In principio fuit interpres : Guarino Veronese dinanzi alle Nuvole di Aristofane

Reviewed by: The Vatican Library and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: The History, Impact, and Influence of Their Collaboration (1927–1947) Patrick Valentine The Vatican Library and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: The History, Impact, and Influence of Their Collaboration (1927–1947). By Nicoletta Mattioli Háry. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2009. 749 pp. €150,00 (paper). ISBN 978-88-210-0849-8. Illustrated. One of the great centers for ancient and medieval manuscripts as well as for early printed books, the Vatican Library nevertheless hardly seemed fit for scholarship and consultation when Pope Leo XIII began the process of modernizing it in 1884. Under its German-born director, Franz Ehrle (1895–1914), the project slowly gathered speed but faced many obstacles. An American visitor claimed that the library was "a miser's treasure" buried under red tape and weighed heavily down by bureaucratic inertia (11–12 n. 12). But the real problems, according to this dissertation from Indiana University completed in 1991 by the Italian American librarian Nicoletta Mattioli Háry, were the lack of cataloging to facilitate access and the scattering of its riches into separate physical collections based on provenance rather than subject. The Vatican Library was not unique in lacking a single or comprehensive catalog, but, somewhat surprisingly, it requested American help in the 1920s and 1930s. The papal librarians were conscious of the need for reform but also wanted to free it from competing European entanglements, and the Americans seemed a likely source of funding. This was only shortly after the great period of Carnegie largess, while the Carnegie Endowment under Nicholas Butler was receptive partly for personal reasons. The amounts eventually granted would seem very small even for that age but did bring American academic cataloging methods and interest in patron-based service to a continent aware of American public libraries but not much else. Prior to the 1920s French influence had been greater at the Vatican, since Italy was considered hostile and Germany predominantly Protestant. The Americans, it might be said, were more neutral, farther away, and richer. For their part, as William Warner Bishop of the University of Michigan wrote, the Americans believed that the Vatican Library's prestige merited their effort to help, despite difficulties of distance and language. Bishop wanted to rescue it from the influence of the Bibliothèque nationale ("No more backward library exists" [103]). Bishop is indeed one of the heroes of this book, along with the French priest and later cardinal Eugène Tisserant and the Italian Giovanni Mercati, who also became a cardinal. [End Page 503] Despite the detailed, even voluminous, nature of Háry's work, readers might want more historical context. This was, after all, the period of Mussolini and the Lateran Accords and, in the United States, the Wilkerson report, which indicated grave deficiencies in American library education. Surely the latter must have occasioned some concern within Vatican Library circles: why should they be learning from the Americans if the latter's education methods were little more than clerical? A greater attention to secondary works would have been helpful here too, and indeed there is no mention of research published since 1990–91. Quite a lot of the book concerns cataloging questions of the time, the Italian tradition being "più teoretica che practica" (563 n. 84). Háry quotes liberally from original documents in Italian, French, and German, often without translating or paraphrasing in English. Much of the book is organized in strict chronological fashion and filled with excessive detail of often minor importance, such as which ship a cleric or librarian sailed on or his or her exact itinerary. This makes following more thematic discussions difficult. On the other hand, she has done extensive research in manuscript and published sources in Europe and the United States. The notes often are worth reading in their own right. The index, admirably full, runs over forty-five pages. Special problems were encountered during this modernization (or, as Baudelaire would say, Americanization) because not only were the collections large, diverse, and sometimes fragile but the facilities were small, cramped, and poorly designed. A partial floor collapse in 1931 killed five people. Probably...

Reviewed by: From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance Mark Vessey N. G. Wilson . From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Pp. xi + 200. $49.95 The subtitle of Nigel Wilson's new book could be thought misleading, did he not immediately qualify the work as a sequel to his Scholars of Byzantium (London: Duckworth, 1983), which "described the preservation of the classical heritage and the use made of it by the intellectuals of Byzantium" (ix). For Wilson, "Greek studies" means primarily "classical scholarship" applied to Greek texts. As the earlier book excluded early Christian writings unless they happened to bear on the literary curriculum or attract the attention of a classicizing writer like Michael Psellos, so this one treats only obiter of Greek patristic studies in the Italian Renaissance. As we should expect, Wilson draws special attention to Leonardo Bruni's pioneering translation (c.1403) of Basil's protreptic Ad iuvenes, emphasizing both the continuing power of that text as a sanction for the predominantly pagan literary curriculum of Christian Byzantium and its new-found utility in the West "as a weapon in controversy with opponents brought up in a less liberal tradition" (14). There is brief mention of the important patristic translations of the Camaldolese monk Ambrogio Traversari (1386-1439), already the subject of a major study by Charles L. Stinger, and some discussion of the activity of Cardinal Bessarion as a textual critic in the tradition of Jerome. Valla is remembered for his version of Basil's Nineteenth Homily as well as his work on the Greek New Testament. Evidence that Pope Nicholas V (1397-1455) was concerned with the question of the authenticity of the works attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite serves to remind us that "for all his humanistic interests [sic!] both he and his successors up to and including Sixtus IV (1471-84) attached importance to [the patristic] part of the Greek heritage" (80). The suggestion that humanist and Christian ideals were somehow at odds with each other, consistent with the older view of Italian [End Page 509] humanism as a basically secular phenomenon, surfaces again in Wilson's commentary on Aldus Manutius' record as a publisher of Greek texts. Noting that a 1501 volume contained poems of Prudentius with the hymns of John Damascene "and some lesser authors," he protests that "[w]hen so much remained to be done for the central areas of Greek literature the choice of such texts can only be characterised as eccentric" (142, emphasis added). Since Aldus presumably knew his market, the charge of eccentricity must recoil on the historian who knows better than he did where to place the center of Greek literature. Another problem is raised by the statement that Marcus Musurus' edition (also for the Aldine Press) of selected orations of Gregory of Nazianzus revived a Byzantine pattern of study, those texts having "made little impact" in Italy, where "other patristic literature had greater claims on scholars' attention" (155). So it may be. But the point is hard to grant when neither the claims of patristic literature nor the scholarly attention accorded it have been any part of the foregoing account. Wilson draws his book to a close in 1515. That was the year in which Raffaele Maffei of Volterra (1451-1522), formerly the translator of Homer, Xenophon and Procopius, published his Latin version of the works of Basil the Great, the basis of all subsequent Latin editions of the Opera omnia (see now Iréna Backus, Lectures humanistes de Basile de Césarée: Traductions latines (1439-1618) [Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1990], 15-27). Maffei's role in the adaptation of humanist ideals to the Roman ecclesiastical and theological milieu has been skilfully documented by the late John F. D'Amico (Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983], Ch. 9). His name does not appear in From Byzantium to Italy. Readers interested in the textual tradition of the Church Fathers will once again be grateful to Nigel Wilson for supplying, conveniently and elegantly, so much of the philological, curricular and bibliographical context of their subject. They should beware...

