In a preceding article, we have tried to show that important features of the relationship between St. Augustine and Plotinus still call for some investigation: that, in fact, one of the latter's most telling treatises (Ennead VI 4–5) had hitherto virtually escaped the notice of those interested in tracing his influence on Augustine's thought. To one possible implication of that study we alluded only briefly, but its importance for the history of Christian spirituality impels our returning to it now. Augustine, we suggested, from his earliest extant writings up to and including the Confessions, may well have been thinking in terms of a Plotinian fall of the soul into the body.

The De vetere et novo testamento quaestiones which Faustino Arévalo, S.J. (d. 1824), the illustrious editor of St. Isidore of Seville, regarded as authentic has long been recognized as spurious. In fact it can be considered one of the oldest extant pseudo-Isidorian works. In identifying this curious little catechetical work and publishing the editio princeps, Arévalo was convinced that he had rightly contributed to the list of the accepted works of St. Isidore. Indeed, he believed that the historical testimony of both St. Braulio and St. Ildefonsus, if rightly interpreted, favored the authenticity of this work and its inclusion under the title, Secretorum expositiones sacramentorum. The evidence which he presented in favor of the acceptance of this ancient catechism is reducible to three general headings: the antiquity of the manuscript in which this work has come down to us, the absence of positive reasons negating authenticity, and the presence of evidence affirming it. Under the latter heading he adduced various extrinsic authority, e.g., that of Gratian and Grialius, which is of no decisive importance in settling this question; and he stressed the inner dependence of the text of the quaestiones on the works of St. Isidore — a literary dependence which in the Early Middle Ages is normal enough in works of this character and which certainly is not a definitive norm for deciding the genuineness of Isidorian works.

Many Old English homilies consist of exhortations to repentance, illustrated by devotional commonplaces that recur in varying forms in different contexts. Such are some items of the Blickling and Vercelli collections (for example, Blickling 5, 8, 10, and Vercelli 2–4; 8–10; 20–21) which are not translated as a whole from identifiable Latin originals. This field of Old English studies was opened more than fifty years ago by Max Förster; and other scholars, principally K. Jost and R. Willard, have investigated the Latin literature in which these commonplaces circulated. Detailed work on the origin and distribution of some central themes has recently been published by J. E. Cross.

In my mercy dispaire thou noght,
Sen I the so dere haue boght,
And ensaumple thou take
Of synfull Mary maudelayne,
That with syn was gastly slayne
And sythen gan it for-sake.

Monseigneur Duchesne's study of the legend of the coming of Saint Mary Magdalen to Gaul left very little to be said on the subject.' Jean Misrahi has opened with this statement a brief note followed by an unpublished version of an early legend of Mary Magdalen and this can indeed be applied mutatis mutandis to many areas of the Magdalen traditions. Still, other features connected with this cult are insufficiently investigated and this is true, in the first place, of the rich and extensive group of medieval Latin hymns celebrating Mary Magdalen.

The discovery of an ancient sequence might not at first sight seem to deserve any special notice. No doubt its absence in the monumental collections of A. M. Dreves and C. Blume, and in U. J. Chevalier's Repertorium hymnologicum, may surprise us, but the poor quality of so many of the sequences there collected may justify an initial indifference to the unearthing of yet another. How was it missed by those indefatigable collectors? Perhaps the reason is that they confined themselves mainly to liturgical books whereas the sequence here presented for the first time is found in one single manuscript which is not a liturgical book but a collection of works by St. Cyprian. These had been transcribed round about the year 1100, and the sequence, words and music, was added to the beginning of the codex in the first part of the thirteenth century. That it was missed is, then, no surprise, but a full-length treatment seems to be called for, because of the light it throws on the history, both factual and literary, behind it, as also possibly on the music of the time and the way that a sequence was then constructed. At least some of its more interesting features can here be gathered together.

For more than sixty years now Heinrich Hagenmeyer's ‘Chronologie de la première croisade’ has been a standard reference. As a compilation and critique of dates recorded by the crusading historians and their contemporaries, the great German scholar's account is as satisfactory today as when it first appeared. It is in the area, however, of the hypothetical dates which Hagenmeyer assigned to the various occurrences on the expeditions of Peter the Hermit and Godfrey of Bouillon to the Orient that the ‘Chronologie’ stands in error and needs revision.

When should an historian analyze the assumptions which underlie his work, and when, if ever, is it incumbent on him to include in his work a discussion of the beliefs and procedures which have influenced his treatment of a subject? Recently historians, and in particular English medievalists, have been criticized for their anarchic empiricism; yet willingness to utilize any approach which promises concrete results, regardless of an integrated theoretical justification, is an attitude by no means limited to history but characteristic of many fields of detailed investigation in the natural and social sciences. By their fruits, as appraised by experts in the same field, shall their works be judged. There are times, however, when a broad historical subject is so narrowly treated that the result is tantamount to a philosophical statement, a statement, however implicit, that there is but one way of gaining valid knowledge of of men's past actions. We may then feel that the historian ought to have justified his procedure more explicitly, and we may be provoked to analyze and criticize the work, not for what has been said in it, but for what has not. This is especially true when the contrast between the dimensions of the subject and the limitations of a particular historian's vision throw his approach into high relief and incite the reader to examine the historian's conception of history. The English Jewry under Angevin Kings by H. G. Richardson is such a book because of its tone of certainty as to the proper path of history and because its subject cannot be domesticated to the calm conventions of professional habit.

