An Old English fragment from Westminster Abbey

REVIEWS 268 contemporary of Abelard, whose largely epistolary poems belong to the first metrical category. Hilary’s poetry is the most explicitly sexual of the poetry addressed in this book and speaks to the tension of homoerotic desire that may have arisen between a schoolmaster and his pupils. In his playful poetry, Hilary also pokes fun at the questionable sexual habits of his fellow clerics. Afterward, Moser goes on to discuss the changing verse forms that are exemplified in such erotic poetry as “Iam dulcis amica” from the Cambridge manuscript mentioned earlier. These new forms represent the concordant changes that were inspired by new liturgical and extraliturgical church songs. The latter parts of chapter 6 are dedicated to three poems from Bodleian MS Additional A.44 and one poem from Cambridge University Library MS Ff.1.17(I). Moser demonstrates that in these poems, poets who wrote Latin erotic lyric and who also experimented with verse form were among a group of clerics who sought to combine their interests in classical exegesis with the scientific humanism of the Neoplatonists. In chapter 7, Moser turns his attention to British Library MS Arundel 384, the largest single collection of Latin erotic poetry in England. In his close study, Moser argues for a single author for the Arundel manuscript, citing the fact that “the thematic, structural, and verbal parallels” evident in the poems imply that a “single mind” is at work (242). Whether this “single mind” is the Peter of Blois who wrote many letters or the Peter of Blois who was a canon at Chartres is somewhat irrelevant. In either case, the poetry of the Arundel manuscript continues the theme of the anxious poet philosopher who is at odds with the role of sexuality in his orderly life. Finally, Moser concludes with a chapter on the importance of myth to the erotic poet. He argues that “the reflex to think mythologically was much more than just an effort to imitate Ovid, it was part of how twelfth-century humanists learned to think about the world.” The importance of myth, moreover, needed to be present because such elements could be understood on multiple allegorical and literal levels; levels in which the level of the audience’s education did not affect the comprehensibility of the text. Moser examines three myths in particular: Hercules, Orpheus, and Leda. In his readings of these myths and in his conclusion to his book, Moser points out the uniqueness and complexity of the Latin verse in their ability to both recreate their authors’ anxieties and interact with a past and present that embraced the sexuality of classics yet still held onto a Neoplatonist world view. Although A Cosmos of Desire is ostensibly about Latin lyric in English manuscripts, it is equally enlightening as an introduction to Latin lyric in France. This synthetic work is friendly to the novice, complete with full translations of the Latin text and helpful bits of information that aid in situating erotic lyric in a larger context. It is in his close readings of the poetry, however, that Moser’s ability to deconstruct the poems’ meanings shines through. The analyses are dense with insightful commentary and fast-paced in their approach, covering a substantial amount of material in a relatively short amount of time. Both advanced and beginning scholars will find A Cosmos of Desire a valuable read. JENNIFER A. TRAN, English, UCLA Leonora Neville, Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004) xi + 210 pp., map. REVIEWS 269 The author’s main premise in this book is that the imperial administration of tenth- and the eleventh-century Byzantium only lightly touched on provincial society, concerning itself exclusively with the maintenance of imperial sovereignty , the suppression of revolt, and the collection of revenue. At the same time, social regulations were undertaken by individual provincial households. Thus personal freedom in the provinces was constrained more by neighbors and rival households than by the imperial government. The novelty and originality of Neville’s approach to the Byzantine tenth and eleventh centuries is in focusing on the provinces instead of the capital in both her choice of sources and in the questions she asks...

Here Ann Buckley presents an appraisal of the collection known as ‘The Cambridge Songs’, found in a mid-eleventh-century English manuscript but derived from a German source which also included material from the international clerical court culture of the period. Buckley suggests that the collection can be viewed as an example of an ‘anthology of musical knowledge’, which informs on genres, techniques, performance practice and the types of repertory that would have been usual in the eleventh century among learned audiences. The chapter focuses firstly on the collection’s song texts as a source of information on musical knowledge and musical practice in German court culture of the eleventh century but takes account too of the wider European clerical and intellectual framework, interrogating the raison d’être of such a collection in the context of anthologies of knowledge of the time.

