It is difficult to deduce the Aristotelian scientific procedure — to take his abstract statement of the nature of science and to show that his actual method in a particular work is adequately explained by the initial definition. Yet Aristotle's actual method is worth getting at. It provides insight into Aristotle and into Greek thought, and it sheds light on the course of ideas during the centuries which have been scientifically Aristotelian. In the following pages, I have tried to discover and to describe the method at work in a particular scientific treatise. The unit chosen for study is the first book and a half of the De caelo. Here it is that Aristotle develops his highly influential science of the celestial bodies.

Comme la plupart des œuvres de Jean Chrysostome, le texte dont l'incipit est ‘Ιατρών μεν παίδες nous est parvenu à travers une tradition extrêmement riche. Sans prétendre avoir identifié tous les manuscrits qui le contiennent actuellement, je donne ici la description des soixante manuscrits que j'ai consultés, soit en lecture directe, soit en microfilms, pour établir l'édition critique de ce texte. J'ai été amenée ainsi à apporter quelques corrections et plusieurs précisions aux catalogues sur les points suivants:

Dans la tradition manuscrite du Xe au XIIe siecle, le texte qui nous intéresse fait partie d'un ensemble que les catalogues designent tantôt par Adversus Anomoeos, tantôt par De incomprehensibili. J'ai adopte uniformement cette seconde formule, pour eviter toute confusion.

In einem einzigartigen Werke der antiken Literatur, in den gegen Ende seines Lebens 427/8 verfassten Retractationes, hat Augustinus in strengster Selbstprüfung ehrlich und gewissenhaft seine bis dahin abgeschlossenen Schriftwerke einer Überprüfung unterzogen auf die Frage hin, ob sie auch nichts enthielten, das er nicht vor Gott und den Menschen verantworten könne. Er hat Korrekturen angebracht und sich gegen Missverständnisse verteidigt; und gelegentlich hat er auch Einblicke in das Werden und Fortschreiten seiner literarischen Arbeit gestattet. Beides gilt besonders für die vier Bücher umfassende Schrift De doctrina Christiana. Es heisst nämlich Retr. c. 30 (2.4):

libros de doctrina Christiana cum inperfectos conperissem, perficere malui quam eis sic relictis ad alia retractanda transire. conplevi ergo tertium, qui scriptus fuerat usque ad eum locum, ubi commemoratum est ex evangel?ο testimonium de muliere, quae fermentum abscond.it in tribus mensuris farinae, donec totum fermentaretur. addidi etiam novissimum librum et quattuor libris opus illud inplevi, quorum primi très adiuvant, ut scripturae intellegantur, quartus autem, quomodo quae intellegimus proferenda sint.

In reconstructing the social and economic history of the early Middle Ages, perhaps the single, most salient obstacle to our research is the scant amount of information we possess concerning the household economy of the lay family, how the family managed its lands and divided its labors among its members. Our sources, overwhelmingly ecclesiastical in provenience, tell us fairly much of the organization of Church properties, and, through a few surviving royal records, we have some information too about royal estates. But at all times in medieval Europe, non-royal lay families owned or controlled the larger portion of the soil. We must try to learn more about how these propertied families managed their estates, and how internal family structure may have been affected by, or in turn may have influenced broader economic and social changes.

By their exchange of articles in the Studi Gregoriani, M. Fliche and the Canon Arquillière have reopened the question of what actually happened when Pope Gregory VII received Henry IV at Canossa. Both scholars assume that Henry approached the Pope, excommunicate and stripped of the royal office; but they differ widely in interpreting Gregory's reception of the penitent King. Taking issue with views Arquillière had expressed in his work Saint-Grégoire VII, Fliche maintained that when Gregory released Henry from excommunication he also reinstated him in the royal office. In response, Arquillière reaffirmed his earlier position that only the ban, and not the sentence of deposition, was lifted.

The vast number and variety of sequences, those liturgical interpolations which in the middle ages commonly followed the repetition of the Alleluia in the Mass, and the freedom of their development, show that they were an outlet for the creative talents of musicians and poets. A sample of sequences from successive periods allows the literary historian to trace the development of rhyme and accentual meter, and a musicologist has described the sequence ‘as the parent of oratorio and the grandparent of modern drama.’ But while a view which encompasses centuries reveals to us variety and change, the compositions of any given time were largely shaped by inherited traditions. Not the least value of studies on the early history of the sequence is their demonstration of the close connection between various Alleluia melodies and their sequences and the way in which appropriate texts were fitted to melodies for specific feasts.

Only since 1932 has the existence been known of the Bridlington Dialogue — or, more properly, Colloquium magistri et discipuli in regulam beati Au- gustini de uita clericorum — a conversation between master and student on the Augustinian Rule. In that year the Bodleian Library of Oxford acquired from the bookdealer E. P. Goldschmidt what is now Bodleian MS. Lat. th. d. 17, a codex which was executed about 1200 and contains the Dialogue on folios 1 to 97v. Nearly twenty years later J. C. Dickinson published some excerpts from the work and discussed it in his The Origins of the Austin Canons and their Introduction into England. Later, Sister Penelope, C.S.M.V., under-took to edit the complete Dialogue. Her edition was well advanced when, in 1955, she learned from Winfrid Hümpfner, Ο.S.A., of another medieval manuscript of the text: Durham College Library MS. Β III 8, folios 222v to 253v, written about 1300. In 1960, she published an edition based upon a study of both manuscripts.

