Some great men receive their due from historians late. Caesarius of Arles is one of these, in good part perhaps because the established mold for writing and teaching about the tradition of spirituality and intellectuality which Roman culture contributed to early medieval Europe had its heroes defined for it early. The patterns thus set up have tended to resist the admission of intruders brought to the fore by more recent historical investigations.

St. Joseph of Arimathea, acclaimed by the monastery of Glastonbury as the apostolic evangelist of Britain, gained this accolade through the Arthurian Grail romances, and most particularly, the Estoire del Saint Graal. Heretofore, the majority of those favoring the Christian origin of the Grail legend have plumbed the Bible, the apocrypha, and the Christian exegetical tradition in search of source elements of the Grail's history. Their research has been concentrated on the mystery of the Grail itself, or the pre-Britain adventures of Joseph and his followers. Some others have investigated various aspects of Celtic Christianity, particularly the assimilation of Celtic legends and narrative materials regarding Bran, son of Llŷr, into Christian tradition, as the genesis of Joseph's activities in Britain. This euhemerization of pagan folklore was a natural consequence of the pattern of Christianization established during the apostolic era, which attempted to build the new religion on the foundations of the old, retaining and adapting heathen practices which were consonant with Christianity. A few, notably Roger Loomis, studied the impact of these euhemerized legends on the Grail history, pursuing the mutations of the myths through oral transmission, in accordance with the process outlined by the noted Bollandist, Père Hippolyte Delehaye. Still others correlated the religious elements of the entire Joseph/Grail saga with the history and characteristics of the Celtic Church in Wales, with strong overtones of heterodoxy.

A Byzantinist today would not attempt to investigate any area of the Byzantine landscape without a thorough consideration of the hagiographic evidence. And yet, hagiography, which admittedly does not always make for entertainment, is not as well plowed a field as one might hope. We may point, by way of example, to the manuscript of the Vita Euthymii Sardensis, Bodleianus Laudianus Graecus 69, fol. 306v-324v, written by the monk Metrophanes. The text has been entirely ignored and neglected, although Krumbacher had noted some seventy years ago that it was easily accessible in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Of course, the neglect may be due to the unwarranted assumption that the text's value is meagre if not wholly negligible. And yet, Euthymius' personality should certainly have aroused the interest of historians.

In modern society, enmeshed with confrontations involving the individual, military service and the state, historians are often inclined to make comparisons with the distant past which offer relief from the pressures of contemporary history. Regarding military service, the Middle Ages are occasionally suggested as an age when combat was sporadic, when only the small feudal aristocracy encountered a martial obligation, and when the remainder of society could concentrate on the other burdens of life, free of the paraphernalia of war, hot or cold. As with many romantic generalizations concerning the period, the comparative bliss of the medieval non-combatant is open to question. Many would note, however, that the feudal classes did possess a monopoly on warfare for several centuries in parts of Continental Europe, and would tend to place all discussion of military institutions within a feudal context.

Early in the twelfth century Alfonso I ascended the throne of the young Aragonese kingdom. His brother, Pedro (1096–1104), had already established the momentum of the Aragonese reconquest by overpowering the Moorish kingdom of Huesca. With the accession of Alfonso, however, the movement of expansion was greatly accelerated. Although the early years of his reign were marked by a paralyzing conflict with Castile-León, by 1118 his career of conquest was fairly launched. The Moorish kingdom of Zaragoza fell near the end of that year, and its neighbor, Tudela, followed two months later. Calatayud and Daroca were conquered in 1120. During the winter of 1125–1126 Alfonso's troops ranged freely through the Moslem lands of Valencia, Córdoba, and Granada. Near the end of Alfonso's reign, the kingdoms of Lérida and Valencia were menaced by Aragonese arms, and their end appeared imminent. The king's sudden death in 1134 inaugurated a period of confusion in which many of his advances were wiped out, but his activities had already made him a legend and had made Aragón a major power in the Peninsula.

These pages continue the inventory of Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries published in Traditio 23 (1967) 313–413 and 24 (1968) 149–245. The commentaries have been arranged alphabetically according to the author's first name, with a brief bio-bibliographical note and indication of manuscripts and editions.