Greek studies were central to the movement of fifteenth‐century Italian humanism, as the humanists claimed themselves. But before 1450, Greek manuscripts were scarce, and many humanists were more enthusiastic about learning the language in theory than in practice. The case of Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) helps us understand the nature of humanist Greek studies in practice in this period. My study of Manetti's Greek skills is based on his collection of Greek manuscripts, which have been preserved as a set among the Palatini graeci in the Vatican Library. I compare the way he collected and used his Greek manuscripts with his use of Greek sources in his Latin writings. Whereas Manetti hardly used Greek sources in the 1430s and 1440s, after 1450 he produced new Latin translations from the Greek. I suggest that this change could result from a sudden improvement in his Greek skills, but also from a different modus operandi in the case of his original Latin compositions as opposed to his translations.

Towards a non-invasive approach for the characterization of Arabic/Christian manuscripts

Reviewed by: Guida ai Fondi Manoscritti, Numismatici, a Stampa della Biblioteca Vaticana. Vol. I: Dipartimento Manoscritti; Vol. II: Dipartimento Stampati—Dipartimento del Gabinetto Numismatico—Ufficio della Prefettura; Archivio ed. by Francesco D’Aiuto and Paolo Vian Ingrid Rowland Guida ai Fondi Manoscritti, Numismatici, a Stampa della Biblioteca Vaticana. Vol. I: Dipartimento Manoscritti; Vol. II: Dipartimento Stampati—Dipartimento del Gabinetto Numismatico—Ufficio della Prefettura; Archivio. Edited by Francesco D’Aiuto and Paolo Vian. 2 vols. [Studi e Testi, Vols. 466 and 467.] (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 2011. Pp. 736; 737–1557. €150,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-210-0884-9.) With 500 years of history, a Renaissance palazzo for its home, more than 100,000 manuscripts, nearly 2 million printed books—not to mention coins, medals, papyri, inscribed palm leaves, parchments, photographs, and prints among various other products of human ingenuity (including statues, carved ivory, and digital resources)—the Vatican Library is one of the world’s great wonders. To this unique institution these two stout volumes (more than 1500 pages), edited by Francesco D’Aiuto and Paolo Vian for the library’s Studi e Testi series, are intended to provide a friendly, versatile introductory guide, but in fact they present readers with a great deal more. As reference books, they furnish a treasure-house of information about every corner of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and its holdings, organized, like the library itself, into three broad categories (manuscripts, printed books, and coins). Each of these contains a host of smaller “Fondi” (individual collections), some extending back into the Middle Ages (like the Cappella Giulia fondo of sacred music), some of them recent legacies (the papers of Pope Paul VI), with an impressive core composed of personal and institutional libraries created in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (the aristocratic collections of the Barberini and Chigi families and the Vatican’s own fondo, the basic collection created in the fifteenth century by Pope Sixtus IV and still open for new acquisitions after all these centuries). There is even a collection of miniatures, Libri minuscoli—books that possess only one common characteristic: extreme tininess. This fondo started, apparently, about 1926. In addition, the Guide also includes a description of the holdings connected with the prefect’s office and the library’s own archive, thus affording a complete introduction to this marvelous world in itself, a world of study that invites conversations among people from every part of the globe and allows living studiosi to forge close relationships with those who have gone before them. Despite its divine “apostolic” mandate (stated in its founding charter in 1476), the Vatican Library has always been made up of people, from the first borrowers who wrote their names into a pair of bound registers still preserved among the Manuscripti Vaticani Latini to the team of researchers who have compiled this new Guide’s exacting entries on the library’s current holdings (given the size of their task, [End Page 348] the bibliography is accurate up to 2009). The contributors are all scholars employed by the library, their expertise strengthened by years of familiarity with the collections, years of familiarity with one another, and unparalleled access to the vast corridors and the six stories of stacks where the books and other treasures are stored. Although the Guide does not pretend to be a history of the library as a whole (for that, the editors refer to an earlier volume in the Studi e Testi series, the excellent La Bibliothèque Vaticane de Sixte IV à Pie XI by the late Jeanne Bignami Odier, from 1973), it provides individual histories of the individual Fondi and the people who amassed and cared for these diverse assemblages of books and objects for the most diverse of reasons. Often the Guide’s short essays present groundbreaking research in themselves, as in the case of Adalbert Roth’s introduction to the Cappella Giulia Fondo, where he uses musical manuscripts to substantiate the claim that initially Pope Julius II (reigned 1503–13) intended only to restore St. Peter’s Basilica, not to replace it—a controversial point among art historians, but a much less controversial point from the evidence provided by the Cappella Sistina manuscripts...