It would be impossible to give the exact number of letters sent by Innocent III to Ireland. All that can be done is to study the ways in which these letters could have survived, and in so doing to establish a calendar of the extant letters. These letters could have been transmitted in two main ways: through originals, or through copies. Copies of the letters, however, could have survived in a variety of ways, through monastic or episcopal cartularies, through the rolls of the royal chancery, through the collections of canon law, but mainly through the official papal register.

Im kanonischen Prozessrecht spielt der Zeugenzwang eine bedeutende Rolle. Er muss vielfach angewendet werden, um die ordnungsgemässe und gerechte Durchführung eines Prozesses zu gewährleisten; denn oft ist dem geistlichen Richter die Wahrheitsfindung nur dann möglich, wenn er Zeugen, die sich aus Hass oder Gunst gegenüber dem Kläger oder Beklagten oder aus Furcht vor Repressalien der Aussage zu entziehen suchen, zum Erscheinen vor Gericht und zur Zeugnisleistung durch Androhung oder Anwendung geistlicher Zensuren zwingen kann. Die folgenden Ausführungen befassen sich mit den Anfängen eines geordneten Zeugenzwanges im kanonischen Prozess des - Mittelalters, und zwar besonders mit der Handhabung des Zeugenzwanges in den päpstlichen Justizbriefen, in denen, aufgrund einer an der päpstlichen Kurie eingereichten Petition, vom Papste delegierten Richtern der Auftrag gegeben wurde, einen Prozess durchzuführen oder bestimmte, vom Papst angeordnete Massnahmen durchzusetzen. Die Untersuchung hat dabei eine doppelte Aufgabe: einmal gilt es, durch Untersuchung der nachher noch im einzelnen zu erörternden Testes-Klausel einen Beitrag zum Formelwesen der päpstlichen Justizbriefe und damit zur Diplomatik der Papsturkunden zu liefern, zum anderen aber durch Auswertung der dabei gewonnenen Ergebnisse unsere Kenntnis der Geschichte des kanonischen Prozesses zu erweitern.

John Trevisa, fourteenth-century scholar and translator, was born in Cornwall, studied at Oxford University, and served as vicar of Berkeley and chaplain to Thomas IV, Lord Berkeley, in Gloucestershire. He died sometime prior to May 21, 1402. The main facts of Trevisa's life and works were collected by the late Professor A. J. Perry of the University of Manitoba, who visited England in the summer of 1914, and reported the results of his research there in the Introduction to his edition of Trevisa's minor works, published by the Early English Text Society in 1925.

In 1955, Professor Eric Colledge of the University of Liverpool called our attention to hagiographical and historical material relating to the Order of the Augustinian Hermits, found in Cod. Plut. 90 sup. 48 of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence. The hagiographical section is headed by an anonymous Life of St. Augustine which, for its structure and the methods of its composition, offers a striking example of the genre of medieval hagio- graphy. We shall first give a general analysis of the MS and its contents, and then discuss the Vita Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis episcopi in detail.

The establishment of a chronology of Saint John Chrysostom's early life is beset with difficulties arising not from a lack of sources, but from a relative abundance of incomplete accounts, which sometimes contradict one another and which are of uncertain reliability. The fifth chapter of Palladius’ Dialogue is generally considered to be our most valuable source. Yet even in the use of this document some caution is advisable. Palladius knew Chrysostom during the last years of the latter's life; consequently his account of the events in Constantinople is of great value. But what were his sources for the saint's early life? Two in particular have been proposed: Chrysostom himself, and his aunt, the deaconess Sabiniana. Our own experience of human nature should warn us that a man in his late fifties or early sixties does not always remember accurately the details of his youth, and that the testimony of elderly aunts about the early years of their famous nephews is never entirely above question. Moreover, it should be remembered that Palladius’ Dialogue had an apologetic purpose.

The theory and fact of the Roman emperor's position were strikingly at variance in the fourth century. ‘Quod principi placuit legis habuit vigorem’ may hav been the established doctrine, but when he spoke to his proconsuls, the emperor said rather, ‘You must order the proceedings [of civil suits] to be on luded on the third day, or at the latest on the fourth day, or at any rate on the fifth’; or, to the civil service, ‘Let the greedy hands of the officials now forbcar, let theln forbear, I say. The stutter and shrillness do not fit an autocrat, nor the repetitions; but repetitions are characteristic of the Codes. An entire decree might have to be re-enacted, in almost identical form, eight or ten time, evidently because no one had paid any attention to it. Against this merely ornamental legislation, against ‘the ruler who lays down a law and is reckoned unable to enforce it,’ Libanius might protest, yet, three times imperatively summoned to the capital, he simply remained in Antioch. A contenlporary, Valerianus v. c., flouted one decree after another, one judicial decision after another, and flouted, too, the authority of the praetorian prefect, the proconsul, the urban prefect, and the imperial secret police, one of whom he allegedly killed with his own hands. Between the emperor and his subjects, and between his theoretical omnipotence and his actual powers, the essential link was the bureaucracy. Plainly, it was not doing its job. It is the argument of this paper that part of the difficulty lay in the failure of all ranks of government to get through to each other.