Since the turn of the century, historians have shown considerable interest in the origins of a capitalistic outlook in Europe. The Werner Sombart - Max Weber debate indicated that Europe had experienced the ‘emergence of a unique mental attitude towards economic activity’ sometime between the later Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. The importance of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic (1904) to the literature on the spirit of capitalism needs little commentary, since a clutter of expository works on his thesis already exists. Weber's Ethic gave rise to three schools of opinion concerning the period during which capitalistic attitudes began to flourish. One group of historians, still dominant, has claimed that new economic values first appeared in the course of the sixteenth century, especially in Calvinist portions of Europe. Another set of students has disagreed, finding that spokesmen truly began to assert these ideals later, in seventeenth-century forms of Puritanism or in eighteenth-century expressions of individualism. The third interpretation declares that an altered scheme of economic values appeared during the Renaissance and later Middle Ages. The mass of material produced by the first two schools has all but obliterated the small but significant literature of the third. Sufficient evidence is now available, however, to warrant a fresh evaluation of the formative stages of this change. The purpose of this essay, then, is three-fold: it intends to outline the present state of scholarly opinion about the earliest appearance of new economic attitudes, to offer a new survey of the evidence from a different perspective, and, finally, to suggest causes for the change.

The subject of this study is all the hymns written for the cult and liturgy of St. James the Greater that are published in the Analecta hymnica medii Aevi. While this source is not exhaustive, it does represent an important part of the hymnological material devoted to this saint. This study is relevant since St. James was a powerful force in the Middle Ages and especially in Spain. Indeed, Américo Castro considers this cult as an ‘axis’ of Spanish history, because the shrine at Compostela not only opened up Spain by bringing pilgrims from all over Europe, but also gave it an identity as a nation which it lacked during the Visigothic era.

One of the commonplaces of criticism with regard to Greek thought is that there existed a canonical tetralogy, ὄλβος, ϰόος, ὕβις and ἄτη which was inexorably operative in human lives. Thus, Basil Gildersleeve in his comments on Pindar's thought wrote:

From 1838 to 1844 John Anthony Cramer, Regius Professor of Modern History in Oxford University and Dean of Carlisle, published eight volumes of Catenae on the New Testament. Using different manuscript sources for the different books, he is characterized by Heinrici as an ‘opportunist,’ who utilized available manuscript evidence without regard for its quality. Volumes six and seven (1842–1843) contain a Catena on Galatians through Hebrews inclusive, drawn from MS Paris Coislinianus graecus 204, concerning which J. A. F. Gregg has written: ‘Cramer is entitled to very real gratitude for bringing the Catena to public notice: but his edition is extraordinarily inaccurate—how inaccurate only those can fully realise who have compared it with the original.’ For the book of Galatians this Catena is of special importance, because scholars have repeatedly suggested that it may contain portions of Origen's lost exegetical work on Galatians. This paper represents an analysis of the Catena, and an evaluation of possible Origenic material therein.

This paper presents the results of my research into the scriptural text which St. John Chrysostom used as the basis of his Homilies on Acts. These results give a good indication of the text-type of Acts known to Chrysostom and, as a corollary, provide evidence bearing on the textual tradition of the Homilies themselves.

Previous research into the sources of the Vercelli Homilies has established that Caesarius of Arles is an influence on some of the pieces in the collection. Rudolph Willard has shown that a Caesarian homily on the last judgment is a source for a part of Homily VIII (untitled) and that Homily XI (spel to forman gangdaege) is for the most part dependent on Caesarius' De natale sancti Felicis with the opening statement based on one of the bishop's Rogationtide sermons. Prof. Willard has also noted that although no specific source has been found, Homily XII (spel to ðam oðrum gangdaege) may very well have been written with one of the homilies of Caesarius in mind. J. E. Cross has demonstrated that a part of Homily XIII (spel to priddan gangdaege) is a close rendering of a paragraph in Caesarius' De elemosinis. Caesarian influence, however, is not limited to these homilies and can be seen in several of the Vercelli Homilies not yet published.

Since the Old English poem Vainglory is generally considered mediocre, and since no source has been found, critics usually dismiss it with terms such as ‘homiletic,’ ‘didactic,’ and ‘reflective.’ Because the poem is an admonition against pride and related sins, these terms are all applicable, but they do little to explain the nature of the tradition in which the poet writes. In both its content and form Vainglory bears a striking resemblance to specific teachings of the Church Fathers. Though an analysis of Vainglory in the light of these patristic writings will not transform the poem into an artistic work, it will illustrate the degree to which the poet depends on the teachings of the Church Fathers; moreover, I believe that this analysis may suggest an approach to the understanding of other Old English poems. When I cite passages from the Fathers I am not suggesting that they are the poet's conscious source, but rather that they are representative of the teachings which he knew and by which he was influenced.

