Published Volumes

The revival of Platonism in western Europe during the eleventh century inspired masters of cathedral schools to explore ways by which philosophy could serve as the handmaiden of theology. Yet some churchmen resisted such exploration, believing it had a subversive effect on Christian thought and morals. Among those who denounced the study of the philosophical tradition of classical antiquity was Manegold of Lautenbach. He aimed his fiery polemical tract, the Liber contra Wolfelmum, at a master from Cologne who glorified the ancients while siding with the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV (1056–1106), against Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085) in the struggle known as the Investiture Controversy. Manegold did not oppose logic and philosophy per se, but rather their use in supporting a political program that questioned the authority of the pope and undermined the unity of Christendom.

Ranulph Higden, monk of St. Werburgh's Abbey and well-known author of the Polychronicon and other treatises, penned a concise and user-friendly Art of Preaching about 1346. His Ars componendi sermones follows a schematic common to many members of this genre and includes attributes desirable or necessary in the preacher, methods for piquing an audience's interest, the process of effective repetition, and suggestions for creating rhythmic patterns in prose. Its major focus, however, is the clear and comprehensive discussion of each thematic sermon part: the theme or scriptural text, its development in protheme and introduction, its division, subdivision, and embellishment. In structure and content, Higden's prescriptive manual has affinities to contemporary rhetorical texts, especially the artes poeticae and dictaminis, and displays an analogous relationship with Ciceronian dispositio as developed in the De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium. A few of the many items of interest scattered throughout the text are Ranulph's insistence that preaching be separate from university exercises and his comments about various subjects like direct entry into heaven post mortem, the scope of medieval optics, what and who compose the church, and the quadruple levels of scriptural exegesis.

The treatise by the Pseudo-Dionysius De Mystica Theologia was translated into Latin in the ninth century, but it had to await the first decades of the thirteenth to receive interpretation and commentary. Thomas Gallus, a member of the Victorine school at Paris, glossed the Latin version of John Sarrazen in 1233. This new, critical edition and translation takes into consideration all five known manuscripts, two of which are recent discoveries. The commentary by Bishop Grosseteste was made at Lincoln around 1242. It was based upon his new version of the Greek text. Grosseteste's Latin version and his commentary are published here with a translation. These earliest Latin commentators ventured a full-scale reappropriation of the contents of the Mystical Theology. They explored the trans-conceptual ecstasy of the individual soul that passes through purification and illumination to union with God by means of an exceptional grace of divine love. Between them they provided the context within which not only the later mystical theology of monastery and university but also the actual spiritual experience of countless souls was formed.

The luminaries of late thirteenth-century Europe took great interest in the mysterious fifth-century author known as Dionysius the Areopagite. They typically read Dionysius not in the original Greek, but in a Latin edition prepared sometime in the middle of the thirteenth century. This edition, which appeared first in Paris and later circulated all over Western Europe, was no mere translation. In addition to the famous translation made by Eriugena in the ninth century, it contained translations of scholia on the Dionysian texts made by Anastasius the Librarian, alternative readings provided by Anastasius and other Latin readers, as well as excerpts from Eriugena's own theological masterwork, the Periphyseon. University scholars such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas thus learned Dionysian mystical theology not only from his text, but from the seven-hundred year interpretive tradition that literally surrounded it on the page.

This volume offers a translation with introduction and notes of Henry of Ghent's questions on the being and essence of God from his Summa of Ordinary Questions (Summa quaestionum ordinarium). These questions form the heart of Henry's philosophy of God, especially his "new way" of proving the existence of God and his claim that God is the first object known by the human intellect.

This volume continues Professor Roland Teske's translation of a series of important questions from Henry of Ghent's Summa of Ordinary Questions (Summa quaestionum ordinarium). It contains the Latin text of questions 25 through 30 (which treat of God's unity and simplicity), a close English translation, a philosophical introduction, and notes identifying all of Henry's sources. Moreover, there is a glossary of Henry's often complex technical terminology. The questions translated in this volume impressively reflect the changed intellectual climate in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, after the condemnations of 1277. To Henry, Aristotelianism is not a viable option for a Christian thinker. Reading the Philosopher "with greater historical accuracy than Thomas Aquinas," as Teske writes, Henry reaffirms the Catholic faith vigorously against the influence of a philosophy that, in his view, applies principles of Greek metaphysics to Christianity without sufficient discernment. Henry develops many of his positions in critical dialogue with Thomas Aquinas, whom he associates with the overly enthusiastic kind of Aristotelianism that he helped condemn in 1277.

