation is, for the most part, restricted to the direct evidence of the text, analogies with other texts, and studies of particular techniques such as examinations of plot types and different forms of dramatic action. While this restraint has placed our understanding of the genre on a secure footing, I believe that there are certain important aspects of the medium for which it is not totally suited. The most important of these in my opinion concerns the evocation of mythical paradigms which, while they may lie beyond the immediate context of the drama, nevertheless shaped the author's conception and the audience's response to the characters on stage.

For St. Augustine the saeculum—the sum total of earthly human existence — was malignant. Not only was it so, he thought, since Adam's fall, but it would remain so until the Last Judgment. Since the Fall this world was no place in which to rejoice; only otherworldly liberation could be had ‘from this life of misery, a kind of hell on earth.’ Historical events, aside from the Incarnation, remained for Augustine ‘a chaos of human sin divided by acts of divine power.’ With Christ, history had entered into its sixth and last earthly age and there was no hope for any greater earthly future. In the City of God (20.7) Augustine rejected as a ‘ridiculous fable’ the view that the thousand-year kingdom of Christ in Revelation (20.1-6) would be a future earthly kingdom, interpreting it instead as a figure for the life of the Church in the present. ‘There are no verbs of historical movement in the City of God,’ Peter Brown assures us, ‘no sense of progress to aims that may be achieved in history.’

Late antiquity and the early Middle Ages witnessed a change in the Christian attitude toward the remains of the saints. Holy bodies came to be treated less and less as normal corpses, worthy of special veneration but still subject to many of the laws and customs which had regulated the treatment of human remains in pagan Antiquity. They came rather to be viewed as cult objects which could be moved or even divided up according to the demands of religion with little regard for earlier prohibitions of these practices. This change occurred relatively early in the Greek, eastern portion of the Roman Empire. In the mid-fourth century the Caesar Gallus translated a saint's body from one tomb to another, and less than two centuries later Justinian asked Pope Hormisdas for portions of the bodies of the apostles. Despite some outstanding exceptions such as the translations performed by St. Ambrose, the Christians of the West were more conservative in these matters. Nevertheless, by the ninth century at the very latest, western Christians had followed the lead of the eastern church in both translating and dismembering holy bodies.

Anglo-Saxon scribes were compilers and organizers as well as copyists. Each major Old English literary manuscript gives evidence of editorial planning. The Beowulf codex was apparently designed as a collection of marvelous tales; the Vercelli Book as a collection of legendary and homiletic matter; and the first three poems of the Exeter Book (Christ I, II, and III) were arranged in proper chronological sequence.

The polemics of the investiture contest, both those of German and those of Italian origin, in most cases owe their survival to the copying activity of scribes in the monasteries and cathedral chapters of Germany during the twelfth century. This survival is in itself unexpected: the Libelli de lite continued to be copied at a period when their argumentation and critical apparatus must have appeared unsophisticated by comparison with the canonical and theological textbooks of the mid-twelfth century. The polemics seem to have been preserved not for their erudition but for their literary qualities. Thus the two most famous twelfth-century collections of eleventh-century libelli — that of the Codex Udalrici and that transcribed in the sixteenth-century codex, Hanover, Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek XI. 671 — are found to exploit the polemics for teaching purposes: not for the elucidation of the rights of King Henry IV or of Pope Gregory VII (as their contents might suggest), but as models of epistolary style for the instruction of the twelfth-century pupils of the cathedral school of Bamberg. ‘Codex I’ of the composite Hanover letter collection — which, like the Codex Udalrici, seems to have originated in Bamberg — contains an important group of pro-Henrician and anti-papal materials: the only extant exemplar of the Defensio Heinrici IV regis of Petrus Crassus, the decrees of the imperialist synods of Worms and Brixen, the encyclical of 1089 of the antipope Wibert of Ravenna, and the treatise of Pseudo-Udalric in favour of clerical marriage. However, ‘Codex I’ also includes pro-papal materials: the two letters of Archbishop Gebhard of Salzburg in support of Gregory VII, letters of Gregory VII himself concerning German ecclesiastical politics, a well-known letter of Urban II and the decrees of the reforming council of Piacenza of 1095. The eclectic nature of the compilation of ‘Codex I’ suggests that the polemical works were regarded by the compiler primarily as model performances in the rhetorical art of the trivium.

