Two years ago I presented in this Review (vol. XVIII, 1925, pp. 115–127) a preliminary account of the papyrus codex, containing a large part of the Similitudes of Hennas, which belongs to the University of Michigan collection (P Mich 917). The complete publication of that text has been greatly delayed by the demands of other duties; and now the importance of a more recent discovery obliges me to turn aside from the larger task in order to bring to the attention of scholars a new fragment, which may be the oldest extant portion of Hennas’ work.

In my essay, “The Genesis of St. Augustine's Idea of Original Sin,” published in this Review (1917, pp. 159–175), I advanced the theory that Augustine's doctrine of original sin and its transmission was not derived from the teaching of Ambrose, as Harnack holds, but rather from the commentary on the Epistle to the Romans by the unknown writer commonly referred to as Ambrosiaster. From this fourth-century writer Augustine borrowed his final formulation of the doctrine of the universal participation of mankind in the sin of Adam and his interpretation of the most discussed passages of the Epistle to the Romans, as well as the notions of man “servus culpae” and “servus gratiae.”

The subject of this paper, Christian of Stavelot, though he is one of the less familiar figures of the Carolingian revival of learning, whose only substantial work is a commentary on the First Gospel, should be of interest to any student of monastic education. Yet, apart from an admirable essay by Ernst Dummler and a shorter, but very useful, article by Manitius, recent research has not paid much attention to this writer.