In 885 AD, the Vikings laid siege to Paris, to which a young monk named Abbo, of the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, stood as witness. Later, he came to make a record of what he saw, heard, and believed in a verse chronicle, the Bella parisiacae urbis. His often stirring account speaks of the relentless and ingenious attacks of the Norsemen, the selfless heroism of the defending Frankish warriors, and the misery and terror of the besieged Parisians. But his canvas is far larger than this single occurrence, for he hints at greater things yet to come, such as the final disintegration of Carolingian rule, the eventual establishment of the Capetian line of monarchs, and the creation of a French Danelaw, namely, Normandy. Ultimately, however, Abbo is not concerned with an impartial narration of events, but rather with salvation through history-of the individual and of the nation of the Franks. The macaronic style of his chronicle very much appealed to the sensibilities of the time, thus ensuring that Abbo's work would endure.

Vowing to lead a life of voluntary poverty in imitation of Christ, the medieval mendicant orders swept across Latin Christendom with their zealous preaching and exemplary charity. But their golden age was short-lived. As they grew in size and wealth, Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, Augustinians, and other friars began to meet with resistance, especially from monastic and clerical circles. Many of these critics called to curb the orders' privileges; others, however, sought their total abolition. The latter found their most ardent spokesman in William of Saint-Amour, a professor of theology at the University of Paris. In 1256, amidst growing tensions between Parisian secular and mendicant academics, William published his major assault on the friars, De periculis novissimorum temporum, or On the Dangers of the Last Times. As its title proclaims, the treatise employed the exegetical language of apocalypticism to expose the mendicants' success as the ultimate universal threat, and to warn their supporters that they were siding with the Antichrist. Official response to these audacious accusations did not delay. At the instigation of Louis IX of France (St. Louis)—himself an outspoken mendicant sympathizer—the pope banished William from Paris and declared the treatise unorthodox. William's party was silenced, at least for the time being, yet De periculis lived on. For centuries to follow it furnished the basic vocabulary of anti-fraternal polemics through an ever-changing political and religious landscape. Medieval poets, Reformation theologians, modern playwrights-all have drawn upon this anathematized treatise to different ends. The present volume offers a fresh Latin edition of De periculis and its first translation into any modern language. The introduction supplies the immediate context for the treatise's original publication, revises its traditional interpretation, and charts its literary and theological afterlife.

This translation of Albert of Saxony’s Twenty-Five Disputed Questions on Logic brings to English readers an important fourteenth-century logician’s contribution to the analytic core issues in philosophy. Many of these issues are still actively discussed today. Albert treats issues such as the nature and scope of logic; the meaning and reference of terms; self-reference; logical difficulties with possessive, non-designating, and fictitious terms; mental terms and relative pronouns; logical problems with propositions, such as quantity, truth, falsity, conversion, and verification; the scope of denials and modal notions; Aristotle’s category theory; and the existence of universals. The book is intended to appeal to all those who are interested in the late medieval contribution to those discussions. Included with the translation, translator’s notes, and introduction are an appendix containing two sophisms that treat part-whole relations, a glossary of Albertinian terms, an index of key rules, sophisms, and theses, and a table of parallel passages in Albert’s other logical works.

The fourteenth-century thinker Thomas Bradwardine is well known in both the history of science and the history of theology. The first of the Merton Calculators (mathematical physicists) and a passionate defender of the Augustinian doctrine of salvation through grace alone, he was briefly archbishop of Canterbury before succumbing to the Black Death in 1349. This new edition of his Insolubilia, made from all thirteen known manuscripts, shows that he was also a logician of the first rank. The edition is accompanied by a full English translation. In the treatise, Bradwardine considers and rejects the theories of his contemporaries about the logical puzzles known as “insolubles,” and sets out his own solution at length and in detail. In a substantial introduction, Stephen Read describes Bradwardine’s analysis, compares it with other more recent theories, and places it in its historical context. The text is accompanied by three appendices, the first of which is an extra chapter found in two manuscripts (and partly in a third) that appears to contain further thoughts by Bradwardine himself. The second contains an extract from Ralph Strode’s Insolubilia, composed in the 1360s, repeating and enlarging on Bradwardine’s text; and the third consists of an anonymous text that applies Bradwardine’s solution to a succession of different insolubles.