In 1912 Prof. Ludwig Baur published among the philosophical works of Robert Grosseteste a short treatise entitled De finitate motus et temporis, which, as he pointed out, was nearly identical with the concluding section of Grosseteste's Commentary on the Physics. Baur however knew only one independent manuscript of the De finitate and based his edition upon this one manuscript and two Oxford manuscripts of the Physics commentary. In 1940 Prof. S. Harrison Thomson listed four additional manuscripts which contain De finitate as an independent work. In the course of preparing a critical edition of the Commentary on the Physics, I found it necessary to consult these manuscripts and thereby became aware of the inadequacy of Baur's treatment of De finitate.

In face of the uncompromising condemnation of divination in Inferno 20 some disquiet may be felt that Dante should have allowed himself any unfulfilled prophecies in the Comedy. If Dante began the Comedy in 1307–8, as is widely held, and penned the prophecy of the ‘515,’ referring to Henry VII, in Purg. 33 before Henry VII's failure became obvious, as it did after July 1312 at latest, the prophecy of Clement V's death in Inf. 19.79–84—that he would be dead before 1323 — must have been made ante eventum, before April 1314. But, it is argued, it was a safe bet for Dante to venture on, in view of Clement's poor health and the average length of recent papal reigns. But in the world of politics as well as in poetry Dante allowed himself about this time (31 March 1311) a confident prophecy which was very soon utterly falsified. In Epistle 6 to the Florentine ‘Scoundrels within the city’ he forecast the imminent fall of the city to Henry, § 4: ‘et si praesaga mens mea non fallitur, sic signis veridicis sicut inexpugnabilibus argumentis instructa praenuntians, etc. (cf. § 6 ‘infusa praesagia’). What then was Dante thinking of prophecy in real life or in poetry, when in Purg. 23.109 he put into the mouth of Forese Donati an Italian counterpart of his phrase in Epistle 6,

se l'anteveder qui non m'inganna?

The notion that the pursuit of self-interest can ultimately bring universal good used to be widely held, but with the demise of the Manchester School of economics and of Herbert Spencer's philosophy it has almost completely gone out of favor. We are apt to forget that trial by jury, due process, and the rest of the beneficent heritage of medieval law originated in royal courts which were primarily interested in defending and promoting the king's interests, whatever the cost to others' rights or ideas of justice. For many years necessities of government warped the growth of English law where the king's needs were most closely engaged. His requirements shaped the remedies, his prerogatives shaped the possibilities of defense, while those who might stand in his way received nothing for their protection but the right to petition, and those who did not affect his immediate interests might be sent elsewhere to find their justice. At no time was this more evident than when the interests of the medieval clergy in their ecclesiastical benefices, already eroded by papal provisions, were attacked anew by the Common Law to aid the royal treasury.

The letters of Francesco Bruni, secretary to three popes, which are printed in the appendix to this article, belong to a largely unexplored collection in the State Archives of Florence, the Carte Del Bene. This important family archive contains business records and private papers of the Del Bene family, a small but prominent mercantile house in Trecento Florence. While the account books are of primary interest to the economic historian, the letters contain valuable information on political and social problems and, in the case of these letters, on aspects of ecclesiastical history. Francesco Bruni was a close friend of the Del Bene, and to this connection we owe the fortunate survival of six of his letters from the papal curia. The sources on the Avignonese papacy are many and varied, but this epistolary collection throws light upon certain features of the curial administration and its personalities which are not well documented by other types of evidence.

Un texte conservé dans le MS A. 2344 de la Collection de Harry A. Walton Jr., à Covington (Virginia), éclaire d'un coup deux personnages du début du XVIe siècle italien. Ni l'un ni l'autre ne sont de premier plan. Ils contribuent du moins à créer le milieu dans lequel vécurent et agirent de plus grands hommes. Il s'agit d'un ermite, Jérôme d'Ancône, et de son biographe, le dominicain Ludovico Brunori. Avant de publier le texte, il convient de présenter brièvement l'un et l'autre.

