Brepols

In September 2008, the seventh edition of the International Colloquium of Greek Palaeography (Madrid-Salamanca, 15-20 September 2008) celebrated the 300th anniversary of the Palaeographia Graeca, the pioneer work of the Benedictine Bernard de Montfaucon that established the fundamentals of the discipline. Papers by renowned specialists in the field contributed to the methodology of study and to our knowledge of Greek manuscripts, and opened new perspectives for the study of the Greek manuscripts preserved mostly in European libraries, taking into account new methodological approaches, the possibilities of online resources and the results of ongoing research projects.

The Proceedings published here include contributions by specialists from over ten different countries, dealing with palaeographical issues such as ancient capital and lower-case lettering, writing and books in the Macedonian, Comnenian and Palaeologan periods, and Greek scribes and ateliers in the Renaissance (especially in manuscripts from the Iberian Peninsula). Many contributors also take a codicological approach and consider the material aspects of the codex, as well as other new research techniques. Finally, some papers deal with the book as object and how this relates to its content, as well as with the history of texts.

The International Colloquia of Greek Palaeography are organized by the International Committee of Greek Palaeography, presided by Prof. Dieter Harlfinger. The seventh edition payed tribute to the memory of the late Jean Irigoin, who died in 2006.

The letters of Anselm of Canterbury († 1109) provide the clearest insight into his mind and action, and they also constitute one of our finest vantage points to observe the formation of those profound forces moulding Europe in the late eleventh- and early twelfth centuries. The focus of the present study is the transmission of Anselm’s correspondence. It argues that many of the conclusions of earlier scholarship have been constructed on flawed foundations. Using evidence from all known manuscripts and printed editions, the study seeks to demonstrate precisely how Anselm’s letters have survived and how the surviving witnesses relate to one another. The study also aims to define the historical contexts within which our key manuscripts were copied and edited. Only when equipped with this store of information can we begin to understand the editorial processes that shaped the textual tradition of Anselm’s letter collections before and after his death.

Dr Samu Niskanen is Newton Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford.

Anglo-Saxon England experienced a process of multicultural assimilation similar to that of contemporary England. At the end of the ninth century, speakers of Old Norse from present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden started to settle down in the so-called Danelaw amongst the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants, and brought with them cultural traditions and linguistic elements that are still a very significant part of the English speaking world in the twenty-first century.

This book analyses the first Norse terms to be recorded in English. After revising the list of terms recorded in Old English texts which can be considered to have derived from Norse, the author explores their dialectal and chronological distribution, as well as the semantic and stylistic relationships which the Norse-derived terms established with their native equivalents (when they existed). This approach helps to clarify questions such as these: Why were the terms borrowed? At what point did the terms stop being identified as ‘foreign’? Why is a particular term used in a particular context? What can the terms tell us about the Anglo-Scandinavian sociolinguistic relations?

The main purpose of this book is to revalue Potamius of Lisbon as a historical figure of a certain importance, as a theologian of some originality and especially as a writer of great power. The first part of the research is a historical study on the life of Potamius and on his role in the development of the Arian crisis in the Western part of the empire. Particular attention is given to the problem of the different phases of his doctrinal career, which began in the orthodox party, then had a short Arian phase and finally ended with a return to Nicenism. The second part is a general study on Potamius as a writer. The topics discussed are the establishment of the author's literary corpus, the content of his works, his language and style, and his importance as a cultural figure in the age of the Arian crisis. Part three is composed by five complete commentaries on each work of Potamius: Epistula ad Athanasium, De Lazaro, De martyrio Isaiae prophetae, Epistula de substantia Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, Epistula Potamii (fragment quoted in Phoebadius' Contra Arianos). Part four is an appendix constituted by the Latin text of each work with English translation. This complete translation is the first ever made for this author.

This volume revolves around three men who knew each other well, oversaw the political and spiritual life of much of northern France and Flanders during the first third of the twelfth century, and died within five years of one another: Charles the Good, count of Flanders from 1119 to 1127; John of Warneton, archdeacon of Arras from 1096 to 1099 and bishop of Thérouanne from 1099 to 1130; and their common biographer, Walter, archdeacon of Thérouanne from 1116 to 1132. The volume includes a detailed historical introduction and offers the first English translations of Walter's biographies of Charles and John and of several other texts: Lambert of Saint-Omer’s Genealogy of the Counts of Flanders and its continuation, poems on the death of Charles the Good, the inquest into his murder, and selections from Galbert of Marchiennes’ The Transferal of Saint Jonatus to the Village of Sailly-en-Ostrevant, Simon of Saint Bertin’s continuation of the Deeds of the Abbots of Saint ertin’s, Andreas of Marchiennes’ The Miracles of Saint Rictrude, and the third Genealogy of the Flemish Counts (Flandria generosa). The works translated in this volume are the principal sources for the reign and assassination of Charles the Good and the bishopric of John of Warneton that have not yet been translated into English. This volume will be of particular interest to scholars of medieval Flanders and to medieval legal, ecclesiastical, political and social historians in general.