Today, after centuries of obscurity, Hildegard of Bingen has become one of the most famous women of the Middle Ages. She was a woman of great and varied talent as well as tenacious purpose. Her life centered on two places: the abbey of St. Disibod, where she grew to maturity in a community of women, and the abbey of St. Rupert, to which she led that community after she had become its leader. In her only two efforts at hagiography, she composed vitae of these two patron saints, in whose honor she also wrote liturgical poetry. These two lives tell much about her understanding of monastic life and history. The text of the two lives in Migne’s Patrologia latina is quite defective. This edition presents the complete texts from the best surviving manuscripts, along with the first translation of the two lives into English. The introduction relates the two vitae to Hildegard’s biography, to her other writings, and to her establishment of her new monastery on the Rupertsberg. This edition also includes a bibliography of editions of Hildegard’s Latin texts, English translations of them, and scholarly works about Hildegard.

The medieval fascination with the mysterious language of Dionysius the Areopagite is nowhere more evident than in the thirteenth-century textbook edition of his treatise on liturgical rites. Dionysius employed unfamiliar Greek to describe people, actions, and texts that would have been perfectly familiar to his readers. The Latin translation used in the thirteenth-century textbook strives to preserve this unfamiliarity, but commentaries are introduced between its lines and paragraphs, disrupting its ability to bewilder and surprise. These commentaries make the Dionysian text less mysterious, while also slightly altering its meaning. In the hands of the commentators, Dionysius becomes less interested in the aesthetic mystery of the liturgy, and more interested in credal orthodoxy. To read text and commentary together is to confront seven hundred years of competing voices speaking on the nature and purpose of the Christian church.

Ranulph Higden, O.S.B. (ca. 1285–1364), well-known author of the Polychronicon, also penned several pastorally oriented treatises, namely, an Ars componendi sermones, a lengthy series of Distinctiones, an Ars kalendarii, and a comprehensive manual of instruction called Speculum curatorum. Last revised about 1350, the Speculum handles almost every aspect of Christian doctrine in three substantial books: the first treats the commandments; the second, the deadly sins; the third, the sacraments. This edition and translation of Higden’s volume on the Decalogue shows how each commandment functions as an umbrella covering various expected and unexpected subjects. Because of the former, it is a serious explication of moral theology and canon law; because of the latter, it is a treasure trove of myth, folklore, vignettes detailing aspects of fourteenth-century life, and avuncular advice. Its definitions of intangibles—like faith, fear, and flattery—are balanced by evaluations of war, robbery, and tithing, and given zest by discussions about the degrees of superstition, the tricks of demons, and the deceitfulness of dreams. Ultimately, all provide insights into the knowledge base, the legitimate and unfounded concerns, and the sincere beliefs of later medieval England.

Ranulph Higden's Speculum curatorum was composed in England about 1350. Book II treats the types and originating circumstances of all sin, but mostly focuses on the seven capital sins: pride, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. Each is discussed with a thoroughness appropriate to the text's function as a manual of instruction for parish clergy. None of the sins is treated lightly, as any one of them could prevent the soul from achieving its eternal goal. The length of each discussion is also indicative of the sin's effect on Church life and discipline. Avarice, together with its worrisome components of usury and simony, is of special concern and consequently occupies about a quarter of the total commentary. Higden's exploration of the capital sins differs in format and purpose from earlier books on the same topic. The libri poenitentiales of the sixth through twelfth centuries usually just matched a sin with its recommended punishment; the summae confessorum of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were mostly oriented to helping a confessor understand how contrition, confession, and satisfaction were necessary components of the sacrament of penance. Higden wants both clerics and lay people to come face to face with all of the destructive aspects of sin. At times, as in the chapter on drunkenness, he weaves the psychological and pastoral dimensions of a certain sin into his painstaking analysis. The manual's fifty-one chapters aim to assist both priest and people to know the blandishments of sin thoroughly and, because of this knowledge, to avoid them.

