The origins of Irish Christianity are unknown. Even the history of the Irish Church during the fifth and sixth centuries is somewhat shrouded in obscurity, and leaves a wide scope for speculation. This is particularly true with regard to the careers of the earliest missionaries of Ireland known to us by name—Palladius and Patrick. Contemporary evidence is extremely meagre in the case of Palladius and conflicting in the case of Patrick; and the more eloquent witnesses of later times often contradict either each other or our primary sources. It is not, then, surprising that the relation between these two missionaries and their respective missions was fervently discussed by scholars during the last one hundred and fifty years. Looking back at the vast amount of diligent labour and learned argument devoted to this problem, one is surprised to find the status quaestionis almost the same at the end as at the beginning. Only in recent years has a way been opened which gives hope to attain reasonable certainty on some at least of the disputed points. With Professor T. F. O'Rahilly's pamphlet The Two Patricks (Dublin 1942) the problem has entered its critical phase. By his lucid statement of the principal issue and its implications, based on a firsthand knowledge of the complete evidence, Professor O'Rahilly has put under a lasting obligation even those who, like the present writer, find it impossible to accept his main thesis. If I offer a different solution of the vexed problem, I do so in a spirit of gratitude to the pioneer whose work alone has made the present study possible.

Ecclesiastical problems naturally loom large in any investigation of relations between Greeks and Latins after the conquest of Constantinople in 1204. The story of the negotiations between the Popes and the Patriarchs at Nicaea-the diplomacy and debate with regard to a union of the Churches-has been well told by Walter Norden; except for materials discovered by Schillmann and Heisenberg, little important information has become available since he wrote. I have therefore not re-examined this range of problems here. The purpose of this study is two-fold: first, to investigate within the Empire itself certain of the local ecclesiastical relationships between Greeks and Latins; and, second, to discover the modifications in ecclesiastical organization brought about by the Roman Church in the newly-conquered Byzantine territories which, from 1204 on, formed part of the Latin patriarchate. It is, then, the social and administrative rather than the theological and diplomatic aspects of the subject which engage our attention here.

I have elsewhere drawn attention to a manuscript containing three works on canon law that Bracton laid under contribution, namely Tancred's Ordo judiciarius, Raymond of Peñafort's Summa de matrimonio and William of Drogheda's Summa aurea. This manuscript has been ascribed to the late thirteenth century by Dr. M. R. James; but dating a manuscript by the character of the handwriting can rarely be exact, and there seemed a possibility that the book might prove to be one that Bracton himself had used or that was related in some way to such a one. Through the kindness of the Council of Gonville and Caius College I have been able to examine the manuscript at leisure and, while it tells us less than might have been hoped, yet it does seem to throw a little fresh light upon Bracton's treatise and one of Bracton's sources.

A student of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas once made the comment that if the Summa theologiae is, as its prologue indicates, the book of the pupil, then the Quaestiones disputatae is the book of the master. And with equal enthusiasm another scholar remarked that though he was eighty years old and had been devoted to study from his youth, he had drawn more profit from the three or four years devoted to the study of the Quaestiones disputatae than from the rest of his life. The rich and detailed treatment of the Disputed Questions has not lacked admirers, yet in the history of Thomistic literature that admiration has been tempered by a difficulty in understanding the unity and organization of certain groups of those questions, notably the Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei.

Cerveri was decidedly no poetical genius, and often enough he follows the trodden paths of troubadour poetry. However, there is no denying that again and again he tries to escape that poetical routine. In many cases these attempts result in odd and eccentric compositions, where the unusual is reached at the cost of good taste and poetical values. On the other hand, it must be admitted that Cerveri's efforts in this respect were not always futile. His is, e.g. an amusing satire upon bad women. One of his love songs, characteristically called libel by the MS (S g), assumes the form of a complaint submitted to the king as the supreme earthly judge, in which the defendant is the lady whose charms torture the lover and have made him a prisoner. This poem combines the traditional praise of the beloved and a flattery addressed to the king. Its slightly humoristic tone is also found in a song entitled lo vers del vassayll leyal. Here Cerveri, basing himself on a certain legend connected with St. Mark, gives the king advice in his love affair. Again the poet kills two birds with one stone, flattering the sovereign and pointing, for obvious purposes, to his own poverty. The latter is the only topic of a remarkably personal poem in which the author complains bitterly that, while many of his playmates have become rich in later years, the only wealth he himself did amass were the chans gays and sonetz agradans which he composed for other people to enjoy. Cerveri even tries to renew the traditional genre of the chanson de la mal mariée by adding motifs of—presumably—his own invention. This tendency towards a more independent way of thinking and greater originality in its poetical presentation could not be better illustrated than by the two poems which the MS calls Lo vers de la terra de Preste Johan and Pistola The one puts the poet's moral argumentation against the background of the medieval legend of Prester John, the other, which forms the subject of the present study, sets its teachings in a still more solemn framework, the liturgy of the Mass.

