Medieval Latin Texts Research Articles

Deittico, articolo ‘articoloide’. Multifunzionalità dei dimostrativi nel Chronicon Vulturnense

"Deictic, Article, ‘Articoloide’. Multifunctionality of Demonstratives in the Chronicon Vulturnense. The study of Latin demonstratives in early medieval texts has mainly focused on the diachronic reconstruction of the formation of the article from the demonstrative. The studies have therefore focused exclusively on ille and ipse as precursors of the definite articles of the Romance varieties and on the search for late Latin and early medieval Latin texts in which demonstratives could have had an article or 'articoloid' function. The loss of the deictic trait has often been associated with its high frequency in these texts. A fine-grained analysis of the values of all Latin demonstratives in a “roborated” chronicle, i.e., a chronicle composed of properly historiographical and documentary parts, written around 1115, reveals an interesting semantic stratification in which the same linguistic element can have traits belonging to different phases of its history or specialise as a distinctive element of a specific textual typology. Keywords: Latin-romance transition, medieval chronicles, medieval latin, ancient Italian, demonstratives, article, deixis"

Cultural Encounter, Race, and a Humanist Ideology of Empire in the Art of Trecento Venice

Cultural Encounter, Race, and a Humanist Ideology of Empire in the Art of Trecento Venice

Towards «new light» or «canceling» medieval Slavs? Notes to Eduard Mühle’ book

The review of the monograph by renowned German scholar Professor Eduard Mühle, currently — President of Viadrina University at Frankfurt (Oder), published in 2020-2023 in German, Polish, English and Czech, is based upon its edition as No 89 of Brill’s collection «Central-Eastern and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages». As the author states, «The books is aimed, to show, on the one hand, how the "Slavs" — ever since they first appeared in 6th-century Byzantine sources — were treated as a cultural construct and as such politically instrumentalized in various contexts». Up to Prof. Mühle, the book «describes the real historical structures hidden behind the phenomenon of the "Slavs" in the Middle Ages». Beginning with a sketch of modern and contemporary ideological practices, where the concept of Slavdom was widely used for political ends, he follows with mentions of the «Slavs» in medieval Byzantine, Latin and Oriental texts against the background of the medieval Slavic «realities», challenging the relevancy of the very term «Slavs» and naming them «Slav-speaking» through the whole book. The reviewer critically analyzes the author’s approach and his monograph’s structure, which from his viewpoint in fact are turning «the new light» in which the medieval Slav history is represented, into «canceling» the Slavs as part of the European history.

MedLatinEpi and MedLatinLit : Two Datasets for the Computational Authorship Analysis of Medieval Latin Texts

We present and make available MedLatinEpi and MedLatinLit , two datasets of medieval Latin texts to be used in research on computational authorship analysis. MedLatinEpi and MedLatinLit consist of 294 and 30 curated texts, respectively, labelled by author; MedLatinEpi texts are of epistolary nature, while MedLatinLit texts consist of literary comments and treatises about various subjects. As such, these two datasets lend themselves to supporting research in authorship analysis tasks, such as authorship attribution, authorship verification, or same-author verification. Along with the datasets, we provide experimental results, obtained on these datasets, for the authorship verification task, i.e., the task of predicting whether a text of unknown authorship was written by a candidate author. We also make available the source code of the authorship verification system we have used, thus allowing our experiments to be reproduced, and to be used as baselines, by other researchers. We also describe the application of the above authorship verification system, using these datasets as training data, for investigating the authorship of two medieval epistles whose authorship has been disputed by scholars.

Releasing Everything Bound in the Knot: P.Saqqara inv. F.17.10

Abstract Re-interpretation of a Coptic magical text on paper from Saqqara in light of parallels from earlier Egyptian as well as medieval Greek, Latin, and Syriac ritual texts: the central motif, which refers to wind, wave, and snakes, is applied to the cure of impotence, conceived as the releasing of ritual binding.

