Early Medieval Latin Research Articles

A Quotation from the Questions of Bartholomew in an early Medieval Latin Sermon

The Questions of Bartholomew, originally composed in Greek probably between the second and fourth centuries, describe how the titular apostle questions Christ, Mary, and the devil about various topics after Christ’s resurrection. Relatively few signs of the possible influence of this text have been discovered in later works, and its reception has consequently been difficult to study. The present article identifies a significant borrowing from the Questions in a seventh- or eighth-century Latin sermon now surviving in two ninth-century manuscripts. The sermon’s account of the fall of Satan and his angels draws heavily on the fourth chapter of the Questions. This discovery should encourage a renewed interest in finding possible borrowings from the apocryphon in the medieval West.

Waltharius and Carolingian morality: satire and lay values

Some recent interpretations of the early medieval Latin poem Waltharius have seen it as offering a clerical critique of warrior culture. While the poem is difficult to date accurately, it seems more likely to belong to the ninth than the tenth century. When the poem is analysed in the context of contemporary Frankish works providing moral instruction to lay noblemen, its attitudes towards pride, wealth and warfare can be shown to lie within the mainstream of Carolingian reformers' thought. The notoriously bloody ending to the poem is also best seen as emphasizing Walter's successful heroism rather than undermining it.

An Edition of an Unstudied Early Carolingian Sermon Collection

This article consists of a study and edition of a previously unpublished cycle of nineteen early medieval Latin sermons. This collection survives mostly intact in two ninth-century manuscripts in the monastic library of St. Gall, while two later manuscripts from Italy and Germany bear witness to a few individual pieces from the cycle. Among the more interesting characteristics of these sermons are their simple, rustic language, which is heavily influenced by Vulgar Latin in both syntax and vocabulary; and their thorough dependence on the Hiberno-Latin Reference Bible (De enigmatibus) for basic scriptural exegesis. The author argues that the collection was originally composed for an uneducated public in the late eighth or early ninth century, probably in a Romance-speaking area of the Carolingian Empire.

Homiletic Texts and the Transmission of Eschatological Apocrypha in a Medieval Irish Context

Within the corpus of extant vernacular medieval Irish sermons, the dominance of eschatological themes borrowed from apocrypha is striking. This raises the question whether this phenomenon is accidental or symptomatic of Irish preaching in the period. The answer may lie in the early medieval Latin collections of homilies which demonstrate affiliations with Insular material. Three eschatological apocrypha which were particularly popular in medieval Ireland and England were chosen as test cases to investigate the nature of this influence : ‘The Three Utterances’, ‘The Apocalypse of Thomas’ and ‘The Seven Heavens’ apocryphon. The interrelated manuscript sources in which these texts survive are discussed, as well as the possible context of their dissemination.

Heritage and Innovation in the Grammatical Analysis of Latin

Summary The Ars Ambrosiana is an early medieval Latin grammatical commentary on Donatus’ Ars maior, written in Northern Italy in the 6th or 7th century A.D. In comparison with preceding grammatical commentaries, the Ars Ambrosiana displays a much more profound Christian-exegetical way of thinking. This study opens with an overview of the historicalcultural context of the grammatical commentary and of the general way of thinking of its anonymous author. The remainder of the article consists in an analysis of the, to some extent highly original, framework which the author uses for describing the Latin language, illustrated by a brief study of the terms agnitio (“recognition”) and nuntiatio (“[linguistic] form”), and their combinations with the adjectives specialis (“special”) and tota (“entire/ whole”).

Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill

Book Review| July 01 2010 Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill. Edited by Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs, and Thomas N. Hall. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Pp. xxiv + 420; 1 portrait, 3 illustrations. $80. Rolf H. Bremmer., Jr. Rolf H. Bremmer., Jr. Universiteit Leiden–The Netherlands Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Journal of English and Germanic Philology (2010) 109 (3): 383–385. https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.109.3.0383 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Rolf H. Bremmer.; Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 1 July 2010; 109 (3): 383–385. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.109.3.0383 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressThe Journal of English and Germanic Philology Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2010 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2010 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill by Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs, Thomas N. Hall

Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill by Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs, Thomas N. Hall

<i>Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill</i> (review)

<i>Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill</i> (review)

CHARLES D. WRIGHT, FREDERICK M. BIGGS, and THOMAS N. HALL (eds), Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill.

