The mysteries and challenges presented by the Latin poem known as De Sodoma are many and varied. The identity of its author will likely never be known. Date and place of composition can only be expressed in terms of probabilities, and portions of the poem are extremely difficult to read and interpret. I am currently involved in the preparation of a critical edition, with translation and commentary, of both De Sodoma and its shorter, perhaps superior companion-piece De Iona, in the hope that this might pave the way for easier reading. In the present discussion I also address problems of readability, returning to that aspect of the poem which first attracted my attention and which, on balance, seems to offer the greatest help comprehending it: its relation to Ovid's Metamorphoses. While the poet of De Sodoma makes explicit and dramatic reference to the tale of Phaethon as told by Ovid, Ovid's text functions at a yet more basic level. In my view, the defining characteristic of De Sodoma is its structure as an Ovidian episode. This structure sets it apart from earlier Latin Biblical epics, canonical school texts by the time De Sodoma was composed. Read against the backdrop of its Ovidian model, the poem reveals a unity and coherence which has previously not been recognized, and extends our appreciation of the interests of some early medieval audiences and of the learning and artistry of at least one early medieval poet.

Any late writer who quotes from an alleged Jokebook of Cornelius Tacitus is doomed to incur suspicion, and the culprit Fulgentius has duly met his fate. In the words of one distinguished scholar he was ‘something of a fraud; many of the learned titles he quotes he had certainly never read, many never even existed,’ whilst another characterises his work as ‘a curious mixture of genuine citation and cool forgery, none of it trustworthy without external confirmation.’ Both were writing on other matters, which enhances the need for a full consideration of Fulgentius‘ methods. The problem has been looked into before, but not in the wider context required. Thus, for easy instance, editors of Petronius still print the fragments of their author cited by Fulgentius without reflecting upon their authenticity. And devotees of that more famous fraud, the Historia Augusta, could profit more than they have done from a closer look at our man.

Merovingian and Carolingian sources refer to a subordinate official, called a centenarius, and his jurisdiction, called a centena. In the Carolingian period, the centenarius was selected by the count (comes) to exercise administrative, police, and judicial functions within the centena or hundred, a subdivision of the county (pagus or comitatus). Other terms for the count's deputies and their jurisdictions are also attested; in the south vicarii administered districts called vicariae, and in the far west the subdivision of the county bore the name condita, a word probably of Celtic origin. For most of the kingdom, however, the principal officials of the count were called centenarii and their jurisdictions, centenae. In the Merovingian period also, the centenarius acted as a subordinate of the count, and like his Carolingian namesake exercised judicial and police duties; the term centena is attested in sixth-century Merovingian sources but probably acquired clear territorial significance only in the late Merovingian or early Carolingian periods.

The object of this paper is to identify a particular stylistic feature in the Old English Genesis A, to point out its affinities in Anglo-Latin historical literature (particularly in the historical writings of Byrhtferth of Ramsey), and to discuss the implications of those affinities. In conclusion I propose to discuss the literary history of this motif and some occurrences in other Old English poems — notably in Beowulf. I will thus move from fairly mechanical problems of source-study and stylistic affinity to some important ideological and literary issues, but unfortunately the more important issues are also more difficult to resolve.

In recent years, a good deal of attention has been paid to the place of typology in late medieval art. This way of thought so characteristic of the Middle Ages, in which Old Testament persons and events are seen to have a prefigurative relationship to those of the New, was a popular teaching device. It is nowhere better seen than in the Biblia pauperum or picture Bible, which originated in a mid-thirteenth-century Dominican milieu and was probably inspired by the altar piece of Nicholas of Verdun, made in 1181. The pages of these books contain drawings that show the typological relationship between Old and New Testament events by means of a center roundel depicting some episode of Christ's life, known as the anti-type, flanked by two Old Testament scenes, the types, which were thought to prefigure it. Appropriate Bible prophecies in banners heightened the visual impact of the drawings for the literate. From its inception, the Biblia pauperum was of enormous importance for northern European art, and its influence can be seen well into the Reformation.

Probably not long before the middle of the thirteenth century, Richard of Fournival, cleric, physician, and author, sent to an unnamed lady the autograph copy of his richly illustrated Bestiaire d'amours. In the prologue, Richard goes to some lengths to explain and justify the inclusion of pictures: hearing (oir) and vision (veir) are the doors through which collective knowledge is transmitted to the individual mind and memory (memoire), and word (parole) and picture (peinture) are the paths to these doors. Either one or the other route could have been chosen — in principle, they represent equivalent alternatives — but Richard is sending both words and pictures, because he wants to make doubly sure that the lady will indeed remember, that is to say, make his love the object of her own memory. The common denominator for word and picture is ‘image,’ and that is the notion on which the illustrator of one of the fourteenth-century copies of the Bestiaire based his introduction to the corresponding modes of reception: on folio 86v he depicted a reader who imagines what he reads (fig. 1); battle-ready warriors of romance stand before this seated figure in the privacy of his own room (indicated by the drapes), before his mind's eye, as it were, conjured up by the words of the text.