Most scholars who have studied the medieval adaptations of Virgil's epic masterpiece agree that the principal change introduced to the story by the Roman d'Eneas and Heinrich von Veldeke's Eneit involves the Dido and Lavinia episodes. In general terms, the first four books of the Aeneid have been reduced in scope to the story of Dido, whereas Virgil's brief references to Lavinia in later books have been expanded into an independent love intrigue several thousand lines in length, creating a bipartite epic which anticipates the structure of Arthurian romance. There is considerably less unanimity of opinion concerning the nature and function of these two episodes in Veldeke's Eneit. The argument has circled for the most part around the question whether the loves of Dido and Lavinia for Eneas can be differentiated in terms of ‘unrehte’ and ‘rehte minne’ or in terms of fate and external circumstances. The following study focuses on a basic element of the work which has largely been ignored but could clarify the dispute: the distribution and roles of the gods of love in the two episodes.

In these pages, the Repertorium of Hippocratic writings in the Middle Ages begun in Traditio 31 (1975) 99-126 is continued, with the works listed alphabetically by the first significant word of the commonly used title. As in the earlier installment, I am indebted to others, but I may under the circumstances be permitted to restrict my acknowledgments: to express in words, however inadequate to the occasion, my sincere appreciation for the encouragement and assistance of the late Father Edwin A. Quain, who gave these so generously even when he was grievously ill. His kindly presence will be sorely missed but the inspiration he provided will continue to sustain us.

Le 5 décembre 1360, le roi Jean le Bon, qui a quitté l'Angleterre oò il était tenu prisonnier depuis la bataille de Poitiers, perdue quatre ans plus tôt, et qui revient de Calais à Paris par petites étapes, sans hâte particulière, s'arrête à Compiègne oò il va passer quelques jours et promulguer un texte important, édictant deux mesures inséparables l'une de l'autre: la suppression de tous impôts autres que ceux qu'il établit pour le paiement de sa rançon et la fabrication d'une bonne monnaie. Quelques jours plus tard, le roi est à Paris, se rend dans l'hôtel de Guillaume de Melun, archevêque de Sens, et déclare qu'il est désormais ‘franc’ des Anglais, terme qui ne peut manquer d'être rapproché du nom donné aux pièces d'or qui sont frappées dès le mois de décembre 1360 sous le nom de ‘francs.’ La monnaie forte est établie sur une évaluation du marc d'or fin à 60 livres tournois et du marc d'argent à 4 livres 18 sous tournois. En même temps est instaurée l‘équivalence de la monnaie réelle et de la monnaie de compte, le franc valant une livre tournois et le denier d'argent quinze sous tournois. La frappe du franc marque solennellement la stabilité de la monnaie et l'ajustement exact de la livre, monnaie de compte, aux pièces d'or ou d'argent. Jean II répudie formellement les mutations ‘par quoy nostre royaume et peuple d'icelui a esté moult diminué et gasté.’

Admiration for the achievements of the thirteenth-century Catalan mystic Ramon Lull ran deep in many currents of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was during this period that Lullism became a potent force in the intellectual life of Western Europe, being blended with mysticism by Lefèvre, with philosophical encyclopedism by Lavinheta, and with occultism and symbolism by Agrippa and Bruno. The penetration of Lull's thought into diverse areas of intellectual life was in agreement with his own contention that the Ars was universally applicable, but at the same time it obscured Lull's fundamental apologetic aims, his eremitic ideals, missionary wanderings, and his martyrdom.

Dans les manuscrits, le De sacerdotio se présente, comme la plupart des textes patristiques, avec un intitulé qui date, selon toute vraisemblance, de la période byzantine. A la même époque, sans doute, le texte a été malencontreusement divisé en six parties désignées par le mot λόγoς que les éditeurs latins ont traduit par liber et les éditeurs français par livre. Cette division donne une idée tout à fait inexacte de l‘œuvre qui est un dialogue et qui a dû être écrite d'un seul jet, sans autre division que le changement d'interlocuteur. Mais nous avons à décrire ici l’état des manuscrits et c'est de leur présentation que nous devons nous occuper. En tête des différentes parties se trouvent des képhalaia, selon le terme employé dans certains manuscrits, c'est-à-dire des têtes de chapitres.

I shall begin with a definition. I am dealing with ‘secular historians,’ and thus I am excluding ecclesiastical history, and chronography. The second of these two genres, chronography, continued a tradition which goes back as far as Thucydides' contemporary, Hellanicus, but under a Christian empire it acquired a Christian bias and dropped any pretence of literary style. ‘Ecclesiastical history,’ which, as far as we know, was invented by Eusebius of Caesarea, and displays a somewhat unclassical passion for documentation, dealt with the church and history as it affected the church. Its presuppositions about historical causation were Christian. The secular historians, on the other hand, continued the classical traditions of historiography begun by Herodotus and Thucydides, and their subject matter was war and politics, and the cross between the two, which was diplomacy.