The French word macabre was first used as an ordinary adjective by the French Romantic writers of the last century: Théophile Gautier and Petrus Borel say ‘c'est macabre’ for anything lugubriously grotesque. Sachs quotes fantaisie macabre from Émile Montégut. The word was not included in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française (1694) up to the seventh edition of 1878, but is now to be found in the eighth in the connections danse macabre, récit macabre, plaisanterie macabre. Bal macabre is not recorded, but often used. In the printers' craft-language macabre is said to be used for a Mort, that is, the accidental omission of one or more words of a text by the compositor. The medical students and servants of the dissecting rooms at the French universities call the bodies dissected les macabres. The bargees on the Seine employ the word for corpses seen drifting on the water. Parisian grave-diggers call the bodies of the poor people buried at minimum cost mauvais macabés. In the Auvergnat patois, [chant] macabre is a bag-piper's melody. In the Bergamask dialect macabret is said to mean the Devil-an easy transition from ‘Death.’ In Cervières (Burgundy) a certain sword-dance is called Bachuber, obviously either a wrong transcription of an aurally recorded macuber or a local mispronunciation of an adopted word. Macabre is found as a loan-word in English, Dutch, and German: Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, and Spanish.

The study of Latin manuscripts has been of vital importance not only to the student of classical and patristic literature but also to every serious scholar interested in the literature, theology, philosophy and science of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance. In this field, the manuscripts contain not merely new variants of well-known texts but an often unsuspected amount of new textual material that never got into print but often had as wide a circulation and importance as some of the printed works. This material is by no means easily accessible. If a collection of manuscripts has no printed catalogue, there is no way of investigating its content except by working on the spot. On the other hand, printed catalogues, when available, permit the location of pertinent material from a distance, and hence are a definite scholarly aid and desideratum. Since even the printed catalogues are often inadequate and sometimes rare, it has seemed useful to compile an annotated bibliography of these catalogues, which would serve as a guide to medievalists and Renaissance scholars in general, and in particular to the contributors to the project of ‘Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries,’ which has been undertaken by a group of scholars under the auspices of several learned societies. The present bibliography was originally compiled for the purposes of that project, and it has been decided to print it, since previous bibliographies of a similar nature were either conceived along narrower lines, like Weinberger's, or were inaccurate, like Richardson's.

The Latin Empire of Constantinople was established by an agreement drawn up in March 1204 between the Venetian and non-Venetian Crusaders of the fourth Crusade, before they captured the city for the second and last time. According to the agreement, each side would appoint six electors; these would elect an Emperor; thereafter the party whose candidate for Emperor had been unsuccessful would choose Latin clergy to serve as a cathedral chapter for Santa Sophia, and would name the Latin Patriarch. The Venetians were chiefly interested in the commercial opportunities in Byzantine territory; and, especially since they had stipulated that the Doge would not be a vassal of the Latin Emperor, they were willing to see the imperial throne go to a non-Venetian, and to establish an economic monopoly, at the same time taking control of the most important church offices. They therefore secured the election of Count Baldwin of Flanders as the first Latin Emperor, and themselves chose a Venetian cleric, Thomas Morosini, as first Patriarch. In April 1205 Baldwin was captured by the forces of Ioannitsa, King of the Vlachs and Bulgars. Sometime thereafter, Ioannitsa had Baldwin murdered in prison. This deed was in all probability committed in a fit of rage at the act of certain Latin forces who had burned down the quarter of the Bogomile supporters of Ioannitsa in Philippopolis, and who had persuaded the Greeks of the place, formerly allied with Ioannitsa, to desert him.