“New Books across the Disciplines” is a bibliographic resource that facilitates a cross-disciplinary survey of recent publications. Its scope ranges from late antiquity to the seventeenth century. Coverage is comprehensive for the large majority of North American and British publishers. Other European titles are included whenever received. Books are classified under variable topical headings and listed alphabetically by author's name. Entries include complete bibliographical data and annotations. Unless designated for paperback editions, prices given are for cloth editions. For paperback reprint editions, original publication dates are given in parentheses. With few exceptions, books appearing here have been published within the previous two years. Many will be presented here before they are ordered and shelved by libraries. Thanks go to David Aers and Sarah Beckwith for their collegial editorial contribution.The topics for this issue include: Editions and translationsManuscripts and printed booksChurch, reform, and devotionScience and medicineThe natural worldThe everydayAstell, Ann W., and Joseph Wawrykow, eds. Three Pseudo-Bernadine Works. With the assistance of Thomas Clemmons. Translated by members of the Catena Scholarium at the University of Notre Dame. Introduction by Dom Elias Dietz, OCSO. Cistercian Studies Series, vol. 273. Athens, Ohio: Cistercian Publications; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2018. xv, 160 pp. Paper $29.95. [Translations of Formula honestae vitae, Instructio sacerdotalis, and Tractatus de statu virtutum humilitatis, obedientiae, tomoris, et charitatis.]Bernard, of Clairvaux. Various Sermons. Translated by Grace Remington, OCSO. Introduction by Alice Chapman. Cistercian Fathers Series, vol. 84. Athens, Ohio: Cistercian Publications; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2020. xlix, 99 pp. Paperback $24.95. [Ten sermons on feast days.]Black, Joseph L., ed. The Martin Marprelate Press: A Documentary History. Publications of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. Tudor and Stuart Texts, vol. 5. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2020. 170 pp. Paper $21.95. [Collection of twenty edited documents, mainly from manuscript and archival sources, connected with the underground press that produced the anti-episcopal Martin Marprelate tracts (1588–89).]Böckerman, Robin Wahlsten, ed. and trans. The Bavarian Commentary and Ovid: Clm 4610, the Earliest Documented Commentary on the “Metamorphoses.” Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020. 386 pp., 4 color illus. Gbp 33.95, paper Gbp 23.95. [First critical edition of Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 4610, which dates to ca. 1100 and is the earliest systematic study of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Latin text with facing-page English translation.]Bokenham, Osbern. Lives of Saints, vol. 1. Edited by Simon Horobin. Early English Text Society, o.s., vol. 356. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 2020. xi, 417 pp., 1 plate. $85.00. [Bokenham's translation of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea, complemented by lives of various British saints, is the first edition of a major work by the fifteenth-century English poet and translator. Vol. 1 of the projected three-volume edition contains the introduction and 65 of the 180 lives.]Caxton, William. Caxton's “Golden Legend,” Volume 1: Temporale. Edited by Mayumi Taguchi, John Scahill, and Satoko Tokunaga. Early English Text Society, o.s., vol. 355. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 2020. lxxxviii, 236 pp., 4 illus. $85.00. [First scholarly edition of Caxton's English translation of the Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea printed in 1483–84.]Cudworth, Ralph. Origenes Cantabrigiensis: Ralph Cudworth, “Predigt vor dem Unterhaus” un adnere Schriften. Edited and translated by Alfons Fürst and Christian Hengstermann. Adamantiana, vol. 11. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2018. 311 pp. eur 54.00. [Editions of the letters, poems, and sermons by the Anglican clergyman and theologian, Ralph Cudworth, accompanied by six articles on his writings. English and Latin texts with facing-page German translations.]Da Vinci, Leonardo. Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester: A New Edition. Edited and translated by Domenico Laurenza and Martin Kemp. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Vol. 1 (83 pp.) contains a facsimile reproduction of the codex; vol. 2 (xv, 242 pp., 74 figs.) presents the history of the codex with interpretive essays; vol. 3 (x, 322 pp.) presents a transcription and English translation; vol. 4 (310 pp.) presents a modern English paraphrase and page-by-page commentary on the text. $390.00. [The four-volume edition of Leonardo's scientific notebook (36 folios) offers the first serious reconstruction of his legacy as a scientist.]Daniel, Henry. Liber Uricrisiarum: A Reading Edition. Edited by E. Ruth Harvey, M. Teresa Tavormina, and Sarah Star, eds. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. xix, 511 pp., 1 illus. $100.00. [Edition of the earliest known work of academic medicine written in Middle English (1370s).]Erasmus, Desiderius. Erasmus on the New Testament: Selections from the “Paraphrases,” the “Annotations,” and the Writings on Biblical Interpretation. Edited and translated by Robert D. Sider. Erasmus Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. xvi, 331 pp. $94.00, paper $47.95. [Translation of selections from Erasmus's voluminous writings on the New Testament.]Gallucci, Giovanni Paolo. Gallucci's Commentary on Dürer's “Four Books on Human Proportion”: Renaissance Proportion Theory. Translated and edited by James Hutson. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2020. xiii, 208 pp., 18 figs. Gbp 37.95, paper Gbp 22.95. [The first English translation of Gallucci's Della simmetria dei corpi humani, an Italian translation of Dürer's treatise.]Gerhard Zerbolt, von Zutphen. Was dürfen Laien lesen? De libris teutonicalibus / Een verclaringhe vanden duytshcen boeken. Edited by Nikolaus Staubach and Rudolf Suntrup. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2019. 214 pp., 1 fig. eur 48.00. [Latin text of a tract by the learned priest and librarian in the house of the Brothers of the Common Life in Deventer, which defended the right of laypeople to read the Bible in the vernacular, followed by a contemporary Dutch translation from the author's circle.]Gottfried, von Strassburg. “Tristan and Isolde” with Ulrich von Türheim's “Continuation.” Translated and edited by William T. Whobrey. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 2020. xxxiii, 321 pp. $49.00, paper $18.00. [English prose translation of Gottfried's Middle High German verse romance and Ulrich's Continuation.]Guillaume, de Machaut. The Complete Poetry and Music, Volume 2: The Boethian Poems; “Le Remede de Fortune,” “Le Confort d'Ami.” Edited and translated by R. Barton Palmer. Music edited by Uri Smilansky. Art historical commentary by Domenic Leo. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications for TEAMS in association with the University of Rochester, 2019. ix, 607 pp., 39 figs., 16 musical examples. Paper $39.95. [Old French verse texts with facing-page English verse translations, with accompanying music and art program of the base manuscript.]Hexter, Ralph, Laura Pfundter, and Justin Haynes, eds. and trans. Appendix Ovidiana: Latin Poems Ascribed to Ovid in the Middle Ages. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, vol. 62. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2020. xxxiv, 510 pp. $35.00. [The first comprehensive collection of Latin “medieval Ovid” verse texts with facing-page English prose translations.]John, of Garland. John of Garland's “De triumphis Ecclesie”: A New Critical Edition with Introduction and Translation. Edited and translated by Martin Hall. Studia Artistarum, vol. 44. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2019. 417 pp., 10 color illus. $111.00. [Latin verse text with facing-page English prose translation.]Jones, Catherine M., William W. Kibler, and Logan E. Whalen, trans. An Old French Trilogy: Texts from the William of Orange Cycle. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2020. ix, 214 pp., 1 map, 1 genealogy. $85.00. [Modern English verse translations of The Coronation of Louis, The Convoy to Nîmes, and The Conquest of Orange.]Kaufman, Alexander L., ed. The Jack Cade Rebellion of 1450: A Sourcebook. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2020. xii, 257 pp. $95.00. [Thirty-two medieval and early modern primary source documents on the Jack Cade rebellion.]Kramer, Johanna, Hugh Magennis, and Robin Norris, eds. and trans. Anonymous Old English Lives of Saints. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, vol. 63. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2020. xxxix, 764 pp. $35.00. [Twenty-two unattributed Anglo-Saxon prose texts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries with facing-page English translations.]Laurence, of Březová. Origins of the Hussite Uprising: The Chronicle of Laurence of Březová (1414–1421). Translated and edited by Thomas A. Fudge. Routledge Medieval Translations. London: Routledge, 2020. xiv, 284 pp., 4 figs., 3 maps. $160.00. [First English-language translation of the most important source on the early Hussite movement, De gestis et variis accidentibus regni Bohemiae.]Luft, Diana, ed. and trans. Medieval Welsh Medical Texts, Volume 1: The Recipes. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2020. xii, 611 pp. Paper $60.00. [First critical edition of the corpus of late medieval Welsh medical recipes traditionally ascribed to the Physicians of Myddfai. Welsh texts with facing-page English translations.]Lydgate, John. John Lydgate's “Dance of Death” and Related Works. Edited by Megan L. Cook and Elzaveta Strakhov. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications for TEAMS in association with the University of Rochester, 2019. vii, 195 pp. Paper $19.95. [Includes both versions of Lydgate's Dance of Death, his French source, the Danse macabre (with English translation), and related Middle English verse.]Melick, Elizabeth, Susanna Fein, and David Raybin, eds. The Roland and Otuel Romances and the Anglo-French “Otinel.” TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications for the Rossell Hope Robbins Research Library, in collaboration with the University of Rochester Department of English and the Teaching Association for Medieval Studies, 2019. viii, 377 pp. Paper $24.95.Metochites, Theodoros. On Morals or Concerning Education [Ēthikos ē Peri paideias]. Translated and edited by Sophia Xenophontos. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, vol. 61. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2020. xxvi, 285 pp. $35.00. [Byzantine Greek text with facing-page English translation.]Meyer, Johannes. Women's History in the Age of Reformation: Johannes Meyer's “Chronicle of the Dominican Observance” [Buch der Reformacio Predigerordens]. Translated and edited by Claire Taylor Jones. Saint Michael's College Mediaeval Translations. Medieval Sources in Translation, vol. 58. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2019. vi, 306 pp., 2 maps. Paper $35.00.Miles, Joanna, ed. The Devil's Mortal Weapons: An Anthology of Late Medieval and Protestant Vernacular Theology and Popular Culture. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2018. xvi, 400 pp. Paperback $35.00. [Original transcriptions of source selections organized around the topics of soul, emotion, spiritual health, body, mind, and physical health.]Moreau-Guibert, Kerine, ed. Pore Caitif: A Middle English Manual of Religion and Devotion. Textes Vernaculaires du Moyen Age, vol. 24. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2019. 293 pp. Paper $111.00.Peter, the Venerable. Les écrits anti-sarrasins de Pierre le Vénérable: Cultures de combat et combat de cultures; “Summa totius haeresis Sarracenorum,” “Epistola de translatione sua,” “Contra sectam sive haeresim Sarracenorum.” Edited and translated by Alain Galonnier. Preface by Dominique Iogna-Prat. Philosophes Médiévaux, vol. 67. Leuven, Belg.: Peeters for Éditions de l'Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2020. vii, 386 pp. Paperback $128.00. [Latin texts followed by French translations.]Robins, William, ed. Historia Apollonii regis Tyri: A Fourteenth-Century Version of a Late Antique Romance. Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, vol. 36. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies for the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 2019. xi, 123 pp. Paperback $17.95. [Edited from Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vaticanus latinus 1961.]Rypon, Robert. Selected Sermons, Volume 1: Feast Days and Saints’ Days. Edited and translated by Holly Johnson. Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, vol. 24.1. Leuven, Belg.: Peeters, 2019. 375 pp. Paper $84.00. [Latin texts with facing-page English translations.]Schieberle, Misty, ed. Christine de Pizan's Advice for Princes in Middle English Translation: Stephen Scrope's “The Epistle of Othea” and the Anonymous “Litel Bibell of Knyghthod.” TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications for the Rossell Hope Robbins Research Library, in collaboration with the University of Rochester Department of English and the Teaching Association for Medieval Studies, 2020. viii, 491 pp. $99.00, paper $39.95.Short, Ian, trans. and ed. Three Anglo-Norman Kings: “The Lives of William the Conqueror and Sons” by Benoît de Sainte-Maure [Histoire des ducs de Normandie]. Mediaeval Sources in Translation, vol. 57. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2018. viii, 228 pp. Paperback $25.00. [Prose translation of the last quarter of Benoît's epic verse chronicle.]Solopova, Elizabeth, Jeremy Catto, and Anne Hudson, eds. From the Vulgate to the Vernacular: Four Debates on an English Question c. 1400. British Writers of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, vol. 7. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies; Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2020. cxliv, 216 pp., 8 plates. $150.00. [Four texts on the legitimacy, for and against, of using the vernacular language for scriptural citation, including Latin works by the Franciscan William Butler, the Dominican Thomas Palmer, and the secular priest Richard Ullerston (edited for the first time), and an English Wycliffite adaptation of Ullerston's Latin. The Latin texts include facing-page English translations.]Bourne, Claire M. L. Typographies of Performance in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xviii, 328 pp., 73 illus. $90.00. [Considers how the theatricality of early modern English drama is conveyed creatively through printed playbook typography and page design.]Bousmanne, Bernard, and Elena Savini, eds. The Library of the Dukes of Burgundy. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2020. 205 pp., 165 color plates. eur 75.00. [Anthology of articles with a catalogue of the library's collection of 280 surviving manuscripts housed in the Royal Library of Belgium.]Calhoun, Joshua. The Nature of the Page: Poetry, Papermaking, and the Ecology of Texts in Renaissance England. Material Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. xii, 212 pp., 30 illus. $55.00.Chenoweth, Katie. The Prosthetic Tongue: Printing Technology and the Rise of the French Language. Material Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. 350 pp. $69.95.Connolly, Margaret, and Raluca Radulescu, eds. Editing and Interpretation of Middle English Texts: Essays in Honour of William Marx. Texts and Transitions, vol. 12. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2018. xix, 351 pp., 30 black-and-white and 2 color illus., 6 tables. eur 95.00. [Essays treating various types of manuscript evidence in relation to editing as an act of textual interpretation.]Fox, Adam. The Press and the People: Cheap Print and Society in Scotland, 1500–1785. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. ix, 449 pp., 60 illus. $100.00.Hirschler, Konrad. A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture: The Library of Ibn ’Abd Al-Hādī. Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2020. x, 612 pp., 20 black-and-white and 79 color illus. Gbp 85.00. [On the largest private book collection from the pre-Ottoman Arabic Middle East for which the corpus of manuscripts and a documentary paper trail survives.]Kwakkel, Erik, ed. Vernacular Manuscript Culture, 1000–1500. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Book Culture. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2018. 278 pp., 23 figs., 22 plates. eur 40.50.Rouse, Richard H., and Mary A. Rouse. Renaissance Illuminators in Paris: Artists and Artisans, 1500–1715. London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2019. 280 pp., 56 color and black-and-white plates. eur 125.00. [Study of the commercial manuscript book trade in Paris, including a biographical register of more than five hundred named illuminators.]Rudy, Kathryn M. Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2019. xvi, 356 pp., 137 color illus. Gbp 59.95, paper Gbp 22.95.Sawyer, Daniel. Reading English Verse in Manuscript, c. 1350–c. 1500. Oxford English Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xiii, 208 pp., 9 figs. $80.00. [Investigates how the reading of poetry happened in the material context of and Text A History. Text University Press, 2020. xii, pp., black-and-white and color plates. Paper and Jeremy Catto, eds. Books and in Early Modern Essays to James in Mediaeval Studies, vol. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2018. 449 pp., 10 figs. Les des de vol. et de de 2 vols. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2019. pp., 1 color plate. eur survey of of books and by that are in the or in for from to and Theology of the Old Toronto Old and Series. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, xix, pp., 2 6 illus. “The of The of Saints’ on the of the Studies in the History of Medieval vol. Press, 2018. pp., illus. in Late Medieval New Books, 2020. pp., illus. and eds. and in the Late Middle Ages. 2019. pp., 30 color illus. eur in Medieval and Early Modern From to Oxford Studies in Medieval and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xv, pp., 9 illus. and David eds. A History of an Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. pp. and eds. Late Medieval in England. Medieval Studies, vol. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2020. xii, pp., 3 color illus. eur Middle English in Late Medieval England. Religion and in the Middle Ages. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019. xvi, pp., 2 tables. Gbp Mary The and in Medieval University Press, 2019. viii, pp., 9 illus. [On the of and in the of and and eds. des vol. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2019. vi, pp. eur and eds. Cultures of in Early Modern Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. vii, pp., color plates. The and in England. University Press, 2019. xviii, pp., illus. [On how of the of of of Poems in of the University of Press, 2020. xi, pp., color 1 The of the in Early Modern Toronto vol. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. xii, pp., illus. and Religion in Late Medieval Royal Society Studies in New Series. Press for the Royal Society, xiii, pp., 1 map, 20 illus. Paper and and in the Late Medieval Studies in the and Its Medieval Studies, vol. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2020. x, pp., 9 figs., 6 color tables. eur James M., and eds. Sources of the Christian A History of Christian Mich.: 2018. pp. and eds. and in Late Medieval and Early Modern and in the Middle vol. 1. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2020. 306 pp., color illus., 6 tables. eur Reformation of New University Press, 2019. pp. paper der vols. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2019. pp. Paper eur Early Modern and in the English Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. 236 pp. or Latin to the in the Studies and Texts, vol. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2019. xv, pp. The of The History and of the Translated from the Italian by M. and R. A. University Press, 2019. pp., 10 illus. D. L. The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch in the Leiden: Leiden University Press, in association with the New 2019. viii, pp. eur The Age of An and History of Late Medieval and Reformation by and New University Press, 2020. pp., illus. Thomas W. and in the Medieval c. 1500. vol. 24. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2020. pp., 10 illus., 2 tables. eur The of the Medieval Middle Society, and University Press, 2018. xiv, pp., 2 maps. $39.95. [On the of Christian of and and the of and eds. and in Early Modern London: Routledge, 2019. ix, pp., figs. paper Protestant in Routledge Research in Early Modern History. New Routledge, 2020. ix, pp., 1 John Robert. and the of the Renaissance London: Books, 2020. pp., color and 39 black-and-white illus. Gbp [On the of by the around in the of and of Rudolf in The Medieval of and the Rise of the University Press, 2019. xv, pp., 6 illus. to and in Medieval The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. x, pp., 20 illus. and the Early Modern English by A. Chapman. London: Routledge, 322 pp., color 73 black-and-white figs., 2 Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Culture. Anglo-Saxon Studies. D. 2020. pp. ed. and at the of New of 2019. pp., color plates. of an at the of Art in in the Texts, and at vol. Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2020. pp., color 6 tables. Paper eur 85.00. [Study of as in the evidence of the of in and in Early Modern University of Press, 2020. xi, 356 pp., figs. and in the of Late Medieval England. Studies in and Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. viii, pp., 4 figs. M. The of and the des University of Press, 2020. xv, pp. T. and the of in Late Renaissance Studies in Italian Renaissance History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2019. xi, pp., 9 figs. John and eds. and in From the Medieval to the New to Religion and Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019. xiv, pp., 6 figs. Paper $60.00. [On the of by for physical and spiritual A. and in the Middle the and University Press, 2020. 236 pp. eur [On the textual of for and the of as and Nature in the Royal Society of University of Press, 2020. pp., illus. 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Reviewed by: Reading Japanese Documents from the Marega Collection: An Introductory Manual with Selected Texts by Naohiro Ōta Daniele Lauro Naohiro Ōta. Reading Japanese Documents from the Marega Collection: An Introductory Manual with Selected Texts. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2021. ix + 134 pp., color illustrations, maps. ISBN: 978-88-210-1076-7. Achief challenge that all scholars of premodern Japan are bound to encounter in the course of their careers is acquiring sufficient skills to read and understand komonjo, a term used to describe various types of documents produced before the Meiji period (1868–1912). The challenge is twofold. First, komonjo feature grammatical structures and words that are no longer in use or that have assumed different meanings in modern Japanese. Second, premodern documents are often written using kuzushiji, a cursive style in which the original shape of the characters is altered, thus making the task of reading texts particularly daunting. In Japan, where the field of paleography emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, an abundance of komonjo manuals and dictionaries have been published over the years. Additionally, Japanese universities, museums, and other research institutions routinely offer classes for the study of premodern documents. Outside of Japan, however, opportunities are more limited, despite the initiatives launched in the past decade by European and American universities. In this context, Naohiro Ōta's volume, Reading Japanese Documents from the Marega Collection, possibly the first komonjo primer in English, is a long-awaited and much-needed contribution. Ōta, a professor at the National Institute of Japanese Literature (Tokyo), developed the volume as a by-product of an international project involving Japanese and European scholars to catalog and digitize a forgotten collection of premodern Japanese documents donated by Mario Marega, a Salesian missionary to Japan, to the