CHARLES D. WRIGHT, FREDERICK M. BIGGS, and THOMAS N. HALL (eds), Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill.

Grec σκύβαλον en latin

We follow here the semantic development in Occident of a technical Greek word, which J.-L. Perpillou already studied in the Hellenistic world, until it becomes an insult in early medieval latin. Known in Rome initially as a «xenism» of medical use, it spread as an insult from a passage of New Testament Ph 3, 8, from its translation by Hieronymus, and through a climate of contempt for Jewish religion.

Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs, and Thomas N. Hall, eds., Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill. (Toronto Old English Series, 16.) Toronto; Buffalo, N.Y.; and London: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Pp. xxiv, 420; black-and-white frontispiece portrait, black-and-white figures, and tables. $75.

Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs, and Thomas N. Hall, eds., Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill. (Toronto Old English Series, 16.) Toronto; Buffalo, N.Y.; and London: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Pp. xxiv, 420; black-and-white frontispiece portrait, black-and-white figures, and tables. $75.

Early Medieval Latin Poetry of Mary

In the tenth century Gandersheim was a small, proudly independent principality ruled by women. All who belonged to Gandersheim (except for the servants) were of noble birth, taking vows as canonesses - that is, free to leave the abbey, if they wanted. Hrotsvit, born around 935, was one of these canonesses. She was well aware of her talent for writing Latin and - as she confessed later in a rhyming prose-preface - ‘was not to lie sluggish in the heart’s dark cavern and be destroyed by the rust of negligence, but rather struck by the hammer of unfailing diligence, was to echo some small ringing note of divine praise.’ ‘In complete secrecy’ she began to write poems based on writings she had found in the library of Gandersheim.

A Treatise on Problem Solving from Early Medieval Latin Europe

A Treatise on Problem Solving from Early Medieval Latin Europe

The True Story of Max and Moritz: Ancient and Medieval Texts before W. Busch

Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908) was a German cartoonist and poet whose most famous work was an illustrated dogtrot verse about a pair of little hellions called Max and Moritz. Published in German in 1865, it has delighted generations of German children and their parents and was eventually translated into English by editor and litterateur Christopher Morley in 1932. Knowledge of the Max and Moritz saga had come to Americans earlier, however, through the comic strip “The Katzenjammer Kids” (later “The Captain and the Kids”), first drawn by Rudolph Dirks for the New York Journal in 1897 and long continuing in popularity. (I remember a version of the cartoon in the 1930s as my own childhood favorite Sunday reading.) Katzenjammer is German for a ‘hangover headache’ (literally “cat’s clamoring”), which is presumably what the terrible twosome gave all the adults around them. Manfred Gorlach has continued and much expanded the Max and Moritz corpus by orchestrating the “discovery” for an overexpanding number of versions of the poem in many languages. The present volume brings together fragments and complete versions of the poem, which consists of a preface, seven tricks, and a conclusion. The fragments are from Egyptian, Sahidic, Ancient Greek, Umbarian, Latin, Gothic (in both Moeso and Crimean versions), Old High German, Old Saxon, Old West Norse, early Welsh, early Middle English (in Peterborough and Pershore versions), Anglo-Norman, Old Spanish, Medieval Latin, Middle Dutch, and others. The full text appears in Old English, Middle High German, late Middle English (Chaucerian), Middle Scots, and early Modern English, as well as the Busch recension and a contemporary English translation. The burden of this tongue-in-cheek scholarly display of textual analysis, iconographic description, manuscript history, and critical appraisal is that Wilhelm Busch was not, after all, the author of Max und Moritz but only a latter-day transmitter. Manfred Gorlach’s labor of love in creating this elaborately extensive spoof of linguistic analysis and textual criticism should earn him a special Nobel Prize for

Slavs in Fredegar and Paul the Deacon: medieval gens or ‘scourge of God’?

