In der Christologie der nach-nicänischen und nach-chalcedonischen Zeit findet sich eine Bezeichnung der menschlichen Wirklichkeit Jesu Christi, deren Geschichte und Bedeutung bis heute noch nicht völlig geklärt sind: ὁ ϰυϱιαϰὸς ἄνθϱωπος, in lateinischer Übersetzung: homo dominicus. Bisher wurde ihr Vorkommen am meisten beachtet im Zusammenhang der Erforschung der Epistula ad Antiochenos (hier weiterhin: EAA) oder des sogenannten Sermo maior de fide, einer Schrift, die heute Markell von Ankyra zugeteilt wird, und der pseudathanasianischen Expositio fidei (fortan: EF), die von dem eben genannten Werk allerdings nur in den §§ 3–4 abhängig ist. Vermutlich darf man Marcus Eremita und seinen Gebrauch von ϰνϱιαϰὸς ἄνθϱωπος (fortan: ϰ.α.) in dem aszetischen Werk Ad Nicolaum praecepta animae salutaria (= Opusculum V) daneben stellen, während sein dogmatisches Werk Aduersus eos qui dicunt sanctam carnem non fuisse unitam cum Verbo … (= Opusculum XI) einen wichtigen Schritt darüber hinaus bedeutet. Man hat auch behauptet, daß Athanasius von Alexandrien diese Bezeichnung gebraucht habe, dies unter Berufung auf einige Texte bei Severus von Antiochien. Dies ist zu überprüfen. K.α. taucht sodann auf im Schrifttum des Didymus von Alexandrien, des Epiphanius von Salamis, des Gregor von Nyssa. Im Osten reicht seine Geschichte bis hin zu Leontius von Jerusalem und (Ps.-) Pamphilus, der wohl bald nach 560, sicher aber vor 630 geschrieben hat, und schließlich bis zu Anastasius Sinaita. Von den Lateinern kennen sie Hieronymus, Papst Damasus, dann Augustinus und der Nestoriusgegner Ioannes Cassian. Wenn Augustinus in seinen Retractationes davon Abschied nimmt, so mag dies nicht ohne Einfluß auf das Verschwinden dieses Ausdrucks in der westlichen Theologie gewesen sein, wenn er auch noch Thomas von Aquin (S. Th. III 16 3) der Erwähnung und der Diskussion für wert erschienen ist. Die Verlegenheit der Dogmenhistoriker in der Deutung dieser Geschichte dauert an bis heute. Der Grund dafür liegt darin, daß die Verwendungs- und Bedeutungsgeschichte dieses Ausdrucks ϰυϱιαϰὸς ἄνθϱωπος, zu dem der andere ϰυϱιαϰὸν σῶμα gehört, zu wenig differenziert untersucht und dargestellt worden ist. Die meisten Forscher haben sich mit der Feststellung einer undifferenzierten Wortverwendung begnügt oder vorausgesetzt, daß ϰ.α. einen einheitlichen Bedeutungsgehalt habe. Darum führen auch verschiedene Versuche, mit Hilfe des Vorkommens dieses Ausdrucks Echtheits- oder Verfasserfragen zu lösen, kaum zu brauchbaren Ergebnissen.

The treatise De re militari by Flavius Vegetius Renatus was the bible of warfare throughout the Middle Ages — the soldier's equivalent of the Rule of St. Benedict. The surviving manuscripts exceed 140; there were five separate translations into French within the century following 1284, many more into other languages, and nine incunabula. In contrast to Byzantium, where a succession of authors since Urbicius (ca. 500) strove to keep military literature up to date, the Latin civilization of the West was content with a single book. Vegetius, who explicitly omitted cavalry from his exposition, became the philosopher-schoolmaster of Western chivalry. Hrabanus Maurus, John of Salisbury, and Egidius Colonna copied large extracts into works of their own, and so did Machiavelli. Vegetius is among the authors whose popularity in the Renaissance more than equalled their medieval fame. The testimonials continued to mount up through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an epoch that was perhaps the highest point of Vegetius‘ influence, and reached even to the Napoleonic age, when Marshall de Ligne (best remembered for a witticism about the Congress of Vienna) pronounced a memorable encomium: ‘A god, says Vegetius, inspired the legion, and I say that a god inspired Vegetius. It is he who by his seven orders of battle made us understand the warfare of the Ancients and taught the greatest generals of our time to imitate them.’ What other book without literary distinction was as prized in the Age of Enlightenment as it had been by Bede?