Monsieur l'abbé Jean École, professeur à l'Université catholique d'Angers (France) et membre du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique vient de rééditer chez Monsieur Georg Olms, à Hildesheim (Allemagne), l'Ontologie de Christian Wolff. Le titre complet de cet ouvrage est, on le sait, Philosophia prima seu Ontologia, methodo scientifica pertractata, qua omnis cognitionis humanae principia continentur, editio nova priori emendatior. Le texte qu'on nous présente est donc celui de 1736. En son Introduction, M. École nous renseigne sur les diverses éditions de l'Ontologia, nous donne quelques précisions sur la fortune du mot ‘ontologie,’ sur les caractères les plus marquants de l'Ontologia de Wolff: universalité en raison de son objet, primat de l'essence, rapports avec la pensée des scolastiques, d'une part, la philosophie de Leibnitz, d'autre part, sur la méthode de Wolff et les auteurs qu'il consulte. Viennent ensuite la Dédicace de l'Ontologia au roi Frédéric, la Préface (1729) de l'Ontologia, enfin l'Ontologia elle-même dont les articulations principales sont les suivantes: Prolegomena. Pars I: De notione Entis in genere et proprietatibus quae inde consequuntur. Pars II: De speciebus entium et eorum ad se invicem respectu: Sectio I; De ente composito; Sectio II; De ente simplici; sectio III; De respectu entium ad se invicem. Un Index rerum praecipuarum, des Varietates et editoris adnotationes, un Index auctorum ad quos Wolffius remittit, un Index auctorum ad quos editor remittit, un Index locorum a Wolffio citatorum, un Index locorum ab editore citatorum, un Index scholasticorum canonum, un Index generalis enfin, ajoutent à l'intérêt de cette réédition dont ils font un remarquable instrument de travail pour tous ceux qu'attirent la Métaphysique et son histoire.

The amount of research and publication on the problem of Herodotus' historicity has been gigantic. Recently Jameson's publcation of the newly discovered ‘Themistocles Decree’ has added a new phase to this ever vital controversy. The present paper, however, will evaluate another incident in the Histories and in the history of the Histories: the debate preceding the accession of Darius the Great to the Persian throne in 522 B.C.

Throughout the Paedagogos, the Stromata, and the Quis dives salvetur? Clement of Alexandria uses the term ‘indifferent’ (ἀδιάφοϱος) or one of its derivatives. In all of these instances except three, the term is found in the moral sense redolent of Stoic usage. The present study attempts to treat by a comprehensive analysis of the term the meaning of ‘indifferent’ in Clement, its significance for his moral ascesis, and certain problems that arise from its use. Because of the marked similarity between Clement's usage of this term and that of the Stoics a brief discussion of the Stoic notions of indifference is necessary as a background to Clement's teachlng. It is hoped that such a study will provide a concrete example of the adaptation of Stoic morality to practical Christian asceticism.

In the course of preparing for the Corpus Christianorum an edition of the Chronica of Sulpicius Severus I have come upon nearly a dozen passages in which the adopted reading invited discussion beyond the limits of an apparatus criticus. This discussion is supplied in the following notes, which may be seen as a supplement to similar treatment of many other passages in the Chronica that are found in my doctoral dissertation, Studien zu Sulpicius Severus (Lund 1940). As an appendix appears a discussion of a few passages in the writings of Sulpicius Severus on St. Martin of Tours; this too looks to the new edition of the text that is to appear in the Corpus Christianorum (where I have the collaboration of Dr. Bernard M. Peebles) but is especially prompted by a recent criticism of my dissertation.

The scanty remains of Hilary's Liber lujmnorumr, represented by the three hymns which have come down to us in the Arezzo manuscript. provide us with our earliest glimpse into Latin hymnody. Since these hymns have been found in no other manuscript, all attempts to provide a correct text owe a good deal to the editor's ingenuity. This study tries to analyze the metrical structure of the first of the three hymns and to offer a few emendations that seem required by the structure.

One of the cruxes of Pearl is the defective line 690, which occurs in a passage discussing the salvation of the righteous man. In the manuscript and in the earliest printed editions (ed. R. Morris, EETS, 1864, 1869), lines 689–692 read as follows:

Of pys ryztwys saz salamon playn
How kyntly oure con aquyle;
By wayej ful streyt he con hym strayn,
And scheued hym pe rengne of God awhyle.

Since the appearance in 1913 of Hofer's critical survey of Ockham's life, a revival of interest in Ockham's non-polemical works has encouraged the publication of monographs and articles to an almost embarrassing extent. Yet in contrast to the energy expended by scholars in this field of research stands their apparent failure to agree upon the order in which Ockham produced them. While Baudry places the Sentence-Commentary after the four logical works and the Physics, Boehmer and Iserlolr reverse the position. Again, Iserloh is persuaded that the Logic followed the Quodlibeta and was written at Avignon between 1234 and 1328, whereas Baudry is of opinion that it was written before 1324 at Oxford: Scholz,” on the other hand, conjectures that the Logic and probably the Quodlibeta were produced at Munich after 1328. In face of these divergent opinions it is difficult to discern upon what principles these scholars have based their conclusions.

A study of the history of alphabetizing, its origin, development and applications from the beginning in antiquity down to the time of printing has necessitated a search for pertinent medieval material. This material has not been easy to find. It has been necessary in the first place to ask in what connection one might reasonably expect to find alphabetic arrangement useful and then to try to find whether there are any actual examples of the use in such a conneetion.