Recent research on the Collectio Isidori Mercatoris, better known to historians as the False Decretals compiled by Pseudo-Isidore, has refuted the prevalent view that the Pseudo-Isidorian compilation became widely diffused in Italy only when the Lotharingian churchmen in Pope Leo IX's (1049–54) entourage brought it to Rome and made it known as their favorite collection. Although Schafer Williams' Codices Pseudo-Isidoriani appeared too late for me to use in the preparation of this paper, his articles make it evident that the initial error rests with Hinschius' incomplete and incorrectly dated list of manuscripts. Horst Fuhrmann, moreover, has shown that, with the possible exception of the first six decades of the tenth century, at least since Hadrian II (867–72), popes made continuous albeit sparing use of the forgeries, and it was only with Urban II (1088–99) that they began to rely on them extensively. His conclusion that the principal channel of diffusion for the False Decretals was not the papacy but the systematic collections which incorporated the forgeries, suggests that further research is needed on the influence of canonical collections in the pre-Gregorian period.

A note by Marvin L. Colker published in this journal concerns a bishop named Angerius Brito, whom the author assigns to the see of Caithness in Scotland. The note gives the text of an epitaph composed in the bishop's honor, from a manuscript in the library of Trinity College Dublin. ‘Who was Angerius?’ asks Mr. Colker, and he continues

When A. E. Housman edited Lucan, he dealt with the ‘confections’ of his predecessors with such high-handed savagery that his introduction is a delight even to non-classical essay-readers. ‘I touch with reluctance …,’ he says, ‘and dispatch with impatience an idle yet pretentious game in which Lucan's less serious critics find amusement, and which they call Ueber lieferungsgeschichte, because that is a longer and nobler name than fudge.’

Shortly after its completion and circulation, the Decretum Gratiani became the foundation for a new canonical jurisprudence. Ironically, study of the work's history has suffered rather than benefited from its prominence in the history of law. Scholars have tried to reconstruct the text of the Decretum as it originally left the workroom of the Magister, but they have almost never tried to discover why — apart from scholarly motives — he undertook the enterprise. Instead, they have concentrated attention on his doctrine, or on the doctrine of the canons he cited, because their primary concern is to find the sources of later canonical theories. When they have searched for the sources of Gratian's own ideas, they have looked to earlier collections of the canons on which he relied. Gratian scholarship has thus been part of the history of ideas; concern for the Magister's place in the history of jurisprudence has kept historians from considering his place in the history of his times.

On 28 April 1192 Conrad, marquis of Montferrat and lord of Tyre, husband of the last royal princess of Jerusalem and newly-elected king of that embattled state, was assassinated. The persons immediately responsible for that deed were captured and summarily executed, but there was and remains some doubt about who was to blame ultimately for the crime. A new analysis of the evidence may shed some light on that unidentified culprit.

Ockham's doctrine of intuitive cognition lies at the heart of his epistemology. As Philotheus Boehner and Sebastian Day have quite rightly observed, one of the central aims of this doctrine is to answer the question how the intellect can have certain knowledge of contingent states of affairs (including the existence or non-existence of material particulars). A number of scholars, including Etienne Gilson and Anton Pegis, have charged, however, that far from achieving this goal, Ockham's doctrine (and especially what he says about the logical possibility of intuitive cognition of non-existents) leads to scepticism. Coming to Ockham's defense, Boehner and Day have rejected these criticisms as resting on misinterpretations of Ockham. I believe Boehner and Day have done much to clarify what Ockham actually meant. I should like to reopen the discussion, however, because I believe not all the consequences of Oekham's doctrine have been accurately drawn.

Nicolaus de Lyra (ca. 1270–1349) is a figure of great importance for the history of Bible study. Regarding Nicolaus' origins and background, as well as over the dates of his birth and death, there has been much confusion. It is only in this century that the research of scholars has lifted the veil which shrouded the life of this eminent Franciscan, so that now we are able to present a brief but accurate chronology of his career.