This article presents a new interpretation of the accounts of Slavs given by two early medieval Latin narrative sources. The first section discusses Fredegar's Wendish account, while the second section considers Paul the Deacon's view of the Slavs in his Historia Langobardorum. The instrumental use of the Slavs in the domestic affairs of the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms constitutes the emphasis of the last section, in which the author compares Fredegar's and Paul the Deacon's historiographical perspectives.

Michael Lapidge, ed. W.M. Lindsay. Studies in Early Medieval Latin

Michael Lapidge, ed. W.M. Lindsay.<i> Studies in Early Medieval Latin</i>

Bernhard Bischoff (1906–91): a memoir

Bernhard Bischoff was one of the greatest palaeographers and medievalists of modern times. Besides his many important contributions to the study of Late Antique and early medieval Latin manuscripts, he also made path-breaking discoveries in the field of Hiberno-Latin literature. This memoir offers a sruvey of his life and career by one who knew him.

Not Available

In most instances, knowledge is passed on through the medium of language. The author tries to demonstrate to what extent the Latin present in early medieval Latin medical treatises failed to fulfill its role as an efficient medium of communication, which factors may account for this failure and how scholars in the middle ages strove to restore sense in texts in various stages of corruption, an attempt that was bound to be unsuccessful in many cases owing to a lack of reliable dictionaries.

Ecce Ymnus Bartholomei Apostoli Quem Fecit Leo Melfitanus. Un inno italico riscattato dalla liturgia mozarabica (AH 27, 139 s. : 97)

Without presuming to have the last word -any philological operation is a work hypothesis - on a particularly controversial text, the elocutio of which is quite corrupt, the author proposes a new critical edition of St. Bartholomew’s hymn, based on two manuscripts. One of these has inexplicably not been used by Clemens Blume in Anacleta Hymnica 27, to date the only organic edition of the entire Mozarabic hymnody. In the article it is possible to find the stemma; a detailed analysis, at least in its intentions, of the prosody and metrics of the text; notes regarding the language, the contents and possible sources, and also an endeavour to establish the location and period when the hymn might have been written. Finally, the critical text with the corresponding apparatus. Due to space problems, it was not possible to add the commentariola, perhaps even more necessary in a case like this, owing to the enigmatic character of many passages. These will appear, as the author wishes, at another time and place. With the publication of this hymn, Leo of Amalfi has been rescued from anonymity. He was quite likely a versifying cleric, and if not great, at least emblematic of the cultural humus of the 9th century; an author still lacking a place in the history of early medieval latin literature.

The ‘Proverbia Grecorum’

Statements in Latin concerning such topics as wisdom, truth, and virtue, attributed to the Proverbia Grecorum (less often the Parabolae Gregorum), are found in a number of early medieval manuscripts. They are of interest because of their stated connection with the Greeks, which pertains to the knowledge of Greek and Greek learning in the early medieval West, and because of the obscure vocabulary many of the proverbs contain, which relates to the study of the latinity of early medieval, especially insular, scholars. New findings concerning the origin and transmission of these statements have increased their importance because they have revealed connections between them and other important early medieval Latin texts, notably the Collectio canonum Hibernensis and certain florilegia found in the miscellaneous Collectaneum of Sedulius Scottus. The Proverbia Grecorum have been edited and studied in detail only once, by Sigmund Hellmann, in 1906. Since then new statements attributed to the Proverbia Grecorum have been found, and the characterization of early medieval Latin culture has been significantly revised. Hellmann's text, furthermore, has been found to be faulty in a number of places. Therefore, there is a need for a full re-edition and study of this proverb collection. This has been undertaken in the present work. Following this essay, which defines the current state of knowledge of the Proverbia Grecorum, there is a critical edition of all statements identified as Proverbia Grecorum. This is followed by a commentary in which parallel texts are cited, and points of linguistic interest are noted.