Vatican Apostolic Library in the 1950s. The approximately 14,500 documents that Marega collected during his time in Ōita Prefecture were produced between the seventeenth and the nineteenth [End Page 152] century and pertain to the institutions used to control and prevent the spread of Christianity, a religion that had arrived in Japan in the mid-sixteenth century but had been outlawed by the military government of the Tokugawa in the early seventeenth century. The volume, whose primary aim is "to introduce the basic skills for reading Japanese early modern records," is divided into five chapters (3). The first chapter provides an overview of the collaborative efforts that started in 2012 to study and digitize the Marega Collection. The chapter also discusses the genesis of the volume and some of the challenges that the editors, three Italian scholars of Japan, tackled to make the volume as approachable as possible to non-Japanese readers. Chapter 2 introduces foundational knowledge for the study of komonjo, and it is divided into four sections. The first explores the material dimension of documents by examining traditional Japanese writing implements and the formats of paper used for administrative purposes, as well as common techniques to wrap and seal documents. The discussion of the "documents as objects" is noteworthy because, in addition to supplying the reader with the technical knowledge to talk about premodern administrative documents, it casts light on the wealth of information that can be gathered by analyzing the material aspects of written records. For example, we learn that the type of paper and the format used in official documents depended on the social and power dynamics between the sender and the receiver. The second section examines "writing and language as gateways to a full understanding of the documents' content" (15). Ōta starts with an explanation of the traditional scripts as well as the writing styles used in premodern administrative documents. Next, he introduces some techniques to decipher texts written in the complex cursive style (kuzushiji) and some conventions that are adopted in premodern texts to read characters in the correct order. Finally, the author examines the various parts of a document and their position in the text, and general grammatical aspects of sōrōbun, a literary style commonly used in administrative documents. This section is beneficial because the structure of Japanese premodern administrative sources follows conventions that are not necessarily intuitive for non-Japanese readers. For...

PRECLASSICAL Uno gentile et subtile ingenio: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Bonnie J. Blackburn. Edited by M. Jennifer Bloxam, Gioia Filocamo, and Leofranc Holford-Strevens. (Collection Epitome musical.) Turn - hout, Belgium: Brepols, 2009. [xxxv, 877 p. ISBN 9782503531632. i125.] Music examples, illustrations, inventories, tables, bibliography, indexes. To honor the remarkably distinguished and fecund career of Bonnie J. Blackburn-scholar, author, editor, mentor, and colleague extraordinaire-Brepols and the Centre d'Etudes Superieures de la Renaissance under Philippe Vendrix have produced a magisterial Festschrift of sixtysix essays contributed by an international who's who of early music specialists, ranging from an array of the most established names in the field (senior doyens, as the preface notes, p. vii) to a generation or more of younger scholars inspired by Blackburn's example. Editors M. Jennifer Bloxam, Gioia Filocamo, and Leofranc Holford-Strevens (Blackburn's husband) deserve our highest kudos for shepherding this imposing tribute to completion and rewarding us with an impressive compendium of knowledge destined to become a cornerstone of Renaissance musicology. Blackburn, presently an emeritus fellow at the University of Oxford's Wolfson College, renowned for her diverse and impeccably crafted contributions to early music scholarship that address source studies, critical editions, theory, humanism, and a host of related topics. The Festschrift documents the magnitude of her achievement with a six-page bibliography of monographs, articles staggering 31), book chapters, dictionary articles, editions, translations, edited volumes, and reviews while still leaving unmentioned five epic volumes in the Monuments of Renaissance Music issued since 1996 by the University of Chicago Press under her oversight as series editor (the latest being vol. 13, Richard Sherr's 2009 edition of Masses of the Sistine Chapel: Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cappella Sistina, MS 14), as well as numerous books she copyedited for the Oxford, Yale, and California university presses and other key academic publishers. Launched in 1967 by her landmark predissertation article Te Matrem Dei laudamus: A Study in the Musical Veneration of Mary in The Musical Quarterly (53, no. 1: 53-76), this laudable record of productivity and accomplishment now spanning over four decades exhibits no signs of ceasing, as the bibliography's several forthcoming annotations confirm. In lieu of a dust jacket, a striking reproduction from Parma's Galleria Nazionale of Leonardo da Vinci's gouache-on-wood painting of a female head known as La Scapigliata (ca. 1508) graces the volume's front cover, followed directly upon opening by Blackburn's engaging smile in the frontispiece's photograph-tandem images that radiantly capture the title's reference to uno gentile et subtile ingenio (a gentle and fine mind, from Giovanni Spataro's letter to Giovanni del Lago, 30 October 1527, as edited and translated in A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians, by Blackburn, Edward E. Lowinsky, and Clement A. Miller [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991], 323, 327). Accolades and gratitude peppered throughout the Festschrift's main text, footnotes, and list of contributors corroborate the title's salute to Blackburn, who, as Herbert Kellman and Lewis Lockwood af firm, is radiant and excited about musicology and has consistently embodied historical scholarship at its best (pp. xxx-xxxi). Equally commendable been Black - burn's unwavering and generous mentorship of scholars throughout her career, setting a pioneering example that especially inspired a cadre of notable women musicologists, many of whom honor her in this book. Beyond celebrating Blackburn with an epic monument of formidable research from her admiring peers, the Festschrift, a massive tome nearly a foot high, 2.5 inches thick, and weighing close to six pounds, physically offers a splendidly imposing example of contemporary academic book production. …

Reviewed by: Commedia: A Digital Editioned. by Prue Shaw Elizabeth Coggeshall Commedia: A Digital Edition, 2nded. Edited by Prue Shaw. Florence: Fondazione Ezio Franceschini; Saskatoon: Inkless Editions, 2021. https://www.dantecommedia.it. ISBN: 1-904628-21-4. T he year 2021 wasmomentous for Dante studies, marking, as it did, the seventh centenary of the poet's death. Universities, scholarly societies, museums, libraries, and other public-serving institutions commemorated the occasion with in-person and online talks and conferences, curated exhibits, performances, and other celebratory remembrances of the anniversary of Dante's death in Ravenna in September 1321. Among these commemorative exercises, one of the most noteworthy was the release of the second edition of Prue Shaw's digital Commedia, published by Inkless Editions (formerly Scholarly Digital Editions) and SISMEL. The CommediaProject, which uses computer analysis to analyze seven key [End Page 167]witnesses in the poem's early manuscript tradition, was originally published on DVD-ROM in 2010. Since then, it has proven to be one of the most valuable resources for the study of the poem's early transmission, even if access to it was limited. The revised edition of the project expands the reach of this rich resource: unlike its limited-access predecessor, the 2021 edition was published as an open-access, free website (https://www.dantecommedia.it/), featuring several new or expanded tools for research. Much like the DVD, the 2021 website presents an information-rich critical edition of the Commedia, with