A Study of Northern English Vocabulary in Medieval Latin Texts: The Case of the Durham Account Rolls

Abstract This article draws on previous work on word geography in Northern Middle English and Early Modern English, which has made use of English monolingual sources, and, for the first time, applies it to the vocabulary present in multilingual texts whose matrix language is Medieval Latin, in this case, the Durham Account Rolls (DAR). Taking a database of c. 380 lexical items culled from the DAR as its basis, it proposes a taxonomy for the study of northern vernacular vocabulary on the grounds of different kinds of evidence: orthographic (words exhibiting northern orthography), textual (words recorded in northern manuscripts), semantic (words for northern concepts) and diachronic development (words established as northern in later forms of English). It highlights the role of dictionaries such as the OED, MED and DOST in constructing our understanding of what is meant by ‘northern’ and emphasises how often it might be essential to revise the lexicographical labels of these dictionaries. More importantly, it underscores the potential of multilingual texts in enlarging the body of historical sources, traditionally in monolingual English, used for lexicographical and lexicological research.

Writing the Jews out of History: Pseudo-Hegesippus, Classical Historiography, and the Codification of Christian Anti-Judaism in Late Antiquity

AbstractScholarly narratives of the development of Christian anti-Jewish thinking in antiquity routinely cite a number of standard, well-known authors: from Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Justin Martyr in earlier centuries to Eusebius, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine in the fourth and early fifth centuries. The anonymous author known as Pseudo-Hegesippus, to whom is attributed a late fourth-century Latin work called On the Destruction of Jerusalem (De Excidio Hierosolymitano), rarely appears in such discussions. This has largely to do with the fact that this text and its author are effectively unknown entities within contemporary scholarship in this area (scholars familiar with Pseudo-Hegesippus tend to be specialists in medieval Latin texts and manuscripts). But “Pseudo-Hegesippus” represents a critical contribution to the mosaic of Christian anti-Jewish discourse in late antiquity. De Excidio's generic identity as a Christian piece of classical historiography makes it a unique form of ancient anti-Jewish propaganda. This genre, tied to De Excidio's probable context of writing—the wake of the emperor Julian's abortive attempt to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple, resurrect a robust Judaism, and remove Christians from public engagement with classical culture—renders De Excidio an important Christian artifact of both anti-Judaism and pro-classicism at the same time. This article situates Pseudo-Hegesippus in a lineage of Christian anti-Jewish historical thinking, argues that De Excidio codifies that discourse in a significant and singular way, frames this contribution in terms of its apparent socio-historical context, and cites De Excidio's later influence and reception as testaments to its rightful place in the history of Christian anti-Judaism, a place that modern scholarship has yet to afford it. As a piece of classical historiography that mirrors not Christian historians—like Eusebius and others—but the historians of the broader “pagan” Greco-Roman world—like Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus—De Excidio leverages a cultural communicative medium particularly well equipped to undergird and fuel the Christian historiographical imagination and its anti-Jewish projections.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Wilbur R. Knorr on Thābit ibn Qurra: A Case-Study in the Historiography of Premodern Science

There was a widespread belief among historians of science of my generation that high competence with regard to content and languages alone can guarantee better, more reliable results than can good philology combined with high competence in history or the other human sciences. In my casestudy of Wilbur R. Knorr’s analysis of several medieval Arabic and Latin texts on the balance, or steelyard, I highlight a variety of factors that compromised time and again his understanding and interpretation of his chosen texts. I conclude that a greater openness to more complex historiographical assumptions and more sophisticated methodological approaches as well as a greater willingness to contextualize documents in numerous dimensions before coming to conclusions about their specific meaning is crucial if we are to correct and improve upon work such as Knorr’s analysis of the Kitab al-qarastun, ascribed to Thābit ibn Qurra, and the Liber de canonio. The way forward is to enhance and temper philological analysis with solid analysis of scientific content within its relevant contexts. Published Online (2021-04-30)Copyright © 2021 by Sonja Brentjes Article PDF Link: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/aestimatio/article/view/37604/28609 Corresponding Author: Sonja BrentjesMPIWG, BerlinE-Mail: brentjes@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Gods and Humans in Medieval Scandinavia. Retying the Bonds by Jonas Wellendorf

