Studies in comparative religion have shown the important role played by the practice of ascetical fasting in the history of man's religious development. But many gaps in that history still exist. We may surmise, for example, that primitive man stumbled on the practice of fasting accidentally, as a way to conserve food in time of shortage, or, again, out of revulsion for food in times of sickness, as well as under stress of sorrow or fear. On the other hand, he would find that overeating might interfere with sleep and cause a feeling of heaviness, or that certain foods could cause sickness and nausea. The lacuna between these primitive experiences and the religious-ascetical practice of fasting still remains a subject for investigation, although, from the point of view of Greece and Rome, it has been adequately treated by Arbesmann. The object of the present work is not to cover the practice of ecclesiastical fasting, either from the canonical point of view (as this has been sufficiently treated by Parra Herrera) or in its connection with prophecy and revelation (as this has again been fully discussed by Arbesmann) — but merely to treat the problem of ascetical fasting as we find it in the Greek patristic writers down to the time of John Damascene.

In the Commentary of Remigius of Auxerre on the De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae of Martianus Capella, which was written at the end of the ninth century, there occurs an unusual tale of the origin of the seven liberal arts. According to this account, the three sons of Noah, upon learning of the impending destruction of the world, took two columns, one of brick and one of stone, and inscribed upon them the knowledge of the seven liberal arts to preserve it from oblivion. The stone column survived the Flood and long after was found in Egypt by Abraham who was thus enabled to restore the arts. From Egypt the arts were transmitted to Greece. Although this story was not commonly related in the Carolingian period, other tales of the discovery of the arts were current. Generally speaking, Cicero's claim for Mercury as the inventor and even the more prosaic accounts of Egyptian and Greek wise men as the discoverers were being superseded by the account of Hebrew discoverers that had been made popular by Isidore. It is not reasonable to think that Remigius, who in his commentary was constantly cautioning his pupils against taking Martianus' tales literally and pointing out for them the allegorical or poetic significance of the narrative, would accept at its face value any one of the versions of the invention of the arts. Actually, in discussing the origin of the arts he gives a philosophical explanation that would at once negate any account of an inventor. ‘The liberal arts,’ he says, ‘are naturally inherent in the soul and cannot be thought of as coming from elsewhere.’

With each investigation into the literary activities of Monte Cassino during the second half of the eleventh century, the reputation of the Desiderian milieu has taken on new and greater proportions. In this circle of learned monks the name of Alberic the Deacon has been brought into sharper focus. Speculation about his family background has yielded little beyond the conjecture that he was of Beneventan origin. In the records of his monastery he appears for the first time as one already arrived at maturity, since he is introduced as vir disertissimus ac eruditissimus and as vir illis temporibus singularis. It would seem, however, that at least by 1065 — possibly as early as 1057 — Alberic had taken up residence at Monte Cassino and had at about that same period launched his literary career in the stimulating atmosphere of the ‘Desiderian renaissance.’

Fundamental to Christianity is the belief in the redemptive death of Christ. But not always has there been complete agreement among theologians as to the precise reason or reasons for Christ's death. For centuries the soteriology of the Church may be said to have been in large part demonocentric. The devil had certain rights over fallen man, rights which could not be violated, still less taken away. If his dominion over man was to be destroyed, it must be done not by any arbitrary exercise of the divine Omnipotence, but in a manner reasonable and just. Some theologians even spoke of Christ's death as a ransom paid to the devil for man's release. With varying nuance such ideas as these were dominant from the days of St. Irenaeus of Lyons' until the very end of the eleventh century, when St. Anselm of Canterbury struck out upon entirely new lines of thought. In his Cur Deus Homo new concepts were introduced into the discussion of the problem. By sin man had offended the infinite majesty of God: God's rights had been violated. Satisfaction must be made, and that by man, for it was he who had sinned. But since the infinite offence which we call sin could not really be atoned for by a finite creature, the necessary satisfaction called for a God-man.

Spécialement consacré à l'examen de quelques thèmes doctrinaux de théologie trinitaire que développe saint Albert dans son Commentaire des Noms divins de Denys le pseudo-Aréopagite, ce travail comprendra en fait deux parties. Parce qu'il s'agit, en effet, d'une pensée qui s'exprime dans un texte encore inédit, il a paru bon, en se bornant à l'essentiel, de présenter au lecteur l'inédit lui même: authenticité et date du commentaire, situation parmi les autres œuvres de l'auteur et parmi les commentaires dionysiens d'autres auteurs, tradition manuscrite, objet, méthode, importance, études auxquelles ce commentaire a donné lieu ou études qui s'y sont référées. Viendront ensuite l'exposé de la doctrine et la transcription des textes qui la fondent. Un vocabulaire dionysio-albertinien terminera cette analyse.

Both Dante and Plato inherited from the past a complex of attitudes, legends and literature about love, and in both cases it was a special kind of love, love as an ennobling passion. Plato confronted the problem of so-called Dorian love, imported into cultured Attica from the Dorian regions of Greece where it had formed part of the ethos of a warrior class. It soon became a widespread practice, and in its most refined form it was conceived of as a passion which made the warrior brave and engendered civic as well as military virtues. The stories of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Cratinus and Aristodemus, the later versions of the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus, all testify to the military and civic heroism which was believed to emerge from this form of masculine affection.