transcriptions of the so-called Sanguineti seven: Ash (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Ashburnham 828), Ham (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS Hamilton 203), LauSC (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut. 26 sin. 1), Mart (Milan, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Aldina AP XVI 25), Rb (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS Ricc. 1005; and Milan, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, MS AG XII 2), Triv (Milan, Biblioteca dell'Archivio Storico Civico e Trivulziana, MS Trivulziano 1080), and Urb (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Urb. lat. 366). These are seven complete manuscripts that Federico Sanguineti had identified to compile his 2001 critical edition, revising Giuseppe Petrocchi's 1966–67 Edizione nazionale, which had, until Sanguineti's revision, been nearly universally adopted as the standard edition of the Commedia. The CommediaProject team originally set out to test the validity of Sanguineti's stemma using computerized phylogenetic analysis. The results of that analysis are presented at length in the site's editorial material, which is largely reprinted from the original edition. Shaw's DVD-ROM edition has been much discussed, and its methods and conclusions debated (see, e.g., Giorgio Inglese, "Rev. of Dante Alighieri, Commedia. A Digital Edition, ed. Prue Shaw," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana189, no. 627 [2012]: 453–5; Vera Ribaudo, "Nuovi orizzonti dell'ecdotica? L'edizione elettronica della Monarchiae della Commediadi Prue Shaw," L'Alighieri42, no. 2 [2013]: 95–127; Paolo Trovato, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann's Method[Libreriauniversitaria, 2014], 208–18; Elena Spadini, "Processing Dante's Commedia: From Sanguineti's Edition to Digital Tools," RIDE3 [2015]). As reviewers have noted, the 2010 edition has much to commend it, features that the revised edition retains or [End Page 168]enhances: meticulous transcriptions that render both text and editorial interventions exactly as they appear on the page; high-resolution images of manuscript folios (excepting MS Urb. lat. 366 of the Vatican Library, excluded at that time because of copyright restrictions but now fully visualizable on the revised site); accurate and thorough witness descriptions, including their paleographical and codicological features; clear, functional, and effective tools for collation; variant maps, wherein relationships between witnesses are graphed as "unrooted phylograms" representing proximity and divergence from one another; and the VBase tool, a proprietary software for complex variant analysis. Many of these features are more prominently displayed or more easily accessible on the revised site, such as the variant maps, which appear in thumbnail images alongside the collation, and VBase, now much more readily accessed through a single click on the static header (previously VBase was only accessible at the bottom of the long drop-down menu in the editorial material). Because much has been said of...

An incomplete Latin glossary attributed to ‘Imogontes’ in the only known manuscript (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb.lat. 452) is, in fact, a copy of a text that Ciriaco d’Ancona found at Monza on 27 November, 1442. From the transmission histories of the other texts found with ‘Imogontes’, I suggest that Ciriaco put two copies of the text into circulation; although those copies travelled widely and in the company of other texts that were frequently copied, they drew almost no interest whatsoever from later readers. Although ‘Imogontes’ turns out to be a ghost, the text itself gives yet more information about the interests and obsessions of Ciriaco.

Beyond the Penitentials:Early Medieval Discourse on Penance Abigail Firey Sometimes the most obvious questions are the hardest ones to answer. For historians of early medieval confession and penance, one of the greatest puzzles has been the cultural context of the penitentials that have dominated, as essential sources, most discussions of early medieval penitential traditions. While there is excellent scholarship on the question of their institutional context—that is, whether they should be located in monastic, parochial, or sacramental settings (or overlapping and evolving contexts of this type)—there is still much work to be done on other, contemporary sources that might help us understand more fully the breadth and depth of penitential culture in the early Middle Ages. This paper explores three ideas: how sources other than the early medieval penitentials are, in fact, necessary to understanding early medieval penance; how, for example, the Synonyma of Isidore of Seville illuminate early medieval penitential discourse; how the imprint of the Synonyma as a penitential and pedagogical text is visible in glosses in a manuscript (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 849) of a Carolingian prose treatise on penance. Since the nineteenth century, the sources most frequently consulted as evidence for early medieval practices of penance and confession have been the penitentials.1 These texts are concise descriptions of specific sins, with a corresponding prescription of specific penances, or 'remedies' for each of those sins. Their descriptions of sins includes such offences as losing a consecrated [End Page 1] object (which receives seven days of penance) or eating meat that might be carrion (which receives four months of living on bread and water and the rest of the year without wine or meat).2 The specified sins tend to be actions or events, usually in the areas of sex, food, violence, mishandling of sacraments or failures to conform to the rules for monastic or clerical life. Some penitentials do use a scheme of the seven or eight 'deadly' sins identified by John Cassian, to organize the sinful actions under an interior, spiritual vice, such as avarice, lust, hatred, anger, etc., but the format of the penitentials has sometimes led scholars to claim that early medieval Christianity was, in its apparent concern for external manifestations, primitive and lacking spiritual or theological depth.3 The penitentials have also been central to a powerful narrative about the history of penance and confession, because they were considered to be handbooks used by priests hearing confessions, that is, the precursors of the later medieval 'summae confessorum'.4 Their chronological position between the practices of penance in the centuries of early Christianity and the Patristic period and the practices after the Fourth Lateran Council (A.D. 1215) seemed to coincide with the change that many scholars perceived from public (ceremonial, once only) to private (secret, repeated) [End Page 2] penance.5 A further layer of interpretation was that this change must have been initiated by some new impetus, from some new, non-Roman, but Christian population. The Irish were identified as the 'missionaries' to continental western Europe who brought these new practices and texts sometime in the sixth century.6 [End Page 3] This traditional narrative is now subject to new scrutiny, for a variety of reasons. First, scholars of the earlier centuries of Christianity now see much more variety in penitential practices than the simple model of a public ritual permitted only once after baptism and used only for the capital sins of adultery, idolatry, and homicide.7 Similarly, scholars of both the earlier and later Middle Ages see much more variety in penitential practices than the private confessions and formulaic penances assigned by priests.8 In addition, the manuscript transmission of the early medieval penitentials has received new attention, and raises new questions. None of the surviving manuscripts were written in Ireland; all were written on the continent during the eighth and ninth centuries or later. Recently, Michael Elliot has argued that the very term 'paenitentiale' occurs only after the mid-eighth century and that the texts we have been accustomed to think of as 'penitentials' are closely associated with [End Page 4] monastic communities and exceptionally devout laity, not with a general Christian...