Reviewed by: Gods and Humans in Medieval Scandinavia. Retying the Bonds by Jonas Wellendorf Łukasz Hajdrych Medieval Scandinavia, Norse Paganism, old Norse religion, old Scandinavian religion, Christianization, demonology, mythology, the Eddas jonas wellendorf. Gods and Humans in Medieval Scandinavia. Retying the Bonds, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. x + 206. The study of the mythology and religious practice of pre-Christian Scandinavia poses many problems for contemporary scholars: incompatibility of terminology, lack of extended sources, and their contamination by later Christian tradition. Jonas Wellendorff's recent Gods and Humans deals with these issues in a highly interesting way. Over the five chapters of the monograph, Wellendorf discusses pagan Scandinavian religion and its transition towards Christianity through the perspective [End Page 120] of ancient and medieval Latin and Scandinavian texts. Wellendorff devotes Chapter 1 to the process of Christianization of Scandinavian lands and the attempts of missionaries to reduce the old Norse gods to the ranks of Christian demons. In Chapters 2 and 3, Wellendorf discusses the issue of anti-pagan texts in their relation to the old Scandinavian religion, showing the attempts by bards and other indigenous authors to preserve the memory of the old gods in a new way, acceptable to Christianity. However, by far the most interesting issues Wellendorf discusses are treated in the final two chapters, in which he analyses how Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturluson deployed new methods of thinking about pre-Christian beliefs. Both thirteenth-century authors reinterpreted the old Norse gods as humans who had traveled to the Scandinavian lands from western Asia to found the various dynasties of these lands, and claimed that, because of their extensive knowledge and skills, they were eventually mistakenly worshipped as gods. Wellendorf shows that through this euhemerizing strategy, those authors secured the memory of the old gods among the Scandinavian peoples, protecting them from oblivion in the new Christian conditions. The great value of this work lies in its principles of interpretation and the perspective that Wellendorf uses to show us what kind of religion the pre-Christian Norse actually practiced. By using Augustine's and Varro's tripartite theological classification of religion into the mythological, the civil, and the natural, Wellendorf demonstrates that the Scandinavian cultus indeed involved very different forms of "religion" than what we are accustomed to denote by that term today. Although his analysis deploys categories from classical Latin works, in every moment of the study Wellendorf remains aware of more recent methodological problems, especially the issue of the definition of "religion." Indeed, Wellendorf devotes a considerable part of Chapter 1 to discussions of the problem of the modern creation of the category "religion" and the issues raised by applying this term to pre-Christian religions (or "beliefs," or "faiths," or "traditions," or whatever term we use to describe old Norse "religious" practices and mythology). But Wellendorf's book is more than just a brilliant study devoted to medieval Scandinavian culture. It is also an invaluable work for anyone interested in early modern Scandinavian historiography. In the final sections of the book (Chapter 5 and the Epilogue), Wellendorf describes an important transition from Scandinavian pagan mythology to the fully Christianized historiography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the Christianization era, the old Norse gods were, as elsewhere, reduced to the rank of demons. However, there is a notable contrast to what happened for example in eastern Europe, where old beliefs were slowly but systematically eradicated and incorporated into Christian religion or eventually died out, in the process losing [End Page 121] almost every aspect of their former identity., In the Scandinavian culture, the memory of old gods survived into an era when they could be drawn upon without fear of being accused of practicing paganism or witchcraft: they were thus available to be incorporated anew into the culture. The discovery of the manuscript of the Poetic Edda in 1640 was one of the inspirations for early modern Scandinavian scholars to rewrite their old mythology, debunk it, and link it directly to the classical Greco-Roman mythology. Wellendorf shows the sincere will of the seventeenth-century scholars and bards to preserve ancient culture by proving that what had been rejected in recent centuries...

Distinctions, foundations and steps: the metaphors of the grades of comparison in medieval Latin, Irish and Welsh grammatical texts

ABSTRACTWhile the ‘grades’ of comparison is a familiar term, it is argued in this paper that a more thorough-going appreciation of a metaphor which originally had to do with steps allows us better to understand the development of the terminology of the grades of comparison as it moved from the Latin grammarians, especially Donatus and the commentators on his original work, into the medieval vernacular Irish and Welsh grammars. The architectural basis of the terminology, then, once identified, may help to clarify the use of such terms as Old Irish etargaire and how in Welsh grwndwal (lit.) ‘ground-wall’ came to be used of the positive form of the adjective.Abbreviations: CIL: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum; eDIL: The Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language (www.dil.ie); PL: Patrologia Latina

History of the kings of Britain. The first variant version by David W. Burchmore (review)