Robert Grosseteste at Munich contains an edition, translation, and careful study of a short and hitherto completely neglected text from a manuscript in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS. clm 8827. This codex—a collection of extracts from a broad range of texts conducive to spiritual contemplation—includes an abbreviatio of Robert Grosseteste’s commentaries on the corpus dionysiacum. Professor McEvoy’s detailed introduction identifies the author of the abridgment as one Friar Andreas, a Franciscan of the southern German province who worked in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. McEvoy is able to identify a series of early owners of the codex, which turns out to be intimately connected with the history of the Franciscan community at Munich—indeed, with the history of Munich itself. For, as McEvoy shows, MS. clm 8827 did not remain unaffected by historical turning-points such as the secularization of 1802 and even World War II. Friar Andreas’s text is accompanied by the glosses of “Finehand,” a mystically inclined mind who may well have been a Franciscan nun. Finehand represents another layer in the tradition of the reception of the Pseudo-Dionysius, and of Robert Grosseteste’s commentary upon the Pseudo-Dionysius, which this volume minutely chronicles. James McEvoy (1943–2010) was a distinguished historian of medieval thought best known for his work on Robert Grosseteste and the philosophy of friendship. McEvoy’s career included chairs at the Queen’s University of Belfast, the Université catholique de Louvain, and the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He was Maître agrégé at Louvain and a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Boncompagno was born in Signa, not far from Florence, sometime between 1165 and 1175. He first studied at Florence but soon moved to Bologna, becoming a teacher of grammar and rhetoric there. One of the most famous teachers of rhetoric of his time, he was regarded by his contemporaries as being the most skillful, the most original, and the most fertile in imagination of them all. The Amicitia was written toward the end of 1205 at Rome. Its unspoken purpose is to act as a guide in identifying and classifying the various kinds of people who try to gain our trust by posing as friends. Indeed, the text excels in describing in exuberant detail the many “false” friends we encounter in life. Boncompagno’s last work (he died sometime after 1240), the Libellus de malo senectutis et senii, was written when he was old and, as a final irony, without friends. It contains a stark description of the human condition as each one enters into old age and decrepitude and finally encounters death. To the end, Boncompagno continues to regard all of human life with a skeptical, even cynical eye, a detached observer of and commentator on the society of his time.

Adelmann of Liège was one of the first interlocutors of Berengar of Tours in the Eucharistic controversy of the eleventh century. For that reason, his contribution was of great importance for the development of sacramental theology. This book contains all the known texts of this pre-scholastic theologian from the school of Liège, that is, not only his correspondence with Berengar, but also his famous poem on the theologians of Chartres—the Rhythmus alphabeticus—and his admonishing letter to Archbishop Hermann of Cologne on the forgiveness of sins.

This volume contains Professor Roland Teske's translation of William of Auvergne’s Divine Rhetoric along with the Latin text, introduction, and notes. The Latin text improves on that of the 1674 printed edition by the use of two early manuscripts of the work. William was a theologian at the University of Paris and bishop of Paris from 1228 until his death in 1249. He is mainly known for his huge Teaching on God in the Mode of Wisdom, in which he made extensive use of the works of Avicenna and Aristotle as they were becoming known through translations in order to come to some understanding of the Christian faith and philosophy. Although the majority of his writings focus upon the mysteries of the faith and philosophical questions about the nature of human beings, their God, and their world, William was also a bishop with a deep concern for his clergy and people. In his Divine Rhetoric he aimed to explain and illustrate for his priests and people the art of prayer or, as he put it in the subtitle, The Oratorical Art of Divine Eloquence. The work lists and explains seven characteristics or perfections of prayer, but it is perhaps best known for its application of Ciceronian rules of oratory to Christian oratory or prayer.

Adam of Saint-Victor’s († 1146) sequences are recognized as sophisticated liturgical poetry, the highest development of this literary genre. In addition to their merit as unique medieval cultural sources, they offer an expression of the lived theology of the twelfth-century Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris. This translation of the collection of Adam’s sequences presents them as a whole, using language that seeks to retain the theological significance of the Latin terminology. The parallel Latin text allows readers to examine the original language used. The included introduction and notes situate the sequences in their historical context and offer references to Adam’s many sources.