‘Abaelard,’ ‘Abelard,’ ‘Baiolard’ …? Twelfth-century scribes were as uncertain of the exact spelling and pronunciation of the famous philosopher's cognomen as scholars have been in more recent centuries. Trivial as it might seem, correct pronunciation provides the key to understanding a short anecdote copied onto the opening folio of a twelfth-century manuscript (MS Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm. 14160 = M), formerly belonging to the Benedictine abbey of St. Emmeran, Regensburg. It tells the reader that the peripatetic philosopher wanted to supplement his studies of the trivium by following the lectures of master Thierry on mathematics, but then found the subject too difficult. Thierry gave Peter the name ‘Baiolard’ because he was like a greedy dog who had eaten his fill yet still wanted to lick (given as the meaning of baiare) lard, here used as an image of the quadrivium. The word lardum may itself be a pun on artium. The story-teller goes on to claim that Peter changed ‘Baiolard’ (‘lick-lard’) to ‘Abelard’ (‘have-lard’) because he came to master geometry and arithmetic. The patent absurdity of a number of details in this anecdote — such as, that Abelard was an Englishman or that he wrote on geometry and arithmetic — has led most scholars to dismiss the story as a spurious invention. In this study I shall examine whether there are any historical insights to be gained from the anecdote, the text of which is given here with an attempt at a translation.

British Library manuscript Cotton Titus A.xix, a miscellany compiled in the fifteenth century, contains on folios 153r–155r an untitled Latin version of the legend of Roland with the colophon ‘Explicit de tradicione Guenonis.’ This text was first published in 1837 by Francisque Michel as an appendix to the editio princeps of the Chanson de Roland in the Oxford manuscript, with no commentary of any kind. In 1838 Wilhelm Grimm declared that the Latin version was a deliberate condensation of the legend and hazarded that it might have been composed in the twelfth century. In 1839 the Swiss scholar Johann Caspar von Orelli reprinted Michel's text in a classicizing orthography with occasional conjectural improvements, and dated the poem in the twelfth or thirteenth century on the basis of its resemblance to the Ysengrimus and the Speculum stultorum.

The historical work of the Premonstratensian canon Robert of Auxerre († 1211) was one of the most influential of medieval chronicles. Vincent of Beauvais († 1264) borrowed heavily from it in Speculum historiale, the final section of his great encyclopedia. The content of the Auxerre chronicle, extant in its independent version in relatively few manuscripts, thus contributed to an essential element in the textual foundation of later medieval education. The shape of Robert's narrative, however, differed from that of Vincent's treatment of history. The canon of Auxerre wrote in an old genre and for a traditional end. His was the kind of monastic chronicle that had for centuries affirmed for Benedictine and reform congregations their connection to venerable tradition, and traced for them the workings of providence in time. Vincent's work, on the other hand, set the record of human experience alongside compendia about the divine and natural worlds. It thus represented the historiographical fulfillment of the thirteenth century's ambition to systematize knowledge.

In 1256 Guy de l'Aumône became the first Cistercian master of theology at the University of Paris. Very little is thought to survive of his magisterial activities. Only his Summa … de diversis questionibus theologie has been seen as a series of ordinary disputed questions. This, however, has been enough to lead some historians to attribute certain original views to Guy. Above all, Guy is supposed to have had a distinctive belief in the precepts of the Old and New Testaments as absolute, which resulted in a desire to produce work based purely on Scripture. Unfortunately this interpretation rests on mistaken assumptions about the nature of the Summa, in particular a willingness to accept its structure at face value. In fact this structure was imposed on several distinct blocks of material which reflect different types of magisterial activity. A greater range of Guy's work is thus available to the historian than hitherto imagined. This makes possible a more balanced assessment of what Guy thought and the kind of work he was engaged in. It also reveals more about the milieu in which he worked, especially the use to which the Halesian Summa was put and attitudes towards different kinds of university exercise.

The Libre de Evast e Blanquerna of Ramon Lull (1232/34–1316) is a Utopian novel, pleading for the reform of various social and religious classes. The work was written between about 1274 and 1289. It is made up of five books in the last of which one can distinguish three mutually independent parts: (1) the De vida ermitana, in which Blanquerna renounces the papacy and withdraws as a hermit to a mountain not far from Rome, (2) the Libre de amic e amat, a collection of mystical utterances, and (3) the Art de contemplació, an introduction to the art of mystical contemplation.

In the past three decades, the origins of Renaissance humanism have received much sensitive scholarly analysis. Although the novelty of humanism is still rightly stressed, the real contribution of medieval thinkers to its evolution has been brought into sharp focus. In no sphere has so high a claim been made for intellectual continuity as in political ideas, with Walter Ullman's assertion that Renaissance civic humanism owed its shape to its medieval antecedents. It is not my purpose to judge how far such a claim is justified. But since almost all historians would now agree that scholastic political thought made at the least a small contribution, there is a point in tracing the means by which Aristotelian ideas percolated into the schools of rhetoric, the cradles of civic humanism. It is in this context that Guido Vernani's commentary on the Politics should be examined.