This paper examines the manuscripts of the Latin translation of Eusebius of Alexandria's sermo 17 as evidence for medieval text searches. This homily, which treats the apprehension of Jesus, his trial and subsequent descent into hell, is found in four manuscripts (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 343; Cambridge, St John’s College, C. 12; München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm14540; Salzburg, Stiftsbibliothek St Peter, a VII 5), which evince two distinct searches for the homily. In the English manuscripts, the homily fills a lacuna in Easter season within the Homiliary of Angers. In the earlier two manuscripts, the homily appears as part of a textual block that served to stock developing library collections. The evidence these manuscripts present for text-hunting help elucidate the influence the work of this obscure Byzantine author had in the Latin world.

‘In literary culture’, Sir James Murray has said, ‘the Normans were about as far behind the people whom they conquered as the Romans were when they made themselves masters of Greece.’ Indeed when the Normans set foot on English soil Anglo-Saxon England was in possession not only of a remarkable literature but also of a highly developed written standard language, known and used in all regions of the country. Most of our Old English manuscripts were written in the late tenth century and in the eleventh in a form of English – although not always quite pure – which the grammarians call late West Saxon. This form of the language is by no means just a dialect, any more than its literature is merely the literary product of a dialect. This fact is first brought home to us when we examine the negative evidence – the rareness before the end of the tenth century of texts in dialects other than West Saxon and their almost complete absence after this time, a state of affairs for which various explanations might be found, historical factors among others. Considerably more important, however, is a positive criterion: texts in this late West Saxon were written and read in other parts of the country too, in Kent (Canterbury), in Mercia (Worcester) and indeed even in Northumbria (York). Moreover, texts which had originally been written in Anglian were transcribed into late West Saxon, as was a large part of Old English poetry. There can be no doubt: in our Old English texts of the eleventh century we are dealing with a standard literary language which, although based on a dialectal foundation, had extended its domain beyond the borders of this dialect.

Table detection is a challenging problem and plays an important role in document layout analysis. In this paper, we propose an effective method to identify the table region from document images. First, the regions of interest (ROIs) are recognized as the table candidates. In each ROI, we locate text components and extract text blocks. After that, we check all text blocks to determine if they are arranged horizontally or vertically and compare the height of each text block with the average height. If the text blocks satisfy a series of rules, the ROI is regarded as a table. Experiments on the ICDAR 2013 dataset show that the results obtained are very encouraging. This proves the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed method.

This paper introduces a novel Active Document Versioning system that can extract the layout template and constraints from the original document and then automatically adjust the layout to accommodate new contents. "Active" reflects several unique features of the system: First, the need of handcrafting adjustable templates is largely eliminated through layout understanding techniques that can convert static documents into Active Layout Templates and accompanying constraints. Second, through the linear text block modeling and the two-pass constraint solving algorithm, it supports a rich set of layout operations, such as simultaneous optimization of text block width and height, integrated image cropping, and non-rectangular text wrapping. This system has been successfully applied to a wide range of professionally designed documents. This paper covers both the core algorithms and the implementation.

Active layout engine: Algorithms and applications in variable data printing

Spatial and dynamical handwriting analysis in mild cognitive impairment

The main contents of the Bosworth Psalter (BM Add. 37517; henceforth cited as B) are on palaeographical grounds commonly assigned to the last quarter of the tenth century. It is thus the oldest surviving English manuscript in which all the important texts of the Benedictine Office – psalter, canticles, hymns and monastic canticles – have been placed together. These texts are preceded by a calendar of slightly later date. Parts of the psalter and six of the canticles were glossed in Old English very early in the eleventh century and there are Latin additions contemporary with the Old English gloss – a short litany, prayers and mass-texts. Finally some psalms were heavily annotated in Latin in the twelfth century. B, still bound in its original oak covers, is of considerable interest on several counts. Early English psalters supply a very good text of the Psalterium Romanum, and B is one of those which appear in the apparatus of Weber's new edition. The hymnologist appreciates B as the oldest representative of the ‘New Hymnal’ in England. And the art historian values it both for its initials to the psalms, which display a style different from that of the contemporary Winchester School, and for the full-page figure of Christ on 128v. Hence any light that can be thrown on the place of origin of this manuscript is important to several disciplines.