The year 1494 marks the beginning of a series of French invasions of Italy. These invasions were to lead soon to a struggle among France, Spain, and the Empire for the control of the whole Italian peninsula. After 1519, when Spain and the Empire came under the scepter of one sovereign, Charles V of the Hapsburg dynasty, the contest for supremacy in Italy assumed the aspect of a great dynastic duel between the French Valois monarchs (Francis I, 1515–47; Henry II, 1547–59), and the Hapsburg rulers for the domination of Europe. This contest finally ended temporarily with the Spanish victory of St. Quentin (1557), and the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) which gave Spain supremacy not only in Italy but in Europe.

The unedited Canticum amoris of Richard Rolle is a Latin poem of one hundred fifty-two lines addressed to the Virgin Mary. Written after he had become a hermit and while, it seems, he was still a youth, the work is of considerable interest for itself, for the light it sheds on the author as man and artist, and for a study of the confluence of the currents in the stream of English literature at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The signature, woven into the poem, leaves no doubt about its being a genuine work of one who in England was probably the most influential English writer of the late middle ages. It was listed among the Latin works of Rolle which Horstmann intended to edit, discussed by Miss Hope Emily Allen in her indispensable canon of the hermit's work, and singled out by Mr. Raby as a work that should be published.

The problem of St. Patrick the Missionary centers upon two assumptions. One is that both the Letter to Coroticus and the Confession were written by the same person. This assumption would explain why the two have so many points in common but does not explain their differences. The similarities could be caused by the copying of one by the other: the differences by the fact that there were two authors. The other assumption is that the King Lughaid in whose reign the deaths of Patrick and some of his followers occurred was the Lughaid of the fifth century rather than the king of the same name in the third century. The alternative possibilities will be examined in this short study.

At first sight Aelfric's Vocabulary appears to be a well-ordered word list, topically arranged under appropriate Latin subtitles. In this it differed none from the Nominale, which was really a Latin-English lexicon largely used in England to teach boys Latin during the Middle Ages. The Nominale, or Vocabulary, contained Latin words together with the English meanings topically arranged: names of trades, herbs, plants, animals, etc. There was no alphabetical arrangement except in a few isolated instances. The Glossary differed from the Nominale or Vocabulary in that it was a collection of glosses which originated as marginal or interlinear explanations of words or phrases in the Latin authors. Any schoolboy who writes the meanings of the Latin words between the lines or on the margin of his Caesar or Vergil is perfectly familiar with the glossing process. However, the analogy stops here: the present-day schoolboy employs this gloss but momentarily. Should he forget the meaning of the Latin word when it occurs again, he is not required to go over the glossed portion of his text to find it; he turns instead to the vocabulary at the end of his book, or goes to a dictionary.

All too slowly, but nevertheless, it is to be hoped, steadily, Byzantine scholars are becoming aware of the special importance of studies dealing with Christian Caucasia — principally Armenia and Georgia — for the studies ex professo their own. That this claim of Caucasiology to a place of special importance in Byzantine studies is no empty boast, an examination of the nature of the Byzantine-Caucasian relations will make amply clear. In the domain of Geistesgeschichte, Caucasia experienced a profound influence of Byzantine civilization. It came, in fact, to form to a very considerable extent a part of that civilization. But, quite unlike Byzantium's younger dependencies, Caucasia's soil had been previously irrigated by waters from other cultural streams, the Iranian, the Syrian, and, together with Byzantium though independently of it, the Hellenistic. The cultures of medieval Armenia and of medieval Georgia were, moreover, rich, vigorous, and original — Armeno-Georgian architecture was, above all the other arts, a thing of originality and beauty; — and what they, in turn, contributed to that of Byzantium is still far from being adequately appraised.

Friedrich II ‘steht zwar nicht isoliert in seiner geistigen Umwelt, nicht der ‘Neuzeit’ näher; aber vieles beunruhigend Neue, was im 13. Jahrhundert auch anderwarts spurbar wird, vereint und verdichtet sich in seiner eminenten Begabung zu weithin sichtbarer Gestalt.’ Diese Worte Herbert Grundmanns in der achten Auflage des Gebhardt dürfen wir aIs die dem heutigen Stand unseres Wissens entsprechende communis opimo zumindest der deutschen Forschung an den Anfang unseres Überblicks stellen. Ganz ähnlich spricht sich auch Friedrich Baethgen in seiner K.urzbiographie Friedrichs II. in der neuen Ausgabe des Buches Die grossen Deulschen aus. Ist zwar dieses Buch vornehmlich für weitere Kreise bestimmt, so sei doch ausdrlicklich auf diese Veröffent1ichung hingewiesen, nicht nur weil es die einzige Monographie der letzten J ahre tiber Friedrich ist, sondern weil sic von der Personlichkeit des Kaiser ein allseitig abgerundetes Bild gibt, das sich durch intime eigene Sachkenntnis und Berücksichtigung der neuesten Forschungsergebnisse auszeichnet.

The present study of the principles and methods of manuscript cataloging began in prosaic simplicity about 1951, as little more than an editorial style sheet. At that time, while reviewing for stylistic uniformity the material that had been collected for a supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, I noted down a number of points with respect to the abbreviating of frequently used terms, the arranging of parts of an entry, the citing of bibliographical references, and other matters of form; these, I thought, might usefully be spelled out in detail for the benefit of compilers of possible future supplements. In this there was no expectation of binding our successors to accept and follow our decisions; it merely seemed a kindness to state plainly what those decisions were, instead of leaving them to be deduced from an examination of the individual entries. Naturally, in debatable cases, along with the decisions went some indication of the reasons that had prompted them.