The Latin sermon ‘Legimus in ecclesiasticis historiis’ has been considered by Anglo-Saxonists a number of times within the past two decades. In 1958 I noted the contact between Ælfric's sermon on All Saints and the only version of the Latin sermon which is printed in modern and accessible text. This version, in PL 94.452–455, unfortunately is an incomplete text with extensive omissions. In 1959 C. L. Smetana independently recorded the same source for Ælfric's sermon, while adding that the Latin sermon was included within augmented versions of Paul the Deacon's homiliary. My minor opposition to one deduction in this important paper took the opportunity of refining my previous comments by illustrating that Ælfric used a complete version of the Latin sermon such as that in the printing of Paul the Deacon's homiliary by Eucharius Cervicornus in 1539. Further contacts with the sermon over the range of Old English prose have convinced me of the general dissemination of this sermon in our period (probably within homiliaries) and, as I hope to argue here, of its value in helping to date the ‘original’ version of the Old English Martyrology.

Studies of medieval literature have evinced a growing concern with the effect of an exegetical milieu on imaginative writing. Although the Middle English period provides an extensive field for allegorical and typological excursions, Old English poetry forms a smaller corpus and makes less conspicuous use of scriptural and patristic allusions. Readers are, therefore, not always alert to the deftness with which an Anglo-Saxon poet has utilized typology. Poems like Andreas, however, are as deeply rooted in typological traditions as in the more obvious traditions of the Germanic epic and can be fully appreciated only if their typological echoes are heard.

The present town of Bertrée lies about mid-way between Liège and Louvain on the undulating plateau of Hannut, toward the center of the ancient region of the Hesbaye, where the rich soil, temperate climate, and relative flatness have attracted settlers since the earliest times. It lies south of the Roman road (later known as the chaussée Brunehaut) between Boulogne and Cologne and is surrounded by the remains of Roman and Gallo-Roman habitations, tombs, and cemeteries. Nearby there were roads to Nivelles and Bavay. In the Middle Ages it belonged both politically and ecclesiastically to the province of Liège, though it was situated almost in an enclave between the counties of Louvain to the north and west, Looz to the north and east, and Namur to the south and west. Nothing specific is known about its history, however, before Walter of Trognée established a priory there in 1124.

The French royal genealogy compiled by Giles of Paris (1160? – before 1224) has received little scholarly attention, but it is an important source for the historical views of Capetian circles at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The work is an elaborate family tree which traces the royal succession from the legendary origins of the Franks to the contemporary heir to the throne, the future Louis VIII, who is identified on the chart as Ludouicus puer. Giles begins with a narrative of the history of Sicambria and of the entry of the Franks into Gaul which he illustrates with a table of the first Merovingians. The family tree then continues, indicating the length of each king's reign and giving historical notes on some rulers. The genealogy is traced in detail from Clovis through the sons of Louis the Pious, but afterward there appear only kings, and rarely their queens, except for the family of Louis VI, whose sons and eldest grandsons are shown. In addition, Giles traces the supposed Merovingian descent of the Carolingians, the descent of the Capetians from Robert the Brave, and the lines of many of the descendants of William the Conqueror. Giles's selection, presentation, and reworking of materials from his sources reveal a view which in some respects is original and in others, while derivative, is an unusually clear sketch of the dynastic schematization of the national history. The genealogy is an outline history of France which, although written at the beginning of a period of great historiographical activity and itself unlike other works of the time, has remained unedited and has never been seriously studied.

The pages that follow continue the ‘Repertorium’ begun in Traditio 31 (1975) 99–126, and continued with the translations of the Liber Aphorismorum in Traditio 32 (1976) 257–292. Included in this issue are the commentaries on the Liber Aphorismorum, arranged in the case of those that are anonymous, by the first principal word of the incipit of the commentary; and where the commentator is named, alphabetically by the first name of the commentator. In each instance, the commentator will be identified briefly, where possible, and provided with bibliographical references for further information. Then follow the manuscripts, with incipit and desinit of the text, where applicable, and of the commentary.