Paul the Deacon was undoubtedly one of the most prolific and gifted scholars of the early medieval period. Working for different patrons, first in his native Lombardy and then at the Frankish court, he left an impressive literary legacy, including a six-volume History of Rome and a History of the Lombards. All in all, Paul wrote more history than any of his contemporaries. He composed the Liber de episcopis Mettensibus around 784 at the behest of Angilram, bishop of Metz and chief counselor of Charlemagne. The text has received considerable attention from modern historians since it contains the first genealogy of the Carolingian family, one that establishes Arnulf, the seventh-century bishop of Metz, as Charlemagne’s forefather. However, rather than being a simple work of royal propaganda, composed to support and legitimize the Carolingians, who had usurped the throne only thirty years earlier with Pippin III’s coup in 751, the text subtly advances the prominent role of Metz within the Frankish kingdom.

The present volume offers a new Latin edition of the Liber, including the late tenth-century interpolated section that both transformed the text and ensured its transmission. It also provides its first translation into a modern language. The introduction analyzes the textual strategies and the political claims at play in the Liber within the context of a reassessment of Angilram’s episcopacy (768–791) in Metz.

The Notory Art of Shorthand (Ars notoria notarie), an important yet understudied late medieval work, is newly edited here and presented for the first time in English translation along with an introduction and commentary. This unique treatise on shorthand writing is a hybrid of literary genres that sheds much light on late medieval scribal culture. Following in a medieval tradition of works such as the Secret of Secrets, the innovative Ars notoria notarie points forward to early modern hermetic writers such as Agrippa von Nettesheim and John Dee, the latter having owned one of the three manuscripts of the work. The Ars notoria notarie relates to disciplines ranging from paleography to magic. It has multiple identities: a unique branch of one of the most popular magic treatises of the Middle Ages, the Ars notoria; a rare report on medieval paleography and the notarial trade; an exposé of a unique medieval cipher based on the famous Tironian notes; an eclectic university text bringing together authorities from Pliny and Aristotle to Donatus and Bede; a remarkable source for the liturgy of Thomas Becket; and, finally, a distinctive contribution to the epistolary genre known as the mirror for princes.

This volume contains the first publication in book form of an English translation of Thomas Aquinas’s controversial disputed question De unione Verbi incarnati. This disputed question is a remarkable portal into the Angelic Doctor’s theology of the hypostatic union, which is recognized as an area in which Aquinas forged some of his most original and penetrating articulations of the Christian faith. In the De unione Verbi incarnati Aquinas presents in five articles material that occupies more than eighteen questions in the third part of the Summa theologiae. The attribution of an esse secundarium to Christ, in the fourth article of the De unione,has been the object of intense debate, for it seems to contradict the account of the Summa. In addition to Professor Nutt’s English translation, the volume includes the critical Latin text published by Barbara Bartocci, Klaus Obenauer, and Walter Senner, as well as a substantial introduction. Professor Nutt’s introduction carefully unfolds the historical background, technical concepts, sources, and speculative claims needed for understanding the breadth of the biblical and metaphysical contemplation represented in this work; it also includes a detailed exploration of the debate over the fourth article.

The Waltharius, a medieval Latin epic poem of over 1400 lines, richly retells the story of a vigorous Germanic saga in the language and style of classical and Christian Latin poetry. Walter, its hero, is a pagan warrior ready to mock his enemies and mercilessly decapitate them, but also a pious Christian who refrains from premarital sex and stops to pray and ask for God's mercy in the middle of a battle. The poem varies remarkably in tone, providing both fervent moral commentary and bitter black comedy. The growing scholarship on the poem outside of Germany, where it has always been popular, no doubt results from its weird allure and eclectic nature. It has something for everyone. This new edition uses a fresh review of manuscripts (especially the recently discovered fragments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) in order to provide a text and apparatus that will aid the reader in understanding the poem's tangled manuscript history. The notes are rather fuller than those of previous English-language editions, providing useful context to understand the complicated relationships among the Germanic, classical Latin, and Christian Latin traditions as well as tracking various themes and stylistic features that the poet employs.