Most of the source texts of this volume were edited in 2006 by Jeff Rider (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 217). References to the corresponding pages of the Corpus Christianorum edition are provided in the margins of this translation.

The articles in this book encompass a broad historical panorama and consider the presence of litanic prayers and songs in different religions, beginning with written records in the Egyptian, Sumerian and Hebrew languages and finishing with Christian works from diverse denominations. The research presents the litany as an exceptionally long-lasting genre which for several thousand years existed in the Middle-Eastern and European traditions, easily conforming to changes in religious or historical circumstances. An interdisciplinary approach by scholars representing different fields of study, including the history of liturgy, Egyptology, Assyriology, literary studies, musicology and ethnosemiotics, allows the eclectic character of litanies to be revealed, litanies which not only were a form of church prayer but also had an impact on the organization of social rituals as well as being appropriated by all the major fields of art, oetry, the fine arts and music. The musicological articles in the book address the performance of Sumerian prayers, the liturgical songs of the Middle Ages, litanies in Tudor England and polyphonic works of the great composers, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In first-century Palestine, a revival was taking place. Many Jews were looking for a more personal encounter with their God. They believed that the glory of YHWH was not confined to the Jerusalem sanctuary, and that in the ‘temples’ of their homes and synagogues they could be like the priests. They would offer sacrifices not of animals, but of prayer. It was in this setting that Jesus taught his followers to say, “Our Father in heaven ...”

Over the course of two centuries, this Jewish prayer became a central feature of Christian ritual. The process of transformation is discerned in various texts: the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the Didache, and Tertullian’s De oratione. To a significant degree, each of these interpreters built upon the foundation which Jesus had established. Yet they also created innovatory significance, forms and functions for this simple prayer.

This work presents the early interpretive history of the Lord’s Prayer. It not only surveys what it meant to Jesus and the early Christians, but also seeks to address the question of why the understanding of the Lord’s Prayer changes. Biblical texts invite - even urge - new interpretations. The meaning of the Lord’s Prayer is to be found not just in its ‘original sense,’ but in the history of its meaning. This work traces the beginning chapters of a two-thousand-year-story which we ourselves continue to shape.

There has been a major trend among social scientists and historians to assume that the history of modernity can be studied without taking into consideration religion as an important factor. This in contrast to premodern societies in which religion would have played such a predominant and all-embracing role that a total symbiosis between religion and society would have existed. Both of these views are challenged by the authors of this volume. They claim that neither of them does justice to the complexity of the relationship between society and religion. They propose a theoretical framework that fully addresses this complexity by focussing on the variegated active ways in which religious agents (groups and individuals) process(ed) their societal and religious contexts in the modern era as well as in the premodern period. Viewed from this perspective, the history of Christianity appears as the heterogeneous result of an ongoing and unceasing selective processing by all Christians - and non-Christians - of their environment. The application of this new theoretical and methodological framework sheds light - often in a surprising and unexpected way - on various processes in the history of Christianity: the conflict-ridden parting of the ways between Jews and Christians; the emergence and development of early Christian rituals; the formation of a Cathar Counter- Church; the emergence of new forms of Christianity in North America; the complicated and ambiguous evolution of Roman Catholicism in modernity.

What is technique in the arts? Now widely used to refer to the practical aspects of art making, ‘technique’ was a neologism in the vernacular, and started to appear in treatises on arts and sciences from around 1750. Rooted in the Greek technè, which was translated routinely as ‘art’ until the mid-eighteenth century, technique referred to processes of making or doing and their products. Described previously as ‘art’, ‘methods’, ‘manners’ or ‘mechanics’, techniques were recorded in text with the intention of documenting or transmitting practical skills and knowledge. This book bridges the gap between the changing concept of technique and the practices currently described by it. It explores the linguistic, philosophical, and pedagogic history of technique in the arts, answering the question why the term ‘technique’ first emerged around 1750, and exploring how its meaning to artists, art theorists, and natural philosophers changed until the twentieth century

In recent years, much critical attention has been devoted to medieval texts written for recluses, such as the Life of Christina of Markyate, Aelred’s Institutio reclusarum, and the Ancrene Wisse. The Manere of Good Lyvyng, in contrast, brings the focus back to the conventual life and to the needs of a nun rather than an anchoress.

The Manere of Good Lyvyng is a late Middle English translation of an earlier Latin text, the Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem, long attributed to St Bernard of Clairvaux. Whether in its Latin form or its Middle English rendering, this work is a fascinating text and one with considerable artistic merit. It is neither a flamboyant text nor one strewn with images such as one encounters in the Ancrene Wisse. It is a quiet text, with the beauty and simplicity of a manuscript perfectly written in an elegant script, where no illustration distracts the reader from its reading.