REVIEWS History of the kings of Britain. The first variant version, ed. & trans. David W. Burchmore. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 57. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. ISBN: 978-0-67424-136-7. xxi + 507 pp. $35.00 (cloth). Paul Russell University of Cambridge A new edition of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s first variant version of Historia regum Britanniae is to be welcomed. Neil Wright’s 1988 critical edition, based on a detailed study of the manuscripts, did not contain a translation. The text in Hammer 1951 is thoroughly confusing ; although a quasi-variant version was printed throughout, it is very difficult to see what is going on as it presents a composite text ‘in a seriously mangled form’ (Wright 1988: xi). So it is good to have a first variant text and translation to set alongside Reeve & Wright’s 2007 edition of the vulgate text. The relationship between the vulgate and the first variant version has been a matter of debate. A second variant version has not received much attention and remains unedited in print (‘a gap hard to lament’ (Reeve & Wright 2007: x & n. 17; also discussed briefly by Emanuel 1966); Hammer’s materials towards an edition are kept in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in Cambridge). The first variant has most recently been examined by Wright, who concluded, after a detailed and judicious discussion of the evidence (1988: lxx): The Variant version was not Geoffrey’s source nor was it written by Geoffrey himself; it is a redaction of a vulgate text made by an unknown contemporary of Geoffrey at some time between 1138, the probable publication-date of the HistoPaul Russell [pr270@cam.ac.uk] is Professor of Celtic in the Department of Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic in the University of Cambridge. His research interests include learned texts in Celtic languages (especially early Irish glossaries), Celtic philology and linguistics, early Welsh orthography, Middle Welsh translation texts, grammatical texts, medieval Welsh law, hagiography, and Latin texts from medieval Wales. North American journal of Celtic studies Vol. 4, No. 2 (Autumn 2020) Copyright © 2020 by The Ohio State University 238 North American journal of Celtic studies ria, and the early 1150s—certainly no later than 1155, since the Variant version was used extensively in Wace’s Roman de Brut, which was completed in that year’. There matters have rested with a general acceptance of this line of argument. The present volume in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series by David Burchmore presents the second modern edition of the first variant version of the text of Geoffrey’s Historia. It consists of a very brief Introduction of 23 pages (vii–xxix), in fact, all too brief for the serious issues it raises; an edited text with facing translation (1–423); Abbreviations (425–426); Notes on the text (427–440); Notes on the translation (441–489); a very brief Bibliography (491–493), and an Index of names of people and places (495–507). The serious issue raised in the Introduction is the claim that the first variant version predates the vulgate and was an early draft of it written by Archdeacon Walter (xiv–xv). There is nothing new in this; it is an argument which has been debated in much greater detail by others (for the debate, see Wright 1988: xi–lxxviii). The important difference in Burchmore’s claim is that it is based on a series of unpublished papers by Robert A. Caldwell in the 1950s. He is known as the author of several articles on Geoffrey (Caldwell 1956 & 1963); it is also known through printed abstracts that he presented in several other conference papers on similar topics (Caldwell 1957, 1958, & 1959). In 2008, the typescripts of two of these three papers (1957 & 1958) were deposited in the Chester Fritz Library in the Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections at the University of North Dakota (Burchmore 2019: xxiv–xxv, nn. 7–8). It is these papers which form the basis of the claims made in the Introduction. It is very difficult to know what to make of this; the abstracts are only a page or so long and provide no details, but, to get a real sense of the arguments...

Making Magic in Elizabethan England. Two Early Modern Vernacular Books of Magic ed. by Frank Klaassen