Since Bonaventure never wrote a treatise devoted to the Eucharist, his extensive treatment in the fourth book of his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, which covers many of the topics that would have comprised such a work, stands as his most extensive discussion. In it the Seraphic Doctor considers, among other things, the symbolism of the Eucharist, its connection to the imagery of the Old Testament, the metaphysics of transubstantiation, and the efficacy of the sacrament in the heart of the believer. The result is a treatment that in many ways parallels the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, yet is distinctively Bonaventurean. This volume presents a translation of this discussion in its entirety, together with the Latin text of the Quaracchi edition. Professor Johnson’s introduction situates this text in the larger development of medieval Eucharistic doctrine and comments extensively on the theology of this set of questions. In addition to explaining dense technical and linguistic issues in the text, the notes key the reader to Bonaventure’s rich inheritance of material in the Fathers and in earlier medieval theologians.

This booklet is devoted to the memory of Margaret Jennings (1942–2016), a distinguished medievalist who devoted much of her scholarly work to the fourteenth-century Benedictine Ranulph Higden and his writings. The booklet offers reminiscences by some of Professor Jennings’s closest friends and colleagues, including her husband, Francis P. Kilcoyne. The brief essays reveal a remarkable woman, who was not only a fine scholar, but poured her soul into many activities benefiting other people, whether these were the generations of students she joyfully taught at St. Joseph’s College or parolees in Brooklyn whom she helped get their lives together. Included in this booklet, as well, is a reprint of one of Professor Jennings’s most intriguing articles, in which she reconstructs the scandalous conditions that prevailed at St. Werburgh’s Abbey in the fourteenth century. Her complete bibliography rounds off this commemorative publication.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are considered the golden age of preaching in medieval England. The Latin sermons edited and translated in this volume, preached by Robert Rypon (c. 1350–1421/22) and collected in a single manuscript, are both representative and exceptional instances of the preaching during this period. Rypon was an English Benedictine monk educated at Oxford and a member of Durham priory, where he served a number of important roles. He preached regularly not only to his monastic community but to lay and clerical audiences at Durham cathedral and in parishes around Durham and Northumbria. Many of his analogies, metaphors, and exempla are original or distinctive in their development, but he applies all of them to traditional homiletic concerns, such as the seven deadly sins, the acts of mercy, the theological virtues, the Ten Commandments, prayer, and penance. He also artfully employs the complex scholastic sermon form popular with preachers trained at the universities. His sermons open a window onto the world of preaching and the religious culture of late medieval England. This volume includes a selection of sermons preached on various Sundays and other feast days during the liturgical year, along with seven sermons preached on saints’ days, which include the feasts for John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, and Oswald, the seventh-century king of Northumbria. The second volume will include a selection of sermons preached during Lent.

The dominating theologian in Europe between Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, Henry of Ghent produced a massive Summa of Ordinary Questions as well as fifteen quodlibets during his long tenure at the University of Paris. His work constituted a new synthesis of faith and reason which competed with that of Thomas Aquinas and influenced the history of both philosophy and theology. The first five articles of the Summa, dealing with various issues associated with human knowledge, constitute an adequate introduction to Henry’s thought. In them we find his approach to fundamental principles and themes developed in detail in the rest of his corpus. Of the five, only article one has appeared as a whole in English translation. The next four articles reinforce and develop the findings of the first article, providing additional treatments that indicate Henry’s principles and orientation. In fact, these four articles alone provide a condensed but remarkably rich portrait of Henry’s basic thought, and so are an invaluable resource for beginning and advanced students alike. Articles 2–5 include important positions on knowledge and reality, a conception of humanity’s ultimate purpose and the pursuits most conducive to it, and an approach to faith and reason. These four articles are presented here for the first time in English translation with an introduction and notes. Along with the translation, the volume includes the Latin text of the modern critical edition.

Paul of Venice joined the Austin Friars at an early age and was sent by them from Padua to study at Oxford in 1390. When he returned, full of ideas and laden with books, he began his prodigious writing career with several books on logic, including the Logica Magna, which runs to some half a million words. The current volume contains the final treatise, on insolubles—that is, logical paradoxes. After surveying fifteen previous solutions, Paul develops his own, based on the idea that such propositions falsify themselves. Besides a critical edition of the Latin text, the volume also contains an English translation, a detailed commentary, excerpts from two other logical works of Paul’s, and a substantial introduction. The introduction describes the fourteenth-century background to Paul’s treatise; it also gives a detailed rebuttal of a recent claim that the Logica Magna is not by Paul because its content clashes with genuine works of his. All in all, the volume greatly enhances our understanding of the development of logic, in particular of the semantics of propositions, during a crucial century in its history.