Gasparino Barzizza of Bergamo, a humanist educator and university professor of rhetoric at Padua and Milan in the early fifteenth century, has come down to us chiefly as a pioneer expounder of Ciceronian eloquence, the man to whom the precious old manuscript of Cicero's complete rhetorical works was confided in 1421 for transcription and divulgation. For centuries, however, his considerable contribution to Seneca studies made before this date has been almost totally neglected. But for a few excerpts from his commentary on Seneca's Letter 1 to Lucilius, tucked away in Francesco Novati's footnotes to a letter of Coluccio Salutati, nothing substantial from these commentaries and their introductory material has to my knowledge ever been printed. Judging from the scanty literature on Barzizza, one is forced to conclude that the content of these commentaries has not even been examined. Still worse, the only biography of Barzizza written in the twentieth century says they are lost. Yet Gasparino Barzizza emerges from these commentaries as a leading Seneca scholar of early fifteenth-century Italian humanism. He was the central figure of Seneca studies while at Padua, a university town with a tradition of interest in Seneca stretching back to Lovato Lovati and Albertino Mussato and the revival of Senecan tragedy, and continuing with Sicco Polenton and his Life of Seneca. As part of the introductory material to his Seneca commentaries, Barzizza wrote the first humanist Latin biography of Seneca using Tacitus, and developed more fully than anyone before him the image of Seneca as a religious dissimulator, calling him for the first time a ‘Nicodemus.’ In a sadly mutilated and anonymous form, it can now be shown, Barzizza's life of Seneca was the only one printed in several early editions of Seneca's works, including the 1515 and 1529 ones edited by Erasmus, and later mistakenly attributed to Sicco Polenton. Erasmus' caustic prefatory remarks on deformers of Seneca that characterize his 1529 edition are aimed, it can also be shown, at Barzizza. Barzizza's lengthy commentary on the controversial opening of Seneca's Letter 1 to Lucilius, a set piece in its own right, stands at the centre of a dispute very much alive in his own time, in which Petrarch and Salutati participated before him, and Pier Candido Decembrio, his brother Angelo, and Leonello d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, participated after him, not to mention Erasmus himself.

The use of moral stories or cautionary tales in sermons to illustrate and reinforce homiletic doctrine was widely accepted by medieval preachers. While diffusion of suitable narratives for this purpose was sometimes accomplished by oral means, such tales were more commonly transmitted by compendia or encyclopedias of didactic stories. These compilations were circulated throughout medieval Christendom for use as reference books by the homilist composing a sermon or series of sermons to be read by his colleagues or delivered from his pulpit.

The Consolation of Philosophy may have owed its popularity to its theme of the search for the summum bonum, the eternal verity beyond the vicissitudes of everyday life, a theme particularly appealing in a period of upheaval and danger such as the tenth and eleventh centuries. But it was much more than a work of conventional piety or Christian philosophy. It was essentially a classical work and its collection of verses in different metres, its mythological allusions and Neoplatonic cosmology, as well as its more Christian discussions of fate and free will, made it a key work in the intellectual ferment of the time. But it was a difficult work, requiring a critical apparatus of elucidation and explanation before its riches could be fully appreciated. This apparatus, in the form of glosses and scholia, necessarily had to draw upon a variety of sources.

Witelo, the thirteenth-century author of an extensive treatise on optics entitled Perspectiva, was thoroughly acquainted with most of the optical works available in the Latin West at that time. Among the works he studied was Euclid's Optica (in a Latin translation under the title De visu). It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that in fact Witelo had produced an earlier recension of Euclid's treatise, a work not generally attributed to him. Although this earlier investigation into optics is also entitled Perspectiva, to avoid confusion it will be referred to here as the Recension. This Recension is found in the following manuscripts:

Florence, Bibl. Riccardiana, MS 885 (s. xiv) fols. 132r–143v (Props. 1–15, 18, 17–23, 26–28, 16).

Milan, Bibl. Ambrosiana, MS R. 47 sup. (s. xiii) fols. 133r–148r (Props. 1–23, 26–61).

Paris, Bibl. Nat., MS lat. 7366 (s. xiv) fols. 90v–97v (Props. 1–23, 26–34).

Paris, Bibl. Nat., MS lat. 10252 (a.d. 1476) fols. 159 (154)v–172 (167)r (Props. 1–23, 26–30).

Toruń, Ksiąžnica, Miejska im. Kopernika, MS Gymnasialbibl. R.4°.2 (s. xiv) pp. 3–30 (Props. 1–23, 26–61).

Vatican, Bibl. Apost. Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 3102 (s. xiv) fols. 37v–50r (Props. 1–23, 26–61).

Vienna, Österr. Nat. Bibl. MS 5303 (s. xv–xvi) fols. 32r–41v (Props. 1–23, 26–30).

The identification of ‘Christ figures’ in medieval literature has no doubt been overdone. Yet it can hardly be denied that we do find there characters who present meaningful analogues to Christ, for along with a good number of probable analogues, the parallels in some cases are explicit; for example, Galahad in the Queste del Saint Graal and Thomas Malory's Grail story. So too in Dante's Vita Nuova the parallel of Beatrice with Christ is not left to surmise. In Chapter 24 Joan, Guido Cavalcanti's donna, is presented as preceding Beatrice; to Dante she is like her namesake John, the one who comes before the True Light. Beatrice who follows, then, is like Christ to him. And in the preceding chapter (23) Dante reports a vision in which he is told of the death of Beatrice; thereupon he sees a cloud ascending to heaven, accompanied by a host of angels singing ‘Hosanna in excelsis,’ conventionally addressed to Christ. Again the analogue seems unavoidable.