In 1964 Professor Sesto Prete published a description of the contents of two fifteenth-century manuscripts, MS 100.42 in the Cathedral Library at Toledo and Cod. Vaticanus Barberinianus latinus 42. He called these T and B respectively, and they will be so referred to here. T contains 169 humanistic items as opposed to 76 in B. The manuscripts have 32 items in common.

In the intellectual history of the Latin West, Aristotelianism holds a unique position. From Boethius to Galileo — from the end of the classical civilization to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, and in some circles even beyond — the influence of the Philosopher was decisive not only for the development of theology, philosophy, and the natural sciences, but also for the university structure and system of education. The vast amount of scholarly writing published each year on aspects of this history is an obvious measure of its significance. However, a natural division between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance has led to an unfortunate dichotomy in the way historians have dealt with the intellectual history of this era. Students of medieval thought have concentrated on the philosophy of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and have generally regarded as decadent the scholasticism of the following period. Renaissance scholarship, on the other hand, has focused its attention on the humanism and Platonism of that time, and tended to regard Italian Aristotelianism as an unimportant holdover from the medieval period. Furthermore, because the influence of Aristotle was so all-pervading, historians have, of necessity, treated aspects of his thought during this time —his significance in logic and philosophy, the repercussions of his thought in theology and the natural sciences, and so on. Nevertheless, in recent years a tendency in research seems to be developing toward an attempt at understanding philosophy and theology in the way in which they were understood in the medieval and Renaissance period and toward bridging the gap between Aquinas and Descartes. One who undertakes a survey of this research is naturally confronted with a large number of works dealing with different aspects of this history, but to make this brief survey possible I have restricted its scope to a very few recent books which either illuminate the various significant turns that the Aristotelian tradition took or seem to contribute to a sense of continuity within this period.

When in 1950–1951 Kassius Hallinger's impressive, not to say monument al, work was published in which with extraordinary wealth of detail he showed the basic differences in organization and observance between the two tenthand eleventh-century movements of monastic reform, the Lotharingian and Burgundian, thus proving them to have been each quite independent of the other — a thesis contrary to the view then prevalent among historians — one of the most striking features of his elaborate study was the concluding chapter devoted to the differences between the customaries or consuetudinaries of these two distinct currents of monastic life, emanating respectively from Gorze and Cluny. It was no surprise, therefore, some years later to learn that he had succeeded in securing the collaboration of twenty-seven medievalists in a project which was to include critical editions of the chief representatives of this type of document.

Hymnological research has reached a very crucial stage during the past fourteen or fifteen years. The steady flow of publications in this field has never really stopped since the middle of the nineteenth century, which saw several attempts to make hymnological material scattered in medieval manuscripts accessible to hymnologists and philologists alike. Nineteenth-century hymnodists had little idea of the riches and depth of medieval Latin hymnody, and the impasse caused by their ‘misconceptions’ and preconceived ideas is still reflected in the erroneous interpretation and improper handling of many Latin hymns by early editors and hymnodists. Of the early editions of medieval Latin hymns there are only two (those of Daniel and Mone)1 that still have source value; most of the others have merely historical significance or offer manuscript readings not adequately evaluated by subsequent editors.

When Christian Friedrich Kling published Berthold des Franziskaners deutsche Predigten in 1824, he opened the study of the great thirteenth-century preacher to theologians, historians, and Germanists alike. Although Berthold had never been completely forgotten, was his fame rather than his actual sermons that were recorded by poet and chronicler. The sermons themselves remained, as most of them do still today, in manuscripts accessible to only a few scholars.