Reviewed by: Making Magic in Elizabethan England. Two Early Modern Vernacular Books of Magic ed. by Frank Klaassen Judith Bonzol Klaassen, Frank, ed., Making Magic in Elizabethan England. Two Early Modern Vernacular Books of Magic, University Park, PA, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019; hardback; pp. 160; 66 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$89.95; ISBN 9780271083681. Frank Klaasen’s Making Magic in Elizabethan England consists of transcripts of two anonymous Elizabethan manuscripts of magic: the Antiphoner Notebook (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Additional B. 1) and the Boxgrove Manual (London, British Library, MS Harley 2267). In addition to making two obscure and difficult manuscripts accessible to scholars and students of medieval and early modern magic, Klaasen’s insightful introductions and notes explain how magic developed and changed during the early modern period. He particularly focuses on how the scribes of the manuscripts altered and adapted the original texts in response to the changing religious and cultural environment of early modern England. The Protestant parish priest of Boxgrove commissioned a scribe to copy the Boxgrove Manual in the late sixteenth century. The original manuscript is not extant. Written in English, it is a work of learned, ritual magic that draws heavily on the 1578 edition of Agrippa’s influential De occulta philosophia, as well as other medieval Latin texts of conjuring and necromancy, thus making them accessible to a vernacular audience. It contains lamens and pentacles for the summoning of spirits, many of which have bled through the paper, obscuring the text on the other side. Consequently, Klaasen’s consummate transcription has made the text more accessible to modern scholars by overcoming many of the impediments created by the incompetent scribe. The Antiphoner Notebook was created in the second half of the sixteenth century, probably by a cunning man, on fragments from a fourteenth-century English liturgical manuscript and copied towards the end of the sixteenth century by two scribes. It is a collection of spells, charms, and cures, written both in English and Latin, dealing primarily with the practices with which cunning folk were most concerned: finding thieves, locating treasure, and countering witchcraft. Some of the Latin is untranslatable and Klaasen has done an excellent job of adding suggestions for what the Latin might have meant. For the scribe of the Antiphoner Notebook, the Latin was part of the numinous power of the magic and therefore needed to be retained, despite the problems it presented. To overcome some of these problems the scribes relied on Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft, first published in 1584. Although this was a sceptical, anti-Catholic work written to expose the practices of cunning folk as fraudulent, it nevertheless provided a useful collection of simplified and vernacularized magical spells, amulets, and remedies that were widely used by cunning folk in the early modern period. [End Page 220] In Making Magic in Elizabethan England Klaasen interprets and explains how the scribes who created the manuscripts altered and modified their original sources in response to scientific, religious, and cultural changes in post-Reformation England. In the Boxgrove Manual, for example, the Protestant author removed all the overtly Catholic aspects from his sources. The removal and translation of the Latin from the earlier sources was part of a process in which learned magic was popularized for a much wider English-speaking audience. The Antiphoner Notebook, on the other hand, is ‘a book of magic that preserves older elements, adopts features of the new religion, and despite itself, creates entirely new ones’ (p. 24). Furthermore, the scribe, particularly in his engagement with Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft, contemplated the differences between religion and magic, thus creating what Klaasen describes as a ‘peculiarly early modern intellectual artefact’ (p. 26). Earlier studies have tended to depict cunning folk as clinging to the old religion for comfort and support in a rapidly transforming world where superstitious, magical practices were being eradicated. Klaasen’s study of the Antiphoner Notebook supports the work of historians such as Owen Davies, by showing how the practice of cunning folk was dynamic and versatile, meeting the changing needs of the communities they served. Much of the earlier research into English magical traditions has portrayed...

The Lost Patriarchs Project: Recovering the Greek Fathers in the medieval Latin tradition

AbstractThis article calls attention to an important, yet neglected, subset of medieval Latin sources: the dozens upon dozens of works of late antique and early Byzantine Christian Greek authors translated into Latin between the second and the thirteenth centuries. It also introduces a new initiative to study these sources: The Lost Patriarchs Project. The goal of this article is threefold. First, it presents a sample of the deep, virtually untouched reservoir of medieval Latin texts that have Greek origins, including patristics, hagiography, and apocrypha, and marshals evidence for their use among medieval readers. Second, it considers some of the reasons why this corpus of medieval Latin literature has not been subject to critical inquiry. Third, it announces plans for a new instrument of reference tentatively entitled The Lost Patriarchs: A Survey of the Greek Fathers in the Medieval Latin Tradition. A reference tool of this kind would gather all that is known about these texts in current scholarship, allowing future researchers to begin the work of creating critical editions of them and incorporating them into our understanding of medieval thought.

I longobardi alla VI Crociata

Abstract The Old French word longuebart, with the meaning ‘inhabitant of Southern Italy’, is used in chronicles that deal with the war between the emperor Frederick II and the lords of Ibelin written in the Latin East. This article traces the history that lies behind this unexpected use of the term examining medieval French, Latin and Italian texts of various kinds.