The Early English homiliary, Cambridge University Library (CUL) MS Ii.1.33, contains sermons and saints' lives and part of the Old English Heptateuch attributable to the prolific late tenth-century religious writer, AElfric, abbot of Eynsham, whose corpus of work in English is the largest belonging to any single, known author before Chaucer. Datable to the later twelfth century, and with a provenance of Ely, this English manuscript represents, for many scholars of medieval literature, the last vestiges of the pre-Conquest Old English textual tradition. The extensive codex seems, at first glance perhaps, determinedly replicative, containing texts that virtually all belong in terms of composition to a period almost two centuries prior. The language of the homilies and hagiographies is predominantly late West Saxon, the standard dialect preferred by AElfric and many English writers in the late tenth and eleventh centuries. Yet despite this old-world facade, a closer look inside the manuscript reveals a dynamic set of texts, linked by intensive editorial activity to the contemporary world of the late twelfth-century multilingual monastery, replete with evidence to illustrate the literary, religious, and intellectual milieu that facilitated the book's compilation.

Exeter, Cathedral Library, 3501, fols. 8–130, the celebrated Exeter Book of Old English Poetry, preserves approximately one-sixth of the surviving corpus of Old English verse, and its importance for the study of pre-Conquest vernacular literature can hardly be exaggerated. It is physically a handsome codex, and is of large dimensions for one written in the vernacular:c.320 × 220 mm, with a written area ofc.240 × 160 mm (see pl. III). In contrast to many coeval English manuscripts, particularly those in the vernacular, there is documentary evidence for the Exeter Book's pre-Conquest provenance. Assuming it is identical with the ‘i mycel Englisc boc be gehwilcum þingum on leoðwisum geworht’ (‘one large English book about various things written in verse’) in the inventory of lands, ornaments and books that Leofric, bishop of Crediton then Exeter, had acquired for the latter foundation, then it has been at Exeter since the third quarter of the eleventh century. This, however, is at least three generations after the book was written, and it has generally been assumed that it originated else where. Identifying the scriptorium where the Exeter Book was made is clearly a matter of the greatest interest and importance. A recent, admirably thorough monograph has put forward a thought-provoking case for seeing Exeter itself as the centre responsible, and has proceeded to draw a range of literary and historical conclusions from this. The comprehensive new critical edition of the manuscript has favoured the thesis, and it has been echoed elsewhere. If correct, this is extremely valuable and exciting – but is it correct? The matter is of sufficient importance to merit further scrutiny.

Just over a third of the seventy-odd surviving English manuscripts of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum date from the long twelh century, material witnesses to engagement with the Anglo-Saxon past.1 e appeal of the text in the later eleventh and twelh centuries was investigated some thirty years ago by Antonia Gransden and R.H.C. Davis.2 Both took as their starting-point the high percentage of copies surviving from this period but thereaer focused primarily upon narrative and documentary evidence. ey used these sources to demonstrate the various ways in which Bede’s history was deployed: to inspire and justify not only the restoration of monastic life in the north of England during the second half of the eleventh century but also the establishment there of Cistercian communities during the twelh, and as an authority in various cases of dispute. e copies themselves provide evidence of a further application for selective reading of the text during the eleventh and twelh centuries: as1 M.L.W. Laistner, with the collaboration of H.H. King, A hand-list of Bede manuscripts, Ithaca, NY 1943, 93-103, with additions and corrections noted by the following: N.R. Ker, review in Medium AEvum xiii (1944), 36-40; V. de Montmollin, review in Revue du Moyen Âge Latin iv (1948), 395-6; C.H. Beeson, ‘e manuscripts of Bede’, Classical Philology xlii (1947), 73-87; K.W. Humphreys and A.S.C. Ross, ‘Further manuscripts of Bede’s “Historia ecclesiastica”, of the “Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae”, and further Anglo-Saxon texts of “Caedmon’s hymn” and “Bede’s death song”’, Notes and Queries xxii (1975), 50-55; H. Silvestre, ‘Le hand-list de Laistner-King et les mss bruxellois de Bede’, Scriptorium vi (1952), 287-93. For a full revised list, see J.A. Westgard, ‘Dissemination and reception of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum in Germany c.731-1500: the manuscript evidence’, unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Chapel Hill 2005, 135-41.