Nithard, a layman and soldier, offers an important eyewitness account of the Carolingian civil war between Charlemagne's grandsons. This work also includes an early example of the languages that would become French and German. Nithard's Histories open with Charlemagne's death in 814, cover the reign of Louis the Pious and the rebellions against him, and then give details about the conflict between Louis's sons Lothar, Louis the German, and Charles the Bald during 840-842. This volume contains a new edition and English translation of the Histories. The edition utilizes all surviving manuscripts of the text as well as Pithou's sixteenth-century edition, which preserves variants from an additional, now-lost manuscript. The critical apparatus presents variants found in all extant manuscripts and editions, providing a full view of the textual history that will interest specialists of Carolingian history and Latin historiography. The volume also offers a comprehensive look at this pivotal period of history that is accessible for the wider public. In addition to surveying the manuscript tradition and describing the manuscripts and editions, the introduction draws on the latest scholarship and discusses Nithard's life, work, perspective, and style. The notes to the translation give further insight into Nithard's work and contextualize his view with references to other contemporary historical sources. The volume also includes a glossary of people and places mentioned in the text and a map of those places.

The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle (Liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli), long regarded as a sixth-century reworking of an earlier apocryphal work by an anonymous author, has often been ignored or used by scholars as a vehicle for recovering that now mostly lost work, The Acts of Andrew. Yet in recent years there has emerged a growing consensus that The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle (hereafter noted as the MA) was authored by Gregory of Tours (538–594), the preeminent historical source for the sixth-century West. While Gregory and his hagiographical works have been studied with increasing vigor by scholars, the MA has only recently figured into that effort and, consequently, has not yet been fully translated into English. This volume attempts to fill this void by offering the first full English translation of the MA, alongside Max Bonnet’s Latin edition, and by setting the work in its rightful place in Gregory’s canon. With an introduction, glossary, notes, and a map of places mentioned in the text, this volume provides an accessible entry point to both the study of the legacy of the apostles as well as Gregory of Tours’s interpretation of it. The MA is valuable for the study of early Christianity, late antiquity, and religious culture in the Merovingian Kingdom of the Franks.

Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel’s Via regia is among the first “mirrors of princes” composed in the Western tradition. Smaragdus wrote this book of advice in the early ninth century, likely for Charlemagne’s son, Louis the Pious, during the years that Louis ruled Aquitaine. It contains thirty-four chapters on the proper conduct expected of a Christian king, addressing such topics as the necessity of peace, justice, and good judgment. While Smaragdus’s contemporaries developed sophisticated theories of government, Smaragdus emphasized the cultivation of virtues and presented a biblical model for rulership. Although the Via regia has received considerable attention in modern scholarship for the information it provides about Carolingian rulership and its author, this is the first critical edition and full English translation of the text. The edition utilizes the three surviving complete manuscripts of the text, an earlier edition that preserves the text of a now-lost manuscript, and two further manuscripts containing excerpts. The critical apparatus presents variants found in these copies, providing a full view of the textual history. Unlike the earlier edition, it includes prefatory material found in the three surviving complete manuscripts, which is significant for the light that it sheds on Smaragdus’s goals and intended recipient. In addition, the volume offers a comprehensive look at Smaragdus’s life and work. The introduction discusses the author, the historical circumstances surrounding the text’s composition, the manuscript evidence, and the textual work involved in producing the critical edition. The notes to the translation identify Smaragdus’s sources and compare the Via regia with Smaragdus’s other works, offering insight into his original exegetical method of adapting his sources into lessons applicable for his audience. The volume also contains a table noting similarities in content with Smaragdus’s Diadema monachorum (Crown of Monks) and the Sententiae of Isidore of Seville and Taio of Saragossa.