In his excellent description and analysis of Walters MS 11, Dr. Leo F. Miller gives little or no attention to what is at times the most vexing problem a liturgical manuscript can present, viz., for what church was the codex written? He determines the predominantly Ravennate character of the ‘martyrologium’ prefixed to the sacramentary-missal which constitutes the body of the book, but in general hesitates to assign the manuscript to Ravenna itself, because ‘it contains none of the liturgical uses proper to that city's ancient liturgy, to which the people clung so tenaciously until they were abolished by Archbishop Julius della Rovere,’ and adds: ‘would a Ravenna calendar lack such great names as Peter Chrysologus and Iohannes Angeloptes?’ It will not be amiss, therefore, to look about for other clues which may help us solve the problem. An initial clue may, indeed, be said to stand out in the calendar itself: March 21. Natale S. Patris nostri Benedicti. This formulation, which is found normally only in Benedictine calendars, taken together with the proper mass for the feast of the saint on fo1.37, leaves little room for doubt concerning the character of the church for which the book was intended, even as the blessing of the weekly reader, inserted after the Canon of the Mass (fol.12r), clearly indicates that the book at one time served a monastic church. Our problem, therefore, is to identify the abbey or priory, if possible, and here again there exists an important clue. In the ‘Missa pro Congregatione In honore (sic) sanctae Mariae,’ St. Ambrose is mentioned in both collect and postcommunion, as he is also in the ‘Nobis quoque peccatoribus’ and in the embolism after the Pater noster. There can be no question that the saint mentioned in the two prayers—Defende, quaesumus and Copiosa—is normally the patron of the monastery, and that this particular mass-formulary has in this book been adapted for use in a church dedicated to the famous bishop of Milan. It would be interesting, therefore, to find in the province of Ravenna a monastery dedicated to St. Ambrose, so remote, too, perhaps from the metropolitan city as not to be obliged or inclined to keep all its local observances. Such a monastery did, indeed, exist—Sancti A mbrosii de Rancla (Ranclo; the modern Ranchio), situated about seven kilometers north-northwest of Sarsina, the episcopal city of the diocese to which it belonged, a suffragan see of Ravenna—and although no chronicle or annals, recounting the inner and outer history of the abbey would seem to be extant, the archives of the diocese, meagerly published, to be sure, do give us for the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries an occasional glimpse of its fortunes, at times perhaps even more.

Examination of the De universitate mundi by Bernard Silvester and the Hermetic La tin Asclepius proves that Bernard had studied the Hermeticist's work. It is the intent of this paper to report not only that proof, but as well to explain to what extent Bernard applied to his own composition what he had learned from his study.

Medieval historians, diplomatists, and canonists alike will welcome the news from Gottingen that Professor W. Holtzmann is preparing the critical edition of a corpus of papal decretals of the twelfth century. It is altogether fitting that this project should be undertaken by a scholar universally recognized as the foremost authority on the decretal collections; and also that he should have decided to detach it from the G6ttingen Academy's monumental enterprise, as designed and directed for over forty years by the late Paul Kehr, which has as its ultimate goal a complete edition of the twenty thousand odd papal letters extant from the earliest times to the accession of Innocent III-an enterprise which we may not hope to see completed within this generation. Professor Holtzmann, in the course of his connection with the general Papeturlcundenuierks, has come to realize that the decretal letters of the twelfth century offer both an historical interest and a critical problem of their own. The first is easily seen by their paramount significance, especially since the pontificate of Alexander III, for the development of Canon law in doctrine and its consolidation in practice; the second consists in the peculiarities connected with their being transmitted in collections made by canonists for the use of canonists. The purpose of such collections, i.e. the intention to serve, broadly speaking, the needs of schools and courts, entailed certain well-known textual developments, resulting in a sharp contrast with any kind of archival tradition: neglect of formal elements of the individual letter, especially of its protocol and eschatocol; abbreviation of its juridically irrelevant portions; dissection, at least in the systematic collections, of slecretals dealing with divers matters in order to distribute their contents under several titles, etc.

Die Sammlung Borghese gehort unter manchen Gesichtspunkten zu den wichtigsten und interessantesten Handschriftenfonds der Vatikanischen Bibliothek. Ihrem Umfang nach ist sie relativ klein: sie umfasst ungefahr vierhundert Codices, von denen die meisten Pergamenthandschriften des 13. und des 14. Jahrhunderts sind. Aber unter diesen vierhundert Banden befinden sich kostbarste Schatze, insbesondere auf philosophisch-theologischem und juristischem (oder kanonistischem) Gebiet, die schon aile in geniigen wurden, um diesem Fonds seinen Wert und seine Bedeutung zu geben. Doch was daruber hinaus dieser kleinen Handschriftensammlung ihren besonderen Reiz und ihre Ausnahmestellung verleiht, ist ihre Geschichte. Habent sua fata libelli: wohl von kaum einer andern Bibliothek der Welt gilt dieses Wort in gleichem Mass wie von der unseren.

Parmi les livres contenant des écrits d'auteurs italiens qui furent édités par AIde Manuzio I' Ancien de 1500 á 1514, le volume, renfermant les Lettres et les Oraisons de S. Catherine de Sienne, occupe une place de choix, car aussi bien par sa facture que par sa noble ordonnance, il se présente comme un monument typographique digne de la Sainte que, moins d'un siecle auparavant, Pie II avait placee sur les autels. Connue de Hain, dècrite plus largement par Renouard, Proctor, Pellechet, Polain et Ie Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke,‘l’édition de 1500 a été étudiée pour sa gravure par le due de Rivoli et, au point de vue catherinien, par MM. Fawtier et Dupré Theseider. Or, bien que dus à des spécialistes, ces différents travaux laissent subsister un certain nombre de problèmes. C'est pour hâter leur solution que la présente note a été rédigée. Elle fournira, croyons-nous, diverses précisions tant pour la description typographique que pour l'histoire de cette importante édition.