Students of late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts are fortunate to have recourse to a number of fundamental studies which chronicle changes in the various arts of manuscript production during the tenth and early eleventh centuries. These studies provide a background against which to assess the work of individual craftsmen (scribes, initiallers, illustrators) who produced English manuscripts of this period. In the attempt to date a manuscript, each of these studies provides a spectrum of changing practices against which one can measure the most probable date of execution for any aspect of the manuscript. Additionally, if we use these studies as a group rather than one by one, they have much to tell us about the chronological circumstances of the creation of an entire codex as a composite work of art produced by a team of craftsmen.

BOOK REVIEWS735 press"). Readers should be alerted to the fine Metropolitan Museum publication , Spanish MedievalArt, with excellent essays on the pilgrimage and Compostela by Serefin Moralejo, David Simon, and others. In Dunn and Davidson, especially useful is Ferreiro's clear summary of the St. Martin/St. James transition and Smith's essay on historical geography. Corrigan's summary of music and liturgy provides an excellent introduction (only Dagenais mentions the video,"And They Sang a New Song"). Scarborough's essay on the Contigas is a tantalizing introduction to her continuing study. On the other hand, the notes on the Indianapolis Altarpiece are disappointing—even the description is inaccurate (e.g., paint loss and restoration are referred to as smudges) and details are misidentified. The pilgrim-shell essay might have included pilgrims' badges, for example their use on church bells in Scandinavia. In short, the editors and authors seem to capture the flavor of the modern pilgrimage, reflecting the range of attitudes and competencies found in amateurs and scholars. After all, Romantics as well as professional medievalists still delight in walking the road. Marilyn Stokstad University ofKansas Pope Urban LL, The "Collectio Britannica", and the Council ofMelfi (1089). By Robert Somerville, with the collaboration of Stephan Kuttner. (NewYork: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press. 1996. Pp. xxii, 318. $98.00.) The Collectio Britannica is one of the most intriguing pre-Gratian canonical collections. A single manuscript that now resides in the British Library (Add. 8873) documents its existence. Although called Britannica, few scholars think that the collection was put together in England. Unfortunately, in spite of numerous consultations with a large number of scholars, Somerville still has not been able to determine the manuscript's or the scribe's geographical origins with any certainty. Northern Italy seems to be the location of choice, but some scholars dissent and give it a trans-Alpine origin. The question is far from paleographical pedantry. If the collection were compiled in Northern Europe from Roman law materials and letters taken from the papal registers, its compilation would force us to rethink the juridical culture of the North at the end of the eleventh century. The Britannica has been most important for the significant number ofpapal letters from the pontificates of Gelasius I, Pelagius I, Alexander II, John VIII, Urban II, Stephen V, and Leo IV Inscriptions from the Letters of Leo, Stephen, Alexander, and Urban sometimes bear the notation "ex registro," which may indicate that they were taken directly from the papal registers. The practice of using this notation in the inscriptions of decretals persists until the beginning of the thirteenth century. By that time, however,"ex registro" clearly no longer means that the decretal was taken directly from the papal registers. The collection also contains large blocks of text from Justinian's Digest and Institutes. Its 736book reviews Roman law contents are important because the Britannica is the first postantique collection to contain material taken from the Digest. Consequently, the collection provides evidence of the rediscovery of the Digest in the second half of the eleventh century. Somerville began working on Urban II as a graduate student atYale University under the direction of Stephan Kuttner in the late 1960's. He completed a dissertation on the Council of Clermont (1095) that was subsequently published in 1972. This collaboration of master and student twenty-five years later is a double tribute: to Stephan Kuttner, who shared his vast knowledge and erudition with the main author until the last days of his life (t August 12, 1996), and to Somerville, who has produced a work that equals the precise and exacting scholarship ofhis old master. For Somerville, the book is a work ofpietas in the word's original sense:"an attitude of dutiful respect toward those to whom one is bound" (Oxford Latin Dictionary). The Britannica is the source of a significant number of Urban's letters from the first eighteen months of his pontificate. Of the forty-seven letters extant, thirty-nine are in this collection. Forty-one letters (one of these is from King Sancho Ramirez I of Aragon to Urban) and five texts that Somerville calls "historical notices" or just "notices" are contained on...