The motet Laudate Dominum de caelis, copied in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Cappella Sistina 42 c. 1509-12, is distinctive in Brumel’s output, bearing many of the hallmarks of the so-called ‘Milanese’ style. This article addresses its sources, style, and technical construction in the context of some of Brumel’s other motets and of Joshua Rifkin’s recent research on the French-court motet around 1500, as exemplified by the motets of Josquin and Mouton. Analyses of local contrapuntal structures and of the motet’s overall form offer a view of Brumel’s working methods. These considerations lead to a picture of the motet as a product of Brumel’s engagement with a French-court motet repertory in the first decade of the sixteenth century.

Reviewed by: Vie et miracles de Bérard, évêque de Marses (1080–1130) by Jacques Dalarun Ruth Harwood Cline Vie et miracles de Bérard, évêque de Marses (1080–1130). Introduction, critical edition of the Latin text, and French translation by Jacques Dalarun. [Subsidia hagiographica 93] (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes. 2013. €65,00. ISBN 978-2-87365-028-5.) Bishop Bérard was of the ruling family of Marche, a region in central Italy north of Abruzzo and east of Rome. Nominally within the Papal States, Marche was controlled by strong local rulers who accrued landed wealth and power by alliances [End Page 612] created by kinship, clientage, and patronage. Bérard’s career was part of the reform movement initiated by Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85). Gregory VII endeavored to expand the authority and autonomy of the Church by imposing clerical celibacy, abolishing lay investiture and simony, and prohibiting “incestuous” marriage. Over a century of struggle was required to achieve its objectives, and the papacy frequently compromised with annulments, dispensations, and settlements. The Church’s weapon of excommunication dissolved oaths of fealty and precipitated leadership struggles. King Henry IV of Germany (r. 1070–1108) retaliated for his humiliation at Canossa by exiling Gregory VII in 1085. Later reformers like Bernard, abbot of Tiron (c. 1050–1116), and Peter II, bishop of Poitiers (r. 1087–1115), fell victim to violence and imprisonment. The hagiography of Bérard sheds further light on the difficult process of imposing the reform on religious and secular leaders. Writing in the 1130s, John, bishop of Segni, shares his reminisces at Bérard’s tomb with his colleague John Furatus, prior of the chapter of the cathedral of Santa Sabina in modern San Benedetto dei Marsi. Bérard was a member of the comital family of Marche, educated at the cathedral of Saint-Sabina and at Monte-Cassino, and was made subdeacon and count of the province of Campania or southern Latium by Paschal II (r. 1109–18). Bérard was captured, thrown into a cistern, and rescued. He became deacon of Sant’Angelo in Pescheria and cardinal priest of San Crisogono in Rome before becoming bishop of Marche. His posthumous healing miracles reflect devotion to the poor and afflicted. Perhaps because of Bérard’s closeness to the papacy, he fought simony with exceptional rigor and suffered severe reprisals. He survived attempted poisoning and was repeatedly expelled from and recalled to his see. Dalarun’s work is based on manuscripts of Vita beati Berardi episcopi Marsorium et miracles by John, bishop of Segni (Jean de Segni), and his continuators, which can be found in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, the Biblioteca nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III in Naples, and the Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana in Vatican City. They are the basis for the F. Ughelli editions in Italia sacra, published in Rome in 1644 and in Venice in 1717, and the J. De Backer edition published in Acta Sanctorum Novembris, II/1, in Brussels in 1894. In the comprehensive introduction Dalarun establishes a meticulous stemma of manuscripts, skillfully resolves their variants, and presents the life and miracles of Bérard of Marche, introduced by a letter of dedication and concluded by a hymn. Dalarun has prepared a well-annotated and faithful French translation of John of Segni’s rough and unbridled Latin text, with its exceptionally lengthy sentences with numerous subordinate clauses disrupted by parenthetical discourse. This life of Bérard of Marche is an important contribution to a corpus of contemporary saints’ lives that deepens our understanding of the turbulent process of the twelfth-century reform. [End Page 613] Ruth Harwood Cline Georgetown University Copyright © 2015 The Catholic University of America Press

Reviews of Books Diversorum patrum sententie sive Collectio in LXXlV titulos digesta. Edited by J. T. GILCHRIST. Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series B: Corpus Collectionum, i (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1973). I. S. ROBINSON I. S. ROBINSON Trinity CollegeDublin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume XC, Issue CCCLVII, October 1975, Pages 839–841, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/XC.CCCLVII.839 Published: 01 October 1975

There has been a common assumption among medievalists that the magical signs deriving from Eastern occult practices and known in Latin as caracteres first appeared in Western European manuscripts with the rise of “learned” magic in the high Middle Ages, and with the translation of relevant materials from Hebrew and Arabic. This paper questions this assumption by presenting a charm, hitherto overlooked, that contains occult signs of Eastern origin, recorded along with an exorcistic incantation deviating from normative Christian formulas, on the final page of a ninth-century Carolingian legal manuscript from northern Italy (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 5359, fol. 146v). Thereafter, the paper sets this unique charm within a broader cultural context of eighth- and ninth-century Western Europe, where both laypeople and clerics continued to deploy graphic signs originating from Eastern occult traditions for apotropaic and healing purposes, despite the repeated criticism of this practice in normative Christian discourse.