DM Reviews – June 2018

These are three reviews for Digital Medievalist, published in order of acceptance. In the first review, Eleonora Litta reviews Bodard, Gabriel and Matteo Romanello’s (2016) Digital Classics outside the Echo-Chamber: Teaching, Knowledge Exchange and Public Engagement. Digital Classics Outside the Echo-Chamber is mainly addressed to Digital Humanists. It showcases exciting methodological examples of the application of digital tools to the Humanities, and demonstrates their impact on pedagogy and public outreach. In the second review, Traianos Manos reviews the online database ALIM: Archivio della Latinita Italiana del Medioevo. The Archive of the Italian Latinity of the Middle Ages ( http://en.alim.unisi.it/ ), which aims “to provide free online access to all the Latin texts produced in Italy during the Middle Ages”. After presenting Archive’s new website, the review discusses issues in editorial approach, usability, digital tools available and more. It concludes that the Archive, wherein there are still opportunities for further enhancements, is one of the most important digital libraries of medieval Latin texts that exist today. For the final review, Lisa Fagin Davis reviews Codicology and Palaeography in the Digital Age 4. Codicology and Paleography in the Digital Age 4 (henceforth CPDA4) continues the series of volumes that began with the proceedings of a 2009 conference, in this case combining solicited contributions to the proceedings of the “Machines and Manuscripts” conference organized under the auspices of the eCodicology project and held in Trier, Karlsruhe and Darmstadt, 2014–2016. Contributions are by senior and junior digital scholars, working alone or in teams, presenting works both in-progress and complete. CPDA4 thus functions as a “state of the field,” focusing more on case studies and methodology than theory, demonstrating how the theoretical approaches of the previous volumes can be put into action. The editors have chosen to divide the volume into two sections, “Digital Codicology” and “Digital Paleography.” Contributions are in English or German, with abstracts in both languages. Each contribution is accompanied by a detailed bibliography listing both printed and online resources.

Otherworlds: Fantasy and History in Medieval Literature, by Aisling Byrne

Aisling Byrne’s book is a rich, fascinating and erudite reassessment of the ‘otherworld’ in the literature of the British Isles. Impressively wide ranging in scope and ambition, the book offers new perspectives on the fantastic realms of medieval vernacular and Latin texts, exploring how otherworld spaces operate within literary texts and how they interact with the historical world in which they were produced. Byrne identifies a ‘counter-intuitive closeness’ between real and ‘other’ worlds (p. 184) and the book concludes with a most interesting chapter on the ways in which the history and geography of real locations are shaped by literary otherworld tropes in sources such as maps and chronicles. This is an important and valuable book which adds much to our knowledge of medieval otherworlds and offers a productive series of frameworks not only for theorising such spaces but for thinking about what they might tell us about medieval attitudes to the relationship between fantasy and history.

Astrolabes as Eclipse Computers: Four Early Arabic Texts on Construction and Use of the Ṣafīḥa Kusūfiyya

Abstract The main topic of this article comprises four unpublished Arabic texts on astrolabe-like instruments for showing the conditions of eclipses. They are the earliest technical descriptions of eclipse computers in any language. The first text is a treatise by ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā (ninth century) on a special astrolabe for lunar phases and eclipses. The second text is an anonymous redaction of the first text with some omissions and additions. The third text describes a similar instrument with a different design, which was invented by Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Nasṭūlus al-Asṭurlābī in the year 893/894 ce. The fourth anonymous text describes a plate for a graphical solution of the size of a lunar eclipse. In the concluding part, later Arabic descriptions of eclipse computers are summarized, some traces of these texts on real astrolabes are mentioned, and finally some comparable medieval Latin texts are referred to. Four Appendices contain an edition of the Arabic texts and English translations.

William J. Purkis and Matthew Gabriele, editors. The Charlemagne Legend in Medieval Latin Texts.

Journal Article William J. Purkis and Matthew Gabriele, editors. The Charlemagne Legend in Medieval Latin Texts. Get access William J. Purkis and Matthew Gabriele, editors. The Charlemagne Legend in Medieval Latin Texts. (Bristol Studies in Medieval Cultures.) Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016. Pp. xvii, 241. $99.00. The American Historical Review, Volume 122, Issue 3, June 2017, Page 974, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/122.3.974a Published: 08 June 2017

Mittellateinische Texte in der Schule. Eine Vorbemerkung mit Beispielen zur Briefliteratur

AbstractAlthough Latin curricula for secondary schools generally recommend medieval Latin texts as a supplement to classical authors, medieval Latin is not necessarily part of the teacher training programms at university. After giving a brief sketch of medieval Latin studies at German universities, this article explores strategies for transmitting at least a basic knowledge of medieval Latin language and literature to students of Latin philology and teachers. Latin letters of the Carolingian period and the high Middle Ages might be an appropriate theme for complementary reading and comparison with classical models and current forms of communication. Examples from the collections of Alcuin, Einhart and Hildebert of Lavardin are discussed.