The importance of Sappho's first poem as a religious document has long been recognized, but there is still room for disagreement as to the position that should be assigned to it in a history of Greek religious experience. The difficulty lies in the interpretation of the language of the poem; not of its literal meaning, which is clear, but of its tone and color. Is the poem, as Bowra puts it, “a prayer intimate and serious”? Is it “after all a religious poem, concerned with an experience which can only be called mystical”? Or is it an exercise in a literary genre, charming indeed in the simple directness of its expression, but still conventional and not to be taken seriously as a religious utterance. Or, finally, does the truth lie somewhere between these two extremes?

The argument pursued in these pages is based, substantially, not on theories of Christian development to which it has been sought to bring the literary data into conformity, but on a direct application to those data of general principles of comparative documentary criticism. It may be worth while to state some of those principles in their generalized form:

1. Where two or more documents correspond in contents, order and language beyond the degree that is necessitated by their subject or probably explicable by accidental coincidence, there is a presumption that, unless inter-dependent, they share (immediately or mediately) a common written or oral source.

2. Where these correspondences or identities attain a certain degree of minuteness the balance is tilted against the hypothesis of merely oral connection.

3. Unless external considerations urge, it is unscientific to conjecture hypothetical documents to explain correspondences for which a theory of direct inter-dependence is sufficient.

4. In determining the direction of dependence (i.e. whether document A depends on document B, or vice versa) weight must be given to the internal coherence of subject-matter on the one hand, and to the employment of merely external links in combining material on the other hand. We may also be helped by a knowledge of the literary methods and the psychology of one or both authors, and especially by evidence of an author's deviation from his habitual style or vocabulary under the influence of a source.

This inscription of Edessa is of some importance for the problem of sacral manumission, since Latte (Heiliges Recht, pp. 103 ff.) has made it the basis of far-reaching conclusions with regard to the social and economic position of persons ‘dedicated’ to the goddess Μᾶ ἀνίκητος. Latte's results have in turn been adopted by Oppermann in his article on Apollo Lairbenos (R.-E. Suppl. V, col. 521 ff.) and used to interpret the important series of texts from the sanctuary of that god, to which corrections and additions have been made in M.A.M.A. IV, pp. 95 ff. The documents from Edessa to which reference will be made are dated from 214 A.D. to 265 A.D. and those of the Lairbenos sanctuary are roughly contemporary.

The Greek and other early renderings of Hebrew ḥèsed and its adjective ḥāsîd only complicate the exegesis the more because of the contradictory renderings given, e.g. in Greek ἔλεος, ὅσιος, ὁσιότης, in Latin ‘misericordia,’ ‘sanctus.’ With fine sense the translators of the English Bible invented a new word for the noun, ‘lovingkindness.’ Similarly the Christian word χάρις = Latin ‘gratia,’ coming down from the New Testament, has had its many-faceted history. The modern use of the word is complicated by the concurrence of Classical and Biblical tradition. The Christian asks for God's grace, and yet renders Him grace at meals, and indifferently speaks of the grace of physical form and bearing, while ‘gratitude’ and ‘graciousness’ have their particular denotations.

Boissier long ago remarked that Augustine's Dialogues (that is, the Contra Academicos, De Beata Vita and De Ordine) reminded him in a way of Boethius's Consolatio Philosophiae. He was dealing with the vexed question of Boethius's Christianity. It seemed to him that Boethius in dealing purely philosophically in the Consolatio with problems lying more or less within the domain of theology had done nothing more than Augustine had done at Cassiciacum and that he was probably following Augustine's example. This meant that Boethius was just as much a Christian and probably the same sort of Christian as the young Augustine. Boissier did not carry his analysis of the resemblance between the two any farther.

On the death of Hædde, bishop of the West-Saxons (676–705) with his see at Winchester (Ha), the West-Saxon diocese as then constituted was subdivided; in Freeman's words this was “the great ecclesiastical event of the reign of Ine,” king of Wessex from 688 to 726. The simplest, earliest and really most authoritative statement of the matter in general is that of Bede:

Quo [Haeddi] defuncto, episcopatus prouinciae illius [Occidentalium Saxonum] in duas parrochias divisus est. Una data Daniheli,…altera Aldhelmo.