Shortly after the Black Death’s ravages, Ranulph Higden (ca. 1285–1364), a Benedictine monk at St. Werburg’s abbey in Chester, revised his 1340 Speculum curatorum (or Mirror for Curates), a comprehensive manual for parish priests. It is now divided into three books: I: The Ten Commandments; II: The Seven Capital Sins; and III: The Sacraments. Since the plague’s decimation of the parochial clergy, Benedictine monks began to fulfill the need for pastoral care; so Higden’s newly revised manual addresses both the re-education of preachers in general and the new training required among his fellow monks. Here in Book III he lays the foundation for analyzing the sacraments by examining the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the beatitudes, grace and free will, as well as merit and virtue. In his examination on the sacraments, Higden interweaves theological discussion with anecdotal and hearsay materials that shed light on the everyday practices and beliefs of the Church in late medieval England. Thus, the reader learns that baptism must not be performed with beer, or that extreme unction should extend to anointing the generative organs. Although Higden characterizes his treatment of the sacraments as a “little book” (libellulus), this part of the Speculum curatorum is as lengthy as the first two combined. Clearly, the sacraments represented the culmination of pastoral care. This volume contains chapters 1–69 of Book III. These chapters deal with the theology of the sacraments in general, then turning to baptism, confirmation, exreme unction, holy orders and the Eucharist.

Shortly after the Black Death’s ravages, Ranulph Higden (ca. 1285–1364), a Benedictine monk at St. Werburg’s abbey in Chester, revised his 1340 Speculum curatorum (or Mirror for Curates), a comprehensive manual for parish priests. It is now divided into three books: I: The Ten Commandments; II: The Seven Capital Sins; and III: The Sacraments. Since the plague’s decimation of the parochial clergy, Benedictine monks began to fulfill the need for pastoral care; so Higden’s newly revised manual addresses both the re-education of preachers in general and the new training required among his fellow monks. Here in Book III he lays the foundation for analyzing the sacraments by examining the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the beatitudes, grace and free will, as well as merit and virtue. In his examination on the sacraments, Higden interweaves theological discussion with anecdotal and hearsay materials that shed light on the everyday practices and beliefs of the Church in late medieval England. Thus, the reader learns that baptism must not be performed with beer, or that extreme unction should extend to anointing the generative organs. Although Higden characterizes his treatment of the sacraments as a “little book” (libellulus), this part of the Speculum curatorum is as lengthy as the first two combined. Clearly, the sacraments represented the culmination of pastoral care. This volume contains chapters 70–109 of Book III. These chapters deal with marriage and penance.

In the years 1222–1227, before joining the order and becoming the first Franciscan to hold a chair as a master ruling in theology at the University of Paris, the English theologian Alexander of Hales (d. 1245) introduced the tradition of lecturing on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, producing one of the earliest and most influential commentaries on that book. After its prominence in the middle of the thirteenth century—its influence can be discerned in the group-authored Summa Halensis, in Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and many others—the commentary languished unnoticed and nearly forgotten until 1945, when François-Marie Henquinet, O.F.M., discovered a thirteenth-century copy at Assisi. The rediscovered text was critically edited at Quaracchi between 1951 and 1957, but has remained unavailable in English until now. The first eighteen distinctions of Book One of Alexander’s Gloss on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard are presented here, together with an introduction and notes. They present Alexander’s doctrine of divine unity and Trinity in its clearest and most systematic form, touching on important controversial questions of the time, such as the relationship of the soul with its powers and the existence or non-existence of a created habit of charity in addition to the uncreated charity that is the Holy Spirit. Along with the translation, the volume includes the Latin text of the modern critical edition.

This book is the first in a three-volume set designed to make available some of the most influential alchemical manuals of the later Middle Ages. The past few decades have witnessed the growing realization of the central role played by alchemy in the intellectual history of medieval Europe. The study of alchemy inspired such authors as Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower, shaped the work of scientists such as Paracelsus and Isaac Newton, motivated some of the earliest translations of Islamic scientific and medical texts for Christian readers, and influenced the development of experimental methods underlying the modern fields of chemistry, physics, and biology. The texts in this volume have been attributed—albeit inaccurately—to the prominent physician and theologian Arnald of Villanova (c. 1240–1311). The Rosarius alchemiae’s detailed instructions for the making of the philosophers’ stone provide one of the earliest accounts of the titration of mercury and sulfur as well as a valuable discussion of the experimental methods of medieval alchemists. De secretis naturae is a dialogue between a master and student which situates the pursuit of the philosophers’ stone within a broader philosophical and theological framework. Of greatest influence was this text’s extended comparison between the making of the philosophers’ stone and the death and resurrection of Christ. Accompanying the editions and translations are a historical introduction, catalogue of manuscripts, glossary of alchemical terms, and detailed textual and explanatory notes.