Before his canonization in 1161 Edward the Confessor was rarely called a saint or credited with miracles. But he received from many authors epithets expressing praise, such as ‘alter Salomon,’ ‘rex pacificus,’ ‘cultor justitiae,’ ‘pater patriae,’ ‘virtutis speculum,’ or, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘ruler of heroes / lavish of riches.’ Florence of Worcester (d. 1118) calls Edward ‘Anglorum decus,’ the glory of the English, a eulogism repeated by several other chroniclers. I want to examine whether this phrase is a ‘panegyric … of the most general kind,’ as Edward A. Freeman suggests, or whether it reveals a distinct esteem for Edward some decades before he was proclaimed a saint and confessor.

One of the more difficult tasks of a historian who treats Italian communal history in the fourteenth century concerns the problem of delineating the thoughts and actions of those citizens who were not allied with any of the several political factions that inevitably vied for office in the turbulent environment of the towns. With the men who were adherents of rival clans, politics was in the main a struggle for power. Their day-by-day activities are frequently the stuff of dreary, repititious Italian chronicles punctuated with blood feuds, vendettas, street fights, judicial persecutions and petty harassments. The persistent theme of cruelty and counter-cruelty heightens the monotony of this historical requiem which continues over that century during which the overwhelming majority of republican communes suffered their protracted death agonies. The historian feels rather like the spectator at an Italian opera in which the heroine's death has been antitipated since the beginning of the first act. Despite his sympathies, the historian is forced to admit that he is indeed pleased to hear the last republican aria and to see the Visconti come on stage to deliver the commune's oratorio. One is tempted to suggest not only that the death of the republic lacked dignity, but also that the various voices raised for and against her were indeed all bass. After all, what is the difference between the songs sung by the Monaldeschi and the Filippeschi of Orvieto or the tunes hummed by the feuding families of Genoa ? Were they not all in the same key? What convictions or ideologies distinguished the chorus which sang on behalf of the Malatesta of Rimini from the one which chanted for its archrival? In truth, the contending factions appear to have stood for little beyond the struggle for office, the urge to punish their enemies, and the desire to enjoy the fruits of their political victories. One is tempted to paraphrase Butterfield's observation and to say: Their successes, like Namier's researches, washed the ideas out of history.

Upon entering a cathedral, our eyes are drawn to the soaring pillars, the sweep of the ceiling, and the richly adorned windows. Yet we overlook many details which play an essential part in determining the finished product, for instance, the composition of the stone and the structure of the foundation. Likewise, as we turn to the era from which grew Augustine's Contessiones, Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae, and Wolfram's Parzival, we may easily overlook a humble type of illustrative story, which was a vital expression of the Christian faith, namely, the medieval exemplum. Accordingly, this paper proposes to indicate in briefest outline the fortunes of the exemplum, which, bound up as they are with the history of their time, clearly reflect significant developments in medieval religion.

Chaucer's character descriptions contain details from the medieval science of physiognomy which create a stratum of meaning hidden to the modern reader. Curry and others have pointed out a number of these details; for instance, the significance of the physical traits ascribed to the Pardoner; the very different implication of those assigned to the Miller; the Wife of Bath's ‘gat-tothedness.’ in knowledge of physiognomy was widespread in the Middle Ages, Chaucer's contemporaries presumably recognized not only the details which modern scholars have identified but quite possibly many more also.

Further instances of the topos of big fishes devouring the little, cited in previous issues of Traditio, include the following, in addition to those given in M. P. Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor, Mich. 1950), which appeared too late for inclusion in the previous discussions. Tilley offers a significant number of references under the headings: F 311 (‘The great fish eat the small’), and, analogously, L 354 (‘The little cannot be great unless he devours many’), Ο 63 (‘There would be no great ones if there were no little ones’), R 102 (‘The rich devour the poor, the strong the weak’), and Τ 507 (‘Great trees keep under the little ones’). See also the allusions in Kenneth Muir's 1952 edition of Shakespeare's Lear, annotating 4.2.49-50 (p. 156), and deriving some instances from F. P. Wilson's essay, ‘Shakespeare's Reading.’ We may compare aiso Plutarch, Cleverness of Animals 964, citing the already-noted Hesiod, Works and Days 277-79. The fifteenth-century Lanterne of reads: ‘But as þ greet fisches eeten þè smale so riche men of J)is world deuouren þe pore to her bare boon…’