The extraordinary productivity of John Wycliffe and his followers is evident in the number of their extensive projects that despite ecclesiastical condemnation survived to modern times: the large corpus of Wycliffe's own Latin treatises and the grand-scale undertakings he inspired including the translations of the Bible, the Glossed Gospels, the vernacular sermon cycle, the multiple versions of the Floretum, and the numerous Lollard tracts. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writers in England would inevitably have been aware of these Wycliffite resources, and the present study will indicate that the compiler of the orthodox collection of Middle English tracts known as The Pore Caitif (PC), ca. 1395–1402, used several of the great Lollard reference works in assembling his materials. In four sections below, evidence is presented that links The Pore Caitif to the Glossed Gospels, an Early Version of the Wycliffite Bible (EV), the Lollard translation of the pseudo-Augustinian De salutaribus documentis, and possibly the Floretum.

Critical approaches to alliterative poetry can and do include all the approaches imposed on literature in general. But to these must be added approaches particular to the fact that we confront a body of literature defined by a distinctive, some would say peculiar, metrical form. Alliterative poetry has been accorded a separate status precisely because it is alliterative, flourished in a relatively short time-frame, and is associated with a geographic region. For most of this century, the Alliterative Revival has reigned as an historical fact — a nationalistic metrical response, fostered by the North West Midlands baronial families, to the increasing power of the Court in the East Midlands and the pernicious influence of foreign, mainly French fashions, particularly poetic. In the last fifteen years, and at a galloping pace in the last ten, we have seen one of the massive certainties of literary history first quietly mined by the late Elizabeth Salter, and then besieged, assaulted, and overrun by an increasing band of scholarly invaders numbering among them Norman Blake, Derek Pearsall, T. Turville-Petre, and David Lawton. The Theory of the Alliterative Revival, once a Castle of Truth, now lies in ruins, picked over by its destroyers for useful material with which to build a new Tower on a Tofte. While the orthodox view of the alliterative revival has been disestablished, and no single creed has yet emerged as an authoritative substitute, there is currently underway a major re-assessment of alliterative poetry, which has both been caused by and also generated a substantial increase in scholarly knowledge of the field. The questions that have been posed and continue to be explored are mainly of the following kind: Was there a revival or simply a continuation? How and where was this revival/continuation generated and located? Should we distinguish sub-groups of alliterative poetry according to metrical variants? How do we scan alliterative verse? What are the origins of or influences on the metres and rhythms of the great alliterative works of the late fourteenth century?

One of the most difficult objectives of research into sacred traditions is to reveal their underlying origins. For early periods, about which we have scanty and sporadic information, the scholar must be content with indicating the earliest piece of historical evidence that connects a tradition with a specific site, though the reasons for this connection often remain unexplained. The tradition that locates the tomb of King David on Mount Zion, the southwestern hill of ancient Jerusalem, has often been considered one such case. Nevertheless this case seems to be exceptional. In this study I shall attempt to show that it is possible not only to indicate the connection between a site and a tradition, but also to explain the circumstances of the emergence of this tradition.

Many years ago Hans Bekker-Nielsen charted the influence of Caesarius of Aries on Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian religious prose in a series of groundbreaking articles. Professor Bekker-Nielsen was quick to acknowledge his debt to Dom Germain Morin, whose lifelong study of the works of Caesarius, culminating in the monumental edition of his sermons, restored to their true author a vast number of misattributed ‘pseudo-Augustinian’ homilies. In Bekker-Nielsen's words, ‘Morin's edition has restored to us an important corpus of ecclesiastical writings, and … it is our duty to tidy up the mess of references to Augustine or pseudo-Augustine in the scholarly literature wherever Caesarius is the genuine author.’ It goes without saying that, following Bekker-Nielsen's example, we should endeavour to do the same whenever someone else can be named as the genuine author of a ‘pseudo-Augustinian’ text. In this paper I should like to draw attention to two further examples of the use by medieval Icelandic authors of Latin sources mistakenly attributed to Augustine.

I recently published in this journal (41 [1985] 341–65) a guide to the medical MSS mentioned in Iter Italicum III. That volume had no index. The first two volumes of the Iter (London—Leiden 1965–67) do have indices, and it might be thought that the present guide is superfluous. But it is quite impossible to get from the indices an adequate idea of the whole body of medical literature listed in Kristeller's magnificent inventory. The Iter is devoted, above all, to theology, philosophy, law, literature, history, musicology, mathematics, and astronomy. Medicine, is, however, not neglected. I hope the present guide will stimulate research into the various genres of medical writing in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. We still have too few editions of medical texts from these two periods, which are really critical and based on all available MSS. We need more studies of plague tracts, consilia, receipts, and medical correspondence. Minor as well as major figures should be studied.

The study of Hiberno-Latin exegesis is a young medieval discipline. As the name suggests, it deals with the exegesis of the Bible by Irishmen writing in Latin. In practice, this discipline is confined to the period from the coming of Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century to the Carolingian Renaissance in the ninth. Furthermore, it deals almost exclusively with texts from Irish circles on the continent because so few texts survive from Ireland itself. Scholars had long known of Irish exegetes like Sedulius Scottus and Aileran the Wise who were usually well-known or at least unquestionably Irish. The works of many Hiberno-Latin exegetes simply languished in anonymity — until 1954.