Among the significant questions perennially raised by Miltonic criticism, the two most important are the two most variously answered: What is Paradise Lost, and why did Milton write it? If the evidence which follows may be regarded as sufficiently exhaustive, I suggest that Paradise Lost was designed as a non-sectarian epic and more or less deliberately modelled as well as based upon conservative religious literature. The second conclusion is that Milton wrote his greatest poem to justify the ways of the Christian God, and to give artistic-prophetic expression to beliefs which were both vital and sacred to him.

Iceland, that island of marvels, has preserved for us, as it has done in most other fields of Germanic culture, nearly all of what we know about the religion of our pagan ancestors. The two Eddas, the Elder (Poetic) and the Younger (Prose) Edda, furnish the whole body of coherent mythology accessible to us. As for the cults themselves, we are much less well informed, but such knowledge as we have is drawn mainly from the Sagas, prose tales dealing with men and events, real and fictitious, of the heathen time, written down two or three centuries after the adoption of Christianity as the state religion in the year 1000, yet seeking to give a faithful picture of the manners and beliefs of the old days, and with scarcely a trace of the intolerance which almost obliterated the pagan traditions in other parts of Germanic territory. The distribution and popularity of the cults, their relative age and gradual expansion have been revealed by the brilliant researches of Professor Magnus Olsen on the Norwegian place-names and by the subsequent studies inspired by his work.

Thomas Carlyle never visited American shores. There was much to encourage his coming, especially the argument dear to his Scottish heart of money to be earned by lecturing. His friend Emerson, whose efforts made Sartor Resartus appreciated in America earlier than in England, was ready both to entertain him at Concord and to introduce him to the paying public. Once Emerson wrote to Carlyle a letter of invitation, describing his life at Concord so charmingly that the invitation must have been hard to decline. Carlyle was touched at one of his most tender points when his correspondent suggested that the hardy Scot's destiny lay in a new world. “What have you to do with Italy?” Emerson asked. “Your genius tendeth to the New, to the West.” Carlyle was invited to try New England for a year, with the promise of new health for poor Jane. The conclusion of Emerson's postscript made the mock assumption of real expectation. “Shall we have anthracite coal or wood in your chamber? My old mother is glad you are coming.”

Nowhere has Dante offered more ample evidence of his faith in the Roman imperium and admiration of the Emperor Henry VII than in a brief passage of six lines in the thirtieth canto of the Paradiso. There, beyond the limits of the corporeal spheres in the heaven which is pure light, surrounded by the saintly splendors of the City of God, Beatrice directs the poet's gaze to a vacant seat among the thrones of the blessed:

E'n quel gran seggio a che tu li occhi tieni

Per la corona che già v' è su posta,

Prima che tu a queste nozze ceni

Sederà l' alma (che fia giù agosta)

De l' alto Arrigo, ch' a drizzare Italia

Verrà in prima che ella sia disposta.

(vv. 133–138)

And the power of these lines is consolidated by contrast with the bitter condemnation of Pope Clement V, which directly follows them.

Source of half a hundred medieval popular romances, the Greek version of the Barlaam and Ioasaph legend has been variously ascribed to three different authors widely separated in time: to St. John of Damascus (c. 676–749), to an anonymous author supposed to have flourished about 600, and to St. Euthymius (d. 1028), a monk of Mount Athos. All three attributions are at present current; it now seems clear that we must discard the first two, and that we are justified in naming Euthymius as the author of this Greek version. The oriental language from which he derived this version we can now identify as Georgian. A brief summary of the evidence which may be adduced for all three attributions is in order here.

Here and there in the published literature on Navaho ceremonials one finds a suggestive detail or an illuminating general statement bearing on the relationship of ceremonial organization to social organization, but we have not yet had a systematic analysis of any body of data from this point of view. This paper will supplement my “Participation in Ceremonials in a Navaho Community” in the direction of providing an account of the “religious” behaviors of the Ramah-Atarque Navahos. The treatment will center around the family and clan affiliation of practitioners, their teachers, patients, and those attending ceremonials, but it will be convenient to incorporate also a few details bearing on individual status.

After the disastrous battle of Lake Trasimene Rome set herself to appease her gods, and by popular vote ordered the performance of a uer sacrum, that is, an offering of all the young of animals to be born in spring. Livy records this formula as having been submitted to the people for their approval (22.10.2–6).

In Coptica, III (Copenhagen, 1922), W. E. Crum and H. I. Bell published the Coptic and Greek texts found at Wadi Sarga, a site some fifteen miles south of Asyut, in the excavations carried on during the winter of 1913–1914. A chance reading of some of the texts enabled me recently to identify one of them as a part of the Homily on the Passion by Melito of Sardis.