In the Old English poem Andreas, the narrative begins with the imprisonment and suffering of Matthew, who is blinded and forced to drink a magic potion which is intended to reduce him to bestiality. This drink, which literarily is directly descended from Circe's potion, fails to be effective in this case, and Matthew prays to God for help in his affliction. God responds directly and tells Matthew that He will bring help. God's help is mediated by the apostle Andrew, and immediately before God summons Andrew He is apostrophized in the following passage:

The development of tax revenues into an important source of royal income was an important event in fourteenth century French history. The military successes of Charles V were based on large standing forces paid for by tax revenues. Under Charles VI, who as a minor and later as a lunatic was incapable of ruling for most of his reign, the struggle of the Valois princes for control of royal tax revenues brought the kingdom to civil war and, ultimately, to the brink of foreign conquest. Little is known, however, about the tax revenues of the period, and few records survive to guide historians who try to estimate the income from taxation of Charles V and Charles VI. The full impact of the establishment of taxation on French politics has, therefore, been difficult to assess.

Francesc Eiximenis' (1340?-1409?) discussion of wine and wine-drinking is part of a moral treatise on the sin of gluttony found within the Terç del Crestià (1384). This work is the third book of an extensive encyclopedia entitled Lo Crestià (The Christian) which Eiximenis never completed. Of its thirteen projected books, to be written in honor of Christ and the Apostles, only four, the Primer, Segon, Terç, and Dotzè, materialized. The size and scope of this proposed work were to be comprehensive, covering all areas pertinent to the improvement of the moral character of the Christian. Within Lo Crestià the Terç, in itself a work of vast proportions, occupies a prominent place owing to its style and content. As F. Martí correctly pointed out, ‘… the Terç is the most important and extensive of the four books of Lo Crestià completed by Eiximenis, as well as the most interesting and remarkable of all.’

That Dante in his depiction of the seventh bolgia of Circle Eight (Inferno 24-25) was particularly reliant upon the Aeneid for plot materials and classical analogies is indicated by the poet's inclusion of Cacus among Vanni Fucci's tormentors: another figure of murderous bestiality, like his progeny in crime ‘Vanni Fucci bestia’ himself, guilty of a notorious sacrilegious theft, the savage, fire-breathing monster is, with little debate, drawn principally from Aeneid 8.185-275. Yet in examining the traditionally cited sources for the seventh bolgia (and the Vanni Fucci episode in particular: Inf. 24.79-25.33), while one encounters nearly every relevant notice of serpents and metamorphoses in ancient Latin literature (e.g., Ovid, Lucan, Pliny, even the Georgics), a very serious omission is apparent. Absent from the catalogue, except for one or two no more than perfunctory observations, is any reference to probably the most celebrated victim of reptilian torture in all Western literature: Laocoon. Another glance at that justly famous passage from the Aeneid (2.201-27) will perhaps cast some new light not merely upon the Vanni Fucci episode but upon the complex nature of Dante's literary debt to Vergil as well.

Heinrich von Langenstein (1325-1397) gilt als einer der produktivsten und berühmtesten Theologen seiner Zeit. Eine grosse Zahl von Werken ist überliefert. Die Thematik seiner Arbeiten ist so breit, dass Johannes Trithemius schreiben konnte, es sei Heinrich von Langenstein schwerer gefallen sich zu beschränken, als neue Themen der Untersuchung zu finden. Bekannt ist Heinrich heute der theologischen Forschung besonders durch seine kirchenpolitischen Werke, den Germanisten vor allem durch sein deutsches Erbauungsbüchlein, die Erchantnuzz der sund. Daneben ist jedoch eine Fülle weiterer Werke überliefert, und in kaum einer Bibliothek werden in den Handschriftenbeständen Titel des Langensteiners fehlen.

The creation of the Austrian diocese of Linz and St. Pölten out of territories which had been parts of the diocese of the prince-bishops of Passau marks an important part of the ecclesiastical policy of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II (1765-1790). The sanction by Pope Pius VI in 1785 recognized the creation of the diocese of Linz, which was to be supported in part by revenues from properties belonging to several recently suppressed monasteries. The Priesterseminar of the diocese of Linz and its library date from the creation of the diocese; and, at the direction of the emperor, a selection of manuscripts and early printed books from the libraries of the suppressed monasteries was presented to the library of the Priesterseminar.